‘’Sit my turn already?’
‘Yep.’
‘Well, hell’s bells. Whatta ya know? Without me this army’d never reach Moscow.’ Displeased, he threw his gun over his shoulder and headed toward the guard posts with Sihvonen. Their steps had hardly died out when a rustling came from the forest. The men grabbed their guns and listened.
‘Stop! Password?’
‘Can’t remember. But I got the day before yesterday’s if you want that one.’
‘You Määttä?’
‘That’s me. You the machine-gunners?’
‘That’s us. Yeah, that’s Määttä all right. And with the machine gun, too. Welcome to Camp Finland!’
Everybody was glad to see Määttä back, though they hadn’t been overly concerned about his absence, as they knew he could look after himself. He arrived soaked to the bone, but just as calm as ever. He looked around, silently taking stock of the situation, as he tried to manage without asking questions. The questions came from the others.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Lost.’
‘How’d you find us?’
‘Guessed from the shooting.’ Määttä sat down at the base of a fir and started taking off his shoes. He wrung out his drenched boot flannels and said offhandedly to Koskela, as if in passing, ‘Seems to be some Russkis over there in that forest. Might be reason to send word upstream. We’d better keep an eye out, too.’
‘Where?’
‘Over that direction. Half-mile, mile maybe. Hard to say.’
‘How many?’
‘I saw about a dozen or so.’
Koskela dispatched a runner to send word, but the runner came right back, saying that the Second Company was supposed to scour the terrain in that direction. That calmed them a little, but they still kept their weapons close. As their anxiety eased, their hunger mounted, and the conversation slipped back into its old grooves.
‘Would you boys believe it? I’m hungry.’
‘Now, where could that hunger possibly be coming from? When we ate just yesterday morning! But would you guys believe it, I’m freezing and soaking wet?’
‘No, but would anybody believe that I’d happily go back to being a civilian?’
‘Civilian! All I’m asking for is a slice of bread. And we can’t even get that.’
‘How long do those stuffed shirts think a deep-forest warrior can last out here on these rations?’ Vanhala asked.
Lahtinen was maybe the most wound up of all of them, and muttered with biting disdain, ‘Think? They don’t think. They know. They’ve counted the calories, or whatever the hell it is that’s supposed to be in the stuff you eat. Go complain about being hungry and they’ll go and wave some kind of form in front of you that proves you could not possibly be hungry. And besides, who’s gonna dare complain about it? Don’t you remember what they did to Isoaho?’
Lahtinen was referring to a certain guy from the First Company who had stepped forward once at the main inspection to complain about the lack of food when the General asked if there were any concerns. It had gotten the man into such a stew that he nearly went out of his mind. They weighed him two, three times a day, dragged him from one medical exam to the next, and made such a laughing stock out of him that he deeply regretted ever having opened his mouth. He suffered the typical fate of the Messiah, in other words. For the complaint had not been personal – they had all put him up to it – he had merely been the bravest in taking up the common cause. They all remembered the ordeal, which had been designed to demonstrate to them all that a private has no rights whatsoever, and that even those he is theoretically granted can be easily disposed of.
Hietanen tapped his palms on his wet knees and said, ‘I don’t know the first thing about calories. My gut’s just telling me that whatever they are, they’re pre-tty scarce.’
‘Hm… Yeah, maybe they’re telling you. But do you think those bourgeois gentlemen up there can understand your rumbling stomach? This nation’s guts have been rumbling so damn long those guys have forgotten what that sound even means. Especially since their own bellies are full.’
Lahtinen was just a die-hard proletarian, but Hietanen burst out laughing and said, ‘Hey, I got it! Aren’t there some kinda actors who make it sound like their stomachs are talking? Let’s train ourselves, guys! Then every time we’re all out there in front of the officers, see, we’ll have all our bellies belch out, “Brehhhd!”’
Vanhala was literally shaking with laughter. Lahtinen’s lesson for the day was drowned out once again, just as it had been thousands of times before. And right there a limit appeared – drawing a line between griping and any actual idea of rebellion. They were all ready to howl in protest and jeer at their country and its ‘stuffed shirts’ however they wanted – but if somebody tried to steer the sneering into something that smacked of an agenda, they would drown him out with roars of laughter. There was a degree of seriousness that remained off-limits, that lay behind a line the men would not transgress. It was the very same aversion that made them avoid that particular type of patriotism that bears even the tiniest glimmer of mania. ‘Fuckin’ fanatic’ was their preferred term for the welfare officer guilty of this particular sin.
Vanhala was laughing so hard that he shook for a good while before gasping out, ‘Our deep-forest warriors’ bellies appear to be rumbling, heehee! What would the stuffed shirts say to that?’
Lahtinen descended into the irritable funk these encounters inevitably left him in. But this time he was so annoyed that he picked it up again, rather than sulking in silence. ‘What would they say? They’d stick you in solitary confinement and give you the New Testament to read! If not The Tales of Ensign Stål! There’s a hell of a hunger story for you. I mean, it’s all this same glorification of hunger. It’s like our cultural heritage, hunger. And the bourgeois gentlemen up there would like this nation to believe it’s a very sacred thing. This army’s been fighting half-dead with hunger for six, seven hundred years straight, with all its bald asses peeking out between their rags. First I thought they had to make some sort of story for the Swedes, something to warm their spirits and all, and now I guess it’s our own upper crust that needs it. Wealthy old men and their wives need that kind of stuff. Gives ’em a reason to squeeze out a tear or two. They even like the fact that there are poor people! Otherwise, who would they help and cheer up out of their own goodness and decency? Same way that if we had bread and clothes, we couldn’t possibly be heroes! What kind of a hero is that?’
‘Starving to death in sub-zero climes is the path to victory, heeheehee. A Finnish warrior on the hunt and a Suomi submachine gun is a terrifying combination. Heeheehee!’
The bantering stopped short as they turned to Lehto in astonishment. He had opened his emergency ration tin and was using his knife to lever the better part of its contents out of the can.
‘Don’t you know that’s not allowed?’ Hietanen said.
A thin, dry smile flashed across Lehto’s lips. ‘So’s killing. Fifth Command, wasn’t it? Can of food’s a pretty minor offense when there’s skulls busting open all over the place.’
The others turned to Koskela, as if waiting for him to take a stance that would resolve this dilemma so that they could follow suit. Koskela had been listening to the men in silence. They amused him greatly, though his amusement never revealed itself beyond the subtle crinkles at the corners of his eyes. His face remained stiff and expressionless, with just a trace of a smile hovering in and around his eyes. He felt a certain revulsion all of a sudden, when the men turned to him awaiting his judgement. In the first place, he had no desire to make other people’s decisions for them, generally speaking, and in the second place, he sort of despised the men for not being able to just take their rations and eat them. He diverted his gaze and said rather abruptly, ‘Far as I’m concerned it’s fine. We can’t get much hungrier than we are now. It’s after twenty-four hours that the edge wears off and you go kind of numb, right? So sure, this is the emergency the rations are meant for, anyway.’