A Shade of Wilderness

A student of art history starts a hunt for the story behind an obscure 1700's German painter. Can it help her finish a master's thesis?

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I.

Unless I had been utterly frustrated with the odd jobs I was surviving by, I had likely never managed to motivate myself and return to my master’s thesis to finish my degree. My studies in art history had been miserably delayed. There were probably several reasons for my procrastination. After the final months of student-support gone by, I had ended up working a low-wage job at the Helsinki Kunsthalle. I had hoped that the job would push me to finalize my thesis by revealing some research subject, hidden from the general public, which had thus far evaded my attention. I had also expected it to offer a chance to read background literature on the silent hours of late evening.

After three years in this educational limbo, the frustration in the exhibition halls and corridors echoing in their emptiness, and the glare of the 90’s tabletop monitor inside the janitor’s office drove back in action to finish my studies.

As student of art history I was left as a spectator in those more intellectual exchanges, played out in the every day life of the Kunsthalle. Enthusiasts, gallerists, artists and researchers did not offer much attention. They bypassed my attempts to open more academic discussion with friendly smiles and brief nods.

In addition to securing the doors, customer service and small maintenance tasks, it was my responsibility to clean the premises. As night descended and the main lights flickered away, the long corridors were filled with silence, except for the clank-and-rattle of my cleaner’s cart. Sometimes I could feel the blaming gaze of the portraits hung on the walls heavy over myself.

It was a late November night when I made a discovery, which forever changed my life. Some absent-minded soul had left a thin and old looking book on a return. Many times, I have wondered in retrospect, if there was actually clear intention behind the act, though subtler than that of travelling door-to-door lay-preachers. 

I stopped the carriage beside the return and picked the book up. On a second glance it looked expensive. The back was slightly worn leather, and the covers were of a slightly faded green cloth. The edges of the pages were decorated by early 20’Th century marble patterning. I read the title on the cover: The Romantic Brutalism of Franz Albert Engerström in Twenty Coloured Prints and Commentary.

As I arrived to work the following evening, no one had come to claim the book as his or her own. It rested where I had set it the previous night. As the evening was calm and I soon got bored, I picked the book up. The pages were old and brittle. My estimate of the books age proved correct. It had been printed in Porvoo, 1903. The author was unknown to me: C. E. Kytökivi. I found two dedications on the title page from different periods. The introduction was brief and generously praised F. A. Engerström’s style, which deviated from the usual romanticist expression of 1700’s.

As I continued to leaf the book, I quickly noticed what the author meant. The prints made of the original oil works followed the nature themes and idealization of history, common to romanticism, on the surface. With slightly more scrutiny, cruder and darker overtones revealed themselves under the seemingly calm surface. Where as the artists of romanticism usually attempted to create connections to the pastoral beauty of nature, and the mark of human hand amidst it, Engertröm’s works had a horribly disfigured quality to them. His human figures and sceneries held a profound asymmetry.

The pictures awakened a sense of foreignness, akin to sheer panic. I tried to reason, that it was merely the cause of their overwhelming power of expression and highly peculiar style. However, that unnatural apprehension bothered me, and I was unable to shake it off with any rationalization. 

I slammed the book shut and pushed it to the other end of the desk, feeling unexplainable disgust.

However, after twenty minutes or so, I grabbed the book again. Even though I intentionally avoided looking at the print panels, I had read the descriptions and commentaries by the end of my shift. Before I headed home, I removed the book from the table and placed it in a sheet metal locker by the wall. I thought to myself, that the owner of the book would know to come looking for it.

But another thought had also come to my mind.

When no one came to claim a lost book in two weeks, I decided to proceed with my plan. I had been tempted to take the book from the closet, and study it in the evenings, but I had restrained myself. I had decided to hide it from prying eyes, and make sure it would not slip my hands, should the rightful owner appear.

I arranged a meeting with the instructor of my thesis. He sounded quite surprised on the phone.

A week later I was standing on the university corridor, the book at the bottom of my bag. I had not taken its possession arbitrarily. I had merely loaned the book until the unknown owner would need it again.

