The Year of the Hare

by Arto Paasilinna

  “Hmm . . . where to put that hare, then . . . So what if we confiscate it, for the state—and let it out in the forest? It’d surely manage okay there.”

  Vatanen produced the license he’d obtained in Mikkeli.

  “I have an official permit to keep this animal in my care. It cannot be confiscated, or illegally turned loose—deprived of my protection, in other words. You can’t put it in a cell, either. A cell’s too unsanitary a place for a sensitive wild animal. It could perish.”

  “I could take it home for the night,” one of the younger constables offered.

  But Vatanen had an objection: “Only if you’re trained in the management of wild hares and possess an appropriate hutch. In addition, the animal definitely requires special foods—meadow vetchling, and many other special herbs. Otherwise it could die of food poisoning. If anything happened to the hare, you’d be liable, and animals of this quality are costly.”

  The hare was following the interchange; it appeared to nod during Vatanen’s words.

  “A fine mess,” the duty officer exploded. “You’d better get out of here. Come back tomorrow, for interrogation. Ten sharp. And take that hare with you.”

  “Hold on,” the young constables warned. “What’ll Laurila say when he hears that? And what do we know about this fellow? Look at that money. Yet he hasn’t even got a car. Where’s he from? Is he really Vatanen, in fact?”

  “Yes ... Hm. Don’t go yet. Have to think. Bit of a bind—the super’s out fishing. Anyone got a cig?”

  Vatanen offered more cigarettes. Again they smoked. Nothing was said for quite a while.

  Finally, the younger constable said to Vatanen: “Don’t get us wrong. We’ve got nothing against you personally, you know, nothing at all, but we have our regulations—for ourselves, too, us police. Without that hare, for example, everything’d be so much simpler. Look at it from our point of view. For all we know, you might be a murderer. Could have bumped someone off before you left Helsinki ... gone out of your mind, perhaps, wandering aimlessly around here. In fact, you are wandering aimlessly—you might be a danger to the whole community.”

  “Let’s not overdo it,” the duty officer said. “No one’s talking about murder.”

  “But we could be, in theory. I don’t say we are, but we could easily be.”

  “Just as easily, I could be a murderer myself,” the duty officer snorted. He stubbed out his cigarette, gave the hare an angry stare, and then: “Let’s do it this way. Stay here regardless—in this duty room if you like—till I can call up the superintendent. That’ll be in a couple of hours or so. Then we’ll get it all straightened out. Meanwhile, take a nap on that bunk, if you’re tired. We can have some coffee if you want. What’s all the hurry? How does that sound?”

  Vatanen accepted the offer.

  The hare, in its basket, was put on a night-duty bed at the back of the room. Vatanen asked if he could have a look at the sort of cell accommodations they had at Nilsiä Police Station. The duty officer willingly got up to show him. The whole company trooped to the lockup, and the duty officer opened one of the doors and explained: “These are nothing special—mostly we only get drunks. We do get people from Tahkovuori sometimes. We’ve had some quite important people inside, too.”

  There were two adjoining cells: modest rooms. The windows, frosted wired glass, had no bars. Screwed to the wall there was a tubular bed, a lidless toilet, and a chair, also fastened immovably. A lamp without a lampshade dangled from the ceiling.

  “They generally smash that lamp in their rage, and so they get to sit in the dark. Should put a steel frame around it—the tallest can jump that high.”

  The policemen made some coffee. Vatanen went to lie down on the duty-room bed. The officers chatted about Vatanen’s case in subdued tones, thinking he was asleep. He overheard the men’s assessment of Laurila. All in all, they thought it a pretty unusual case: best to proceed cautiously at the start. Vatanen dozed off.

  Later, about ten, the duty officer woke Vatanen. The superintendent had been contacted and was on his way. Vatanen rubbed his eyes, looked at the basket by his feet, and saw it was empty.

  “The boys are out in the forecourt with it. We saw it didn’t run away, and we thought it might be hungry, so we procured some of that meadow vetchling you mentioned. Quite a meal it’s had, in fact.”

