The Year of the Hare

by Arto Paasilinna

  But the driver forced his vehicle ever deeper: the water rose to the engine top, the winch went under, and soon a wave was swilling over the hood. The machine went even deeper, the water swirled around the driver’s buttocks, and simultaneously the engine slurped water inside. It coughed to a banging halt. The bulldozer was marooned a hundred yards from the shore.

  The people on the shore watched in horror. The driver now turned in his seat, slowly got to his feet, his trousers dripping, and then sat on the floor of the cab. He turned shoreward and after a pause shouted in a voice that carried: “Shut your mouths yet, have you?”

  The women were whispering to each other: “Must be lack of sleep. It’s driven him over the edge.”

  The firefighters let rip: “Damn you! You’ve ruined the soup!”

  The man replied calmly: “Did get spilled, I guess.”

  “Swim back now!” they shouted at him.

  But he didn’t attempt it. Instead, he climbed onto the steel hood, the only part still above water. He leaned against the exhaust pipe, took off his boots, and poured water into the lake.

  Someone who knew told the others he couldn’t swim.

  There was no boat. They’d have to build a raft to get him off. The men with mechanical saws cursed: they were dead tired from their nights without sleep at the firebreak; now they were supposed to start making a raft to rescue a lunatic bulldozer driver sitting on his hood in the middle of a lake.

  “Come on! What about a raft!” came a shout from the lake.

  “Quit yelling. We will if we feel like it.”

  The men conferred. One said that morning would be time enough. Sitting out there overnight would teach him a lesson.

  They decided to make coffee before beginning work. When the driver saw no one was making a start, he went berserk: threats howled across the calm water. Finally, he yelled: “Just wait. The minute I’m back, you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  “Raving mad,” they decided.

  He got more and more agitated, hammering the metal hood with his fists. The banging carried across the lake to the far shore and sent the waterbirds flocking into the air and sliding into the reeds.

  All the same, the men gradually put together a sort of raft—they bound logs together with rope, hewed a pole—but then retired on the lakeside bank to think about sleep. No one was in the mood to set out and rescue a raving driver.

  He was still howling from the hood of his bulldozer: “Just wait! First one I get hold of, I’ll flatten him out in the bog!”

  They pondered what to do. Poling out, on a make-shift raft, to fetch a rather hefty near-homicidal maniac who’d gone several days without sleep, had no appeal for anyone. They’d fetch him off his machine in the morning, they decided; by then he might have calmed down a bit.

  All night long, the driver stormed on the lake. He yelled and yelled, though no one answered, till his voice became a croak. He kicked the bulldozer’s headlights to smithereens. He twisted the exhaust pipe off and threw the heavy metal object at the shore, which fortunately it didn’t reach. Not till the early morning hours did he begin to tire; as dawn approached, he snatched a couple of hours’ sleep, belly-down on the hood.

  At morning coffee time, people began stirring, and the sounds woke the man on the bulldozer. He began roaring again, slipped off his machine, and flopped into the water.

  That brought things to life. The man was splashing around by his machine, yelling in terror. Sliding the raft into the water, Vatanen and another man started frantically poling it toward the bulldozer. The driver was making vain clutchings to climb onto his engine, but his hands slipped on the wet metal, and each time he fell back he went under and got more water in his lungs. His struggles became feebler and feebler, and finally he went completely under, floating facedown, only his spine poking up through his wet shirt.

  Vatanen had managed to pole the raft to the precise spot; the two men hauled the driver aboard and turned his limp body on its side. Vatanen lifted the man’s waist, letting water and mud flow from his mouth. The other man started poling back toward the shore while Vatanen knelt down and started administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, simultaneously pressing on the man’s chest.

  The driver was lifted ashore, where Vatanen continued his artificial respiration.

  Perhaps five minutes elapsed before the drowned man showed any signs of revival. Then the man’s body stiffened and his hands began to tremble, and finally Vatanen heard the driver’s teeth grating together. Vatanen was thankful his own tongue hadn’t been caught between the other’s teeth.

