The Year of the Hare

by Arto Paasilinna

  The major general asked Vatanen if it was true that the hare was his. Vatanen said it was and whispered that he had no intention of letting the lady have it as her darling.

  “Might be a little tricky to get it back now,” the general whispered.

  The lady gave the hare some lettuce, and it began eating voraciously. Its mouth went like a mill. A cry of delight went around the table. The hare was sharing a meal with the other members of the hunting trip! The company was audibly moved.

  The general buzz alarmed the hare. It released a little cascade of pellets onto the tablecloth. Some went into the Swedish lady’s soup. The hare wriggled out of her hands and bounced along the center of the table, knocking over a candlestick and leaving panicky droppings among the knives and forks.

  The guests leaped to their feet, all except the general and Vatanen. The general did pull his soup bowl onto his knees when he saw the hare hopping to his end of the table.

  Vatanen grabbed the hare by the ears and put it on the floor, where the poor creature escaped into a corner. The guests seated themselves again. There was silence for a while.

  The Swedish lady was more than a trifle on edge. Her left hand was fiddling with a lettuce leaf as if it were a napkin; she then sipped several spoonfuls of soup till she noticed the hare droppings floating on the surface. She became still more uneasy, stared at her plate, and then began delicately spooning the pellets onto the rim, as one might dispose of some unwanted black peas in pea soup. Once the pills were on the edge of her plate, she gave a nervous smile, dipped her spoon a couple of times, but without appetite, and then suddenly dropped the spoon onto the tablecloth. She wiped her mouth with a lettuce leaf and said in embarrassment: “Oh, how stupid of me ... May I have another plate of soup, please.”

  Her plate was removed. The hare droppings on the table were discreetly swept off, and a new cloth was spread. While all this was going on, a glass of vermouth was offered.

  Then the dinner was resumed. The conversation seemed to be avoiding the hunting episode. The Swedish lady did not even toy with her fresh soup: she stared at her bowl, saying something inconsequential to her neighbors from time to time. And then it was time for the main dish: It was hare. What a coincidence!

  The hare was delicious, but not many took a second helping; the situation was too confusing. Dessert was hurried along—Arctic cloudberries in whipped cream—and then people rose from the table. The cloth was removed, coffee was served, with liqueurs and brandy, and only now did the atmosphere begin to relax.

  Through the window, soldiers could be seen skiing past in all directions; army trucks were rumbling across the twilit landscape. The guests looked out with bored stares, as if the window were a television screen someone had forgotten to switch off during a tedious program. Soon there was darkness outside, as if something were wrong with the tube: the picture slowly dimmed until complete blackness prevailed. Only the sound was still working: the battle cries of the charging soldiers, the muffled reports of the blank cartridges, and the rumblings of the vehicles. The sounds penetrated the log walls of the Vittumainen Ghyll guesthouse, where the VIPs chatted urbanely about this and that.

  17

  The Fire

  At bedtime, Vatanen was settling down with his hare and his knapsack to sleep on the floor of the men’s side of the Vittumainen Ghyll guesthouse when the private secretary appeared and said: “As I see it, you’re sort of out of place here . . . Mr. Vatanen—that’s your name, isn’t it?—I suggest you take yourself off with that damned hare of yours and don’t put in an appearance again. That is undoubtedly the best solution for all concerned. I’ve spoken to the Swedish attaché, and he’s of the same opinion. He tells me his wife is no longer so set on retaining the hare as she was yesterday.”

  Vatanen began collecting his gear.

  “I do find it a little astonishing that you were able to bring yourself to take a place at the official dinner. Was that a deliberate act? And the animal—please, get it out of here. It’s already caused more harm than you can imagine.”

  “But it was the lady who decided she couldn’t do without it,” Vatanen muttered.

  “It was your damned hare that caused all the trouble. And don’t permit yourself to refer to the lady or what she wants. Now get out. Here’s fifty dollars, or a hundred, if you want. I’d like want to get this business completely off my hands.”

  Vatanen accepted the bills and asked: “Do your require a receipt?”

