The Year of the Hare (10 page)

The pastor made two circuits of the church, firing after the hare on both loops. Running up the central aisle again, he pulled up in shock to stare at the altar painting: a Mauser bullet had ripped through the canvas. It was a picture of the Redeemer on the Cross, and the bullet had pierced Christ’s kneecap.

The Mauser went off yet again—this time pointing downward and obviously by mistake. The pastor groaned and lifted his right leg. The smoking weapon slipped from his hand; he began to weep. Vatanen ran up to him and picked the gun off the floor.

The bullet had pierced the middle of the pastor’s black patent-leather shoe. Dark blood was dripping from the sole. There was a hole in the church floor at the point where the pastor’s foot had just been.

“I’m Reverend Laamanen,” he whimpered, standing on one foot and offering his hand to Vatanen. Vatanen shook him by the hand, being careful not to tip him over.

“Vatanen.”

Laamanen hopped along on one leg to the sacristy. At each hop, blood dripped out of his shoe onto the floor. Vatanen wiped it up with his handkerchief; the blood came away easily, being still wet.

“I got carried away, seeing that hare. I’ve had this gun since 1917. I was in the infantry, you see, a lieutenant. What possessed me? And a stray bullet’s pierced that painting! How can God ever forgive me, shooting His only Son in the knee, here in His own house!”

He wept. Vatanen was feeling pretty bad about it himself. He said he’d go to the parsonage and call for an ambulance.

“No, no! Be a good fellow and get this smell of cordite out. The town clerk’s daughter’ll be here any minute to get married. Let’s just put a bandage on. I’ve got to marry this couple first. And would you please be kind enough to gather up any cartridge cases you see lying around in the aisles? Kick them into a corner.”

Vatanen went around opening the church windows. The smell slowly vanished from the church. He found several empty cartridge cases and stuffed them in his pocket. In the sacristy he tore a small altar cloth into strips and put a temporary bandage on Laamanen’s foot. Laamanen was wearing insoles in his shoes. Vatanen changed them around, putting the blood-soaked one with its bullet hole in the good shoe, and the undamaged insole in the damaged shoe; that way, the shoes were almost restored. At any rate, for the time being, the insole would stop blood from seeping out of the bandage onto the floor.

Voices were already audible from the nave. The marital couple were arriving with their relatives. The clergyman hobbled to the sacristy door. Vatanen opened it and guided him toward the altar. Once in the chancel, Laamanen walked steadily, as if there were nothing wrong with his foot.

Vatanen settled down for the wedding at the back of the church; he found the hare pottering around there as well. It hopped into Vatanen’s lap and stayed there during the service.

Laamanen married the couple with practiced skill. After the ceremony, he delivered a short sermon. His eyes were moist, and several of the women, interpreting the moistness in their own way, began to sob. There was a moving atmosphere of utmost devotion. The men cleared their throats behind their hands as discreetly as possible.

“It was God Himself who created the institution of marriage, and our newly married friends here, like others, should hold fast to that. You see, what God, in His great mercy, has ordained is sacred. Too sacred to be profaned. Yet marriage is full of lurking dangers, and one of these terrible lurking dangers is jealousy. Jealousy rages around like a hungry lion, bringing an unhappy mind. Today you two, my dear friends, feel a deep sense of belonging to each other, and mutual love. Yet a time may well come, and a day, when some other person may seem still more dear. If that happens, I want you to remember these words from the Bible: ‘What then? Notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice.’ I quote from the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, chapter one, verse eighteen, and these devout words I pass on to you as guardians of your marriage. In a time of need, take them out, read them! Then the drizzle of delusory love will pass, and your soul will find its peace. I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

Laamanen gave the married couple a white-bound Bible and shook their hands. He stood firm on both feet till the congregation had filtered out and the door finally closed. Then he carefully raised his foot. The church floor was stamped with a large blood-stained footprint.

Vatanen hurried to the parsonage to call for a taxi. While he waited, the Reverend Laamanen lay on a pew, quietly sobbing.

“What can that marriage come to, since I, figuratively speaking, performed it in blood-stained clothes? My dear Vatanen, swear by Almighty God you’ll never relate what happened here in this church today.”

Vatanen gave his word. Then the taxi came. Before hobbling into it, Laamanen knelt before the altar painting, clasped his hands, and prayed: “Lord Jesus, only begotten Son of God, forgive me for what I have done to thee today. But in the name of our Almighty Father, what happened was an accident!”

Vatanen told the taxi driver to go quickly to the outpatient department of Kuopio General Hospital. Laamanen eased himself into the taxi, and soon it had vanished up the dusty road.

Vatanen stretched out full-length on a pew, and the hare fell asleep on the floor. It was tired. The silence, now complete again in the nave, lulled them both into a profound slumber.

T
oward the end of July, Vatanen took a forestry job. It meant billhooking and chopping excessive undergrowth from the woods on the sandy ridges around Kuhmo and living in a tent with an ever more faithful, almost full-grown hare.

He was now seventy or eighty miles farther north, about halfway up the map of Finland. As he performed his heavy labor, with no concern for time, he grew tougher and thought less and less about the flabby life he’d left three hundred miles or so south in the capital city. Here there were no boring political arguments with raw proselytes, and no randy women displaying themselves for picking and choosing. In the Kuhmo forest wilderness he could keep sexual obsession out of his head.

Anyone could live this life, he reflected, provided they had the sense to give up the other way of life.

