The Year of the Hare (14 page)

Vatanen replaced a broken window with a new pane. He tore up the rotten flooring inside the bunkhouse and nailed down new boards. In between the two layers of the floor he poured the fine-grained contents of some abandoned anthills—a good insulation. The cabin at Läähkimä Gorge was looking splendid.

Scarcely a month after Kaartinen’s visit, Vatanen again had visitors.

Ten soldiers skied into the yard—from the infantry battalion stationed at Sodankylä, they said. Brewing tea on the fire, the lieutenant in charge explained that the battalion was going to carry out a three-day military exercise in these Lapp backwoods. And soon.

“We were really surprised. We’ve got the foreign minister to thank for it. Wants some sort of a show for the foreign brass he’s invited up for a Lapland trip. So it’s full-scale battle maneuvers, on GHQ’s orders. Damn foreigners: five hundred men shouting battle cries in the forest about nothing.”

The lieutenant asked Vatanen if the scheme’s HQ could use the cabin at Läähkimä Gorge as their billet. The foreign minister’s crowd were staying at Vittumainen Ghyll, he’d heard. “So is it all right if we come here?”

“Be my guest. Make yourself at home,” Vatanen agreed.

Two days before the official start of the exercise, a stream of soldiers began arriving at the Läähkimä bunkhouse. Some NCOs and several privates turned up on a snowmobile, bringing radio equipment, maps, food supplies, tents, unit flags. Vatanen asked if he could buy some ski wax and pork from them
,
but the quartermaster said, “No, help yourself if you want.”

The next day, more troops arrived. A long gray file of soldiers, conscripts, skied to the bunkhouse. The fellows were worn out. Army trucks rumbled, tents billowed around the bunkhouse and down the gorge-side, and one tent was pitched almost at the bottom of the gorge.

Vatanen was afraid the din would waken the bear. He hadn’t intended to speak about the bear to begin with, but now he told the major in charge of operations that if the troops weren’t soon deployed toward Vittumainen Ghyll, the bear might wake up, and Vatanen couldn’t answer for the consequences.

“To hell with the bear. I’ve got other things to think about. Read that book by Pulliainen, reindeer man. You’ll see bears are nothing to freak out about.”

At night, the temperature fell below minus twenty. Vatanen slept badly. He felt the hare breathing short sharp breaths by his ear; it seemed to be on edge, too, poor thing.

And what Vatanen feared happened, very nastily.

In the early hours, about five o’clock, a group of soldiers burst into the cabin, carrying one of their comrades in a blanket. When the lamps were lit and the surplus men had been ordered out, the injury could be seen.

The boy was covered from head to foot with frozen blood. His right hand had been torn almost off. He’d fainted, probably from loss of blood. The MO was sent for; he bandaged the kid and gave him a tetanus shot. An army truck started up in the yard; the radio operator asked for a helicopter, but flight permission had not been granted. The chopper was reserved for the use of the Foreign Office.

The mauled conscript was wrapped in blankets and lifted into the truck. The bearers wiped their bloodstained hands on their trouser legs as the truck began bumping off through the dark forest toward the nearest highway.

Shots rang out from the dark gorge. Vatanen went out and shouted in their direction: “Quit shooting in the dark! You might hit it!”

Later in the morning, when it was light enough, Vatanen skied down into the bottom of the gorge. The soldiers told him what had happened.

The man on fire duty had gone to look at the bear tracks with a flashlight. He’d gone into the thicket, though the sentry warned him not to. A short time later, the sentry saw the flashlight go out, heard a crashing and a yelling in the trees, and then nothing. When the men leaped out of their tents to help their comrade, a huge black bear with a white ring around its neck burst out of the thicket and ran into their lights. Spattering the men with snow, it fled into the darkness.

In the cabin, the officers discussed what had happened and gave the situation some thought. They bleakly concluded that neither war nor military exercises depended on one casualty. The major decided to put the exercise in gear exactly as planned. Tents were dropped. Soldiers quietly skied off in single file for Vittumainen Ghyll, where, the following day, they were to give a demonstration of combat for the foreign military attachés.

A radio message came from the foreign minister’s private secretary at Vittumainen Ghyll. News had reached them that a bear had been sighted at Läähkimä Gorge; the military attachés and their wives were extremely interested.

“We’d like to have a go at it. What we want is, first, to get a good look at it—photograph it, you know, and film it. Then shoot it. Can you arrange that?”

The major, who was receiving the call, objected. The bear, he pointed out, was dangerous: during the night it had mauled a man almost to death.

The private secretary dismissed the warnings. Clearly, the attachés had excellent weapons, and experience in using them. They all had the rank of colonel. The major was worrying needlessly.

“But in Finland bears are a protected species,” the major persisted.

“We’ve taken that into account. Been in touch with the minister for the environment. When he heard the bear had attacked one of your men, permission was granted.”

The major had to give in. He detailed a truck to bring the attachés and their wives on their bear hunt. As daylight faded, a colorful party was driven over from Vittumainen Ghyll, including the Swedish, French, American, and Brazilian attachés, and two women: the wives of the Swedish and American attachés.

“This is something else!” the American attaché’s wife rejoiced. “Can you believe it? Shooting one of these black polar bears?”

The party could hardly wait for their dawn ski trip and bear hunt.

The HQ operations room, with its radio equipment, was handed over to the women for the night. The major dejectedly took his equipment to a tent and directed night operations from there.

Milk cans were used to heat up water so the women could wash. Outside, by the campfire, the soldiers tinkered with the boiling water and complained about their assignment. Two little pea-soup pans were washed and consecrated to the women for more intimate ablutions. The pans were draped modestly in towels.

