The Year of the Hare (6 page)

In the morning, Vatanen woke fresh and alert. It was eight o’clock. Hannikainen’s bunk was empty. The fishermen had probably just risen and were starting a fire outside. A coffeepot dangled from the bar above the fire, and Hannikainen shook some butter pretzels out of a plastic bag. Waders were crying from the shore. A morning mist lay over the water, and a bright day was on the way.

After coffee, the superintendent set off for the village to take up his duties. The sound of his car faded down the forest road and drifted out of earshot.

Hannikainen went into the cabin and came out with some lard, which he sliced into the frying pan on the fire. The fat sizzled, and he tipped a one-pound can of beef and pork into it. The food was soon ready. Hannikainen cut some long slices from a large loaf of rye bread, put the burning-hot fried meat on them, and presented some to Vatanen. It was delicious. In Helsinki, Vatanen usually had difficulty coping with breakfast, but now the food tasted marvelous.

Hannikainen lent Vatanen the superintendent’s fishing gear, rubber boots, and a fishing smock. Vatanen’s own shoes and suit were left hanging on a nail in the cabin. Probably they are there to this day.

The men loafed around the cabin all day, fishing, making fish soup, lolling in the sun, looking at the grassy lake. In the evening Hannikainen took a bottle of vodka from his rucksack, creaked the cork out, and poured them each a shot.

Hannikainen was already getting on in years, pushing seventy, completely white haired, tall, talkative. In the course of the day, the men got to know each other. Vatanen related the what and wherefore of his journey. Hannikainen presented himself as a lonely widower spending his summers as the young superintendent’s fishing companion. He was well informed on world affairs and thoughtful by nature.

What, Vatanen wondered, was so unusual about Hannikainen? So far nothing to justify the superintendent’s remark of the previous evening had appeared in Hannikainen’s lifestyle, unless quiet summer fishing was coming to be considered unusual nowadays.

The answer to this question was on its way.

After the second shot of vodka, Hannikainen began to lead the conversation around to government politics in a more serious vein. He spoke of the responsibility of people in power, their influence and conduct, and revealed that, after retiring, he had begun to do some research into these concerns. Even though he had spent his life as a police superintendent in a country parish, he was astonishingly well informed about the constitutions of the Western countries, the nuances of parliamentary law, and jurisdiction in the socialist countries. Vatanen listened with keen interest to Hannikainen’s pronouncements on these major international questions, which constitutional lawyers often have to deal with in Finland, too.

According to Hannikainen, Finland’s constitution gave the president far too great a power of decision in state affairs. When Vatanen asked if he didn’t think President Kekkonen had managed to make exemplary use of the powers devolved on him, Hannikainen replied: “Over several years I’ve been making a close study of President Kekkonen . . . and I’m coming to a most disturbing conclusion, disturbing to myself, too. I don’t mean I’m disturbed by his performance. I’m actually rather an enthusiastic supporter of his administration, but nevertheless ... All I’m doing is collecting information. I form comparisons, I sift, I make inferences. The result is extremely disturbing.”

“And what conclusions are you coming to?”

“I’ve kept this affair a careful secret. No one but Savolainen knows, and a certain carpenter in Puumala. Neither of them will reveal the results of my investigations. You see—the conclusions my research has led to would, if published, have a nasty backlash. I might well lay myself open to the law, and at the very least I’d be made a laughing-stock.”

Hannikainen stared at Vatanen fixedly. His eyes froze.

“I’m getting on in years, and perhaps a little senile . . . nevertheless, I’m not completely cracked. If you want to know what I’ve unearthed, you must give me your word that you won’t use your knowledge against me, or against anyone else.”

Vatanen readily gave his word.

“It’s a question of such moment that I can only beg you to give serious consideration to what I’m now going to tell you, and I insist that you never give me away.”

It was apparent that Hannikainen had a burning need to share his secret. He screwed the vodka cork back in the bottle, pushed the bottle into some moss, and walked briskly to the cabin. Vatanen trailed after him.

Hanging on the cabin wall, between the window and the table, was a large, battered brown suitcase. Vatanen had seen it the evening before but had paid no attention to it. Hannikainen lowered the case onto a bunk and snapped the catches open. The lid sprang upward, revealing a store of tightly crammed documents and photographs.

“I haven’t yet done the final sorting out on this archive—the research is still incomplete. But most of it’s here. With the help of this, you’ll reach a conclusion without much difficulty.”

Hannikainen started extracting documents from the suitcase: thick, typewritten leaflets, several books, and photographs all showing President Kekkonen in various settings. The books, too, concerned Kekkonen: they included editions of his speeches, Skytä’s books on the president, and several other accounts, including a book of anecdotes. The documents included many graphics, which also, Vatanen saw, centered on Kekkonen.

Hannikainen produced several drawings on graph paper, showing careful longitudinal sections of human crania.

“Take a look at these,” Hannikainen said, showing two cranium pictures side by side in the pallid light of the window. “Do you see the difference?”

At first glance the pictures looked exactly alike, but on closer inspection they differed slightly in detail.

“This on the left shows Urho Kekkonen’s cranium in 1945, just after the war. Then there is this one. It shows his cranium in 1972. I’ve prepared these drawings to show the changes with the years. My method has been to project outlines of ordinary photographs onto a screen—in different positions, naturally—and then transfer the outline of the cranium onto the graph paper. For Kekkonen this procedure offers no complications, thanks to his complete baldness. The method is extremely painstaking and demands unusual precision, but I have, in my view, achieved exceptionally good results. I’d say these are far more accurate cranial mensurations than are normally achievable. Anything more accurate would have to come from a pathology laboratory, where the skull itself is at the researcher’s disposal.”

Hannikainen selected another cranium picture.

