Kaputt (8 page)

"Haivää päivää
—Good day," I said.

"
Haivää päivää
."

She was the daughter of Colonel Merikallio, a tall fair girl, a Finn from Oulu in East Bothnia. She had followed her father to the front, as a
lotta
during the first Finnish war, in the winter of 1939. She saw to the headquarters mess, and under her father's eye served at the table, a few hundred yards from the Russian trenches.

Her hands were livid from the cold as she chopped a large sheet of cellulose paste into a pail filled with warm water. The horse was tied to a tree and was twisting its neck toward the pail filled with the cellulose. The winter had been frightful; the terrible cold, hunger, hardships and toil had shrunk the faces of the Finnish people. The hard, bony features of the Kalevala heroes, as painted by Gallen Kallela, were showing again in the pale fleshless faces.

Soldiers, children, women, old people and animals, were all hungry. There was not a shred of hay, or of straw; not an oat to feed the horses; dogs had been slaughtered wholesale; the soldiers' gloves were made of dogs' skins. The people fed on cellulose bread, and horses relished the sweetish taste of that cellulose mash—the taste of cooked paper.

The girl untied the horse, grasped the halter and, carrying the pail in her left hand, moved toward a wooden tub sitting on a bench. She poured the cellulose mash into the tub and the horse began to eat slowly, gazing round from time to time. It looked toward the lake that shone dully through the trees. A cloud of steam rose from the tub, the horse sank his nuzzle into that cloud; then it raised its head, looked toward the lake and neighed.

"What's the trouble?" I asked the girl. "He seems to be restless."

Colonel Merikallio's daughter turned her face to the lake. "It smells the horses," she said.

I smelt the horses, too: it was a warm, greasy odor, mellowed by the resinous scent of the pines and by the lean odor of birches. The cuckoo gave its call at the edge of the forest; a squirrel, his tail erect, scampered up a tree trunk. The girl picked up the pail and went into the horse
korsu
. I could hear her talking to the horses with that slow sweet intonation of the Finnish language,- I could hear the dull thud of the horses' hooves on the litter of birch branches, the twinkle of the iron rings, the short impatient neighing.

I made off toward the lake. Svartström was waiting for me at a turn in the path; he was leaning against a tree trunk, his high sheepskin cap tilted back toward the nape of his neck, his legs sunk halfway to his thighs in Lapp reindeer leather boots with upturned points like Persian slippers. His eyes were lowered and he was slightly stooped as he tapped the bowl of his empty pipe on the palm of his hand. When I reached him, he raised his face, looked at me smiling, and said,
"Haivää päivää."

"
Haivää päivää
,
Svartström
."

He was pale, his brow damp with the sweat of fatigue and lack of sleep. As if apologizing, he told me that he had been in the forest the entire night with a ranger patrol.

"Where is Colonel Merikallio?" I inquired.

"He has gone to the lines," he replied. He glanced at me as he tapped the empty pipe in the hollow of his hand, and from time to time he turned toward the lake. I saw his nostrils quivering. He breathed through his nose as woodsmen do, as
sissit
—the Finnish rangers—do: a thin, cautious, suspicious breathing, just a thread of air.

"You really want to go and see them?" asked Svartström. "It would have been better for you to follow the Colonel to the lines. He purposely went to the trenches not to see them."

The wind was charged with the odor of the horses, that greasy, sweet odor.

"I should like to see them for the last time, Svartström, before they take them away."

We walked on toward the lake. The snow was sodden; it was already spring snow; no longer white, but ivory colored, with those green and yellow spots found in old ivory. Here and there where it filmed the red granite rock, it was the color of wine. And where the trees were thinner, it seemed to be covered with a thin coating of ice like a glistening piece of Orefors crystal through which pine needles, colored pebbles, blades of grass, scales of that white skin that clothes birch trunks could be seen. Twisted tree roots broke through the crystal sheet like frozen serpents,- it seemed as if the trees drew sustenance from the ice, that the young leaves of a more tender green took their sap from that dead, glassy matter. Strange sounds ran through the air,- it was not the wail of beaten iron, nor the sonorous shudder that bells make in the wind, nor the drawn-out soft note of a stroking finger on glass; it was not even the high, round hum of wild bees swarming in the thick of the woods, but it really was a wail; it seemed the moan of a wounded beast, the call of a lonely and despairing agony that crossed the sky like an invisible flock of doleful birds.