  As soon as the driver came to, he grabbed Vatanen and started in on him; for a moment Vatanen had to tussle with him on his own before the others realized they ought to him give a hand. With the help of several men, Vatanen finally forced the driver to give in and tied him to a stump sticking up on the shore. There they left him, sitting with his back to the stump.

  “A feisty one,” they said.

  “Let me go! I’ll yank this stump up with me!” he threatened, but nevertheless he didn’t try to carry out his threat. Instead, he fell into a subdued muttering: “Damn people! Leave a man out there who can’t swim, all night long, in the middle of a lake. I’ll set the damn police on them.”

  Several soldiers came to fetch him, and he was taken off into the forest, strapped to a stretcher.

  A terrible wailing came from the forest, not dying out until much later, when the stretcher was a mile or two off.

  9

  In the Marsh

  A new morning dawned. Vatanen was woken by the racket of motor vehicles: three Land Rovers had plowed their way through the forest and gotten to the lake. The men in them included the two superintendents, Hannikainen and Savolainen. Hannikainen had a knapsack on his back; a hare’s head peeped out from under the flap.

  Vatanen rushed over to them, grabbed the knapsack from Hannikainen’s back, undid the cord, and welcomed the hare into his arms. What a happy reunion!

  The hare sniffed Vatanen excitedly. When he put it on the ground, it ran happily around his legs like a little dog.

  Savolainen took charge on the shore; his orders were to oversee evacuation of personnel and animals.

  Hannikainen was there out of curiosity; time had probably been dragging a little, with his friends away firefighting.

  “I got such a haul of pike, I had to go around the villages selling it off. I took the hare along. I laid off my research for a bit,” he added. Taking Vatanen aside, he whispered: “I made a few more calculations back there, though. They show that President Kekkonen—the new one, that is—will still be there in 1995. By my reckoning, ‘The New Kekkonen’ will then be only about seventy-five, whereas the old one would have been ninety. I fear it’ll cause a lot of unfortunate speculation abroad. They won’t know what’s going on, really.” He added: “Theoretically, it’s perfectly possible for Kekkonen to be still governing the country after the year 2000. By then he’ll be eighty-five. In my opinion, though, he won’t dare offer himself as president in the next millennium.”

  Tents were erected on the bank of the lake; soup canteens were heated up; blankets were distributed. A large winch was unloaded from the back of a Land Rover and set up onshore. Its purpose was to haul the bulldozer out of the lake.

  Since he hadn’t been assigned any other task, Vatanen went into the meadow to help the women with the milking. One young woman, Irja, had already milked three plastic pails-full of milk, and Vatanen helped her carry them over to a spring of water, for cooling. Soon the hare came hopping over as well. Irja fell for the hare at once.

  “Oh, what a darling!”

  “Would you like to take it to bed with you?”

  Irja certainly would.

  “You can, if you like. Provided you take me as well. Are you game?”

  In the evening, the three of them—Vatanen, Irja Lankinen, and the hare—retired to a barn in the meadow for the night. Vatanen had taken some blankets there. Irja brought som
e soup from the tents. She made up beds by the rear wall of the barn, Vatanen closed the barn door, the sun went down, and then there was a voice inside the barn: “Stop it. It’s looking.”

  The barn door flew open, and the hare flew out. Vatanen had tossed it into the meadow. The door closed; the hare sat there in the dusk, embarrassed. Half an hour later, Vatanen came to the door and apologized for throwing it out. The hare slipped in, the door closed again, and there was quiet everywhere. Even the curlews were quiet on the lake.

  In the morning, Savolainen asked Vatanen if he’d mind accompanying Irja about eight miles through the forest to the Sonkajärvi road. She was herding some cows there to be loaded into cattle trucks and driven to cow-sheds in Sonkajärvi. Vatanen was delighted: nothing could be better than cowherding with Irja. Excitedly, he said good-bye to Savolainen and Hannikainen.

  Hannikainen said: “If you ever get near Nilsiä, look me up. I’ll definitely have my research complete by then.”

  It was a gorgeous day. They sang as they went along. The sun shone; there was no hurry. From time to time, they let the cows graze peacefully along the ditches, and at midday the beasts lay down for an hour or two, ruminating. Meanwhile, the cowherds went for a swim. Irja looked marvelous, sinking into the cool forest pool with her sumptuous breasts.

