The couples trip, p.10
The Couples Trip, page 10
The flight to Staloluokta took about twenty minutes. It was a Sami settlement by Lake Virihaure with a long mountain along one shoreline. There was also a mountain station. Jenny slowly brought the helicopter down and landed in a small enclosure by the water. As we left we thanked her for the fantastic flight, and she wished us good luck for our trip to Sarek. We retrieved our rucksacks and set off for the mountain station. The ground was soft, covered in heather and moss.
By now it was two thirty in the afternoon. We hadn’t had a decent meal since the morning, so we decided to stock up with provisions in Parfa’s kiosk, then have lunch in the station.
The kiosk was a little wooden building not unlike an old-fashioned sausage stall, located among the Sami dwellings. It appeared to be closed, but as we approached a friendly looking man emerged from one of the buildings and opened up.
I had never seen so much stuff crammed into such a small space. Every square centimeter of the walls, floor and ceiling, had been used to display everything you could possibly need for a mountain hike. Preserves, powdered soups, freeze-dried meals, sweets and snacks, toilet paper and washing-up liquid and liquefied petroleum gas, local products like knitted gloves and smoked mountain char and vacuum-packed reindeer meat at a thousand kronor a kilo. We bought what we needed for lunch and the rest of the week, said thank you and left—several kilos heavier.
The mountain station kitchen was simple with LPG hot plates and big steel buckets filled with water. We heated up meatballs in a cream sauce, cooked some macaroni and sat down in the dining room with a magnificent view of the lake.
When we’d eaten and cleared away, Jacob spread out his map on the table and showed us the route. First of all there were several kilometers of a pretty steep climb until we reached the south side of the mountain known as Stuor Dijdder, then we would leave the track and zigzag between lakes in order to continue toward Alajavrre, the lake we had seen from the helicopter. It would be a long first day, a hike of about twenty kilometers, but we wanted to get into Sarek as soon as possible, didn’t we?
We were full and happy and warm. We felt strong and keen to get going. We thought it sounded like an excellent plan.
I paid for the use of the kitchen, and we all took the chance to visit the outside toilets. We had a week of very primitive toilet opportunities ahead of us, and I suspected that within a couple of days we would think fondly of these smelly wooden huts as the height of civilization.
We shrugged on our rucksacks and set off. The track passed a church built as a traditional Sami dwelling, then began to climb. Jacob took the lead, and the rest of us followed in single file. After a few minutes I stopped and looked back. We were already a good way up the mountainside; the station and the Sami settlement lay below us, between the deep blue waters of Virihaure and the mountain known as Unna Dijdder. Its soft contours were clad in shades of mustard yellow and rusty red with patches of green. Beyond the lake I could see a white jagged line of peaks. It was stunning.
We hadn’t done it deliberately, but I realized that we had hit the September explosion of color in the mountains of Lapland. I dug out my phone, took a picture. The sun was still high in the sky. It felt like a sunny October day in Stockholm—pleasantly warm. I put down my rucksack, took off my anorak and continued in just my top. A gentle breeze fanned my face and throat.
Milena had noticed that I’d stopped, and was waiting for me to catch up. “Isn’t it amazing?” she said.
“Absolutely. I just want to keep taking photos.”
“Did you sort out the work problem, by the way?”
“Yes. It was just something I had to say yes or no to.”
We carried on chatting about our respective jobs, about new colleagues and mutual acquaintances who’d moved on to pastures new. Our conversation started out as small talk, but gradually became more personal. This was the first time since we left Stockholm that we’d been on our own, and soon the bond between us was restored. It had been established in Uppsala ten years ago, and it was always easy to find our way back, even if we hadn’t spoken for months.
I was careful not to ask about Jacob. If she wanted to talk about him, she could do it on her own initiative. And I no longer felt that it was important for me to dig into his past. On reflection, all that research, all that phoning and Googling, seemed a little over-the-top to say the least. I was no longer afraid of Jacob, nor was I curious about him. Right now I was walking through a magnificent landscape, Milena and I were good friends again, talking to each other the way we always used to. Nothing else mattered.
The track led us down into a narrow ravine, edged with birch and willow brushwood, then up the other side. It was very steep, and we had to grab hold of branches to pull ourselves up. We were lucky that it wasn’t raining, because then the muddy track would have been very difficult to negotiate. It was only a short passageway, and when we reached the next ridge, we had a clear view toward Stuor Dijdder and the small lakes at the foot of the mountain.
Jacob and Henrik were about a hundred meters ahead of us. I wondered what they were talking about. Maybe they were walking in silence. I remembered the pattern from our earlier trips: for the first few days Milena and I would chat virtually nonstop and Henrik would often walk alone, a short distance ahead of or behind us. We would talk less and less with each passing day—not because we’d grown tired of each other, but because the most important stuff had already been said, and when you spend every waking hour together, the perception that silence is uncomfortable soon disappears.
We started to discuss Henrik. Milena was worried. “He doesn’t seem like himself. He looks tired.”
Should I tell her that he’d hardly left the apartment all summer? That he’d turned into a couch potato? No, that would be disloyal. I replied truthfully that he was feeling pretty down about work at the moment.
