Trolls

Stefan Spjut

Cover

Landing Page

TROLLS

STEFAN SPJUT

Translated from the Swedish
by Agnes Broomé

Title Page
The snowmobile track was…
SATURDAY TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE TWO THOUSAND AND FOURTEEN
Seated in a plastic chair…
It was a Monday…
A patient…
After exiting the mess…
Lennart opened the door…
Every time Anders tried…
Diana sat in front of her computer…
Lennart hung the headlamp…
When I walked out onto the square…
The door to his office was locked…
It was early morning when they arrived…
Håkan took off his watch…
Anders was sitting on the sofa…
The sound of a lorry reversing…
Lennart peered into the reeking…
Diana ended up setting off later…
Anders studied the strange…
Grete sat gazing out the window…
The car was turning around when Diana stepped…
Elias was sitting outside Frasse’s…
Anders was standing in front of the…
Susso told her she was going…
Rune was hobbling around…
When Diana opened her eyes in the dark…
Every now and then…
Anders had asked if he should bring anything…
Lennart followed behind the motorhome…
I recognised the girl…
Abraham had stopped at the top of the ridge…
Anders looked at the house on the other side…
Diana couldn’t see anything…
The mouse followed us everywhere…
Diana walked toward the sea…
Ipa was more or less constantly…
In Varangerbotn, Diana turned into an Esso…
Anders was woken up by the sound of…
When I entered the kitchen that morning…
Ipa had ripped the tape off…
It was close to eleven at night…
Stava climbed out of the car…
I didn’t recognise her at first…
It was the intensifying, suffocating…
Lennart was lying on his back…
Anders stood by the edge of the lake…
‘You can take those off now…
When Roland told me he had asked…
Anders was in the kitchen…
‘There they are,’…
When Anders woke up…
Diana sat with her phone…
Anders closed his eyes…
Seeing Susso’s car parked…
I had a message and when…
Diana sat with her hand around…
I was watching TV when Diana called…
Every once in a while, Anders was…
Her dad was fiddling with something…
Lennart drove across the ling bridge…
Diana tapped her nails against…
Stava stepped through the door…
Diana had planned to tell…
It frightened me half to death…
Diana was out of bed…
Lennart was sitting in the hallway…
Kiruna had got it in her head…
I picked up my phone from the…
Diana looked in through the kitchen…
Näcken slowed down and stopped…
Lennart stood there with…
The car was parked behind…
Anders was kneeling on a…
It was incomprehensible…
Susso was sitting in the armchair…
Lennart lay in bed with both shoes and clothes on…
Diana saw her through the window…
I counted the days, every single one…
About the Author
Copyright

The snowmobile track was…

The snowmobile track was a sharp line across the white sheet of the fens; the wolf was running below them. Appearing and vanishing like a pale ghost dog in the shrouds of snow stirred up by the rotor blades. Anders put one leg out through the cabin door and found purchase for his boot on the landing gear foot step. The wind rushed through his hair and the collar of his jacket whipped against his face when he strained his eyes not to lose sight of the blurred creature.

‘Would you look at that!’ he shouted. ‘That’s no bloody hybrid, that’s for sure!’

The helicopter had moved in so low he could see the waves rippling through its fur. Its tongue, flapping out of its long snout like a wet rag. Ears pressed flat against its head. He leaned as far out as his harness allowed, pushed the butt of the stock against his shoulder, turned the ring on the scope one notch and tossed his head to push his ear protector out of the way. His index finger slid down and curled around the trigger; then he fired.

With snowshoes strapped to their boots, they followed the tracks that led in among the spruce trees. Geir went first, striding through the snow as though in a race to reach the wolf first. Anders got winded and called out to him, but Geir strode on, arms pumping, seeming not to hear.

The wolf had gone into hiding under the skirt of a large spruce. It was lying on its side; when they creaked their way in under the branches, it raised its head. Its nose was spackled with snow. The spark behind its eyelids slowly dimmed. The dart with its red fletch was buried like a pimpernel in the animal’s hip. Geir pulled it out and slipped it into his breast pocket. Then he pushed his hand into the fur and turned up the undercoat, which was pure white. He examined the claws on the enormous paws and noted that they were black. With his knuckle, he pushed his foggy glasses further up the bridge of his nose and then he sat quietly, deep in thought while Anders praised the wolf’s remarkable size. He had come across wolves that weighed more than he did himself in northern Canada, and this looked to be of the same stock. Without a doubt, it was the biggest wolf he had ever seen on Scandinavian soil.

