After hurling his usual maledictions at the raven, Vatanen started to conceal his knapsack under the logs. Before doing so, however, he pushed the triangular points back inside, so that the opening formed a kind of funnel, like the entrance to a lobster pot.
As soon as Vatanen left for the forest, the raven flopped down by the dying fire and strutted over to the concealed knapsack. It turned its head to one side for a second and then energetically set to: it edged its beak between the logs, tore at the knapsack straps, croaked a comment or two, nudged the logs around, and very soon pulled out its booty. Every now and then it lifted its large black head and cocked its eye to see if Vatanen was on the way back.
Having tugged the knapsack out, the raven dragged it a little farther off to a level spot where, during the previous two weeks, it had customarily carried out its predations. There it opened the bag with an experienced twist and attacked the contents.
Vatanen was watching developments from the shelter of the forest.
The raven hooked a crispbread package out of the bag, gobbled several fragments, then took a whole crispbread in its beak. As it started running with the crispbread in its bill, beating the air with its wings, it resembled a fully loaded transport aircraft about to take off from a short runway on an important mission. Its wings gathered air, and it rose from the ground. The hare backtracked into the bivouac in terror, seeing the pirate craft taking off.
The raven flew over Vatanen’s head with the whole slice of crispbread in its beak. It was like a kite: the morning wind coming across the vast marsh took hold of the broad wafer, and the heavy bird needed all its strength to beat air and hold course toward its forest hideout.
Soon the raven was back, and the hare, which had meanwhile managed to forage a little in the marsh grass, hid away in the bivouac. Vatanen watched more attentively.
The raven snatched the meat tin out of the knapsack. Before examining the contents, it stretched up and eyed the surroundings to be sure the coast was clear. Then it thrust its big head into the depths of the tin.
The creature bolted down several gulps of the greasy meat at the bottom and then decided to come up for air.
But its head wouldn’t come out. The raven was snagged.
It panicked. It bounced away from the knapsack, trying to wrench the tin off, but the snare remained obstinately stuck. The bird clawed in vain at the slippery sides of the tin, and the sharp metal edges sheared into its greasy neck.
Vatanen rushed over, but too late. The black looter took wing, making a great racket, the tin still tight on its head. Though it couldn’t see its way, it gained enough height to prevent Vatanen from finishing it off on the spot.
As it went, it cawed its distress inside the tin. The marsh rang with metallic kronkings, muffled but fateful. It flew straight up, like an evil black swan heading right for Tuonela, the Land of the Dead. There was a clatter and rattle in the tin, and behind that the overwrought croaking of the bird.
All sense of direction lost, incapable of a straight trajectory, it was performing aerobatics. Soon it lost height and crashed into the highest treetops at the edge of the forest. The tin rattled against the branches, and the bird tumbled to the ground, only to fly up again, bleeding, to new heights.
Vatanen saw it disappearing across the forest. Nothing but fearful noises reached the campsite, telling of the robber bird’s last journey.
A drizzle of sleet started, and soon the sounds stopped.
Vatanen picked up his ransacked rucksack, took it into the bivouac, hugged the hare in his arms, and looked at the horizon, the edge of the forest. There was more raven’s blood in the tin than meat, he knew, and there was enough cruelty in him to laugh out loud at his foul play.
And it looked as if even the hare might be laughing, too.
14
The Sacrificer
The week after the raven’s death, Vatanen left the Posio marsh and went to Sodankylä, about ninety miles north of the Arctic Circle. Spending a few days resting at a hotel there, he met the chairman of the Sompio Reindeer Owners’ Association, who offered him a job repairing a bunkhouse in Läähkimä Gorge in the Sompio Nature Reserve. It was just the thing.
He bought a rifle with a telescopic sight, skis, carpenter’s tools, and food for several weeks. He ordered a taxi and drove a hundred miles farther north along the Tanhua road, into the wild forest land. At the Värriö fork he came across a group of reindeer herdsmen sitting around a fire at the roadside.
“Can’t figure it out,” said one. “The hares around here have been white for weeks, but that one there’s still in its summer coat.”
“Could be a brown hare.”
