Say hello to Kristin.
If he dared to start looking at things as they really were, marrying her had been the biggest mistake of his life.
Stefan could actually feel himself hardening inside. Hardening toward Bertil, toward his wife.
I’ve carried them long enough, he thought. It has to end.
His mother must have realized about Kristin. What he’d fallen for was her resemblance to his mother. The slightly doll-like appearance, the graceful manner, the good taste.
But his mother had definitely realized. “So personal,” his mother had said about Kristin’s home the first time she visited her son’s girlfriend, “very pleasant.” That was when he was studying in Uppsala. Pleasant and personal, two good words to use when you couldn’t say beautiful or tasteful without lying. And he remembered his mother’s amused smile when Kristin showed off her arrangement of dried everlasting flowers and roses.
No, Kristin was a child who had a mediocre talent for imitating and copying. She’d never become the kind of priest’s wife his mother had been. And what a shock he’d had the first time he went to messy Mildred’s house. All her colleagues and their families had been invited to Mildred’s for a Christmas drink. It had been an interesting collection of people: the priests and their families, Mildred herself, her husband with his beard and apron, pretending to be under the thumb, and the three women who had temporarily sought refuge in the priest’s house at Poikkijärvi. One of the women had two children who must have had every kind of behavioral difficulty in the book.
But Mildred’s home had been like a Carl Larsson painting. The same light touch, warm and welcoming without being over the top, the same tasteful simplicity as in Stefan’s childhood home. Stefan couldn’t see how it fitted in with Mildred’s personality. Is this her home? he’d thought. He’d been expecting bohemian chaos, with piles of newspaper cuttings on storage shelves and oriental cushions and rugs.
He remembered Kristin afterward: “Why don’t we live in the priest’s house in Poikkijärvi?” she’d wondered. “It’s bigger, it would be better for us, we’ve got children after all.”
No doubt his mother had seen that the fragile side of Kristin that attracted Stefan wasn’t just fragile, but broken. Something cracked and sharp that Stefan would hurt himself on sooner or later.
He was suddenly seized by an upsurge of bitterness toward his mother.
Why didn’t she say anything? he thought. She should have warned me.
And Mildred. Mildred who’d used poor Kristin.
He remembered that day at the beginning of May when she came in waving that letter.
He tried to push Mildred out of his mind. But she was just as insistent now as she had been then. Pushing. Just like then.
“Right,” says Mildred, bursting into Stefan’s office.
It’s May 5. In less than two months she’ll be dead. But now she’s more than alive. Her cheeks and her nose are as red as freshly waxed apples. She kicks the door shut behind her.
“No, sit down!” she says to Bertil, who’s trying to escape from the armchair. “I want to talk to both of you.”
Talk to, what kind of introduction is that. That alone tells you everything about what she could be like.
“I’ve been thinking about this business with the wolf,” she begins.
Bertil’s leg crosses over the other leg. His arms fold themselves across his chest. Stefan leans back in his chair. Away from her. They feel criticized and told off before she’s even managed to say what’s on her mind.
“The church leases its land to Poikkijärvi hunting club for a thousand kronor a year,” she goes on. “The lease runs for seven years, and is automatically renewed if it isn’t cancelled. This has been the case since 1957. The parish priest at the time lived in the priest’s house in Poikkijärvi. And he liked to hunt.”
“But what has that got to do with…” Bertil begins.
“Let me finish! True, anybody can join the club, but it’s the board and the elite hunting team who actually make use of the leased land. And since the number in the elite team is set in the statutes at twenty, no new members are allowed in. In practice it’s only when somebody dies that the board elects a new member. And every single person on the board is a member of the team. So it’s the same bunch of old men there as well. In the last thirteen years, not one new member has joined.”
She breaks off and looks Stefan straight in the eye.
“Except for you, of course. When Elis Wiss left the team voluntarily, you were elected-that must have been six years ago?”
Stefan doesn’t reply, it’s the way she says “voluntarily.” On the inside he’s white with rage. Mildred goes on:
“According to the statutes, only the hunting team is allowed to hunt with shotguns, so therefore the team has commandeered all elk hunting. As far as other hunting is concerned, suitable members can buy a one day license, but the kill must be divided up between active members of the club, and surprise surprise, it’s the board members who make the decision as to how that division takes place. But this is what I’m thinking. Both the mining company, LKAB, and Yngve Bergqvist are interested in the lease, LKAB for its employees and Yngve for tourists. That would mean we could increase the fee significantly. And I’m talking about big money here; it would allow us to look at a sensible approach to forestry. I mean, seriously, what does Torbjörn Ylitalo actually do? Runs errands for the team! We’re even providing that bunch of old farts with a free employee.”
Torbjörn Ylitalo is the forestry officer in the church. He’s one of the twenty members of the elite team, and the chairman of the hunting club. Stefan is conscious of the fact that much of Torbjörn’s working day is spent planning hunts with Lars-Gunnar who is the team leader, maintaining the church’s hunting lodges and watchtowers and clearing tracks.
“So,” Mildred concludes. “We’ll have money to manage the forest properly, but above all money to protect the wolf. The church can donate the lease to the foundation. The Nature Conservancy Foundation has tagged her, but we need more money to monitor her.”
“I can’t see why you’re taking this up with me and Stefan,” Bertil breaks in, his voice very calm; “Surely any changes to the lease are a matter for the church council?”
“You know what,” says Mildred, “I think this is a matter for the whole church community.”
The room falls silent. Bertil nods once. Stefan becomes aware of an ache in his left shoulder, pain working its way up the back of his neck.
They understand precisely what she means. They can see exactly how this discussion will look if it’s carried out within the whole community and, of course, in the press. The bunch of old men hunting for free on church land, and on top of that claiming the animals they haven’t even killed themselves.
Stefan is a member of the hunting team, he won’t escape.
But the parish priest has his own reasons for keeping well in with the hunting team. They keep his freezer well filled. Bertil can always show off, offering his guests elk steak and game birds. And there’s no doubt the team members have done other things to compensate the priest for his silent approval of their empire. Bertil’s log cabin, for example. The team built it and they maintain it.
Stefan thinks about his place on the team. No, he feels it. As if it were a warm, smooth pebble in his pocket. That’s what it is, his secret mascot. He can still remember when he got the place. Bertil’s arm around his shoulders as he was introduced to Torbjörn Ylitalo. “Stefan hunts,” the priest had said, “he’d be really pleased if he got a place on the team.” And Torbjörn, the feudal lord in the church’s forest kingdom, nodded, not allowing even a hint of displeasure to cross his face. Two months later Elis Wiss had given up his place on the team. After forty-three years. Stefan was elected as one of the twenty.