I counted the days, every single one, and when I had reached a number I felt was improbably high, I started hoping that what had happened in Rumajärvi would never be discovered. I prayed to the ravens and the carrion beetle. The devouring bacteria of decay and the white shroud of winter. They were, in fact, not hopes, but fantasies, which I allowed myself to be seduced by, and on occasion I took them so far I briefly doubted there even was a village by the name of Rumajärvi. The path to that kind of doubt was well trodden, of course. Having spent countless sleepless nights pondering the line between reality and what lay beyond it and how reliable my senses and the memories built on what they perceived could possibly be, I had dismantled the partitions in my brain to the point where doubt had free rein. When this happens, madness is not far behind, and there’s only one thing to do: you have to put yourself in a state of denial.

During the day, I manned the shop, as ever, serving customers, as ever, and at night I watched TV, as ever.

Is it called the calm before the storm or the calm after the storm? I always forget. Maybe it’s calm both before and after. It has to be, really, relatively speaking. Either way, it was calm. Roland and I talked exclusively about practical matters and barely about that either, and I felt like someone else.

The days were hot. Unnecessarily, miserably hot. The sun beat down on the town square like on a Mediterranean piazza and people came into the shop to cool down. Stood there half naked, reviving. A lot of tourists were surprised at the heat that refused to subside. How did the sun do it? Both day and night. Not just tourists, for that matter. Sixten Kalla was sitting on the bench out in the foyer, saying they were having record lows in Abisko.

‘Record lows?’ I said.

‘No, I meant the opposite, obviously.’

‘Yes, I figured.’

‘It’s hot like a desert up there.’

‘Have you been up?’

‘No, but I’ve been to the Kalahari,’ he said and grinned at me from under his baseball cap, and I didn’t get the joke until afterwards, I was so dazed and confused.

‘Just look at what happened up in Karesuando,’ he continued. ‘There was one of those bloodbaths up there, you must’ve heard?’

The news hit me like a cudgel and I was completely stunned and could only manage to shake my head.

‘They slaughtered a whole village. It was on the news this morning.’

*