  The younger constables re-entered with the hare. They let it go hopping around the floor, leaving little pellets everywhere. The officers kicked the droppings into the corners but, finding that not very satisfactory, they grabbed a rag off the coffee table and whisked the droppings up against the wall.

  A little yellow car drove into the forecourt. The superintendent came in. He noticed the hare on the floor, showed no surprise, offered his hand to Vatanen, and announced his name: “Savolainen.”

  The duty officer explained the whole case to him. The superintendent was a youngish man, probably a recent graduate in jurisprudence, in the sticks as a stage in his career. He certainly looked professional enough as he listened to the evidence.

  “The boys in Kuopio told you to lock him up?”

  “That’s what they recommended, but we didn’t want to go ahead till we heard from you.”

  “You did right. I know Laurila.”

  The superintendent examined Vatanen’s papers and returned his money to him. “I’ll give the doctor a ring,” he said and picked up the telephone.

  “District Superintendent Savolainen here. Good evening. You have, I understand, brought criminal charges against a certain person. Yes, I see. However, the situation is this: your report has no foundation. This is the conclusion we’ve arrived at in the course of our investigations. It’s important that you come here at once to clear the matter up. Tomorrow won’t do, not at all. This will be a very difficult situation for you unless somehow or other you can clear the matter up. If the person concerned presses charges, I don’t know what I, as a police officer, can do about it. In any case, the person has been held here on your responsibility and could press charges of false accusation against you. He’s been compelled to endure a considerable time here at the police station. When you arrive, you won’t find me here, but you can explain yourself to the duty officer, who will be responsible for interrogating you. Good-bye.”

  The superintendent grinned. To Heikkinen he said: “Sound out Laurila. Question him about this and that. Force him to think up suitable answers. Ask whatever you like—you could even take his fingerprints. When you’ve finished, tell him he can go. Say that neither the public prosecutor nor I will pursue charges unless the person concerned considers it appropriate. Well, you know the form. Yes, and, Vatanen, where are you going for the night? I’m off back to the lake till morning. I put some nets out. Why not come along with me for the night? You can bring that hare of yours. It’s a little log cabin by the lake—just a fishing sauna. The hare can run wild there, and you can sleep in peace.”

  The constables accompanied Vatanen, the superintendent, and the hare to the station forecourt.

  The duty officer said to the superintendent: “Right from the start, sir, I saw this Mr. Vatanen was a respectable person.”

  7

  The President

  The superintendent’s little fishing cabin and sauna were a few yards from a lake in the forest. They were a pile of old logs on quaking bogland, reached by boardwalk.

  “Inside, you’ll find my fishing buddy, quite a character, rather special. Retired now, used to be the Kiuruvesi superintendent of police. Name of Hannikainen.”

  When they got to the cabin, Hannikainen was sitting with his back to the door: he was grilling fish on the heating stove in the corner, its iron doors open for the job. He pushed the gridiron to one side and shook hands, then offered the new arrivals hot fish on pieces of wax paper. By now Vatanen was truly hungry. They gave the hare some fresh grass and water.

  The two others went out, and Vatanen collapsed onto a bunk. Half asleep, he felt the hare hopping onto the b
unk, by his feet, shuffling into a comfortable position, and settling down for the night, too.

  Sleepily, in the early hours, Vatanen heard the men returning from the lake and chatting outside in low tones before turning in. The superintendent went into the sauna to bunk down on the boards; Hannikainen stretched out on a bunk in the cabin. The hare raised its head but soon went back to sleep.

  In the morning, Vatanen woke fresh and alert. It was eight o’clock. Hannikainen’s bunk was empty. The fishermen had probably just risen and were starting a fire outside. A coffeepot dangled from the bar above the fire, and Hannikainen shook some butter pretzels out of a plastic bag. Waders were crying from the shore. A morning mist lay over the water, and a bright day was on the way.

  After coffee, the superintendent set off for the village to take up his duties. The sound of his car faded down the forest road and drifted out of earshot.

  Hannikainen went into the cabin and came out with some lard, which he sliced into the frying pan on the fire. The fat sizzled, and he tipped a one-pound can of beef and pork into it. The food was soon ready. Hannikainen cut some long slices from a large loaf of rye bread, put the burning-hot fried meat on them, and presented some to Vatanen. It was delicious. In Helsinki, Vatanen usually had difficulty coping with breakfast, but now the food tasted marvelous.