I had to wait professor Leo-Luukas Karjaluhta for some time. I had already started to suspect that he might have forgotten our meeting, when he suddenly emerged at the other end of the corridor. He had aged before his years, his back bent and his presence ever absent-minded. He also had a tendency to break off, to babble alone during lectures, and unexpectedly chuckle to his own stories, whispered under his breath.

Professor Karjaluhta wore a brown leather jacket, old and torn; a shabby, wool-sweater and a pair of rumpled slacks underneath. Everything he had on, including the shoes in his feet, had seen their better days. His lack of posture made him almost a head shorter than myself, even as I wasn’t exceptionally tall. The satchel he carried, hung half open, welling with papers, plastic sheets and thin folders.

He greeted me, as he looked for a jingling set of keys in his pocket, and ushered me into his office after opening the door.

”Good morning, Ms. Haapala”, he said. ”It has been… hmm… a while. I was under the assumption, that you had moved on… hmm… to work at the Kunsthalle.”

I returned his greeting, wishing he hadn’t noticed the sudden blush on my cheeks. ”I have been working there temporarily”, I admitted. ”I was hoping to make arrangements to finish my studies.”

I had occasionally bumped into other students and friends from the university, but I felt that my state was somehow shameful. I tried to change the subject to the purpose of my visit: ”I believe I have found a topic for my thesis. I would like to hear your opinion.”

The office was a flood with papers and literature. The shelves by the wall sagged from the weight of art history and other books; most of them old, accompanied by piles of archived tests and essays, stretching back decades. The desk had been buried in an avalanche of papers and yet more books. Towers of piled books, bound paper stacks, and filled cardboard boxes stood on the floor, forming canyons I was barely able to navigate.

The professor cleared some space on a chair by the wall and gestured me to take the place.

”Very well, then”, he said. ”I am curious to hear what kind of… hmm… idea, you have come up with, Ms. Haapala.”

I told him about the book I had found, and pulled it out of my bag. Karjaluhta started to leaf it through, and stopped now and then to chuckle silently, almost as if he had forgotten my presence. Finally he raised his large, balding head and looked at me through his thick-brimmed glasses.

”I noticed by the dedication, that the book was previously owned by docent Eero Wakka”, he said. ”He… hmm… passed away a few weeks ago, a pleasant colleague. A sensitive man. Died at home, in his bed, surrounded by his paintings.”

Professor Karjaluhta removed his glasses and rubbed his moist eyes. The thought that the previous owner of the book had died around the time I found it in the Kunsthalle, was slightly creepy. I briefly wondered if I should return it to some of his next of kin, but quickly discarded the idea.

Karjaluhta returned the glasses to his nose and turned to stare at one of his bookshelves. ”A very strange person”, he said slowly. ”An… hmm… artistic soul. He was very fond of the oddities of romanticism, not… hmm… the conventional mainstream. He died lonely, at home. Surrounded by art”, he kept repeating himself.

I was not sure if Karjaluhta was now speaking of his late friend, or Franz Albert Engerström. After a moment he chuckled again, melancholically, and turned back to me.

”Very well. I have a book here, somewhere, which touches… hmm…F. A. Engerström’s work. I will see if I am able to find it. He lived in the 1700’s in the German Western Pomerania. He had Swedish roots. Wakka was convinced, that his family came from the eastern part of the realm… hmm… Finland. Very little has been written of him, but we will see what can be done. You may have to do a field trip to Germany. Do you think you will… hmm… afford one?”

I promised to find out what funding possibilities the mobility fund offered of our faculty offered, and to start my background work on marginal currents in romanticism, the art in Western Pomerania and, as far as I could, on Franz Albert Engerström. We agreed that I would formulate a research plan for my thesis based on this.

II.

It had been some six months since my discussion with professor Karjaluhta. I had been sitting with my luggage close to three hours in a train north from Berlin. Behind the window, rolling fields and shabby rural villages with low hanging sheet metal roofs and rusty iron fences, hugging the railway, took turns as scenery. Sometimes the rails cut through forested patches, leftovers of the European primal forest spared by the woodsman’s axe. Tangled branches gleamed black. Now and then the narrow shapes of power plants stretched themselves from the distance, their blades spinning electricity from the wind.