“This is Kekkonen’s cranium at the time of the formation of his third government. As you can perhaps see, it’s precisely the same as the 1945 cranium. And here is the cranium of 1964, again the same.

“Now! Look at this: the cranium of 1969! What a difference! If you compare this, though, with the picture from 1972, you’ll see that
they
have a great deal in common.”

Hannikainen displayed his drawings excitedly, with burning eyes, smiling triumphantly. Vatanen studied the pictures and had to admit that Hannikainen’s drawings were exactly as he said: the crania were different, the older crania from the more recent ones.

“The change occurred sometime during 1968, perhaps toward the end of 1968, but in the first half of 1969 at the latest. I haven’t yet been able to pin down the time factor more precisely than this, but I’m continuing my studies, and I’m sure I’ll arrive at within a month or two of the precise date. In any case, I’ve already been able to prove, convincingly, that a change has taken place, and that the change is significant.”

Hannikainen paused. Then he said with emphasis: “I tell you straight, these cranial outlines are not diagrams of one and the same head. The difference is too marked, incontestably so. These old crania—from the time when Kekkonen was young, that is—are somewhat sharper on the crown, for example. In these recent pictures the cranium is flatter in formation; the crown is clearly rounder. And look at the jawbone. In the older pictures Kekkonen’s jaw is noticeably receding. In these recent pictures the jaw juts several millimeters farther out than before, and at the same time the cheekbones are lower. This profile shows it best. Also, the occiput has clear divergences, even if not so marked. In the old pictures the occiput is a little more flattened than in the recent ones. Look at that! When a person grows old, the occiput
never
becomes more salient—quite the reverse, I assure you.”

“What you’re saying is that Kekkonen’s head changed shape some time in the vicinity of 1968?”

“I mean much more than that! What I’ve established is that around 1968 ‘The Old Kekkonen’ either died or was murdered—or withdrew from government for some other reason—and his place was taken by someone else, almost exactly like the former Kekkonen, down to the voice.”

“But supposing Kekkonen became ill about that time, or had an accident that remolded his skull?”

“Skull changes of this order would, if sickness were in question, or an accident, involve months of recuperation. My studies indicate that President Kekkonen was invariably too busy, all his life, to be absent from public exposure for longer than two uninterrupted weeks. And, in addition, I’ve been unable to find, in a single photograph, any evidence of scarring on the scalp. Warts, yes, but nothing indicating surgery in 1968.”

Hannikainen replaced the cranium pictures in the suitcase and displayed a large chart: a spreading curve annotated with numbers.

“This is the chart Kekkonen’s physical height. The numbers record his height since childhood.... The figures from adolescence are not absolutely precise, but since Kekkonen’s service as a sergeant they’re completely watertight. Here is a photocopy of his ID card. See? Since his sergeant days Kekkonen has been one hundred seventy-nine centimeters tall ... he’s the same height here, at the time of President Paasikivi’s funeral . . . and now look again! We come to the year 1968: the curve suddenly leaps a couple of centimeters. Kekkonen is in fact, all at once, nearly a hundred eighty-one centimeters. From then on the curve continues unchanged till this point, 1975, with no change in sight. A sudden increase in height in his latter days—something rather remarkable there, don’t you think?”

Hannikainen thrust the chart of the president’s height aside. Somewhat frenziedly, he sought out a new chart. It was a careful record of Kekkonen’s weight.

“Of course, these figures are nowhere near as conclusive, but they do add certain indices. Kekkonen’s weight has changed very little since middle age. He has persisted in a certain annual cycle. In the autumn Kekkonen’s weight goes up. He’s sometimes as much as ten pounds heavier than in the spring. At the beginning of summer he’s without exception at his lightest, returning again in the autumn to his maximum weight. I obtained these figures from the Occupational Health Institute in Helsinki, and so they’re guaranteed accurate. But to follow the pattern decade by decade and compare the years with each other, I had to calculate Kekkonen’s average weights for each year, and those are what this chart shows. Now, you see, from 1956 right up to 1968, Kekkonen’s average annual weight is one hundred seventy-five pounds. After 1968, it is one hundred eighty-five pounds. The ten-pound increase continues from 1968 to this day, absolutely steadily, apart from the seasonal cycle I referred to. All in all, only the first two presidential election years show an exception on the curve, a couple of pounds, and such a weight loss, even though diminishing the whole year’s average, is quite natural and doesn’t disturb the curve substantially.”

Hannikainen turned to additional evidence.

“I’ve drawn up a lexicon of Urho Kekkonen’s vocabulary. Here, too, we see the same divergence after 1968. Before 1968, Kekkonen’s vocabulary was notably more limited than later. There’s an increase of, by my reckoning, twelve hundred words in active use. The reason could of course be that after 1968 ‘The New Kekkonen,’ as I call him, was employing new speechwriters, but even so, an increase in vocabulary of that order is extremely indicative. In addition, I’ve established that a considerable alteration took place in Kekkonen’s opinions after 1968. From 1969, Kekkonen’s views were becoming increasingly progressive, quite as if Kekkonen had been rejuvenated, by ten years at least. His logic, too, was noticeably improving. I’ve analyzed his performance here with extreme care, and, again, a clear change for the better occurs during 1968. Also, during 1969, Kekkonen was becoming somehow more boyish. He was getting up to tricks in public that he’d never have attempted before. Quite clearly, his sense of humor was developing, and he was becoming, as it were, much more tolerant toward the people of his country.”

Hannikainen shut his suitcase. He was now completely calm. There was no sign of his recent fervor. He seemed happy.

The two went out. A curlew’s cry came from the lake. For a long time they were completely silent. Finally, Hannikainen said: “I’m sure you understand now that it would be unwise in the extreme to set about publishing research like this.”