29. Nilsa
NILSA
1985
On the anniversary of Aslak’s death, there was a memorial candle and a bouquet of flowers on the side of the road. Nilsa passed by slowly in his car, trying to see if there was a note as well. He had Guorpmit at his back and A ? evuopmi a few kilometers ahead of him. He’d said he was going to Gárasavvon to buy some things at the gas station, but Sire knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
“Shouldn’t we visit his grave instead?” she’d asked. And when he didn’t respond, she continued: “Well, I’ll go, then, and light the candles.”
Something about that grave wasn’t right. His parents had chosen the wrong headstone, too straight and smooth. The engraved writing never should have been colored in. And besides that, the grave site was in a shady spot, so the flowers Sire had planted couldn’t thrive. But now the grave was covered in snow. His wife had once claimed it looked cozy there. When he heard that, he went out to his shop, dumped out his toolbox, and sat down with his headlamp to spend the whole evening sorting.
Nilsa stopped in the parking pull-off right before the end of the straightaway coming from Sohppar. This was another issue: that Aslak had died on a straightaway. No oncoming traffic, no curve, no blinding sun. No, it had happened in the middle of the night, on an empty road, under a starry sky. A full moon, someone had said with a knowing nod. He didn’t believe in that crap. Aslak had been hanging out with the usual dumbasses who made their own moonshine and treated weeknights and weekends the same.
The call had come at three in the morning, and Nilsa hadn’t rushed to the hall to answer it. Not until Sire stirred beside him, about to get up, did he place a hand on her arm and go himself.
It was a call everyone in the family had dreaded yet also, callously enough, expected.
His steps were heavy on the way to the phone, which stood on the pine table in the front hall. The chair’s imitation leather was cold against his bare thighs as he sat down and picked up the receiver. Sire had, of course, come padding after him and now hovered in the doorway in her nightgown.
There had been a car accident, only one vehicle involved, and Aslak had been killed. He drove off the road and crashed straight into a fir tree. A Norwegian on his way to Kautokeino saw the car and stopped. The man trudged into the snow and got the car door open, but there was nothing he could do. He returned to his car and drove back to Sohppar, where he knew there was a phone booth. Only after a prolonged search through his car for Swedish one-krona coins did he realize you could call the emergency number for free by pushing the red button.
The ambulance and the police had run with lights but no sirens, past the village to the scene of the accident.
Nilsa had not been awoken by the blue lights flashing across the bedroom wall, even though they lived so close to the main road. He’d been sound asleep, like usual. A fire truck had gone by as well, carrying the cutting tools needed to free Aslak, who was pinned by the steering wheel. His chest was crushed, his heart flattened into nothingness.
Nilsa had headed over as soon as the morning light allowed. He left a red-eyed, weeping Sire and two quiet boys at the kitchen table. They would almost certainly cry with her as soon as he closed the door.
First he drove past, then he pulled a U-turn and drove back slowly to park on the opposite side.
He walked along the road, looking for brake marks, but they didn’t show up until it was too late, right next to the snowbank Aslak had plowed through. He must have been going fast, because the meter-high bank hadn’t been able to stop the car, but the tree did. The Scotch pine stood all alone, but he’d hit it even so. If he’d left the road a few meters farther on, he would have lived.
Nilsa had looked for reindeer or moose tracks, but the snow was white and pristine, so that couldn’t explain the accident either. The tow truck had already removed the car, and he was grateful for that. It was a red Volvo 240 that had once belonged to him, a hand-me-down for Aslak when Nilsa bought a new car. He’d wanted to pay, but Nilsa had waved him off, said it would all work out.
He looked for blood in the snow, but the interior of the car had caught it all. The bark of the tree was scraped off, and he ran his glove along the marks. He punched the trunk, but the scream remained in his chest.
He had no doubt the police would find alcohol in his blood. Aslak, who thought himself a capable driver in any condition, who never believed he was too drunk. He had probably been singing at the top of his lungs as he drove, maybe looking for a cigarette in his breast pocket and forgetting to keep an eye on the road, and then it was too late.
