The Year of the Hare (9 page)

It surprised Vatanen that the calf didn’t get an upset stomach, swinging in its hammock to the rhythm of his tread. But then it had been swinging many months like that in its mother’s belly. What a trip! Burdened by his calf, Vatanen was in a sweat. Gnats had come out, too: they were flying into his nostrils, and, with both his hands gripping the ropes, and the knapsack dangling on his belly, he couldn’t reach up to flick them away.

“Loving animals can be a heavy load,” he muttered to himself as a sprig of spruce lashed his face in a thicket.

But Vatanen’s load was not yet full.

He took a shortcut through a bog. “I’m not going to go all the way around that,” he decided. “It’d add half a mile at the very least.” He tested the bog, which seemed to hold him up. The cow hesitated: should it follow? But when Vatanen turned and ordered it to follow, it summoned up courage. Its hooves did sink a bit, but Vatanen calculated that, in a dry summer like this, a sphagnum-moss bog would support a single cow; besides, the cattle on these outlying farms knew how to cope with bogs.

But toward the center, the bog turned squashier. The swamp began to give under the cow: it needed to break into a trot if it wasn’t going to sink in the ooze. There was no headway to be made in the mire, so they had to take a detour along some ridges of sphagnum moss. In the slushier spots, Vatanen himself had to break into a trot, and halfway across the swamp his boots stuck in the mud. He gave his leg a furious yank, but his boot remained stuck, and then the other stuck too. With an awkward effort, he managed to jump barefoot onto a dry spot.

From behind came a lowing. He swung around anxiously to look. The cumbersome cow had been athletically following his footsteps, but now it could no longer keep up. It had sunk to its belly in the bog and lay there motionless, mooing for help.

Vatanen dropped the calf on a sphagnum ridge and ran to the cow’s help. He tried hauling it by the horns onto a drier patch, but no man is strong enough to heave a cow out of a swamp.

He had to move fast. Whipping an ax out of his knapsack, he ran fifty yards to some little dead trees that were sticking up out of the marsh. He chopped several down, stripped the sharp twigs off them, and ran back to the cow, which had sunk a little deeper still.

He thrust the rods he’d made under the cow’s belly. The beast seemed to understand that his intention was good: it didn’t thrash about, even though thin trunks shoved under its belly may well have been painful. The sinking stopped. Vatanen tried to pry the beast higher, but with very little success. The cow was spattered with black mud. The hare loped about in astonishment.

“Why don’t
you
do something?” Vatanen snarled, as he prized and heaved at the cow. But the hare didn’t help, harebrained and helpless as it was.

Vatanen broke off to go and calm the calf, which was on the ridge. He untied the blanket ropes, fastened them end to end, and then went back to fasten the rope around the cow’s shoulders. The cow’s dewlap was deep in mud, and Vatanen was soon black with mud from head to foot.

The rope just reached as far as the stump of an old marsh redwood five yards away. Vatanen tied it securely to the stump.

“If you sink now, then that stump’ll sink with you,” he told the cow.

Anchored to the stump, the cow listened calmly to his words; it made no lowing when it saw him busying himself nearby.

Vatanen made a tourniquet by separating the strands of the rope and pushing a stick into the gap. Then he began to turn. Soon the rope tightened. The cow’s legs began rising slowly out of the mud. The beast did its best to cooperate. From time to time Vatanen relaxed the tourniquet and went to prize up the cow’s backside, being careful not to injure the udder. The cow was gradually moving toward the stump.

By turn, Vatanen reeled the cow stumpward, went back to prize the beast up, calmed it.

During all this labor, time was flashing by so quickly it was evening before Vatanen noticed. He was weary, but he couldn’t leave the cow lying in the marsh all night.

“No joke, this cowherding!”

By midnight, Vatanen had gotten the cow into a good enough position for it to struggle out by itself. The beast summoned its last strength for a spurt from the mud and, finding solid ground under it, lay down immediately. Vatanen led the tottering calf to its mother and dropped off to sleep on the ridge himself. It turned cold in the early hours, and he moved over to sleep against the cow’s flank, which was as warm as a chimney corner.

The morning sun rose on a mucky retinue: a black-mud-bespattered cow; a black-mud-bespattered man; a black-mud-bespattered calf; and a black-mud-bespattered hare. They woke. The cow shat, the calf sucked milk, Vatanen smoked a cigarette. Then he set off, carrying the calf to the far edge of the marsh. The cow followed, more gingerly than before, and when it got to the other side, it turned to stare at the bog and bellow at it angrily.

At the next pool in the forest, Vatanen washed down the cow, then the calf, and rinsed his own clothes. He had no boots: they were back there in the mud. Last of all, he washed the hare. It was outraged for quite a while.

When Vatanen and his train of animals reached the Sonkajärvi road, an empty cattle truck awaited him, and some tired men who had been vainly searching for him all night long. The other cattle had been driven away the previous evening, along with a worried Irja. Vatanen, too, was driven to Sonkajärvi in the cattle truck, and soon he was standing on the main street of the village, wearing smutty, mud-bespattered clothes, clutching a hare in his arms, and barefoot.

V
atanen spent the night in a boardinghouse. He had a poor night in a good bed, for he was now accustomed to life in the open air. In the morning, he went shopping for new boots, a pullover, underclothes, trousers, everything. He threw his dirty old clothes in a trash can.

It was a hot, sunny morning, and Saturday as well. He took a stroll through the village streets, and, in his search for a good spot for the hare to browse, he came across a cemetery.

The herbaceous arrangements on the little hillocks were very much to the hare’s taste. It particularly relished the ryegrass on the recent spring graves.

