The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [37]
It was about twenty miles through the forest to Läähkimä Gorge. With only scant snow, Vatanen had to carry his skis on his shoulder, and they tended to catch on the branches, slowing down his progress.
Darkness fell early; he’d have to camp in the forest. He felled a pine, set up his bivouac, and made a log fire for the night. Then he cut a slice of reindeer meat into the frying pan. The hare settled to sleep in the bivouac, and soon Vatanen was stretched out, too. Large snow-flakes floated into the fire, vanishing in the flames with a slight hiss.
The next day, Vatanen took a long hike before he reached his destination and could say: “Ah! The Läähkimä Gorge bunkhouse.”
He leaned his skis against the wall and went wearily inside. The log cabin was an ordinary reindeer herder’s bunkhouse, built in the old days as a base for men rounding up reindeer. The previous winter, a snowmobile had delivered boards, nails, rolls of roofing felt, a sack of cement. The bunkhouse had two rooms; one end was almost a ruin, and even the better end had a rotten floor that would need replacing.
“I’ve got time enough for this, even if it takes me till Christmas,” said Vatanen, talking to himself. To the hare he said: “You’d better get your winter coat on. We’re not in Heinola now, you know. A goshawk’ll get you in that brown.”
Vatanen picked up the hare and examined its coat. When he plucked at the hairs, they came away easily. A clean winter white was coming up underneath. Good, Vatanen thought, and put his ruffled friend down.
Vatanen was in no great hurry to start work. For several days he wandered about the neighborhood, seeing how the land lay, and bringing in wood for the fire. In the evening lamplight, he planned the repair of the cabin.
There was a sandy ridge nearby, and he dug several sacks of fine sand out of the snow for bricklaying. With planks, he constructed a mortar-mixing trough. The first thing to set right was the fireplace, which was in the worst repair: it was important to be able to warm up the cabin, and the first really frigid temperatures came as he began mixing mortar. The chimney was equally dilapidated; it needed plastering, but that was difficult in the subzero temperature: the mortar froze instead of hardening.
Time is in abundant supply in the wilderness, and Vatanen decided to put it to good use. He went up onto the roof and built a sort of tent around the chimney stack with his bivouac. Then he opened a space around the stack, going through both the roof and ceiling, so that warm air from inside the cabin rose into the tent. He put a ladder across the roof and carried steaming mortar up to the chimney.
While he was repairing the chimney stack, a couple of reindeer drivers skied up to the cabin. The snow was already thick enough to make skiing more practicable than walking. They were astounded at the weird-looking contrivance on the roof, and neither of them could figure out why a tent had been put there. If their curiosity was stirred by this contraption, which was steaming slightly from its orifices, they were even more astonished to see the cabin door opening and a man carrying out a heavy, steaming bucket. He was so wrapped up in his job, he didn’t notice the reindeer men leaning on their ski poles in the forecourt. He carried the heavy bucket up the ladder and picked his laborious way across the roof, giving himself a rest every now and then.
Once up, he disappeared inside the canvas cover and stayed there a good quarter of an hour. Finally, he came out again, knocked the bucket against the edge of the roof to shake out the remains of the mortar, and came down.
The reindeer men said, “Morning.” They took off their skis and went inside.
In the middle of the floor stood Vatanen’s mortar-mixing trough, some boards, and various other building materials. These showed the reindeer men that nothing more remarkable was going on than repair of a chimney and a fireplace.
There was a fire burning in the fireplace, not interfering with the repair work, since the mortar dried better in the warmth. The reindeer