The Year of the Hare (20 page)

Vatanen put some money on the table, but the host handed it back. They went outside. He felt stiff; his stomach was hurting.

“You don’t have any boric acid, do you?”

“Leena, go and get some antiseptic from your mother.”

The girl ran in and came out again with a bottle. Vatanen undid his trousers, and his host saw the tooth-marks.

“A hellish big mouth it had!”

The host dressed the inflamed bite with the antiseptic and wound gauze around Vatanen’s stomach two or three times. Then Vatanen set off to pick up the trail again. From the edge of the forest he called back: “Is this Kotala or Naruska?”

“This is Naruska!”

Soon he found the trail, and the hunt was on again.

He could see that the bear was tired and in a fury: it had been slashing trees that were in its way with its claws, and bashed down several dead trees; chips of wood had been flying around everywhere. Was the bear, Vatanen wondered, going to disappear over the frontier?

“But nothing’ll save you now, mister. No use defecting to a great power.”

Overnight, a freezing wind blew in. The clouds allowed only occasional glimpses of the moon. He was forced to stop for hours. By morning, the wind had swept the tracks clean: he had to ski hither and thither before he located some fresh tracks among the snow.

How many days was it now? It no longer mattered.

He pushed the worn-out hare into his knapsack and set off again. Snow was falling more and more heavily, and it became a storm. In the whirl it was difficult to see the tracks, even though they were fresh. If he stopped the pursuit now, he knew, the whole trip would be a flop. His stomach was hurting him; the gauze had slipped down to his groin, but he couldn’t afford the time to adjust it.

The tracks climbed a plateau. Here the wind was strong enough to bowl the sweating man over, but he soldiered on. He had to! Now his eyes, he noticed, seemed to be failing him. Was he getting snow-blind after all the days and days of staring at tracks? More than likely.

“But you won’t escape my claws, you devil!”

It was dreadful weather: the storm kept him from seeing more than a yard or two ahead. Mechanically, he traced the powdering-over tracks. Gone was that joy he’d felt at the start. All day long the storm raged. He was no longer sure which way he was going, but he fastened on to the tracks like a leech. As he went, he occasionally sucked on some Naruska pork fat, now frozen solid, or clawed some of the snow stuck to his shoulders to quench his thirst. Then, suddenly, the tracks dropped out of the forest to the snowplowed road. The bear had gotten so tired, it had taken to running along the highway.

It had been skidding on the icy surface: there were great claw marks in the blowing snow. Vatanen shuddered. An icy chill went down his spine.

He came to a crossroads, with signposts. Excellent! Now he could find out where he was.

He stopped and, leaning heavily on his ski poles, began peering at the signs. But he didn’t understand the language.

He’d skied across the border into Soviet Russia. The signposts were Russian, in Cyrillic script. The surprise made sweat break out on his brow.

Should he turn back now? Should he report to the Soviet authorities?

“So this is where we are, damnit!”

His indecision at the crossroads was brief. He pushed off again in pursuit, skiing doggedly till evening, when he did get a glimpse of his quarry; but then darkness covered the beast. Again he felled a pine, made a campfire, and settled down for the night, his first in Soviet territory. Ahead of him were the immeasurable forest wildernesses of the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea: they’d test his mettle.

The next day, the weather improved a little, and Vatanen charged along like a mad bull. He crossed several large roads, with the bear tending eastward and showing no sign of ever turning westward. From the south, a supersonic aircraft sped overhead, off to Murmansk. He had to stop and look at the glittering-winged, faster-than-sound projectile. It made a deep impact on an exhausted skier: what disparate modes of transport human beings had!

The bear was avoiding villages and making its way through the deserted places. Vatanen didn’t encounter a single soul but did cross several ski tracks in the wilderness. Could his violation of the frontier have passed unobserved? Possibly: in the storm, Vatanen himself hadn’t noticed the boundary. Talk of an iron curtain was evidently misplaced: there hadn’t been a single strand of barbed wire to snag his skis.

His food had run out two days earlier, but the hunt went on. He came to a hamlet. The bear had slept the night in the ruin of a stone building, apparently an old salt factory, Vatanen concluded. That meant they were getting close to the sea: the White Sea.

He suddenly emerged onto the Murmansk railroad tracks. His skis clanked in the frosty air as he made his way over the many pairs of rails. The track was electrified—which called for caution as he hurried by.

His only nourishment was some pork rind he’d boiled the previous evening. He was hungry, but nothing except the bear mattered to him now.

And then—he came to the seashore. The bear was dashing out onto the ice; far out, a black icebreaker had several small cargo ships trailing in its channel.

The bear was scudding across the ice of the Kandalaksha Gulf, with Vatanen in hot pursuit. A few miles north, the factory chimneys of Kandalaksha were staining the clear, frosty sky. The bear, with Vatanen after it, loped up to the icebreaker’s channel; the last battle of this fearsome trek was being waged on the dazzlingly immaculate ice of the White Sea.

The bear rose on its hind legs at the edge of the channel. It gave a howl and a roar; the brilliant white neck-band in its black coat flashed in the sun. The bear turned on its pursuer, bellowing outrage and hatred. Vatanen took off his skis; he lay prone on the ice, melted the rime on the rifle with his thumb, released the safety catch, and shot the bear right in the chest.