“Damn!” the signals sergeant said. “We forgot a mirror and a piss pot!”

The problem was solved with a milk churn, delivered into the women’s bedroom. The foreign minister’s private secretary was delegated to explain the purpose for which it was reserved. The women looked at the churn and then enthused: “Gee, talk about every contingency. The Finnish Army sure is well set up. These cans are really practical for field conditions! How come
our
armies don’t have equipment like this?”

When both rearview mirrors had been screwed off the truck and handed over to the women, the foreign minister’s private secretary was able to heave a sigh: the problems were pretty well straightened out now, even if conditions here
were
rugged.

In the morning, a couple of conscripts were detailed to empty the milk churns the women had used during the night. They carried the cans out gravely, but as soon as they were outside they ran into the forest and tipped them into the snow, retching and laughing.

“Pipe down, men!” the major called from the steps. “And get those churns washed out, on the double. I want to see sunshine through their sides.”

The bear’s tracks were easily found. The hunting party was brought into single file. Vatanen skied off first, following the tracks. Next came the hare
,
then several officers, and finally the rest of the party. Vatanen was fairly convinced the hunt would come to nothing, and as far as he was concerned, that was fine.

After an hour’s skiing, the group had split up into a long broken line: the military attachés, apart from the Brazilian, were still keeping up with Vatanen; the women and the other members must have stopped off somewhere farther back for coffee.

After another hour’s smooth skiing, there was a surprise.

They came to the bear’s former sleeping place, and the bear was still there! It had dug itself a sort of den under the snow and was apparently sleeping down there. Vatanen hissed his discovery to the nearest men, and the word was passed along. The hare sensed danger again and ran around in terror at Vatanen’s feet.

The group organized themselves into a firing position. Then they stood waiting for the women and the rest of the tail end. About half an hour later, the women staggered up, perspiring. The lady from the United States sat down on her skis in the snow and lit a cigarette. She was completely exhausted; her eye makeup had run down her cheeks. She looked pretty miserable, that was sure. Her Swedish sister was in better shape, but she, too, was tired.

Vatanen entrusted the hare to the Swedish lady’s arms and asked her to look after it for a while. Then he skied nearer to the lair. It was a weird feeling, complete with butterflies in his stomach. There it was, the bear: exactly how fierce, no one knew. Vatanen had not done anything like this ever before. He’d never hunted purely for pleasure. Now that he was part of it, he felt both shame and fear.

Vatanen bellowed in horror. A film camera began to hum.

The bear woke with a jump but was at once alert to danger. It tossed the detritus aside and made a dash at Vatanen. Vatanen hit it on the head with the butt of his rifle, so hard he split the wooden butt. The bear darted through the cordon and turned to the women. Two shots rang out. Neither hit.

The bear reared in front of the Swedish lady and paused on its hind legs, apparently astounded at the sight of a woman hugging a hare in her arms. The bear sniffed the hare and then hugged the woman: three creatures in one embrace. The hare and the woman squealed with terror, alarming the bear. It hurled both of them away—the woman five or six yards, the hare still farther. And right away the bear took off in full flight.

Several shots rang out after it. One may have hit, for the bear let out a great roar and turned toward its enemies; but then it continued its swift lope and had soon disappeared from sight.

A couple of soldiers skied off after the bear, though the pursuit now looked pointless. The rest of the party gathered around the Swedish lady, who was hysterical, weeping in the snow. Hardly surprising, after an ordeal like that.

They radioed for a jeep. A couple of hours later, they were all back at Läähkimä Gorge. In front of the cabin was a heavy air force helicopter; the women were helped into it. The Swedish woman had been holding on to the hare the whole time. Its coat was wet with her tears, and now she was taking the hare into the helicopter with her.

Vatanen objected.

“Come on, now,” said the foreign minister’s private secretary. “You’re a big man. Can’t you see she’s in a state of shock? You must let her hang on to it.... The foreign minister’ll make it up to you. Anyway, you can get yourself a thousand hares in this forest, can’t you?”

Vatanen refused to give up his hare. From the helicopter the lady sent word: she couldn’t ever think of parting with the hare; it had shared the most horrifying moments of her whole life. The private secretary found himself anxiously negotiating under the helicopter blades in the bunkhouse yard. He tried a compromise, but his diplomatic skills weren’t cutting it with Vatanen; they were getting nowhere.

The lady announced she could not
,
under any circumstances, leave this poor little hare in this fearful wilderness, a prey to wild beasts, at the mercy of savage Finnish men.

Vatanen proposed that if the lady could not, at the present moment
,
see her way clear to giving up what was not her property, the rights of the matter would no doubt be settled later.

“Very well
,
get in yourself,” the private secretary exploded, having had enough. “You are, I have to say, an unusually petty individual.”

The rest of the party climbed into the helicopter. The heavy warplane revved up its engines, lifted into the air, and headed for Vittumainen Ghyll. There a veritable winter war was in progress, but the foreign military attachés paid no attention to how things were going. They went straight from the chopper to the log hostel. Outside, the Finnish Army was left shouting battle cries about ... nothing.

I
n the spacious men’s side of the Vittumainen Ghyll guesthouse, a table had been set for a magnificent dinner. The long raw-pine table had been covered with a handsome white cloth and loaded with succulent delicacies from Helsinki. Places for more than twenty had been set around the table. In the spaces between the delicacies stood bowls of fruit and miniature national flags of all the military attachés. The private secretary of the foreign minister presided at one end of the table, and a general from the Defense Department at the other.