‘Hey, guys, put my share in a bottle, huh? I’m gonna go check out the villages,’ Rahikainen said.
‘On the other side of the Svir? How you figure you’ll do that?’ Hietanen asked.
‘They got convoys driving over all the time. But there’s a big encampment even closer to here where they got some ladies laying a road. The guys on leave said so. Whatta ya say, boss?’
Splotches burned red on Koskela’s cheeks. He stared silently at Rahikainen for a long time and finally said, ‘Guys come and guys go, and that’s their business. I’m not going to give you permission, but if you want to go AWOL, that’s your responsibility, not mine. Tomorrow morning we head for the line right after we eat, and if you’re not there then, you’ll get hit with ten times normal guard duty. The things we have to do, we do – otherwise, we might as well be Lulu’s chickens on the loose. Remember that, and you can go.’
‘Okey-doke! If I’m alive, I’ll be there. You betcha. Now gimme some a that home brew, huh?’
They eyeballed Rahikainen’s share and poured it into two bottles, which he wrapped in his blanket and stuck in his bag before taking off.
‘What the hell you takin’na blanket for?’
‘A man’s gotta put something down! Who’s gonna lie on the bare ground?’
When Rahikainen had gone, Rokka said, ‘Yup, I bet he makes it. That fella there’s gonna make it through this whole war without a scratch. Too slippery for even a bullet’ta catch, that one.’
‘Yeah, but Jesus, come on. Now I don’t wanna be mean or anything, but I have to say, it’s pre-tty rare that Rahikainen puts himself in the line of fire.’
‘Sure is!’ Salo chimed in, pointedly. But Sihvonen, not exactly belonging to the fleet of the fearless himself, was not eager to discuss heroism and sniffed, ‘I don’t know about that. Every man here’s been scared.’
‘Scared … scared. Everybody gets scared, some guys just know how to hide it better … There ain’t no such thing as a guy who ain’t afraid of death.’
They all raised their voices in agreement, save Rokka, who smiled and said with a wink, ‘Now, don’t talk nonsense, fellas. How could I be scared a sumpin’ I ain’t never seen? But hey, fellas, let’s play sumpin’! Lissen, Sankia Priha the Great, put on “Yokkantee!”’
Vanhala dug out his record-player. Its spring was broken, but Vanhala turned the record with his finger, which worked well enough. The rhythm was a little off, but in their current state of bliss, nobody noticed. They played ‘Yokkantee’ and ‘Army Battalyon’, records they had named according to the words they could make out the most clearly. One or two of them even took a crack at singing along, belting out garbled, vaguely Russian-sounding noises over and over again.
Eventually Vanhala got tired of turning the records and their attention drifted off in search of the next source of amusement. At one point, somebody finally remembered it was Mannerheim’s birthday, but they didn’t drink to him just then because they were saving the home brew, and by the time they poured the next round, Mannerheim was long since forgotten. But Vanhala had promised to sing in his honor, and since the others were eager to hear something, he began,
Shackles of the nation tremble with frustration
Finland’s cup of misery has reached its very brim
Casting off the chains of tyrants, Finland rallies up the finest
Forces in the noble nation, braced for battles grim …
‘Goollord, boy! That’ssa rebels’ song you’re singin’!’ Rokka exclaimed, but Koskela motioned Vanhala to continue. He’d found the rhythm in his fingers and was tapping in time with Vanhala’s song, even humming along here and there. Koskela had known the song as a boy, since back before the Finnish tenant farmers had won the right to own their land, the Koskelas had been quite red indeed. Two of Koskela’s uncles had been shot at the hands of the parson’s son, a Jaeger trained in Germany, at the base of the hill by the village hospital. Thanks to his sturdy constitution, Koskela’s father himself had made it out of prison camp alive, but only barely. The Koskelas had rented their farm from the parsonage, and it was to the parson’s severe disappointment that he had one day glimpsed this phantom of a red scoundrel staggering home to claim the farm now lawfully his. Afterwards, the elder Koskela had gradually softened, and when his two younger sons fell in the Winter War, and his eldest was promoted to the rank of officer – making him nothing less than a legend in their little district – the two uncles’ graves by the hospital hill came to be noticeably better kept. The elder Koskela wasn’t particularly surprised by his son’s promotion, seeing as he himself had commanded a company in the Red Guard, and if by some stroke of luck he had managed to escape execution himself, it certainly wasn’t because he hadn’t been a hell of a rebel. Of course his son would have inherited his military gifts: his bravery and strength, his calm, steady intelligence.
