48. Nilsa
NILSA
1986
He had to stop the car when he got to what the locals called “Shit Stream.” As the stench made its way through the vents he pulled onto the shoulder, opened the door, and trudged through the brush to the water. He’d noticed blood caught under his thumbnail as he drove out of town. Now he could see some under the nail of his index finger, too. His fingernails were bitten almost to the quick but even so, the blood had left rinds. Nilsa still didn’t understand how she could have gotten a nosebleed when he never even touched her face. Maybe it was the shock, or maybe her blood pressure had shot up, bursting a vessel in her nose.
The water smelled terrible but was cool on his hands, and the burbling sound calmed him. He rubbed his palms together—there had to be spatter he hadn’t noticed. He dug at the nails of his index finger and thumb, scraping out what she had left. He was awfully thirsty, but it was bad enough to use the stinking water from the sewage plant to wash his hands. His fingers were red by the time he finally wiped them off on his pants.
What would he say to Sire if the old bitch actually called the police? Would it be the last straw, would she take the boys and move out? He slapped his thighs. No way would she leave him. Where would she go? And there was no way she wouldn’t get why he’d done it, right? For that matter, it was her fault! She was the one who’d let Hilde in. Hilde’s words had gotten under his skin, gnawing their way through every layer, impossible to get rid of. And then for Rita Olsson to show up outside the Konsum, out of the blue. All this goddamn talk about things happening for a reason… well, if that was so, he was meant to see her, what had happened was meant to happen.
He’d been having nightmares recently, waking up with pain in his chest, unable to go back to sleep, incapable of fending off the thoughts. The phone call from Aslak. He’d tried to redirect his mind, tell himself he was misremembering, that Hilde’s chatter had put ideas into his head.
Aslak had called, slurring his words, and Nilsa was so sick of it. He let his brother ramble on and on until he was so fed up that he could hardly breathe for all his rage. He was just about to hang up when the conversation took a turn.
“I called Jon-Ante tonight too,” Aslak had said.
“What would you call him for?” Goddammit, did Aslak want the whole village to know he was an alcoholic loser? And Jon-Ante, of all people. He probably sat there snickering at Aslak and, by extension, their whole family.
“Jon-Ante is a good guy. He remembers things. We talked about school, about her.”
Nilsa was startled, but he bided his time like a pike in the reeds.
“I’m gonna tell her we never forgot what she did. You don’t think I have it in me, do you. But I’m gonna do it.”
“What are you talking about? You need to get it together, stop drinking and running your mouth.”
“Jon-Ante saved me. More than once. No one else but him.”
It was enervating, being forced to listen to this, to hear Aslak praise Jon-Ante. Why on earth did Viellja want anything to do with someone from that family of infamous reindeer thieves? It was one thing that he’d lacked judgment as a child and wanted to be friends with Jon-Ante back then, but now that they were grown it was like giving a big fat middle finger to his own people.
Aslak became whiny, like a baby, and Nilsa cringed. He’d been limited by the reach of the phone cord, pacing back and forth in the hall, ready to hang up on his brother as he’d done so many times before.
Now he wished he’d slammed the receiver home the minute he realized Aslak was on a bender. If he’d done that, he never would have ended up full of this doubt that ate at him night and day.
Sometimes he managed to convince himself that Aslak hadn’t been clear, that Nilsa couldn’t have known he would track down that old bitch. Memory wasn’t very reliable. Had Viellja really said he was going to see her? No. He had blathered on and on about doing the right thing. It had sounded like his usual nonsense, and there was no way Nilsa could have guessed what would happen.
He took long strides through the brush and his underarms began to sweat. What if she hauled off and died now? He scratched at his neck and swore. Why the hell did he have to act so rashly all the time? He thought of the boys and made his hands into fists. Was he going to have to leave them, end up in prison because of her? No, he’d rather die. He wouldn’t subject his children to that kind of shame. But killing himself would leave the boys just as vulnerable. He had to stop and take a few deep breaths, this was happening more and more often, the sensation that he couldn’t get any air. It was almost harder to exhale. Sweat broke out on his palms and droplets chilled the hairline on his neck. He grabbed his chest, but there wasn’t any pain there. The best thing for the boys would be if he died of a heart attack, that way there would be nothing to be ashamed of.
He looked up at the road as a police car with flashing blue lights sped by. Had she called them already? Were they on their way to the village to arrest him? He had to get there first. No fucking police car was going to pull up to their house. He quickened his pace through the thickets back to the car and was on his way before his seat belt was fastened. What should he do? Follow them, see where they were going, flash his brights before they reached the village so they could take him into custody without an audience?
