The Year of the Hare (19 page)

Leila kept him posted with letters; sometimes they arrived two at a time, for delivery was only every other week. Her letters were steamy, and it was distinctly enjoyable to read them. He replied less frequently, but enough to keep the fire going, so to speak. Leila hoped he’d give up Lapland and return at long last to the civilized world, but he couldn’t make up his mind. He felt a diffidence about the south: the manners disgusted him.

In the last week of March, life at Läähkimä Gorge altered dramatically.

Last autumn’s bear had emerged from its lair—or perhaps it had not even tried to hibernate again after the pre-Christmas upset. At any rate, the bear was once more on the prowl around Läähkimä Gorge. It had killed several reindeer, Vatanen observed; the soggy slush must have made it difficult for it to find other food. It came snuffling around the cabin walls, urinated at the corners, and snorted testily in the March night.

These nocturnal visits rattled Vatanen, who slept in a bunk next to the log wall. The grunting and snorting on the other side of the wall made it difficult to sleep. He felt like a small fish in a fish trap, with a big pike circling it.

Reason told him that bears don’t attack humans, but sometimes events are unreasonable.

For instance, one night the bear pushed a whole window in, frame and all. It thrust its upper body through the space, sniffing the warm air inside. Outside, there was a brilliant full moon, but the bear’s body obstructed the whole window space. The hare hopped onto Vatanen’s bunk and cowered, squeaking behind his back. Vatanen lay stiff. Quite a situation.

The bear snuffed the food left on the table, the remains of supper: dried reindeer meat, bread, butter, a bottle of ketchup, and a few other items. In the moonlight Vatanen saw the animal reach over from the window and adroitly paw some delicacies into its mouth. It rustled the wrappings and opened them up; then there were some smacking noises. How handy it was with its paws! Soon everything had been eaten, and the bear eased itself back into the yard for a moment.

When it appeared again, it was bolder. Its eye fell once more on the open ketchup bottle; it picked it up in its paws and examined it, wondering. The smell seemed alluring. It kept squeezing the bottle, evidently not understanding how to extract the contents.

The bear gave it a shake. There was a squirt and a surprised groan as ketchup flew out of the bottle and sprinkled the wall above Vatanen’s head.

Now the bear appeared to be licking the bottle. In between, it squirted the ketchup around the room, undoubtedly smearing itself all over in the process. It licked its own coat. The sound reminded Vatanen of the name of the place, Läähkimä Gorge—“Gasping Gorge”—there was plenty of gasping going on at the moment.

Now the bear was licking the tabletop. The oilcloth wrinkled under its thick tongue. The streaks of ketchup tempted it ever farther in; the window opening was stuffed as tight as a bottle with a bottle brush. The bear’s upper body was weighing on the table; the table collapsed, and the bear thumped onto the cabin floor in a clatter of shattering wood. It appeared somewhat shocked at first but soon recovered and began exploring the interior of the cabin.

Vatanen was afraid to move a muscle.

The bear began licking the floor; the ketchup had flown quite a distance. The moonlight illuminated the huge, lithe animal: a terrifying spectacle. Its massive head crossed the floor swiftly, like an alarming cleaning machine getting closer and closer to Vatanen’s feet.

At this point the hare’s nerves snapped. It hopped from Vatanen’s back onto the floor and zigzagged around the room. The bear made a grab for it but was left groping, while the hare cowered inaccessibly in a recess.

The bear forgot it and began licking the wall at the foot of Vatanen’s bed.

Only now did it notice the man. Cautiously and curiously, it began a puzzled examination. Hot, moist bear’s breath warmed Vatanen’s face. Feeling Vatanen’s breath on its muzzle, the bear snorted, picked him up in its paws, and shook him a little. Vatanen faked limpness, trying to appear unconscious.

The bear studied the body in its arms, somewhat like an ogre that had gotten hold of a doll and didn’t know what to do with it. Tentatively it took a bite at Vatanen’s stomach and brought about a stabbing cry of pain. Shocked, the bear threw the man against the cabin wall and fled through the window, out into the open air.