The great bear collapsed on the ice: no second shot was needed. Vatanen crawled up to the bear, opened its gullet, and let the blood flow out, black and clotted. He cupped his hands and supped two handfuls. Then he sat on the huge carcass and lit a cigarette, his last. He wept; he didn’t know why, but the tears came. He stroked the bear’s fur, stroked his hare, which was lying in his knapsack with its eyes closed.

Two large airplanes landed on the ice, and soldiers leaped out. About twenty men came over to Vatanen, and one of them addressed him in the Russianized Soviet Karelian Finnish dialect: “So, well, comrade, you got it! On behalf Red Army, congratulations! Now I arrest you as spy. But no worry—this formality. Have drink.”

A burning-cold swig of vodka took the tears from Vatanen’s eyes. He introduced himself and said: “Excuse me for crossing the border, but otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten this bear.”

“Well! Comrade, excused! Some ski trip! Now, into plane. These men skin bear. You bringing this hare with you?”

They embarked, and the aircraft left the ice. A few minutes later, it landed on a mainland airstrip.

“Well! First sauna, then sleep. Interrogation tomorrow.”

V
atanen and the hare were held in custody in the Karelian ASSR for two months. During this period, Vatanen was interrogated several times and probed for information about Finland. It emerged that the Soviet frontier troops had tracked his crossing of the frontier and kept his ski journey under continuous observation day by day as far as the White Sea.

Vatanen had been mentioned on Karelian ASSR radio. The
Karelian ASSR News
interviewed him, and photographs showed him, bearskin on shoulder, with the hare under his arm.

All the officials were well disposed. He was not confined to prison but permitted to walk about freely in the streets of Petrozavodsk, after giving his word that he would not attempt to ski to Finland before the formalities were completed.

Finland was sent a two-hundred-page interrogation report, which included a detailed account of Vatanen’s movements on both sides of the border. The Soviet authorities in Petrozavodsk requested the Finnish minister of the interior to investigate the validity of Vatanen’s statements. A month later, Petrozavodsk received a reply from the Finnish authorities confirming the correctness of Vatanen’s statements; the document pointed out that Vatanen had been charged with a large number of crimes in Finland.

Vatanen had (1) committed adultery. He had misled the authorities by (2) not providing notice of removal on (3) deserting his family the previous summer. He was consequently (4) a vagrant. (5) He had retained a protected wild animal in his possession for several days without a valid permit. (6) In Nilsiä, Vatanen, together with a certain Hannikainen, had engaged in clandestine jacklight fishing and other piscatorial ventures without a permit. (7) In the course of a forest fire, he had contravened the alcohol regulations by knowingly consuming an illegally distilled spirituous liquor. (8) Additionally during the said forest fire, he had neglected his duties over a twenty-four-hour period while consuming alcohol with a certain Salosensaari. (9) In Kuhmo, he had desecrated a recently deceased body. (10) At the village of Meltaus, on the Ounasjoki River, he had been party to unlawful appropriation and illegal sale of German war booty. (11) In Posio, he had been guilty of cruelty to animals. (12) At Vittumainen Ghyll, he had inflicted grievous bodily harm on a ski instructor named Kaartinen. (13) He was charged with neglecting to give due and timely warning of a dangerous bear inhabiting the vicinity of Läähkimä Gorge, Sompio. (14) At Sompio, he had also contravened the law by taking part in a bear hunt without a permit to carry a weapon. (15) At Vittumainen Ghyll, he had obtruded without invitation on a state occasion organized by the minister for foreign affairs. (16) Under false pretenses, he had obtained treatment for the hare in his possession at the National Institute of Veterinary Science, Helsinki, a state research institute, and, furthermore, had failed to provide monetary compensation. (17) He had assaulted the secretary of the Coalition Party’s Junior League in the bathroom of a Helsinki restaurant and inflicted grievous bodily harm. (18) He had endangered life by riding a bicycle in an inebriated condition on the major road to Kerava. (19) While traveling between Turenki and Hanko, he had illegally become engaged to a certain Heikkinen while already married. (20) In Sompio, he had for a second time committed the offense of bear hunting without a permit to carry a weapon. (21) In the course of hunting a protected animal, he had violated the frontier of the Soviet Union without a passport or relevant visa. Thereafter (22), he had been guilty of the crimes that he had confessed to the Soviet authorities.

The document indicated that, because of the diverse criminal charges against him, Vatanen would be brought before the Finnish courts for trial and sentence. His extradition was requested. It was also requested that the pelt of the bear he had killed be returned to Finland, and that the wild hare in Vatanen’s possession be returned to Finland.

“Quite a record!” chuckled the interrogator in Petrozavodsk. “All I can do now is hand you over to the government in Leningrad. Let them figure out what to do with you.”

In Leningrad, Vatanen was given a room in the Astoria Hotel while the Soviet Union was clarifying the situation from their point of view. The Soviet authorities relinquished any further claims on Vatanen and, at last, on June 13, he was escorted to the station to be put on the train to Finland. The major who accompanied him to the station hugged him fiercely, kissed him on both cheeks, and said: “Comrade, when you getting free—well!—you come back Astoria. We drink together!”

T
his is how it went with Vatanen. Once over the border, he was arrested at the border town of Vainikkala, locked in a cell pod in an armored prisoner-conveyance van, and transported to Helsinki. The hare was also delivered there, in a plywood box with round holes in the sides and the word
Animal
on the lid.