  “Get out of here, for God’s sake.”

  Vatanen had packed up his gear. He slipped the hare into his knapsack, its head poking out the top. Before going to the door, he offered his hand to the official, who merely sucked in his breath through his teeth angrily. Outdoors, Vatanen followed a path to its end, and then went a couple of hundred yards or so farther, to some soldiers’ tents. He climbed into a platoon tent and found a place to curl up and sleep. The weary soldiers were making tea and offered Vatanen a mug. No one asked any questions. The guy on fire duty threw more wet birch logs into the black stove, and someone moaned in his sleep.

  In the early morning hours, an alarm sounded, but no one left the tent. Someone dug out a pack of cards. Vatanen perked up at that and said he wanted in—if anyone felt like playing?

  He plunked the hundred dollars on the blanket, saying where it had come from, and the whole tent joined in a poker game. An hour later, the money had made the rounds. A soldier took a turn outside and came back with the news that one of the diplomats’ wives had been sipping hare-shit soup the evening before.

  An order came through that camp had to be struck by six o’clock.

  No one made the slightest move to carry out the order. In the dark outside, some night assault was evidently under way. The contribution of the men in the tent to the war game outside was to yell assault cries at the tops of their voices. The war was still going on: vehicles started to rumble and roar; tired shouts came from somewhere.

  Around nine o’clock, Vatanen emerged from the tent. It was still more or less dark, but the war games had now livened up somewhat—enough, at any rate, to put a stop to the tent life. Nevertheless, the tent had still not been struck.

  That was perhaps as well, for the Vittumainen Ghyll guesthouse was up in flames. It had evidently caught fire quite a bit earlier, and the flames were now out of control. The sleepers had woken up, and the windows were being blown out by the flames. Military men in underclothes, and their wives, were crowding out of the log building; shouting was getting vociferous. Flares were shooting up in the air; the conscripts’ war had taken second place.

  Vatanen parked his knapsack, with the hare inside, on the branch of a tree and dashed over to the building. The forecourt was crowded with people wrapped in blankets, bemoaning the crisis in a babble of different languages. The fire had probably started in the kitchen, for the center of the kitchen roof had caved in, but it had now spread to the whole building. The major general had taken charge: he was standing in stockinged feet in the middle of the chaos, bellowing out orders. He kept picking up one foot after the other: the snow was melting under his socks. He was wearing army trousers, but he had no tunic. In spite of that, everyone knew he was a general.

  People were still jumping out of the narrow end of the house, including women, panicking and screaming. Vatanen recognized many of them, one especially: someone was leading the Swedish lady out of the smoke into the forecourt. She was naked in the frozen snow, weeping bitterly. The blazing flames threw her figure into silhouette, and she looked extremely beautiful picking her way through the snow, supported by two soldiers; then a blanket was thrown around her. The whole building was now a mass of flames; soldiers were shoveling snow in through the windows, but someone swore it was going to melt the helmets on their heads.

  The helicopter was standing at the verge of the forecourt and looked in danger of bursting into flames. The general bellowed for it to be taken away. Where was the pilot? A naked man ran to the helicopter, burned his
hand as he touched the metal side, but managed to squeeze in, lower a window, and shout: “Too cold! Can’t take off yet!” His naked body was visible in the window, and sparks from the shell of burning logs were flying against the chopper’s hot metal sides like pinecones in a storm.

  The window shut as the general yelled: “Take off! Come on! Get a move on!”

  The private secretary ran into the forecourt, also half dressed. He asked the soldiers for jackets and shoes. Soon his arms were piled with clothes and boots, which he spread on the melting snow and distributed to the naked women covered in nothing but blankets. One woman received a pair of boots, another socks; tunics and great-coats were thrown over the women’s shoulders, till they were as fat as queen bees; white camouflage hoods came down to their white shoulders.

