‘Tie this man up… Tie him up!’
They managed to get Koskela face-down. Five, maybe six men were lying on top of him, but he still wriggled around like a bear beneath the pile of them. At last they got three belts around him, and Koskela was helpless. Nevertheless, he clenched his teeth and growled, ‘I’m not giving up, damn it! Damn it, I’m not giving up.’
Then they carried him off to his tent with a sizeable brigade in tow. Kariluoto walked beside him, chatting to try to calm him down, until finally Koskela asked, ‘Who’re you?’
‘Why, I’m Kariluoto! Don’t you recognize me? It’s me, your old friend.’
Koskela lit up. ‘Well, hello there! So long, boys… Where we going?’
‘To lie down. You’re tired.’
‘Tired… Old Lady Koskela’s boy never gets tired… Then Antti of the Isotalo’s came by… singing all the way from Härmä da-dye…’
The casualty rate in the tent was rather high as well. Only Rokka and Vanhala were still up. Määttä had actually taken the initiative to go to bed, but the others had just dropped out on the field, as it were.
Vanhala was playing Stalin’s speeches and Rokka was telling tales of yore. ‘Looka here… I keep this lil’ almanac with me all a time, see. And then one time I go back home with the missus to her parents’ place and here I am flippin’ through this almanac here so her ol’ man asks, “Anythin’ in’nat book a yours ’bout the fishin’ for t’marra?” ’Nen I read, “Fish’s swimmin’ this time a year an’na pickins’s good”. And shucks! Next mornin’na ol’ man comes back with a whole heap of ’em, and he says Tommo went out and bought all kinds a books, too, but no good ever came a any a those. Shoulda seen how the ol’ man was worked up! But then’na next day he asks me again and I read him the same bit, but he doesn’t catch a damn fish all day. So then he gits all sore ’bout the whole thing and won’t open his mouth for three days. And then there’s the missus, who’s still sore ’bout it ’cause I put one over on her ol’ man.’
Vanhala’s head was nodding off as he turned the record, but he laughed nonetheless and said, ‘The missus got sore… the missus always get sore.’
‘My missus never stays sore long. You know, Sankia Priha the Great, you know what you do with a missus when she gits all riled up at you?’
‘Give ’er a good whack ’cross the backside, heeheehee.’
‘Stop that. I spinn’er round in a polka and I’ll be darned if that don’t set things right. But hey! What the hell is’sat? What’ssat they’re draggin’? Those fellas gone and killed Koskela?’
They went to meet the traveling party and Rokka growled from a good way off, ‘What the hell’d you folks do you gotta drag a fella back like that? What’ssa matter, boy? Somebody take a crack at you?’
‘Well, hullo, sharp-shot. Who took a crack?’
They lowered Koskela to the ground and Kariluoto whispered to Rokka, ‘Try to get him to go to bed. He got carried away and we had to tie him up.’
Rokka loosened Koskela’s bindings and led him over to his tent. Koskela put up no resistance. He had no idea what was going on around him, and just babbled as he stumbled along, leaning on Rokka’s arm. ‘Hullo, you old Taipale vet. Let’s sing Lundgren… da da da off with the stable naaags…’
Koskela dropped off to sleep as soon as he hit the tent. Rokka tossed a coat over him and came back outside.
Lammio was trying to play sober, and failing miserably, though the ruckus had dispelled his drunken haze quite a bit. He looked around at the men lying about here and there, a few of whom had vomited up the rice porridge consumed in honor of the occasion. ‘Lovely… Very attractive… Well, that clears that up. The whole platoon’s in the same state. What have you been drinking here?’
‘Home brew. Bubba had such stuff in’nim that me and Vanhala here’s the only ones left standin’! We’d offer our guests some, ’ceptin’nat we’re all out, see…’
‘You are responsible for the section until Koskela and Hietanen have sobered up. And what do you suppose would happen if we were called to alert now?’
‘Well, shucks, me and Vanhala here’d go set up a machine gun and empty some belts over there, and there, and there, and there. We’d send such a hail a bullets in each direction as would settle that alarm right then and there, don’t you worry. Lissen, you better not have any more to drink now, hear? Otherwise I’m gonna end up bein’ company commander. Not that I couldn’t do it, a course, it just wouldn’t be quite right, see.’
At that, Lammio could say nothing, so the officers made their exit. The whole festive mood had been spoiled, and Lammio even started enumerating Koskela’s less favorable qualities for the others’ benefit. ‘It is not always the case that personal courage makes a man suitable for the rank of officer. When they asked me about possible candidates for officer training, I thought of Rokka and Hietanen, but I decided against it. And this kind of thing proves that I was right to do so. As good a man as Koskela may be, he lacks the sense of tradition and the true spirit of a real officer. He doesn’t fit into civilized circles – which is why he buddies up with his men and then vents his resentment in a drunken outburst. There is no other possible explanation. I wouldn’t have believed it of a man so calm and restrained.’
Kariluoto hiccuped. His spirits had suddenly plummeted. Everything Lammio was saying made him feel so sick that he somewhat uncomfortably started speaking up in Koskela’s defense. ‘Sure, but he was totally drunk. Home brew can make anyone like that, for no reason at all.’
He remembered the shots whistling from the bunker, and how Koskela had crawled toward it, loaded down with satchel charges on both sides. And he knew that it was he, and not Koskela, who had received all the credit for that breakthrough. But it wasn’t his fault. He’d done everything he could to make sure everyone knew what Koskela had done. Kariluoto could feel himself growing sober, and in his numbed state he was suddenly ashamed of the whole drunken evening and everything he might have said over the course of it. Goodness, how far away all of this was from the center of things, from that point upon which the reality of all these events turned! Kariluoto didn’t return to Lammio’s quarters, but turned off toward his own command post without a further word of explanation.
Rokka and Vanhala dragged their compatriots into the tent for the night. They brewed a pot of ersatz coffee and drank it between themselves.
Mosquitoes swarmed in the beams of sunlight streaming from the evening sky, and from high in the treetops of a nearby spruce came the hollow call of a cuckoo.
They awoke the next morning to the rustle of Rahikainen’s return. Rumpled heads began to rise along the edges of the tent, eyes red and squinting, tongues wriggling about in their dry, sticky mouths. Hietanen looked around, spotted the empty vat and said, ‘Well! Never taken part in a war operation like that one before!’
‘You ended in a tailspin, heeheehee!’
‘I can’t remember a damn thing. But hey, let’s put on some coffee. I need something anyway. My mouth tastes like a cat took a crap in it.’
Koskela got up too. He wrinkled his forehead in concentration, but evidently the effort yielded no insight into the festivities of the previous evening, as he subsequently asked, ‘So, uh, how did everything go yesterday?’
Rokka laughed. ‘Went pretty good for everybody else! It’s just you they had’da take prisoner over there at the headquarters.’
‘Did I go over there too?’
‘Sure did. Fellas carried you back. Bound hand and foot.’