Until Thy Wrath Be Past Read Free Page A

banging my face against the ice. A pink veil spreads across the light blue.
    Eventually I realize what’s happening: I’m bleeding.
    The person up there changes his grip. Clasps hold of me as if we were shaking hands.
    I press my knees against the ice. My trapped hand between my legs. And then I push away. I’m free. My hand slides out of my diving glove. Cold water. Cold hand. Ouch!
    I swim away under the ice. Away. Away from whoever it was.
    Now I’m beneath the green door again. I thump it hard. Hammer on it. Scratch at it.
    There must be another way up. A place where the ice is thinner. Where I can break through it. I swim off again.
    But he runs after me. Or is it a he? I can see the person through the ice. Blurred. From underneath. Above me the whole time. Between breaths, when the air I’m exhaling isn’t thundering in my ears, I can hear footsteps on the ice.
    I can only see whoever it is for brief moments. The air I’m breathing out has nowhere to go. It forms a big, flat bubble like a mirror beneath the ice. I can see myself in it. Distorted. Like in the hall of mirrors at a fairground. Changing all the time. When I breathe in, I can see the person on the ice above me; when I breathe out, I can see myself.
    Then the regulator freezes. Air comes spurting out of my mouthpiece. I stop swimming. I have to devote all my strength to trying to breathe. A few minutes later the cylinder is empty.
    Then it’s over. My lungs heave and heave. I fight to the bitter end. Mustn’t inhale water. I’m about to burst.
    My arms are flailing. Banging in vain against the ice. The last thing I do in this life is tear off my regulator and my mask. Then I die. There’s no air now between me and the ice. No reflection of me. My eyes are open in the water. Now I can see the person up there.
    A face pressing against the ice, looking at me. But what I see doesn’t register. My consciousness ebbs away like a retreating wave.

THURSDAY, 16 APRIL
     
    At 3.15 in the morning Östen Marjavaara opened his eyes in his cottage in Pirttilahti. The light woke him. In the middle of April it was never dark at night for more than an hour or so. The fact that the blinds were closed did not make much difference. The light forced its way in between the slats, trickled in via the cord holes, poured through the gap between the blind and the window frame. Even if he had boarded up the windows, even if he had slept in a windowless room, he would still have woken up. The light was out there. Prodding and tugging at him. Gently but persistently, like a lonely woman. He might as well get up and make a pot of coffee.
    Climbing out of bed, he opened the blinds. The floor was freezing cold against his bare feet. The thermometer outside the window said minus 2. It had snowed during the night. The hard crust that had formed the previous week after some milder weather and a few days of sleet had become even firmer now – strong enough for him to ski along the bank of the River Torne towards Tervaskoski. There were bound to be grayling lurking behind stones in the rapids there.
    When the fire had taken hold in the kitchen stove, Marjavaara took the red plastic bucket standing in the hall and went down to the river to fetch some water. It was only a few metres to the riverbank, but he made his way carefully: there were plenty of potentially treacherous ice patches beneath the fresh snow and you could easily injure yourself.
    The sun was lying in wait just below the horizon, painting the cold, wintry sky with golden-red strokes. Soon it would peer over the spruce forest, setting the red wooden panels of the cottage aglow.
    The snow lay over the river like a whisper of nature. Hush, it said, be quiet. There is only you and me now.
    He did as he was told, stood still with the bucket in his hand, gazing out over the river. It was true. You never come closer to owning the whole world than when you wake up before everyone else. There were a few cottages dotted along