  In the afternoon, a large brown cow began complaining. It moaned quietly, closing its moist eyes, and seemed unwilling to keep up with the other cows. Nor would it eat with the others; it just drank water. It strayed from the herd, mooing querulously, and walked between two trees, leaned a flank against one, and turned to look at Irja.

  “That one’s going to calve soon,” Irja said anxiously.

  To Vatanen the cow didn’t look any more round bellied than the others, but no doubt Irja knew what she was talking about.

  “If we don’t reach the road soon, she’ll have it here in the forest,” Irja said.

  “What if I go ahead to Sonkajärvi,” Vatanen said, “and bring back a vet?”

  “Nonsense! It can drop the calf here. It’s healthy enough, that cow. And as for you, you’re certainly up to carrying a calf.”

  After a while, the cow began to paw the ground and arch its back, clearly in pain. It let out urgent intermittent lowings, sounds you’d never expect from a cow. Irja spoke consolingly to it; the beast responded by mooing more quietly. Finally, it went to lie down.

  After an hour, Irja said: “It’s on its way. Come and help me pull it out.”

  The calf came out slowly, the cow groaning in agony; they had to pull hard. Then the calf dropped to the ground—the cow had heaved to its feet. The calf was slimy with mucus, and the cow, completely at peace already, began licking it.

  Vatanen dug a pit a hundred yards away and buried the afterbirth. He came back to Irja and the calf, which was trying to struggle to its feet but continually flopping back, still too weak. It did know how to suck on a teat, though: it knelt down under the cow and gorged itself.

  Obviously, a newborn calf like that couldn’t totter through the forest to the road. Should it be killed? Definitely not. Irja and Vatanen settled on Irja’s going on ahead with the cows, and Vatanen’s carrying the calf on his shoulders and bringing up the rear with the mother cow.

  Vatanen pulled a blanket out of his knapsack, tied rope to the corners, and constructed a sort of hammock that he could carry on his back. As he squeezed the calf into the blanket bag, it lowed with fear, but to no avail. It was still incapable of managing on its own legs. The cow looked on calmly as the calf was tucked into the blanket.

  Vatanen heaved the calf onto his back; its hooves tapped the back of his neck rhythmically as he plodded along. The hare was somewhat nonplussed. It loped nervously about at Vatanen’s feet but then settled down to the slow advance. Calf on back, Vatanen led the way forward through the forest. The pensive cow ambled quietly behind him, occasionally licking her calf’s head, and the hare undulated along at the rear.

  It surprised Vatanen that the calf didn’t get an upset stomach, swinging in its hammock to the rhythm of his tread. But then it had been swinging many months like that in its mother’s belly. What a trip! Burdened by his calf, Vatanen was in a sweat. Gnats had come out, too: they were flying into his nostrils, and, with both his hands gripping the ropes, and the knapsack dangling on his belly, he couldn’t reach up to flick them away.

  “Loving animals can be a heavy load,” he muttered to himself as a sprig of spruce lashed his face in a thicket.

  But Vatanen’s load was not yet full.

  He took a shortcut through a bog. “I’m not going to go all the way around that,” he decided. “It’d add half a mile at the very least.” He tested the bog, which seemed to hold him up. The cow hesitated: should it follow? But when Vatanen turned and ordered it to follow, it summoned up courage. Its hooves did sink a bit, but Vatanen calculated that, in a dry summer like this, a sphagnum-moss bog would support a single cow; besides, the cattle on these outlying farms knew how to cope with bogs.

  But toward the center, the bog turned squashier. The swamp began to give under the cow: it needed to break into a trot if it wasn’t going to sink in the ooze. There was no headway to be made in the mire, so they had to take a detour along some ridges of sphagnum moss. In the slushier spots, Vatanen himself had to break into a trot, and halfway across the swamp his boots stuck in the mud. He gave his leg a furious yank, but his boot remained stuck, and then the other stuck too. With an awkward effort, he managed to jump barefoot onto a dry spot.

