The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [41]
For the hare, he felled several aspens from a pondside and hauled them into the yard. The simple creature busied itself with them all day, as if it, too, had its building work to get on with. At any rate, the aspens turned white as the hare ate the bark.
Vatanen replaced a broken window with a new pane. He tore up the rotten flooring inside the bunkhouse and nailed down new boards. In between the two layers of the floor he poured the fine-grained contents of some abandoned anthills—a good insulation. The cabin at Läähkimä Gorge was looking splendid.
Scarcely a month after Kaartinen’s visit, Vatanen again had visitors.
Ten soldiers skied into the yard—from the infantry battalion stationed at Sodankylä, they said. Brewing tea on the fire, the lieutenant in charge explained that the battalion was going to carry out a three-day military exercise in these Lapp backwoods. And soon.
“We were really surprised. We’ve got the foreign minister to thank for it. Wants some sort of a show for the foreign brass he’s invited up for a Lapland trip. So it’s full-scale battle maneuvers, on GHQ’s orders. Damn foreigners: five hundred men shouting battle cries in the forest about nothing.”
The lieutenant asked Vatanen if the scheme’s HQ could use the cabin at Läähkimä Gorge as their billet. The foreign minister’s crowd were staying at Vittumainen Ghyll, he’d heard. “So is it all right if we come here?”
“Be my guest. Make yourself at home,” Vatanen agreed.
Two days before the official start of the exercise, a stream of soldiers began arriving at the Läähkimä bunkhouse. Some NCOs and several privates turned up on a snowmobile, bringing radio equipment, maps, food supplies, tents, unit flags. Vatanen asked if he could buy some ski wax and pork from them, but the quartermaster said, “No, help yourself if you want.”
The next day, more troops arrived. A long gray file of soldiers, conscripts, skied to the bunkhouse. The fellows were worn out. Army trucks rumbled, tents billowed around the bunkhouse and down the gorge-side, and one tent was pitched almost at the bottom of the gorge.
Vatanen was afraid the din would waken the bear. He hadn’t intended to speak about the bear to begin with, but now he told the major in charge of operations that if the troops weren’t soon deployed toward Vittumainen Ghyll, the bear might wake up, and Vatanen couldn’t answer for the consequences.
“To hell with the bear. I’ve got other things to think about. Read that book by Pulliainen, reindeer man. You’ll see bears are nothing to freak out about.”
At night, the temperature fell below minus twenty. Vatanen slept badly. He felt the hare breathing short sharp breaths by his ear; it seemed to be on edge, too, poor thing.
And what Vatanen feared happened, very nastily.
In the early hours, about five o’clock, a group of soldiers burst into the cabin, carrying one of their comrades in a blanket. When the lamps were lit and the surplus men had been ordered out, the injury could be seen.
The boy was covered from head to foot with frozen blood. His right hand had been torn almost off. He’d fainted, probably from loss of blood. The MO was sent for; he bandaged the kid and gave him a tetanus shot. An army truck started up in the yard; the radio operator asked for a helicopter, but flight permission had not been granted. The chopper was reserved for the use of the Foreign Office.
The mauled conscript was wrapped in blankets and lifted into the truck. The bearers wiped their bloodstained hands on their trouser legs as the truck began bumping off through the dark forest toward the nearest highway.
Shots rang out from the dark gorge. Vatanen went out and shouted in their direction: “Quit shooting in the dark! You might hit it!”
Later in the morning, when it was light enough, Vatanen skied down into the bottom of the gorge. The