The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [53]
In Turenki they spent the night at a farm. Vatanen whooped it up with cheerful abandon—even if it looked physically and spiritually wearing to Leila—and he was one of the village sights for three days.
On the day before Christmas Eve, they left Turenki for Janakkala to spend Christmas with Leila’s parents. Vatanen bought fine presents for her whole family: a barometer for her mother, a selection of pipes for her father, a bracelet for her sister, and a xylophone for the youngest girl. On Christmas Eve, Vatanen was charming: the family listened fascinated to his stories; Daddy produced his best brandy from the liquor cabinet, and it went down well. Vatanen tended to drone on during the night and kissed Leila and her mother on their cleavage, but no one had been offended.
Christmas night, they left Janakkala unexpectedly, supposedly for the hospital, but they didn’t go there. Instead, they took a taxi to Tammisaari, where Vatanen tried to take a Christmas dip in the sea, without success. They spent Christmas night sleeping in a taxi, which turned out to be expensive.
They also went to Hanko and Salo, where nothing particularly unusual happened. And now they were in Turku. They’d arrived in the middle of the night; Vatanen had gone through the list of dentists in the directory, asking for an appointment, and one had accepted. The Hanko taxi driver had spent the night in Turku. Throughout all this, Leila had been with him, and that astonished Vatanen.
“How on earth could you put up with it?”
“It was my Christmas vacation, darling.”
Darling? Vatanen gave the young woman a second look. That put a different spin on things. Had they been having some sort of liaison? If so, what exactly?
She was certainly attractive, no question. Or, rather, that very fact raised a question: how could a young woman as attractive as Leila endure this crazy trail of tomfoolery for so long? Surely, as a foul-smelling drunk, he hadn’t had the indecency to seduce her? But that would be difficult to believe, because, judging from her account, his behavior had been revolting from beginning to end.
Besides, she was apparently engaged, he observed. A ring glinted on her finger: cheap and nasty, a sort he personally wouldn’t want to buy for any woman, let alone a woman of this quality. For a moment he had managed to think something lovely might have happened, something inconceivable, between this traveling companion and himself; but the hideous ring put a stop to that.
He was overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness: even his hare was in Helsinki. He suddenly felt an unbearable yearning for his hare.
“I must go and get that hare,” he said sadly, looking at the ring. “You’re engaged, I see, and I can’t help saying I don’t think much of the ring.” He sighed deeply.
“Guess who I’m engaged to,” she said, looking him gravely in the eye.
“Oh, some high-flying young accountant, I suppose. Forgive me, but it doesn’t interest me.”
“Wrong ... Guess again.”
“You could try and guess who I’m engaged to instead,” he retorted.
“I know already,” she said. “You have to guess who I’m engaged to.”
“I don’t have the energy at the moment,” he said. “We’d better get our stuff together, I think, and go. You wouldn’t mind phoning the station for me, would you? I need to know the train times. Do me that favor, please. I’m so tired.”
“I’ll give you the answer, then,” she said. “I’m engaged to you.”
He heard what she said—he heard it word by word—but didn’t grasp the meaning. He looked her in the eye, he looked at the tablecloth, he looked out of the window, he looked at the restaurant floor, and then he looked at the hovering waiter. He managed to give the waiter an order: two glasses, the same as before.
The waiter brought their drinks. They drank them in silence.
“Is it true?” Vatanen asked after a long interval.
Yes indeed, she affirmed. Vatanen had proposed in Kerava, and she had accepted in Turenki. The ring had been bought in Hanko. Since the