Professor Karjaluhta had accepted my research plan. I had used my free time in the past months to do background work on my topic, writing grant applications and gathering background material – as far as I could from Finland. To my own surprise, I got a grant covering both my travel and my stay in Germany. The late professor Wakka’s idea of Engerström’s Finnish roots had contributed to my success.

As we approached my station, the early spring sky hung low and lead gray over the train. A few times the forested patches opened to reveal dark, swampy lakes and withered wood that stood in the stale water, white as some long since dead giants bones.

The wheels of the train moaned and screeched, as it slowed down. We stopped beside a platform, and a sign that read with scaling white letters: WÜRMFELD.

Würmfeld was a drowsy town of roughly 20 000 inhabitants. It got its lifeblood from the vicinity to the resort island of Rügen, a small fishing fleet, and the surrounding agriculture. Unlike the nearby Greifswald, Würmfeld did not have the vibrant atmosphere brought by a university, outside the holiday seasons. The town’s great son, F. A. Engerström had been less famous than his Greifswald equivalent, Caspar David Friedrich, although they represented the same period, and roughly speaking, the same style. A small museum had been dedicated to Engerström. I had managed to get a room from a humble inn in the same block for the duration of my stay.

In the reception I found a blonde, who was examining her artificial nails over a women’s magazine unenthusiastically. I set my luggage on the rug and greeted her with my college German: ”Good day, I am Hilkka Haapala. I come from Finland. I have reserved a room here.”

The woman gave me a long look. The makeup on her face reminded me of some kind of a mask. She leafed the reservation book almost reluctantly.

”So it is”, she admitted finally. ”Welcome to Würmfeld, Ms. Haapala. Fill out these forms, please. Our hotel is very old, from the 1600’s; you will find a brochure in your room. The price includes a visit in the F. A. Engerström Centre, and the exhibition.  Your room’s number is 32. You will find it on the top floor.”

She spoke her piece like a rehearsed set of dialogue.

After I filled in the required information, I handed the form to the indifferent receptionist. ”Where can I find the elevator?”

The expression on the painted face became confused, as if I had asked something utterly incomprehensive. ”We do not have an elevator here, Ms. Haapala”, she answered. ”None of the town buildings has one. You can use the stairs. They can be found behind that glass door.”

I understood, there would be no offer to help dragging my luggage. Wondering about the receptionist’s absolute unwillingness to help, I took the task for myself.

After I got, already exhausted, to my room, raindrops drummed against the roof and the low windows, near floor-level. The window shades allowed only some light into the small room. The floor was bare wood, and in for the furniture there was a dark double bed, a desk with a chair in front of it, and a large wardrobe. There were no curtains in the windows. To my surprise, next to the bed hung  a large print of the same oil painting by Engerström, which I had found months before in the collections of the Ateneum art museum in Helsinki. I found it quite a coincidence.

The work was called Wanderer in the Whispering Grove. The painting depicted a dim and mist-covered forest, where some obscurely humanlike, creature wandered, and almost came to focus. On the background a building was visible, perhaps the ruins of an old castle or a church. The dark branches seemed to stretch themselves towards the stone arches and few still standing pillars, amidst which the creature shambled. The mist was painted with such skill, that I expected it to seep from the canvas and spread into the room at any moment. The painting was also mentioned in C. E. Kytökivi’s book, which I carried along.

Even though the experience in front of the original had been more powerful, I was overwhelmed by an unspecified horror. I felt myself naked in front of the unstoppable and ancient forest landscape depicted in the work. I was gripped by the same fear that the people of past centuries had felt towards the wilderness beyond the stonewalled yards of their homesteads. If it was art’s most important purpose, to shake a reaction from the viewer, then Engerström certainly had been successful. I resisted the urge to actually turn the piece around, face to the wall. But it would have made no sense. I was here to research Engerström’s art. I settled in sleeping my back towards the painting, and tried not to look at it.

