“Have you lost your mind? Go home and lie down.”
“And Tore! He should have been given a good hiding ages ago.”
Kerttu tries to close the door, but Anni is furious.
“You…” she says, forcing her spindly arms in through the crack and grabbing hold of Kerttu’s dress. She pulls her sister out onto the top step.
“Come on, out with it,” she says, giving Kerttu a good shaking.
I’m sitting on the rail, laughing. This isn’t at all funny, in fact, but my God! It’s like watching two scraggy old hens fighting. Kerttu howls, “Let go of me!” But they don’t have enough strength to fight and talk at the same time. They pant and struggle for all they’re worth.
“Go on, Anni!” I shout. “Let her have it!”
But only the ravens can hear me. They are making a racket on the roof of the barn.
Anni holds on to Kerttu’s dress as hard as she can, shoving her against the iron rail, over and over again. Kerttu slaps Anni in the face. Anni starts crying. Not because of the pain in her cheek, but because she is hurting deep down inside. She hates Kerttu, and that hurts.
“Traitor,” she snarls. “You bloody…”
That’s as far as she gets because Kerttu gives her a head-butt. Anni loses her grip on her sister and falls down the steps.
With considerable difficulty she gets up on all fours. She’s sobbing loudly, out of frustration and sorrow.
“Go away,” Kerttu says, gasping for breath. “Go away before I set the dog on you.”
Anni crawls to her kick-sledge and struggles to her feet. Pushes the sledge ahead of her and hobbles along behind it. Crosses the parking area with difficulty, and comes out onto the road.
When she is out of sight, Kerttu goes back indoors. Tore is standing in the kitchen.
“Did you hear that?” she says.
He nods.
“Hjalmar has lost the plot. And Anni! I think everyone’s gone mad. He can ruin us. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t think about you and your family. About your life.”
She pauses and massages her sore back where it has been banged against the iron rail.
“He’s never been bothered about your life. We know that, of course.”
“Is he at his cottage?”
Kerttu nods.
“I’ll take your snow scooter and go out there,” Tore says.
“Your father won’t survive this,” Kerttu says, sitting down with difficulty at the kitchen table. She rests her head in the crook of her arm. It’s August 1943. In the clearing is a silver-coloured haymakers’ hut. She’s lying on her stomach in the trees. Viebke and the three Danish prisoners of war have disappeared into the hut. Sicherheitschef Schörner whispers into her ear.
“Go over to the hut and shout for them,” he says.
She shakes her head.
“Just go,” he says, “and everything will be O.K.”
So she does. Stands outside the hut and shouts for Viebke. She needs to shout his name twice.
He emerges onto the steps. He is surprised, and his face lights up in a smile. The three Danes come out as well.
Then Schörner and the other two soldiers step out of the trees. They are not in uniform, but the pistol in Schörner’s hand and the rifles the other two are carrying say all that needs to be said. In broken Swedish Schörner instructs Viebke and the Danes to place their hands behind their heads and kneel.
Kerttu looks down at the moss. She wants Viebke to think that she has somehow been forced to do this. She does not want him to think ill of her. But Schörner catches on to what she is thinking and will not allow that kind of deceit. He walks over to her, his pistol still aimed at Viebke, and caresses her cheek.
Kerttu cannot see the disgust in Viebke’s eyes, but she can feel it.
Schörner points his pistol at Viebke’s head and demands information about other members of his resistance group.
Viebke says he has no idea what Schörner is talking about, that he…
He gets no further before Schörner points the pistol away from Viebke’s head and pulls the trigger.
Two seconds pass, then one of the Danes falls over. Blood pours out of Viebke’s ear; the gun went off so close to it. The other two Germans exchange glances.
Kerttu has screamed. But now the forest is silent. Her legs are shaking. She looks down at her trembling knees. White parnassia and eyebright are blooming in the grass at her feet. After a short pause she hears the birds twittering in the trees once more, and the woodpigeons cooing.
She stares at the hair moss and stair-step moss and reindeer moss as Schörner kicks Viebke in the stomach and drags him towards the hut.
She stares fixedly at the spent flowers of the wild rosemary and juniper bushes while one of the German soldiers lifts Viebke up so that he is standing with his back to the hut. Schörner takes his captive’s sheath knife and stabs it through his hand so that Viebke is nailed to the silvery-white wall.
“Out with it!” Schörner shouts.
But Viebke does not say a word.
Kerttu can see his white face, so very white. She watches as he loses consciousness. Then she sees the lingon sprigs and blueberry sprigs and crowberry sprigs and bog bilberry.
And then… then Schörner curses in frustration, tries to bring Viebke round by removing the knife and punching him in the face. But Viebke remains unconscious.
Then Kerttu hears three shots, and thinks, This isn’t happening, this can’t be true. One of the German soldiers walks over to the car and comes back with a petrol can. When they drive off, the hut is burning like a parched fir tree.
Schörner hands Kerttu over to Isak Krekula and tells him that his fiancée has turned up trumps. Then he strokes Kerttu under her chin and says he knows he can trust her, and that she will get a handsome reward. She will have to be patient for a while, but Schörner will personally ensure that she is paid.
Krekula notices the spots of blood on Schörner’s face, and he has to tell Kerttu over and over again to get into his lorry. In the end one of the Germans lifts her in.
A few days later there is an article about the fire in the local paper, Norrbottenskuriren, saying that it had not been possible to identify the three men who died in the accident alongside Viebke. Kerttu notes that it is the only time she has not seen the newspaper on Krekula’s desk in the garage office. But he never says anything. Asks no questions. And she does not say anything either. It is a matter of forgetting, of carrying on.
She never receives payment. They never see Schörner again. In September depot manager Zindel informs them that there is a parcel for Kerttu in a transport plane from Narvik, which is due to land in Kurravaara.
But Krekula, Johannes Svarvare and three young lads from Kurravaara employed to assist with loading and unloading wait in vain for that aeroplane, all evening and half the night. And after that, the matter is never mentioned again. Krekula is informed that the transport plane has disappeared, and Kerttu has constant visions of it crashing somewhere in the forest, and someone finding it, and discovering a briefcase. A briefcase similar to Schörner’s black pigskin briefcase. And that in it are details of everything that she, Kerttu the Fox, did to help the German army. Every time berry-picking season comes, she is worried to death.
“Are you going to tell me?” Martinsson says to Hjalmar Krekula. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
She has made some coffee. Hjalmar has put his mug on the little table in front of the sofa. Vera is lying at his feet; Tintin has fallen asleep in front of the fire. Martinsson is finding it difficult to stop looking at the photograph of the Krekula family. She would like to go and fetch Pantzare’s photograph of the girl and Viebke in order to compare them. But she is sure it is her. It is Kerttu.