The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna [61]
“So this is where we are, damnit!”
His indecision at the crossroads was brief. He pushed off again in pursuit, skiing doggedly till evening, when he did get a glimpse of his quarry; but then darkness covered the beast. Again he felled a pine, made a campfire, and settled down for the night, his first in Soviet territory. Ahead of him were the immeasurable forest wildernesses of the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea: they’d test his mettle.
The next day, the weather improved a little, and Vatanen charged along like a mad bull. He crossed several large roads, with the bear tending eastward and showing no sign of ever turning westward. From the south, a supersonic aircraft sped overhead, off to Murmansk. He had to stop and look at the glittering-winged, faster-than-sound projectile. It made a deep impact on an exhausted skier: what disparate modes of transport human beings had!
The bear was avoiding villages and making its way through the deserted places. Vatanen didn’t encounter a single soul but did cross several ski tracks in the wilderness. Could his violation of the frontier have passed unobserved? Possibly: in the storm, Vatanen himself hadn’t noticed the boundary. Talk of an iron curtain was evidently misplaced: there hadn’t been a single strand of barbed wire to snag his skis.
His food had run out two days earlier, but the hunt went on. He came to a hamlet. The bear had slept the night in the ruin of a stone building, apparently an old salt factory, Vatanen concluded. That meant they were getting close to the sea: the White Sea.
He suddenly emerged onto the Murmansk railroad tracks. His skis clanked in the frosty air as he made his way over the many pairs of rails. The track was electrified—which called for caution as he hurried by.
His only nourishment was some pork rind he’d boiled the previous evening. He was hungry, but nothing except the bear mattered to him now.
And then—he came to the seashore. The bear was dashing out onto the ice; far out, a black icebreaker had several small cargo ships trailing in its channel.
The bear was scudding across the ice of the Kandalaksha Gulf, with Vatanen in hot pursuit. A few miles north, the factory chimneys of Kandalaksha were staining the clear, frosty sky. The bear, with Vatanen after it, loped up to the icebreaker’s channel; the last battle of this fearsome trek was being waged on the dazzlingly immaculate ice of the White Sea.
The bear rose on its hind legs at the edge of the channel. It gave a howl and a roar; the brilliant white neck-band in its black coat flashed in the sun. The bear turned on its pursuer, bellowing outrage and hatred. Vatanen took off his skis; he lay prone on the ice, melted the rime on the rifle with his thumb, released the safety catch, and shot the bear right in the chest.
The great bear collapsed on the ice: no second shot was needed. Vatanen crawled up to the bear, opened its gullet, and let the blood flow out, black and clotted. He cupped his hands and supped two handfuls. Then he sat on the huge carcass and lit a cigarette, his last. He wept; he didn’t know why, but the tears came. He stroked the bear’s fur, stroked his hare, which was lying in his knapsack with its eyes closed.
Two large airplanes landed on the ice, and soldiers leaped out. About twenty men came over to Vatanen, and one of them addressed him in the Russianized Soviet Karelian Finnish dialect: “So, well, comrade, you got it! On behalf Red Army, congratulations! Now I arrest you as spy. But no worry—this formality. Have drink.”
A burning-cold swig of vodka took the tears from Vatanen’s eyes. He introduced himself and said: “Excuse me for crossing the border, but otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten this bear.”
“Well! Comrade, excused! Some ski trip! Now, into plane. These men skin bear. You bringing this hare with you?”
They embarked, and the aircraft left the ice. A few minutes later, it landed on a mainland airstrip.
“Well! First sauna, then sleep. Interrogation tomorrow.”
23
In Government Hands
Vatanen and the hare were held in custody in the