Hietanen shared the home brew around and they gulped it down, coughing and choking. No one would have dared criticize it, seeing as it had already afforded them the joy of anticipation, which made its waters sacred. It was beyond reproach. They downed another round and grew drunk with glee, more from the pleasure of knowing that they would soon be drunk than from the actual alcohol, which hadn’t had enough time to take effect.
Conversation grew livelier. A sort of radiant joy seemed to rise in each of the men. They were quick to laugh at even the most pitiful jokes, and a powerful atmosphere of camaraderie and fraternity soon reigned within the tent.
‘Aw, shit, it warms a belly to the depths!’ Rokka smiled. ‘Hey! Koskela! Why ain’t you over at the command post? They got the big shots’ liquor over there.’
‘Nothin’ as big as this jug here.’
‘You sure don’t do much drinkin’ with them other officers.’
‘Why should I? Right here’s where I come from.’
Faces here and there were already flushed pink, and Salo was off to such a rip-roaring start that he was already singing Koskela’s praises. ‘No, guys. Say what you will, but there’s not many sections got a top dog like we got.’
Koskela didn’t pay him any attention, and none of the others was quite drunk enough to start launching into public confessions just yet. They stuck to praising the home brew.
‘Stiff stuff. Starting to feel it, boys!’
They drained one cup after another, and soon the conversation turned to the various phases of the war and the friends who had fallen. ‘It’s been rough, boys. Guys dropping like flies… you remember the time we flanked the road for that shitty encirclement and the stretchers were dripping with blood? That guy was tough all right… I mean, if you wanna tell it straight, Lehto was tough as nails… guy killed himself for nothing… Yeah… sure was… sure was… Lahtinen was as good as they come… got ’im in the back of the ear… Aren’t many guys would of even started lugging that machine gun back.’
‘Lissen, Koskela,’ Rokka said, ‘you oughdda make ’em git another stripe for Määttä, now that he’s replaced Lahtinen as squad leader and all. Not that those ribbons are worth anythin’, but since that’s how it’s done and all. He’s a good fella.’
Koskela hadn’t said anything yet. Little by little he had started looking around at the others, always fixing his steady gaze upon whoever happened to be speaking. Now, weighing his words, he said, ‘I know the guy.’
Salo turned to Koskela, hands flailing. ‘But look, Koski! Maybe I ain’t the best, but I still done purty good, ain’t I?’
Koskela looked at each of them again, staring at them for a long time. Then, weighing his words as carefully as before, he said, ‘Tough crew.’
‘Yeah, I say so too. And no other crew better come stompin’ all over us.’ Hietanen might have been the drunkest of them all, bobbing his head as he spoke, hair falling in his eyes.
‘Hey, guys, put my share in a bottle, huh? I’m gonna go check out the villages,’ Rahikainen said.
‘On the other side of the Svir? How you figure you’ll do that?’ Hietanen asked.
‘They got convoys driving over all the time. But there’s a big encampment even closer to here where they got some ladies laying a road. The guys on leave said so. Whatta ya say, boss?’
Splotches burned red on Koskela’s cheeks. He stared silently at Rahikainen for a long time and finally said, ‘Guys come and guys go, and that’s their business. I’m not going to give you permission, but if you want to go AWOL, that’s your responsibility, not mine. Tomorrow morning we head for the line right after we eat, and if you’re not there then, you’ll get hit with ten times normal guard duty. The things we have to do, we do – otherwise, we might as well be Lulu’s chickens on the loose. Remember that, and you can go.’
‘Okey-doke! If I’m alive, I’ll be there. You betcha. Now gimme some a that home brew, huh?’
They eyeballed Rahikainen’s share and poured it into two bottles, which he wrapped in his blanket and stuck in his bag before taking off.
‘What the hell you takin’na blanket for?’
‘A man’s gotta put something down! Who’s gonna lie on the bare ground?’
When Rahikainen had gone, Rokka said, ‘Yup, I bet he makes it. That fella there’s gonna make it through this whole war without a scratch. Too slippery for even a bullet’ta catch, that one.’
‘Yeah, but Jesus, come on. Now I don’t wanna be mean or anything, but I have to say, it’s pre-tty rare that Rahikainen puts himself in the line of fire.’
‘Sure is!’ Salo chimed in, pointedly. But Sihvonen, not exactly belonging to the fleet of the fearless himself, was not eager to discuss heroism and sniffed, ‘I don’t know about that. Every man here’s been scared.’
‘Scared… scared. Everybody gets scared, some guys just know how to hide it better… There ain’t no such thing as a guy who ain’t afraid of death.’
They all raised their voices in agreement, save Rokka, who smiled and said with a wink, ‘Now, don’t talk nonsense, fellas. How could I be scared a sumpin’ I ain’t never seen? But hey, fellas, let’s play sumpin’! Lissen, Sankia Priha the Great, put on “Yokkantee!”’
Vanhala dug out his record-player. Its spring was broken, but Vanhala turned the record with his finger, which worked well enough. The rhythm was a little off, but in their current state of bliss, nobody noticed. They played ‘Yokkantee’ and ‘Army Battalyon’, records they had named according to the words they could make out the most clearly. One or two of them even took a crack at singing along, belting out garbled, vaguely Russian-sounding noises over and over again.
Eventually Vanhala got tired of turning the records and their attention drifted off in search of the next source of amusement. At one point, somebody finally remembered it was Mannerheim’s birthday, but they didn’t drink to him just then because they were saving the home brew, and by the time they poured the next round, Mannerheim was long since forgotten. But Vanhala had promised to sing in his honor, and since the others were eager to hear something, he began,
‘Goollord, boy! That’ssa rebels’ song you’re singin’!’ Rokka exclaimed, but Koskela motioned Vanhala to continue. He’d found the rhythm in his fingers and was tapping in time with Vanhala’s song, even humming along here and there. Koskela had known the song as a boy, since back before the Finnish tenant farmers had won the right to own their land, the Koskelas had been quite red indeed. Two of Koskela’s uncles had been shot at the hands of the parson’s son, a Jaeger trained in Germany, at the base of the hill by the village hospital. Thanks to his sturdy constitution, Koskela’s father himself had made it out of prison camp alive, but only barely. The Koskelas had rented their farm from the parsonage, and it was to the parson’s severe disappointment that he had one day glimpsed this phantom of a red scoundrel staggering home to claim the farm now lawfully his. Afterwards, the elder Koskela had gradually softened, and when his two younger sons fell in the Winter War, and his eldest was promoted to the rank of officer – making him nothing less than a legend in their little district – the two uncles’ graves by the hospital hill came to be noticeably better kept. The elder Koskela wasn’t particularly surprised by his son’s promotion, seeing as he himself had commanded a company in the Red Guard, and if by some stroke of luck he had managed to escape execution himself, it certainly wasn’t because he hadn’t been a hell of a rebel. Of course his son would have inherited his military gifts: his bravery and strength, his calm, steady intelligence.