Вяйнё Линна - Unknown Soldiers

The bantering stopped short as they turned to Lehto in astonishment. He had opened his emergency ration tin and was using his knife to lever the better part of its contents out of the can.

‘Don’t you know that’s not allowed?’ Hietanen said.

A thin, dry smile flashed across Lehto’s lips. ‘So’s killing. Fifth Command, wasn’t it? Can of food’s a pretty minor offense when there’s skulls busting open all over the place.’

The others turned to Koskela, as if waiting for him to take a stance that would resolve this dilemma so that they could follow suit. Koskela had been listening to the men in silence. They amused him greatly, though his amusement never revealed itself beyond the subtle crinkles at the corners of his eyes. His face remained stiff and expressionless, with just a trace of a smile hovering in and around his eyes. He felt a certain revulsion all of a sudden, when the men turned to him awaiting his judgement. In the first place, he had no desire to make other people’s decisions for them, generally speaking, and in the second place, he sort of despised the men for not being able to just take their rations and eat them. He diverted his gaze and said rather abruptly, ‘Far as I’m concerned it’s fine. We can’t get much hungrier than we are now. It’s after twenty-four hours that the edge wears off and you go kind of numb, right? So sure, this is the emergency the rations are meant for, anyway.’

He realized that his reasoning was incoherent, and he knew the men were no less aware of it, but somehow it still sort of veiled the event in his shadow, making the rest of them feel less like they were going against orders.

A general feeding frenzy began, and although he personally would have endured his hunger, Koskela joined in with the others for precisely this same reason. His action legitimated theirs.

A broad smile spread across Hietanen’s face as he dug his fingers into the canned pork and shoveled it into his mouth. They all lit up with the familiar, mischievous joy that comes of breaking the rules, which in Hietanen overflowed into the grandiloquent declaration, ‘I’ve fought on a lot of battlefields, but I’ve never seen gluttony like this before!’

They smoked the mahorka to top off their meal, and a feeling of contentment settled over them. Määttä picked at his teeth with a match. Somebody asked for more details about his adventure, and the feeling of well-being induced him to talk about it at greater length than he normally would have. He burped first, then, slowly, he started to speak. ‘Bastards nearly got me back there.’

‘How’d you get lost?’

‘I was just going around some bushes. Seemed to me the line was turning right, so I thought I’d just cut straight through, but then there I was standing all alone in the middle of a dark forest. Only way I can figure it out is that the company must have turned left. And I just went straight.’

‘And you saw Russkis.’

‘Well, I heard some rustling and decided to go see who was over there. ’Bout a dozen of their big shots were all crouching down, and I’d already yelled out ‘Hey guys!’ before I realized they all had helmets on. They asked something, but I can’t make head or tail of those foreign languages. Didn’t have much to say back to ’em, either. I just made a run for it. They fired after me, but I zigzagged and they missed.’

‘Shit, guys. We better keep it down. The bushes are crawling with Russkis.’

‘Bushkis! Heehee,’ Vanhala giggled, thus coining right there in their group the term that would become so widely used.

Määttä’s story set them on their guard and then, to crown it, Koskela whispered, ‘Get down!’

He pulled his pistol from its holster and signaled to the men. ‘Somebody’s moving.’

They loaded their guns and cautiously clicked the bolts shut. The guns turned in the direction Koskela had indicated. ‘Get in formation! Advance quietly!’

They darted from tree to tree. Each twig that snapped underfoot felt like an explosion, and would prompt one’s neighbor to shake his head angrily. Then a shot rang out.

Vanhala was firing. ‘Vanhala’s shooting!’ rippled down the line.

‘What’s over there?’

‘Somebody’s running.’

A brown-clad man was making a dash for a tree. He tripped and fell to the ground, but recovered and kept running.

‘ Rookee veer! Hands up!’

The Russian emerged from behind the tree, his arms raised. He glanced from man to man and took a few steps toward them. His filthy face was exceedingly pale, and a dreadful trembling shook his body. His eyes darted from one man to the next as he scanned those closest to him, but you could tell from the expression in his eyes that he was too focused on some strenuous internal effort to actually see anything. His intense, anxious shaking and darting eyes laid bare his whole mental state. He was clearly terrified at the sight of the raised guns pointed in his direction. He awaited death with each step, but hoped, at the same time, that it would not come.

‘Check the bushes! Case he’s got friends with him.’

There were no others to be found, however, so they gathered around the captive, who was growing discernibly calmer. He stood with his trembling arms raised, trying to force some kind of distorted smile. The smile intuitively sought the humans behind the soldiers. It was as if he wanted to say, ‘Don’t hurt me. Let’s smile and be friends. I’m smiling, see? Just as if we happened to be meeting in peacetime.’

The man was maybe in his thirties. His face bore traces of long suffering and heavy exertion. He wore a moss-brown shirt and the same color trousers, the knees of which had been reinforced with triangular patches. Below them he wore black legwarmers and leather shoes.

‘His belt’s made out of cloth.’

‘Even the superpower’s gear is looking a little ragged.’

‘Got any comrades with you? Tovarisch? ’

The prisoner shook his head.

‘ Tovarisch, tovarisch . Understand? Ponimai? Are there any others? No ponimai ?’

‘ Nyet tovarisch ,’ the man mumbled indistinctly.

‘Got any weapons in your pockets? Vintovka plakkar? In here, in here, any vintovka ?’

‘Don’t ask, check!’ Lehto started patting down the prisoner’s pockets. He found a hand grenade in his breast pocket. ‘Hey bud, what you doing with this little guy?’

‘He could have blown himself up and taken us with him.’

‘He’s not one of those guys. You can tell just by looking at his head,’ Koskela said. ‘The guys who pull those stunts are different. And of course he’s got a hand grenade on him – we all do.’

‘What do we do with him?’

‘Take him to the command post, I guess,’ Koskela said, looking around inquiringly at the men. ‘Who wants to go?’

‘I’ll take him,’ Lehto said. ‘This way!’ He signaled the direction to the prisoner, who hesitated as if he was afraid he’d misunderstood, then started walking. Lehto followed behind with his rifle under his arm, and the others began heading back, keeping an even sharper lookout. Lehto and the prisoner had just disappeared from view when a gunshot rang out from the same direction. The men rushed to the site. The prisoner lay face-down on the ground and Lehto was yanking an empty cartridge from his gun.

‘What did he do?’

‘Died.’ Lehto’s lips were stretched into a thin line.

‘Did he try to get away?’

‘Yep.’

Koskela looked at Lehto out of the corner of his eye. His voice was not really accusatory, it was more evasive as he said, ‘You didn’t have to do that. He wasn’t one of those guys.’