‘This is incredible! What a giant!’

The vet said nothing, but when he pulled out the syringe with the anaesthetic, Anders noticed his hands were trembling.

The snowmobiles had tracked them across the fens and there was much excitement when Anders and Geir arrived, hauling the animal. A crowd formed around them but dispersed at a few barked commands from Geir.

A woman from the Environmental Protection Agency was with them; she handed Anders coffee in a plastic cup. Her name was Åsa. She had gathered her hair up in a ponytail that danced against the hood of her puffy snowmobile overalls as she walked around like an astronaut, serving coffee from an aluminium thermos. From Geir’s muttering earlier in the day, Anders had gleaned that she had been lobbying hard for this, more or less unilaterally ramming through the decision to move this wolf immediately, without the legally required quarantine. Which also explained why the Norwegian silently shook his head when she tried to offer him coffee from her thermos.

The wolf had been placed on a blanket with a scarf wrapped around its head. Geir snapped on a pair of light-blue nitrile gloves and tied the animal’s fore and hind legs together. He fastened the rope to a big-game scale, which he hooked onto the shaft of a snow shovel. Then Anders and one of the snowmobile drivers raised the shovel above their heads like a couple of weightlifters. Geir read the dial, studying it carefully. The result, 170 pounds, quickly spread through the stunned assembly.

Geir was on his knees, working intently. He pushed back the scarf and shone a flashlight in the animal’s eye; he moved the polished silver bell of his stethoscope across the furry ribcage that was slowly rising and falling. He measured the teeth with callipers. From time to time, he made pencil notes in a protocol fastened to a writing board with a metal clip. People thronged around him, asking him questions he wouldn’t answer.

A man from the county board was present, pacing in circles while talking on his mobile phone. Satin military jacket. Dark leather patches on the shoulders, corduroy-lined collar and a napoleon pocket. Squinting at the sun that glowed red behind the jagged treeline on the other side of the fens, Anders pushed a portion of snus up under his lip, figuring the man had probably worn that jacket during the hunt as well. Topped off with a feathered hat. Was he even one of the regular field agents? Doubtful. And yet, here he was. In that get-up. Probably so he would have something to brag about.

‘Cheers then!’ Åsa exclaimed; a whisk of steam rose from the cup she raised.

‘Cheers,’ Geir said quietly, tightening the bolts on the tracking collar with a pair of pliers. ‘Cheers to echinococcus.’

He was talking to himself, but Anders heard.

Echinococcus was also known as the hydatid worm. A horrendous parasite. He had seen pictures. Scary pictures. An x-ray of a human head with equal parts worm and brain inside the cranium. It had turned his stomach. And it was turning now too. Because he realised he had put his snus in without washing his hands first. He had worn gloves, of course, but taking them off, he had touched them. And he had been the one to carry the hind part. Who knew what might have been caked in those long tufts of fur? He thought about white fettucine, about eggs and cysts. Cuticles lined with invisible ribbons of roe. Horrified by these images, he sank into a squat, dipped his hands in the snow and dug his fingers around. Then he spat out his snus, cleared his throat and spat again.

They wrapped the wolf in the blanket and loaded it into the helicopter. Anders leaned back in his seat and felt the vibrations reverberate through him. His eyelids drooped. It had been a long day and he was terribly tired. How long before he could sleep? Best-case scenario, they would reach the release site by 6 a.m. In bed by nine. Best case.

The moment the skids sunk into the snow, Anders grabbed his rifle bag in one hand and backpack in the other and dashed, at a crouch, through the miniature blizzard stirred up by the helicopter in the dark. He pushed the remote Åsa had given him. The headlights of a large Mitsubishi turned on. He threw his equipment on the back seat and opened the bed cap. The transport crate was inside. A metal box with a steel grate in the front and a sliding hatch with air holes in the back. He placed it on the ground and ran back to the helicopter.

People made way for them as they carried the wolf between them. They put it down in front of the cage. Then all that was left to do was wait.

The temperature had dropped, quickly. Anders had pulled on a hat and was stamping his heels hard in the snow to keep warm. They were on a road in a frozen fox forest, somewhere north of the Kaitum River. They had followed the directions from the snowmobilers, but the venerable male had confounded them for a good long while. While he stood there, trying to come to grips with the geography, a cricket started chirping under his jacket. He pulled out his phone and poked at it with cold fingers.

‘Is the wolf all packed up and ready to go?’