“Never—a brown hare’s bigger.”
“It’s a southern hare,” Vatanen explained. The taxi driver helped him get his luggage out of the taxi. It was snowing somewhat, but not enough for skiing yet.
The herdsmen offered Vatanen coffee. The hare sniffed the men’s forest smell with curiosity, showing no fear.
“If Kaartinen sees that, he’ll sacrifice it,” one of the herdsmen told Vatanen.
“Used to be a teacher, maybe a priest, too, in the south. He does that—sacrifices animals.”
This Kaartinen, it emerged, was still a youngish man, a ski instructor at Vuotso. In late autumn, out of season, he tended to ski in the nature park and live in the bunkhouse at Vittumainen Ghyll, near Läähkimä Gorge.
The herdsmen were still sitting by the fire as Vatanen hoisted his heavy equipment on his shoulders, took a look at the map, and disappeared into the forest. The hare followed, hopping joyously.
It was about twenty miles through the forest to Läähkimä Gorge. With only scant snow, Vatanen had to carry his skis on his shoulder, and they tended to catch on the branches, slowing down his progress.
Darkness fell early; he’d have to camp in the forest. He felled a pine, set up his bivouac, and made a log fire for the night. Then he cut a slice of reindeer meat into the frying pan. The hare settled to sleep in the bivouac, and soon Vatanen was stretched out, too. Large snow-flakes floated into the fire, vanishing in the flames with a slight hiss.
The next day, Vatanen took a long hike before he reached his destination and could say: “Ah! The Läähkimä Gorge bunkhouse.”
He leaned his skis against the wall and went wearily inside. The log cabin was an ordinary reindeer herder’s bunkhouse, built in the old days as a base for men rounding up reindeer. The previous winter, a snowmobile had delivered boards, nails, rolls of roofing felt, a sack of cement. The bunkhouse had two rooms; one end was almost a ruin, and even the better end had a rotten floor that would need replacing.
“I’ve got time enough for this, even if it takes me till Christmas,” said Vatanen, talking to himself. To the hare he said: “You’d better get your winter coat on. We’re not in Heinola now, you know. A goshawk’ll get you in that brown.”
Vatanen picked up the hare and examined its coat. When he plucked at the hairs, they came away easily. A clean winter white was coming up underneath. Good, Vatanen thought, and put his ruffled friend down.
Vatanen was in no great hurry to start work. For several days he wandered about the neighborhood, seeing how the land lay, and bringing in wood for the fire. In the evening lamplight, he planned the repair of the cabin.
There was a sandy ridge nearby, and he dug several sacks of fine sand out of the snow for bricklaying. With planks, he constructed a mortar-mixing trough. The first thing to set right was the fireplace, which was in the worst repair: it was important to be able to warm up the cabin, and the first really frigid temperatures came as he began mixing mortar. The chimney was equally dilapidated; it needed plastering, but that was difficult in the subzero temperature: the mortar froze instead of hardening.
Time is in abundant supply in the wilderness, and Vatanen decided to put it to good use. He went up onto the roof and built a sort of tent around the chimney stack with his bivouac. Then he opened a space around the stack, going through both
the roof and ceiling, so that warm air from inside the cabin rose into the tent. He put a ladder across the roof and carried steaming mortar up to the chimney.
While he was repairing the chimney stack, a couple of reindeer drivers skied up to the cabin. The snow was already thick enough to make skiing more practicable than walking. They were astounded at the weird-looking contrivance on the roof, and neither of them could figure out why a tent had been put there. If their curiosity was stirred by this contraption, which was steaming slightly from its orifices, they were even more astonished to see the cabin door opening and a man carrying out a heavy, steaming bucket. He was so wrapped up in his job, he didn’t notice the reindeer men leaning on their ski poles in the forecourt. He carried the heavy bucket up the ladder and picked his laborious way across the roof, giving himself a rest every now and then.
Once up, he disappeared inside the canvas cover and stayed there a good quarter of an hour. Finally, he came out again, knocked the bucket against the edge of the roof to shake out the remains of the mortar, and came down.
The reindeer men said, “Morning.” They took off their skis and went inside.