I slept uneasily. I dreamt of wandering in the scenery of Engerström’s paintings, which had become familiar to me from Kytökivi’s book. I wandered aimlessly, sometimes in a small village flooded by a foggy marsh, sometimes in the labyrinthine ruins of tall stone buildings, engulfed by a primal forest. I tried to seek an escape from the world of the paintings, the forest breathing all around me, damp and smothering, and hostile to human nature. Even though wandering in the woods was familiar to me since early childhood, the woods of my dream sunk their roots somewhere deep in my psyche’s darkest corners. They eagerly sucked vital sap from the memories of my unproductiveness, and the malformed branches reached to caress my anxiety in the windless air.

When the alarm clock sprang to notify I had to get up for the meeting I had scheduled with the museum assistant of the F. A. Engerström Centre, it did not release me from my delirium a moment too early. 

I found the museum assistant smoking beside the main entrance next to the small market square. ”So, so…”, he said. ”Ms. Haapala, our guest from Finland? Pleased to meet you, I am doctor Fuchs. If it suits you, we can continue on first name basis? My name is Caspar.”

I was happy for his informality. Caspar seemed far more approachable, than the sour receptionist at my hotel. He was tall, and very slim. I had always found that an attractive quality. I estimated him to be a few years older than myself. He was wearing straight slacks, light shirt and a slightly scruffy coat. After he crushed his cigarette under the toes of his shoe, he led me to the exhibition.

Caspar guided me through the museum. Engerström’s originals and copies hung from the light walls. Even though the rooms in the old building were well lit, the dark colours of the paintings seemed to swell out of the paintings.

I had told Caspar about the painting I had found in Ateneum, in my e-mail. He soon took it up in our discussion.

”I am delighted that people in your home country are interested in the life’s work of our town’s most significant cultural person. We seldom get guest researchers, and I for one, was unaware that you had Engertröm’s art in Helsinki.”

He seemed so enthusiastic, that the situation was almost a little awkward.

”In fact I found the piece in a catalogue. The painting has been stored already for a long time in the cellar storage of the museum.” The confession made me feel a little uncertain, but Caspar did not seem to mind.

Finding the piece had taken some effort. In addition, it had been catalogued in the cellar slightly wrong. The lady, who worked as the conservator, was also worried, that I did not take the protective sheet off the painting for a too long time. I found it all a little strange, but the painting was so disturbing, that I was relieved to cover it again.

The same heavy atmosphere was present in the works displayed at the F. A. Engerström Centre. Caspar opened the exhibition’s theme for me: ”We have here most of his paintings. Some of the works are copies, of course. Some of the originals are in the Art Museum of West Pomerania, Berlin or private collections. The one in Ateneum must have gotten there through the latter. Roughly half of the paintings are from Engerström’s early period, where the twisted human figures are still present. The rest are from the later period, where such shapes have completely vanished from the ruins gorged by the untamed wilderness. We also have some of his sketches. On the second floor we have rooms, which display his tools and life in Würmfeld at the end of the 18th century. There you will find a small library on the art of his age, and two studies. The second one is freely at your disposal.”

After a lunch I found the office Caspar had mentioned, pulled my sleeves and started to work. I had done pretty good background research in Finland, and could now concentrate in the original material available. But especially I looked forward to see the local scenery, which had inspired Engerström to capture it in paint. I wanted to compare the actual locations to the final artworks, and now that I was privy to his sketches, the birth process of his paintings. 

III.

I was sitting in a restaurant opposite to the F. A. Engerström Centre. We had come there for lunch with Caspar. Buildings from various centuries and styles, oldest from the 15th century, surrounded the rider statue of king Gustaf II Adolphus at the centre of the square.

I was finishing my dish of solyanka as we discussed my finds thus far. Caspar was politely curious, even though I had found out that Engerström’s art and the cultural life in Würmsfeld were sidetracks in his career plan.

As I swept the broth from my soup bowl, I told Caspar of recent revelations.

”Engerström’s family really arrived to Western Pomerania from Sweden in the 1600’s. I have been tracking his lineage to Stockholm, where the family was part of the lower craftsman ranks.

Caspar set his fork and knife aside.

”What about his presumed roots in your home country?”

I smiled and swiped the corner of my mouth with cloth.

”I was actually able to track his ancestors in Stockholm. Their forefathers came across the sea from Rauma in Finland, so as such the theory seems to hold true.”

