The Beggar and the Hare (9 page)

T
he 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 at 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.

V
atanescu 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.

Act. Act now.

The train stopped.

What am I going to do?

The rabbit slipped out of his sleeve onto the seat and then to the floor. From there it climbed up beside the teenagers.

It sat on Ökö’s lap, and encountered no resistance. In a flash their astonishment turned into affection. The rabbit looked at the teenagers and by its demeanour permitted them to stroke it.

Jonttu took photos with his camera phone and they asked why the head of an investment company was travelling with a rabbit.

‘Are you a magician?’

It’s like a… canary. In a mine. Life insurance. It detects danger. Sniffs out precious metals. Only eight rabbits in the world are specially trained like it.

V
atanescu lay on one of the upper berths in the
four-berth
sleeping compartment. The berth had been intended for Oili Tymäkkä, who had not received her parents’ permission to go and work in a mine for a year because they had already paid for her to take a cramming course in legal studies.

Vatanescu looked at the ceiling and listened to the delight of the teenagers as they fondled and fed the rabbit.

Just before the train arrived in Seinäjoki, Jonttu dug from his wallet a brown lump, which he crumbled onto cigarette paper with some powdered tobacco.

‘Feel like a smoke?’

I don’t smoke.

‘Just a puff or two.’

I must be worthy of their trust. They mean well.

I mustn’t be arrogant.

At first the joint made Vatanescu smile. Then he felt as though he had floated in through the door, along the corridors into the sleeping compartment and lain down on a bed. Then he felt terribly hungry. Then Jonttu went off to the restaurant car to buy something that would stave off the hunger. Then Vatanescu’s tongue began to loosen.

The biggest problems in the labour market are caused by management structure and working conditions. There’s a need for the workforce to feel that they are wanted and secure. That’s how a spirit of solidarity is built. There must be barbecues now and then. We need to feel that we’re important, that’s all. That we can have an influence on the way things are run, and that we’re taken notice of and listened to. These are things that don’t have much to do with the world of finance, but the problem is that no one ever asks any questions. Think. We need to think about things and not just chase the money. Yet that is what I do, and what you do. I don’t know. It’s something that needs to be given thought.

Minttu, who was taking notes with her Stabilo pen, underlined the word ‘barbecue’ in three different colours.

Profit-sharing is essential, twenty-five per cent is not enough. Those who make the greatest physical effort must receive adequate remuneration for putting the strength of their bodies at the company’s disposal. Prostitution and human trafficking are combated, but no one objects to the fact that building workers also sell their bodies. The management swindles its subordinates, lines its own pockets and cuts back on toilet breaks. Think about it.

Jonttu returned with eight bags of potato crisps, which they mixed with the delicacies Vatanescu had brought from Ming’s restaurant. They ate like pigs and played the board game ‘Star of Africa’ like children. Vatanescu amassed the biggest fortune in emeralds and rubies, but lost it to a robber in Madagascar.

How can one person take from another the money he has earned with his labour and then enjoy an untroubled night’s sleep?

They drank Coca-Cola and the cider the teenagers had brought with them, and in the next game Vatanescu made do with being the banker.

In this game all the players start off with three hundred pounds. In real life many people start off with little more than hunger and a pair of leaky shoes. Should it be like that? Must think about it. Could it be different? Is money the solution?

I’m going to lie here and think.

Vatanescu’s mind and body were mellow, gentle, floating. He looked out of the window; the view out there was still the same, little stations, housing estates and industrial parks shortly before and after the main stops. Forest and more forest, becoming less and less tall the further north they went.

With a start, on the border between sleeping and waking, Vatanescu once again saw the eve of his departure from Romania. His son had dozed off between the wall and his grandmother, whose lungs were as ravaged by damp as the wallpaper. He could still save his son; an eight-year-old boy could recover from almost anything as long as he had fruit juice and football boots. His son’s joy in life was still strong, despite the attempts of older boys to get him to sniff glue with them. Vatanescu had lit the stove, fetched more firewood from the outside wall. He had noticed his mother watching him and asked what the matter was. His mother had said she knew that tomorrow her son would be leaving.

‘Will you be able to endure what will come?’

‘What will come?’ Vatanescu had asked.

‘Anything can come.’

‘I’m doing it for you.’

Vatanescu then went off to bed, but could not sleep, and waited for the morning. The new day was waiting there, too.

That’s how days are. They arrive and we don’t know what they will bring. Or what we are allowed to take from them.