They just hoped for food and rest, both of which were in short supply. Once they seized a field kitchen full of freshly prepared cabbage soup.
‘Don’t touch it. It could be poisoned.’
Rokka scooped himself a bowl. ‘You all are actin’ like children. Here we got shells an’ bullets whizzin’ non-stop and you fellas are worried ’bout a lil’ poison?’
Rokka ate, and when he showed no signs of poisoning, the others ate too. Lahtinen praised the soup to high heaven, comparing it to the meals from their own field kitchen. ‘These past thirty years now we been hearing about how everybody over here on these communal farms was gonna start dying of starvation, but it looks to me like the kolkhoz boys got something to eat after all. We’ll just see how all this turns out in the end.’
‘Well, who knows?’ Rokka said, licking his spoon and looking sly. ‘Things’s lookin’ pretty bad, it’s true. There is one bright side, though. Those poor devils lost some mighty fine soup. And that there’s a sure victory for us. Lissen, you take another bowl, just to seal things up.’
Even Lahtinen laughed at that – and their spirits were a bit brighter as they set off. But then Hietanen started whistling. Hietanen’s whistling always had the same devastating effect on them, regardless of the situation, as it was truly dreadful, but our boy Urho just carried on whistling away. Once in a while he would issue harsh judgements of communism on the basis of the poorly maintained Eastern Karelian roads. Lahtinen often found himself hard pressed to defend it in light of the half-rotting buildings, the shoddy newsprint, and the inhabitants’ ragged clothing.
On the other hand, they had to admit that its defenders seemed pretty attached to it. They died at their posts, behind great heaps of ammunition cartridges.
Barrages rumbled, automatic weapons rattled. Man after man died, each in his own way. Somewhere a sprint was cut short mid-race. Somewhere else a weapon slipped from arms gone limp and a head lurched down upon it. Some died moaning and begging for mercy, others cursing and gritting their teeth.
Somebody lay behind a rock waiting for death, brave and calm to the end.
Mile after mile was bought on these men’s backs: miles of muddy, Eastern Karelian road, winding toward Petroskoi.
Smoke struggled up from the stovepipes into the gray drizzle. Howitzers rumbled by, and an ammunition column clanged noisily down the muddy road. The racket didn’t disturb the men sleeping in the tents, however. They’d been sleeping like the dead for fifteen hours and showed no signs of stirring anytime soon.
Rahikainen was on fire-watch. He passed the time playing poker by himself, pulling two separate hands of cards and murmuring back and forth, ‘What’cha got? Three whores. Well, that ain’t bad at all…’ He tossed one hand angrily back on the deck. He glanced at the time and, seeing that his shift was finally almost up, hurried to wake Hietanen.
‘Hey! Get up and watch the fire.’ He poked and prodded Hietanen for a long time, until at last he got him to sit up. Hietanen groped around, entirely disorientated, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
‘Go stand guard by the fire. It’s your turn.’
‘Yeah,’ Hietanen said compliantly as he sank back into bed, blissfully ignorant of whatever it was he was being asked to do. Rahikainen relaunched his campaign.
‘No, no, no you don’t, you’re gonna go stand watch by the fire.’ Rahikainen was fired up by his own desire to sleep, so Hietanen would have to be roused, come hell or high water.
‘What?’
‘Fire-watch.’
‘Aw, shit. That dead pine still burning?’
‘Well, why wouldn’t it be? And in nice little logs, too. Rahikainen the Patriot here chopped wood. Just like a real war horse.’
‘Well, let’s hope they give you a medal for it. Jesus, it feels good to sleep. How long did we go without rest?’
‘Three days.’
Rahikainen crawled over to his bed and said as he dropped off to sleep, ‘Artillery got hit with some shells minute ago. Probably made a few more heroes. Heard some shoutin’ anyway. I’d be happy to do a round in artillery myself. Word is those guys get bigger rations. Might have been able to get some off of somebody over there, if I’d a had it in me to go that far. But I’m pretty beat.’
Hietanen looked out of the tent. Three wrecked tanks were lying on the main road and a few dead Russians lay by the wayside. That was where yesterday’s counter-attack had ended. Hietanen pulled up his trouser-leg to check on the small wound in his thigh. It already showed promising signs of healing. One of the mangled tanks now out on the road had fired a shell right next to Hietanen, and a shard had lodged itself in his thigh. He had burned a safety pin with a match to kill off the bacteria and used it to carve out the shard, which was now wrapped in paper and tucked in his wallet.
He pulled his trouser-leg back down, dug the shard out of his wallet and considered it thoughtfully. ‘This world’s got everything all right. Put a hell of a lot of work into making that thing, and then they send it shooting along through the woods. And they don’t even know how to shoot it! War’s a pretty crazy business, that’s for sure. All pre-tty strange if you ask me.’
Then he tossed some more wood onto the fire and sat dozing before the stove. The artillery kept rumbling by, and cracks of infantry fire rang out from the front line. Another regiment had been marched out there yesterday, when they had been ordered to stand down. Hietanen listened to the shooting and started dozing off. Machine guns hammered out intermittent bursts: pa, pa, pa, pa, pa. There was a light machine gun firing off solo rounds, and Hietanen figured it was probably Russian, since the sound of the shot had a different quality when you heard it from the front end of the barrel. Pa-koo-pa-koo-pa-koo.
Hietanen’s head jerked up with a start. He was afraid he would fall asleep if he stayed beside the stove, so he threw his coat over his shoulders and crawled out of the tent. He checked on the other squad’s fire and then, bored, started wandering around the encampment. A gray, misty rain drizzled from the low-hanging clouds. It cast a gray gloom over the whole, forested world and the war concealed inside it. Hidden in the trees, tens of thousands of men were fighting one another, and nothing but the clinks of combat revealed the existence of this life, and the death it portended. A horse-cart came down the road carrying a vat of soup – the driver huddled with his reins pulled in beneath his wet coat, which he had pulled up over his head like a hood. The horse’s back and neck streamed with water as the rain pooled and collected into black streaks.
Mielonen approached from the direction of the command tent, prompting a familiar dread to rise up in Hietanen. Was their rest period up? Of course, Mielonen could be coming for some other reason than to order them to head out – so, Hietanen avoided the question, caught between hope and fear. What would he say? Hietanen was practically having heart palpitations he was so anxious. Was that mouth about to declare, ‘Get rrready to head out!’? He calmed down slightly when he heard Mielonen’s voice say, ‘So, what’s the Hietanen boy wandering around for?’
‘Just sittin’ here thinkin’ war’s a right miserable business. Hunger, cold, fear, sleep, and these lice-infested rags just to top it off.’
‘Sounds about right. There’s saunas in these villages, but no, always gotta be pressing onward. I was just asking that ambulance driver over there, and he said that the vehicles can barely keep up. Guys are going down all over the place now. Seems they’re advancing down into the isthmus now, too, into Kannas.’