The Year of the Hare (7 page)

T
he hare took to the lakeside life. It came along on Hannikainen and Vatanen’s lake trips, hopped boldly into the small boat with them, though it clearly feared water. It grew longer, plumper, and stronger.

Hannikainen discoursed at length on President Kekkonen. The hare looked up at the men from the bottom of the boat its head to one side. Its droppings rolled among the fish. In this manner, the days went by on the forest lake, and no one felt a need to go anywhere else.

One morning toward the end of July, the hare became restless. It lurked at the men’s heels, and in the evening it hid away in the sauna, under a bench.

“What on earth’s the matter with it?” the men wondered.

That same evening the men noticed a strong smell of smoke. As the lake became still for the night, they could see, beyond the reeds of the farther shore, a blue cowl of smoke gathering.

“Somewhere there’s a forest fire,” Vatanen said.

The next morning, the smoke was enough to make their eyes smart. There was a wind on the lake, but the smoke thickened. It overlaid everything like a dense sea haze.

On the third morning of smoke, Savolainen came running across the boardwalk to the cabin.

“There’s a huge fire at Vehmasjärvi. Vatanen, you’ll have to go and join the firefighters. Take Hannikainen’s knapsack and put some food in it. I’ll spread the word around the villages. Let’s go, right away. Two thousand acres are up in smoke already.”

“Should I go, too?” Hannikainen asked.

“No, you stay here with the hare. The over-fifty-fours don’t have to go.”

Vatanen stuffed the knapsack with fish, lard, a pound of butter, and salt; then he left. Meanwhile, the hare was enticed into the cabin, so it wouldn’t follow Vatanen.

Vatanen was taken from Nilsiä to Rautavaara, where hundreds of men were gathering, some from the fire area, others on their way to it. Aircraft were continually droning overhead, lifting food from Rautavaara to the fire area. Tired, sooty men, back from the fire, had little to say about it; they crept into tents to sleep.

In a gap between the billeting tents, Rautavaara’s elderly pharmacist had established a sort of first-aid station and, helped by his daughter, was binding firefighters’ blistered legs and bathing them with boric acid. A television crew was apparently interviewing the deputy town clerk of Rautavaara. The woman editor of the
Savo Daily Times
was taking photographs; Vatanen himself got his picture in the paper. Canteens were providing soup for everyone.

Trained orienteers were required. Vatanen said he could find his way in the wilds with a bucket on his head. A party of similar volunteers were herded into a heavy army helicopter.

Before the helicopter took off, the officer in charge explained what they had to do: “I’ve photocopied the map of the area for each of you. Your copy gives you some idea of how far the fire’s spread. Last night it came to a stop at the point marked on your map, but that’s not where it is now. Right now it’s traveling northeast through the treetops at a hellish speed. Tonight we’ll be clearing a new firebreak seven miles farther up. During the night we’re going to let over four thousand acres burn away. Half of it may, in fact, have gone already. We’re dealing with the biggest fire in Finnish history—not counting Tuntsa, perhaps. Now, your task is this: You’ll be let down at the point marked with a cross in the line of the fire’s advance. You’re to form a chain at hundred-yard intervals from each other and head northeast for at least six miles or so, shouting and making a hell of a clamor to get the game to flee from the path of the fire. There are two houses as well. They’ll have to be evacuated. Get the people down to the lakeshore, at this point here. And any other people, get them out of the fire area, too. Also, according to our reports, there’s livestock at large in these backwoods, on the run from Nilsiä—horses, and about fifty cows. They’ve got to be driven down to the lake, also to this point on the map.”

They helicoptered over the fire area. The glowing heat down below seemed to be reaching right up to the chopper. The air was cloaked in a thick pall of smoke, the earth scarcely visible. The helicopter was buffeted about in the heat turbulence, and it seemed as if the long blades of the main rotor might crack and drop the chopper into the roaring furnace below.

The helicopter passed beyond the fire area and began descending like a large dragonfly. Its rotors churned; blue smoke jetted from the tail into the sweltering air. The lower the warplane got, the more the treetops swished. Finally, the pinecones on the ground flew helter-skelter in the hot downdraft; the helicopter touched down, and the roar of the rotors subsided.