  Hannikainen lent Vatanen the superintendent’s fishing gear, rubber boots, and a fishing smock. Vatanen’s own shoes and suit were left hanging on a nail in the cabin. Probably they are there to this day.

  The men loafed around the cabin all day, fishing, making fish soup, lolling in the sun, looking at the grassy lake. In the evening Hannikainen took a bottle of vodka from his rucksack, creaked the cork out, and poured them each a shot.

  Hannikainen was already getting on in years, pushing seventy, completely white haired, tall, talkative. In the course of the day, the men got to know each other. Vatanen related the what and wherefore of his journey. Hannikainen presented himself as a lonely widower spending his summers as the young superintendent’s fishing companion. He was well informed on world affairs and thoughtful by nature.

  What, Vatanen wondered, was so unusual about Hannikainen? So far nothing to justify the superintendent’s remark of the previous evening had appeared in Hannikainen’s lifestyle, unless quiet summer fishing was coming to be considered unusual nowadays.

  The answer to this question was on its way.

  After the second shot of vodka, Hannikainen began to lead the conversation around to government politics in a more serious vein. He spoke of the responsibility of people in power, their influence and conduct, and revealed that, after retiring, he had begun to do some research into these concerns. Even though he had spent his life as a police superintendent in a country parish, he was astonishingly well informed about the constitutions of the Western countries, the nuances of parliamentary law, and jurisdiction in the socialist countries. Vatanen listened with keen interest to Hannikainen’s pronouncements on these major international questions, which constitutional lawyers often have to deal with in Finland, too.

  According to Hannikainen, Finland’s constitution gave the president far too great a power of decision in state affairs. When Vatanen asked if he didn’t think President Kekkonen had managed to make exemplary use of the powers devolved on him, Hannikainen replied: “Over several years I’ve been making a close study of President Kekkonen . . . and I’m coming to a most disturbing conclusion, disturbing to myself, too. I don’t mean I’m disturbed by his performance. I’m actually rather an enthusiastic supporter of his administration, but nevertheless ... All I’m doing is collecting information. I form comparisons, I sift, I make inferences. The result is extremely disturbing.”

  “And what conclusions are you coming to?”

  “I’ve kept this affair a careful secret. No one but Savolainen knows, and a certain carpenter in Puumala. Neither of them will reveal the results of my investigations. You see—the conclusions my research has led to would, if published, have a nasty backlash. I might well lay myself open to the law, and at the very least I’d be made a laughing-stock.”

  Hannikainen stared at Vatanen fixedly. His eyes froze.

  “I’m getting on in years, and perhaps a little senile . . . nevertheless, I’m not completely cracked. If you want to know what I’ve unearthed, you must give me your word that you won’t use your knowledge against me, or against anyone else.”

  Vatanen readily gave his word.

  “It’s a question of such moment that I can only beg you to give serious consideration to what I’m now going to tell you, and I insist that you never give me away.”

  It was apparent that Hannikainen had a burning need to share his secret. He screwed the vodka cork back in the bottle, pushed the bottle into some moss, and walked briskly to the cabin. Vatanen trailed after him.

  Hanging on the cabin wall, between the window and the table, was a large, battered brown suitcase. Vatanen had seen it the evening before but had paid no attention to it. Hannikainen lowered the case onto a bunk and snapped the catches open. The lid sprang upward, revealing a store of tightly crammed documents and photographs.

  “I haven’t yet done the final sorting out on this archive—the research is still incomplete. But most of it’s here. With the help of this, you’ll reach a conclusion without much difficulty.”

  Hannikainen started extracting documents from the suitcase: thick, typewritten leaflets, several books, and photographs all showing President Kekkonen in various settings. The books, too, concerned Kekkonen: they included editions of his speeches, Skytä’s books on the president, and several other accounts, including a book of anecdotes. The documents included many graphics, which also, Vatanen saw, centered on Kekkonen.

  Hannikainen produced several drawings on graph paper, showing careful longitudinal sections of human crania.

