So she has acquired a tidy little sum. And she has not wasted it. She lives with her parents and does not have to pay for board and lodging, and she has lent money to Krekula, who has in turn invested it in his haulage business. Krekula is paid well by the German army. He does not ask many questions, and he delivers the goods to their destinations.
Now Schörner takes Krekula and Kerttu to one side and asks if Krekula is prepared to lend Kerttu to him for a little job.
Kerttu pretends to be offended and asks Herr Schörner if he does not think he ought to be asking her instead of Krekula. She is not Krekula’s property, after all.
Schörner laughs and says that Kerttu is an adventuress. He knows that she will want to do it.
Krekula says that Kerttu will make up her own mind, but of course he is wondering what it is all about.
“Ah well,” Schörner says. “The thing is that three Danish prisoners of war have escaped from a German ship moored in Luleå harbour. I want them recaptured.”
He smiles, winks and offers them a cigarette.
Krekula realizes that, behind his smile, Schörner is furious. The resistance movement in Denmark has become properly organized during the summer, and the Germans have been having enormous problems with sabotage and other anti-German activities.
Schörner knows only too well that ruthlessness must be met with ruthlessness. An eye for an eye. In Norway the Germans have escalated the level of terror imposed on the civilian population, which is essential to keep people under control now that the 25th Panzer Division has withdrawn to France.
“Someone has hidden them,” Schörner says. “There is a resistance movement here in Sweden as well. And I have a pretty good idea that a particular young man probably knows where those Danes are. And that young man has a weakness. He’s very fond of attractive girls.”
And he tells them what he has in mind. Promises them generous payment.
Krekula’s head fills with images. He pictures Kerttu coming back from her little outing with bits of straw clinging to her back and her hair tousled. But it is a lot of money. And Kerttu says yes without so much as a glance in his direction. What can Krekula do about it? Nothing.
Krekula is eighty-five years old. Lying on his back in the little room, he says to himself – as he has been saying to himself ever since – I couldn’t have stopped her.
He shouts for her again. Says he is thirsty. That he is still freezing.
She appears in the doorway with a glass of water in her hand. When he turns to look at her, she empties the glass in a single swig.
“You’ve always revolted me,” she says. “You know that, don’t you?”
Even as she is saying it, the doorbell rings. The police are outside. That little fair-haired inspector Anna-Maria Mella. With two men standing at the bottom of the steps. Mella asks if Tore is in.
Kerttu Krekula realizes that this is serious. The police say nothing about a warrant. Nor do they need to. Kerttu is furious. Absolutely furious.
“Are you mad?” she yells. “Out of your minds? Why are you harassing us? What do you want him for?”
And she stands there screaming as if someone had stuck a stake through her body while the police enter the house and take a look around.
“My boy,” she screams. “My poor boy!”
And when the police have left, she slumps down at the kitchen table with her forehead resting on one arm. She puts her other arm over the top of her head.
Isak Krekula is lying in the little room, shouting. Who the devil was that, he wants to know. Who was it? She does not answer.
I’ve landed on all fours on Kerttu’s draining board. Standing like a cat on the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet. I want to see this. Bloody Kerttu! There’s only the two of us in the kitchen. I accompany her to the open-air dance floor at Gültzauudden just outside Luleå. It’s 28 August, 1943.
There is a dance at Gültzauudden near Luleå. The Swingers are playing. “Sun Shines Brightly on Your Little Cottage”, “With You in My Arms”, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and other popular songs. The mosquitoes and horseflies join in the “Sjösala Waltz”, and the telephone wires sag under the weight of the swallows, sitting in a row as if at the front of the stalls.
The young men are wearing suits finished with French seams. The girls are in home-sewn outfits with stiffened bell skirts. Everyone is slim and willowy in these straitened times of food rationing.
Kerttu is not in a particularly good mood. She has come to the dance without a partner. And Schörner would not let her wear her best dress either.
“You mustn’t stand out too much,” he said. “You must look like an ordinary young lass. You come from… wherever it is you come from.”
“Piilijärvi,” she said.
“But you don’t have a fiancé, of course, and you’re staying with your cousin here in Luleå, and you’re looking for a job.”
She buys a bottle of soda and stands around at the edge of the dance floor. Two young lads come up and ask her for a dance, but she says, in a friendly way, “Maybe later,” explaining that she is waiting for her cousin. Drinking her soda slowly to make it last, she feels like a cross between a wallflower and an ice queen. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the man Schörner is trying to trap. Schörner had shown Kerttu a photograph of the lad. Axel Viebke.
Here comes Schörner. He has borrowed the depot manager’s Auto-Union Wanderer. Young boys hanging around the dance floor and sitting in the birch trees like a flock of thrushes gather round the smart-looking sports car.
Schörner, who has a quick eye for the leader of any flock, gives one boy a five-krona note to keep an eye on the car. He does not want it scratched. Or to find that some joker has dropped a sugar cube in the petrol tank.
Then he saunters over to the dance floor. He is in uniform. Those near him stiffen noticeably.
He buys a soda, but hardly touches it. Then he walks over to Kerttu and asks her for a dance.
“No thank you,” she says in a loud voice. “I don’t dance with Germans.”
Schörner’s face turns white and strained. Then he clicks his heels, marches over to the car and drives off.
Kerttu turns to look at Viebke. Stares hard at him. Gazes into his eyes. Then looks down. Then gazes back into his eyes.
He leaves his group of friends and walks over to her.
“Do you dance with boys from Vuollerim, then?” he says. She laughs, flashing her white teeth, and says yes, of course she does.