  The battalion’s Sixth Company came up, on the double. Exhausted, they stopped at the edge of the melting snow. An officer hollered, but it was a very ragged semicircle the men formed around the burning building. Their stained white snowsuits flickered red in the blaze of the fire. The men’s faces, black and frostbitten, looked improbable, hardly human; they were more like a chain of Moomins sent to close off the area. “Got a match?” someone asked. A cigarette lighter passed from hand to hand as the soldiers leaned on their ski poles.

  The heavy army helicopter began thumping and throbbing, and soon there was a full-throated hammering, as the great blades began slowly churning the burned air. Doubled up, the general ran over to the flight cabin, signaling that more people ought to be taken along. The private secretary, realizing what he meant, began leading women to the juddering chopper. Vatanen resorted to the tree and collected his knapsack from the branch, whispering soothingly to his hare, which was frantic after hanging so long on a branch, in a bag, in all this pandemonium.

  Vatanen tossed the knapsack on his back and returned to the scene of the fire. The hare whined in its bag but made no further efforts to escape; in any case, the cord would have stopped it if it had tried.

  The private secretary led some women under the helicopter blades; the door opened, and hands pushed on the women’s bottoms, thrusting them, wrapped in thick army clothes, into the cabin. The helicopter pilot and his number two, stark naked at the door, were giving a hand to help them inside. The general lit a cigarette. Vatanen decided to go and help with the loading, too. He jumped into the machine and lifted struggling people in till the helicopter captain said to him: “That’s it, Lieutenant. We’re off. Not one more. Door closed!”

  Lieutenant!

  Vatanen was about to get back out, but the naked electronics engineer grabbed his arm, fastened the door in his face, and clapped earphones on: “OH 226, OH 226, over ... Do you hear me? About to be airborne. Destination Sodankylä Garrison Hospital. OK, roger, out.”

  The helicopter’s windows were spotted with condensation, but, giving the nearest window a wipe with his hand, Vatanen saw the heavy blades starting to flash around with accelerating force. That sent a new blast of wind into the burning building, and the furnace spouted up ninety feet high. The tempest the helicopter was stirring grilled the collapsing log stories to a new brightness: in the pale morning light they glowed like Bengal lights. Then the machine became airborne.

  From the ground, the general was semaphoring: he spread his arms and closed them at intervals. The people down there were getting farther and farther away, and the ears of those in the cabin were being pounded by the drumming. Soon the figure of the general, standing in his suspenders, became very small; the glowing building diminished, and the machine rose so high the sun blazed into view.

  Ah, what a sight!

  Vatanen took the bag off his back and moved it around to the front; he pushed the hare’s muzzle to the window, showing it the grandiose landscape.

  “Look, boy, look.”

  The hare looked, sighed, and then huddled against its master’s chest; it tucked its legs together in the bag, crouched into a fetal position, and went to sleep.

  Immediately bright lights came on in the cabin. The cockpit door opened, and there stood a naked helicopter captain.

  “We’re on our way to Sodankylä. Flight time twenty minutes. I ask you to please keep calm. And then . . . could anyone lend me a little clothing?”

  He was given a haphazard collection of items. Meanwhile, the equally haphazard collection of people, about twenty of them, began taking a closer look at each other and peeking out of the windows. Vatanen noticed that opposite him was the private secretary, sitting tightly squeezed between two women, and looking distinctly ill at ease. When the official realized who was sitting opposite him, he said quietly, in a voice resigned to adversity: “You here, too. I might have guessed.”

  He had no shoes. His bare feet were obviously icy. Vatanen took off his own shoes and offered them to the secretary, saying: “Here, take these. Go on.”

  The American military attaché’s wife, who was sitting next to the official, noticed the hare; she pointed to it and said sweetly: “What an adorable creature! How lovely it is! And always with us! May I stroke it?”

  The helicopter was heading almost straight into the sun; the snowy wilderness was speeding by underneath. Back at Sompio, thick clouds of smoke could still be seen by craning the neck. The deserted forest glided vibrating below them. As they flew over Läähkimä Gorge, Vatanen could see the tracks left by the bear hunt. Nearer to Sodankylä he caught sight of a solitary figure plodding far below after a long trek; the tracks were like a mouse’s, but the maker of them was black and heading southeast. Vatanen looked so hard, his eyes began watering. He came to the definite conclusion that it was Läähkimä Gorge’s bear: it couldn’t be anything else.

