The Beggar and the Hare Page 5

  Usko put the lid back on his carton of yoghurt, placed the carton on the windowsill and wiped his moustache. He cleared his throat, got up from his chair and opened the door to the hallway. Someone was sitting in the waiting room.

  ‘Come i-i-n,’ Usko Rautee said without looking up. Then he put on his glasses and roused his computer from its sleeping state.

  Usko smiled at the client; that was how he always began. Each someone was an opportunity, at least for themselves. For the system, each someone was an opportunity to remove that someone from the system.

  The someone was a tired and wan-looking man who had been fired from his regular job and was ready to accept any kind of work. As work experience the man listed construction, tending livestock and cutting out half-length paper silhouettes on the corner of Bucharest Park Street and Ceausescu Square. A quick learner, not given to complaining. No references or letters of recommendation, but as a sample of his work Vatanescu snatched up a pair of scissors that were lying on the desk and a blank sheet of paper from the printer, and in a few seconds cut out a very lifelike silhouette of Usko Rautee. Usko Rautee asked if Vatanescu was prepared to do something different from creative improvisation. Was he capable of real work?

  You have the means to distinguish between real work and false work.

  Hire my head, my hands and my feet for eight hours, determine my wage and pay me at the end of the day.

  I want the football boots.

  Usko Rautee typed Vatanescu’s details into the computer and pressed Enter. Alternatives were offered: Vatanen, Esko; Valtaoja, Esko; Vataranta, Essi; Valamo Etruscans. Usko studied the computer screen, shook his head and muttered to Vatanescu what it said.

  Vatanescu did not exist.

  Create me. Please.

  Rautee tried F1, F5 and Ctrl+V, but Vatanescu still lacked a social security number – in other words everything. It would have helped if Vatanescu had an ID in his own country, but that too was lacking. Usko said he would try to create Vatanescu. First he would have to fill in a questionnaire that would outline the foreign worker’s qualifications in the Finnish labour market.

  Did Vatanescu speak Finnish?

  No.

  Did he have a fixed address?

  No.

  Usko looked at Vatanescu’s weary eyes. He wasn’t a coaster or a baldie or an arts graduate. He was a man, capable of work, willing to work, and of working age. He didn’t even look as though he had problems with alcohol. Yes, he smelled, but the reason for that was his unwashed state, not drink. In order to be able to work he didn’t need eight years of training, just a little soap.

  Usko leaned round his computer and asked Vatanescu if he was really willing to do any kind of work.

  I’m in the shit. A people smuggler wants my head. I’m being hunted.

  Must I rob a bank?

  If the conveyor belt below the factory smokestack that was visible through the window still worked, Vatanescu could be sent to work on it, or perhaps to the packing department, or perhaps as a pusher of wheelbarrows. He could unload containers at the harbour. Jobs like that didn’t really need to be entered on the payroll, Usko reflected.

  He looked Vatanescu in the eye.

  ‘I’ll take you on myself. I’ll hire you.’

  You’ll fire me?

  Usko pronounced the word more distinctly and made it clear that this was a labour contract. If you wanted a service society, you had to get on with the work.

  ‘A service society. A customer-oriented society. That’s what you hear everywhere. Vatanescu, you can be my servant. How would you like that? Another name for the job would be general dogsbody. I’ll pay you a decent wage and sort out your social security for you. You’ll do cleaning. Wash my car. You’ll take hot meals to my mother three times a week. OK? Is it a deal?’

  Vatanescu did not manage to say anything, as the rabbit was struggling inside his jacket.

  Usko Rautee said he would make the offer as honest as was possible in these doubtful times. Vatanescu would have the weekends to himself, and they would agree on when he could take his autumn, winter and summer holidays. Usko Rautee felt that for once he was doing something, not just following the rules. If everyone did the same, took the initiative and listened to their own inner voice, the welfare state would be certain of success. It would be updated. Man would rise above the despotism of machines and regulations.

  The rabbit moved up to Vatanescu’s collar.

  Vatanescu pushed it back inside his shirt.

