The stars blazed as Esko led us over crunching snow to a smoking wooden box in the forest. Lifting its lid, he pulled out a salmon on a hook and led us back into the cabin, set the salmon on paper on the table. He pinched a hunk of its flesh from its side that sizzled, set it down and sucked his thumb with eyes closed. Then he took three forks off the wall and three mugs and the three of us ate the salmon mostly in silence. Once, he had traveled to Montenegro to go shopping, but that was all. Finland more than satisfied him. “I started the fire in the sauna one hour ago,” he said. “It is ready.” He set the key on its hook with a look back and left.
I lifted the hatchet and bucket off the wall, walked onto the frozen pond in the dark, and cut a hole in the ice. There was no one for miles, not even another cabin, only stars and the moon lighting the snow. I brought three buckets of water up to the sauna and poured one steaming over the rocks on top of the stove. Allison and I got naked and laid down on two levels of the cedar bench side by side as sweat soothed us.
“An old poet found the salmon of wisdom once,” I said in the dim orange light and hissing steam. “Whoever ate it would gain all the knowledge of the world. He gave it to his servant to cook. The servant turned the salmon on a spit over the fire, and when he tested it, he burned his thumb and immediately sucked it, gaining all the wisdom of the world. He became a poet.”
I jumped up and ran outside down to the pond as fast as I could, sensing steam leap off every part of my body, rolled in the snow three times under the moon and ran back up into the sauna as all my skin contracted and my blood surged with euphoria in contact with the warmth. That night we set an alarm every forty-five minutes but never saw the Northern Lights past the glow of the moon.
