“For the first time, they detected a note of irritation in Koskela's voice. His gait was a bit stiffer than usual too. Some of them figured it was Lehto who had irritated him, and others assumed it was Lahtinen, but in truth it was all of them. The event and its aftermath had stirred up feelings in Koskela he thought he had buried beneath the snowdrifts of the Winter War. He had tried to forget about death - his own or anybody else's - and to maintain a certain tranquility. This tranquility was dear to him, and he was angry now that it had been upset. Nothing had been quite brutal enough to desensitize him to the insanity of war. He fought, and he fought better than countless others, but each despicable deed and show of pride in killing awakened the judge in him. He had tried to fulfil his duty, blocking out its insanity, and now this equilibrium had been upset - which was why he was walking jerkily several yards in front of his men. But soon his heaving breath evened out. He calmed down. The lingering shock of the experience fell away and Koskela was his former self once more. The baseness of what Lehto had done had affected him most deeply of all of them probably but after a few minutes, it ceased to trouble him. And so one more incident receded into the past. Nobody learned anything from it, and everybody, by forgetting, condoned it.”

—Narrator