  Usko Rautee asked what it was.

  Nothing. Or rather, that is…

  The rabbit moved round into the sleeve and from there jumped clumsily towards Rautee’s desk. For a moment it clung to the edge of the desk by its front paws, and then, exerting all its energy, hauled up first its good hind-leg, and then the splinted one.

  ‘It’s a damned rat!’

  The rabbit looked the employment officer in the eye. Rautee instinctively rolled back his chair. Vatanescu dived after the rabbit and tried to catch it in his hands. The animal hopped off the desk into Rautee’s lap, and Rautee threw it back on the desk again.

  A harmless creature.

  Don’t be afraid.

  The rabbit limped awkwardly across the desk with its splint, knocking over a penholder and Usko Rautee’s water mug. The computer mouse fell to the floor, its base came off and the ball rolled along the carpet for several long seconds. With an embarrassed smile Vatanescu hurled himself after the rabbit. At last it came to a halt in the curtain hanging by the desk, which came adrift from its moorings and collapsed to the floor. The rabbit found Usko’s eraser, popped it in its mouth and began to nibble it.

  ‘Out! You’re nothing but a horse trader! Out! I’ll call the police.’

  And all too soon the siren of a police car was heard outside. Vatanescu leapt down the stairs and managed to pass the front door just before the policemen got out of their car. He set off in the opposite direction, trying not to run to avoid drawing attention to himself.

  I have international crime and the Finnish police after me.

  I would cry if I wasn’t laughing.

  Ming Po had left Saigon for the Helsinki suburb of Malmi over thirty years earlier. His travel plans had been strongly influenced by the war, which had made it necessary for him and his family to seek exile abroad. They had rocked about in a mortally dangerous boat in the middle of the open sea, and had spent some of the time in refugee camps.

  Ming’s mother, Ding, had a magic spoon, as all good fairies do. She was like Finland’s favourite television cook Teija Sopanen or Mother Amma before she took to embracing people. Outside there might be genocide, napalm or Noah’s Flood, but within the confines of the tent or in the open air by a naked flame, the delicious fragrance of Ding Po’s cooking always brought a smile to people’s faces. The lack of raw materials was never a problem; Ding accepted difficult conditions as a challenge. Not only was she fond of cooking, but cooking was fond of her.

  What casseroles Ding was able to simmer in the oven out of bamboo shoots and rat meat! She had the art of spice in her fingertips, the correct preparation times in her soul, and it could be said that for a whole decade her cooking had kept her family alive, both spiritually and physically. It soothed the horror of the everyday. Ding Po gave part of herself in every pot and bowl she served to her husband and children, of whom her favourite was Ming, who had preserved his chubby cheeks in spite of the hard times. He was Mum’s kitchen companion, and he peeled onions at the age of three, gutted the burbot, plucked and jointed the pigeon, tasted the sauces and became an indisputable master of the balance between sweet and sour.

  When their wandering as refugees ended in the autumn of 1977 in a well-heated two-room apartment in Malmi, Ding felt she had fulfilled her duty. She saw her three children asleep on a mattress on the floor, tested the central-heating radiator that distributed the warmth that came from afar, admired the electric cooker and oven in the kitchen, and went to put more blankets on he
r offspring.

  Her husband, King Po, came to join her. He placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders, and then Ding died. Having given everything, with the journey complete. With her children alive.

  From his mother Ming Po inherited a wok and an attitude to life. You’ll survive it all, never complain, see the good in people, you’ll find it easier that way – of course they’re stupid, but are you yourself so eternally wise? Think about that, look in the mirror, don’t be proud and don’t be cynical. They can take everything away from you, but don’t let them have your cooking pot. A well-simmered casserole will open the way to anyone’s heart. Be careful about what food you cook for which woman, and you will win them all. Listen to Pave Maijanen’s record ‘Take Care’ when it comes out, then you will finally understand what I mean.