The needle of the speedometer climbed steadily higher, now at 140, and he squeezed the wheel tight, passing two cars at once, approaching Alttaj?rvi without slowing down. How far could they have gotten?
He should have killed her. Why hadn’t he? He could have lived with that. And the boys would never find out, never need to feel the shame. He wouldn’t have gotten caught. Who would suspect him?
Then again, who knew? What if there were witnesses, had someone seen him? Those big high-rises had plenty of windows. Someone could have spotted him trailing her up Gruvv?gen. It probably wasn’t as big a deal if someone saw him leaving the building. But the part where he was following her—neighbors might have noticed that.
He looked down at his flannel shirt; it was hard to tell if there were bloodstains on the plaid fabric. He would have to throw it away, but Sire would find that curious, it was practically new. Why had he pinched the old hag’s nose? He slapped the steering wheel and hit the gas again to pass a car. He’d hit her where it would leave no marks, but then she had to go and get a nosebleed. And the home health aides, what if she was bleeding when they found her and they called the police? He remembered the feeling of her nose between his fingertips, large and fleshy. But how had he hit her? Was it after she fell to the floor? He groaned aloud as memories of her against the wall flashed through his mind. Had he been stupid enough to grab her arms and leave bruises there? Yes, when she tried to get out of the kitchen. He’d shaken her the way she’d done to the children, back and forth, rough and brutal. She wasn’t a small woman, not dainty like his Sire, and it had taken him some effort. The back of her head had struck a wall. The neighbors might have heard the thud. She hadn’t screamed, only moaned and whimpered. He’d shaken her the very same way she’d tossed Aslak around that time they let one of the stray village dogs into the dormitory. She caught them in the act but purposely singled out Aslak. She knew it hurt Nilsa more to watch his brother take a beating. Hadn’t her eyes bored into his own as she flung Aslak back and forth until his head nearly came out of joint? That’s how he remembered it now, and a sound escaped his throat. All Nilsa had been able to do was watch and wait for it to be over so he could take Aslak to the dormitory room. He didn’t want to remember the terror in Viellja’s eyes, and he squirmed there in the driver’s seat. The car swerved as he did. Still no police car—how fast had they been going?
“Biru!” he cursed.
In Veaikevárri, the ore dust lay over the village like gray powder; not even the newly green grass was spared. He approached the fork in the road that led either to Vazá? or Jiellevárri. He could keep heading south and go up in smoke. Maybe that would be the best thing for the boys. And Enná, what would it be like for her if he ended up in prison? It was a good thing Isá could no longer tell people or days apart, it wouldn’t make any difference to him.
He sat up straight, chiding himself, had to get all the details straight now in case he was questioned by the police. He would tell them he stopped by the home to visit his father after the dentist. They would surely ask how often he was in Kiruna; they would never believe this whole thing was a coincidence. In fact, they would assume he had planned it, that he’d visited the nursing home first—it wasn’t far from Rita Olsson’s building—then gone to see her.
And wasn’t it strange that he’d decided to visit Isá today, given that he usually didn’t bother when he was in town? What was the point of going to see him, he always said to Sire, since he doesn’t remember me anyway? He doesn’t remember anyone, she would say, but you still go, because he’s your father. She didn’t get it. He and Isá had meant the world to one another, but then Isá had abandoned him, found a way to escape when Aslak was no longer with them. He vanished into his own brain and didn’t have to feel what Nilsa was forced to endure every day. Nilsa hated him for it.
Maybe Sire, too, would believe he had planned to attack Rita Olsson. If the police got there first and started asking questions, would she tell them yes, her husband was in town? Look surprised when the police asked if he knew anyone on Gruvv?gen? Something in her face would give him away. Maybe she would see her chance to get rid of him. But surely she would think of the boys, right?
He signaled a left and turned toward Vazá?. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. As he’d walked back down Gruvv?gen to his car, full of adrenaline, he’d felt something akin to a rush of joy. He imagined that he would go home, head out to the forest, raise his fist to the sky, and tell Aslak he’d done it for him.
Now that had all faded away. He tasted bile as his body betrayed him once more and let the acid surge up. He cleared his throat, nausea lurking in the pit of his stomach. His sternum burned, but there was no hope of a heart attack, this was regular old-man heartburn. He rubbed his chest and frowned.
At Parakkav?gen he saw three moose, still and stately. He raised his right hand and formed his index finger into a gun. If only they had run across the road, causing him to crash, a hundred kilos of moose smashing through the windshield and trapping him inside. Sure, the boys would have mourned for him, but this was another ending in which they wouldn’t have to live in shame.
