The Beggar and the Hare (16 page)

Chaining oneself to a bulldozer: it was eighty per cent nature conservation, twenty per cent S&M.

Iina had left a note on the kitchen table to say that when reading week was over she would come back for the final exams, but that just as probably she would join the ranks of the revolution.

The revolution demands, the revolution sets free
, she wrote, quoting the South American singer and
songwriter
Alfonso Padilla.

During the same two months that Õunap, Jeffersson and Vatanescu were pulling out all the stops to get the work finished, the environmental organisation Nature-Mili was preparing an expedition. As Vatanescu put his head on the pillow again after another cold day that had turned sweaty, a group from Nature-Mili set off for Lapland. They had bought their truck from a dubious, one-eared Russian in Helsinki’s suburb of Kalasatama.

And one day at sunrise Vatanescu did what he always did. He washed his face in the brook, splashed his stubbly cheeks a couple of times and was ready to build a world of shopping. For company he had the reindeer, who like him were revving themselves out of their morning stiffness.

Vatanescu urinated on the snow as he whistled the song he had sung with Harri Pykström. He had just finished shaking himself dry when he suddenly stopped whistling.

In front of him stood three rows of people who were chained to the bulldozers with handcuffs and cable clamps. They began to chant in rhythm:

‘Sa-ave the nation-al pa-rk!’

And then something totally baffling:

‘Sa-ave Vata-nes-cu!’

V
atanescu pinched the skin of his stomach. Yes, he was awake. Iina Rautee shouted to him to stop, to come and join the group of demonstrators.

‘We’re here to save you!’ Iina cried. ‘Vii seiv ju!’

Thanks.

But no thanks.

I’ve been saved once already.

I demanded and believed.

I cut the emblem of the dictatorship out of my country’s flag with a knife.

That should have been freedom, too.

Buzzing overhead was a helicopter, with a cameraman leaning out of it. Vatanescu raised his eyes. More helicopters were coming; it was like
Apocalypse Now
. The helicopters were from the public and private television channels.

We didn’t get freedom.

We got the flesh trade.

We got vodka bars.

We got hamburger bars and investment banks.

We had to leave and go somewhere, among you – whoever you are.

Iina Rautee purred with satisfaction; the pictures would be on CNN and all over the world. Activism now! Now! And at their centre was Vatanescu, filmed by all eight cameras. One camera zoomed in on his eyes, on the depths of his brown pupils that were filled with weary bewilderment.

You don’t know what you’re doing.

You’re spoiling everything.

Vatanescu turned round and tried to continue onwards.

Go away.

Go away, will you.

I’m shutting my ears, go away, I’m shutting my eyes, get lost. I’m leaving.

Vatanescu collided with a group of cameramen who had just landed, and a sports reporter who had been covering the skiing championships nearby. Apparently the Finns could have been among the eight best teams, but they hadn’t made it. The reporter had a question ready for Vatanescu.

‘How does it feel?’

Won’t I ever be allowed to do anything in peace?

Vatanescu tried to move the sports reporter out of the way. When that didn’t work, he stepped off the path.

This step took him straight into the arms of Iina Rautee, who pulled him towards her. Our hero was in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Charlie Chaplin when the plank a big man is carrying hits him on the back of the head, and that plank is the world.

Hands took hold of Vatanescu’s arms and tried to bind them with cables; the sports reporter thrust a microphone in front of his mouth; a group of cameramen from Finnish TV arrived, then one from Sámi Radio, then another from Sixty Minutes. Even Hannu Karpo’s fur hat could be glimpsed among the crowd.

I wish you would all calm down.

That would be more businesslike.

One of the demonstrators pulled a rain cape with the Nature-Mili logo over Vatanescu’s overalls. On the back a slogan demanded an end to ecological violence and the assassination or at least immediate re-education of the leaders of the G8. Vatanescu tore himself free.

Rabbit!

Run!

Y
egor Kugar was walking along Helsinki’s Hämeentie Road, where the wind blew from six directions at once. It was eight o’clock, but Yegor had no idea if it was am or pm. Anyway, it didn’t matter.

But Yegor’s life did have a direction, and it was down. What had brought him to Naseem Hasapatilalati’s store was a disconnected phone line. Yegor Kugar could no longer deliver his orders as he was accustomed to. He had lost interest in everything, his morning erection had abandoned him, his evenings were without passion, at night he had no desire to go out looking for action and fooling around.

Yegor tried to find a crumb of comfort in his local newspaper, which Naseem Hasapatilalati ordered for him at his own expense. Such friendliness touched Yegor but also made him suspicious. He did not believe in altruism or disinterested motives. No one had ever done anything for him for nothing, and vice versa.

The doorbell in the entrance rang, and the evening newspapers were brought into the store. Naseem cut the ties on the bundles and lifted the papers onto the counter. He took the placard and fitted it into the holder.

Yegor had moved on from the sports pages to the comics, which failed to make him laugh. He found it especially irritating that there were people in the world who were able to draw pictures as their job, who got respect for it, even fame in some cases. Yegor thought bitterly of the two whole decades he had sacrificed to the Organisation, without a pension or healthcare benefits. Always available, taking all the risks of a small businessman, and all the thanks he got had been the boot.

