The next pair of shells exploded a bit further off. The horse flared its nostrils and took a few stiff steps before rearing up onto its hind legs again. Mäkilä patted the horse and tried to calm him, saying, ‘Don’t be scared! Here we go, nice and easy. This isn’t up to people. It’s all in greater hands.’
Mäkilä was speaking to the horse, though the words were actually intended for his own soul. Otherwise he was perfectly calm. His eyes gazed straight ahead, bulging only when the shells exploded, and he gave a throat-clearing cough now and again. The launch booms sounded once more, but this time the whistle was ominously short and quiet. Mäkilä saw the splash of grass-stained water strike his hand, and grasped the quiet whoosh and thump he heard before a red flame billowed up before him from a crater that had appeared in the road. He was blasted in two.
The horse fell sideways onto the pole of the cart hitch. There was a hole in the side of the soup vat, so when the weight of the horse and the downhill slope turned the cart onto its side, soup streamed onto the ground, as the hole in the vat was on the downward-facing side.
The horse managed to raise its head, struggled to get up onto its front legs, and let out a wild, agonized whinny. Then it sank back to the ground, tossing its head weakly a couple of times.
The next set of shells sent mud splashing over both of the deceased.
IV
The machine-gunners were sitting beside their foxholes, awaiting their food. They were all silent and irritable. A few days earlier they had taken up positions along this brook, holding a bit of line connected to Lord knows how many others. The enemy had gone a long time without testing the line’s endurance, so in that sense this situation was exceptional. Normally, their opponents shut down their attempted barricades immediately, forcing them to resume their retreat. They stared at the ground, their unshaven faces filthy, exhausted and creased with lines of bitterness. Sometimes a bullet would nick a tree and they would hear the rumble of a combat vehicle behind the stream. Further off they could hear the booming of an air raid, a sound that was rarely absent.
They were extremely hungry. Just two days earlier, Rahikainen had brought them a massive load of food scrounged from some bombed-out supply vehicle, but their moment of bliss had been short-lived. They couldn’t turn away the men who came from neighboring units, hands outstretched, pleading, ‘Give us just a little, huh? We haven’t had anything to eat for two days.’ Feelings of charity and generosity toward their brothers-in-arms were running even lower amongst these dead-tired men than their will to preserve the established order of Finnish society or the people fearing its demise, but they were so well acquainted with hunger that they shared every last morsel that they had.
It was an anti-tank detachment that came across Mäkilä while on their way to bring a new cannon to a devastated section of the line. The numbers stamped on the side of the soup vat enabled them to identify its owner and they brought him and the vat out to the platoon. So great was the disappointment brought on by their unsatiated hunger that the news of Mäkilä’s death remained secondary to the fact of the shortage of soup. Rahikainen even went so far as to say curtly, ‘That man was stingy all his life and managed to be stingy even in dyin’.’
They received one ladle of soup apiece and crumbled what little bread they had into it, then ate sparingly, as if they might somehow stretch the food that way.
It was Rahikainen who gave a laudatory eulogy for Mäkilä, however. ‘That fellow there’s the one offloaded the officers’ junk into the forest. Did away with those icon-pictures the leader of the First Platoon was hangin’ onto. The shit that nutcase collected! Not worth a damn cent …’
‘We seen stuff better than that fly by the wayside. There’s sacks a wheat flour they had in those supply trucks they drove in’na the lake. Didn’t I tell you all they thought we’d be out here ’til kingdom come? They were still drivin’ supplies out to the line when they shoulda been drivin’ ’em away.’ Rokka was sharing his cutlery with Susling, as the latter had lost his pack in some scuffle with the enemy.
‘I done told you not to take it off your back,’ Rokka added.
The men generally threw their packs on their backs immediately upon hearing an alarm, demonstrating their estimation of their odds of success, as well as the general state of their fighting spirit. Hence Vanhala’s new name for their gear: ‘Panic packs! Heeheehee.’
The others ate in silence. Rokka was the first to spot a group of men coming toward them along the road, and yelled, ‘Damn it, lookit that! Kariluoto’s headin’ over. Well, I guess he’s gonna see for himself now how it is … Got some men with ’im. Hang on, what the hell am I sayin’? Those are just pups’s all those are.’
Kariluoto had returned, bringing the battalion’s replacements with him. He took the men to the command post, where they met Koskela.
Kariluoto was overjoyed to see him after such a long time and burst out, ‘Well hello, old man! Old Koski, still holding down the fort. Weeds’ll outlive everything. God doesn’t want them and the devil knows he’ll get them in the end. I’ve brought some boys with me. Four men for the chatterbox team, too … your old platoon, I mean.’
Kariluoto was a happy man. He’d gotten married over his leave. He had returned to the front deaf and blind to the trains of wounded men streaming past. Newspapers full of the retreat and defeat had passed him right by. He’d grown thinner while he was away, and developed black bags under his eyes, and his lips were literally chafed from kissing. His lady Sirkka had bashfully remarked that he was going to wear herself out if he kept up that way.