Even in the parson’s estimation, an improvement of some sort had taken place over the course of a generation. So, if now, in his drunken revelry, the Koskela boy was humming the Red Guards’ March, the parson was none the wiser, and even if he were, he would certainly have forgiven him. The rebels’ anthem sounded curious indeed in the mouth of an officer, but Koskela just kept asking for more and the slap-happy Vanhala kept it coming:
Fat administration, beyond saturation
Lawless, lynching minions, executions without trial.
No one knows as chaos rages – will our nation’s hist’ry pages
Tell of revolution or of reconcile? …
There Vanhala’s song ended, as he was unable to continue, having dissolved into chortles of laughter. The lynching minions and raging chaos cracked him up especially, and he kept repeating the words over and over between fits of giggles. It was as if he could just taste the hopeless naïveté of the lyrics and wanted to suck out every last drop of their sweetness.
And so the celebrations continued until at last the home brew ran out, and they moved outside. They played Vanhala’s gramophone now and again, belting out their own bastardized renditions between songs. Koskela himself didn’t sing, but urged the others on all the more insistently for all that. He listened closely, as if there might be something remarkable in there, amidst the din. He had never really been interested in songs and such, and indeed, his expertise in such matters was rather weak. He didn’t even know the names of the songs, which was why he kept having to say things like, ‘Guys, do the one with Lotta Lundgren and the stable nags!’
A miserable melange of belches and bellowing rang out:
Beneath the shaaady pines
There lies a waaaaar canteen
Where Lotta Lundgren, she
Boils up the weak caffeiiiiiine …
Echoes rang through the densely wooded grove, mingling with explosions of artillery fire in the background as the cannons boomed in the Marshal’s honor.
‘Hey lissen, Sankia Priha the Great! Play “Yokkantee!” I’ll dance. I’ll dance like Veerukka in Petroskoi … You fellas remember?’
Hietanen dug Vera’s pin out of his wallet and started swinging his head back and forth as he hollered, ‘I I I I remember!!!!!!!! Hahaa … Do I remember!!! The pin of the Soviet Socialist Republics … Take a look, boys … I remember all kinds of things … Hahaa!’
Vanhala played and Rokka danced, attempting a rather peculiar rendition of Vera’s spinning, but demonstrating marvelous virtuosity in doing so. Hietanen spread his arms out and shouted, ‘Hahaa! Listen, everybody! Big shot here’s giving a speech! I am the defender of our homeland. We didn’t want anything a
t all ’cept to build our houses and saunas in peace. And build up this country … Hahaa … Hink hank hoonaa … Niemi’s big bull climbed the Santaranta hill, his big ol’ balls a-dangling … Blessed are the airheads, for they will never drown …’
Rokka spun faster and faster. ‘Yokkantee an’ Yokkantee … Aw shucks, that’s swell! Suslin’s on leave … gonna bring me back a package from the missus … Yokkantee an’ Yokkantee … Looka here, Hietanen, watch me dance …’
Hietanen was completely gone. He staggered about with his arms stretched wide, shouting, ‘Look, boys! I’m an airplane!’
He swerved around back and forth, vrum-vrumming his lips. ‘Look out, boys, Messerschmitt coming in!’
At that point Vanhala’s gramophone went silent and its operator, bubbling with delight, joined in the airborne antics. ‘I-16 swooping down on the left, engine’s howling at max rotational speed, pow pow pow! Vicious air combat … Warriors of the skies in the thick of battle, pow pow pow pow pow … The last knights of war, pow pow pow pow!’
