The Beggar and the Hare Page 6

  One doesn’t throw bad things away, either.

  As he stood between the rice pan and the grill, Ming examined the banknote his daughter had brought him. Right, clearly a proper forgery. He said he would take care of the matter and went to Vatanescu’s table. Vatanescu was stroking the rabbit and blowing out his cheeks with satisfaction, his stomach replete. But Ming did not know how to be hard, was incapable of issuing a brutal demand. The customer had clearly enjoyed his cooking.

  Ming had never given orders to his children; he preferred to be silent. He had learned this first from his father, and then from his neighbour Seppo Mäkäräinen. He did not like to talk about money because his world was all about food. He didn’t really want to speak at all, for one could express all the things one needed to express by means of cookery. Love, anger, happiness in one’s grandchildren, one’s thoughts and emotions. Rather than to other chefs, Ming compared himself to a painter or a sculptor.

  And yet.

  A ragamuffin and a rabbit had paid with a three-hundred-euro banknote, and there was no such thing in this world. Did they think he was stupid? Ought he to call the police?

  I could call them, but I won’t. That was how Ming began his speech to Vatanescu, after standing before him for several minutes. Continuing, Ming said he was a stubborn small businessman who had to pay an exorbitant rent that was the equivalent of wages for five people, and it would be nice to be able to get some sleep occasionally. Sometimes it might even be nice to pay himself a wage. That was why childish tricks played by adults merely provoked him.

  Vatanescu told Ming in English that he didn’t understand Chinese, or was it Cantonese or Mandarin.

  Ling Irmeli came over to translate her father’s speech, and thus a degree of understanding began to develop.

  I didn’t know that it was… Of course it was forged. It came from Yegor, that money. The whole man is a forgery. The owner of an object transmits his karma to it, that’s what old Gurda used to say. I’m still broke, and my son has no football boots.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Ming said.

  They were the first swearwords Ming Po had uttered in his life. The whole restaurant turned round to look at him. Someone applauded in astonishment, like at school when some sixth-former drops a glass of milk on the floor and they have to live it down for the rest of the year.

  ‘Rabbit man! Do not lie to me. The easiest thing is to tell the truth!’

  I know.

  At least life has taught me that.

  Ming gradually became himself again by some sort of continuous speed control. He remembered his mother’s teachings. The customer is always right. A good deed is never lost. Vatanescu deserved a show of mercy, particularly as his eyes shone with a sincerity in which there was no stupidity.

  When the lunchtime rush hour gave way to a moment of peace, Vatanescu found himself beside a man-sized pile of clean plates, glasses, cutlery and saucepans. He had paid for his meal by washing dishes.

  Ming invited Vatanescu into his office. Vatanescu picked up his rabbit and tried to slip away, but Ming pointed to the chair, and Vatanescu sat down.

  On the wall there were framed photographs of Ding Po and Ming’s favourite Finnish female artiste, Meiju Suvas. The two women bore a distinct resemblance to each other, and Meiju Suvas had a dish named after her on the menu. It was Ming’s dream to have her sing in the restaurant on his fiftieth birthday next summer. At least one song, at least ‘Come Bite Me!’. On the other hand, he was not sure whether he really wanted to organise a party; there was too much work to do. And anyway, Ming did not like the idea of being the centre of attention.

  Ming told Vatanescu that he was not interested in his past, but had a slight impression that his future was shrouded in darkness. Vatanescu nodded.

  I want a job.

  Give me a job.

  Pay me what you like.

  My son will have his football boots.

  As if in answer to Vatanescu’s thoughts, Ming said that he would willingly employ someone so keen to work, but Finland’s social security and pension costs were so high that a small business owner could only hope to hire additional labour in his dreams, and so is forced to do all the extra work himself. He didn’t want to employ black-market labour either, because if he did that his licence would be revoked, and with it his livelihood.

  I guessed it.