It didn’t exactly sound like a question. More like an accusation. He said he couldn’t answer that; he even said he had no comment. It made him sound like a politician, so he added: I know you’ll be able to see why, Micke.

When he had finished the call, he hurried over to Geir and Åsa. They stopped talking when they saw the look on his face.

‘They know we’re coming!’

‘Who?’ Åsa said.

‘Micke Moilanen from Hunt & Hunter. The entire hunting community, in other words.’

‘Okay, but wasn’t that inevitable?’

‘Was it?’ Anders said and looked over at the snowmobiles and the anonymous bunch huddled by them in yellow hi-vis vests. ‘I reckon you should be a bit more careful what kind of people you employ. To do the tracking. Are those guys from the Sami village or are they just regular wolf-haters?’

The look Åsa shot him signalled that she thought he was getting worked up over nothing. He took a deep breath, and when the air came back out it was as white gas through his nose.

‘The more people,’ he said, ‘the worse for the animal. All the eyes and scents. We have to put the animal first.’

‘We do,’ she said. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

The wolf was awake now. It was sitting up, head gently swaying from side to side. Geir hooked his fingers under the collar and led it to the crate.

‘Get in, old chap,’ he said.

The headlights ploughed the darkness aside, clearing a strip of road. Here and there, the light from a window or a lantern flickered, wandering sparks in a night that seemed infinitely deep. Geir had kept both his jacket and his hat on. He had been fiddling with his phone for a while, but now he was leaning against the window, possibly asleep. Anders had tuned in to a station playing golden oldies. He tapped along on the steering wheel from time to time and whenever he knew the lyrics, he sang along, though without ever engaging his vocal cords.

A shudder ran down his spine; he shrugged his shoulders to shake it.

‘What’s the matter?’ Geir mumbled and sat up straight.

‘I was just thinking about what it would be like to live here. To be trapped in this darkness. In this bunker!’

‘You mean Sweden?’

Anders chuckled. Geir had been strangely quiet all day, but now he recognised him, his dry, minimalist sense of humour, and so he unleashed the barrage of questions that had accumulated during the day.

The county board had acted unusually quickly when reports about the immigrated wolf had reached it. The Sami village wanted it removed from their year-round grazing land immediately and had probably delivered some kind of unspoken ultimatum, because just one day after the animal’s genetic value had been established, Anders had carried his rifle bag onto a plane headed to Gällivare like some kind of hitman. He had instantly sensed the tension surrounding the decision. Relocating a wolf without putting it through quarantine was a severe breach of regulations. Potentially fatal, according to Geir, who initially had refused even to help.

Geir, however, didn’t seem to want to talk about it.

He sat staring out the window, silent.

‘I can tell you’re angry,’ Anders coaxed.

‘What makes me angry,’ Geir replied, ‘is that the authorities in this country ignore their own rules and endanger the public. Not for the wolf’s sake, but for political reasons. Because they can’t stand not being number one in the EU.’

His voice had a disdainful tone to it when he spelled out E-U.

‘At the end of the day,’ he continued, ‘it’s about status. About prestige. And that pisses me off. If the hydatid worm is brought into Sweden, we’ll get it in Norway too.’

‘Not my doing.’

‘It’s worth asking whose wolves are more inbred in this colossal mess.’

‘Sure, okay. But this guy, he doesn’t look particularly inbred. And he’s definitely not a dog. That much we know.’

‘I’m actually not sure what he is.’

‘It’s not a dog, it’s a wolf. As the Phantom would put it.’

‘He weighs a hundred and seventy pounds. A hundred and seventy! Wolves like that don’t exist. Not west of the Urals. This wolf doesn’t exist. It can’t exist.’

‘You mean someone released it here?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is something’s wrong.’

‘Speaking of which, it’s probably time to check on him.’

Geir looked at his watch.

‘No, keep driving.’

‘I kind of need to drain the lizard.’

The reflective rectangles of Geir’s glasses turned toward him.

‘Piss. I need to take a piss.’

Anders fumbled the fly of his insulated trousers open and drilled a glittering rod into the snow bank, where it quickly rotted out a steaming hole. The cold seized him by the scruff of his neck and refused to let go. He raised his eyes above the tree tops. The stars had come out.

The car door slammed shut behind him. Then there was a scraping sound from the flatbed; when he turned his head, he saw that Geir had opened the cap and the crate as well. It surprised him. Wolves needed their privacy during transport, so they usually only peeked in through the grate to make sure they were all right.