They veered around each other, arms extended, vrumming and pow-pow-ing, and in between Vanhala would shout, ‘Heroes of the great blue skies … with their engines roaring, eyes sharp, hands firm, and hearts steeled, our fearless aviators take on enemy predators … pow pow pow pow pow pow pow …’
Hietanen tripped on an alder stump and crashed down. And there he remained, unable to get up. Vanhala swooped round in an elegant whoosh, engine roaring, and yelled, ‘Pull the parachute! The plane’s going down! Heeheehee …’
‘Plane’s going down! Whoa, I’m dizzy … Everything’s spinning like my head’s turning round,’ Hietanen slurred, pawing at the grass as he tried to grasp it in his hands. Vanhala yelled into his ear, ‘You’re in tailspin! Jump! There’s no way you can turn it around …’
But Hietanen’s plane was falling with ferocious speed, spinning and whirling through its descent. No longer in a position to leap, its pilot fell with his plane into a fog and then, complete darkness. Vanhala left him there, disappointed that their battle had been cut short.
Somewhere off to the side, Määttä, Salo and Sihvonen were sitting around on a rather large boulder. Salo was lecturing the others gravely, his hair flopping in his eyes, ‘In our county the will-o’-the-wisp is real bright …’
Sihvonen turned his head away and swatted his hand as if fending off mosquitoes, ‘Oh please, come off it …’
‘Well, I think it’s true. Old people’s seen it. Even seen crossed swords over the spot.’
‘Oh, stop it … Lapland witch tales. Maybe way up north they have some of those wonders.’
‘But who here’s from way up north, then?’ Määttä asked. ‘I mean, where I’m from’s so far up, we brew our coffee over the northern lights.’
Määttä had been totally silent the whole time, and even the home brew didn’t appear to have had much effect on him. Now he stared at the rock and proposed, ‘Now that there’s a rock. What do you say we lift it?’
‘I don’t think so … that one’s not comin’ up.’
Määttä circled the rock, contemplated it in silence, then grabbed hold of the corners that offered the best grip. The rock was almost as big as the man himself, but lo and behold, up it came, a few inches or so. Määttä straightened himself up, clapped the dirt off his hands, and said, ‘Didn’t I say it’d come up?’
Sihvonen estimated that his odds were just about nil, but Salo took hold of the rock and gave it a yank. The rock didn’t budge, but Salo suddenly grabbed his back with both hands. ‘I pulled something in my back. Shit! If the damn thing hadn’t turned like that, I think I’d a gotten it up.’
‘You just lifted it the wrong way if you put your back out,’ Määttä said, gazing at the rock with an air of calm superiority. But Salo was still holding his back, his face contorted with pain. Maybe he actually had sprained his back. Hadn’t his foot started to hurt too, after he mentioned it?
Rokka had stopped dancing. Vanhala was playing Stalin’s speeches to himself and Koskela had started off toward the command post.
‘Koskela! Where you goin’?’ Rokka called after him.
‘Jerusalem!’ Koskela was groping his way uncertainly along the path, beltless and hatless, the front of his combat jacket undone.
‘You goin’na the command post?’
‘I am going to the Führer’s Headquarters.’
They inquired no further, gleaning from Koskela’s evasive replies that he wasn’t about to tolerate other people’s meddling in his affairs.
He set off decidedly, though not without a swerve off the path here and there. Stiff and unflinching, his blue eyes stared into the grove of alders. Between hiccups. Then he stopped and belted out, ‘O, crash! Lake Oooonega’s waaaters …’
III
A group of the battalion’s officers had gathered in the machine-gunners’ headquarters to celebrate. It was more comfortable there, since it was located furthest away from the front line. It certainly wasn’t the renown of Lammio’s hospitality that had prompted their selection. Kariluoto was there, as well, having been promoted to lieutenant in Petroskoi. He’d left his company in the care of a platoon leader and set off to join the party. He’d been downing drinks with great gusto and was already spouting off about the task of being an officer. ‘The only way to influence a Finn is by example. And then you have to spark his ambition. A private feels his subordination in relation to his superior, and that feeling has to be directed so as to persuade him to carry out acts that will make him feel he’s rising up to the level of his superior. But above all, no weakness … lock it up inside of you, whatever it is. On the outside – like a rock.’
