The Beggar and the Hare (18 page)

S
anna 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 Pommakka 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.’

O
f 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.

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.

T
he 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.

T
he 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, followed 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.