  Ming showed him the photograph of a range of Lapland fells that hung between the portraits of his mother and Meiju Suvas. If Vatanescu wanted to be the master of his own destiny, he would need to go to Lapland.

  Ming spoke of the wide open spaces, the marshes and the south-facing slopes where marketable natural riches grew. Bilberries and lingonberries and especially cloudberries – so-called ‘yellow gold’. If Vatanescu wanted real banknotes instead of forged ones, if he was not afraid of work, if he needed some quick wages for himself and his rabbit, then berry-picking was the job for him.

  Ming showed him in a guide which berries and mushrooms were worth picking, which ones showed the best return. Then Ming told him about everyman’s right, a right that was shared by Romanian and Vietnamese everymen, too. In the early 1990s Ming had often done berry- and mushroom-picking. The contents of those red and blue buckets had paid several income tax bills and the interest on several loans.

  Vatanescu thumbed through the guide, in which the section on cloudberries was marked with a paperclip. Ming told him that Finns preferred to buy frozen Swedish berries rather than pick them for themselves. It made no sense, in the same way that, although Finland had thousands of lakes, instead of buying pike perch Finns bought fillets of panga from the fish-rearing tanks of Ming’s homeland. Berry-picking was like prospecting for gold: only the most grabbing guerrillas succeeded, and then not always, but everyone had the chance. You didn’t need to speak the language, you didn’t need any training, and no work permits were required.

  Ming opened a wardrobe and showed Vatanescu a black suit, a white shirt, a tie and a pair of polished shoes. The suits were meant for waiters, but the largest size had never been used.

  Ling Irmeli translated her father’s words:

  ‘Smarten yourself up; you can sleep on the kitchen floor. We’ll look up the Lapland train times on the World Wide Web. You’ll be leaving tomorrow.’

  From his desk drawer Ming produced a razor and a can of shaving cream, which he gave to Vatanescu.

  The next phase in the development of his bundle of old clothes would soon be lice, then rot. Vatanescu threw the bundle into the rubbish bin and closed the lid tight.

  He stood naked before the mirror in the basement toilet. His hair was unkempt, his beard straggling, the dirt came off his face on his fingertips. In a dictionary he would have been found under the entry for ‘pariah’. He seized his beard and used scissors to cut it all back to a half-inch in length, letting the tangled hairs float down into the washbasin. Then he squeezed some shaving foam onto the palm of his hand and spread it on his cheeks, his jaw and upper lip. He shaved his chin with rasping strokes. As the stubble disappeared, a new man emerged. Next Vatanescu cut his hair, and little by little his ears, his forehead and the nape of his neck were exposed.

  Outward appearance sorted.

  Is my outward life also going to be sorted?

  He rinsed his face and armpits with water, dampened the hand towels and rubbed himself down all over. A brownish liquid flowed from the towels into the drain. Vatanescu cut his fingernails and four hairs that were growing on his earlobe. He looked at himself.

  Who are you?

  Vatanescu looked at himself from the side.

  Who are you?

  Vatanescu leaned very close to the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, red, black and yellow, as though they were being tested in some medical experiment.

  Where am I going?

  What can a person freely decide for himself?

  Vatanescu removed the white shirt from its hanger.

  The last time I wore a suit was at my wedding. Or was it a
t Miklos’s christening?

  He buttoned the shirt, got his legs into the trousers. There weren’t enough holes in the belt, so he pierced some more with the scissors.

  I’m not a pariah any more. What am I?

  Vatanescu pulled on the suit jacket and sat on the lavatory in order to tie the shoelaces. The bathroom mirror showed him the familiar eyes and a very, very faint smile. A big step forward from the deadly fear he had felt the day before, and after his flight from the police that morning. He took a deep breath and opened the door of the toilet, then made his way upstairs to the restaurant.

  The shoes tapped on the wooden stairs in a dignified way. It was a sound quite different from the flopping of his old slip-on trainers, which had said, I’m going where I’m good enough to go. The new shoes said that this man knew where he was going and was travelling business class.