The men leaped from the aircraft and scurried out of range of the blades, bent double by the downdraft. The door banged shut, the rotors roared, and the chopper disappeared into the smoky air. The men were left rubbing their watering eyes in the forest.

Vatanen occupied a central place in the chain. The men dispersed into the forest, their shouts echoing out from the smoky trees. Life does shake you up a bit, Vatanen was thinking: only a month ago he’d been fed up, sitting in a corner tavern with a mug of warm beer in his hand; and now here he was, in a hot wilderness, surrounded by smoke, carting around a knapsack of wet fish, and feeling the sweat running from his groin.

“A thousand times better here than in Helsinki,” he grinned, his eyes brimming with water.

The terrain descended into a damp depression. A large brown hare was zigzagging about, not knowing which way to go. Vatanen chased it away from the direction of the fire, and the creature vanished. In a dense clump of birches beyond the depression, a cow was bellowing frantically. It was so panicked by all it had gone through, its bowels were loose: its flanks were spattered with dung right up to the ridge of its back, and its tail was a smelly black whip. The cow stared at Vatanen with moist, fear-distended eyes, squeezing a stupid mooing from its swollen, panting throat. He grabbed it by the horns, screwed its head around with all his might, pointing it northeast, and kicked its backside. The poor creature finally got the point and disappeared the way it was supposed to go, with filth pouring from its rear and its bell clanking like a monastery fire alarm. Vatanen wiped his watering eyes.

The forest was swarming with various animals: there were squirrels and hares; land fowl clacked into flight and splayed to earth again; he chased capercaillies like farmyard fowl to get them to understand which way to go. He came to a brook, a little river of clear water about four yards wide. Smoke hovered over the lush banks and the water: it had a fairy-tale beauty.

Vatanen took off his sweaty clothes and slipped naked into the cool water, rinsing his bloodshot eyes and his mouth with fresh water. After his trudge through the smoke, a quiet dip in a brook was paradise. He swam slowly upstream, following the brook’s interesting meandering. The water flowed slowly against him, and he felt blissful.

Suddenly he saw something by the thick grass on the riverbank: a man’s hand, hairy and sunburned. It stretched out of the grass and rested in the water up to the elbow.

Vatanen was shocked: it looked as if the hand belonged to a corpse. He swam up to it and took hold of it. It was not unattached: it belonged to a large man lying back in the riverbank bushes with his mouth open. Vatanen got out of the water and bent down over the prone figure. He felt the pulse; it was beating normally. He put his face close to the man’s mouth to see if he was breathing, and a foul reek of alcohol met him. Vatanen shook the man, who slowly began to come to. He turned onto his back and stared at Vatanen a moment, as if trying to recognize him; then he offered his hand.

“Salosensaari. Who are you?”

“Vatanen.”

After they’d shaken hands, Vatanen helped the other man to his feet.

“Listen—you’re looking at the man who’s been dealt the world’s worst hand.”

He went on to explain. For his vacation, he’d decided to spend a couple of weeks fishing and also brewing a little moonshine in a quiet spot where he could be absolutely sure not to be disturbed. So he’d slipped off into the wild with all his tackle and set up his modest still. Then, just as the first ten liters are cooked, what happens? A forest fire that incinerates his still. So he has to flee on foot with the fire after him and a ten-liter vat of hooch on his back. And now here he is: his knapsack and victuals are up in flames, everything’s kaput, fishing tackle, the works. All that’s left is this first batch of the stuff.

“So here I am, parked by the river. Second day of drinking, this is. Still quite a few liters left, but talk about rotten luck!”

Vatanen got a little campfire going on the riverbank and cooked some fish. Meanwhile, Salosensaari went for a dip, and then they both settled in. After the meal Salosensaari offered some of his moonshine.

And why not? Vatanen accepted and drank some. Blessed stuff! It warmed the stomach. Vatanen took another nip.

“I’ll tell you what, Salosensaari, you’re a dab hand at making hooch.”

All afternoon the two went on boozing. From time to time they cooked fish or went for a swim. The more they drank, the less interest they took in the whole forest-fire situation.

