The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [47]
The heavy army helicopter began thumping and throbbing, and soon there was a full-throated hammering, as the great blades began slowly churning the burned air. Doubled up, the general ran over to the flight cabin, signaling that more people ought to be taken along. The private secretary, realizing what he meant, began leading women to the juddering chopper. Vatanen resorted to the tree and collected his knapsack from the branch, whispering soothingly to his hare, which was frantic after hanging so long on a branch, in a bag, in all this pandemonium.
Vatanen tossed the knapsack on his back and returned to the scene of the fire. The hare whined in its bag but made no further efforts to escape; in any case, the cord would have stopped it if it had tried.
The private secretary led some women under the helicopter blades; the door opened, and hands pushed on the women’s bottoms, thrusting them, wrapped in thick army clothes, into the cabin. The helicopter pilot and his number two, stark naked at the door, were giving a hand to help them inside. The general lit a cigarette. Vatanen decided to go and help with the loading, too. He jumped into the machine and lifted struggling people in till the helicopter captain said to him: “That’s it, Lieutenant. We’re off. Not one more. Door closed!”
Lieutenant!
Vatanen was about to get back out, but the naked electronics engineer grabbed his arm, fastened the door in his face, and clapped earphones on: “OH 226, OH 226, over ... Do you hear me? About to be airborne. Destination Sodankylä Garrison Hospital. OK, roger, out.”
The helicopter’s windows were spotted with condensation, but, giving the nearest window a wipe with his hand, Vatanen saw the heavy blades starting to flash around with accelerating force. That sent a new blast of wind into the burning building, and the furnace spouted up ninety feet high. The tempest the helicopter was stirring grilled the collapsing log stories to a new brightness: in the pale morning light they glowed like Bengal lights. Then the machine became airborne.
From the ground, the general was semaphoring: he spread his arms and closed them at intervals. The people down there were getting farther and farther away, and the ears of those in the cabin were being pounded by the drumming. Soon the figure of the general, standing in his suspenders, became very small; the glowing building diminished, and the machine rose so high the sun blazed into view.
Ah, what a sight!
Vatanen took the bag off his back and moved it around to the front; he pushed the hare’s muzzle to the window, showing it the grandiose landscape.
“Look, boy, look.”
The hare looked, sighed, and then huddled against its master’s chest; it tucked its legs together in the bag, crouched into a fetal position, and went to sleep.
Immediately bright lights came on in the cabin. The cockpit door opened, and there stood a naked helicopter captain.
“We’re on our way to Sodankylä. Flight time twenty minutes. I ask you to please keep calm. And then . . . could anyone lend me a little clothing?”
He was given a haphazard collection of items. Meanwhile, the equally haphazard collection of people, about twenty of them, began taking a closer look at each other and peeking out of the windows. Vatanen noticed that opposite him was the private secretary, sitting tightly squeezed between two women, and looking distinctly ill at ease. When the official realized who was sitting opposite him, he said quietly, in a voice resigned to adversity: “You here, too. I might have guessed.”
He had no shoes. His bare feet were obviously icy. Vatanen took off his own shoes and offered them to the secretary, saying: “Here, take these. Go on.”
The American military attaché’s wife, who was sitting next to the official, noticed the hare; she pointed to it and said sweetly: “What an adorable creature! How lovely it is! And always with us! May