The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [3]
“God! That was a hare,” the journalist said.
“Damn animal—good thing it didn’t bust the windshield.” The photographer pulled up and backed to the spot. The journalist got out and ran into the forest.
“Well, can you see anything?” the photographer called, listlessly. He had cranked down the window, but the engine was still running.
“What?” shouted the journalist.
The photographer lit a cigarette and drew on it, with eyes closed. He revived when the cigarette burned his fingers.
“Come on out! I can’t hang around here forever because of some stupid hare!”
The journalist went distractedly through the thinly treed forest, came to a small clearing, hopped a ditch, and looked hard at a patch of dark-green grass. He could see the young hare there in the grass.
Its left hind leg was broken. The cracked shin hung pitifully, too painful for the animal to run, though it saw a human being approaching.
The journalist picked up the young hare and held it in his arms. It was terrified. He snapped off a piece of twig and splinted its hind leg with strips torn from his handkerchief. The hare nestled its head between its little fore-paws, ears trembling with the thumping of its heartbeat.
Back on the road there was an irritable revving, two impatient blasts on the horn, and a shout: “Come on out! We’ll never make Helsinki if you hang around in this wilderness! Out of there—now!—or you’ll have to find your own way back!”
There was no reply. The journalist was nursing the little animal in his arms. Apparently, it was hurt only in the leg. It was gradually calming down.
The photographer got out. He looked furiously into the forest but could see nothing of his companion. He swore, lit another cigarette, and stamped back to the road. Still no sound from the forest. He stubbed out his cigarette on the road and yelled: “Stay there, then! Good-bye, nutcase!”
He listened for another moment but, getting no reply, stormed into the car, revved up, engaged the clutch, and shot off. Gravel spat under the wheels. In a moment the car was out of sight.
The journalist sat on the edge of the ditch, holding the hare in his lap, like an old woman with her knitting on her knees, lost in thought. The sound of the car engine faded away. The sun set.
The journalist put down the hare on the grass. For a moment he was afraid it would try to escape; but it huddled in the grass, and when he picked it up again, it showed no sign of fear at all.
“So here we are,” he said to the hare. “Left.”
That was the situation: he was sitting alone in the forest, in his jacket, on a summer evening. No disputing it—he’d been abandoned.
What does one usually do in such a situation? Perhaps he should have responded to the photographer’s shouts, he thought. Now maybe he ought to find his way back to the road, wait for the next car, hitch a ride, and think about getting to Heinola, or Helsinki, under his own steam.
The idea was immensely unappealing.
The journalist looked in his briefcase. There were a few banknotes, his press card, his health insurance card, a photograph of his wife, a few coins, a couple of condoms, a bunch of keys, an old May Day celebration badge. And also some pens, a notepad, a ring. The management had printed on the pad Kaarlo Vatanen, journalist. His health insurance card indicated that Kaarlo Vatanen had been born in 1942.
Vatanen got to his feet, gazed at the sunset’s last redness through the trees, nodded to the hare. He looked toward the road but made no move that way. He picked up the hare off the grass, put it tenderly in the side pocket of his jacket, and left the clearing for the darkening forest.
The photographer drove to Heinola, raging. There he filled up the tank and decided to check into the hotel the journalist had suggested.
He claimed a double room, threw off his dusty clothes, and took a shower. Refreshed, he went down to the hotel restaurant. Vatanen would certainly appear there soon, he thought. Then