Lammio was sitting at the table in his best uniform, decorations splayed across his chest. Pale-faced, he was nodding off in a drunken stupor. Some young ensign was lying on his back on Lammio’s bed, saying, ‘Oh my drunken brothers. Helsinki is in my heart, and in my sight … oh that happy city of delight …’
Kariluoto remembered Sirkka. ‘Hush … shhh, Jokke. Don’t get me all revved up … I remember … I remember … That time I danced that tango of yours. Taa daa didadaa dida dida dida dii daaa dididaa …’
Kariluoto looked rather amusing sitting on the bed demonstrating his tango moves. ‘Sirkka’s tango. Taa daa dii di … ta dida daa daa diidi …’
A slim ensign with spectacles was sitting on Mielonen’s bed, the latter having been driven outside by the party. Interrupting Kariluoto’s wistful tango, he suddenly burst out singing, ‘Die Fahne hoch …’
The ‘Horst Wessel Song’ made Lammio come to. He rose, swerving as he attempted to straighten himself up, then shouted behind the door, ‘Bursche!’
The orderly stepped inside and stiffened to attention.
‘Fill the glasses.’
‘Yes, sir, Lieutenant!’ The orderly poured the drinks and disappeared. Lammio raised his glass and said, ‘And now, a drink to the officers. Gentlemen, our task is clear. We are the backbone of the army. On our shoulders Finland will rise, or fall. Gentlemen, unswerving we follow, wherever Mannerheim’s sword may lead.’
‘Zum Kampfe stehn wir alle schon bereit,’ sang Spectacles, and the glasses clinked.
‘Backbone,’ Mielonen muttered behind the door. ‘In that case, we got a weak link in your spot, my friend.’
Even the calm and eager-to-please Mielonen was beginning to feel that he had had enough. It wasn’t until the advance had stalled, setting them in the deadlock of a positional war, that it had really become clear what it meant to be Lammio’s battle-runner. The crowning
glory was the Lieutenant’s mongrel mutt, which he was obliged to refer to not as ‘it’ but as ‘him’. Mielonen had actually conspired with the orderlies to tie ‘him’ to a twenty-pound rock and launch both into the pond, but the next day Lammio had put in a phone call to one of his buddies higher up in the division and requested a new pup. They decided not to repeat the stunt, since they knew that while one incident might escape notice, systematic dog drownings were likely to arouse Lammio’s suspicions.
Mielonen rose as he saw Koskela approaching and walked down the steps to open the door. He was rather stunned when Koskela, contrary to all Mielonen’s prior experience with the man, growled in a voice looking for a fight, ‘Who the hell are you, the goddamn doorman?’
‘I’m Corporal Mielonen, Lieutenant, sir,’ Mielonen said, rather bewildered. The contrast of Koskela’s outburst with the tact and discretion he had always demonstrated before made it all the more upsetting. Then Mielonen noticed Koskela’s hazy, dilated eyes, realized what was going on, and stepped away from the door as Koskela said, ‘Well, if that’s who you are then don’t go falling over yourself to open doors like you were a doorman.’
‘Yes, sir. I mean no, sir, Lieutenant, sir.’ Mielonen was so confused that he kept calling Koskela ‘sir’, despite the fact that they had been on casual terms for quite some time now.
Koskela stepped inside. Hair rumpled, buttons undone and slightly unsteady, he lurched to the center of the room and said, ‘Zrastooi.’
The others didn’t appear to take much notice of Koskela’s arrival, nor his curious Russian greeting, but Kariluoto lit up at the sight of him, calling out, ‘Well hello, old man! Where have you been? Why didn’t you come along with the group? Hey, orderlies! Let’s have a glass for my boy Koski here. Here, take a swig from mine – there’s some first aid for you.’