Winter, that terrible winter of 1942, that had been the great scourge, the great plague of the Finnish people, the white plague that had filled the hospitals and churchyards of the whole of Finland, lay now like a huge naked corpse across the lakes and the woods. That huge decomposing body tainted the air with its lean smell of rotten wood, and the first spring breeze was already bringing its tired scents, its tepid odors, its intimate and bestial dog's breath—the very snow seemed to be lukewarm.

For some days the soldiers had been less sad, more lively; their voices were a little louder, and during certain hours of the day a peculiar restlessness was creeping through the lines in the
korsus,
among
lottalas,
{5}
through the trenches and the dugouts scooped into the thick of the wild Raikkola forest. To celebrate the return of spring, which is their sacred season of the year, the men of the North light great fires on the mountains, sing, drink and dance all night. But spring is the insidious disease of the North; it rots and dissolves the life that winter has jealously guarded and protected within its prison of ice, and brings its fatal gifts—love, the joy of living, the yielding to light thoughts and gay feelings, the enjoyment of strife, of idleness, and of sleep, the fever of the senses, the deluding weddings with nature. It is the season in which the eye of the man of the North is lighted with a turbid flame, and the proud shadow of death that winter sweeps clean and free, sets on his brow.

"We have taken the wrong way, Svartström."

I no longer recognized the path I had so often followed during the winter on my way to the lake to see the horses. It had become narrower, more winding; the forest had grown thicker. As the snow thaws and changes color and the spring chrysalis bursts into flight out of the shining icy cocoon leaving the bare dead slough of winter, the forest regains mastery over the snow and the frost and becomes thick again—entangled, secretive—a green, mysterious and forbidden universe.

Svartström stepped slowly and cautiously; he stopped now and again to listen, detecting in the rhythmical silence of the forest, in that musical silence of nature, the crackling of the branches, the patter of the squirrel in a pine tree, the darting rustle of the hare, the anxious sniffing of the fox, the call of a bird, the whisper of a leaf, and far away—diseased and defiled—the voice of man. The silence around us was no longer the dead silence of winter, frosty and transparent as a block of crystal. It was a living silence, shot through by warm streams of colors, sounds and odors. The silence was like a river that I felt flowing around us; I thought I was being carried down the current of that invisible river, between the banks that were like warm, moist lips.

The mellow heat of the rising sun was pervading the forest. As the sun gradually climbed up along the arch of the horizon raising a slight pink mist from the silvery surface of the lake, there came with the wind a far-off rattling of machine guns, solitary rifle shots, the rapt song of the cuckoo; and at the end of that landscape of sounds, colors and odors, within a break of the forest, there flashed something opaque, something shiny, like the shimmering of an unreal sea—Lake Ladoga, the vast frozen expanse of Lake Ladoga.

At last we stepped out of the forest onto the shore of the lake and saw the horses.

It happened last year in October. The Finnish vanguard, after crossing the Vuoksi wilderness, crossed the threshold of the wild limitless Raikkola forest. It was full of Russian troops. Almost the entire Soviet artillery of the northern sector of the Karelian isthmus had rushed toward Lake Ladoga to escape the stranglehold of the Finnish army. It had hoped to ship the guns and the horses and to bring them to safety across the lake. But the Soviet lighters and tugs were late in arriving; every hour of delay could prove fatal for the frost had set in, gripping and savage; the lake was likely to freeze at any moment, and the Finnish troops, formed of ranger detachments, were gliding through the thick forest and pressing the Russians on all sides, attacking them from the flanks and the rear.

On the third day a huge fire flared in the Raikkola forest. Men, horses and trees clutched within the circle of fire sent out awful cries. The rangers, firing through that wall of smoke and flames, blocked every avenue of escape. Mad with terror, the horses of the Soviet artillery—there were almost a thousand of them—hurled themselves into the furnace and broke through the besieging flames and machine guns. Many perished within the flames, but most of them succeeded in reaching the shores of the lake and threw themselves into the water.