He’d been clearing undergrowth nonstop for a couple of weeks and had finished his assignment: the privileged saplings had been given enough space to grow. It was time to head for the township of Kuhmo and get paid.

Around midnight, he arrived at a little village on the shore of Lake Lentua. His seven-mile trek had wearied him, and he’d have liked to stop and stay at some house; but the village was asleep, and he didn’t feel like waking anyone in the middle of the night. So he went into a windowless, timbered barn in the yard of a large farmhouse, threw his knapsack against the wall, and settled down to sleep on the floor. It’s very pleasant sleeping in pitch-darkness: the mosquitoes don’t bother you. People who live in the forest think such sleep is a luxury. The hare was restless, though. It kept sniffing the air around it; the barn had an odor of rotten fish. They haven’t put enough salt in the carp tub, Vatanen decided, and dropped off, giving little thought to the sweetish smell.

At about six, he woke and rose with stiff limbs, rubbing his eyes in the dark barn, and thinking the farm people would soon be stirring: he’d be able to get some coffee. The hare was lying by the wall, behind his knapsack. It was very agitated, as if it hadn’t slept the whole night.

He made his way into the middle of the barn and stumbled over something he hadn’t noticed the night before. When he reached out, his hand met a thick peg stuck into a plank. It was a bench for planing. This was a workbench in the middle of the floor.

He circled to the other side of the bench, feeling his way along its top in the dark. His hand met some cloth. Taken by surprise, he started groping at the bench top to see what was on it.

Someone seemed to be asleep there, under a sheet. Astonishing! It must have been a very deep sleep for him not to wake when Vatanen opened the door during the night.

“Wake up, man,” Vatanen said, but got no reply. The sleeper evidently hadn’t heard; at any rate, he showed no sign of waking. Vatanen touched the sleeper a little more inquiringly: it was definitely a man sleeping on the bench top, under a cloth, without a pillow. His arms lay straight down his sides; his boots were off; he had a large nose. Gently, Vatanen began shaking the sleeper; he raised him into a sitting position and addressed him.

Then he decided to open the door: the light would wake this man. Starting toward the door, he felt his pocket catch on the handle of the vise; the whole bench tilted, and the sleeper came rolling off. There was an audible thump as his head hit the ground. Vatanen wrenched the barn door open, and the light showed him that an old man was lying unconscious on the floor.

Vatanen mumbled: “He’s banged his head!”

He went over to the man, felt around his heart in panic, but couldn’t make out whether it was beating. Anyway, the man had clearly been concussed by his fall. In consternation, Vatanen carefully picked up the unconscious man and carried him out into the yard. There, in the bright morning light, he studied the man’s face. Calm, furrowed features, eyes shut. An elderly man like that could easily die from a fall off a bench. Better move fast. The unconscious man lay across his chest like something on a tray. He ran into the middle of the yard, heading for the farmhouse, but, luckily, just then a young woman appeared on the stoop, carrying milk cans.

Vatanen gave a shout: “There’s been an accident!” There he stood in the middle of the yard with the unconscious old man in his arms, saying: “I can explain this! But get someone who can do first aid!”

The milkmaid panicked in turn. The cans dropped from her plump hands, clattered down the steps, and rolled across the yard to the well. She darted inside, and Vatanen was left on the lawn, holding the man in his arms. The concussed man’s condition seemed to have gotten even worse. A flood of compassion swept over Vatanen—he hadn’t wanted to cause any harm!

People in underclothes were appearing on the stoop: the farmer, his wife, and the same young woman. But they were too shocked themselves to rush and help Vatanen resuscitate the man.

“You don’t have a swing, do you?” Vatanen shouted. “That gets them breathing again.”

But they were silent; no one made a move to help.

Finally, the farmer said: “It’s our granddad. Put him back.”

Vatanen was nonplussed. “Put him back” reverberated a moment in his thoughts. He looked at “Granddad” lying stiff in his arms. One eyelid had half opened. Vatanen looked into the eye.

Then he realized. He was holding a dead man: long dead. A gruesome feeling made him go weak; the burden fell from his arms onto the lawn. The farmer rushed down the steps and lifted the corpse onto his back. The deceased man teetered a little, but the farmer strengthened his grip, took the man back into the barn, laid him out on the bench, and covered him up with the sheet. Then he closed the barn door and came back into the yard.

“You’ve desecrated our granddad!”

Vatanen scarcely heard, for he was vomiting behind the well.

Explanations followed.

Vatanen had spent the night with the head of the house, who had died the evening before. The house was in deep mourning, for he’d been a grand old man. Forgiveness for the misconception now followed, but when they spoke of the old granddad, the women wept. Vatanen, too, felt a lump in his throat. The hare sat at a distance like a partner in crime.

At ten o’clock a hearse drew up in the yard. Vatanen helped the farmer transfer the corpse to the vehicle. They closed the eye that had opened in Vatanen’s arms, the driver presented a form, and the farmer signed it.

Vatanen was given a lift to Kuhmo in the hearse. Behind him, the coffin looked very dignified under its black pall.

The undertaker chatted on and on about the hare and revealed that he himself had a tame magpie in Kajaani.

“It’d stolen a reflector, from the chief constable’s wife, or so I heard, right in the middle of the town. Anyway, that’s what it flew in the house with.... By the way, changing the subject, I knew this Heikkinen, the old guy. He was a communist in his day, but he didn’t get fat on that. Turn communist and you’ll never get rich.”