Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck Page B

There were scraping noises as people sat down, mumbling as they greeted others they hadn’t seen for many months and turning to see if anyone was absent. On the arched roof high above them were painted scenes in frames that made them look like medallions. Maija recognized Jesus teaching his disciples, Jesus waking Lazarus from the dead. One of the pictures seemed to be from a torture chamber. Naked people in flames speared by brown devils; the eternal threat of hell. She scoffed to herself. Hanging at the front, in the air high above them, its body clad in gold and its roof and curtains of red velvet,surrounded by lit candles in massive candlesticks, was an enormous pulpit. Like a chariot already halfway to heaven.
    Then Maija felt cold.
    A young woman knelt on a stool in the middle of the aisle, her hands clasped to her chest, her head with the white linen bonnet, lowered. People parted around her. A man spat on her dress.
    Dorotea pulled her sleeve: “What’s going on?”
    “That, Dorotea, is called a whore stool,” Maija said aloud.
    “Shhh,” Paavo hissed.
    “The priest puts people there to punish them and to scare us others.”
    “But what has she done?”
    “Something the priest considers a sin. Notice, Dorotea, that she is alone. There is no man being punished together with her.”
    Paavo pulled her with him into one of the aisles and down on a bench.
    “Stop it. Stop it right now.”
    “This.” Maija pointed at the woman. “This is insane.”
    “Do you want to join her?”
    In her lap, her hands, their chapped skin and square nails. Ugly hands. Honest hands. Working hands. She opened them. Shut them again. Paavo still stared at her. She ignored him. Her cheeks burned. She remembered a Paavo shouting at the village priest over the practices of the Church. He’d only been a boy. Four days in the stocks, he had got. She had walked past him again and again, full of admiration. She had thought about it so often, used him as her beacon. And instead, now, his fear maimed her.
    She thought of Henrik and Lisbet and recognized herself and her husband. Only there it was the woman who was frightened and the man who was trying to soothe. It was like what Nils had said, about the little lake on the mountain that had turned into marsh and the large one that had remained a lake. A being was either strong enough to hold their ground or they became small and bottomlessand started feeding on themselves. They turned into something they never saw coming. Something they never intended.
    She must not begin to hate, she told herself.
    “What your mother isn’t telling you,” Paavo said to Dorotea, his voice pointy, “is that the priest could have given a much harsher punishment to this woman. She could have paid with her life.”
    Toward the front Nils stood with Kristina. Daniel entered with Anna a step behind him, and Nils smiled and greeted them as if welcoming them to his church. Henrik and Lisbet were already sitting in the sea of balding heads and kerchiefs. Maija didn’t know how Lisbet had managed the journey. Then Elin walked by with her children.
    Nils was looking at Elin. There was no greeting. Not for her. Elin sat down in the same bench as Henrik and Lisbet. Lisbet pushed on her husband and they stood up and walked to some benches further back. Elin’s children stirred, hovered around her, jostled to sit close to their mother. One of the children put a thin hand on her shoulder, but Elin didn’t react.
    The door at the front opened and the priest strode in. He held a Bible in his hand. He mounted the golden stairway up to the pulpit and bent his head. There was a cool draught from behind her, and Maija turned around to see Gustav enter. The great hall fell quiet and then the priest looked out over them without seeing any one of them.
    “Repent,” he whispered. “Repent,” he whispered again.
    “Eve in the Garden of Eden, oh, you despondent, can you see her? God’s creation, perfect in every way.