  When he arrived at the doorway of the restaurant, Vatanescu saw a sight that filled him with horror. Ling Irmeli was talking to two policemen. They were holding a photograph of Vatanescu. Once again he took flight – though this time it was his mind that fled, for he remained standing where he was. There were two possibilities. He could go back to the toilet and lock himself in. That would mean arrest. Or he could do what he always had to do. Run away.

  Do you remember who looked at you in the mirror just now?

  A new man, a different man, everyman.

  I’m not the man who was washing dishes in the restaurant kitchen a moment ago.

  Vatanescu looked at his reflection in the tall window.

  I’m not a pariah. I don’t hug the wall. I walk straight.

  I’m not the person they are looking for.

  They aren’t looking for me.

  And so Vatanescu, running a risk of one hundred per cent with a self-confidence of seventy, strode calmly behind Ling Irmeli and crossed the restaurant to the kitchen, right in front of the policemen’s faces.

  Ming greeted him in the kitchen doorway with a train timetable in his hand. He had seen the policemen arrive and had told his daughter to distract them for a while. Vatanescu needed only to climb out of the window onto the bin for old newspapers and from there head out through the courtyard. Once he was in the street it was only a few hundred yards to the railway station.

  Without further thought, Vatanescu jumped out of the window. It was only when he had already broken into a run that he remembered the rabbit.

  Ming whistled from the window.

  Vatanescu caught the rabbit like a ball.

  Hey ho, let’s go.

  Chapter Five

  In which Vatanescu gravitates to first class, smokes a joint and finds a Volvo.

  Vatanescu sat down on the only vacant seat in the carriage and kept his gaze fixed on the floor.

  A beggar doesn’t achieve his goals.

  A beggar doesn’t get berries or football boots for his son.

  Change yourself.

  Vatanescu perceived himself as an outsider. He watched the other passengers in suits and shoes that clicked. The best of them wore their uniform in a relaxed but confident way. They demanded a treatment that fitted their status, and got it. They had laptop computers, touchscreen mobile phones and very thin wallets, just a few plastic cards. Thus the world changes. Nowadays a fat wallet was the mark of an obsessive collector of receipts, where once it meant having enough cash to buy the world. These men could buy the world and only needed two cards to manage their lives.

  Try to look like them, then you’ll gain entry to first class, you’ll be the owner of an iPad.

  Three teenagers were sitting at Vatanescu’s table. Children to his eyes, adults in theirs. One of them was Jonttu, a grammar-school graduate and former ice hockey prospect dressed in a casual style, who liked others to laugh at his jokes, though not at him. His father wanted him to carry on in his glazing business, which interested Jonttu even less than the course at a vocational training school which his mother hoped he would take. At Jonttu’s age the meaning of life was freedom, in all its forms. The price of this was an empty soul, empty words and an empty bank account. But today, like his travelling companions Ökö and Minttu, he had a clear goal: a job in an ore mine, and the hourly wage of more than twenty euros that was paid there.

  Vatanescu greeted the teens with a nod and took a sip of water.

  Try to look like a man in a suit.

  Talk like a man in a suit.

  Invent a life for yourself.

  Under his arm the rabbit nibbled some carrot.

  Having looked at the railway timetable and the list of fares, Vatanescu decided that his journey would have to end no later than the third stop unless he was able to find some more money. He checked the pockets of his jacket and trousers as though there ought to be something there which had now gone. For this, an expression of genuine surprise was needed, as it was even harder to lie with gestures than with words.

  Ökö, a first-year student of tourism and a consumer of cannabis products, surveyed the foreigner who sat opposite. The foreigner’s plastic bags smelled mouth-wateringly good – precisely the kind of Chinese food that tastes so delicious after one has smoked a couple of grams of hash.

  What does a man in a suit do if his wallet and phone have been stolen?

