The Year of the Hare (8 page)

The driver didn’t stop after wiping out the fire: he accelerated the bulldozer to full speed. The machine broke through the bank by the lake; the ground gave way, the caterpillars squirmed, the bushes swayed as the apparatus muscled through the bank and straight into the lake; the calm surface of the water was shattered. The excavator pushed a large foaming wave into the heart of the lake. It was as if a steel hippopotamus had angrily taken to the water.

The lake bottom had a gradual slope. First the excavator was immersed, then the caterpillars; as the water foamed into the tracks, the clatter changed to a squelching. The machine was butting a wave in front of it, which swilled farther and farther out. Soon, water rose up to the red-hot engine: there were rumblings and bubblings as the lake water boiled on the engine sides. A thick cloud of steam plumed upward, as if the machine had suddenly burst into flames.

But the driver forced his vehicle ever deeper: the water rose to the engine top, the winch went under, and soon a wave was swilling over the hood. The machine went even deeper, the water swirled around the driver’s buttocks, and simultaneously the engine slurped water inside. It coughed to a banging halt. The bulldozer was marooned a hundred yards from the shore.

The people on the shore watched in horror. The driver now turned in his seat, slowly got to his feet, his trousers dripping, and then sat on the floor of the cab. He turned shoreward and after a pause shouted in a voice that carried: “Shut your mouths yet, have you?”

The women were whispering to each other: “Must be lack of sleep. It’s driven him over the edge.”

The firefighters let rip: “Damn you! You’ve ruined the soup!”

The man replied calmly: “Did get spilled, I guess.”

“Swim back now!” they shouted at him.

But he didn’t attempt it. Instead, he climbed onto the steel hood, the only part still above water. He leaned against the exhaust pipe, took off his boots, and poured water into the lake.

Someone who knew told the others he couldn’t swim.

There was no boat. They’d have to build a raft to get him off. The men with mechanical saws cursed: they were dead tired from their nights without sleep at the firebreak; now they were supposed to start making a raft to rescue a lunatic bulldozer driver sitting on his hood in the middle of a lake.

“Come on! What about a raft!” came a shout from the lake.

“Quit yelling. We will if we feel like it.”

The men conferred. One said that morning would be time enough. Sitting out there overnight would teach him a lesson.

They decided to make coffee before beginning work. When the driver saw no one was making a start, he went berserk: threats howled across the calm water. Finally, he yelled: “Just wait. The minute I’m back, you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“Raving mad,” they decided.

He got more and more agitated, hammering the metal hood with his fists. The banging carried across the lake to the far shore and sent the waterbirds flocking into the air and sliding into the reeds.

All the same, the men gradually put together a sort of raft—they bound logs together with rope, hewed a pole—but then retired on the lakeside bank to think about sleep. No one was in the mood to set out and rescue a raving driver.

He was still howling from the hood of his bulldozer: “Just wait! First one I get hold of, I’ll flatten him out in the bog!”

They pondered what to do. Poling out, on a make-shift raft, to fetch a rather hefty near-homicidal maniac who’d gone several days without sleep, had no appeal for anyone. They’d fetch him off his machine in the morning, they decided; by then he might have calmed down a bit.

All night long, the driver stormed on the lake. He yelled and yelled, though no one answered, till his voice became a croak. He kicked the bulldozer’s headlights to smithereens. He twisted the exhaust pipe off and threw the heavy metal object at the shore, which fortunately it didn’t reach. Not till the early morning hours did he begin to tire; as dawn approached, he snatched a couple of hours’ sleep, belly-down on the hood.

At morning coffee time, people began stirring, and the sounds woke the man on the bulldozer. He began roaring again, slipped off his machine, and flopped into the water.

That brought things to life. The man was splashing around by his machine, yelling in terror. Sliding the raft into the water, Vatanen and another man started frantically poling it toward the bulldozer. The driver was making vain clutchings to climb onto his engine, but his hands slipped on the wet metal, and each time he fell back he went under and got more water in his lungs. His struggles became feebler and feebler, and finally he went completely under, floating facedown, only his spine poking up through his wet shirt.

Vatanen had managed to pole the raft to the precise spot; the two men hauled the driver aboard and turned his limp body on its side. Vatanen lifted the man’s waist, letting water and mud flow from his mouth. The other man started poling back toward the shore while Vatanen knelt down and started administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, simultaneously pressing on the man’s chest.

The driver was lifted ashore, where Vatanen continued his artificial respiration.

Perhaps five minutes elapsed before the drowned man showed any signs of revival. Then the man’s body stiffened and his hands began to tremble, and finally Vatanen heard the driver’s teeth grating together. Vatanen was thankful his own tongue hadn’t been caught between the other’s teeth.

As soon as the driver came to, he grabbed Vatanen and started in on him; for a moment Vatanen had to tussle with him on his own before the others realized they ought to him give a hand. With the help of several men, Vatanen finally forced the driver to give in and tied him to a stump sticking up on the shore. There they left him, sitting with his back to the stump.

“A feisty one,” they said.

“Let me go! I’ll yank this stump up with me!” he threatened, but nevertheless he didn’t try to carry out his threat. Instead, he fell into a subdued muttering: “Damn people! Leave a man out there who can’t swim, all night long, in the middle of a lake. I’ll set the damn police on them.”

Several soldiers came to fetch him, and he was taken off into the forest, strapped to a stretcher.

A terrible wailing came from the forest, not dying out until much later, when the stretcher was a mile or two off.

A
new morning dawned. Vatanen was woken by the racket of motor vehicles: three Land Rovers had plowed their way through the forest and gotten to the lake. The men in them included the two superintendents, Hannikainen and Savolainen. Hannikainen had a knapsack on his back; a hare’s head peeped out from under the flap.