With the perfect self-absorption of the lover, he had managed to block out the events that were crushing his entire world. Finland could not possibly capitulate, because that would make him, Captain Kariluoto, unhappy, and how could anyone do that, particularly now, when the wave of his life was at its very crest? Surely everyone was aware that he had just married a woman whose magnificence would astonish the entire world. Kariluoto’s sharp-eyed mother had hinted that her son might have acquired a wife with a tendency toward carelessness, but that was precisely what made Sirkka so attractive to Kariluoto. She had such a charming way of forgetting things – and when Kariluoto found a one-mark coin in her stocking, which had been put there in place of a lost garter button, he melted at her adorable ridiculousness.
‘New weapons,’ his beloved papa had repeated anxiously, having realized that the tides of world history were not going to spare the idyllic corner of Northern Europe in which he had lived so happily. A secure government functionary’s job during the week and exercises with the National Guard every Sunday – followed by all sorts of eager, utterly preposterous dreams about the future, backed by nothing but the untamed zeal and blue-eyed naïveté of a country that had won its independence just one generation before.
If a moment arose in which the son was obliged to take a stance on the developments, as well, he consoled himself with the fact of Rommel, or, in the worst case, with the Western Allies’ friendship toward Finland.
Koskela stood waiting as Kariluoto bounded eagerly toward him, his hand outstretched. He had the glow of leave about him, emanating from his clean clothes, freshly cut hair and gleaming boots, upon which dust seemed out of place.
Koskela clasped his outstretched hand and said, ‘Well, well. Hello, there. And congratulations.’
Kariluoto was suddenly unsure of himself. His boisterousness vanished – and only now did he realize the reality he was being faced with. He could see that Koskela’s cheekbones stood out, that his eyelids were red and swollen, and that his forced smile was strangely
contorted.
‘Thanks,’ he said quietly, then asked with some hesitation, ‘How are things?’
‘We’re here. Moved since you been away.’
‘Yeah. Tough times. Why don’t we get these men split up and then go find a place to talk? I’ve got a thing or two in my bag. I can take over the company after.’
‘Yeah, sure. The Second Platoon is on the other side of the road, the First and the Fourth are on this side, and the Third is off in reserve. Our battalion demanded it for its own reserve, but gave in when they heard that its headcount was down to sixteen. The Jaeger Platoon is carrying out patrols on the flanks and there aren’t any other reservists left. Everything feels so helplessly weak.’
‘Sarastie seemed quite hopeful about the line along the brook. He thinks it’ll hold.’
‘Maybe. But both flanks are exposed. Well, they’ve been that way before, too. When there’s no one left, there’s no one left, no matter how unreasonable that seems. If only there were just one strong reserve unit to take the flanks!’
They divvied up the replacements and found a quiet place to talk, out of earshot of the messengers and phone operators. Kariluoto opened up his pack and started making sandwiches.
‘I can offer you a drink, too, if you want.’
‘No, no.’
‘I just meant one.’
‘Not worth it for the taste. But hey, how are things back in the land of the living?’
‘Honestly, there’s not much to report. But how are things here?’
Koskela grunted quietly and then fell silent for a long time before saying, a faint surge rising in his voice, ‘It’s all over. As over as it can be.’
Kariluoto gave a start. Uttered in this strong, bitter voice, the words felt so irrevocable that Kariluoto felt the end was at hand this very moment. ‘I see. Who’d have thought – Germany. And we won’t last on our own.’
Koskela didn’t say anything for a little while. It seemed to Kariluoto that he was deliberately holding something back. He saw a muscle twitch in the corner of Koskela’s eye and realized what kind of strain this seemingly calm man must have been under. Finally Koskela said in a strangely angered voice, ‘This isn’t a war. This is just horror after horror.’
‘Yeah, the deserters,’ Kariluoto said, seizing on the first thing that came to his mind of what this ‘horror’ might be. ‘Have there been many?’
‘Oh, they don’t really have anything to do with it. The ones who actually desert, I mean. There aren’t many of them, and mostly they’re guys whose nerves are so fried they’re no use anyway. But nobody wants to fight. The whole thing’s like sand slipping through our fingers – like water, even. Nothing stays where it’s supposed to.’
Koskela fell silent and his face resumed its former, motionless mien. Kariluoto didn’t say anything either, sensing more from Koskela’s speech than he really wanted to know. He knew him well enough to understand that he must be tottering on the breaking point of exhaustion, as there was no other way that Koskela would have been capable of such an outburst.
A long, embarrassed silence prevailed as they chewed on their sandwiches. Finally, Kariluoto said, ‘How are things going for us?’
‘The battalion, you mean?’
‘All of us. All of Finland …’
‘The way things go for losers. Getting the shit kicked out of us.’
