Free The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

tongue. “I’ve already burned four this week. You know, some people might take an interest in the whole thing.”
    “True,” Winter said, “some people might.”
    “But not you.”
    “Well, I could, but I don’t feel like it. Everyone has their own interests. Some collect butterflies, you burn library books. Look on the mantel.”
    “Why?”
    “Matches. Listen, Ingrid, do you know anything about animal psychology?”
    “What?”
    “Dogs, to be precise.”
    She snorted and started piling the books in the fireplace. Soon the fire was blazing happily.
    As she left, she said with a pinch of regret, “Martti, if you were any less interested in what was happening around you, you’d be indistinguishable from a leather sofa.”
    Winter enjoyed his solitude, quiet and cake, which contained a particularly well-made layer of marzipan. Then he noticed that Ella Milana had appeared in the chair beside him.
    “Oh! Evening,” he said.
    “Evening yourself,” Ella Milana answered.
    Winter smiled encouragingly at the girl and made a note of the lovely curve of her lips. He thought that he might fit them onto the main female character of the novel he was working on, if he ever bothered to finish it.
    “Exciting night. For you, anyway, I assume. Congratulations again, both for your story, and for the status it’s brought you.”
    “Thanks,” Ella Milana said.
    Winter continued eating his cake, supposing that she would return to join the other guests. She was beginning to make him nervous.
    “Have you played any interesting games lately, Mr Winter?”
    “Uh, I think the young lady is overestimating my athletic condition,” he answered. “Or are you thinking more of something like chess or checkers? Noble games both. Unfortunately I can never remember which piece goes where.”
    Ella Milana’s expression told him immediately that she wasn’t referring to any such commonly played game, but rather to The Game.
    “Ah, you mean The Game,” he said finally, reluctantly. “Who told you about it?”
    He stood up slowly and with some difficulty and set his plate on an antique bureau. The girl looked at him excitedly. He turned with his side to her and wished she would go away. But instead she came closer, her dress rustling, an impudent smile on her face, veiled in strawberry-scented perfume, slightly drunk.
    In his comic novel Hidden
Agendas Winter
had called such an attitude “the tenacity of a small animal”. In the same book, it was said that the only way to fight “the tenacity of a small animal” was by cultivating a well-practised “old barge” approach.
    “A woman named Arne Ahlqvist mentioned it,” she said. “She welcomed me into the Society and asked if I was ready to play a couple of rounds of The Game with her, and some other nonsense. Then she saw someone she knew and left before I could ask her to explain. I asked Ingrid Katz about it, but she said that although she could answer me, I ought to ask you if I wanted a proper answer. She said you ‘take a great interest in people and the things people do’ and would be happy to initiate me into the procedures of the Society.”
    Winter made an indistinct noise and then started humming to himself. He closed his eyes. Then he smiled as if he’d just remembered an amusing anecdote. He turned, wagged a finger at Ella Milana, and stiffened where he stood. For a moment it looked like he was about to tell some hilarious story.
    Then he let his face darken and his finger fall and turned away, as if he’d just remembered something extremely worrisome.
    His next manoeuvre would have been to walk away shaking his head, sad-faced, but Ella Milana appeared in front of him.
    “My dear Mr Winter, everything you’ve written, I’ve read. I read
Hidden Agendas
twice, so I recognize the ‘old barge’ trick very well when I see it. What was it Douglas Dogson said about how to fend off ‘the tenacity of a small animal’?”
    “I haven’t the faintest,” Winter