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Authors: Tuomas Kyrö

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BOOK: The Beggar and the Hare
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V
atanescu 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.

One doesn’t throw bad things away, either.

A
s 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.

W
hen 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.

BOOK: The Beggar and the Hare
4.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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