Viellja had been happy only when he was drinking. Or when he was with the reindeer. But Nilsa could tell when he got restless in the pasture and the craving took over. Sometimes he forced him to stay, and they would argue. But they hardly ever talked about the liquor.
Aslak had reindeer luck, his herd was so large and healthy that Nilsa sometimes felt envious. But even so, it was the liquor, always the liquor, that came first.
The brothers never talked about where his desire to drink came from. But Sire thought she knew, and a few years before the accident she tried to wheedle it out of Nilsa. “Could it be because everything he went through took its toll?”
The first few times she brought it up, Nilsa simply walked away, but she didn’t always give up. Sometimes she stood her ground, and then he raised his voice. “Well, if that’s what it is, what does it even matter!”
“There’s help to be had.” Sire worked as a nursing assistant in Vazá? and could be a real know-it-all when it came to that stuff. “He could at least take Antabuse, which would force him to stop drinking.”
But Nilsa wasn’t sure that was the solution. If alcohol was the only thing that made viellja happy, they couldn’t just take it away from him.
“Except then he would have to start dealing with what happened.” She was insistent, and getting on his nerves.
What happened . Not even Sire liked to talk about the nomad school as more than an unpleasant thing from the past. So how could she expect Aslak to be capable of dealing with it?
“Talking isn’t going to fix anything.”
Nilsa shook himself as he sat in the car in the pull-off. Might as well get out. Two cars whizzed by and he turned his head away. But people wouldn’t remember that this was the anniversary of Aslak’s death. Maybe it would jog their memory to see the bouquet on the snowbank, they might say, oh, that’s right to one another in the car. “It must be two years now since Aslak died. Wonder what happened, was he really trying to kill himself?”
He climbed out of the car and fastened his coat up when the cold nipped at him. No, Aslak hadn’t crashed because he didn’t want to live. He was sure of that. It had been an accident, a stupid fucking accident. Aslak would never leave him on purpose. It felt hard to breathe, as though his airways were constricting; he gasped for air. No, Aslak would never abandon him, even though he had abandoned Aslak.
He took a few steps once his breathing calmed, but he felt reluctant; those thoughts were returning. Sire was wrong to say talking would help, all anyone wanted was peace and quiet inside their head, to stop ruminating. He forced himself to keep walking.
The red roses were frosty and the candle had gone out. He took out his lighter and cupped his hand until he managed to relight the wick. He could see the footprints of whoever had left the flowers. He read the card. “I’ll never forget you, Aslak. Hilde.”
Hilde and Aslak had met at Eastertime in Guovdageaidnu, just over the border into Norway, three years before he died. She worked in the village grocery store where he’d stopped multiple times that weekend. She should have realized he had a problem, considering all the beer he lined up on the conveyor belt. But it was Easter and everyone was cheerful and ready to celebrate and he was wearing a brand-new gákti.
At first, Hilde’s influence helped. Aslak drank less and started commuting between Kautokeino and Sohppar. He was happy. Nilsa liked thinking about those days. And all of them liked Hilde. She was quick to laugh and the women often confided in each other. But it was also through Hilde that they later learned Aslak had started drinking heavily again. Sire thought she had all the answers, that she was the one who had seen through Aslak, when really it was Hilde. Apparently Aslak had gotten emotional while drunk and said he was having a hard time on account of the nomad school, that he’d never really been able to put those days behind him. Nilsa had soured on Hilde after that. Who was she to share what Aslak had said with Sire? Could they even trust he’d actually said that? But Hilde had been persistent, especially when she called the day after the accident and repeated it all. Nilsa heard her lamenting voice loud and clear even though Sire was in the hall with the receiver pressed to her ear.
“I’m sure she’s just feeling guilty because she didn’t want to see him as often,” Nilsa said after Sire hung up.
“I’m not going to argue with you. Not today. But I know Hilde is telling the truth.”
