The Beggar and the Hare Read online

  Sanna Pommakka ate cold sausage, and pined. Pining was wanting to be where one belonged without necessarily knowing where that was. It was where other people were. Where another person was, but how could she conjure that person up?

  Only food made her feel better. The food had once been alive and it went inside her. In the course of a night Sanna could easily get through a kilo of fries and a couple of packs of frankfurters. The shelves of a German discount grocery store were her friends, her security, her source of surprise and understanding. For twenty euros she could fill a shopping bag with a wonderfully nurturing assortment of carbohydrates, proteins, sodium glutamate, sugar and salt. Sixty cents, it said on the red label of the pack of frankfurters that had passed their sell-by date.

  Sanna changed the channel.

  On the TV channel designed for men, a performing magician was being dropped into a deep, icy lake, bound with chains, locked in a box. Sanna picked up a fry. Sanna looked at the magician.

  He believed in himself. He knew what he was doing, but no one else knew how he did it. He made people believe in him. His trickery worked.

  Sanna Pommakka googled the man and checked up on his life. Wife a top model, two children, Mandus and Skylah. Sanna Pommakka suddenly had an awakening. Unlikely as it might seem, her energy had been returned to her by an illusionist named Germano Bully.

  Sanna Pommakka travelled from the edge of town by metro, bus and train to the central library. In the library’s entrance hall a miracle, a divine dispensation, a cinematic twist took place. Sanna Pommakka’s eyes fell on a row of books that were being sold off cheaply, and the fourth one from the right was Solmu Mäkelä’s The Big Book of Magic, one euro.

  Such can be the price of one’s future.

  Sanna practised at home until she could do Solmu’s tricks with her eyes shut, in the dark, suffering from serious sleep deprivation. At night school she enrolled in a magic class and also learned to take criticism as something that was aimed at her conjuring tricks rather than at her personally. In the follow-up class she received lessons in illusionism of a more sophisticated kind, as well as in how to manipulate one’s audience.

  The teacher claimed to have earned his own diploma in Las Vegas. He complimented Sanna on her swift hands and powers of concentration, but reproached her for her earnest expression, her over-sensitive peripheral circulation and her excessive weight. The magician was an entertainer, and for a woman that meant fake blonde hair and a wasp waist. She had to be at once practical and fuckable, the teacher explained.

  Sanna Pommakka registered herself as a company and applied for a start-up grant. She made herself a website and applied for a pension. She got herself on the books of a small theatrical agency and accepted all the gigs she was offered, which at first only paid her expenses. She tested her tricks on her father and mother and asked them for once to be as honest as they could be with their only daughter.

  ‘That one doesn’t work,’ said her father.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ said her mother.

  ‘You’re just saying that because you’re my mum,’ said Sanna.

  ‘I saw the card up your sleeve,’ said her father.

  ‘You know, in the old days magicians used to lift rabbits out of hats,’ said her mother.

  In the People section of the weekend supplement of Absolut Gazeta there was an interview with a man named Harri Pykström. The photos had been taken from a helicopter, over the Lapland fells.

  ‘A big fat Finnish ex-military type was explaining with a perfectly straight face what a great guy this Sicilian was, a real philanthropist. And at the side of the page it said that all Vatanescu wanted was football boots for his son.

  ‘Bloody fucking hell! It’s a lie! He wanted to destroy my life.’

  So what did Yegor Kugar do about it? Did he lose his rag, did he drink a hundred cans of Sandels beer, did he start injecting drugs? Did he take a cab to Lapland to look for Vatanescu? Did he do what Yegor Kugar usually did in problem situations? Perceive the problem. Get rid of the problem. No, nothing like that. Yegor Kugar had lost his self-confidence. The neurotransmitters in his brain had gone on strike; he would have needed the help of a therapist, and third-generation antidepressants.

  ‘I blame society and the system. It’s too kind. It’s too safe. This country is so safe that even a crook like the Yegor could afford to get depressed.’

