Odd how the island landscape changes the moment one leaves the well-trodden paths. I have been aware of this since childhood: that the island is made up of not one but several landscapes, joined so tightly that it is hard to tell where the differences begin. This is why it is impossible to wander by the lake to try to find the paths you once used – inevitably, you get lost. Is this not what happens with the words, with the stories we tell each other? Minna had gone to meet Kaufmann again at the same place by the lake at around six o’clock the following morning. Even though only a few hours had passed since they met earlier, everything seemed different. The ground was dry and soft underneath their feet, the morning air flooded with early sunlight. Kaufmann took her along paths she had never known before or, at least, did not recognise, leading away from the reed beds on the island’s western shores, across the isthmus and into its interior. After walking for a good hour, they reached a meadow. Though it might not have been a meadow, Minna corrected herself later, perhaps just a grassy slope, but it might not have been so much a slope as some kind of clearing, or maybe a thinner part of the forest. I cannot tell how many times I have tried to follow Minna’s vague, contradictory descriptions but it has been just as impossible to find this place as to track the unusual animals Johannes told us about when we were little, stories to make us believe that they had been here before any people had come to live here: animals a little like stoats or white martens. On the other hand, it might have been that I never found the right route into the interior. Viewed from the familiar spaces of the landscape that everyone on the island knows, the terrain to the north of the lake rises and becomes stony and barren. If you walk up high enough, you finally reach a ridge from which you can see all the way to the strait and across to the airport with its two parallel runways for landing and take-off. Perhaps only Kaufmann knew the whereabouts of that secret place. It would not surprise me. Was it just the two of you? I asked at the time. And again, Minna hesitated. Yes, she said, yes, just the two of them, the old man and herself. At another time, she told me that Mr Carsten had come by, briefly, with his dogs. (Walked by, did he, as if it were the most natural thing in the world?) But Kaufmann had been worried that the dogs would be a nuisance and sent the farm manager on his way. Then he had explained that she had better lie down so that she was quite hidden in the grass, and she had hardly done so before the foxes emerged from the forest. Three of them: two males, one female. And, she went on without drawing breath: as if he had called them! Didn’t you get scared? I asked. And she: not just in that moment, no, at first I thought it was almost beautiful. It looked like the three of them doing the moves in a square dance, as the two male foxes tried to keep their distance from each other while both made up to the female. In the end, one of the males gave up and left. The female just feigned indifference and ambled off towards the forest, but the remaining male followed her as if pulled along on a string. And then something weird happened, Minna said. Both animals turned, as if to run away from each other, but neither of them moved an inch. I didn’t get it at first, but the thing was, they were stuck to each other, well, their bums were! So, for a while, they didn’t seem to mind, just stood there, staring in opposite directions. Then the female tried to lie down but she pulled the male with her, and at the same time they did that Kaufmann grabbed me round the waist, really hard, and whispered they’re mating, see, that’s how they go about mating! Then I realised that the poor foxes didn’t do what they wanted but simply acted out what he wanted. He had power over them, like that time when he only had to stamp his feet to make the butterflies come out of the ground. He is an evil person! Do you see, Andreas? she said, and grabbed hold of my hand so firmly that I thought my fingers would break. The aircraft with our mum and dad on board, he was the one who made it crash. What happened afterwards? I asked, mostly to escape from the pain. What happened afterwards? Minna said, and looked hard at me as if I was stupid not to get it. Afterwards, he wanted to do the same with me, of course, the same thing that he had made the foxes do. But there was a stone next to me on the ground and I took it and hit him with it to free myself and I ran away as fast as I could. Couldn’t you have called out to Mr Carsten? I asked. Now Minna bent over me, her face so close to mine that I could smell the hot scent of resin and wild sorrel in her hair. Don’t you get it, Andreas? We have to kill him! You have to kill him. How? I asked. And she: do what I did, find a stone and whack his head with it. Do you promise to do that, Andreas? Will you promise to kill him for my sake? And I said, I promise. I would not have been able to refuse her anything then. Besides, I needed to make her stop shaking me so roughly. And she finally let go of me.