In the middle of the floor stood Vatanen’s mortar-mixing trough, some boards, and various other building materials. These showed the reindeer men that nothing more remarkable was going on than repair of a chimney and a fireplace.
There was a fire burning in the fireplace, not interfering with the repair work, since the mortar dried better in the warmth. The reindeer men made some coffee on the fire. They were rounding up the remaining reindeer into the pound, they said: many herds had scattered in the forest. The construction of the Lokka artificial lake had meant less pasturage for the deer. It had messed the system up: now herding reindeer was much more difficult than before.
They had come via the cabin at Vittumainen Ghyll. Kaartinen, they said, had been living there.
They spent the night with Vatanen. After they’d gone, Vatanen was hard at work on the roof for a couple of days before the chimney was sturdy enough to last a few decades. When the mortar was dry, he removed the chimney’s tent. Then he swept the snow off the roof and began nailing new asphalt felt on top of the old, worn-out stuff. The subzero frost made the felt stiff and difficult to handle without cracking it. Vatanen had to carry boiling water onto the roof and pour it over the felt veneer, standing on the ridge. The hot water softened the asphalt, and, working quickly, he was able to spread the felt out smooth and nail it firmly to the roof.
It was a conspicuous activity: the boiling water steamed into the frosty air, enveloping everything, and floating high off in the clear sky. From a distance the site looked like a steam-driven power station or the kind of old-fashioned railroad engine that swallowed water and puffed out steam. Vatanen resembled some engineer trying to get a huge engine going under freezing conditions. The blows of his hammer were like the knockings of an engine cranking up. But the bunkhouse was no machine, nor was it going anywhere. Once, as Vatanen straightened his back and waited for the clouds of vapor to disperse, his eye fell on the far slope of the gorge below. There were tracks leading up to the tangled thickets on its far side. Something had been walking there.
Vatanen got down from the roof, took his rifle, and climbed back up. Now the steam had dispersed and he could see clearly through the telescopic sight. He pressed the gun to his cheek and took a long look at the opposite slope, occasionally giving his eye a rest. Finally, when his eyes were beginning to water, he lowered the weapon.
“It can’t be anything but a bear.”
He went down into the cabin, ushered in the hare, and started cooking. He pondered: Now I’ve got a hibernating bear as a neighbor.
The hare fidgeted around the room. It always did that when it noticed its master had something on his mind.
At first light, Vatanen skied across the gorge to look at the tracks more closely. The hare sniffed them and began to tremble with fear. No question, a bear had been there, and a big one. Vatanen followed the tracks to a treeless slope and, farther on, to a dense thicket of pines and fire. He skied a wide circle around the thicket but didn’t see any emerging tracks. So the bear was in the thicket, and now he’d skied all the way, around it. Quite clearly, the bear had made a den for itself in the thicket and was sleeping heavily.
Vatanen skied into the thicket. The hare didn’t dare follow him, even though Vatanen tried to coax it in a low voice. It remained on the open slope, looking insecure.
The bear had wandered around in the thicket, searching, no doubt, for a suitable lair. Difficult to know where it was. Vatanen had to ski deeper among the trees. Then he saw a tree that had been felled by the wind; the bear had crept under it. Not much snow had fallen on the lair as yet, and a little vapor was trailing up from under the tree trunk. So that was where it was lying.
Vatanen silently turned his skis and glided out of the thicket onto the treeless slope, where the hare hopped up joyously to greet him.
Back at the bunkhouse, Vatanen realized he had a visitor. Factory-made cross-country skis were leaning against the cabin wall. Inside sat an athletic-looking young man in skiing clothes. He offered his hand in greeting—a somewhat odd custom in Lapland. It was Kaartinen, whom Vatanen had heard so much about.
Kaartinen was entranced with the hare. He tried to stroke it and pat it, and Vatanen had to ask him to stop because the hare didn’t like being petted. It was apparently shy with the man, though it didn’t usually fear visitors if Vatanen was present.