“It’s to do with the fact that he’s never in the running for a professorship. It’s taking its toll on him. He’d expected it to happen years ago, but he feels as if he’s missed out.”
“Does it have to be in Uppsala? Couldn’t he apply for a post elsewhere?”
“I suppose so... Anyway, this is the first time he’s talked about doing something else.”
“Leaving university?” Milena sounded surprised.
“I don’t think he’s serious, but he’s been in that world forever. He’s never tried a different job.”
Milena looked taken aback. “But what would he do? Office work?”
“I don’t really know. Like I said, I don’t think he’s serious.”
Milena was clearly more worried about this than I was. For a fleeting moment I thought of asking whether Jacob enjoyed his job, but I didn’t do it.
We’d been walking for a couple of hours now, and my body had acclimatized. At first the rucksack always feels heavy and uncomfortable; the body has a new center of gravity and your knees kind of give way a little with every step because you’re afraid of losing your balance. Your boots might seem hard, you’re aware of the strain in a muscle at the back of your thigh. But gradually you warm up, the little cramps fade away, your whole body is working, you have a pleasantly increased pulse rate, the endorphins are fizzing in your blood and you experience a mild euphoria.
Suddenly we could no longer see Jacob and Henrik. We had left the track and were on our way down between the lakes. The ground rose and fell, crisscrossed by small ridges with puddles, dips and dense undergrowth between them. It was easy to lose the wider view here. Milena and I had stopped to discuss which way we should go when Jacob popped up a short distance ahead and waved to us. We set off in his direction.
They had found a sheltered spot with rock faces on three sides, close to one of the lakes. Henrik was already on his way back from the water’s edge, having filled up the coffeepot. Jacob lit the stove and soon the water was boiling. We tipped instant coffee straight into the pot and gave it a stir, then Jacob divided the hot drink between us, while I dug out my bottle of powdered milk. We didn’t have any fruit or pastries, but Henrik offered around peanuts and raisins. The ground was relatively dry, so I sat down on the moss and heather. I leaned back against a rock and sipped my coffee. I felt calm yet full of life, reveling in the peacefulness of this place, the blue sky, the sunlight.
The others were chatting about which coffee was best—espresso, filtered or freeze-dried. Jacob admitted that he actually loved instant coffee. He’d never understood the popularity of espresso. Milena and Henrik promised not to tell anyone.
After about half an hour we wiped out our drinking cups with a clump of moss and were soon on our way again. I had the map in my hand and could see that we were walking up the side of Unna Liemak. It lay next to Stuor Liemak. Unna and Stuor, just like Unna and Stuor Dijdder. Could it mean little and big? Stuor Liemak was about a hundred meters taller, so that sounded right. Both were about a thousand meters high, and I thought they were unlucky to have ended up here, just outside Sarek and with Ahkka and Sulitelma nearby. Almost anywhere else in Sweden they would have been regarded as huge mountains, but here they weren’t much more than hills.
At first the four of us walked together, but meter by meter Jacob and I pulled away from Henrik and Milena. We plodded stubbornly upward. I definitely wasn’t tired, but I could feel the steady rhythm of my pulse. The terrain didn’t look at all as I’d expected from the map. I’d pictured a wide valley extending down to Lake Alajavrre, but instead we were constantly climbing. We came to a small brook, the first one we’d encountered, but we were virtually able to cross it without even getting our feet wet. I topped up my water bottle. Maybe the rumors about difficult crossings in Sarek were exaggerated. When we reached the fence around a reindeer enclosure we stopped and waited for Henrik and Milena. It was clear that the gradient was beginning to take its toll, especially on Henrik. He was red-faced, sweating and panting.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. “Do you want to take a break?”
“No, I’m fine,” he gasped between breaths. “We’ll be stopping for dinner soon, won’t we?”
“We’ll keep going for another hour or so,” Jacob stated firmly. “That will get us to Alajavrre. It’s fantastic up there.” He lifted the fence, we took off our rucksacks and slid them across the ground to the other side, then wriggled under ourselves. Jacob was the last. He took out a couple of energy bars and divided them between us before we set off again.
The sun was setting now, the light falling at an angle across the landscape. The air was quickly growing cooler, and I put my anorak back on.
Eventually we were able to see the western part of Alajavrre, and from the next ridge we were looking out across the whole lake. At the far end a smaller mountain blocked the way, but the snow-capped peaks rose up beyond it, and there it was: Sarek. Just to have these amazing mountains within sight gave me butterflies in my tummy.
“That’s where we’re heading,” Jacob said, leaning closer to me and pointing. “The far end of the lake.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, but it’s an easy route from here. You just walk along the shore.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Henrik and Milena had fallen a long way behind, and there was no sign of them. I felt a tiny stab of unease. I was alone with Jacob Tessin. But the feeling disappeared as quickly as it had come.
12
We went a little farther, out into a huge meadow of lush green grass right by the lake. I fetched some water while Jacob rigged up the stove. Dusk had fallen but it was still relatively light. The sky and mountains on the far side of Alajavrre were reflected upside down in its mirrorlike surface. I had the dizzying sensation that the ground itself was nothing more than a thin plate, the lake a gash that enabled you to see right through it. The sky was beneath our feet as well as above our heads.