Vatanen felt his stomach. He was seeing pink and white stars, and his stomach was wet. Had it disemboweled him? Horror! He reached for his gun, crouched out into the yard, and fired into the darkness. The bear had fled. The moon was shining.

He went back inside, lit a lantern, and examined his stomach. It was slippery with blood and bear slobber, but nothing lethal, it seemed. The bear had bitten experimentally; actually, it was more of a nip. He was not disemboweled.

The hare was limping. The bear must have stepped on it accidentally, for if it had struck a blow, the hare would undoubtedly have been smashed to a pulp against the wall.

Vatanen kicked the remains of the table against the wall, nailed a blanket across the window, and bandaged a sheet around his stomach. The wound ached: the bear had lacerated him enough for that.

He picked the hare up and hugged it, stroked its innocent white coat, and promised: “Before dawn tomorrow, I’ll be following that bear’s tracks. Its time has come.”

The hare’s sensitive white whiskers trembled earnestly. It looked as though it agreed: the bear had to be killed! A hare was thirsting after a bear’s blood!

T
he moon set. Vatanen stuffed his knapsack with several days’ provisions, thrust twenty cartridges into the flap-pocket, loaded his gun, and sharpened his ax. He took along five packs of cigarettes for good measure, some matches, and some ski wax. To the hare he said: “You’ll come along, too, won’t you?” He left a note on the table:
I’m off after a bear. May be gone a few days.—Vatanen

He closed the bunkhouse door behind him, waxed his skis, put them on, and shouldered his knapsack and his gun. There were bear tracks all over the place, but in spite of the dark he identified fresh tracks farther out, showing the bear leaving at a high trot. He pushed off on their trail; the snow was pretty firm under his skis.

“Now, Mr. Bloody Bear, we’ll see.”

The tracks led across the gorge itself. Vatanen skied off at a strong and even pace; his back began to sweat under the pressure of the knapsack. The hare limped along at his side.

The March sun rose into a brilliant sky. The air was exhilaratingly crisp; the snow squeaked as the sticks prodded; skiing conditions were excellent. He relished the motion and the glittering snow—so bright in the rising sun, it made his forehead ache if he opened his eyes wide.

The tracks showed that the bear had calmed down: probably it felt it had escaped. Vatanen speeded up: he might well catch up with his quarry.

In the afternoon, he swooped into a thick grove of spruce and saw that the bear had been lying down there. It may have heard the skis coming and taken to its heels. More skiing, this meant, perhaps many days of it before he caught up with the beast, if then. Fortunately, the snow gave way under the bear more than under the skier.

He came to an open sweep of marshland, where the tracks led south. Across a prospect of six or seven miles he glimpsed his quarry: the bear was a little black dot slinking into snowy forest at the far side. That spurred him on. Thrusting hard, he flew across the flats.

The sun went down. Where the underlying growth was thickest, the tracks were hard to make out. It was time to stop and eat. He felled a large dead tree and made a fire from the top branches; he fried some reindeer meat in his pan, drank some tea, and slept for a few hours. When he woke, the moon had risen in a perfectly clear sky; it was possible to follow the tracks again.

The brilliant night and snowy Lapland wilderness had a cruel beauty. It was too exciting for Vatanen to feel fatigue. Sweat froze on his back as the frost took hold. His lashes froze, clogging his eyes; he had to take off a glove from time to time and melt the clots with his hand. Occasionally the hare started nibbling edible bits from brookside osier bushes. “Careful! Don’t get left behind,” Vatanen warned. “This is no time to eat.”

Twice the bear had lain down: it must be tiring. But each time, it had evidently heard the skis through the crisp night air and had made off. Now it was heading southeast. In a single day they’d crossed the Tanhua road; now they were approaching the great northeastern wilderness, with its fells. They’d been over many rivers that night; at one point the snow had melted and the bear had drunk the ice-cold water. Vatanen bypassed the spot carefully: it would have been death to ski inadvertently into the icy black water.