  He said nothing. He brushed the drops from his eyes and stroked the hare. The smoke of Sodankylä was coming into view.

  18

  To Helsinki

  The helicopter touched down in the forecourt of Sodankylä Garrison Hospital. It was quite a spectacle when the diplomats disembarked into the snow wearing their heterogeneous medley of borrowed clothes. A doctor came to receive them and shook each person by the hand, including Vatanen. The arrivals were ushered into a ward and given a medical examination.

  The last one off was a naked airman. He lurked behind the chopper till most of the women had gone into the hospital, then made a dash for a nearby welfare center. The doctor ordered clothes to be sent over to him: they’d been requisitioned.

  Vatanen sat in the waiting room with his hare and his knapsack. Soon various civilian clothes, shoes, underclothes, everything, arrived in a delivery van from Mannermaa, the department store. Everyone could select what he needed from the mounting pile on the waiting-room floor and go away to try things on. The private secretary picked out suitable footwear for himself and then returned Vatanen’s shoes, thanking him.

  Once his shoes were on, Vatanen left the waiting room and hitched a lift to the main street in the Mannermaa delivery van. The driver had heard the news on the radio and asked Vatanen so many questions he began to feel weary.

  Vatanen was fed up with the recent days’ happenings. He got himself a hotel room and called the chairman of the Sompio Reindeer Owners’ Association.

  “I don’t suppose the Läähkimä Gorge bunkhouse went up in flames, too?” the chairman said.

  “No. But, listen, it’s time to pay me off now. I think I have to be on my way. There wasn’t much peace and quiet up there in Sompio, after all, you know.

  “I believe you. Sure, I’ll settle up with you.”

  The hare didn’t seem very well. It lay in the bag looking miserable, and when Vatanen let it out into the room, it hopped listlessly over to the bed and closed its eyes.

  Vatanen rang the Sodankylä vet to ask what might be wrong. The vet came and examined the hare but couldn’t say one way or another.

  “These wild animals can be funny, you know. Tamed, they can die for no special reason. Maybe that’s the case now. The only place that might be able do anything for it would be the
National Institute of Veterinary Science. They could analyze some blood samples—if they thought it worth their while, that is. But you’d hardly want to go all the way to Helsinki for the sake of a hare, would you? And, of course, they don’t take private cases.”

  But with the hare in such poor condition, Vatanen was determined to do anything he could to help it get better. He managed to sell all the equipment he’d left behind at Läähkimä Gorge, including his skis, to the Sompio chairman, then hired a taxi to Rovaniemi and took the flight to the Seutula Airport at Helsinki. At Seutula, he took a taxi straight to the National Institute of Veterinary Science.

  Vatanen walked along the institute corridors without arousing any attention: for once he was in a place where a man wasn’t stared at for carrying a hare.

  With no difficulty, Vatanen found his way to a research professor’s office; he rang the bell by the door and, when the green light showed, carried his hare in.

  Shuffling papers at his desk sat a white-coated, oddly grubby-looking man, who rose to his feet, shook Vatanen’s hand, then invited him to sit down.

  Vatanen said he needed help, or, rather, the hare did, because it was unwell.

  “So what’s this hare, and what’s the matter with it?” the professor said, taking the hare in his lap. ... “Hm, it might well have some parasite, I think. It couldn’t have been in contact with any foreigners, could it? Or eaten some unwashed vegetables?”

  “It might well have,” Vatanen said.

  “It’ll have to have some blood tests; then we can tell.”

  He wrote an admission note on a yellow slip and handed it to Vatanen, adding: “The hare’s from Evo, of course.”

  Vatanen nodded.

  He took his form to a laboratory and gave it to an assistant, who produced several hypodermic needles and took two or three samples from the trembling hare. The assistant said the results would be available in a couple of hours.