He drove slower through Vazá?, fiddling with the radio until he got the Norrbotten news. Biting his thumbnail, he waited for an announcement about a woman assaulted in Giron. He remembered that her blood had been under his nail and he spat on the floor, wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand.
Crossing the bridge, his eyes were drawn to the cemetery on the island. áddjá was there, that evil bastard. Served him right, being buried on an island no one felt like rowing to in the summer. But Nilsa never considered going there even in winter, when the river froze and there was an ice road over. Unless maybe he was there to piss on áddjá’s grave. He and Aslak had done that one winter. Nilsa had just gotten his license and they’d been driving between villages. Near the end of the bridge Nilsa looked at his brother and said they should go and kick the old man’s headstone over. Aslak shrank down in his seat and Nilsa punched him in the shoulder, baiting him.
“Think of áhkku,” he said at last.
Nilsa skidded all the way out, pulling the handbrake, doing donuts. Aslak howled with laughter, watching him with admiration. It was a moment Nilsa would never forget.
It proved impossible to overturn the headstone, not with the weight of their bodies, not by kicking it, so Nilsa unzipped his fly and pissed on the stone instead. The warm stream steamed in the cold air. He laughed out loud as he sullied áddjá’s name.
“Your turn!” he said to Aslak once he’d emptied his bladder and closed his fly.
“You already hogged the whole headstone.”
“Come on.”
Aslak slowly unzipped his pants and turned his back, but he couldn’t produce a drop. “I can’t do it with you standing right next to me.”
“Are you kidding me? Fine, I’ll go find a shovel or a sledgehammer, maybe we can destroy the stone when you’re done. Now pee!”
What áddjá had done to áhkku was something they didn’t quite understand when they were children, but they knew she got quiet whenever he was nearby. She sometimes touched her neck but always kept a shawl wound around it, hiding what mustn’t be seen. She liked the little ones, mostly Aslak, and held them close, but the minute áddjá showed up she would drop everything and wait to be told what to do.
He drank too much, of course, and his voice would get shrill and they were never allowed to go visit at those times. Isá made sure of that. It’s because he lost his reindeer, Isá sometimes said. Indeed, they had starved to death, so it wasn’t entirely untrue. He hit the bottle even harder after that.
We saw that, Viellja! Nilsa thought. We saw what liquor could do, and even so you went down the same road.
“Idiot!” he said aloud and rubbed at his chin in annoyance.
But liquor didn’t do to Aslak what it had done to áddjá; if possible he became even more fragile, weepy, and lovesick than before. No wonder he couldn’t handle Rita Olsson once they were standing face to face.
Aslak never did piss on that headstone. Nilsa watched him from the corner of his eye the whole time, saw him standing there with his head hanging, trying but failing to summon anything.
“Think of áhkku!” he’d called, his voice echoing over the graves.
There was no sledgehammer and no shovel, and when he returned, Aslak lied and said he’d done it. Nilsa let it go.
A car appeared behind him, and he squinted at the rearview mirror to make out the license plate. In the reflection he encountered áddjá’s eyes, deep-set and so dark that the pupils blended in. Some in the village had been startled, more than once, when they saw him coming from a distance, because they thought his áddjá had been resurrected—they were that similar. The same stocky, muscular body, the same habit of walking with their heads thrust slightly forward. When you got closer, the resemblance was even clearer: a thick neck, ears that stuck out just a bit, and those eyes, like black wells. It hadn’t escaped him that áhkku found it ever harder to look at him once he became a teenager, and it only got worse as the years passed. Enná, too, sometimes showed a sliver of sorrow in her gaze. Isá didn’t look like áddja; he took after áhkku with his sharp, straight nose and pointy little chin. None of Isá’s siblings had inherited áddjá’s looks either, and that made him cruel and áhkku’s life even harder. He accused her of whoring around the village, saying that all the children had different fathers. But then came Nilsa, and áhkku and Enná could hardly stand to look at him. áddjá glanced at him with surprise now and then, making it clear that Nilsa paled in comparison to the original. One time he’d grabbed seven-year-old Nilsa by the waist and held a knife to his throat.
“The one who shows fear is the first to die.”
He could recall the chilly blade against his skin and Enná’s panicked face. Nilsa didn’t tremble, didn’t wet his pants, but he felt dizzy as the air was squeezed from his lungs. When áddjá finally let go, he stumbled. That wouldn’t do. áddjá scoffed, called him a coward. He thrust his foot into the soft backs of Nilsa’s knees until his legs gave out and he fell.
