‘No, I won’t. Although there is a port in Turku.’
‘Please, will you stay in the port?’
He contents himself with nodding. Now I have to swallow the bile rising from my stomach. A clock begins striking inside me, I am thrown by the maelstrom of time, the early morning is cool and sweaty. I resist. I grip Henrik’s arm and say, ‘You were good once.’
His face twitches, lowers. ‘And so were you.’
‘Although I knew nothing then.’
An unprecedented din comes from the direction of the kitchen; we both twist round, stunned, in that direction. The Old Mistress is singing. Henrik laughs soundlessly and looks at me with his face opening out, as if seeing me for the first time. ‘But that’s not why. It was…’
‘Yes,’ I say. I turn my back on him. ‘Yes.’
They sit in the cart, stiff and solemn. They could well be leaving for a nocturnal church service. Henrik, holding the reins, wears clothes retrieved from the late Master’s estate, the Old Mistress sits next to him, and Anna and Erik are behind them with the chests and bundles. I do what I have to do: I walk to the side of the cart and look the Old Mistress in the eyes by way of a goodbye. The moonlight falls on the lines of her face, gets caught in her eyelashes and stays there, glittering.
‘You’re staying?’ she asks, or states.
‘I have no choice,’ I say, ‘I’ve been given the title of Farm Manager.’
‘You think you’ll get on all right?’
‘With the title or the man? I’ve always got on with Mauri. And what can he do to me?’
She smiles. ‘No one can do anything to you.’
I move over to shake hands with Anna and Erik. Anna smiles. She has wrapped a blanket round her shoulders over a thick coat and looks very young, like a little girl excitedly anticipating a journey. Erik holds my hand between both his palms and says, ‘You’ll come and visit us in Turku.’
‘Duties permitting,’ I promise. ‘I have become an important official.’
‘And you must write, since you have that skill.’
‘Unless Mauri hires a scribe to help me out.’
I walk round the cart and stop by Henrik. He crouches, stooped, his head drawn between his shoulders, the features of his thin face sharp and stubborn in the bluish light. I have just opened my mouth when he flings the reins from his hands, jumps onto the ground and sets off determinedly past me, towards the house. He takes a lantern suspended from a pillar of the veranda and continues with a heavy tread towards the stable. He has already pulled open one half of the double doors when I go after him.
He stands by the stall, circled by the dim, flickering light of the lantern. I stop by his side. We observe it in silence: a creature that has strayed into our age from the airless centuries of the past, a creature that exudes the nasty smell of a churchyard and whose malevolent gaze bores into us from its immobile eyes, eternally judgemental and accusatory. It does not breathe, it emanates quietly, you can feel life flowing in and out, eternally, through its tough skin.
‘Erik must have paid a pretty penny for Horse,’ Henrik says, looking at the animal he worked so hard to win.
‘On the contrary. He got it practically free as it was no good to anybody. Jansson was probably pleased just to get rid of it.’
Henrik nods. He stretches out his hand, the horse has to bend its head, swaying up there so high, to nudge the palm with its rounded muzzle. I feel the warm saliva smell of its breath. Henrik smacks his lips. The horse, or rather the horse-like being, more mysterious and more powerful than a horse, responds by throwing its head up and letting out a sound: not a neigh but rather the boom of an out-of-tune organ, or the hollow, screeching din of heavenly trombones – or infernal instruments. I step back, poised to raise my hands to my ears.
‘You thought you’d let it go,’ I say.
Henrik nods. ‘That’s what I thought.’
I walk outside and move away from the doorway. The horse steps out of the stable slowly, haughtily and insolently. It could quite easily dig man-sized holes in the ground with its hooves, but refrains out of sheer superiority. In the middle of the yard, it stops to look with scorn at the cart and its passengers. Shaking its head discontentedly, the horse carries on to the edge of the field, as if trying to forge those heavy hooves into the earth. It does not need to jump over the ditch. It simply crosses the ditch without acceleration. In the middle of the field, it hurtles into a gallop.
About the Author and Translator
Asko Sahlberg, born in 1964, has acquired a fame in Finland that has yet to be replicated in the English-speaking world. He published his first novel in 2000 and has written steadily since then, completing his ninth work, The Brothers, in 2010.
Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah unite as a multilingual mother-and-daughter translation team. Emily has an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in German Studies. Fleur, her mother, is Finnish and has translated both fiction and non-fiction for many years.
