The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [60]
“So when does the mobile shop come?” he asked.
“Be here tomorrow.”
“I’m in a rush. You couldn’t let me have a few days’ food yourself, could you?”
“Where’d you ski from?”
“From Sompio. Läähkimä Gorge.”
“Is it a wolverine you’re after?”
“Something of the sort.”
The children came in and started a ruckus. The host ordered them out and took Vatanen to a bedroom. He drew back the coverlet from a double bed and told Vatanen to get some sleep. Vatanen could hear him instructing his wife in the living room: “Put four days’ food in a bag and tell the children to be quiet out there. I’ll wake him in a little while.”
A couple of hours later, Vatanen came to without anyone’s waking him. He realized he’d been sleeping on top of the sheets, fully clothed, with his boots on. In the living room the children were stroking the hare. When they saw Vatanen was awake, they began chattering.
Vatanen put some money on the table, but the host handed it back. They went outside. He felt stiff; his stomach was hurting.
“You don’t have any boric acid, do you?”
“Leena, go and get some antiseptic from your mother.”
The girl ran in and came out again with a bottle. Vatanen undid his trousers, and his host saw the tooth-marks.
“A hellish big mouth it had!”
The host dressed the inflamed bite with the antiseptic and wound gauze around Vatanen’s stomach two or three times. Then Vatanen set off to pick up the trail again. From the edge of the forest he called back: “Is this Kotala or Naruska?”
“This is Naruska!”
Soon he found the trail, and the hunt was on again.
He could see that the bear was tired and in a fury: it had been slashing trees that were in its way with its claws, and bashed down several dead trees; chips of wood had been flying around everywhere. Was the bear, Vatanen wondered, going to disappear over the frontier?
“But nothing’ll save you now, mister. No use defecting to a great power.”
Overnight, a freezing wind blew in. The clouds allowed only occasional glimpses of the moon. He was forced to stop for hours. By morning, the wind had swept the tracks clean: he had to ski hither and thither before he located some fresh tracks among the snow.
How many days was it now? It no longer mattered.
He pushed the worn-out hare into his knapsack and set off again. Snow was falling more and more heavily, and it became a storm. In the whirl it was difficult to see the tracks, even though they were fresh. If he stopped the pursuit now, he knew, the whole trip would be a flop. His stomach was hurting him; the gauze had slipped down to his groin, but he couldn’t afford the time to adjust it.
The tracks climbed a plateau. Here the wind was strong enough to bowl the sweating man over, but he soldiered on. He had to! Now his eyes, he noticed, seemed to be failing him. Was he getting snow-blind after all the days and days of staring at tracks? More than likely.
“But you won’t escape my claws, you devil!”
It was dreadful weather: the storm kept him from seeing more than a yard or two ahead. Mechanically, he traced the powdering-over tracks. Gone was that joy he’d felt at the start. All day long the storm raged. He was no longer sure which way he was going, but he fastened on to the tracks like a leech. As he went, he occasionally sucked on some Naruska pork fat, now frozen solid, or clawed some of the snow stuck to his shoulders to quench his thirst. Then, suddenly, the tracks dropped out of the forest to the snowplowed road. The bear had gotten so tired, it had taken to running along the highway.
It had been skidding on the icy surface: there were great claw marks in the blowing snow. Vatanen shuddered. An icy chill went down his spine.
He came to a crossroads, with signposts. Excellent! Now he could find out where he was.
He stopped and, leaning heavily on his ski poles, began peering at the signs. But he didn’t understand the language.
He’d skied across the border into Soviet Russia. The signposts were Russian, in Cyrillic script. The surprise made sweat break out on his brow.
Should he turn back now? Should he report to the Soviet