Caspar gestured to the waiter and ordered our checks.

”How are you planning to proceed?”

I pulled out my purse and left the customary extra for the waiter.

”I have already marked the known locations Engertröm painted, on the map. I have also gathered the birth history of individual pieces, as well as I have been able to. I was planning on visiting the sites to compare the sketches and the final works to the sceneries.”

Caspar smiled, and helped me with my jacket.

”That sounds good. I can recommend you a reliable car-rental.”

I was clad for my field trip according to the weather, and packed a camera and some copies of the material I was interested in. I had not been able to find Engerström’s notes or correspondence, which could have shed light on his creative process. The few letters he had written, were sent to patrons and supporters, and mainly discussed delivery of paintings and his continuous need for funds. I was able to relate to the situation of a bohemian youth, living off others support, and understood his worry for his livelihood.

I had already stopped by a couple of locations. The first one had been right next to the town, where Engerström had painted his The Forest Arrives to the Mansion, which was kept here in Würmsfeld. From the second one the view opened into an overgrown cemetery, which he had captured in The Field of Life Ploughed at Spring, with roots turning the crumbling tombstones over, and all.

My third target was the forest-engulfed ruins, which Engerström had stroked on canvas with his brush in the Wanderer in the Whispering Grove. I had experienced strange anxiety already in the two first places, but now the oppressive feeling quickly grew almost unbearable. I felt a strong desire to turn around and return to the Skoda i had rented, to drive away, without looking back. I had to force myself to root myself on the winding footpath, which squirmed and twisted through the underbrush.

In the middle of the small forest, I found the remains of a redbrick building.

At some time there had been a monastery, pure red-brick-gothic, but only a few vaulted arches and brick pillar stood against the test of time, defying forces of nature.

Mist spread slowly from the pond behind the ruin, and the moist branches, wet in early spring haze, seemed to again stretch their length towards the ruined building. Tree trunks grown crooked, and the twisting, creaking branches swaying in the soft wind were, however, not what caught my attention most horribly. The same had been true already with the earlier locations, but I had not been able to realise it.

The ruin was almost identical with the painting.

It was almost as if none of the scenes I had visited, had changed since the moment, skilful brush-strokes had transferred them on canvas. A nameless fear struck shivers down my back, and as my heart begun to race in agitation; I suspected that the same would hold true with the rest of Engertsröm’s paintings. The time around me seemed frozen to the moment of it’s depiction, centuries ago.

Because this could not be true, there was only one possible solution. I had to shake myself out of that nonsense. Engerström was an artist. His job was to let his imagination loose and see on his canvas things that others could not see. I quickly snapped a few photographs, and then hurried back to my car. I tried to get through the locations on the map, not to think the thoughts, which were only strengthened, scene after scene.

It was late night and I was sitting in the darkness of my office. A single lamp illuminated my research material. I had spread the photographs, Engerström’s sketches, and the print-size black-and-white copies on the table. I was concentrating on electronic versions of old land-ownerships and maps. I had opened a couple of local histories next to the monitor.

I jumped when the door creaked, and a shark blade of light cut into the darkness from the corridor. It was Caspar standing silhouetted on the doorway.

”I hope, I am not disturbing you”, he said. ”You did not answer my knock, so I wanted to make sure, everything was ok. I noticed you still had a light on.”

As I recovered from the scare he caused, I felt relief. I turned in my chair and smiled. I felt the familiar blush on my cheeks.

”Everything is fine, Caspar. Thanks for looking out for me. I was so deep in the zone, I did not even hear you.”

Caspar opened the door all the way. Light filled the dark space.

”You have been working long hours several days in a row”, he said. ”Don’t you think you should maybe rest a little?” He tried to sound like he was not intruding. When I did not answer straight away, he changed tactics.

”Would you like to tell me, what you have found?”

Suddenly I felt myself extremely tired. Caspar was right. The anxiety, which had subtly caught me with its branches, first in Engerström’s paintings, and a few days ago, in the scenes he had used as his models, had pushed me to work past my threshold.

Except Engerström could not have used them, as they had not existed at the time of his paintings.