  Vatanescu twitched and shrugged his shoulders, spread his hands and waited for one of the teenagers to ask what the trouble was. The first to react was Minttu, Jonttu’s classmate and possibly his girlfriend. (It wasn’t clear, because Minttu wasn’t sure whether she liked Jonttu or Ökö, or even whether in general she preferred girls or boys. Why, in the course of the same year, did you have to be able to decide on the colour of your hair, your sexual orientation, your field of study, your attitude to life and which political party to vote for? A year in an ore mine would help you make decisions about your life, things that right now you change your mind about three times a day.)

  ‘Something wrong?’

  Vatanescu cleared his throat, swallowed and was unable to tell a lie.

  Stay close to the truth. Vary it.

  Vatanescu said he had lost his bank card, relying on the memory of losing a postcard in Timisoara in 2002. He said that his mobile phone had also disappeared, and indeed it had, as he had sold it to Yegor in exchange for a pack of oat-flakes.

  Get into the swing of it, choose the right words, loads of conviction.

  Put in a twist at the end.

  Vatanescu asked when the ticket collector would be along. He couldn’t get off at an interim station to find out because he had business waiting for him in Lapland and there weren’t any more flights that day. Ökö said that the ticket collector usually came round before Tikkurila, in about fifteen minutes’ time.

  Keep calm. Don’t force it. Don’t cause tensions.

  Vatanescu asked the teenagers where they were going.

  Jonttu’s map showed all the mining areas, and planned mining areas, across Finland and Sweden. He had also printed out a bundle of information – maps, data, company profiles – and firmly believed that if he did not succeed on the first attempt, then surely by the third he would. There must be plenty of work there for those who looked for it. Vatanescu took from his pocket the map of the national park that Ming had given him, and pointed to his own destination.

  The right words. The details.

  Vatanescu put his finger on a circle. The area inside it was said to contain peat bogs that produced the highest yield of cloudberries.

  Raw material trading.

  Vatanescu’s destination was close to where the teenagers were going, and his ultimate aims were not so distant from theirs either.

  Natural riches, preliminary explorations.

  ‘In the area of the national park?’

  All over the place. If I find what I’m looking for, nothing will get in my way.

  The teenagers looked at the smooth-shaven man in a suit sitting in front of them, and then at one another.

  ‘What do they have up there? Gold?’

  �
�Diamonds?’

  ‘Oil?’

  Yellow stuff. Valuable stuff.

  They asked what company Vatanescu represented, what his position was.

  They’ll catch you out if you mention names or describe things in too much detail.

  Remember the men in suits. In first class.

  Just tell them the essentials. But don’t lie so you don’t have to explain. Explaining is what will get you caught.

  Vatanescu said that he worked for himself. He sold outputs, results and reports to the highest bidder. Thus he was able to make the quick decisions that in large businesses can take months. And he knew where to invest his profits. In the future, in future generations.

  In football boots.

  He said he had started out in the financial sector but had discovered new challenges in the raw material market.

  Jonttu wanted to know from Vatanescu what the advantages were of working in mines with regard to wages and conditions of employment. Minttu was interested in whether women were able to take jobs as drivers of forklift trucks or ore transport lorries.

  Everything is possible. You have excellent backgrounds and the hourly rate is so high that… er… a Romanian beggar… could live for a whole year on a month’s wages.

  The teenagers thought the comparison was far-fetched, but they liked what he told them.

  It’s also OK to smile while you’re working. You can look other people in the eye, even if those eyes are blackened by coal. There’s always some white flashing in them.

  The train stopped at Pasila.

  Listen…

  Vatanescu’s words stuck in his throat. To request a loan was risky, especially if he was asked about his credit record, which was worse than that of Greece. It could all collapse, it was all useless.

  Well, anyway…

  The express train sped through Malmi without stopping, then Tapanila. After Puistola it began to slow down as it approached Tikkurila. The teenagers chatted together in Finnish. They laughed at all sorts of things, as kids do at that age – laugh and be sceptical.