Yegor crushed his cigarette beneath his shoe and finished his coffee. In the bottom of the cardboard cup there was a black residue that resembled what was left of Yegor’s vitality and powers. What had once been strong, steaming coffee, now reduced to a crumpled cup that missed the rubbish bin when you threw it.

Yegor looked out of the window. The short walk back to his front door seemed like miles. He said goodbye to Naseem and stepped outside. Sleet was falling. A bus was skidding at the bus stop; some alcoholics were singing a march tune.

Yegor thought what he had known ever since he was a child. That human beings were animals. Both physically and metaphorically. All without exception, us, you and them.

Naseem Hasapatilalati carried his placard holder out to the street.

Yegor Kugar glanced at the placard, though he didn’t understand what it said.

He didn’t need to, as the picture spoke for itself.

‘
S
orry lads,’ said the only developer’s representative who had dared to remain on the site. He had been obliged to sack Vatanescu, Urmas Õunap, Goodluck Jeffersson and eighty-seven other construction workers – Poles, Russians, Finns and Ghanaians – without pay.

The coffers were empty. All further work was banned. The project would be frozen for decades, and environmental organisations were breathing down its neck. The only possible future activity would be the restoration of the devastated fells.

‘We’ll call you,’ the developer’s representative said. ‘There’s no point in you calling us.’

Three thousand euros in unpaid back wages.

‘Do I look as though I have any money on me?’

I’m three thousand euros short.

I’m short of a pair of football boots.

‘Did we have a contract? Not as far as I recall. If there was, you can claim what’s owed to you from wage security.’

With this the man tried to flee, but ran straight into the arms of the police, who handcuffed him and asked him politely to get into the back of a Ford Mondeo. The guardians of the law promised to come back and fetch the rest of the gang when the ringleaders were all in custody. Work permits and identity documents would
be checked, and those workmen whose papers were not in order would get a nice warm cell.

Better get moving.

Follow your own path, wherever it takes you.

To the end.

Vatanescu ran with Jeffersson and Õunap to the shack. Then, with the rabbit under his arm, and his belongings flung into an overnight bag, he set off with them on the trek out of the National Park.

After they had trudged five or six miles through the snow they stopped at a shelter to eat. With his strong, gleaming white teeth Goodluck Jeffersson tore open a pack of sausages. Õunap manufactured some barbecue sticks with a carpet knife and Vatanescu made a fire. In the course of these months in the National Idea Park he had learned the right way to handle bark, woodchips and twigs, knew how to determine the wind’s direction with his finger, and how to save matches.

There was silence, the firelight glimmered on the men’s faces, the sausage skins popped, fat hissed on the embers. On the sausages the men spread mustard from a yellow tube. They had acquired a taste for it during their work on the site. The rabbit passed from lap to lap. They all took turns at giving it a scratch, and thanks to its presence the silence lost its tone of gloom, and a gleam of hope remained.

In the morning they continued their silent journey and split up when the snowy expanses ended at the side of Route 79. There they exchanged a few embarrassed jokes – jokes that were needed, because they had reached the end of their common journey and they felt a sense of respect and esteem for one another. It was a spirit of comradeship, something that had welded them together in the shack they had shared, and in the freezing days they had worked side by side. Now they
all wanted to be off before a tear flowed down a cheek, or a voice trembled and failed. So they resorted to the method men have employed since the dawn of world history – humour.

Õunap suggested they could form a male
striptease
troupe, like the unemployed men in that movie. Goodluck Jeffersson thought that would be against his religion, and in any case Vatanescu’s physique and Õunap’s sense of rhythm militated against it.

Take care.

We’ll meet again if we’re meant to.

And so Goodluck Jeffersson took off in a westward direction, because there he thought he would find a skiing centre, a wife and a family, though his route might just as easily take him to Vittumainen Ghyll and Läähkimä Gorge. Urmas Õunap went to the east in order to implement his Plan B. His schooldays had left him only with bad memories and a knowledge of Russian he had never needed and had tried to forget. But up here in Lapland, Russian seemed to be a real advantage in the labour market, especially if you were looking for a job as a trail guide or second-home estate agent. From over the border flowed an endless stream of Russia’s
ever-growing
middle class, with an equally growing urge to spend its money.

Where shall I go?

Guided by instinct, Vatanescu set off on foot
southward
, to Kolari. He reckoned that Lapland had nothing more to offer him, not even football boots. The
berry-picking
season was still six months away, and the reinvigoration of the reindeer business would take a generation or two.

Vatanescu walked up hill and down dale, he waded along motor sledge tracks, avoided the hotels and
restaurants of Äkäslompolo and gave a wide berth to the unfinished holiday villages where in back yards prefabricated concrete slabs, polystyrene panels and piles of crushed stone – currently covered in snow – awaited the spring.