Each of the buildings had still been in use, when the paintings were made. A couple of years after the finished works, they had however been left vacant, for one reason or the other, and the forest had quickly claimed the untended ruins. People had vanished from Engerström’s works, and the all-consuming, ancient forest had replaced them.

I shook my head and switched the light off, as Caspar was trying to see what I had spread on my desk.

”You are probably right. Would you join me for a moment? I can tell you more in my room? I have there a bottle of wine, the cheap stuff though – one you can get from Netto. Nothing fancy, but…”

Caspar smiled, and I did not need to persuade him further. He took my jacket from the door side and gave it to me.

”I’ll be happy to walk you to your room. A small night cap might do good for me too.”

In my room we talked about the strange qualities in Engerström’s art. Caspar had done his dissertation on the transference of romanticism across the Baltic Sea. In reality he considered Engerström’s art grotesque, but the position of museum assistant had secured his income. He was as frustrated as anyone seeking grants funding for their research. We sat on the edge of my bed, until the wine bottle was empty. We sat there for a while, in silence. Then we kissed. The copy of Engerström’s work on the wall scared me twice as much now, and I wanted to divert my thoughts. I did not want to be alone.

Caspar made love a little more clumsily than I had expected. As I lay under him, I could, however, concentrate on something else, except the humming of the wind. It had to come from outside, behind the low windows. Even though we were in the epicentre of the town, I thought for a moment, I heard the wind, and the shifting of leaves, from the painting.

IV.

Next morning I woke up to the gray light, streaming in through the window shades. Caspar had wrapped his arms around me and we lay our backs to the painting on the wall. The man’s voice was drowsy as he stroked my bare side gently.

”I saw the strangest dream…”, he muttered. ”We were in it, both of us. We had gotten lost in the woods somewhere, the kind that is dark and thick and lightless. It felt really oppressive. Do you think those Engerströ’s paintings are starting to get inside my head…?”

I knew perfectly well what he was speaking of. I had seen a similar dream, perhaps even, the very same one. The same, I had seen every night, since I set foot in the room. I had considered changing the room, or the hotel, a few times. There was a youth hostel by the highway, but what would it have looked like? Visiting the painting locations had only enforced the experience.

Even though it was calm outside, I could hear the wind howl behind my back, the creaking of ancient branches. There was something unspecific, but threatening in the foliage. I answered him on a flat tone.

”Yeah, I guess so.”

I got up, so that Caspar could not try to pull me back next beside him.

As I came back from the shower, he asked a little awkwardly:

”Is everything ok?”

”Yes”, I said, not looking in his direction. It was mainly because I did not want to see the copy of the Wanderer in the Whispering Grove behind him. We got dressed without a word of what had happened last night. I was left with a shitty feeling. I felt as if I had taken advantage of him.

I dedicated that day to work on Engerström’s tools. The exhibition concerning his life was located in two rooms on the same floor as my study. The first one had a collection of furniture, which had come from his home, and in the second one, a reconstruction of his workshop. It probably did not look like the original, but caught the interest of visiting tourists. His few letters and surviving tools had been gathered in the glass cabinets along the walls: brushes, paints and other things necessary for his trade.

The floorboards creaked as if they had remembered the time when they rose from the ground as mighty trunks, and would have liked to share with me some secret hidden from the mortal ear. I examined the brushes and paints. I could not shed the thought of wind blowing in the canopy, branches rustling against each other. There was doubt gnawing on my mind like some wood eating worm drilling its way into a tree. I was afraid of how crazy the thought in my mind would have sounded, had I voiced it aloud.

Engerström had been a private person. I don’t think it is uncommon to a sensitive artistic personality. He had kept even his patrons at a letter’s length away. He disliked painting people and they vanished from his wild visions on his mature period.

His paintings, I was now sure, had somehow called destruction upon the buildings they depicted. It was as if he had possessed some arcane power to summon the nature to swallow the very mark of human hand, and have the roots push the mortared foundations of the hairless apes from the soil. 

I was painstakingly aware of the raging force of his work, but I could not let my imagination run along those prehistoric paths.

Could it really be, that the brushes and paints he used, held such powers?

