Revolver

  We’re dead anyway, he thought. We’re dead anyway.

  “Why don’t you?” he said.

  Wolff turned from Anna to Sig.

  “What?” he said, snarling.

  “Why don’t you shoot?” Sig said. “You keep threatening to. Why don’t you?”

  He got to his feet.

  “Sit down!” Wolff thrust the gun at Sig, but Sig stayed standing.

  “Shoot me,” he said, as calm as the depths of the forest. For a brief, strange but wonderful moment he was filled with elation.

  Wolff hesitated for a second, then smashed the revolver into the side of Sig’s head.

  He went down, his eyes saw nothing more.

  35

  Moon Day, morning

  Does God turn his eyes away when bad things happen? Or does he watch, wondering at how his creation unfolds? Does he shake his head in sorrow? Or does he smile?

  Sig lay on the floor of the cabin, not moving.

  Anna screamed.

  “You’ve killed him! You … You’ve killed him!”

  She wailed and tried to scramble across the floor to Sig, but Wolff moved into her path, squatting down in front of her.

  “I hope so,” he drawled.

  She slapped him viciously across the face, so that her hand stung, and yet Wolff seemed almost not to notice.

  “Now then,” he said, and Anna saw the darkness come into his eyes. She began to stumble away, staggering to her feet as she went, but Wolff was on her.

  “Please …” Anna began.

  “What?” mocked Wolff. “Please don’t kill me? After ten years, ten years of waiting. Of hunting and travelling and freezing and almost damn-well dying, and you don’t have my gold? Please don’t kill me? Oh, I’m not going to kill you. Not yet. I want something for my trouble.”

  Anna felt the back of her calves press against the edge of the bed, and Wolff towered in front of her.

  “Not yet,” he whispered, as he pushed her backward.

  Anna began to cry, as terrible memories flooded back.

  “You killed my mother!” she screamed. “You killed my mother!”

  Wolff paused, gazing at the girl on the bed in front of him.

  “Come now,” he said, licking his lips. “Let’s not speak of the snow that fell last year.”

  36

  Moon Day, morning

  Not feeling anything, not hearing anything, Sig nonetheless opened his eyes and what he saw made him want to howl.

  Not just Anna lying on the bed, with Wolff standing over her, tugging at his waistband. Not just the shape of his father’s corpse under the blanket, not the pool of his own blood in which he lay, flowing freely from the wound to his head.

  Even the dead tell stories. Stories of lies, and lies of stories, and lying, lying in blood, Sig leaked his life out, glaring at the man who told him that the dead can speak. His own dead now, his father, lying no more, but lying frozen on the table.

  It made him want to howl.

  But he didn’t.

  As he saw Wolff stroke one hand up the length of Anna’s leg, he turned away and bolted for the door.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Wolff spin around, but nothing would stop Sig now. He flung himself around the frame of the door and into the storeroom.

  The gun box was gone, but immediately he saw it on the floor—that had been the sound that had given Anna away, as she’d clumsily knocked it to the floor, the very thing she’d been looking for. Its contents were strewn across the floorboards.

  He grabbed the revolver, and heard steps coming across the cabin.

  But the gun was not kept loaded. He needed cartridges, and they had spilled. He fumbled for them frantically, and sent them clattering away from him.

  He tried again, but there was only time to snatch one of the little brass tubes from the floor.

  He flicked the chamber gate open with shaking hands, slid the cartridge in, snapped the cylinder around into place, and stood.

  The door darkened.

  “Get back!” Sig screamed, and Wolff froze where he was.

  “Get back!” Sig yelled again, and this time Wolff edged back into the cabin, his own gun leveled at Sig’s chest.

  “What are you doing?” Wolff said evenly, but Sig ignored him, kept edging him back into the room.

  “Keep going,” he said. “Anna, are you all right?”

  Anna got up from the bed, smoothing her skirts, her eyes meeting Sig’s then opening wide as she saw the gun in his hands.

  “What are you doing with that, boy?” Wolff asked again. “That old piece of your Pappa’s? You going to hurt somebody with that?”

  “Be quiet, Wolff,” Sig said, pointing the gun straight toward him. “Anna, come away from him.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Wolff said. “Wait a minute.”

  “What’s wrong with your gun, Wolff?” Sig said, his breath coming in nervous gasps. Once more he watched himself as if from outside, heard himself speak as if it were someone else speaking, and as he did, he felt his strength growing and his voice becoming calmer. “What’s wrong with your gun? You’ve been waving it around an awful lot. But I don’t think you’re going to use it, are you? I think there’s something wrong with it. Isn’t that right? Because otherwise I think we’d both be dead by now.”

  Sig saw in the silence which followed that he was right. A fury swept into Wolff’s eyes as he realized he’d been found out, and it seemed he would paw the floor like a bull in barely contained rage.

  “What happened to it? Did the cold get to it? Did you let it get too cold? Did it rust when you stayed at some inn someplace? You should leave a gun outside when it’s been in the cold. You should know that.”

  He stared straight into Wolff’s eyes, and though Wolff held his gaze, Sig no longer felt afraid.