Kariluoto’s jaw trembled. He felt a dampness under his eyelids and his angry voice wavered as he said, ‘No. By God, no! I can’t stand it … I don’t want to see it. Anything but that.’
‘There’s no hope. Not a trace.’
‘So we fight hopelessly.’ A savage note had crept into Kariluoto’s voice.
‘That’s what we’ve been doing this whole time,’ Koskela said, exhausted to the point of apathy. Kariluoto saw that he was embarrassed by the whole tenor of their conversation and wanted it to be over. They shifted into a more practical mode and Koskela explained their situation to Kariluoto. He would go back to leading his former platoon indefinitely, even if he knew it was only a matter of time before they transferred him elsewhere. The shortage of officers was becoming apparent, and they wouldn’t be able to keep lieutenants like him as platoon leaders for long. The battalion actually had a couple of company commander vacancies that were being filled by men younger than him, but they had been filled while he was serving as Third Company commander, and besides, they were regular officers. Koskela had no professional ambitions mixed up in the matter, but he would have liked to stay with his own platoon. There was no way that would happen, however, unless he became commander of their own company.
When they’d finished eating, they set off to check on the positions. Koskela explained a bit about the stages of the retreat, and little by little Kariluoto began to understand just how complete the collapse had been.
V
The new recruits assigned to Hietanen’s platoon were digging foxholes for themselves. They were four in total, and Hietanen had left them all in the first section, as it was down by more men than the second. Actually, all the squads had been operating short-handed since the war began. It hadn’t really been a problem during the positional war, as it had just meant that they had to stand guard more frequently, but as soon as the retreat began, they struggled to carry all of the equipment. Hietanen was instructing the boys digging foxholes. Three of them appeared to be taking the situation seriously. They said little and followed Hietanen’s instructions with a harried submissiveness attesting to their general uncertainty. The fourth boy, however – a vigorous, blond youth – seemed instantly at home. Once he’d dug his hole, he sat down on the edge of it and said with a swagger, ‘So, where these Russkis at, huh? I wanna start takin’ ’em down.’
Rokka’s head popped out of a pit. ‘Goollord! You all hear this fella? Lissen boy, don’t yell so loud, they’ll hear you, and they’ll all start runnin’ for the hills once they realize you’re here.’
‘How old are you?’ Hietanen asked.
‘Eighteen, Sergeant, sir,’ one of the boys replied.
‘Well, I’ll be damned. We were pre-tty young when we started but we weren’t children.’
‘Mother Finland wrenches babes from her breast and sends them out to protect her,’ Rahikainen said.
Something resembling a smile rose to Hietanen’s exhausted face. ‘That’s the first time I’ve been called “Sergeant, sir”! You all hear that? Just so you know who you’re talking to.’
‘New recruits with the fear of the trainin’ center drilled into them,’ Rahikainen said disparagingly. ‘Now they’re sendin’ us young’uns and grandpas.’
‘Far and wide, our heroes rise up, coming forth to join the line-up … heehee …’ Vanhala, sitting in his hole, hands clasped around his ankles, started chanting the Red Guard’s March again.
Bureaucrats are dying
hells and prisons vying
for the wretched souls
of this sad, misbegotten land.
Far and wide, our heroes rise up
coming forth to join the line-up
fighting on through all that life and death demand …
‘Fighting on, fighting on,’ Sihvonen sneered. ‘Except that there’s no life out here. Should’ve just made it “death” …’
Koskela and Kariluoto then arrived. Koskela was to stay with his platoon from now on, and Kariluoto stuck around a moment to say hello. ‘Hey. How are you guys doing?’
‘Oh, fine. Ceding land to pass the time.’
Kariluoto spotted a guy from his former plato
on and ran off to greet him – it was Ukkola, boiling up some water over a nearby campfire. Ukkola sat with his cap backwards, the bill over the nape of his neck. Machine-gun cartridges dangled from his waistband. He had no pack, just a breadbag and a rolled-up winter coat bound together with some hemp string. He had fixed his canteen to the barrel of his submachine gun and was dangling it over the fire.
‘Hey there … How you doing, Ukkola?’
‘Hey. Well, can’t say there’s anything too great about the job.’ The man glanced over his shoulder and even Kariluoto had to smile. The image of him was so perfectly stereotypical, right down to the response.
‘No, doesn’t look that way. So this is what we’ve come to.’
‘In cards it’s the luck of the draw, and farming’s a goddamn lottery, but this here, this is one hell of a course they sent us out on.’
‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’
‘Sure, we can stir up a little nuisance, but that won’t stop them. If we manage to hold the line in one spot it gives way somewhere else. And those guys move fast. First, they load up the air with iron and then they pounce on you like a pack of wolves. Those fuckin’ Sturmoviks are hell. Shooting off shells and bullets so fast it almost looks like there’s guys sittin’ up on the wings shooting off submachine guns.’