How could it be explained?

Was it, in the end, just a quirk of my exhausted mind?

I had become certain, that his paintings had shackled me in their grip, even though his personal history and past remained suspiciously shallow. I wondered feverishly how I could unfurl the problem, which seemed to knot itself around me like a tightening twine thicket. At the back of my mind, nonexistent trees kept creaking and rustling.

We did not get back to last evening with Caspar during our lunch brake. I guess we both had second thoughts and regrets. We discussed the most natural thing connecting us, Franz Albert Engerström. I was especially interested in his fate and possible quirks. I did not take up my own suspicions. I did not want to make myself a laughing stock in front of Caspar.

Caspar was cutting his Schnitzel with mechanical movements.

”Engerström lived in seclusion”, he said. ”He suffered badly from economic problems, because he was so bad with his supporters. He had to sell his apartment already at an early stage, and he moved into a hovel at the edge of the town. One day, a townsman found him on his unkempt back yard. He had already been ill for a while, and they suspected a stroke.”

I had already managed to find out that Engerström was buried in the town, but I had not been familiar with the details of his passing.

”I guess it is a shame”; Caspar said. ”He died in the middle of his most productive period. Maybe the seclusion benefited his creativity. Although, I have to admit they creep me a little. They are so… You know?”

I gave him a nod, and swept my hair behind the ear.

”I know. You just drifted to your current position. We talked of it earlier.”

He smiled and looked a little confused, then returned to his Schnitzel, relieved.

It took a while before I was able to locate the lot Caspar had mentioned in the old maps and land-registers. To my surprise, the land had never been developed, and the lot was communal wasteland.

Because the land was near the old edge of the town, I went to take a look on the same afternoon. After walking a short while, and brief searching, I arrived at the right lot. It was a lush piece of forested land right next to the town park, overshadowed by ugly East-German blockhouses.

Borders of the lot were hard to find in the thick bushes. I was sure that the best I could hope for was some remains of the foundation. Despite this, I departed from the main path and into the thicket of the overgrown lot. I pushed through the bushes, and noticed some heavier, leafless trees, that reminded of the ones in the paintings.

This time there really was a gust of wind blowing high up in the canopy. I was not merely imagining it. I heard something akin to whispered words, something I just could not interpret, mixed in the rustling sound of the leaves, and branches, and the wind.

As I reached the heart of the overgrown lot, I found to my surprise, not only the preserved foundation, but a stone oven, the lower part of it’s chimney still wrapped in vines. I could imagine Engerström standing in his hut like a man possessed, fallen branches crackling in the fireplace, painting a canvas on it’s easel.

As I waded through the forest, I felt as if the branches parted to open an easier path to the remains. I wondered if I rejoiced too early. Perhaps it was just some newer ruin, left behind by the succession of wars waded through the area?

As I crouched to move vegetation off the stove’s mossy walls, I became ever more convinced, that the dating of the ruin was correct. My hand found a loose brick on the side of the fireplace, which I almost unknowingly pulled off its place. I leaned even lower, to inspect the gaping hole.

I acted, as if in a dream.

The forest groaned and droned around me, inebriating and intoxicatingly humid.

In the light of my small Maglite, I could see in the brick structure’s hollow darkness a large metal box, sealed with wax. I extended my hand inside the brick maw and felt from the weight of the box, that it could not be empty. When I left the thicket with my prize, it sounded as if the canopy had whispered my name in the wind.

It was already late when I returned to the F. A. Engerström Centre. Caspar had locked the doors when he left, but I had my own keys. I knew that the malfunctioning alarm system was not kept on. The find had filled me with new enthusiasm. I rushed into my study. The previous night I would have worked late just to avoid my room. This time the thought did not even cross my mind. Not even, when I heard the insatiable, hungry sighs of the forest, as I climbed the stairs up past the paintings on the walls. 

I had considered waiting until dawn. If I had shown the box to Caspar, he would have summoned the local archaeologist, and if my hunch were right, my find would be added to the exhibition. Professional ethics got to step aside, out of the way of my demanding curiosity. I cleaned my desk of the earlier material, and my hands broke almost on their own accord the wax seal, which had protected the content from moisture and air.