  Wolff smiled.

  “Smart boy,” he said. “Just like your damn father. Too damn smart.”

  Wolff lowered his hand, and when it was pointing at the floor, he let his useless barrel-rusted gun drop to the floor, where it lay like a dying beast, no hint of danger left about it.

  “Anna,” Sig said. “Are you all right? Did he touch you?”

  Anna moved over to Sig.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “All right.” But she wouldn’t look at Wolff.

  “How did you get free?” Sig asked. “Nadya’s here, isn’t she?”

  Anna nodded.

  “I couldn’t tell you. Not in front of him. She left just before you got back. She’s gone for help. Proper help, this time.”

  “Good,” Sig said. “Now, I want you to go after her, catch her up. Take the dogs and catch her up.”

  “Sig …”

  “Please, Anna, do as I say.”

  Sig didn’t take his eyes off Wolff, but he spoke urgently and insistently to Anna.

  “Please. For my sake. For your sake. For Pappa,” he paused. “For Mother. Do as I ask. Please?”

  Anna waited a long time before answering and even then her answer was only a nod.

  She went to the door, pulling gloves and a coat on.

  “Sig,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Remember your mother. Remember her, remember what she would tell you now.”

  “Listen to your sister, boy,” Wolff whispered. “She’s right. Once you pull that trigger, your life will never be the same again. It won’t just be my life you’re ending, boy.”

  But Sig didn’t answer, didn’t answer either of them, and Anna shut the door behind her.

  She was halfway across the snow towards the dog huts, when she heard the shot.

  A single shot, which rang out across the whole of the frozen valley, from the cabin to Giron.

  The echo of the shot came back, shaking the snow from the tops of the trees, and the ravens took wing.

  37

  Moon Day, morning

  Love.

  Faith, Hope, and Love. That was what Maria had tried to teach her children, but she ha
d died too soon to finish their education.

  In some move of the hand of fate, or maybe of God, Nadya had entered their lives to finish that teaching, but still, these are lessons for which you have to provide your own answers. That much, Sig had learned.

  In the cabin, Sig stood staring at the tip of the barrel of his father’s old Colt. The smoke from the black powder cartridge curled into the air. He breathed deeply. To pull the trigger, or not to pull the trigger? It was such a tiny act, such a small difference between doing it and not doing it. So small a choice, was there really any difference at all? And yet there was, and he had chosen to pull the trigger. It was easy.

  Wolff sat on the floor, against the wall, the wall that now bore a blasted hole almost a foot wide in its surface, about two feet away from Wolff’s head.

  “Why?” Wolff asked. “You could have won.”

  He stood up.

  “You could have won. Why did you miss?”

  Sig smiled.

  “My mother’s children are not murderers,” he said, and handed the empty gun to Wolff. Without another word, he turned and walked toward the cabin door.

  Wolff stared at him open-mouthed, and then at the gun in his hands.

  His left hand moved to the string of shiny new cartridges clipped into a belt around his waist, and with almost childlike glee he eased one out of the leather and slid it into Einar’s old gun.

  Sig heard him do it.

  He had reached the door and opened it.

  He didn’t falter as he heard Wolff thumb the hammer back on the revolver. It clicked into place and Sig knew that it was held back from falling onto the primer only by a tiny sliver of metal.

  He prayed, but he didn’t pray to God.

  He prayed to his mother; he prayed that she wasn’t wrong to preach the path of peace.

  He prayed to his father; he prayed that his father had known what he was talking about when he said that you should never put a powerful new smokeless cartridge into an old gun like theirs.

  He heard the trigger grate. There was a second deafening bang as the gun roared into life again, some of the roof splintered down onto Sig, and with it came a scream of wild pain. The gun had blown apart, taking half of Wolff’s hand off with it.

  38

  Moon Day, morning

  Anyone would have thought it was the Devil himself who came flying out of the cabin after Sig, as he bolted down from the porch.

  He saw Anna ahead, transfixed by the two gun shots.

  “Run!” he shouted.

  She didn’t need telling twice.

  Behind Sig, Wolff staggered like a drunk, as rage and pain fought for control of his mind and his body. Blood was pouring from his right hand; the thumb and at least his first two fingers were gone, and he clutched uselessly at it with his thumbless left.

  “Run!”

  Sig waved Anna on, but soon caught her up.

  He risked a look backward, and to his horror he saw Wolff was gaining on them.

  He seemed oblivious to his injury, just wanting one thing now. He had forgotten about gold, about revenge, about lust. All he wanted to do was kill them both, and Sig did not doubt that even in his wounded state, he could still do that.

  Anna turned for the shore, but Sig called her back.

  “No! This way. Up here. To the trees.”

  They put on a burst of speed that took them to the line of little trees that lay at the edge of the forest, and then Anna saw what Sig saw.

  The snow.

  “Wait!” Sig cried. “Anna. Wait. We need to walk.”

  “What?” Anna cried. “Are you mad?”

  “No! Anna, remember! We need to walk!”

  And now Anna nodded and stopped.

  Wolff was only yards away.

