back home, but instead we went on with the others. Again, my opinion was not sought – Erik would probably have glanced back more frequently if he had been followed by a faithful dog. I began to suspect that the excursion had to have some higher purpose, that we were for some reason destined to it. I had to wait until September before the point of it all became clear to me.
The battles of Ruona and Salmi had been lost and the army was retreating towards the north. We spent the night on a hill; a river ran at its foot and you could see the Vaasa road if you craned your neck. I had difficulty getting to sleep, I was not used to sleeping at nights. It was dawn when I finally began dropping off. But suddenly I heard cannon, like thunder, and muskets, banging. The noise was coming from the outposts. Erik, recumbent next to me, also woke up.
We received an order: we were to snoop on the enemy and establish their strength. So we went in a big loop behind our own troops. The boom of the cannon and the sporadic firing of the muskets became more distant as we stalked along the forest edge, crouching, alert as hunters after a timid prey. The smell of powder trailed us in the wind, early light filtered through the tree trunks like water, everything was at a standstill and unreal and too real. Erik went ahead, as always, until we turned back and again approached the sounds of battle, stopping on a gentle slope at the edge of a long field. We had a clear view. Erik kept peering through the telescope that had been lent to him by the officers. He said, ‘They must be somewhere over there in the meadow, because I can see some of our men at the edge of the forest. And we’re bound to see better from that hillock. We should go there.’
‘But what if they’re there?’ I asked. ‘Not too many trees on the slope.’
‘Let’s go carefully. If you head straight to the top and I go round to that spot over there with the three big pines, we might see them from two directions.’
‘And we’re supposed to count up the heads?’
‘They can’t really be counted, but we can make some sort of estimate.’
‘Let’s go, then. Got to help the King, I suppose.’
He looked at me coolly. ‘Don’t hurry, though. It’s hardly going to help the King if we start rushing round. And he’s not here himself, crawling along.’
‘He may have other business to attend to,’ I suggested. ‘A ball or suchlike. Or some noble lady.’
He stuffed the telescope into his knapsack and some chewing tobacco into his mouth. ‘Bet he’s good at it, dancing. He’ll know a bit about the ladies, too.’
‘How do I know when you’ve got there?’
‘I’ll come to you. We’ll meet at the top.’
And we did. But I had to crawl first, and I was not actually used to crawling. I was exhausted halfway up the slope, my knees and elbows were stinging, my face was all scratched by the brush. On reaching the hilltop, I came to a halt, panting. I closed my eyes and thought I might just as well stay there, rot away on the spot, end up as bones, forgotten. I did not stay there. I lifted my head cautiously and looked around. I did not see anybody.
Then I did. There was a surreptitious movement between two intertwined junipers. At the same time Erik appeared further away, bent down and carrying his musket across his breast. A man wearing the green coat of the Russian army raised himself and moved from the cover of the bushes to a massive pine, all the while staring at Erik’s back. He lowered himself and then, resting on one knee, took aim. He was so close to Erik, it would be hard to miss.
I lifted my gun. I focused on the enemy. Then I saw who it was. For a moment, my heart stopped beating.
I often return to the scene in my mind. I could so easily have killed Henrik. He had never been a great shot and now, too, he took unnecessarily long to aim. Or perhaps he wanted to be absolutely certain that his bullet would pierce Erik’s heart. Who knows? I do not even know how my own reaction came about. When I pulled the trigger, the decision seemed to have been made somewhere outside myself, independently of me. My actions were not dictated by my own will, but determined by a power bigger than I, unknown to me. Then everything happened fast, faster, all at once. The bullet dispatched by me hit the tree trunk. Henrik shrank back as splinters hit his eyes, Erik threw himself on his stomach and Henrik was instantly on the move, twisting sideways and diving deep into the junipers. I could see from the swaying of the shrubbery that he was storming towards the southern slope of the hill. I fell first to my knees, then into a sitting position. My eyes became blurry, I felt like my limbs were falling off my body. I squeezed my eyes shut again.
‘Who fired that shot?’ Erik asked. ‘Was it you?’
I opened my eyes. ‘I had to shoot when I saw the green coat tail.’
‘How did he fare? You hit him?’
‘It was all so quick I don’t think I did. He ran off, in any case.’
‘He may have been wounded, at least.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
And nothing more was said about the incident. So much else happened that there were plenty of other things to talk about. For me, the fighting ceased on that hill, in a way. We landed up in many more knotty situations afterwards, and finally in Tornio, in such wretched winter quarters that the misery is indescribable. But lying amidst dying soldiers seemed to me neither here nor there. Nothing can move a man once he has seen someone trying to kill his own brother.
I hear footsteps coming closer from outside, along with the wind. I sit still, my elbows resting on the table, and wait. The Old Mistress treads decisively but unhurriedly, as is her wont, setting her town shoes carefully in the snow, one after the other. She stops on the steps, hesitates a moment, knocks on the door. I clear my throat and shout out, ‘Couldn’t afford a latch!’
A flurry of cold air comes in. The wind is shut out by the door, disappointed. The floor creaks and the Old Mistress says, ‘You’re just sitting here.’
‘Don’t I usually sit here?’
‘Where else? I suppose each of us has his place.’
She sits down on the bench. My nose twitches with the familiar waft of powder. I stand up and feed the fire with a couple of logs. I get the spirits jug out of the cupboard and two cups. I pour. She watches my actions benignly, her face tired. Even in dim light she looks careworn, her former bearing gone. The years have not been merciful to either of us, but there is no point in lamentations.
‘I was just thinking about the war,’ I say.
She lets out a melancholy laugh. ‘Is it worth thinking about?’
‘No, probably not. But I was thinking how you count one as your own and another as your enemy. Your allegiance is arbitrary. You happen to be in a certain place and so you’re in the army of that place.’
‘Henrik didn’t have to enlist.’
‘You can never know what makes people do what they do. And I don’t know whether we came out of it well or badly. I mean, whether we lost out when we became part of the Russian Empire instead of the Kingdom of Sweden. For it may be that we would have lost anyway.’
‘I hear there are some, in towns in particular, who dream of an independent Finland,’ she says. She coughs after a sip of liquor. ‘I receive letters from Turku. But I don’t expect anyone dares say it aloud.’
Turku. She has never stopped yearning for it. It is where she came from, in a new carriage purchased by the master. She was young, voluptuous, proud, shy. Her dress was dusty from the journey. I recall her fine wrists. Next to the big-boned master she barely looked like a grown woman, but you only had to glimpse her eyes to understand that she had brought with her an unbending will. She had the patience to wait, with that will, until the man she wedded soon proved sickly and, as a consequence, unwilling or unable to manage the affairs of the house. So the town miss became mistress of a farm. At a cost. She has paid with her loneliness and with the broken veins on her cheeks. She pawned her youth such a long time ago that there is nothing left now to redeem.
‘Hmm, so we could be a sovereign state,’ I say. ‘I’ve thought of sovereignty myself at times, when I’ve got fed up with carving sticks out of wood.’ I try to catch her eyes but her eyelids droop heavily. ‘Is that what makes people blessed? Haven’t we been sovereign for hundreds of years, part of the sovereign Swedish realm? And now we are sovereign subjects of the Russian Emperor.’
‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ she mutters.
‘Who knows. Some of this talk is beyond me. I suppose I’m stupid, not understanding.’