“They say that the most beautiful view in the whole of Sarek is from the top of Alatjåhkkå,” Jacob said, waving a hand at the mountain behind us. The minestrone soup was bubbling nicely, and I took some rye bread and a tube of shrimp-flavored cheese out of my rucksack.
“Which peak?” I wondered. “It looks as if there are several in a row.”
“The farthest one, I think.” He took out the map. “It’s the highest—1430.”
“You’ve never been up there?”
“No, and it’s not going to happen tonight either, if we’re going to get to the end of the lake.”
“How many times have you been to Sarek?”
“This will be my fourth, but I’ve only walked this route once before.”
He told me that when he first came to Sarek, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, the main focus was climbing. He and his friends wanted to conquer the highest peaks in Sarektjåhkkå. They had challenged themselves. It was another ten years before he returned, and on that occasion he had rediscovered Sarek: the beautiful narrow valleys where you never saw another soul, the delta at the end of the Rapa Valley, the majestic elk around Rovdjurstorget.
“That was when I fell head over heels in love,” he said.
A train of thought from the previous evening made its presence felt. Jacob was between twenty-five and thirty when he first came here, then ten years passed, which made him at least thirty-six. And now he was claiming to be thirty-eight. So if I asked him when he’d last been here, and if he said it was more than two years ago, then something wasn’t right.
But my speculation was half-hearted, as if I were on autopilot. I didn’t need to know, and I didn’t ask any follow-up questions. Jacob smiled at me.
“So tell me about your trips—where have the three of you been?”
“Hasn’t Milena told you?”
“A bit—Kebnekaise, she said.”
We exchanged memories of our trips, compared various destinations. We both agreed that Blåhammaren had the best food in the Swedish mountains.
At long last Henrik and Milena arrived. They both looked exhausted as they undid the straps of their rucksacks and let them fall to the ground.
“Tired, sweetheart?” Jacob asked, giving Milena a hug.
“Absolutely,” she gasped.
“The soup is ready,” I said, smiling at Henrik. He lay down on the wet grass, took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“I just need to rest for a minute or two.”
I dropped to my knees beside him and gave him a kiss. “Of course you do. There’s no rush.”
I took out my mess tin and Jacob poured the soup directly from the pan. I sat down on a rock and started to eat, feeling vaguely concerned that Henrik seemed so tired after a four-hour walk. Admittedly it had been uphill most of the way, but certainly not steep, and the weather was perfect. This didn’t bode well for the difficulties that might lie ahead in Sarek.
And I also felt something else, something I had touched on when I was talking about Henrik and Milena. Something I didn’t really want to admit, because I was ashamed of it.
Irritation. Henrik was less fit than usual. I suspected that he’d thought our holiday would be canceled because we’d postponed it when I had to work, so he hadn’t bothered training. I’d spent virtually all day every day in the office over the summer, so of course I was unable to keep an eye on what he did and didn’t do when I wasn’t there. He’d had a long break, seven or eight weeks, and he’d stayed in the city without doing anything special, except for a week with his brother’s family on the west coast.
When I was doing the laundry, I’d noticed that his gym kit was never in the basket. On the days when I worked from home, he stayed in bed, when he wasn’t reading or doing sudoku. I had trained at the gym near my office as usual, almost every day.
We hadn’t had time to go on any training walks together carrying heavy rucksacks as we normally did, and he certainly hadn’t undertaken any on his own.
He sat up with some difficulty, staggered over to his rucksack and dug out his mess tin.
“Some hot soup will soon perk you up,” Jacob said cheerfully. Henrik managed a wan smile as he held out his tin.
We ate our soup; nobody had much to say. It was eight thirty now, and the evening was closing in. With the darkness came a chill in the air. On a sunny September day like this you could almost be fooled into thinking that it was still summer, but when the evening came that illusion was soon shattered. The temperature could easily fall close to zero tonight. That wasn’t a problem, we had the appropriate sleeping bags, but before we snuggled down in our tents, there would be a certain amount of shivering and stiff fingers clutching our toothbrushes.
Jacob finished first and put on some water; he wanted a cup of coffee. Henrik ate his soup quickly and looked enquiringly at Jacob. “I assume we’re camping here tonight?”
“No.”
There was a brief silence. Milena looked unsure of herself. Henrik glanced at me. “But it’s almost dark.”
“Not quite,” Jacob replied. “And your eyes will soon get used to it. No, I thought we’d carry on alongside the lake, to the far end. That means we’ll be inside Sarek by lunchtime tomorrow.”
Henrik’s expression was skeptical. Jacob went on: “It’s a really easy walk, you just follow the shoreline. One and a half, maximum two hours.”
“It will be pitch-dark by then.”
“We’ve all got head torches, haven’t we? Milena and I have, anyway.”
Henrik was waiting for me to respond, but I remained silent. I felt fit and alert, and to be honest I really wanted to keep going.
He turned to Milena instead. “I guess the two of us are the most tired. What do you think?”