  “Have faith,” she said to herself, and walked across the snow.

  Sig followed, trying to stop himself from breaking into a run.

  Slowly, they set out across the snow field between the trees.

  They were maybe twenty feet in when Wolff hurtled after them. It was enough. Within two paces he sank into the snow up to his chest, breaking through the ice crust which Sig and Anna had walked clean over.

  He floundered, waving his arms around him, blood staining the snow in a vivid red scar all around him.

  At one moment it seemed he might break free, but his rage and his strength were draining away with his blood.

  Sig and Anna walked on a few more paces, then stopped and turned.

  It was true.

  Wolff was trapped.

  “Help me!” he cried. “Help me. I’m hurt.”

  Sig remembered. He remembered saying the same thing to Wolff, only hours before. What was it Wolff had said in reply?

  Sig took a tentative step closer to him.

  “Well, Mr. Wolff,” he whispered. “Is that my problem?”

  1967

  The Warwick Hotel New York City

  Postscript

  Sigfried Andersson sat in the small but elegant bar of the hotel and recalled the last of the story. He was chatting to a young soldier who had just come back from a war in a jungle in a country Sig had never heard of. The young soldier had seen some sights, and had heard some stories, but he’d never heard a story like the one the old Swedish man was telling him.

  Some of the details were crystal clear, some were hazy; it had been a long time. He’d forgotten some of it, but then, there were times when he forgot for a moment the name of the woman he’d married, though she’d only been dead five years.

  He was an old man, and old men have a right to forget certain things.

  But there were other things he would never forget.

  He would never forget dragging Wolff from the snow, with Anna’s help, and then Nadya’s, too. Mr. Bergman and men from town arrived soon afterward, and took Wolff away. He wasn’t quite dead, and even to this day Sig couldn’t work out exactly how he felt about that. He’d heard that Wolff had died in prison a few years later, in a fight with another prisoner. The dumb man had never learned to control his anger, and it had cost him his life in the end. A man with no thumbs was never going to win a fight with a cell mate holding an iron table leg.

  And then there was something else that he would never forget. Anna and Nadya and he had gone back into the cabin, to try and set things right. The men from town had taken Einar’s body away, in preparation for the funeral, and the three Anderssons had gone with them, staying at Per Bergman’s house till it was done.

  There was time for grief then, at last, and some kind words were spoken that settled the anger between Anna and Nadya for good. Then the time came to return to the cabin, and Sig, for one, went with great dread. The cabin looked just the same as ever from outside, but inside the signs of the struggle were still evident.

  They’d cleaned up the mess, lit the stove, put on some food to cook. Anna had set the chairs on their feet, and Sig saw their mother’s Bible lying on the floor.

  As he picked it up, his father’s words came into his head.

  “Even the dead tell stories,” Einar had said, “and this book is full of them.”

  Finally something clicked in Sig’s head. He pictured the day Einar had repaired Maria’s Bible. Opening the front cover, he saw what no one had seen before. A slight bulge, flat and square, under the endpaper. He understood that Einar had not meant to burn the Bible at all but, knowing he was already dead, had tried to draw their attention to it.

  He took the knife from Nadya’s hand as she chopped a potato, and she and Anna crowded wordlessly around Sig as he slit open the binding at the front of the Bible.

  Two neatly folded squares of paper fell out from inside.

  One was a short note.

  I have something for all of you, but I have hidden it until I know it is safe for you to have it. One day, a man will come. And only when he has gone again, will it be safe for you to have it. When he has gone, take this map and start a new life. I know you can do this, for you are all wonderful and
clever people. My Nadya, my Anna, my Sig.

  I love you all, E.

  The other square of paper was a hand-drawn map.

  It led them through a path into the forest behind the cabin, to the bole of a huge birch tree, under whose spreading roots they found a steel box.

  Inside the box was a small fortune in gold.

  It had been years until they’d found out how he’d done it; how he’d smuggled all that gold from right under everyone’s noses, grain by grain all through that season. One day Sig had bumped into an old miner from the Alaskan gold rush, who’d told him about all the dodges under the sun, including the one about how gold dust will stick to damp fingers, which can then be transferred unseen to hair that’s been slicked carefully through with hair oil, to be washed out every evening into a bowl, strained with a muslin cloth. Just the thought of it had brought the smell of his father’s hair back to him, so many years later.

  It hadn’t been so very much money really, but they’d spent it wisely, after convincing Nadya that there was not really anything else they could do with it. They’d bought a stake in Per Bergman’s mine, and in the end the iron business had made them very rich.

  Just then, Anna came down the stairs and into the hotel bar. She smiled when she saw her brother, still so very much her little brother, even though he was seventy-two.

  She laughed as she joined Sig and the young soldier.

  “Still telling that old story,” she said.

  Sig nodded.

  “Time to go,” Anna said. “The concert won’t wait for us, and I don’t want to miss it.”

  They bade the soldier good-bye.

  As they walked arm in arm to the concert hall a couple of streets away, Anna turned to Sig.

  “You know,” she said. “It took me years to work out why you did it.”

  “What’s that?” Sig said, though he could guess.