The church door was unlocked. Vatanen called the hare away from the graves and brought it inside. What a wonderful coolness and peace! Though Vatanen had long since stopped going to church, he still relished the silence of the huge space.

The hare hopped along the central aisle to the chancel, dropped a few innocent pellets in front of the altar, and then began studying the church more systematically. Vatanen sat down in a pew, observing the altar painting and the architecture of the nave. There were places for about six hundred people there, he estimated. The nave was partially two-level: both side walls were lined full-length with galleries that joined under the organ loft at the back. Wooden staircases led to the galleries from either side of the altar. A looming light from the high, narrow windows evoked a dreamy, peaceful ambience.

He gathered up the hare droppings from the altar and slipped them into his pocket. He made his way down a side aisle to a pew tucked away at the back, removed his shiny new boots, stretched out on the bench, settled the knapsack under his head, and prepared for a nap. This was a much more agreeable place for sleeping than the boardinghouse. The eye could travel into the lofty Christian spaces of the ceiling, and the still, pitch-pine columns adorned with verses were a fine contrast to the grubby designs on the peeling boardinghouse wallpaper. The hare was silently pottering around by the sacristy door behind the altar. Let it, Vatanen thought, and dozed off.

While he was sleeping, an elderly man came into the church: the pastor, here to do a few ecclesiastical chores. In his ministerial garb, a black cassock with the white tabs of his clerical bands at the neck, he walked briskly past the altar to the sacristy without noticing the hare near the door. It stared in astonishment at this apparition of a black-cassocked man.

The pastor came out of the sacristy hugging a collection of long candles and a pile of paper, probably crumpled-up packing paper. He went up the steps to the altar, removed the guttered candles from their candle-sticks, and replaced them with new ones. He took the candle stubs back into the sacristy and simultaneously disposed of the ball of paper.

When he returned, he lit the candles and retreated into the central aisle to appreciate the result. He tapped his pocket through the cassock, rattling a box of matches, then produced a cigarette and lit up, blowing the smoke away from the altar with each puff. When the cigarette burned down, he stubbed it on a stone windowsill, blew the ash onto the floor, put the batt in his matchbox, and thrust the box in his pocket. Finally, he rubbed his hands on the hem of his cassock, as if to wipe away his sin of smoking.

He again went into the sacristy. When he came back, he was holding several sheets of paper, probably sermons.

Only now did he see the hare, which had lolloped its way up to the altar. It had profanely left a few new droppings by the sacred place, and now it was sniffing the flower arrangements on the altar steps.

The pastor was shocked into letting the sheets of paper slip from his hands and float down to the floor.

“Lord help us!”

The hare hopped down the altar steps and vanished into a side aisle.

Vatanen woke. He rose from his sleeping position and saw the hare flashing to the back of the church and the shocked pastor wiping sweat from his forehead.

He sank back behind the pew to follow what was happening unobserved.

The elderly pastor recovered rather fast. He cautiously crept into the side aisle and saw the hare sitting up on its hind legs at the other end: a charming creature in a graceful pose.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty!” he coaxed, but the hare didn’t trust the invitation: the rector was in such a stew, the hare sensed danger.

The pastor made a faster rush than seemed possible for such an elderly man and tried to trap the hare under his cassock. No luck: the hare was faster.

“It’s very smart, but I’ve got to get it.”

The hare circled around to the altar. The pastor stole along the central aisle, slightly out of breath, approaching the altar, too. When he reached the critical distance, the hare dashed up the stairway to the gallery. The pastor didn’t follow at once. He collected his papers off the floor, arranged them on the altar rail, and then noticed the droppings by the altar.

In dismay, he picked up the droppings and threw them into the pulpit one by one, not missing with a single throw. He rested a moment and then clambered up the steps to the gallery. The heavy beams creaked under his feet as he trod his way to the back. Suddenly he broke into a thundering rush: he’d caught sight of the hare, but the hare was taking off again. The rector shouted: “Don’t worry, I’ll get you in the end. You may be a wild animal but ... Kitty, kitty, kitty!”

The frightened hare ran around to the opposite gallery, dashed down the stairway, and hid in the sacristy doorway, behind the altar. The old clergyman ran the same route and came clomping down the stairs. Completely breathless, he didn’t see the hare crouching in the sacristy doorway.

He glanced at his watch, went to the church door, slammed it shut, and locked it. This done, he prowled the central aisle like a hunter. Then he saw the hare.

“Now you’re trapped, you little devil!” he muttered as he passed Vatanen. Playing it cool, he skirted the altar a yard or two from the hare, which thought it hadn’t been seen. Then the pastor made a tremendous leap at the sacristy door: arms wide, he trapped the hare underneath him. The hare gave a pitiable, piercing whimper like a baby before managing to wriggle free from the old man’s embrace and tearing blindly down the center aisle toward the church door.

“Oh my God!”

The clergyman was lying on his belly in the sacristy door, a tuft of hare fur in his hand.

Before Vatanen could get to him, the clergyman was on his feet and out of the church; through a window, Vatanen saw him hop onto a bicycle and ride frantically off toward the parsonage. Soon he was pedaling fiercely back up the hill to the church. Vatanen scarcely had time to hide in a pew before the pastor had swept through the door.

He hastened to the central aisle. There he stopped and pulled a Mauser pistol out of his cassock. He checked the magazine and released the safety catch, his eyes glinting in the dimness of the church, searching for the hare.

It was crouching near the altar. Catching sight of it, the pastor raised his pistol and fired. The hare leaped off in terror, while a smell of cordite floated down the central aisle. The pastor pounded around the flank; two successive reports crashed out. With the bullets whistling through the ecclesiastical air, Vatanen ducked behind his pew like a patron in a Wild West saloon.