  Naseem Hasapatilalati suggested that Yegor should draw up a list of his problems, which would make them easier to deal with. Then perhaps he would be able to get rid of them, one at a time. Yegor picked up a sheet of graph paper and a pencil. Everything he wrote was about Vatanescu.

  ‘As an employee he let me down. As a human being he let me down. He took the piss out of me. He let down the Organisation and I took the consequences. He pulled the rug from under my feet, and with it my future, my broads, my Beamer, my steaks, my friends and my mates. He took my life away. Thanks to him I became an outcast, an immigrant, a depressive without a future.’

  The list only made it all worse. Vatanescu was penetrating ever more deeply into the convolutions of Yegor Kugar’s brain, into his sweat glands and fear centre. In Vatanescu’s case it was not a simple matter of a debt that had to be repaid or compensated with a little finger or a larger limb, or an apartment, a car or a wife if necessary. It was not just business, as 99.99 per cent of things in Yegor Kugar’s life were.

  Yegor Kugar understood his situation, and his problem concerning Vatanescu, when he saw a shaky video on the Web that had been taken with the camera of a mobile phone, showing the night emergency clinic at Maria Hospital. It zoomed in on Vatanescu and the rabbit that was sitting on his lap. The clip was hosted on an Israeli server.

  ‘So that ugly mug was as famous as Jesus Christ, was he? What did that mean? It meant that this gutter’s gift to the world had become what I was supposed to become.

  ‘What was I supposed to become? A big shot. A star. A celebrity. An idol.’

  Sanna Pommakka sat in the buffet car, crying. Or rather, her weeping could be compared to the thawing of someone frozen who had come in from outside. The ice turned to water, the water spilled over the table, someone spread a napkin on the pool of liquid. That someone was a dark-haired man wearing Repa-Rent overalls and a yellow cap, and he offered Sanna a napkin. Sanna accepted it. She looked the man in the eye.

  I don’t have a ticket.

  They’ll throw me off.

  The place where I’m going is no more or less well known than any other in this country.

  Sanna Pommakka glanced around her, sniffled and said something in the language of Finland. Vatanescu shook his head as a sign that he didn’t understand.

  ‘In deep shit,’ Sanna said in English.

  Me too.

  ‘No money, no ticket.’

  Tell me about it.

  ‘I’m never going to get anywhere. Nothing ever works out for me.’

  Vatanescu looked at her.

  Lonely, fragile, human.

  In the same train, human.

  Vatanescu nodded to Sanna Pommakka like a psychotherapist, and in response Sanna whispered to him in a few short sentences how she came to be on this train. Two weeks ago she had received a brilliant job offer. A performer was needed for the opening of a new shopping mall. A woman. A blonde. Three thousand euros. It was such a lot of money that Sanna Pommakka had bought a pack of hair-dye with her Visa card and retrieved her exercycle from her parents’ garage. With three thousand she could buy anything she wanted. An old car, good food, two months of safety. She could go on a trip somewhere. To Forssa, anyway.

  Is Forssa in Italy?

  It sounds like a beautiful place. A name full of power.

  I’d like to go to Forssa some time. One day I will.

  Sanna Pommakka gave a short laugh. An innocent man, perhaps even a good man. At any rate it was easy to sit opposite him. He didn’t laugh at her, he didn’t despise her and he didn’t try to get into her pants.

  Sanna P
ommakka continued her story. She had flown in to Kittilä, where she was supposed to be picked up and driven to the shopping mall. But no one was there to meet her. She had called all the numbers that were written on the order sheet, but they were all unobtainable. She only had enough money for a taxi to the shopping mall construction site. When she got there she encountered workmen who had just been fired. The whole site had been closed down for eternity.

  ‘I’ve been had,’ said Sanna.

  Vatanescu looked her in the eye. He put his hand on hers and lowered his gaze. The train was already in motion, and he put his yellow helmet on the table.

  Sorry.

  ‘It’s not your fault. Whoever you are. Of course it’s not. This is the way my life is, always has been, always will be; it’s no good having any hopes because they always let me down.’

  It is and it isn’t.

  My fault.

