‘Me, too… we came that way too… there… for my bootleg…’ Priha was settling old accounts.
The one who killed fugitives with the greatest panache, however, was Honkajoki, who had joined in late in the game. Actually, it would be false to say that he killed fugitives. That is, he didn’t actually hit anyone, because he didn’t aim – he just shot in the same general direction as the others, looking very splendid and calling to Vanhala, ‘Shock trooper Vanhala, brilliant execution. The homeland will not forget you.’
Honkajoki figured he had pulled his weight in the whole ordeal, if only by the seat of his pants. Although, indeed, he had been a little tardy setting out. But one does have to assess a situation first. Understandably.
Not one enemy soldier made it across the river. Those on the opposite bank were firing intensely, however. A thud came from the direction of the second bunker, and the men could instantly guess what had happened. Blown up with a satchel charge.
‘Guys, I’m out of ammo. Any of you bums got extra?’ Asumaniemi turned slightly to the side in the nest and simultaneously rose so that his head and shoulders popped into view through the opening in the nest. Just then, he tumbled over, grabbing his chest.
The others saw him take a few steps as if he were drunk. Then they heard him say quickly a couple of times, ‘It’s on the left… the heart is on the left…’
Then he fell to the floor of the trench, and when Jalovaara and Vanhala turned him onto his back, they saw that the boy was dead. The bullet had actually struck quite close to his heart.
Jalovaara suddenly turned away. He took a few violent steps, but then got himself under control and said, ‘Always the best…’
The shooting ceased. Everyone was stunned. The easy slaughter of a moment ago and the success of the counter-attack, with no casualties, had lifted their spirits almost to the point of exultation. Asumaniemi’s death thudded down like a sledgehammer in the middle of the elated atmosphere. The final expression on the boy’s face was one of astonishment. No doubt his bravery had been connected to a perfect certainty that danger did not actually exist. He had had one, brief moment in which to realize that playing with one’s life can lead to losing it.
He was, incidentally, one of the most beautiful corpses they had seen. That slightly childish expression of amazement still beamed from his face. Otherwise it was perfectly calm, untroubled by any of the warped contortions that usually made the features of the dead so horrible to look at.
Jalovaara left a few men to secure the riverbank, then set off toward the second bunker’s communication trench with Vanhala, Honkajoki, Sihvonen and one of the new recruits. Six enemy soldiers surrendered there, seeing that they had no hope of escape. They had been retreating down the road the second section had come along when they saw that their escape route was blocked. The last man raised his hands like the others, but then suddenly grabbed the submachine gun he had dropped, stuck the barrel under his jaw, and shot himself. He had the shoulder tabs of a second lieutenant.
The position had been retaken. Two men from the second section had been wounded – one by shrapnel from a hand grenade and the other by a piece of wood that had sailed from the doorpost of the bunker after he threw the satchel charge through its opening. They had taken three prisoners from the bunker, making eight in all. Jalovaara sent them away immediately and hurried to man the positions. As soon as the enemy was sure their own men were all out of the stronghold, they would launch a terrible barrage in revenge. There was no doubt about that.
Things were already quiet in the neighboring stronghold as well. The enemy soldiers over there who had tried to make it to the river ended up dying helplessly, as Määttä’s machine gun was situated at a particularly opportune angle. When Jalovaara reached the machine-gun position, the new recruit who had been assisting Määttä was bursting with excitement. This many and that many men we shot! They dropped like frogs!
Määttä himself was smoking a cigarette and looking indifferent. When Jalovaara congratulated him, he paid the Ensign no attention, then said, as if he hadn’t heard him at all, ‘Might want to pull the team back into the foxholes for cover. Iron’s gonna start comin’ down pretty soon.’
Jalovaara could see that Määttä took no interest in anything but the strictly practical side of things. The Ensign set off down the trench toward the others. They had gathered around Asumaniemi’s body, which the medics had lifted onto a stretcher.
‘He was good at gymnastics,’ a voice said. ‘He was always practicing at the training center ’cause they had bars there.’
‘He was always dangling from the tree branches here, too, whenever he had any time.’
Jalovaara ordered the body to be taken away so that it wouldn’t end up in the barrage.
When the medics had left, he said to Vanhala, ‘This means another stripe for you, Priha. It’s… just… too bad.’ Jalovaara’s voice trembled. ‘What a horrible reward for Asumaniemi.’
Then the Ensign looked at Honkajoki. ‘Well, you did quite all right too.’
The Ensign smiled. He was remembering Honkajoki’s hop-crawl. Honkajoki raised his eyes with a look of respectful earnestness, removed his cap and bowed.
Then they all laughed. A little too much, perhaps. The joy felt slightly hysterical as their anxiety began to wear off. Only Vanhala’s heehee-ing was just as it had been as he said, ‘So we’re gonna have a real live officer on our hands! Lots of blood, sweat and tears goes into a rise in the ranks. But a man’s rewarded in the end! Heeheehee…’
Then they ducked into the foxholes without being commanded. Back-clapping and heehee-ing stopped in a second. Booms sounded from the other side of the river, like potatoes dropping onto the floor. Stalin’s organs.
They lay curled up in the shelters dug into the walls of the trench. Fire, dirt, iron and smoke swirled up over the positions. Their terror was just the same as before. It hadn’t changed at all. Eyes closed, hearts thumping, bodies trembling, they tried to sink themselves into the very earth.
They might have been even more scared today than they had been before, though. They knew that the firing would end soon.
‘Stop, just stop.’
They had finished with the war the day before, but the enemy had yet to do so. It was as if might was flaunting its divinity, taunting them, even in these final moments.
Watchful, exhausted and beyond worn out, they waited for the blasts to cease. What use had their dogged stint by this river been? What use had the counter-attack a few days ago been? They were going to have to relinquish the positions.
Right. They had lost. Received their punishment. Why had it happened this way? Well, there would be many answers to that, no doubt. There was, at least, one consolation in it all. In handing them this whipping, fate had released them from all responsibility. What would victory have meant? Responsibility. Responsibility for deeds they would have been obliged to account for, sooner or later. Because as long as the history of humanity marches on, the cause of what follows will be what came before. And in cause lies responsibility. He who presides over the cause must answer for the consequences. And maybe it was just these exhausted men’s good fortune that neither they nor their descendants would be the ones obliged to answer. They had already atoned for their sins – paid for them with their own hides. They had but one hope left: to pull the shreds of their lives through these final minutes.
And after that, they would stand free, cleared, blameless. Happy.