The Beggar and the Hare (4 page)

Y
egor outsourced the most unpleasant tasks to the Svetogorsk Speedfreaks. The Speedfreaks cut off the electricity to the beggars’ encampment at 7pm and made sure there was no surplus food or pleasure in the caravans. The lights came back on at five. When this was combined with a darkness that fell ever earlier, an increasing amount of rain, a strong wind that brought an icy chill, and the reluctance of people to part with their small change, Vatanescu sank into dejection. The passers-by snarled, spat – even the woman who distributed the religious newspaper hurried rudely past on her way to holy-roller meetings held in old cinemas.

The streets are amazingly clean.

Am I the only rubbish?

Balthazar consoled him, telling him that his anger would eventually subside, but Vatanescu saw no further than the following day, and not even that far. He had the same symptoms of burnout that afflicted the givers of alms. People wanted to get back to their communally heated homes by the quickest possible combination of bus, train and walking, and they did not feel obliged to help a person who was capable of working.

Inevitably the day came when the Organisation gave the order that there must be more results. There were to be discussions about layoffs, because International Crime was a supranational company listed on the stock
exchange, just like Nokia or Gazprom. Moreover, the Organisation’s advertising and marketing department noted that the public image of begging had taken a battering. The police were tackling the beggars ever more snappishly, and public opinion was hardening by the day. The mayor wanted the ragged riff-raff off his streets.

The Organisation’s head office demanded increased productivity. They must all increase their output by thirty per cent, and at the same time the least productive ones would be fired. Those who had arrived last would be the first to go. The row of beggars listened to Yegor’s speech, Vatanescu slightly apart from the others on the steps of his caravan. His nose was running; perhaps it was fever, maybe hypothermia was setting in.

Yegor Kugar.

To you a quiet stretch of water is a place where you can duck the head of your fellow man and drown him.

And inevitably the day also came when the camp was filled with the flashing blue lights of police cars, and after them the flashing red lights of bulldozers. The police gave the residents five minutes to gather their belongings and then return to the land of their fathers. The women and children would be guaranteed a place in the warmth of a shelter for the night, and would be taken there locked up in a Black Maria.

As usual, the adult male simply had to manage. The adult male only has what he takes, and he invariably takes it from others. This produces accusations, demands for compensation and world wars. Because adult males are the cause of everything, they are sent off to the worst places, to hunt, to fight wars, to build playhouses for children, to take part in the Finlandia Ski Marathon – though they’d willingly rush to put on skis themselves. The adult
male is useful as long as he is strong. As long as the adult male is able to defend and protect his family, he has a purpose as a threat to those outside his intimate circle. This show of strength produces all the good things and bad things in the economy, rock music or even the arms trade, for example. Sad is the lot of the wretched man who cannot seize what comes his way, the lot of the man who is unable to fight for his place in the sun, who does not master the language, the tricks of the gambler or the comedy that softens the fall. A man does not arouse pity as a child does, or desire as a woman does: his fundamental role, and the meaning of his whole existence, is to produce economic added value.

I am no use to anyone.

No one is any use to me.

I am not needed.

I need football boots.

The bulldozers bulldozed and bashed and lifted the debris into a skip. As Vatanescu stood with Balthazar and the other beggars in a nearby pedestrian underpass, the old man took his hand and pressed it as a father would press the hand of his son, transferring all his strength from himself to his successor. A firm pressure, cold, wrinkled palms. Balthazar said he had seen in the stars, or rather knew from experience, that no good ever comes of a grilled steak. Right at that moment, for the first time on his journey, Vatanescu began to feel something: first fear, then uncertainty, and then a sense of being mightily pissed off. Vatanescu jabbed his fist into the wall of the underpass – he who had never hit anyone. He pumped himself into the state that made possible the events that followed.

When the figure of Yegor Kugar appeared in the entrance to the underpass, Vatanescu knew that he for
his part was not going to retreat. The bulldozers were leaving; now he must be as strong as they were, he must bulldoze his way forward, even though he had no idea where it might take him. Their homes were destroyed, their source of income removed, and what did Yegor Kugar do? He asked the brothers Vatanescu and Balthazar if now they understood the general situation.

The general situation?

Here everything is a matter of individuality.

Individuals. Private property. An independent professional’s right to a pair of football boots.

‘Have you got it through your thick skulls, or do I really have to explain to you why negotiated layoffs are necessary?’

For the first time, Vatanescu stared Yegor Kugar in the eye.

Pig
.