As evening approached, they were both so drunk it was with the greatest effort that they crawled out of the brook, which they were flopping into every now and then to refresh themselves. The brook was deep enough in places to reach their necks.

“Must watch out. Don’t want to drown by accident,” Salosensaari kept repeating.

During the night, the fire reached the brook.

It was a fairyland. Blazing trees illuminated the night on both sides of the brook—huge red fluttering flowers. The heat was so scorching that while the fire lasted they had to stand in the brook: only their heads baked in the blazing glow. They had the vat of moonshine with them and drank from it liberally, watching with keen interest the destructive show of this wild, natural superstar. The forest crashed, the fire thundered in the trees, hissing embers flew into the brook, the men’s faces shone red upon the water, they laughed and tippled.

In the early hours, the fire passed by; the men emerged from the brook exhausted and fell off to instant sleep on the charred riverbank.

They didn’t wake till noon. Then they went their separate ways, after shaking hands in farewell. Salonsensaari took the shortest route to Rautavaara, and Vatanen headed for the point by the lake where the evacuees were to congregate. The ashy road melted the rubber designs on the bottoms of Vatanen’s boots.

The fire had been brought to a halt a few miles away. Vatanen crossed the firebreak and entered green forest. Soon he was at the lake, where both people and animals were congregating. As for the people, probably their houses had been burned down. The children were rollicking on the lakeshore; the cattle were bellowing with fright in a meadow; the firefighters lay on the lakeshore like sooty logs.

Vatanen handed over the rest of the fish in his knapsack to the women, who began to make fish soup out of them in a cauldron suspended over a campfire. Just as Vatanen was falling off to sleep, a bulldozer came rumbling to the shore. It emerged from the fire area, crushing trees in its path; huge red pines were going down under its excavator, like willow herb under a drunkard’s boots. It was pulling a large steel sleigh full of men who had mechanical saws and knapsacks at their feet.

The bulldozer thundered into the middle of the scene. Children woke up crying. The cows in the meadow panicked, heaved to their feet, and started bellowing. The women yelled at the driver, berating him: coming and shaking everybody up like that, killing the peace on the shore!

The driver couldn’t hear what the women were shouting. He switched off the engine and looked at them in bewilderment; it was probably difficult to make out human voices after the racket of the bulldozer.

“Have you gone nuts?” the women railed. “Plowing in on everybody and everything like that? Couldn’t you see you’d wake the kids and scare the cows milkless?”

The driver wiped a sooty hand over his black face and said with slow deliberation: “Shut your faces, you hags.”

“We’re not hags, you creep!” the women howled in fury.

The driver climbed down and walked over to the women. “I’ve been driving this damn machine three days and three nights without sleep, so shut your traps.”

It showed. He looked dead tired. Sweat had run great sooty streaks down his cheeks; his weary face looked like smudged ink. He went to the lake and rinsed the soot off his face, cupping some water into his mouth with his hands; gargling loudly, he spat the water back into the lake. He returned with his face still wet, not wanting to wipe it on his sooty sleeves. The cauldron of fish soup was bubbling on the fire. He went to take a look at it, pulled a mess tin out of his knapsack, and began ladling some soup for himself.

“Stop that!” the women shrieked. “Who do you think you are? That’s our soup!”

The man had managed to scoop a single ladle of savory-smelling soup into his mess tin. He took no more: he hurled the tin and soup back into the cauldron with a splash; the ladle he flung into the forest, too far to be heard dropping. He walked slowly over to his bulldozer, leaped athletically into the driver’s seat, started the huge machine up, and pressed his heavy boot down hard on the accelerator. The engine roared, sparks showered up from the exhaust pipe, and the machine clattered off, its broad tracks ripping up the smoothly trodden evening shoreline.

He aimed his machine straight at the fire and the steaming cauldron of fish soup. Nearing the fire, he lowered the excavator; it scraped the ground, peeling off a three-foot-thick layer of earth, sent the fire and the cauldron flying, and ground them into the dirt. Steam boiled up from the fish soup before both soup and cooking gear disappeared under the turned soil. Nothing was left but a three-foot-deep channel pointing to the lake. Three kinds of smell hovered in the air: fresh soil, burned diesel, and the fading odor of fish soup.