  From behind came a lowing. He swung around anxiously to look. The cumbersome cow had been athletically following his footsteps, but now it could no longer keep up. It had sunk to its belly in the bog and lay there motionless, mooing for help.

  Vatanen dropped the calf on a sphagnum ridge and ran to the cow’s help. He tried hauling it by the horns onto a drier patch, but no man is strong enough to heave a cow out of a swamp.

  He had to move fast. Whipping an ax out of his knapsack, he ran fifty yards to some little dead trees that were sticking up out of the marsh. He chopped several down, stripped the sharp twigs off them, and ran back to the cow, which had sunk a little deeper still.

  He thrust the rods he’d made under the cow’s belly. The beast seemed to understand that his intention was good: it didn’t thrash about, even though thin trunks shoved under its belly may well have been painful. The sinking stopped. Vatanen tried to pry the beast higher, but with very little success. The cow was spattered with black mud. The hare loped about in astonishment.

  “Why don’t you do something?” Vatanen snarled, as he prized and heaved at the cow. But the hare didn’t help, harebrained and helpless as it was.

  Vatanen broke off to go and calm the calf, which was on the ridge. He untied the blanket ropes, fastened them end to end, and then went back to fasten the rope around the cow’s shoulders. The cow’s dewlap was deep in mud, and Vatanen was soon black with mud from head to foot.

  The rope just reached as far as the stump of an old marsh redwood five yards away. Vatanen tied it securely to the stump.

  “If you sink now, then that stump’ll sink with you,” he told the cow.

  Anchored to the stump, the cow listened calmly to his words; it made no lowing when it saw him busying himself nearby.

  Vatanen made a tourniquet by separating the strands of the rope and pushing a stick into the gap. Then he began to turn. Soon the rope tightened. The cow’s legs began rising slowly out of the mud. The beast did its best to cooperate. From time to time Vatanen relaxed the tourniquet and went to prize up the cow’s backside, being careful not to injure the udder. The cow was gradually moving toward the stump.

  By turn, Vatanen reeled the cow stumpward, went back to prize the beast up, calmed it.

  During all this labor, time was flashing by so quickly it was evening before Vatanen noticed. He was weary, but he couldn’t leave the cow lying in the marsh all night.

  “No joke, this cowherding!”

 
; By midnight, Vatanen had gotten the cow into a good enough position for it to struggle out by itself. The beast summoned its last strength for a spurt from the mud and, finding solid ground under it, lay down immediately. Vatanen led the tottering calf to its mother and dropped off to sleep on the ridge himself. It turned cold in the early hours, and he moved over to sleep against the cow’s flank, which was as warm as a chimney corner.

  The morning sun rose on a mucky retinue: a black-mud-bespattered cow; a black-mud-bespattered man; a black-mud-bespattered calf; and a black-mud-bespattered hare. They woke. The cow shat, the calf sucked milk, Vatanen smoked a cigarette. Then he set off, carrying the calf to the far edge of the marsh. The cow followed, more gingerly than before, and when it got to the other side, it turned to stare at the bog and bellow at it angrily.

  At the next pool in the forest, Vatanen washed down the cow, then the calf, and rinsed his own clothes. He had no boots: they were back there in the mud. Last of all, he washed the hare. It was outraged for quite a while.

  When Vatanen and his train of animals reached the Sonkajärvi road, an empty cattle truck awaited him, and some tired men who had been vainly searching for him all night long. The other cattle had been driven away the previous evening, along with a worried Irja. Vatanen, too, was driven to Sonkajärvi in the cattle truck, and soon he was standing on the main street of the village, wearing smutty, mud-bespattered clothes, clutching a hare in his arms, and barefoot.

  10

  In the Church

  Vatanen spent the night in a boardinghouse. He had a poor night in a good bed, for he was now accustomed to life in the open air. In the morning, he went shopping for new boots, a pullover, underclothes, trousers, everything. He threw his dirty old clothes in a trash can.

  It was a hot, sunny morning, and Saturday as well. He took a stroll through the village streets, and, in his search for a good spot for the hare to browse, he came across a cemetery.