The doctor pressed his hand down on the man’s forehead, as he was still struggling to lift up his head, without success. ‘Close your eyes. There’s nothing up there. Are you in pain?’
The man did not calm down and the doctor was becoming impatient. He was a bundle of nerves as he crawled out of the tent and said to the chaplain huddled under a nearby spruce, ‘Eerola hasn’t got much time left. Why don’t you go in there and try to do something for him? He’s restless again and I just can’t keep giving him endless amounts of morphine. He’s vomiting even without it. Oh for God’s sake, could they please get that main road open!’
The doctor’s nerves and exasperation gave his voice an angry tone as he addressed the chaplain. He was hesitant to send him into the tent to talk with the man, as it would be agonizing for the others to have to hear the whole thing. Listening to somebody prepare for the end wasn’t going to do any of them any good, lying there as they were, with fear in their hearts, awaiting their own deaths at any moment. This was why he generally tried to get the dying men out of the tent, as the two deaths inside had induced panic in the others. It was just that it seemed rather a gruesome task to carry them out into the rain, even if they were all bundled up and well past understanding anything about the world around them. Practically speaking, it was still better to bring them out. The doctor cursed the Third Battalion’s aid station, to whom he had lent his second tent, in deference to the fact that they had even more wounded men over there. One of their companies had ended up at the dead center of a terrible mortar barrage.
‘We half-killed ourselves carrying that tent out here and now we can’t even use it. Was it really necessary to halt the advance here?’
‘The Commander said the men were so exhausted that there was no way they’d be able to launch a successful attack before morning. By the way, did Eerola ask for me?’
‘No. But he’s afraid of death and I think he was praying. Just try to calm him down.’
The chaplain removed his black rubber raincoat and hung it on a tree branch. Then he cleared his throat and focused. He had a habit of saying a little prayer to himself before performing his duties. The act had already become so habitual that it was entirely devoid of any genuine spirit of piety. The operation was more like that of a reaper who sharpens his scythe on the whetstone a couple of times at the end of each row, just out of habit.
Then the chaplain crawled into the tent. He had to squint for a long time before he could see anything in the glare of the Petromax. The stove radiated warmth into the air, which reeked of disinfectant. A medic was huddled half-asleep beside the stove. Wounded men wrapped in blankets lay lined up along the side of the tent. Somebody gave a low moan.
The chaplain crawled over to Eerola. The wounded man looked at him with restless eyes dimmed by fever and nearing death. The chaplain saw that his face was covered in beads of sweat. In this kind of situation, it was an unfailing sign.
‘Brother, are you in pain?’
The man said something, but his voice got lost in his throat.
The face the chaplain looked upon was filthy and exhausted, already gleaming with a yellow sheen. There was something dark glimmering in the region around the man’s eyes, almost like a visible manifestation of his suffering. You could see a line on his neck where his suntan ended but his skin remained filthy, and his flannel shirt collar glistened with grime, peeking out from beneath his sweater. Eerola was twenty. He was thin and lanky, having been underfed his entire life. As a day laborer on a large farm and a member of a family of hired hands who fed livestock, he belonged to a social group below which there were only vagrants and inmates of the workhouse. Heavy labor and light sustenance had left their mark on his physical constitution, but even so, a tough resilience within him fought death long and tenaciously. This young man had had a goal in life, which he had pursued, but which was now doomed to remain unattained for all eternity. He would have liked a new suit and a new bicycle – that belonged to him from the start and were meant exclusively for his use. But he had been obliged to hand his meager salary over to his family, so he had had to do without. And it had made him bitter, for in the world of his tiny town, these two items were the rightful belongings of any grown man. But it was in plain trousers and a suede jacket that he had left for the army.
The chaplain watched as the life that had cherished these dreams slipped away, little by little. He put his ear to the boy’s mouth just as the doctor had done and made out a hoarse, wheezing whisper. ‘Jesus… Jesus… take me… deliver me from here…’
‘Brother, be calm. He will help you. Jesus will not forsake any of us. He will deliver us all to safety. Do not be afraid, brother. You are His. He has redeemed you as He has redeemed all of us. You have borne your burden faithfully and Jesus will not forget that…’
The man’s restless breathing evened out and began to grow faint. The chaplain whispered quietly into the dying man’s ear, ‘Jesus has forgiven your sins. He will grant you everlasting rest and peace.’
A brief, gentle shudder shook the dying man, two soft sighs escaped him, and the chaplain pressed his mouth closed and whispered, ‘Amen’.
Over on the other side of the tent, somebody pulled a blanket over his head and muffled sobs began to emerge from underneath it. The chaplain was just about to head over to him when the wounded man who’d been lying unconscious beside Eerola suddenly started to speak. He had been stirring restlessly the whole time, obviously disturbed by the chaplain’s whispering. The man, who was high on morphine, grunted almost incoherently, ‘Jesus… Jesus…’
The chaplain bent down beside him, thinking he was praying. Actually, the man had lost contact with reality entirely. He was a tall, broad-faced youth. His wide, brutal-looking mouth revealed tobacco-stained teeth.
‘Jesus, Jesus,’ the man repeated over and over, the word from the chaplain’s speech clearly having fixed itself in his mind.
Quietly, the chaplain said to him, ‘Brother, shall we pray?’
‘Jesus, Jesus,’ the man repeated, only to himself. Then he suddenly burst out into a harsh, piercing howl.
‘Shh, shhhh, calm now,’ the chaplain whispered, but the man went on howling, foaming at the mouth as his eyes rolled back in his head. From underneath the blanket that had been muffling sobs just moments ago, there now came a shriek of ‘Stop it, stop it!’ as the man burst into a hysterical fit of tears.
‘Ah-ha, oh dear! Oh, what a world! Please, dear people, please!’
The doctor crawled quickly into the tent and hurried over to the crying man, trying to calm him. The chaplain was completely at a loss for what to do and decided it was best to leave the tent. As he emerged outside, he heard a medic saying in a pained voice verging on tears, ‘How much more can they suffer? Can’t they at least be left to die in peace?’
The chaplain took his raincoat from the branch and crouched down to a squat. He prayed, half crying, that God would let the main road open and save the wounded men. The sobs died down within the tent, the doctor having managed to calm the man. The medics carried out Eerola’s body and set it in the grove of trees behind the tent, the last in a long row.
Rain drizzled from the sky. The Petromax hummed quietly in the tent and now and again a tired, hopeless wail would emerge from its tarped awnings.
Guards stood in the darkness surrounding the aid station, keeping watch over this miserable grove, where the cost of the flanking operation was being paid out in pain.