When I saw what the box contained, I shouted in delight. It had inside two bound folios, full of notes, and a small wooden palette with paints and brushes.

Even though I had already passed a course on old handwriting, the notes proved very hard to tackle. It was on an old German dialect, mixed with Greek and Latin. It was clear, that I was now in possession of Franz Albert Engerström’s sparse notes and his instructions to mix the paints. Unless I had heard the forests ghastly hum in the gloom of the office, I would have considered Engerström’s notes the work of a delirious mind.

I did not, however, think I had lost my mind quite yet.

V.

I returned my thesis for inspection a month after my trip to Germany. I worked for it like possessed, to get my hands on the more important tasks ahead. Professor Karjaluhta was pleased when I handed the text over. He was impressed of the work I had done and asked if I considered doctoral studies. In reality I returned my Thesis only not to rouse anyone’s suspicion. I did not bother to pick up my diploma, and so it was mailed to an address I barely use anymore.

Now I know the Black Deer of the Forest, which Engerström writes of in his notes. I no longer need his shabby explanations as my interpreter, because the forest tells me what I need to know without intermediaries, and instructs me with its sighs.

I will continue Engerström’s work.

It may be, that I have to get some day-job, so that my relatives and ever decreasing friends wont become suspicious. In the dark hours of the night, the Black Deer of the Forest calls me from the direction of the Central Park. I would like to get up from the bed and dash to it in my nightgown, straight through the downtown Helsinki.

The laws of the human world, and the rules of the city are no longer my own.

Humanity is merely a interlude, a passing disturbance. Once more, the forest of our origins returns and covers Europe, lush and wet. Cities will be buried under it’s leaves and mighty roots will plough open the highways.

Is the Black Deer of the Forest the ghost of the last giant elk, or the essence of the wild forest, made flesh? That is inconsequential.

I have prepared my paints, except the final shade, according to Engerström’s instructions, and thus far my careful experiments seem to have gone well.

The detached houses I painted in Käpylä and Tapanila last year have fallen vacant. Their lots have begun to grow over quickly. Because they are private estates, the city’s environmental administration doesn’t lift a finger. Someone local might find it odd, but who could guess the truth?

Like in Engertsröm’s better paintings, the humans will eventually vanish in my shaky experiments. The tribe of the apes will once more remember the forest, and why the sounds of the night in the rainforest give us goose bumps.

I put some of my work on the walls. I have even framed a few better ones. My family has become a nuisance. Especially my aunt makes up excuses to visit me. She is worried of me. Once she asked: ”But Hilkka, aren’t those a little bit creepy? Couldn’t you paint something lighter for a change, something beautiful?”

I told her, that painting was like therapy for me. I guess my family considers me down and out. That’s one of the reasons I need some kind of a job. I have thought about painting my aunt’s summer cottage one day, maybe even her home.

The most important thing is to continue the work Engerström participated in. I have gathered clippings across Europe and further away. It seems that there are more of us, who hear the felled forest sigh. I do not know who they are, but the signs in the news speak enough to encourage me. I assume that I am not the only, nor the last of its clergy.

I must still mix the most powerful shade. Concerning that, I have kept in contact with Caspar. I invited him to visit me in Finland a few weeks ago. Perhaps the night in the hotel room was not a mistake after all. For the last of Engström’s colours, the Black Deer of the Forest demands a sacrifice.

I am waiting for him in the Saab 90 I inherited from my grandfather, on the parking field of the airport. He arrives with the last flight. The waxing moon has risen high over the Central Park. I am going to suggest Caspar that we go to enjoy it, before we drive to my place.

I look from the driver’s seat when he steps out of the sliding doors on the ground level, pulling his luggage. I get up from the car and walk to meet him. The broad bladed butcher’s knife under the driver’s seat is wrapped in plaid kitchen towel. Caspar looks anticipating, and hurries his step. I was up late, the previous evening, honing the knife. I am relaxed and determined. Even the parking area’s concrete walls can no longer silence the hum of the foliage.

As Caspar sits on the front seat, he thinks I am smiling to him.

By Teemu Korpijärvi

From: Finland