Kaartinen said he was setting up a six-mile ski trail from the cabin at Vittumainen Ghyll to here at Läähkimä Gorge. He produced two rolls of plastic tape from the inside pocket of his ski jacket, one red, one yellow, which he was going to use to mark out a trail for tourists. A group of official visitors was coming for a backwoods holiday even before Christmas: that was the work of the minister for foreign affairs. Several dozen VIP guests were coming, and the press, too.
Kaartinen offered to buy the hare: first he offered twenty-five dollars, then fifty, and finally a hundred. Vatanen was certainly not going to sell; he was almost incensed at the ski instructor’s offer.
Kaartinen stayed the night. Vatanen’s thoughts were occupied with the bear, and it was quite a while before he got to sleep. When he did drop off, his sleep was all the sounder.
In the morning, Vatanen woke to find himself alone. There was no sign of either the hare or Kaartinen. Kaartinen’s skis were not outside, and there were no fresh hare tracks.
How? Why? In a rage, Vatanen leaped onto his skis, pushed off along Kaartinen’s tracks, but came back almost at once, lifted the gun off its nail, and started out again. What the reindeer men had said about sacrificing was going through his head. Vatanen went like the wind.
He swept up to Vittumainen Ghyll, puffing and blowing. He was in a sweat, steaming, his eyes smarting with sweat, and black rage was burning in his breast. By the Ghyll stood what was, in effect, a handsome country hostel, a log house big enough for a hundred people at least.
Vatanen kicked off his skis and wrenched open the door. Kaartinen was at a table by the window, just having coffee.
“Where’s the hare?”
Kaartinen backed to the wall, staring in a funk at Vatanen, who was gripping a rifle. Terrified, Kaartinen stammered out that he knew nothing about the hare. He’d left so early, he hadn’t had the heart to awaken his host, who was sleeping so soundly. That was all.
“You’re lying! Give me that hare, and quick!”
Kaartinen fled into a corner. “What would I be doing with it?” he protested.
“The hare!” Vatanen roared. When Kaartinen still refused to admit anything, Vatanen lost control. He flung his weapon on the table, strode across to Kaartinen, grabbed him by the lapels, and lifted him against the wall.
“Kill me if you like,” Kaartinen spluttered. “You won’t get the hare.”
Vatanen became so enraged, he dropped the man from the wall, flung him into the middle of the room, and ga
ve him a cracking blow on the chin. The luckless ski instructor went flying full-length across the cabin floor. There was silence, broken only by Vatanen’s panting.
Another sound became audible. A faint scratching and quiet thumping was coming through the kitchen safety vent. Vatanen ran outside, then in through the kitchen door, and wrenched open a cupboard door. Onto the floor rolled a hare, its feet tied together—Vatanen’s hare!
Vatanen cut the strings with his sheath knife and returned to the other room with the hare in his arms. Kaartinen was just coming to.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Vatanen demanded threateningly.
Then Kaartinen told his story. It was long, and not a little bizarre.
He had grown up, he said, in a very devout atmosphere: his pious parents were determined to bring up their son as a priest. When he passed his university entrance exam, he was sent to the University of Helsinki, in the theological faculty. But his studies there didn’t chime with his sensitive youthful scrupulousness: he was not as convinced by the Lutheran doctrine as he ought to have been. Doubt gnawed at him; his theological studies seemed alien. It alarmed him to think that one day, himself troubled by skepticism, he’d nevertheless have to preach the word of God to the faithful. Thus, disregarding his parents’ religious sentiments, he broke off his theological studies and enrolled at the Kemijärvi Teachers’ Training College. There, too, he tangled with Lutheranism, but the presence of Jesus was not as overpowering. Kaartinen qualified as an elementary school teacher.
While still at the teachers’ college, in a muddle of shifting notions about what was real, he hunted for his true identity in literature. He was fascinated by Tolstoyism, but the charm of that faded with time. Then he turned to Oriental religions, particularly Buddhism, whose study went deepest with him. He was even planning a trip to Asia, to visit the centers of the faith, but his parents, who certainly weren’t going to countenance pagan notions, refused travel money, and Kaartinen’s Oriental leanings gradually diminished through force of circumstance.
The Year of the Hare Page 9