Yegor heard the whisper. After a moment of silence, the kind of silence during which a man like Yegor Kugar decided if he was going to rearrange one’s features with his fist there and then or if he had better resort to the socially more acceptable art of verbal humiliation, he said quite calmly that Vatanescu was dismissed from his duties. Vatanescu’s eyes narrowed. Yegor Kugar relates:

A twenty-euro note in his hand. Nearby, a camp that had been wrecked. No way of making a living. Now there were no more alternatives, and Vatanescu let his body do what it wanted to do. He crumpled the money in his fist, took a step back and lashed out with his arms at Yegor Kugar. From somewhere he had found the strength he ought not to have had. He added a
headbutt
that made Yegor lose his balance and fall to the pavement.

Balthazar sat on top of Yegor. Then, one by one, all the other beggars did the same.

Vatanescu snatched the wad of banknotes from Yegor’s hand and ran as he had never run before.

O
ne day something happened to Vatanescu’s home village. It was demolished. Farewell to the mill and the centuries-old stables with their stone foundations. The site was levelled and fenced off, and a mobile phone factory built on it. Vatanescu had once applied to work there, but a monkey would have had more luck in getting a job than Vatanescu, for at least a monkey has job options in zoos and on cartoons. Only the cottage belonging to Komar Tudos had survived. It survived as it had done throughout all the upheavals in Europe since the days of Byzantium. Perhaps so that later it would be discovered by some opinionated documentary
filmmaker
from the North who would obtain a grant and
prizes for Komar Tudos on the strength of his story. Or perhaps because the world changed, but Komar Tudos never did. Each morning Komar stepped into his back yard, spat once to the left and three times to the right, greeted all the ghostly beings that whirled around him and visited his outside toilet. The cart track that passed in front of the Tudos cottage had been traversed by Nazi armies, Communist armies and Coca-Cola trucks, and was now about to be surfaced with asphalt.

Komar smiled. Or was it the semi-paralysis of his face that twisted the old man’s expression?

V
atanescu had a wad of criminal cash, four hundred and eighty euros. When one started with nothing, five hundred was almost the stuff of legends, and it would at least enable him to buy the football boots. First thing in the morning, as soon as the sports shops with their vast windows opened their doors, Vatanescu would go inside and choose the boots that were worn by the best and most expensive players of the day. And what remained would form the basis of something greater.

Without a purpose, what I’ve done is merely the insane action of a man who has been driven to the brink.

Just as everything that people do often is.

Give it a purpose.

Give it a meaning.

Vatanescu’s joy in the money disappeared when he realised that what he had done might equally have been the most stupid act of rage in the world of bipeds, something for which he would have to pay interest at far above the market rate. When the word got around, when mobile phones connected Finland to Vatanescu’s
home village in Romania, information about the solo beggar would reach Yegor’s henchmen.

Vatanescu sat down on a park bench between the large white building of Finlandia Hall and the inlet that comes in from the sea. On the other side of the bay a goods train rumbled. He tried to curl up in his own armpit, tried to forget the cold. In spite of the adrenaline and the cold, his constant tiredness got the upper hand. But we shall not let Vatanescu fall asleep.

The bushes rustled.

Something moved.

Vatanescu wondered if there were snakes in this land.

Then from the south he began to hear a babbling that grew into a unique and universal shouting. The shouting approached at a running pace; a group of young men threw stones and brandished sticks. Vatanescu was surprised that Yegor had managed to send a gang of assailants made up of local residents after him so quickly.

Don’t kneecap me.

Don’t torture me. Don’t kill me.

The youngsters ran past Vatanescu towards a bush.

As the crime squad combed the bushes for something, a creature hobbled out from between their legs. Vatanescu caught it in his hands and hid it in his jacket.

Whatever you are, you are smaller than that group of human animals.

The youngsters’ heads popped up from the bushes. They noticed Vatanescu and asked if he had seen a nasty rodent. A pest that was a menace to the city, gnawing the roots of the apple trees on housing estates and rushing about in the traffic causing unnecessary insurance claims. The youngsters were paid five euros per
rabbit; the city’s zoo bought the long-eared creatures to feed to the tigers.

Vatanescu felt the small creature’s heart beating against his, and nodded.

I saw it. It went that way. Towards the railway station.

If you’re quick you’ll be able to catch it.

Go on, hurry up, or it will get away.

When the lynch mob had disappeared from view, Vatanescu looked at the rabbit that was furtively flattening its ears in the shelter of his jacket. The poor thing’s gaze was weary, and it begged for mercy.

Don’t be afraid of me, I’m Vatanescu.

Like you.

Tiger food.

Vatanescu washed the undernourished creature in seawater and noticed there was a splinter in its paw. When he pulled the splinter out the rabbit gave a piteous squeal and the wound began to bleed more profusely. In Vatanescu’s family there were fortune-tellers and soothsayers, but he himself had as scientific a view of the world as a man who was self-educated could have. Yet, precisely for that reason, this rabbit that had sprung out from nowhere in front of him seemed too powerful an omen to be the result of mere chance.