Aslak had taken it hard when Hilde objected to his drinking. She didn’t want to see him when he was drunk, but even so he sometimes drove to Norway to surprise her. It seemed likely that’s where he’d been heading that night. He believed it wasn’t over between them, even if Hilde had given him an ultimatum. According to Aslak, she could never say no once he was standing outside her door. But his trips to Guovdageaidnu had become fewer and farther between as drinking reentered his life. Nilsa had been aware that his brother was depressed, but what was he supposed to do about it? Nilsa just got angry at him. And at Enná, for making him so weak. And at their áddjá, for making everything worse, for mocking Aslak when he was little, calling him a weakling, saying the boy would never amount to anything. Aslak had been afraid of áddjá and would hide behind Nilsa when the old man raised his voice, which had forced Nilsa, as stuora viellja, to stand his ground even though his own knees were trembling. Isá had never defended Aslak, just sent the kids outside whenever áddjá got that spiteful look on his face. That bastard never got to see Aslak’s reindeer luck, never knew that the boy he’d had so little faith in turned out to be the greatest herder in their collective. And it was all Nilsa’s fault.
He sighed aloud, not wanting to end up wallowing in áddjá’s death too. He growled—it wasn’t normal to be overcome by your own thoughts repeatedly like this. He needed to get out into the forest, go snowmobiling, clear his head by letting his body work. Wear himself out enough that he could fall asleep from exhaustion tonight.
The Scotch pine was gone. Last autumn he’d come here with a chain saw. The tree had taunted him each time he drove that stretch of road, which happened several times a month, until he couldn’t stand it. Splinters of wood flew around him until the pine fell, and then he sawed it into kindling. By the time it was done, he was covered in sweat; rivulets ran down his temples and his shirt was damp. But his rage had ebbed out. For the time being.
Sire had shifted her concern to him after the accident, saying that he needed to talk about what he’d gone through.
“You’re burdened by grief too,” she said, sounding like some armchair psychologist. “The nomad school took a toll on all of us.”
“I didn’t have a hard time, not for a single day. I had fun there.”
“Yeah, everyone knows what a bastard you were.”
She always expected him to react to that, to feel guilty for something he’d done. She was wrong. He’d truly had a good time there, he remembered it all, how the boys got up to mischief together, had contests in the schoolyard; he remembered evenings spent wrestling in the common room and how he always won. He rarely even missed home, because it was nice to get away from áddjá—especially for Aslak.
Nilsa had made it through that school, and he was damn proud of it. He’d tried to make Aslak be the same, tougher and fiercer, but it didn’t work. After Nilsa finished his last year at school, Aslak ended up alone there. Abandoned. This was the real cause of Nilsa’s guilty conscience, but he would never admit it to Sire. It had been years before he admitted to himself that he felt responsible for Aslak being left there on his own. Unpleasant thoughts that wouldn’t let up—he had gone back and forth and sometimes told himself it wasn’t his fault, that he had been a child and couldn’t have done anything about it. He’d certainly never discussed it with Aslak. But Nilsa had seen his bruises, and it made him furious; he took the air gun and went out to shoot songbirds to relieve the pressure.
Nilsa didn’t know exactly how rough things had been for his viellja, and now, after the accident, he never would. On breaks Aslak had come home pale and quiet. He never tattled about who had given him the bruises, whether it was the old bitch or his classmates. But once he said that the village boys had chased him home from the store and stolen his candy and called him “Lapp bastard.” The worst part wasn’t the blows or the slurs. It was that none of his own people had lifted a finger to help. They’d just watched as he took a punch that split his lip, coloring his teeth red. To be sure, Aslak maintained that Jon-Ante shouted at them to stop. Nilsa said he didn’t believe that for a second, which made Aslak clam up and say no more. As usual, Nilsa told his brother he had to hit back. Aslak gave a tiny smile and nodded. But he refused to practice punching or defending himself. That was the last time he shared anything, so Nilsa believed it had stopped. It must have—otherwise wouldn’t he have said something?
He waded out of the snowdrift and trudged to the car, unlocked it, and sat down heavily. Aslak had started drinking when he was young—how young, Nilsa didn’t recall. Well after his school days, anyway. Nilsa would have to go pick him up from his friends’ house parties in the village, lug him into the house, and tuck him in before Enná could catch him. Most of the time he was a cheerful drunk. But sometimes, the harsh words came out.
“Viellja, you should have killed that old bitch.”