No sooner had the drinking party disappeared around the corner than the bellowing vocals started up again, accompanied by strains of the mandolin…
Then they came upon two privates.
‘The oldest guys in the group… but I mean, they’ve had us spearheading… out in Vieljärvi, fuck… He chickened out, the Sarge, I mean, but I said gimme that goddamn submachine gun… sent in eighteen rounds…’
Then they saw their first civilian resident. It was a woman, dragging her mattress God knows where, looking harried and frightened. She was an old woman, wearing all thirty of her handkerchiefs on her head, boots on her feet and a quilted overcoat tied with a woolen sash. The woman frantically quickened her step as some drunk who had been walking toward her from the opposite direction started walking beside her, slurring strangely, ‘Maatuska… maatuska… Russki mama, babydoll. Kuksitnaataa… Finski kuksitnaataa… Liepuska… finski bread for you… yepatnaataa me need fuck you… yeputtaa yeputtaa…’
The frightened woman sped up, but the man persisted by her side, repeating his words over and over. He took the woman by her wrist and patted her bottom, ‘Russki Maatuska… Good Bessie… yeputtaa…’
The woman slipped inside some building, leaving the baffled forest warrior to stand in the street and recover from his disappointment. He was a large man and big-boned. A reddish beard covered his face. His shirt glistened with grime and half of its buttons were open, the other half being absent entirely. A large triangular swath of fabric was torn out of the knee of his cargo trousers. He’d rolled his trouser-legs up twice and his wool socks peeked out from underneath.
The man shoved his powerful fists into his pockets and started to stagger away, bellowing, ‘Onward! Marshal Mannerheim cries… aim between the Russki’s eyes…’
Kariluoto had already taken a few steps toward the man when the latter had taken hold the woman, but he abandoned the effort once he saw her escape into the building. He felt ashamed, and angry. These people… these people… where did these people come from?
But the sight of the woman had brought Sirkka to mind. This woman was already on the older side, and looked a little Santa Claus-esque with all those clothes wrapped around her, but the sight of her had made Kariluoto’s thoughts drift to women nonetheless, and thus, quite naturally, to Sirkka. So exquisite was his relationship with the girl that he could think of nothing ugly in connection with it. In his mind’s eye, he saw only that lovely, slender face, those slim shoulders and bosom, which he had occasionally brushed up against, by accident. His whole body shuddered as a sharp longing flooded through him. When, oh when would they grant leave?
What a marvelous thought. Home – a conqueror of Petroskoi. He knew he would be promoted soon. Lieutenant Kariluoto. A youth of twenty who had taken over command when the Company Commander fell and succeeded in putting down the enemy attack. Yes, this was Petroskoi. Maybe they already knew, back home.
Kariluoto looked back. The company was marching double-file behind him. ‘Finns March into Petroskoi.’ How many times had he heard his father and his friends talking about Eastern Karelia, even when he was a child? Of these kindred people, sighing beneath the yoke of foreign rule, whose liberation was the duty of the Finnish nation – a duty that should never leave their thoughts. They ought to think about it at mealtimes, at work, ponder it while preparing for bed; and during the night, visions of it ought to fill their dreams. And now it was here.
They were liberating Karelia.
A rowdy group of men carrying boxes and bundles on their backs came around the street corner. Kariluoto was so absorbed in his thoughts, however, that he didn’t pay any attention to them. His battalion hadn’t yet taken over the guarding of the city, anyway, so it wasn’t their responsibility to arrest drunks just yet.
Shots and yells rang out. Bonfires were still ablaze over in Ukkossalmi, lighting up the autumn sky with bloody curls of light.
Petroskoi descended into the darkness of her first night as a Finnish city.
‘Laadaadaa dee daadaallalalaallaa… daa deedeedaadeedeedaadada… and I’m saying to the doctor… you take a piss in those bottles, mister…’
The keg had been destroyed, but the men had managed to get the liquor into buckets, which they were now lugging toward their lodgings.
Life was good as an occupation unit. A fellow could explore the city at will and amass all kinds of fascinating experiences – such as rounding up all the city’s madmen after some drunken soldier released them all from the mental hospital, for example. If they were liberating the city, he protested, they were supposed to free everybody behind bars! That was his story, and what could you do? The explanation was perfectly logical. Walking the streets, they were amazed to encounter young Russian men wearing civilian overcoats over their army uniforms: fellows who had abandoned their units and taken it upon themselves to resume life as civilians. The Finns couldn’t really hold it against them – seeing as they would happily have done the same.
The men had been explicitly ordered to protect the houses against theft, but what difference did it make who owned each old vinyl record, Russian string instrument, button and knick-knack these thieves rounded up? There wasn’t anything decent to be found in the whole town. They had to protect the residents, but once the keg of liquor had been destroyed and almost all the other units had left the city, life was so quiet that even that wasn’t much of a burden. They tried to make friends with the local residents, who took a little while to get over their initial shyness, but then began interacting with them quite freely.
One or two of the men had already found himself a girl – Rahikainen first, obviously. His urban existence was like a chapter unto itself. It was as if everything in that conquered city had been made expressly for him – scraps, hungry residents, women, labyrinths, massive army depots. He played the businessman to a T. Not so much because it would get him anything in particular as because it was just his mode of operation. He didn’t know what to do with himself unless he had some scheme or other in the works. And here, where greater opportunities presented themselves to the enterprising entrepreneur, well – he pounced. His principal operation consisted of procuring food for the hungry inhabitants, generally against payment in the form of young women’s services. He scrounged up some icons for some art-connoisseur military official, even if he did think the man was nutty to give him money for those mildewy pictures. The older and less entrepreneurial privates could safely turn to him with their needs regarding women, as he already knew all the ones willing to sell themselves for bread. He sold the mother of his own seventeen-year-old ladyfriend to some guy from the veterinarian unit in exchange for two packs of cigarettes.
They enjoyed life. They had no duties to perform, save the occasional round on guard duty. And the fact that they were cleaning out a Russian barracks for their housing indicated that this state of bliss was likely to continue.
The city was no longer Petrozavodsk, nor even Petroskoi – it was now Fort Onega, Finland. Lenin’s statue had been replaced by a Finnish field cannon, and their ownership was established throughout the town in every possible way.
Rokka, Hietanen and Vanhala were walking the streets shoulder to shoulder, routinely failing to salute the officers they happened across. All sorts of occupying units had turned up in the city, and admittedly their general comportment was such that our friends would have happily been thrown in the brig before demonstrating their respect toward such individuals. They had passed by several officers without incident when a certain captain approached them from the opposite direction, having spotted them from quite a way off. When the trio pretended not to notice him, he stopped and said, ‘What’s this? Why don’t you salute?’