The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [44]
Vatanen proposed that if the lady could not, at the present moment, see her way clear to giving up what was not her property, the rights of the matter would no doubt be settled later.
“Very well, get in yourself,” the private secretary exploded, having had enough. “You are, I have to say, an unusually petty individual.”
The rest of the party climbed into the helicopter. The heavy warplane revved up its engines, lifted into the air, and headed for Vittumainen Ghyll. There a veritable winter war was in progress, but the foreign military attachés paid no attention to how things were going. They went straight from the chopper to the log hostel. Outside, the Finnish Army was left shouting battle cries about ... nothing.
16
The Dinner
In the spacious men’s side of the Vittumainen Ghyll guesthouse, a table had been set for a magnificent dinner. The long raw-pine table had been covered with a handsome white cloth and loaded with succulent delicacies from Helsinki. Places for more than twenty had been set around the table. In the spaces between the delicacies stood bowls of fruit and miniature national flags of all the military attachés. The private secretary of the foreign minister presided at one end of the table, and a general from the Defense Department at the other.
The bear-hunting women had gone off to change their clothes and now reappeared from the other, narrower end of the house. The hors d’oeuvre was a choice fish canapé. Vatanen noticed that a couple of chairs were empty at the general’s end of the table. He seated himself in one, for he was feeling hungry.
The private secretary gave Vatanen an angry look but said nothing. The officer from the Defense Department, a major-general, gave Vatanen a soldierly greeting.
There was both rosé and white wine. Vatanen accepted the rosé. After the canapé, soup was served, a slightly gooey bisque extracted from canned shrimp, but delicious.
The conversation turned to the day’s happenings: in particular, the Swedish and American ladies were questioned endlessly about their bear hunt. They went into detail, especially the Swedish lady. The listeners sighed with horror at her ordeals and courage, and everyone was in ecstasies about her extraordinary luck. She also mentioned the hare, which by now had almost been forgotten. It was hastily produced and put into the lady’s lap. She lifted the frightened animal onto the tablecloth and began to stroke it.
“I can never, for the rest of my life, be parted from this adorable, brave creature! The bear would have killed me, I’m absolutely certain, if this poor innocent darling had not been in my arms.”
The major general asked Vatanen if it was true that the hare was his. Vatanen said it was and whispered that he had no intention of letting the lady have it as her darling.
“Might be a little tricky to get it back now,” the general whispered.
The lady gave the hare some lettuce, and it began eating voraciously. Its mouth went like a mill. A cry of delight went around the table. The hare was sharing a meal with the other members of the hunting trip! The company was audibly moved.
The general buzz alarmed the hare. It released a little cascade of pellets onto the tablecloth. Some went into the Swedish lady’s soup. The hare wriggled out of her hands and bounced along the center of the table, knocking over a candlestick and leaving panicky droppings among the knives and forks.
The guests leaped to their feet, all except the general and Vatanen. The general did pull his soup bowl onto his knees when he saw the hare hopping to his end of the table.
Vatanen grabbed the hare by the ears and put it on the floor, where the poor creature escaped into a corner. The guests seated themselves again. There was silence for a while.
The Swedish lady was more than a trifle on edge. Her left hand was fiddling with a lettuce leaf as if it were a napkin; she then sipped several spoonfuls of soup till she noticed the hare droppings floating on the surface. She became