60°10”N, 24°55”E #4
The landowners with the deeds to Aspsk?r look favourably upon the brothers’ suggestion.
They have nothing against the protection of the birds, so long as they can continue to fish in the waters around the island and harvest the long grass growing around the rocks once the nesting season is over.
They draw up a rental agreement lasting fifteen years.
With the remaining money, the brothers buy an old pump room from the city authorities.
The fishermen’s hut on Aspsk?r will provide adequate accommodation during the summer, but the nesting season begins during the cold months of the spring, and they must start their guard duties as soon as the first goldeneyes return from the south and land in the shallow waters by the island’s shores.
They load the pump room onto a sled and pull it across the brittle sea ice to the island.
For the next few years, they spend all spring and summer on the island, keeping watch and making sure the birds are never left unsupervised.
John takes the longest shifts. His brothers gradually grow into adulthood, and with that comes adult concerns, wives, children and work, but John spends his time sitting on the steps outside the pump room, drawing, listening to the shipping forecast and the birds, and whenever he sees an approaching boat, he quickly strides down to the shore.
He always greets the new arrivals with a smile and tells them that hunting and gathering eggs is forbidden on the island.
His words and demeanour are pleasant, but he always has a rifle slung over his shoulder.
A gull is building a nest in the roof of the pump room.
It plucks twigs and branches from the shore, carefully weaves them together and opens its beak in a long mating call.
The squawk startles John. He steps outside, sits on the steps, and the gull continues its work without paying him the slightest attention.
He is shaking off the remnants of sleep and watching the bird go about its business, when the sea carries a sound all the way to the steps of the hut.
The roar of the approaching motor cuts through the birds’ cries, and he soon sees a boat approaching from the north-west. Its course shows it is heading right towards the island, and before long he can make out four men sitting on board.
He doesn’t recognise the boat, and he pulls on his shirt and trousers and quickly heads down to the shoreline.
The wind brings with it a whole host of new sounds.
One of the men is singing, braying so raucously that it is clear the group has been drinking more than just water.
John can see the rifles propped between the thwarts and begins to fear the worst but raises his hand and calls out a hello.
Upon noticing him, the men fall silent, one of them quickly hiding a bottle in the folds of his jacket.
They don’t reply to his greeting, but John wishes them a pleasant day and tells them that hunting on the island is forbidden.
When he hears this, the man who hid the bottle bursts into an ugly laugh.
He will hunt wherever he likes, and people should think twice before trying to stop him.
His comrades egg him on with a volley of cheers.
John doesn’t take the bait but explains that he can direct them to many excellent islands in the waters off Loviisa where there are plenty of birds, but that here they will have to leave empty-handed.
In response, he is met with a slew of curses, and one of the men hands the spokesman a rifle.
The man raises the rifle and asks whether Gronvall would still like to tell him what to do.
He is drunk and unpredictable, but John continues talking as though he hadn’t noticed the weapon in the man’s hand.
He thinks about his own rifle in the pump room.
He was in such a hurry to get down to the shore that he forgot to take it with him, so he’ll simply have to do without it.
The seagulls have noticed the intruders, their warning calls are ringing out across the island.
John listens to the gulls, takes a deep breath and doesn’t even flinch when the man fires a warning shot.
The bullet strikes a boulder, sending fragments of rock into the air, and the men give a cheer, but John stands firm, though it is all he can do not to let the fear show.
We could shoot you right here on this island and nobody would ever know.
We could put you full of holes and leave the police to work it out, the drunkard threatens him.
John nods: if you want to hunt on this island, that’s what you’ll have to do.
For a moment, the men exchange confused glances, then the drunkard throws the rifle from his hand – no point wasting bullets on this bastard – and they steer their boat back out to sea.
John waits until the boat has disappeared over the horizon before slumping to the ground.
The shaking lasts a long time. He sits on the rocks, trembling, and the seagull nesting on the roof of the pump room flies down and lands next to him.
He looks at the bird, and it nods, raises it beak then lowers it again, and John nods back. He will not betray his birds.
John Gronvall is accepted to the drawing school of the Ateneum art gallery.
All the Gronvall brothers are skilled illustrators, and John would happily spend all day drawing.
But he is the son of a sea captain and a backwasher and does what is expected of him: he gets himself a proper job.
He secures a position at the Loviisa cardboard factory, but after two years of stripping spruce trees he makes up his mind and walks up the fossil-dappled steps of the Ateneum with a portfolio under his arm.
He swaps the factory floor for the drawing ateliers of the opulent palace and spends his days sketching gypsum, tracing people and animals.
John graduates, his teacher Bruno Tuukkanen hires him as an assistant, and the two work on decorating churches.
John isn’t perhaps the most imaginative of his peers, but he is diligent and a pleasure to work with, not remotely predisposed to the emotional outbursts so typical of young artists, and his eye for colour is second to none.
He is able to reproduce the suggested patterns with such attention to detail that Tuukkanen cannot tell his student’s work from his own, and they spend the summer on raised platforms under the vast arched ceilings, painting high above the life going on around them.
John learns to unveil the work of the old masters from beneath a layer of whitewash.
He reinvents the colours they used, grinding pigments until oxide green and earthy ochre come together to form just the right shade.
In his spare time, he collects eggs. Hidden in the boughs of an old spruce, he finds a goldcrest’s nest, woven together from cobwebs and lichen, and gathers its tiny eggs, wraps them in cottonwool and takes them home.
Once at his desk, he carefully picks up one of the eggs, which weighs but a fraction of an ounce, drills a hole in it, blows, and his breath replaces the life hidden inside the shell.
He realises that his timing was just right.
He climbed up to the nest shortly after the eggs had emerged from inside the bird.
The yolk dribbles out of the hole, wet and sloppy, the embryo inside hasn’t yet begun to take shape.
It is possible to blow an egg even once this process has started, but tugging the foetus out via the tiny hole is difficult and unpleasant work.
He wipes the emptied egg with a chamois leather, moves on to the next, tries and fails, but continues until he is able to open his cabinet, pull out a drawer and place in it a glass tube containing a row of brittle, brown-dotted eggshells.
From time to time, he attends meetings of the ornithological society.
He doesn’t take part in the scientists’ conversations but listens intently and offers to help maintain the cabinets used to store the eggs, and when the Museum of Zoology advertises for an assistant who knows how to use both a chisel and a paintbrush, he gets the job.
Tuukkanen loses his assistant to the birds, and John swaps the churches for the museum.
John spends the daytime at the Museum of Zoology and his evenings with Kreuger’s egg collection.
These days he only rarely gets out to Aspsk?r, but their work there has borne fruit.
Every spring, more fledglings hatch from their eggs.
Many species that had abandoned the island have found their way back, and when the first couple of common guillemots choose to nest there, the brothers’ joy and pride know no bounds.
Aspsk?r has got its birds back, and the brothers are replaced by the next generation of bird lovers, new inquisitive youngsters who take up residence in the pump room.