  Sanna Pommakka sniffled and let Vatanescu hold her hand, even though he was foreign and came from warmer climes. His helmet trembled against the cutlery tray. On his overalls it said Repa-Rent, just like the world, everything for hire. Vatanescu noticed the metal-rimmed carrying case next to Sanna Pommakka.

  Are you a musician?

  ‘Magician.’

  Of the meals that Naseem Hasapatilalati brought him Yegor ate only the rice, and growled. He neglected his personal hygiene, his hair and beard grew longer, and he no longer had the strength to crush all the silverfish that emerged from the drains. He, a man who had always gone forward, a man in whose view the analysis of the past was a task for wimps, no longer looked forward. Or back, or up or down. He looked inward; he was ready to live in his little closet until he wasted away. Perhaps that would indeed have happened if his rent agreement on the closet had not run out, but it did, and his living arrangements suddenly underwent a rapid – though not unexpected – change.

  ‘I heard people rummaging in the closet next to mine and in the toilet. The rummagers were speaking my language, with the same accent: I’d performed enough of the same kind of evictions and door-to-door checks myself. At last they came to my storeroom, but I had time to hide behind some banana crates.

  ‘After closing-up time a sweating Naseem came to explain that his cash till and display shelf of cigarettes had been cleaned out and that he’d been threatened with prolonged torture. He thought it was time to say goodbye. Although he liked me, he liked his life and limbs a fucking lot more. The Organisation had given him twenty-four hours to denounce me. I took my laptop under my arm and left the building. It’s not my way to beg for pity and mercy. Thank you, I said to him, for the first time in my life.’

  The Toshiba’s battery still had two hours and fourteen minutes of life left. Stopping in front of a café with large windows, Yegor looked for a spot where he could get a wireless Internet connection. He brought up the page at vatanescu.com, where the photo at the top had once again changed. Pykström and Vatanescu side by side, with broad smiles on their faces, each with a bottle of vodka under their arm, the rabbit bouncing about at their feet.

  ‘I became just Yegor the homeless guy, whom the female down-and-outs pushed around while others tried to steal the rags off his back. I took the last tram at night or the first one in the morning to get some peace. I could only ever get a patchy Internet connection and the translation programme kept hanging. Somewhere near Stockmann’s department store an item popped up which said that Finland’s most popular figure had acquired the dimensions of a legend…

  ‘That really got to me. A legend? Hello?

  ‘Vladislav Tretyak is a legend and John Rambo is a legend and Stalin and Vince Neil are almost legends, but Vatanescu is about as much of a legend as Co-op soap.

  ‘I clawed at the tram seat. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I cried like an old woman. Then I asked myself a few questions. The answers had to be totally honest, for if I lied, I’d beat the crap out of myself.

  ‘I’m a fair-minded guy, right?

  ‘I want to be fair to people, right?

  ‘Do I want to be a goddamn wanker?

  ‘Don’t I have the right to take the law into my own hands?

  ‘Do I want respect?

  ‘Do I have the means to take the law into my own hands? The strength? The will?

  ‘Do I want broads?

  ‘Do I have the courage to take what belongs to me? Or do I, Yegor Kugar, prefer to be a victim?

  ‘Am I a victim?’

  The ticket collector had plenty of genial chat for the passengers, and offers of a more personal nature for the girl who was serving at the buffet counter. They shared the same sense of humour, the same employer and possibly the same hated bosses. The girl poured the ticket collector a cup of coffee, and for another moment or two Vatanescu and Sanna Pommakka were able to travel in peace. The train was rattling through forests of dwarf trees, the electric cables hung low, and the trees bent humbly under their load of snow. On a motor sledge track the last group of tourists of the season, Dutch ones, were rolling along.

  Let’s go into hiding, Pommakka.

  ‘Let’s tell the truth.’

  About what?

  To whom?

  Does the truth exist?

  ‘In the first place, we have no money and no tickets.’

  Maybe we can travel on credit. We’ll do dishwashing. We’ll massage people’s shoulders. We’ll perform somersaults. We’ll melt the frost from the tracks.

