Kariluoto gave a start. Uttered in this strong, bitter voice, the words felt so irrevocable that Kariluoto felt the end was at hand this very moment. ‘I see. Who’d have thought – Germany. And we won’t last on our own.’
Koskela didn’t say anything for a little while. It seemed to Kariluoto that he was deliberately holding something back. He saw a muscle twitch in the corner of Koskela’s eye and realized what kind of strain this seemingly calm man must have been under. Finally Koskela said in a strangely angered voice, ‘This isn’t a war. This is just horror after horror.’
‘Yeah, the deserters,’ Kariluoto said, seizing on the first thing that came to his mind of what this ‘horror’ might be. ‘Have there been many?’
‘Oh, they don’t really have anything to do with it. The ones who actually desert, I mean. There aren’t many of them, and mostly they’re guys whose nerves are so fried they’re no use anyway. But nobody wants to fight. The whole thing’s like sand slipping through our fingers – like water, even. Nothing stays where it’s supposed to.’
Koskela fell silent and his face resumed its former, motionless mien. Kariluoto didn’t say anything either, sensing more from Koskela’s speech than he really wanted to know. He knew him well enough to understand that he must be tottering on the breaking point of exhaustion, as there was no other way that Koskela would have been capable of such an outburst.
A long, embarrassed silence prevailed as they chewed on their sandwiches. Finally, Kariluoto said, ‘How are things going for us?’
‘The battalion, you mean?’
‘All of us. All of Finland…’
‘The way things go for losers. Getting the shit kicked out of us.’
Kariluoto’s jaw trembled. He felt a dampness under his eyelids and his angry voice wavered as he said, ‘No. By God, no! I can’t stand it… I don’t want to see it. Anything but that.’
‘There’s no hope. Not a trace.’
‘So we fight hopelessly.’ A savage note had crept into Kariluoto’s voice.
‘That’s what we’ve been doing this whole time,’ Koskela said, exhausted to the point of apathy. Kariluoto saw that he was embarrassed by the whole tenor of their conversation and wanted it to be over. They shifted into a more practical mode and Koskela explained their situation to Kariluoto. He would go back to leading his former platoon indefinitely, even if he knew it was only a matter of time before they transferred him elsewhere. The shortage of officers was becoming apparent, and they wouldn’t be able to keep lieutenants like him as platoon leaders for long. The battalion actually had a couple of company commander vacancies that were being filled by men younger than him, but they had been filled while he was serving as Third Company commander, and besides, they were regular officers. Koskela had no professional ambitions mixed up in the matter, but he would have liked to stay with his own platoon. There was no way that would happen, however, unless he became commander of their own company.
When they’d finished eating, they set off to check on the positions. Koskela explained a bit about the stages of the retreat, and little by little Kariluoto began to understand just how complete the collapse had been.
The new recruits assigned to Hietanen’s platoon were digging foxholes for themselves. They were four in total, and Hietanen had left them all in the first section, as it was down by more men than the second. Actually, all the squads had been operating short-handed since the war began. It hadn’t really been a problem during the positional war, as it had just meant that they had to stand guard more frequently, but as soon as the retreat began, they struggled to carry all of the equipment. Hietanen was instructing the boys digging foxholes. Three of them appeared to be taking the situation seriously. They said little and followed Hietanen’s instructions with a harried submissiveness attesting to their general uncertainty. The fourth boy, however – a vigorous, blond youth – seemed instantly at home. Once he’d dug his hole, he sat down on the edge of it and said with a swagger, ‘So, where these Russkis at, huh? I wanna start takin’ ’em down.’
Rokka’s head popped out of a pit. ‘Goollord! You all hear this fella? Lissen boy, don’t yell so loud, they’ll hear you, and they’ll all start runnin’ for the hills once they realize you’re here.’
‘How old are you?’ Hietanen asked.
‘Eighteen, Sergeant, sir,’ one of the boys replied.
‘Well, I’ll be damned. We were pre-tty young when we started but we weren’t children.’
‘Mother Finland wrenches babes from her breast and sends them out to protect her,’ Rahikainen said.
Something resembling a smile rose to Hietanen’s exhausted face. ‘That’s the first time I’ve been called “Sergeant, sir”! You all hear that? Just so you know who you’re talking to.’
‘New recruits with the fear of the trainin’ center drilled into them,’ Rahikainen said disparagingly. ‘Now they’re sendin’ us young’uns and grandpas.’
‘Far and wide, our heroes rise up, coming forth to join the line-up… heehee…’ Vanhala, sitting in his hole, hands clasped around his ankles, started chanting the Red Guard’s March again.
‘Fighting on, fighting on,’ Sihvonen sneered. ‘Except that there’s no life out here. Should’ve just made it “death”…’
Koskela and Kariluoto then arrived. Koskela was to stay with his platoon from now on, and Kariluoto stuck around a moment to say hello. ‘Hey. How are you guys doing?’
‘Oh, fine. Ceding land to pass the time.’
Kariluoto spotted a guy from his former platoon and ran off to greet him – it was Ukkola, boiling up some water over a nearby campfire. Ukkola sat with his cap backwards, the bill over the nape of his neck. Machine-gun cartridges dangled from his waistband. He had no pack, just a breadbag and a rolled-up winter coat bound together with some hemp string. He had fixed his canteen to the barrel of his submachine gun and was dangling it over the fire.
‘Hey there… How you doing, Ukkola?’
‘Hey. Well, can’t say there’s anything too great about the job.’ The man glanced over his shoulder and even Kariluoto had to smile. The image of him was so perfectly stereotypical, right down to the response.
‘No, doesn’t look that way. So this is what we’ve come to.’
‘In cards it’s the luck of the draw, and farming’s a goddamn lottery, but this here, this is one hell of a course they sent us out on.’
‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’
‘Sure, we can stir up a little nuisance, but that won’t stop them. If we manage to hold the line in one spot it gives way somewhere else. And those guys move fast. First, they load up the air with iron and then they pounce on you like a pack of wolves. Those fuckin’ Sturmoviks are hell. It’s raining shells and bullets like there were a couple of winged Kirghizs up there with submachine guns.’
Ukkola’s water started to boil. He took the grease box for his gas mask and carefully emptied his packets of substitute coffee into it.
‘This here’s everything I have left. The supply guys have given their notice. We go whole days without seeing a scrap of food. Even the Good Lord Himself couldn’t save this ship from sinking.’
Ukkola stopped speaking as he focused his attention on the boiling coffee. Blowing on his cup, he continued, ‘I mean, once it goes, there’s no getting it up again any which way. So, well. Hey, congratulations by the way. Didn’t you get married or something?’