The investigation

#shortstory

Word spread that the investigators were arriving and immediately the main street, the square, the church and Master Scoldig’s shop swarmed with people coming and going, gathering, lingering on the doors, as if to say one more thing, as if waiting for further information. Master Scoldig himself went to the isba of Baba Iaga, but did not mention it to a soul.
There had been many inquiries, he thought, chewing on the few words drawn at the cost of two chickens from the decrepit wisdom of the Baba; Varbad di Valgelata had been joined by countless government officials, who had braved the rigors of the northern winter, the fangs of wolves, the dark gorges of the Passo del Vento, just to ask questions to the population.
They asked for everything, from health, to crops, to the number of wolves sighted, to the annual alcohol content, and then they studied, cataloged, taxed. Zealous officials swarmed up and down, waving folders that reflected the snow, that caught the flame of the candles on the windowsills, that absorbed the glare of the fireplaces, that shone with the fires of the gnomes, that lit up the arctic night, the smoky huts, the icy torrent on which the girls drew ice cobwebs with the blades of their skates.
But an investigation like the one that was expected made the chest of master Scoldig the carpenter throb with fear. This time they did not go to investigate cheese, wood-fired bread, church visits, this time the officials would ask everyone, no more and no less, if he was happy. These were the incredible rumors that came from the countries where the investigation had already arrived.
Hurrying down the path, Master Scoldig scratched his large woolly head in concern. Baba Iaga had not been able to tell him how much the breadwinner's share of happiness would weigh. To tell the truth, he had never felt happy or unhappy between logs to be sawn and planks to plane, he had never even asked himself that singular question.

On his way home, Solveig tied her handkerchief under her throat because it was starting to snow again. Master Scoldig the carpenter was not there, they had told her that he had gone out early, that he had climbed up the path of the hill without saying where he was going.
It had been a gloomy day, the sun had not even bothered to rise, lingering all the time to doze on the edge of the horizon, and the lights in the houses were always on. The first flakes swirled over her numb nose and shredded at her feet.
Peer's sleigh rattled past. A melancholy sound, which lingered in the air accompanied by the roar of the reindeer, as familiar as the sound of one's own voice.
Solveig walked with her head down to the front door, never looking into the lighted windows, without listening to the laughter, the voices of the children, the lullabies sung by the mothers.
She had been to Mastro Scoldig to resell the cradle, because it was made of good wood, with the money you could buy a little butter. The cradle was no longer needed, the baby had died three nights earlier.
Master Scoldig's wife had talked about the investigation, now everyone was talking about nothing else. But what would she say, long-braided Solveig, as Ugric called her, what could she possibly answer to the official's questions?
Now the sled was in the yard, Cousin Peer was already unloading the bundles. He asked her how she was, smiled at her with her breath congealing into frozen clouds around his mouth.
The fever that had killed the child, she replied abruptly, had given her great exhaustion, as if someone were clinging to her guts and pushing her down. Then she went into the house quickly. Grandmother had put the beer on the stove to heat up and was now mending a sock. Her face was a wrinkled patch of shadows in the corner by the fire. Every winter she got closer to the stove, hunched over until she almost merged with the sooty pipe, until she entered, chair and all, in the corner between the hot plate and the wall, where before - Solveig would have sworn – there coud not even be the back of the chair. Her grandmother was made of the same dough as the elves, as shifty and dark as them.
Solveig informed her that what had to be done had been done, then began peeling the turnips. She lowered them into the water along with onion and herbs and salted them with a few secret tears. Bent over the cauldron, with her face against the wall so as not to be seen by her grandmother, she reflected that the last connection with her husband had gone three nights earlier. Ugric's son had died of fever, as his father was dead, when the point of the blade he was forging had lodged in his stomach. She had found him, her husband Ugric - Ugric the strong, Ugric the blacksmith - lying in front of the fire bubbling in the forge, with the piece still to be finished, with his life still to be lived.

"I'm leaving, Solveig with long braids", he said, calling her by the name he gave her one morning of thaw, when he came down from the mountains loaded with tools, "I'm leaving, but you still have our baby and so we don’t really part. "
What could she answer to the officer's pressing questions, now that indeed nothing of him remained?

Peer began to stack the wood beside the stove, looking at the hands of Solveig, his cousin, white and smooth even after so much housework. They were fairy hands, the same hands that rolled up the snowballs and throw them against his neck, when grandmother grabbed them both by the wind-blushed ears and kicked them back into the house.
There was this matter of the investigation, which he had heard about in the tavern, where Master Scoldig, after three mugs of beer, had leaned towards him and, in all secrecy, had confided to him that he had talked to the Baba Iaga, to find out a little more about this new tax, because in the end this was what it was all about, right? Always about money, and he, poor carpenter who had spent his whole life in the middle of the sawdust, what did he understand of happiness? Then he collapsed on the table and started snoring. Then Peer had hurried to take the road to home, because of that eagerness that always seized him in the evening to return to her, to hear her low and sweet voice, her way of turning her eyes away when he looked at her. He liked this too.
Who knows if Solveig had heard of the investigation? Since the baby had died, she couldn't even be talked to, she was so gloomy.
Instead he was looking forward to the moment when,  soon, even in days, someone, for the first time in his life, would ask him if he was happy.
“Peer, are you happy? Are you happy, Peer? "
Nobody asks you such a beautiful, direct question. Solveig had never asked, when she moaned in the loft, grabbed by that bear that came down from the mountains to steal her heart which, if it hadn't been for him, could have been his. His grandmother did not ask him, heart of gold, yes, but all lost in her shadows, with a distant eye, already set out on the paths of another world. His friends never asked him, at the tavern or on the street, because everyone had something to do, their worries, and no one thought of asking you a question like that.
But finally now someone would have asked him the question, and afterwards, he would have listened to the answer as well, not like when people ask you how you are without expecting you to say anything. The official would have listened, would have collected his words, would have noted them carefully, would have filled the boxes of the sheet with crosses and then, who knows, not a tax, but a solution would come out of the investigation, something good for everyone, they would really send happiness, perhaps in the mail, or hanging from the jeweled neck of a reindeer.
Are you happy Peer, this they would ask him and he just waited to answer that, heck, no, he wasn't happy, he didn't even remember what happiness was anymore, since the last time she smiled at him, since she threw him a snowball with those fairy hands of hers. Even if there was a good fire at grandmother's and the beer was frothing over the fire, you could not be happy in the same house where Solveig, his always wet-eyed Solveig, was crying for a bear that came down from the mountains.

From her shadowy corner, his grandmother's semi-blind eyes followed the soup smoking on the fire that her granddaughter was watering with tears. She didn't need glow-in-the-dark cards to know what her grandchildren had in their hearts. She was old and her mother's mother had elven blood in her veins.
Ugric's son, poor soul, was now dancing with the gnomes, miserable flame of will-o'-the-wisp on the swamp, but this was not to be told to Solveig, she preferred to believe in a new star lit in the sky by the forest people.
And how to melt the pain of those other faithful eyes, how to comfort them, how to help them fight the ghosts of Ugric the blacksmith and his son?
In days, those from the happiness survey would arrive in town. Perhaps, with a little luck, they would  forgotten her, an old shapeless nook in the air, a pile of bones and rags.
Or, maybe, she would be able to die before they found her.