“I had to get away from the house,” he confesses. “Before I left… I’m not sober, I admit that. Before I left I was sitting by the side of Nalle’s bed holding a shotgun to his head.”
Lisa doesn’t say anything. Slices a carrot as if she hadn’t heard.
“I thought about how things are going to be,” he sighs. “Who’s going to look after him when I’m gone? He’s got nobody.”
And that’s true, thought Lisa.
She’d arrived at her gingerbread house up on the ridge. The moon cast a silvery sheen over the extravagant carving on the veranda and window frames.
She went up the steps. The dogs were barking and charging about like mad things inside, recognizing her footsteps. When she opened the door they hurtled out for their evening pee on the grass.
She went into the living room. All that was left in there was the empty, gaping bookcase and the sofa.
Nalle’s got nobody, she thought.
YELLOW LEGS
Spring is coming. The odd patch of snow beneath the blue gray pines and the tall firs. A warm breeze from the south. The sun filtering through the branches. Small animals rustling about all over the place in last year’s grass. Hundreds of scents floating about in the air, like in a stew. Pine resin and the smell of new birch leaves. Warm earth. Open water. Sweet hare. Bitter fox.
The alpha female has dug a new lair this year. It’s an old fox’s den on a south-facing slope, two hundred meters above a mountain lake. The ground is sandy and easy to dig out, but the alpha female has worked hard, widening the entrance so that she can get in, clearing out all the old rubbish left by the foxes, and digging out a chamber to live in three meters beneath the slope. Yellow Legs and one of the other females have been allowed to help sometimes, but she’s done most of the work herself. Now she spends her days close to the lair. Lies in front of the entrance in the spring sunshine, dozing. The other wolves bring food. When the alpha male approaches her with something to eat, she gets up and comes to meet him. Licks and whimpers affectionately before gulping down his gifts.
One morning the alpha female goes into the lair and doesn’t come out again that day. Late in the evening she squeezes out the cubs. Licks them clean. Eats up the membranes, umbilical cords and the placenta. Nudges them into the right place beneath her stomach. No stillborn cub to carry out. The fox and the crow will have to manage without that meal.
The rest of the pack live their lives outside the lair. Catching mostly small prey, staying close by. Sometimes they can hear a faint squeaking when one of the cubs has wriggled in the wrong direction. Or been pushed out by one of its siblings. Only the alpha male has permission to crawl in and regurgitate food for the alpha female.
After three weeks and a day, she carries them out of the lair for the first time. Five of them. The other wolves are beside themselves with joy. Greet them carefully. Sniffing and nudging. Licking the little ones’ rotund tummies, and under their tails. After just a short while the alpha female carries them back into the lair. The cubs are completely worn out by all the new impressions. The two one-year-olds hurtle joyfully through the forest, chasing one another.
It’s the beginning of a wonderful time for the pack. They all want to help with the little ones. They play tirelessly. And the rest are infected by their playfulness. Even the alpha female joins in a tug-of-war over an old branch. The cubs are growing, they’re always hungry. Their muzzles grow longer and their ears more pointed. It happens quickly. The one-year-olds take turns to lie on guard outside the lair when the others go off hunting. When the adults return, the youngsters come forward, tails wagging. Begging and whimpering and licking the corners of the older wolves’ mouths. In reply the adult wolves bring up red mounds of the meat they’ve swallowed. If there’s anything left over, the babysitters can have it.
Yellow Legs doesn’t go off on her own. During this period she stays with the pack and the new cubs. She lies on her back playing the helpless prey beneath two of them. They hurl themselves at her, one sinks his needle-sharp teeth into her lips and the other attacks her tail like a mad thing. She pushes the one who was dangling from her lip aside and places her enormous paw on top of it. It’s all the cub can do to free itself. Wriggling and struggling. Finally it escapes. Gallops around her on its fluffy paws, comes back and throws itself at her head, growling recklessly. Bites her ear aggressively. Then all of a sudden they fall into a deep, peaceful sleep. One lying between her front legs, the other with its head on its sibling’s stomach. Yellow Legs takes the opportunity to have a little doze as well. She snaps half-heartedly at a wasp that comes too close, misses, the sleepy hum of insects above the flowers. The morning sun rises above the tops of the pine trees. The birds swoop through the air, hunting for food to regurgitate into the gaping mouths of their babies.
Playing with cubs makes you tired. Happiness flows through her like spring water.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 8
Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke woke up at half past four in the morning.
Bloody cat, was his first thought.
It was usually his cat Manne who woke him up around this time. The cat would leap up from the floor, landing with a surprisingly heavy thud on Sven-Erik’s stomach. If Sven-Erik just grunted and turned on his side, Manne would stalk up and down the side of Sven-Erik’s body like a mountain climber on top of a high ridge. Sometimes the cat would let out a terrible wail, which meant that he either wanted food, or to be let out. Usually both. Straightaway.
Sometimes Sven-Erik tried refusing to get up, muttered “it’s the middle of the night you stupid bloody cat,” and wrapped himself in the bedclothes. Then the promenade up and down his body was carried out with the claws extended further and further each time. In the end Manne would scratch Sven-Erik’s head.
Pushing the cat onto the floor or shutting him out of the bedroom didn’t really help. Then Manne started on the soft furnishings and curtains with all his might.
“That cat’s too bloody crafty,” Sven-Erik always said. “He knows I’ll put him outside when he does that. And that’s exactly what he wanted all along.”
He was a man who commanded respect. Strong upper arms, broad hands. Something in his face and bearing bore witness to years of dealing with most things, human misery, fired-up troublemakers. And he found pleasure in being ruled by a cat.
But this morning it wasn’t Manne who’d woken him. He woke up anyway. Out of habit. Maybe because he was missing that stripy young man who constantly terrorized him with his demands and whims.
He sat up heavily on the edge of the bed. He wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. This was the fourth night the bloody cat had been missing. He’d gone missing before for one night, occasionally two. That was nothing to worry about. But four.
He went downstairs and opened the outside door. The night was like gray wool, on the way toward the day. He gave a long whistle, went into the kitchen, fetched a tin of cat food and stood on the steps banging the tin with a spoon. No cat. In the end he had to give up, he was getting cold in just his underpants.
That’s the way it is, he thought. That’s the price of freedom. The risk of getting run over or taken by the fox. Sooner or later.
He spooned coffee into the percolator.
Still, it’s better that way, he thought. Better than Manne getting weak and ill, and having to be taken to the vet. That would have been bloody awful.