Then he found himself directly in front of a car that he recognised: Thomas Weissbier’s Volvo XC90, rusting in the same place he had left it. Its owner had preferred to claim on his insurance and had bought a shiny new one. Such is the way of the world: goods have a purchase value, a sales value, an insurance value, a resale value, a sentimental value, a theft value, a scrap value and an exchange value.

What do I have that anyone would pay money for?

What do I have to give in exchange?

What guarantee can I offer?

Am I worth anything?

Vatanescu heaved open the door on the driver’s side and attempted to start the engine. Not a sound, only silence and the steam of his breath in front of his face.

The rabbit jumped up to the windscreen, and its tiny warmth gradually thawed the frozen glass. It looked out of the opening, and then Vatanescu leaned right up next to it, so close that they could feel each other’s insignificant and unique breathing, and gradually the hole in the ice became large enough for them to see the whole of the snowy, moonlit world.

Y
egor Kugar needed a computer and an Internet connection. He had no money and Naseem Hasapatilalati did not want to mess up their friendship with loan agreements. Yegor remembered that his former employees had searched for their own clients on the Web,
and he dragged his arse off to Vaasankatu Street to ring the intercom. Or rather, he climbed the fire escape to the balcony and entered the apartment that way. The former employee’s name was Natasha. She had a client in bed with her, and there was a Toshiba laptop on the bedside table. Yegor told her to maintain her posture and look of boredom, and the client his red face, astonishment and erection. He put the Toshiba under his arm and scuttled back down to the street like a rat.

Yegor was perfectly aware of his situation. He knew that right from the outset he had been a social outcast, but in a very privileged position compared to others like him. Now he was in free fall towards a safety net that had a hole in it, a hole that grew bigger by the day. Yegor Kugar’s entire career had been built on inspiring fear that inspired respect. Yegor was the wolf, others were the lambs.

Such is the fate of the crook, from the first day to the last. Few people begin with a desire to be a crook while they are still in the maternity ward. That point is reached through a series of chance events, great or small. In the case of Yegor Kugar, history’s conveyor belt had once made a sharp turn, transporting him from the shores of the Arctic Sea to Vaasankatu Street.

No one would become a crook if they could obtain the same standard of living and pension by legal means. And even if one day they had enough money to be able to retire, at what point in their life would they jump off the train of criminality? A train that hurtles along at full steam, charged with electricity, through tunnels
and into a brick wall. A bullet train. In two weeks of work a crook makes as much as a drive-in waiter earns in three years. The crook doesn’t need to cringe before the system, to fill in forms or beg for a mortgage. True, the crook’s world also has its systems and hierarchy, but, in his initial enthusiasm, the crook who is new to the game doesn’t see that immediately. The crook finds himself in a family of other crooks, the drugs never run out, the jobs remain interesting. You make your own laws; the women are there for the taking, and you take them.

But now the wolf had been stripped of his fangs and his virility, his bankroll taken away, and the lambs had become wolves. Yegor Kugar was familiar with the practice, but he had never thought he would end up as a lamb. However, those were the facts. If that was how it looked, that was how it was, as an elder statesman would have said – and Yegor knew it too.

His forebodings were confirmed on the stairs outside his apartment. There Yegor Kugar saw three large leather-jacketed
men. One of them bore an angle grinder and the other two had sledgehammers. They must have been there to retrieve Natasha’s laptop, and that meant he had to beat a hasty retreat to the storeroom of Naseem Hasapatilalati’s premises. Naseem said he was certainly willing to protect his only friend, but not at the risk of his own life. Yegor Kugar accepted the conditions.

Naseem Hasapatilalati brought Yegor Kugar meals and newspapers in his hiding place with a special coded knock. Otherwise the storeroom remained locked, and Yegor put shelves against the door. He knew what the Organisation’s contract said; he had signed it in his own blood. You never left the Organisation on good terms, and even on bad terms there were only two options. Really bad or fucking bad. The first option meant surrendering all your worldly goods, and your little finger or your arm to the Organisation. The second option meant surrendering your life, and all that was needed for that to happen was for the Room Upstairs to find you dispensable. When the Organisation no longer had any use for a man like Yegor, a man like Yegor became a threat to it. He knew too much; he would start singing. The Organisation preferred to put an end to the singer’s career before it even got started.

So Yegor Kugar’s days were spent on his mattress in front of the open laptop. He did not search for porn or the ice hockey scores. Instead he searched for his erstwhile employee, his present arch-enemy, the Romanian beggar. And indeed he found him, in moving pictures, in material both free and paid for. The evening paper’s placard had been only the start, for the search engine revealed the scale of the situation, producing more than a hundred thousand hits for the name ‘Vatanescu’.

When Yegor Kugar noticed that Vatanascu had a lot of followers in social media, he joined Facebook himself. He wanted to test his own market value.

After this experience Yegor Kugar found it hard to stomach the sight of Vatanescu’s face when it appeared on YouTube, in the light topics at the end of the MTV3 news or on talk shows.

But from Yegor’s point of view the worst was still to come. He found it in the Russian newspaper where he checked the scores of his favourite ice hockey team.