The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [30]
He made his way into the middle of the barn and stumbled over something he hadn’t noticed the night before. When he reached out, his hand met a thick peg stuck into a plank. It was a bench for planing. This was a workbench in the middle of the floor.
He circled to the other side of the bench, feeling his way along its top in the dark. His hand met some cloth. Taken by surprise, he started groping at the bench top to see what was on it.
Someone seemed to be asleep there, under a sheet. Astonishing! It must have been a very deep sleep for him not to wake when Vatanen opened the door during the night.
“Wake up, man,” Vatanen said, but got no reply. The sleeper evidently hadn’t heard; at any rate, he showed no sign of waking. Vatanen touched the sleeper a little more inquiringly: it was definitely a man sleeping on the bench top, under a cloth, without a pillow. His arms lay straight down his sides; his boots were off; he had a large nose. Gently, Vatanen began shaking the sleeper; he raised him into a sitting position and addressed him.
Then he decided to open the door: the light would wake this man. Starting toward the door, he felt his pocket catch on the handle of the vise; the whole bench tilted, and the sleeper came rolling off. There was an audible thump as his head hit the ground. Vatanen wrenched the barn door open, and the light showed him that an old man was lying unconscious on the floor.
Vatanen mumbled: “He’s banged his head!”
He went over to the man, felt around his heart in panic, but couldn’t make out whether it was beating. Anyway, the man had clearly been concussed by his fall. In consternation, Vatanen carefully picked up the unconscious man and carried him out into the yard. There, in the bright morning light, he studied the man’s face. Calm, furrowed features, eyes shut. An elderly man like that could easily die from a fall off a bench. Better move fast. The unconscious man lay across his chest like something on a tray. He ran into the middle of the yard, heading for the farmhouse, but, luckily, just then a young woman appeared on the stoop, carrying milk cans.
Vatanen gave a shout: “There’s been an accident!” There he stood in the middle of the yard with the unconscious old man in his arms, saying: “I can explain this! But get someone who can do first aid!”
The milkmaid panicked in turn. The cans dropped from her plump hands, clattered down the steps, and rolled across the yard to the well. She darted inside, and Vatanen was left on the lawn, holding the man in his arms. The concussed man’s condition seemed to have gotten even worse. A flood of compassion swept over Vatanen—he hadn’t wanted to cause any harm!
People in underclothes were appearing on the stoop: the farmer, his wife, and the same young woman. But they were too shocked themselves to rush and help Vatanen resuscitate the man.
“You don’t have a swing, do you?” Vatanen shouted. “That gets them breathing again.”
But they were silent; no one made a move to help.
Finally, the farmer said: “It’s our granddad. Put him back.”
Vatanen was nonplussed. “Put him back” reverberated a moment in his thoughts. He looked at “Granddad” lying stiff in his arms. One eyelid had half opened. Vatanen looked into the eye.
Then he realized. He was holding a dead man: long dead. A gruesome feeling made him go weak; the burden fell from his arms onto the lawn. The farmer rushed down the steps and lifted the corpse onto his back. The deceased man teetered a little, but the farmer strengthened his grip, took the man back into the barn, laid him out on the bench, and covered him up with the sheet. Then he closed the barn door and came back into the yard.
“You’ve desecrated our granddad!”
Vatanen scarcely heard, for he was vomiting behind the well.
Explanations followed.
Vatanen had spent the night