The Year of the Hare (12 page)

Next evening, coming back tired from the forest and getting ready to make his supper, Vatanen had a surprise. His knapsack, which had been lying open on the bivouac branches, had been plundered. A considerable amount of food had disappeared from it: half a pound of butter, practically a whole tin of pork, and many slices of rye crispbread. Obviously, the culprit was that miserable flap-winged bird that had aroused his sympathy the day before. It had clearly torn open the packaging with its bony beak, spilled the contents around, and then spirited some off to a cache known only to itself.

The raven was sitting on the top of a tall pine, quite close to the bivouac. One side of the pine was covered with a shiny black mess: the raven had been shitting from its branch.

The hare was rather nervous; the raven had evidently been molesting it while Vatanen was away working.

Vatanen threw a stone at the raven but missed. It merely shuffled aside, not even opening a wing. It didn’t switch trees until Vatanen ran at the tree with an ax and started chopping.

If only he had a gun.

Vatanen opened another tin of meat, fried it in the pan, and ate the rest of the crispbread dry, without butter. As he ate his reduced repast, he eyed the raven on its branch and heard it burping.

An unassuageable black rage came over him, and before settling to sleep he moved the knapsack under his head. The hare hopped behind his head to sleep, sheltering close to the damp canvas of the bivouac.

In the morning, Vatanen carefully closed up the bivouac entrance with spruce branches, hiding the knapsack inside after making sure the cord was tightly fastened.

When he returned in the evening, the camp had again been raided. The raven had knocked the branches aside, dragged the bag outside the charred circle of the campfire, torn open one of the pockets, and eaten the processed cheese. The bird had also snipped through the cord and gobbled up the contents of last night’s meat tin and, likewise, the rest of the crispbread. All that was left was a packet of tea, some salt and sugar, and two or three unopened tins of meat.

That evening, supper was still more frugal.

The pillage continued for several days. The raven succeeded in raiding the knapsack’s victuals even though Vatanen covered it up with large logs before setting off for work: the raven always managed to worm its beak through the cracks and get into the bag. The knapsack would have to be enclosed in a concrete bunker if it was to be safe from the greedy bird’s ravages.

The raven became bolder and bolder, seeming to know that the man in the bivouac had no way of stopping it. Try as he might to dislodge the bird with ferocious roars and stones as big as a fist, the raven remained unperturbed, even a little amused by Vatanen’s impotent rage.

The bird was rapidly putting on weight and hardly bothered to shift from its branch even in the daytime. Its insatiable appetite forced Vatanen to frequent the food van three times a week instead of two. He worked out that the raven was costing him nearly thirty dollars a week.

This went on for two weeks.

The bird had become grossly fat. It sat lazily and impudently on a branch just a few yards away from Vatanen, puffed up, like a shaggy, well-fed sheep; its formerly grayish-black plumage had darkened and developed a prosperous shine.

At this rate, Vatanen’s forest clearance would bring in a very poor return. He gave much cogent thought to ways of getting rid of the bird, and when the invasion had lasted a couple of weeks, he hit on the ultimate contrivance.

The way to make the raven renounce its iniquitous behavior would be exceptionally effective.

And cruel.

Vatanen made another food run to Lake Simojärvi. The girl in the food van couldn’t help looking askance at her odd customer: besides turning up three times a week with a hare, he was buying more and more food each visit. Yet it was common knowledge he was buying food only for himself.

The word started to go around: “There’s this fantastic eater out there. Three times a week he comes. He buys a stack of food, and all he does is get thinner.”

The day after his brainstorm, Vatanen opened a two-pound meat-tin in a new way: instead of cutting around the edge, he slit a cross in the top, forming four sharp tin-triangles. He carefully prized the points upward so that the meat tin resembled a freshly opened flower with four metal petals. Vatanen dug the meat out of the center of this corolla with the point of his sheath knife, fried the meat, and ate heartily. The raven eyed the goings-on with a detached air, clearly expecting the rest of the tin to be its own as usual.

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.

T
he 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.