Mother turns suddenly, as if spun round by a gust of wind. Her face looks pale in the slanting light. The wrinkles that begin at the corners of her eyes and the sides of her nose have deepened, and the skin under her chin has loosened. ‘What sort of a place is it, then?’ she asks.
‘There’s no other city like it,’ I reply. ‘There are more fountains there than there are houses in Turku, and Nevsky Prospect is so packed with carriages you can scarcely squeeze between them. There’s progress, well-being, plenty of rich folk. Not even Stockholm can compete.’
Her eyelids don’t flicker. ‘If it’s so grand there, wouldn’t you have been better off staying?’
I will not lose my temper; I will not give her the satisfaction. I answer, ‘Yes, of course, but history’s being made. Good men are needed here, now that we’re lucky enough to be part of the Empire.’
‘Lucky, you say?’
‘Call it luck, or else the Emperor doing us a favour out of the goodness of his heart. Of course, many of the local peasants haven’t yet grasped this.’
‘But you were right to return to the peasants?’
‘I’ve already said so.’
She turns her back on me again. I move to the table. I draw a line in the dust shrouding it. Has the new maid been engaged only to receive free board? Mother begins nervously fingering those foolish porcelain knick-knacks collected on top of the chest of drawers: angels and horses and sheep and unicorns. Grotesque reminders of her urban childhood, long since lost. Though there is still something childlike about her, always will be. I would bet my boots she is itching to grab that bottle on the side table. So I go and pour myself a drink.
‘I hear Erik is in Vaasa with Mauri,’ I say. ‘The Farmhand told me.’
Her voice couldn’t get any more tense. ‘They seem to have more than enough business over there. But what do I know? It could be something really important. I made up my mind a long time ago that I don’t need to bother with the affairs of this house any more. Erik deals with all that. And I think I’ve earned a quiet life by now.’
‘Yes, for sure. And Erik has…’
‘A capable wife to support him? Is that what you were going to say?’
‘Capable, why not? Not a bad expression.’
She half-turns towards me. ‘Why did you come back?’ She seems to direct the question to a third person, hidden from view.
‘What sort of a question is that? Surely a man can come home.’
‘Home? No use trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I know full well there’s no such thing as home where you’re concerned.’
Strange, how at times the easiness of words can make your whole face feel light. ‘A man can’t always fathom his comings and goings. I felt there was unfinished business.’
‘Business?’
‘Yes. Certain business.’
She snorts, weakly but furiously. ‘It’d be better if you saw to your certain business elsewhere.’
‘But I happen to be here. So, not much you can do about it.’
I am about to step into the doorway when she says, ‘You obviously didn’t do that well in St Petersburg.’
I stop. I ask over my shoulder, ‘Why d’you say that?’
‘There’s not one new horse in the stable.’
She got that off her chest. Indeed she did, but let her have that small consolation in all its pettiness. I enter the hall and my gaze collides with the Farmhand. He is hanging around next to the wall as if it were his job. This little act gets him a real house. If there were any justice in the world, he would be living in a hole in the ground with smoke vents, and spend his days burrowing away deep down in the earth. I stare at him for a while before I snarl, ‘Why are you skulking here?’
‘You can say what you like,’ he says in his irritatingly slow way. ‘But I’ve never been caught skulking.’
‘Anyone’d think you were standing there with your ears pricked up, listening to other people’s talk.’
He bares his blackened gums. ‘Not possible. I’ve been deaf at least since you were fresh out of swaddling clothes.’
‘In other words, you’ve been deaf for a long time.’
‘Or maybe I can still hear perfectly well.’
He should be flogged. He has the nerve to stand there in front of me with his hat on. The Devil knows why everyone here esteems him so. What strings did he pull in his day? That must all have happened before my time and then been handed on, just like the bad blood they say one generation passes to the next. Thank God the Farmhand’s blood has been stopped up. Then again, he could have a brother he has kept quiet about, maybe even a whole brood of uncouth men, fellows who stand around in dirty boots on rugs bought by others in Vaasa, lacking the manners to remove their smelly, ragged hats.
I glare at him until he finally turns and hobbles outside. I’m tempted to speed him up with a kick. They say sons inherit the sins of their fathers. My father’s sin was taking that shameless rat into this house, leaving me to shoulder the burden.
Mother has obviously been listening, for she slams the drawing-room door shut behind my back.
Just then, I hear a rustle in the passage leading towards the kitchen. Are there ears in every nook and cranny of this madhouse? I stride in the direction of the sound, squeeze into a dark corner and freeze. I sense it: the scent. What an irony, for a man to experience all the smells of a world metropolis only for his feet to be nailed to the floor by a faint scent that brings him slap-bang face to face with the past.
It has always been the way round here: you say something when you mean something completely different, or at least more. There would have been no point continuing my squabble with Henrik. I might as well talk to a barn wall, with the barn about to fall on top of me.
So I went out again. I felt the frost sharpening. The coldest winter months are lying in wait. I had to go to the forest. On a good day, you can hear nothing there but your own thoughts. I could have inspected the traps, and I started off in the right direction, but a strange weariness forced me to sit down on a tree stump. As I sat, I tried not to think of Henrik, and so I thought of him.
Anyone can see he has been to war. That sort of thing is etched on a man’s face, like exhaustion or grief, but I saw more in him: I saw what he used to be. A human being never sheds his past. He drags it around like an old overcoat and you know him by this coat, by the way it looks and smells. Henrik’s coat is heavy and gloomy, exuding the dark stench of blood.
It all began with the horse. So little is needed for a man’s life to go wrong. At first the horse was a colt. This colt lived on the neighbouring farm. The day Henrik laid eyes on the colt, and saw the horse it would become, the fate of this house was determined. Henrik was born to understand horses. In any other man, such an understanding would be a gift. In Henrik’s case, the gift proved a curse. He didn’t see in the colt a future work-horse or even a mount. Such a vision was not enough for Henrik. Was he looking for something in animals that he did not dare look for in humans? I was sharpening my scythe at the edge of the field when I heard Henrik’s breathless voice behind my shoulder: ‘I’m going to get a horse.’
I smiled. One underestimates one’s own bygone dreams, sneers at them as they were sneered at in their day by obtuse old men. I asked anyway, ‘Where will you get one of those? There’s many a grown man doesn’t manage it.’