  At the age of seventeen, Ming Po rented a disused fire station and set up a restaurant there. The restaurant became known as ‘the Chinese restaurant’, even though it had a carefully chosen Vietnamese name. In the queue at the local supermarket he met Marjatta, who became his wife. His father was against the marriage and wanted a daughter-in-law from his own people, but was talked round when Ming explained to him that the only girl who would meet his criteria was located thousands of miles away in a crisis zone. Ming said that Marjatta was just right for him, and, in particular, that she was also pregnant with his child. Mixed-race couples need the support of their families, not prejudices and misplaced pride. Papa King’s objections finally ended when he met Marjatta’s father Jorma. Jorma was in the glazing business in Vaasa, and he looked at the world from the same one-square-yard-sized plot of his native land as King did. Like King, Jorma thought that everything was better in the old days, and that all the new places, objects, ideas, jobs, generations and music were characterised by an inexcusable laziness.

  Ming cooked for the whole gang. How could one doubt a man whose Karelian hotpot melted in the mouth – or indeed deny him anything? Ming himself called it a Fhong Bain hotpot, after a recipe of his mother’s, with the difference that in the Finnish version all the spices were left out. Ding had not written down any of her recipes, and Ming had inherited them by doing, watching and trying. In the same way he passed them on to his children, the eldest of whom was born in 1984 and received the name Ling Irmeli Po-Virtanen.

  Ming’s establishment was in competition with the Tillikka Restaurant, which served its schnitzels and herring sandwiches with beer to railway staff, librarians and people from the local engineering works. In the evenings they moved on to fortified wine and schnapps. Ming had followed his mother’s instructions and adapted. He kept his restaurant open slightly later than the Tillikka and sold takeaway meals to people in a state of paralytic drunkenness. He also added schnitzel to his own menu. As soon as Ling Irmeli was three, Ming got her into the restaurant’s kitchen and dining room. The little girl learned the trade from her father and became a customer attraction. No matter how frozen a nation may be, a small child always wins hearts. Even dictators don’t use children only for propaganda purposes; they actually like them, for they provide a momentary relief from the planning of evil.

  If the MasterChef format had been known in those days, Ming would have won the contest and received a boost to his career, but back then people preferred to watch comedy shows about rural police chiefs, and Ming had to take a longer road.

  One cannot cheat in the matter of cuisine. Merely good is not good enough, but excellent always sells in the end. The price must not be too high, but the price of excellence must not be too low either. Ming bought his chickens, pork and beef from the Finnish countryside, caught his fish himself, learned how to hunt, adapted moose to his own style of cooking, set traps for hares in his back yard and taught himself how to use all those edible plants that grow in the Finnish forest, but which the Finns had forgotten about since the 1750s. Ming used no artificial flavourings, because he had at his disposal the flavourings he inherited from his mother: love, daring, knowledge, courage, passion, and the ability to deal with failure.

  In the mid-1980s the Malmi restaurant began to make a profit. In January 1989 some skinheads in pilot jackets smashed the window with an oar, but the next time they tried the same trick Ming invited them in and suggested they sample a bamboo leaf boat and a bowl of sweet-and-sour beef before they engaged in any more acts of vandalism and violence. If they could say in all honesty that it tasted bad, they could go ahead and throw their oar. Kick the asylum seekers to hell, as their slogan said. Pete, Miksu and Tumppi sampled the beef. It made their hair grow. The lads repaired the window and found summer jobs in Ming’s restaurant.

  Ming escaped xenophobia, but to cope with the economic downturn he had only the same weapons as his neighbours. A pint of lager for ten Finnish marks. To that, too, Ming adapted, hanging up his mother’s wok on the wall and waiting beside his beer tap for the day when people would be hungry again and not thirsty all the time.

  On the day that ice hockey star Ville Peltonen scored three goals and Ming’s restaurant was filled with men in pilot jackets watching it on the ceiling-mounted TV, the wind changed. By the following Monday the shares in ethnic restaurants were rivalling those of Nokia. They were called ethnic, though Ming considered himself more of a resident of Malmi than of Vietnam. His children, born in Finland, spoke two languages but were of one mind.