The lake is not deep there, not more than six feet; but a hundred yards from the shore the bottom suddenly drops. Pressed within that narrow space (the lakeshore curves inward there forming a small bay) between the deeper water and the barrier of fire, the horses clustered, shuddering with cold and fear, their heads stretched out above the surface of the water. Those nearer to land were scorched by the flames and reared and struggled to hoist themselves onto the backs of the others, tried to push a way open by biting and kicking. And while still madly struggling, the ice gripped them.

The north wind swooped down during the night. (The north wind blows from the Murmansk Sea, like an angel of doom, crying aloud, and the land suddenly dies.) The cold became frightful. Suddenly, with the peculiar vibrating noise of breaking glass, the water froze. The heat balance was broken, and the sea, the lakes, the rivers froze. In such instances, even sea waves are gripped in mid-air and become rounded ice waves suspended in the void.

On the following day, when the first ranger patrols, their hair singed, their faces blackened by smoke, cautiously stepped over the warm ashes in the charred forest and reached the lakeshore, a horrible and amazing sight met their eyes. The lake looked like a vast sheet of white marble on which rested hundreds upon hundreds of horses' heads. They appeared to have been chopped off cleanly with an ax. Only the heads stuck out of the crust of ice. And they were all facing the shore. The white flame of terror still burnt in their wide-open eyes. Close to the shore a tangle of wildly rearing horses rose from the prison of ice.

Later winter came; the hissing north wind swept the snow away; the surface of the lake was as clean and smooth as an ice-hockey rink. During the dull days of the endless winter, toward noon, when a little faded light rains from the sky, Colonel Merikallio's soldiers used to go down to the lake and sit on the heads of the horses. They were like wooden horses on a merry-go-round.
Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois
—turn, turn, good wooden horses. The scene might have been painted by Bosch. The wind through the black skeletons of the trees played a sweet, childish, sad music,- the sheet of ice seemed to turn, as the horses of that macabre merry-go-round tossing their manes would curve to the sad tune of the sweet childish music. The soldiers would shout, "Hop
la! Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois."

On Sunday mornings the rangers gathered in the Raikkola
lottala,
and after drinking a cup of tea, walked toward the lake. (The rangers—
sissit
—are the wolves of forest warfare. They are mostly young, some are very young; some mere boys. They belong to the solitary and silent Sillampää
{6}
breed of heroes. They spend their entire lives in the depths of the forest. They live like trees, rocks and wild animals.) They used to go down to the lake and sit on the heads of the horses. The accordion player would start a
laulu,
the "Vertiossa," which is the song of the lookout. Wrapped in their sheepskin coats, the rangers would sing together the sad
laulu.
Then the player, sitting on the frozen mane, would run his fingers over the keyboard and the rangers would take up the
Reppurin laulu,
the song of the cuckoo, which is the sacred bird of Karelia.

Siell mie paimelauluin lauluin
min muamo mieroon suori
Karjalan maill kuldäkäkoset guk-kuup—

The cuckoo's call rang sad and loud in the silence of the forest. Guns rumbled on the opposite shore of Lake Ladoga. The crash of the explosions spread from tree to tree like a flutter of wings, a rustle of leaves. And above the living silence that was rendered deeper and more secret by the occasional ping of isolated rifle shots, rose persistent, monotonous and very pure the call of the cuckoo, a call which seemed to become human.
Gook kooup, gook kooup.

Sometimes, Svartström and I also went down to the lake and sat on the heads of the horses. Leaning his elbow on the hard icy mane, Svartström tapped the empty pipe in the hollow of his hand and gazed fixedly in front of him across the frozen, silvery expanse of the lake. Svartström hails from Viipuri—called Viborg by the Swedes—the Karelian city on the shore of the Gulf of Finland facing Leningrad. His wife is a young Leningrad Russian of French origin, and he has something delicate and gentle in him that men in the North seldom possess, perhaps something French that he has acquired from his wife, his
baby kulta—"kulta"
meaning "golden" in Finnish. He knows a few French words,- he can say
oui, charmant,
and
pauvre petite.
He can also say
naturlement
instead of
naturellement.
He can say
amour,
he often says
amour,
and he also says
très beaucoup.
Svartström, by profession, is a poster-designer; and he spends many hours in drawing red and blue flowers with a red and blue pencil, in cutting
baby kulta's
name into the white bark of birches, and in writing the word
amour
in the snow with the tip of his stick.