Free The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna Page B

black-mud-bespattered man; a black-mud-bespattered calf; and a black-mud-bespattered hare. They woke. The cow shat, the calf sucked milk, Vatanen smoked a cigarette. Then he set off, carrying the calf to the far edge of the marsh. The cow followed, more gingerly than before, and when it got to the other side, it turned to stare at the bog and bellow at it angrily.
    At the next pool in the forest, Vatanen washed down the cow, then the calf, and rinsed his own clothes. He had no boots: they were back there in the mud. Last of all, he washed the hare. It was outraged for quite a while.
    When Vatanen and his train of animals reached the Sonkajärvi road, an empty cattle truck awaited him, and some tired men who had been vainly searching for him all night long. The other cattle had been driven away the previous evening, along with a worried Irja. Vatanen, too, was driven to Sonkajärvi in the cattle truck, and soon he was standing on the main street of the village, wearing smutty, mud-bespattered clothes, clutching a hare in his arms, and barefoot.

10
    In the Church
    V atanen spent the night in a boardinghouse. He had a poor night in a good bed, for he was now accustomed to life in the open air. In the morning, he went shopping for new boots, a pullover, underclothes, trousers, everything. He threw his dirty old clothes in a trash can.
    It was a hot, sunny morning, and Saturday as well. He took a stroll through the village streets, and, in his search for a good spot for the hare to browse, he came across a cemetery.
    The herbaceous arrangements on the little hillocks were very much to the hare’s taste. It particularly relished the ryegrass on the recent spring graves.
    The church door was unlocked. Vatanen called the hare away from the graves and brought it inside. What a wonderful coolness and peace! Though Vatanen had long since stopped going to church, he still relished the silence of the huge space.
    The hare hopped along the central aisle to the chancel, dropped a few innocent pellets in front of the altar, and then began studying the church more systematically. Vatanen sat down in a pew, observing the altar painting and the architecture of the nave. There were places for about six hundred people there, he estimated. The nave was partially two-level: both side walls were lined full-length with galleries that joined under the organ loft at the back. Wooden staircases led to the galleries from either side of the altar. A looming light from the high, narrow windows evoked a dreamy, peaceful ambience.
    He gathered up the hare droppings from the altar and slipped them into his pocket. He made his way down a side aisle to a pew tucked away at the back, removed his shiny new boots, stretched out on the bench, settled the knapsack under his head, and prepared for a nap. This was a much more agreeable place for sleeping than the boardinghouse. The eye could travel into the lofty Christian spaces of the ceiling, and the still, pitch-pine columns adorned with verses were a fine contrast to the grubby designs on the peeling boardinghouse wallpaper. The hare was silently pottering around by the sacristy door behind the altar. Let it, Vatanen thought, and dozed off.
    While he was sleeping, an elderly man came into the church: the pastor, here to do a few ecclesiastical chores. In his ministerial garb, a black cassock with the white tabs of his clerical bands at the neck, he walked briskly past the altar to the sacristy without noticing the hare near the door. It stared in astonishment at this apparition of a black-cassocked man.
    The pastor came out of the sacristy hugging a collection of long candles and a pile of paper, probably crumpled-up packing paper. He went up the steps to the altar, removed the guttered candles from their candle-sticks, and replaced them with new ones. He took the candle stubs back into the sacristy and simultaneously disposed of the ball of paper.
    When he returned, he lit the candles and retreated into the