‘And what kind of woman is she, Stellan?’ Niilo asks, amused.
‘I found her blog, and she’s just more… worldly than you.’
‘You’re already stalking Sylvie and her friends online?’ Niilo laughs and runs his fingers through his choppy dark hair, which is glistening with sweat in the low sauna light.
‘I was just getting up to speed. It’s a long time since I’ve seen Sylvie and I don’t remember her talking about Nari, so I guess I just… looked her up too.’
‘And what did you find? A string of convictions for man-eating?’ Niilo laughs.
‘No, I just looked at her blog. Granted, it seemed kind of old, but she talks a lot about dating men from different countries and compares them and, you know, that kind of thing?’
‘I don’t, actually. So she travels a lot. She meets a lot of people. She finds people interesting. So do I.’
‘Yeah, but when did you last go on a date with anybody?’
Niilo shrugs. ‘I didn’t meet my soulmate until tonight. Why would I waste my time dating lots of different people? Besides, when was the blog you read published?’
‘I don’t know, 2010 or something like that. I didn’t have time to look for more recent ones. I can only imagine they get worse as they go on,’ Stellan says gruffly, closing his eyes once more.
Niilo falls silent, thinking about his friend’s warning and how one of the American tourists back at the resort had propositioned him only the weekend before, asking him to show her the aurora with a meaningful glint in her eyes. She’d smelled of oily perfume and hairspray, and her thick black lashes seemed to have been attached with something cloying and sticky.
He’d made sure to let her down gently but firmly. There was no way he’d be baited and reeled in, yanked out of his elemental arctic home, not by one of the tourists set on a holiday romance with a pretty, exotic, spiritual stranger. He knew that was how they all saw him. No, he’d long ago resolved that he belonged here in the peace and silence where he was safe and unburdened. The fleeting tourists from the resort, with their return tickets and their penchant for Sámi men, were not for him.
Stellan interrupts Niilo’s pensiveness. ‘Niilo, you slept with that tourist from Sweden, didn’t you? The one that wanted to see your cabin in the woods?’
Niilo simply smiles. He doesn’t talk about the rare exceptions to his rules. Only he knows about the few people he’s made love to and the memory of each one is sewn up in the quietest quarters of his heart. Apart from the fleeting lovers of his youth who he met during Southern migrations following his herds, the rest – all tourists – had got on planes and flown home to their real lives soon afterwards. He had learned his lesson with those few strangers. They don’t really want to know who he is, and they never stay long enough to find out anyway. But Nari is different. She’s the one he’s been waiting for.
Niilo veers away from the subject and back to Stellan’s reservations. ‘An online blog is not a person. She must be much more than the public persona she portrays. Once I know her, I’ll read her blog. Anyway, who are you to judge? At least I’mopento life’s possibilities.’
Stellan huffs out an exasperated breath, but Niilo talks on. ‘Aren’t you glad I talked you into apologising to Sylvie? Doesn’t it feel better now you’ve written down the words, told her how you feel?’
‘You don’t understand. Sylvie and me… it’s more complicated than you think. Look, I’m not like you. You suddenly seem to have a lot of faith that this kind of thing will come right for you. You hide away, and you abstain, and you wait for a sign from some snow fairies or whatever—’
Niilo interrupts with a gentle laugh and a dig of his elbow in Stellan’s ribs.
‘You do! You say you’ve seen a sign and now you’re mated forever with some woman you’ve said five words to.’
Niilo nods and pulls a face that says there may be some truth in what his friend is saying, but he doesn’t regret telling Stellan out on the trail about the bear and how he’d seen it again.
The creature had ambled out of the darkness towards him, stood up on its hind legs, revealing its grizzled chest matted with icicles, and lifted his head, turning his black eyes to the sky. That was when Niilo saw the plane, the first that had passed overhead in four days out on the trail. He knew it was coming in to land at the airstrip fifty kilometres to the south, and he’d understood then. He’d closed his eyes and filled his lungs with arctic morning air, and the bear had disappeared, its message delivered.
Niilo had described his premonition to Stellan as they’d prepared the tourists’ breakfasts, and Stellan had simply smiled. Niilo had always had a vivid imagination and powerful, colourful waking dreams that he’d come to rely on as a way of breaking the monotony of the snowy reindeer migrations and the long white nights of summer. They offered him a kind of comfort Stellan couldn’t understand.
‘You think I’m a romantic fool?’ said Niilo, watching Stellan through the heat haze.
‘Well, yes.’
‘I thinkyou’rea pig-headed pragmatist.’
‘You’re going to get hurt.’
‘Maybe. But I’ll have loved.’
‘Oh my God, you’re crazy.’
‘Just be polite to them both, OK? They’re only here for a few days. You told me you were in love with this Sylvie once, so let’s show her and NariourLapland, make this a really special time for them. OK?’
Stellan drains his beer. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