  People came all the way from downtown Helsinki to sample Ming’s cookery, so he took the risk and moved his restaurant to a more expensive location closer to where the majority of his customers lived, and even started another, entrusting its management to his daughter. It was now twenty years since he first arrived in Finland, and during all that time he had slept no more than seven and a half hours a night. His resting pulse rate was one hundred and sixty.

  The cornerstone of the downtown restaurant became a reasonably priced and plentiful lunch buffet, because that was what Finns liked. You paid a finite amount of cash and received an infinite amount of food. Not that you were able to stuff yourself infinitely, but there had to be freedom. Freedom with the corn and the peas at the salad bar, freedom to take an enormous mound of sausages and ketchup. During their lunch hour Ming served them his own idea of fusion cuisine: in addition to Asian dishes there were Hanoi Grandma’s meatballs and especially Finland’s staple food, the pizza. The Ho Chi Bling-Bling – with a combination of ham, kebab, chicken wings and pepperoni – was the favourite among the young. You could also get it on a rye base, for the more adult taste.

  Vatanescu sat down at a window table that some people from the advertising agency Kr-öm & co had just vacated. He saw the reflection of his face in the window: a bearded, empty, squeezed-dry mug.

  Instil confidence with the banknotes, dispel suspicion.

  Ling Irmeli Po-Virtanen handed him the menu and inquired if the gentleman would like something to drink.

  Vatanescu asked for water, and drank it in great gulps. He kept a constant eye on the door, fearing the arrival of the lady from the health centre, the man from the employment agency, the Russo-Balkan mafia and the Finnish police. When he put his glass down on the table, the rabbit hobbled out of his sleeve towards the spice rack.

  Ling Irmeli politely backed away.

  We won’t hide any more. With Yegor’s money I’ll buy us an hour of peace.

  Vatanescu scratched the rabbit under its chin, the place where all animals and humans go limp with satisfaction, because it means acceptance. It gets rid of anger, stress and aggression.

  Who would scratch me under my chin?

  Ling Irmeli told her father what she had seen. Ming looked from the kitchen into the restaurant and saw Vatanescu studying the menu, saw the rabbit sniffing the salt and pepper shakers. Ming recognised the type: a refugee, an asylum seeker. The best thing for him would be a seven-course dinner with flavour and substance, a blend of cultures, a dash of aesthetics and some nice surprises. He told his daughter not to complain about what the customer had brought in with him, as long as it wasn’t leprosy or a
suicide bomb. If here people ate pigs, oxen and bamboo shoots hauled from the other end of the earth, there was room for a paying rabbit. In old Ding’s home village the animals lived together with the human beings under the same roof, because they needed one another.

  That was what Vatanescu got, real food. A spring roll wrapped in a slice of pizza. Soy sauce, curry sauce, chilli sauce, sweet-and-sour chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, Karelian hotpot in chilli sauce. The rabbit nibbled three platefuls of salad, drank one bowl of milk after another and settled down to sleep on Vatanescu’s lap. And that was no wonder, what with the first proper meal of its life in its belly, or what belly a rabbit has.

  Vatanescu looked at the people in the restaurant. There were white-collar workers, there was the creative group, there was the depressed group, there were pensioners from the suburb of Myllypuro who had heard about the tasty, satisfying and reasonably priced lunch. There were yellow-helmeted building workers and there was Miihkali Toropainen with his family, considering divorce.

  The boy is blowing bubbles in his Coca-Cola.

  The girl is twirling a noodle on her chopstick with her fingers.

  What’s my son doing at this moment?

  Vatanescu ordered coffee with dessert and helped himself to a triple portion of fruit salad, putting aside the pieces of peach, which the rabbit sucked in the human way.

  Everything is going really well for us today.

  We’re going to take a room at a hotel, the kind of hotel that has bathrobes. Tomorrow morning I’ll go back and see the man at the employment agency again. He promised us a roof over our heads. He was more good than bad.

  Vatanescu paid Ling Irmeli with Yegor’s banknotes and told her to keep the change. He asked for two plastic bags to take away the uneaten food, and the salad for the rabbit. One doesn’t throw good things away.