  Now it was Sanna Pommakka’s turn to put her hand on Vatanescu’s, without knowing why. Even though I do know, being the omniscient narrator who can get under the skin of his characters and rise up and observe them from the clouds if necessary. Sanna Pommakka took the initiative because Vatanescu posed no threat to her. He made no demands on her, did not want anything from her, she saw that right away. It might be a lack of ambition or willpower, but it could also be the sign of a purity and sincerity that were quite out of the ordinary.

  ‘Secondly. Tell me who you are,’ Sanna Pommakka said. ‘Tell me the truth about yourself.’

  If I knew it I would.

  The ticket collector scraped the remains of the sugar from the bottom of his cardboard coffee cup with his spoon, and then crushed the cup and dropped it in the rubbish bin. With his reading device he inspected the tickets of two trade union officials who were on their way to Helsinki and, raising his cap slightly, wished them a pleasant journey. The men were red-cheeked; before each was a bottle of dark beer and a shot of schnapps. Their lives had a direction because the train had one. Straight on, and change at Riihimäki.

  There were still several passengers between the ticket collector and Vatanescu and Sanna Pommakka. Sanna pressed Vatanescu’s hand. He was showing signs of being about to flee.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ Sanna said.

  Leave you? What? Who?

  At that moment the rabbit stirred in Vatanescu’s armpit.

  Stay hidden.

  Don’t struggle.

  Vatanescu stopped the rabbit’s attempt to escape through his collar. Vatanescu stopped the rabbit’s efforts to slip out of his sleeve onto the table. Sanna pressed the back of Vatanescu’s hand so hard that it hurt. The rabbit navigated the obstacle and went down into the legs of his trousers, then along the edge of his safety boot and out.

  The rabbit jumped into Sanna Pommakka’s magician’s top hat.

  It jumped out of the hat.

  It jumped into the hat.

  The cardboard coffee cup rapidly filled with coins. Vatanescu handed the cup to the ticket collector and went to get another from the buffet counter. In between stations, Sanna Pommakka and the rabbit performed magic tricks, easily collecting the price of the next part of the way.

  ‘Animals are not allowed in the buffet car,’ said the ticket collector. ‘But that one’s something you need in order to do your job. It’s not doing any harm.’

  The tipsy passengers made generous donations, and soon five-euro notes were being thrust into Vatanescu’s cup. Then a ten-euro note, followe
d by several more. There were even twenty-euro notes. Someone brought a pack of cigarettes, someone else a bar of chocolate, a third put down some luncheon vouchers, and one passenger parted with a paperback copy of a novel by Marko Tapio.

  ‘Let’s take a break,’ said Sanna. ‘My hands are numb.’

  Vatanescu ordered chilli con carne for Sanna and himself, and milk and rye bread for the rabbit. Sanna was physically exhausted, while he was primarily astonished at his new role as impresario and magician’s assistant.

  ‘We make a good couple,’ said Sanna Pommakka.

  I had a wife once.

  We thought we made a good couple. At least, I did. She wanted different things than I did, but she never told me what they were. I would have had to sense it.

  I want football boots for my son.

  ‘You respect me,’ Sanna said.

  You’re a good magician and you get paid for your work.

  You and the rabbit, you make a good couple.

  Vatanescu put the coins into cups. There were now ten full cups, and two full of notes.

  Over three hundred.

  I can get football boots for my son.

  Vatanescu and Sanna Pommakka left the buffet car and moved to the children’s play area, where the little people were whizzing down a slide, making Lego, colouring pictures, scribbling, and hugging one another. And once again, as she did when delivering sofas to families with children, Sanna Pommakka felt at once moved and irritated. Not by the children, but by their parents. All kinds of emotionally crippled amateurs had spouses, former or present, and the sperm had fertilised the ovum without anyone asking questions. These people didn’t know how to appreciate what they had, and instead of looking at their children they flicked through women’s magazines with bored expressions, snapped at their spouses, stared out of the train window and thought about the life they should have chosen in place of their present one. Sanna Pommakka wondered the same thing as she was pulling the rabbit out of her top hat.