But he wasn’t a coward. He would prove it with a vengeance years later.
áddjá had been drunk and forced him to come along into the forest to chop wood. When his axe swung and missed the birch tree, it audibly sliced through muscle and down to the femur. His femoral artery was just a few quivering millimeters away, but it was bleeding even so. Way too much.
“Go get Gustu’s áddjá,” he’d said, almost casually, as though unconcerned that he was bleeding so profusely that Nilsa found the smell of iron hard to take.
Gustu was a few years older than Nilsa, and maybe the only person he looked up to. And Gustu’s áddjá, Per-Ante, was known far and wide for his abilities. He would be able to stanch the blood.
Nilsa ran until áddjá would no longer be able to see him through the trees. As soon as he was out of sight it was like his legs no longer belonged to him. áhkku was in the yard and saw him coming from a distance; their eyes locked, and the way he remembered it she nodded, giving him permission to slow down. She walked just as slowly and they met halfway.
“Is it urgent?” she asked, her eyes slipping to the side, looking past him, into the forest.
“Juoa.”
“Nu go lea.” I see.
“We need Gustu’s áddjá.”
“Then we’d better go get him.”
They walked side by side in silence, and as áhkku took his hand he nearly burst into tears. For the sake of appearances they began running as they approached Per-Ante’s house, and áhkku let go of him.
Per-Ante arrived too late, there wasn’t much blood left to stanch; it was all in the lingonberry scrub, already absorbed by the earth. He looked at áhkku and shook his head sadly; she cast her gaze downward.
They would never speak of it. áhkku would never hold his hand again. What’s more, she would have an even harder time looking at him. But on his eighteenth birthday she handed him an envelope and told him to use it to get his driver’s license. The envelope was full of hundred-kronor bills. He accepted it with a clenched jaw.
Later he would regret not staying with áddjá and looking him in the eyes as the blood drained out of him. He’d said as much to Aslak, too, and Unna Viellja had shaken his head gravely. “Do you really mean that?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t do it. I ran for help.” He never burdened Aslak with the truth. It remained his and áhkku’s secret.
Enná had loved Aslak so much, they all had. He was sweet and easygoing even as a baby. They passed him from lap to lap and he learned to reach for the grown-ups. They couldn’t resist. Nilsa remembered the way he was always glued to Enná’s or áhkku’s side. They made him soft and didn’t see the danger.
He tilted the rearview mirror away, tried to think of nothing. He stared intently ahead, unwilling to drive at high speeds now; the road was hardly passable thanks to all the potholes. It was narrow, too, and the eighteen-wheelers brushed the center line. As he crossed the bridge in Vuolle Sohppar, the river was black, reflecting the dark clouds above. It sure would be nice to just give up.
He passed Gustu driving in the other direction, on his way to the dump with a trailer full of trash bags. They exchanged nods. Nilsa drove through the village slowly, making a loop and taking in the store, the school, the church, and the soccer field, braking for a dog that darted onto the road, barking wildly; he saw his cousins and raised a hand now and then but mostly stuck to nods. Was this what it was like to give up? The river was lower now and he wished he could go fishing. He hadn’t done enough of it. Some villagers had already hooked massive salmon.
At last he turned onto the road where he lived, passing the neighbors as he had so many times before. They wouldn’t look at him with fresh eyes if the police arrested him. They would say it came as no surprise. The hell with them!
His sons rode up on their bikes, popping wheelies and waving as they went by. They looked like him. They looked like áddjá; even though his features were a bit diluted it was still plain to see. áhkku had tried to look at her great-grandchildren without that expression on her face, but Nilsa could still see it.
“When Aslak has children it will be different,” he’d heard her sister whisper.
But Aslak never had any children. And now áhkku was gone. She’d asked to be buried next to Aslak, and Enná and Isá had agreed. She had been just over ninety.
Nilsa gritted his teeth, muttering to himself. “She had a lot of good years, thanks to me.”
He wouldn’t give up. He would never let the police get him. He would lie, he would deny it all. If there were no signs of him in the apartment, they couldn’t arrest him. They couldn’t scare him. He was no coward.
The police car wasn’t in their yard. Nilsa was astonished. He pulled up behind the other car and turned off the engine but stayed put. Sire walked by carrying sacks of bread; she’d gotten up at five to bake and must be taking them to the chest freezer in the storehouse.
She didn’t look at him, just walked on by as though he weren’t there. Her parents hadn’t been thrilled when she started dating him. He’s like his áddjá, they’d warned her, but Sire wouldn’t listen, said he looks like him, but Nilsa’s different.
She was wrong.