The vet was studying a thermometer in the light of a miniature flashlight. The wolf was lying down, and Anders could both see and hear that it was breathing rapidly.

‘It’s warm,’ Geir said and turned the light off. ‘Very warm.’

He stuck his hand into the cage and ran his fingers through the fur. Turned the torch back on and aimed the beam at the wolf.

‘And it’s shedding. See?’

They each grabbed a handle and backed up a few paces to avoid the worst of the exhaust fumes; as soon as they had put the cage down, Anders dashed over to kill the engine and hit the button with the emergency triangle.

In the fruit-punch red light pulsating across the deserted road, Geir was kicking the snow bank; for a brief moment, Anders thought he had flown into a blind rage. That he had lost his mind. Then he realised it was the snow he was after. The animal obviously needed to be cooled down.

Geir picked up a few lumps of snow and crawled into the cage with them. That set things off in there. Something banged against the metal and Geir cursed. Then he came crawling back out, bum first. He fitted the hatch into its grooves and only just managed to slide it into place before the wolf hurled itself against it.

Geir was on his knees with a frozen smile on his lips.

‘I tried to feed it a bit of snow,’ he said. ‘It didn’t much care for that.’

He crawled around to the other side of the crate and pointed his flashlight in through the grate. The wolf was sitting up, glaring at them. Its eyes had cleared. There was no fear in them. No hostility. But something else. Something hard.

‘Are you going to give him something?’

Geir turned the light off and stood up.

‘Let’s leave it here for a bit. Let it cool down a little.’

‘But you said he was shedding. That’s not good, is it?’

‘That was … a mistake. I got it wrong.’

Anders phoned Johanna and paced up and down next to the snow bank while they were talking. He told her he thought they would reach the release site around six and be home by nine. When she asked him how it was going, he heard himself say it was going well. He didn’t have the energy to tell her the animal was likely in hypothermic shock. Not now. Not when the poor reception broke their words into fragments and the cold was gnawing his fingers to the bone.

Before long, they were back in the car, encapsulated in darkness, silent and dazed. Judging by how Geir stared fixedly at the road and the snow grains crashing into the windscreen like asteroids, he was deep in thought; Anders assumed he was casting about for a medical explanation for what had happened. For his part, Anders was struggling with an anxiety that was suddenly raging inside him.

He had experienced mishaps before. Drugged animals that staggered into rapids and were swept away. Vomit and swallowed tongues. These things happened. But this was different. All eyes were on them this time. If this wolf didn’t make it, they would be in for it. From every direction. Even the hunters who wanted zero wolves in the country, preferably not even in zoos, would lay into them. Most of their ire would be directed at the Environmental Protection Agency, naturally, at Åsa, to be precise, if it was true that she had lobbied for the relocation, but internally, the spotlight would be turned on him and Geir. On Geir in particular. He, of course, had the option of retreating into the haven known as his native Norway. Anders had nowhere to hide. He would be told he was nothing but a lowly field technician with a dart gun he was not fit to operate. There were many within the veterinary field who felt a veterinary degree should be a requirement for tranquillising animals and this would provide one more argument for them to point to. It would be insinuated that he had messed up. This would reach him in the form of jokes and barbed comments, which was actually worse, because you couldn’t defend yourself against that.

‘The car behind us,’ Geir said. ‘Hasn’t it been there for an awfully long time?’

Anders’ eyes shifted to the headlights in the rear-view mirror.

‘You’re being paranoid, Geir.’

He said it quietly, to underline that he did not want any tension in the car. His own anxiety was simmering just below the surface. Against his will, he was now picturing an armed mob. Merciless men, maybe masked. Like a bloody western. It was not entirely unlikely. He knew that. Wolf-hatred was fierce and ran deep. At times, he wondered if it was genetic, if there were men who hated wolves. Besides, he couldn’t deny that there were rational reasons for stopping them. An intervention of this kind would draw no end of attention, and would once again highlight the absurdity of transporting wolves halfway across the country at enormous expense to the taxpayer.

‘Listen to me, Anders. They want us dead.’

It was such a weird thing to say Anders pretended not to have heard at first. But the words hung in the air and after a while he had to ask what Geir had meant by them.

Geir didn’t reply and seemed so paranoid Anders realised he had to calm him down. They were not being followed. The roads were practically empty, so it made good sense to keep a constant distance to the car in front, wouldn’t he agree? But the Norwegian was not persuaded; he didn’t even seem to be listening; he just stared into the wing mirror and the headlights that were burnt into it.

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