  “Take a look at these,” Hannikainen said, showing two cranium pictures side by side in the pallid light of the window. “Do you see the difference?”

  At first glance the pictures looked exactly alike, but on closer inspection they differed slightly in detail.

  “This on the left shows Urho Kekkonen’s cranium in 1945, just after the war. Then there is this one. It shows his cranium in 1972. I’ve prepared these drawings to show the changes with the years. My method has been to project outlines of ordinary photographs onto a screen—in different positions, naturally—and then transfer the outline of the cranium onto the graph paper. For Kekkonen this procedure offers no complications, thanks to his complete baldness. The method is extremely painstaking and demands unusual precision, but I have, in my view, achieved exceptionally good results. I’d say these are far more accurate cranial mensurations than are normally achievable. Anything more accurate would have to come from a pathology laboratory, where the skull itself is at the researcher’s disposal.”

  Hannikainen selected another cranium picture.

  “This is Kekkonen’s cranium at the time of the formation of his third government. As you can perhaps see, it’s precisely the same as the 1945 cranium. And here is the cranium of 1964, again the same.

  “Now! Look at this: the cranium of 1969! What a difference! If you compare this, though, with the picture from 1972, you’ll see that they have a great deal in common.”

  Hannikainen displayed his drawings excitedly, with burning eyes, smiling triumphantly. Vatanen studied the pictures and had to admit that Hannikainen’s drawings were exactly as he said: the crania were different, the older crania from the more recent ones.

  “The change occurred sometime during 1968, perhaps toward the end of 1968, but in the first half of 1969 at the latest. I haven’t yet been able to pin down the time factor more precisely than this, but I’m continuing my studies, and I’m sure I’ll arrive at within a month or two of the precise date. In any case, I’ve already been able to prove, convincingly, that a change has taken place, and that the change is significant.”

  Hannikainen paused. Then
he said with emphasis: “I tell you straight, these cranial outlines are not diagrams of one and the same head. The difference is too marked, incontestably so. These old crania—from the time when Kekkonen was young, that is—are somewhat sharper on the crown, for example. In these recent pictures the cranium is flatter in formation; the crown is clearly rounder. And look at the jawbone. In the older pictures Kekkonen’s jaw is noticeably receding. In these recent pictures the jaw juts several millimeters farther out than before, and at the same time the cheekbones are lower. This profile shows it best. Also, the occiput has clear divergences, even if not so marked. In the old pictures the occiput is a little more flattened than in the recent ones. Look at that! When a person grows old, the occiput never becomes more salient—quite the reverse, I assure you.”

  “What you’re saying is that Kekkonen’s head changed shape some time in the vicinity of 1968?”

  “I mean much more than that! What I’ve established is that around 1968 ‘The Old Kekkonen’ either died or was murdered—or withdrew from government for some other reason—and his place was taken by someone else, almost exactly like the former Kekkonen, down to the voice.”

  “But supposing Kekkonen became ill about that time, or had an accident that remolded his skull?”

  “Skull changes of this order would, if sickness were in question, or an accident, involve months of recuperation. My studies indicate that President Kekkonen was invariably too busy, all his life, to be absent from public exposure for longer than two uninterrupted weeks. And, in addition, I’ve been unable to find, in a single photograph, any evidence of scarring on the scalp. Warts, yes, but nothing indicating surgery in 1968.”

  Hannikainen replaced the cranium pictures in the suitcase and displayed a large chart: a spreading curve annotated with numbers.

  “This is the chart Kekkonen’s physical height. The numbers record his height since childhood.... The figures from adolescence are not absolutely precise, but since Kekkonen’s service as a sergeant they’re completely watertight. Here is a photocopy of his ID card. See? Since his sergeant days Kekkonen has been one hundred seventy-nine centimeters tall ... he’s the same height here, at the time of President Paasikivi’s funeral . . . and now look again! We come to the year 1968: the curve suddenly leaps a couple of centimeters. Kekkonen is in fact, all at once, nearly a hundred eighty-one centimeters. From then on the curve continues unchanged till this point, 1975, with no change in sight. A sudden increase in height in his latter days—something rather remarkable there, don’t you think?”