The moon set; it was dark; he had to stop. He made a fire and slept in its warmth. The hare nibbled a little and then dropped off to sleep, too.

When the sun rose, Vatanen set off again. They were somewhere in the desolate wilderness west of the tiny hamlet of Martti. Now, he figured out, they must be heading toward the parish of Savukoski. The bear seemed to be running straight to the little village itself. Soon they should hit the highway; and soon there it was, the road. The bear had crossed the Savukoski-Martti road about halfway between the two villages. The ridges thrown up by the snowplows had exasperated the beast: it had torn up the road sign as it went by and bent it over like a twig, a sort of message to Vatanen: “Human, I’ve still got all my power. Keep away!”

But Vatanen continued his pursuit.

In the afternoon, the sun turned the snow slushy. It began to stick to the skis, and the going became all huffing and puffing. The tracks in the snow were fresh, but progress was beginning to seem hopeless. Snow caked the skis to the point where he had to stop.

The snow didn’t harden till evening. Then Vatanen skied a couple of hours, but it became too dark to see: this night the moon wasn’t visible. He had to spend the night by his campfire. He guessed he was already in the parish of Salla, at most twenty-odd miles from the Soviet frontier. The hare was tired out, but it didn’t complain; it never did. Vatanen felled an aspen sapling and split the bark with his ax. The hare ate and then collapsed into sleep, legs stretched, warming its belly in the fire’s circle of light. Never before had the hare seemed so tired.

“I wonder if the pace is as punishing for the bear?”

As soon as there was light enough to see the tracks again, Vatanen continued his pursuit. The knapsack was lightweight, the food finished. Now he was in a hurry: the bear had to be killed before it reached the Soviet frontier. The trail was leading through the northern regions of the Tenniönjoki River Valley toward the hamlet of Naruska, he estimated. He’d skied off the limits of his maps a few days earlier; now he had to rely on his memory of the overall map of Finland. The village of Salla itself, he knew, was a mere twelve miles from the border.

It was a dragging, grueling day.

By evening, he was just south of Karhuntunturi—“Bear Fell”! He gave up the trail and took the road to a village, so tired he had a fall on the slippery, snowplowed road. Children came out of the hamlet to meet him, and they all greeted him, for it’s the custom in the north for children to greet adults. He asked where the shop was.

But the shop had closed down long ago. A mobile shop drove up twice a week. Vatanen took off his skis and stopped at the house next to the old shop. The man of the house was having a meal in the living room; his wife was peeling hot potatoes near the stove and bringing them to her husband one at a time.

An exhausted man looks, in a way, alarming, and yet not an immediate threat. He has rights in the north, which people observe with an intuitive discretion. The host gestured to the chair beside him and invited Vatanen to eat.

Vatanen did eat. He was so tired the spoon shook to the beat of his heart. He’d forgotten to take off his cap. The reindeer stew was delicious and substantial. He ate the entire helping.

“So when does the mobile shop come?” he asked.

“Be here tomorrow.”

“I’m in a rush. You couldn’t let me have a few days’ food yourself, could you?”

“Where’d you ski from?”

“From Sompio. Läähkimä Gorge.”

“Is it a wolverine you’re after?”

“Something of the sort.”

The children came in and started a ruckus. The host ordered them out and took Vatanen to a bedroom. He drew back the coverlet from a double bed and told Vatanen to get some sleep. Vatanen could hear him instructing his wife in the living room: “Put four days’ food in a bag and tell the children to be quiet out there. I’ll wake him in a little while.”

A couple of hours later, Vatanen came to without anyone’s waking him. He realized he’d been sleeping on top of the sheets, fully clothed, with his boots on. In the living room the children were stroking the hare. When they saw Vatanen was awake, they began chattering.