Vatanen rushed over to them, grabbed the knapsack from Hannikainen’s back, undid the cord, and welcomed the hare into his arms. What a happy reunion!

The hare sniffed Vatanen excitedly. When he put it on the ground, it ran happily around his legs like a little dog.

Savolainen took charge on the shore; his orders were to oversee evacuation of personnel and animals.

Hannikainen was there out of curiosity; time had probably been dragging a little, with his friends away firefighting.

“I got such a haul of pike, I had to go around the villages selling it off. I took the hare along. I laid off my research for a bit,” he added. Taking Vatanen aside, he whispered: “I made a few more calculations back there, though. They show that President Kekkonen—the new one, that is—will still be there in 1995. By my reckoning, ‘The New Kekkonen’ will then be only about seventy-five, whereas the old one would have been ninety. I fear it’ll cause a lot of unfortunate speculation abroad. They won’t know what’s going on, really.” He added: “Theoretically, it’s perfectly possible for Kekkonen to be still governing the country after the year 2000. By then he’ll be eighty-five. In my opinion, though, he won’t dare offer himself as president in the next millennium.”

Tents were erected on the bank of the lake; soup canteens were heated up; blankets were distributed. A large winch was unloaded from the back of a Land Rover and set up onshore. Its purpose was to haul the bulldozer out of the lake.

Since he hadn’t been assigned any other task, Vatanen went into the meadow to help the women with the milking. One young woman, Irja, had already milked three plastic pails-full of milk, and Vatanen helped her carry them over to a spring of water, for cooling. Soon the hare came hopping over as well. Irja fell for the hare at once.

“Oh, what a darling!”

“Would you like to take it to bed with you?”

Irja certainly would.

“You can, if you like. Provided you take me as well. Are you game?”

In the evening, the three of them—Vatanen, Irja Lankinen, and the hare—retired to a barn in the meadow for the night. Vatanen had taken some blankets there. Irja brought some soup from the tents. She made up beds by the rear wall of the barn, Vatanen closed the barn door, the sun went down, and then there was a voice inside the barn: “Stop it. It’s looking.”

The barn door flew open, and the hare flew out. Vatanen had tossed it into the meadow. The door closed; the hare sat there in the dusk, embarrassed. Half an hour later, Vatanen came to the door and apologized for throwing it out. The hare slipped in, the door closed again, and there was quiet everywhere. Even the curlews were quiet on the lake.

In the morning, Savolainen asked Vatanen if he’d mind accompanying Irja about eight miles through the forest to the Sonkajärvi road. She was herding some cows there to be loaded into cattle trucks and driven to cow-sheds in Sonkajärvi. Vatanen was delighted: nothing could be better than cowherding with Irja. Excitedly, he said good-bye to Savolainen and Hannikainen.

Hannikainen said: “If you ever get near Nilsiä, look me up. I’ll definitely have my research complete by then.”

It was a gorgeous day. They sang as they went along. The sun shone; there was no hurry. From time to time, they let the cows graze peacefully along the ditches, and at midday the beasts lay down for an hour or two, ruminating. Meanwhile, the cowherds went for a swim. Irja looked marvelous, sinking into the cool forest pool with her sumptuous breasts.

In the afternoon, a large brown cow began complaining. It moaned quietly, closing its moist eyes, and seemed unwilling to keep up with the other cows. Nor would it eat with the others; it just drank water. It strayed from the herd, mooing querulously, and walked between two trees, leaned a flank against one, and turned to look at Irja.

“That one’s going to calve soon,” Irja said anxiously.

To Vatanen the cow didn’t look any more round bellied than the others, but no doubt Irja knew what she was talking about.

“If we don’t reach the road soon, she’ll have it here in the forest,” Irja said.

“What if I go ahead to Sonkajärvi,” Vatanen said, “and bring back a vet?”

“Nonsense! It can drop the calf here. It’s healthy enough, that cow. And as for you, you’re certainly up to carrying a calf.”

After a while, the cow began to paw the ground and arch its back, clearly in pain. It let out urgent intermittent lowings, sounds you’d never expect from a cow. Irja spoke consolingly to it; the beast responded by mooing more quietly. Finally, it went to lie down.

After an hour, Irja said: “It’s on its way. Come and help me pull it out.”

The calf came out slowly, the cow groaning in agony; they had to pull hard. Then the calf dropped to the ground—the cow had heaved to its feet. The calf was slimy with mucus, and the cow, completely at peace already, began licking it.

Vatanen dug a pit a hundred yards away and buried the afterbirth. He came back to Irja and the calf, which was trying to struggle to its feet but continually flopping back, still too weak. It did know how to suck on a teat, though: it knelt down under the cow and gorged itself.

Obviously, a newborn calf like that couldn’t totter through the forest to the road. Should it be killed? Definitely not. Irja and Vatanen settled on Irja’s going on ahead with the cows, and Vatanen’s carrying the calf on his shoulders and bringing up the rear with the mother cow.

Vatanen pulled a blanket out of his knapsack, tied rope to the corners, and constructed a sort of hammock that he could carry on his back. As he squeezed the calf into the blanket bag, it lowed with fear, but to no avail. It was still incapable of managing on its own legs. The cow looked on calmly as the calf was tucked into the blanket.

Vatanen heaved the calf onto his back; its hooves tapped the back of his neck rhythmically as he plodded along. The hare was somewhat nonplussed. It loped nervously about at Vatanen’s feet but then settled down to the slow advance. Calf on back, Vatanen led the way forward through the forest. The pensive cow ambled quietly behind him, occasionally licking her calf’s head, and the hare undulated along at the rear.