The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [48]
The helicopter was heading almost straight into the sun; the snowy wilderness was speeding by underneath. Back at Sompio, thick clouds of smoke could still be seen by craning the neck. The deserted forest glided vibrating below them. As they flew over Läähkimä Gorge, Vatanen could see the tracks left by the bear hunt. Nearer to Sodankylä he caught sight of a solitary figure plodding far below after a long trek; the tracks were like a mouse’s, but the maker of them was black and heading southeast. Vatanen looked so hard, his eyes began watering. He came to the definite conclusion that it was Läähkimä Gorge’s bear: it couldn’t be anything else.
He said nothing. He brushed the drops from his eyes and stroked the hare. The smoke of Sodankylä was coming into view.
18
To Helsinki
The helicopter touched down in the forecourt of Sodankylä Garrison Hospital. It was quite a spectacle when the diplomats disembarked into the snow wearing their heterogeneous medley of borrowed clothes. A doctor came to receive them and shook each person by the hand, including Vatanen. The arrivals were ushered into a ward and given a medical examination.
The last one off was a naked airman. He lurked behind the chopper till most of the women had gone into the hospital, then made a dash for a nearby welfare center. The doctor ordered clothes to be sent over to him: they’d been requisitioned.
Vatanen sat in the waiting room with his hare and his knapsack. Soon various civilian clothes, shoes, underclothes, everything, arrived in a delivery van from Mannermaa, the department store. Everyone could select what he needed from the mounting pile on the waiting-room floor and go away to try things on. The private secretary picked out suitable footwear for himself and then returned Vatanen’s shoes, thanking him.
Once his shoes were on, Vatanen left the waiting room and hitched a lift to the main street in the Mannermaa delivery van. The driver had heard the news on the radio and asked Vatanen so many questions he began to feel weary.
Vatanen was fed up with the recent days’ happenings. He got himself a hotel room and called the chairman of the Sompio Reindeer Owners’ Association.
“I don’t suppose the Läähkimä Gorge bunkhouse went up in flames, too?” the chairman said.
“No. But, listen, it’s time to pay me off now. I think I have to be on my way. There wasn’t much peace and quiet up there in Sompio, after all, you know.
“I believe you. Sure, I’ll settle up with you.”
The hare didn’t seem very well. It lay in the bag looking miserable, and when Vatanen let it out into the room, it hopped listlessly over to the bed and closed its eyes.
Vatanen rang the Sodankylä vet to ask what might be wrong. The vet came and examined the hare but couldn’t say one way or another.
“These wild animals can be funny, you know. Tamed, they can die for no special reason. Maybe that’s the case now. The only place that might be able do anything for it would be the National Institute of Veterinary Science. They could analyze some blood samples—if they thought it worth their while, that is. But you’d hardly want to go all the way to Helsinki for the sake of a hare, would you? And, of course, they don’t take private cases.”
But with the hare in such poor condition, Vatanen was determined to do anything he could to help it get better. He managed to sell all the equipment he’d left behind at Läähkimä Gorge, including his skis, to the Sompio chairman, then hired a taxi to Rovaniemi and took the flight to the Seutula Airport at Helsinki. At Seutula, he took a taxi straight to the National Institute of Veterinary Science.
Vatanen walked along the institute corridors without arousing any attention: for once he was in a place where a man wasn’t stared at for carrying a hare.
With no difficulty, Vatanen found his way to a research professor’s office; he rang the bell by the door and, when the green light showed, carried his hare in.
Shuffling papers at his desk sat a white-coated, oddly grubby-looking man, who rose to his feet, shook Vatanen’s hand, then invited