The Beggar and the Hare (13 page)

Y
egor Kugar’s life was starting to go downhill. The number of contracts he got began to dwindle, because his rights to extortion and torture had been removed. Then he was told he would have to pay rent for the place he was living in. Yegor Kugar’s mental balance was affected, and that was quite new to him.

That is indeed how it is sometimes, and all of us who have ever worked know the theory of shit. The steak flambé that is eaten on the top storey may end up pouring down as diarrhoea on the employees on the floors below. For that reason, or perhaps because of his misanthropy and anthropophobia, Yegor Kugar now covered his eyes with large sunglasses even when the sky was overcast; he now wore a cap, and a hood on top of it. The logo on the cap said The Bear, and yesterday’s truth had now become a post-modern irony, or rather, a cruel game.

V
atanescu awoke to the smell of herbs, tomato, feta cheese, smoked ham and onion. His gaze travelled along the ceiling and the walls.

Did I die?

But few are the graves that come with a television screen on which a bearded Finnish runner has just won an Olympic gold medal, in spite of a fall, while Anssi Kukkonen commentates by shouting in the background. Vatanescu turned his head and saw a naked Harri Pykström dozing in an armchair with his feet on a footstool, the remote control in his right hand.

Vatanescu got up, put his blanket over his host and removed the extinguished cigarette from between his fingers, then, blinking, returned upstairs to the ground floor.

The rabbit was nibbling grated carrot on the kitchen table. Mrs Pykström said good morning and invited Vatanescu to try her Mediterranean omelette.

Vatanescu drank a glass of water. Then a second, and a third. A hangover in a strange house is an existential crisis, because instead of concrete beneath one’s feet one has a shifting marsh. One doesn’t know who one is, what one remembers, what one ought to remember. Mrs Pykström said that when Vatanescu had finished eating it would be time for him to leave.

Sorry, did I do something wrong?

‘Harri will be in no state to drive until this evening. I’ve got some buckets ready. In the cold pack there are berries, salad and a carton of goat’s milk for the rabbit.’

Vatanescu changed into an arctic snowsuit that was several sizes too large for him. By tightening the cords and rolling up the sleeves and trouser bottoms he managed to make it fit. Mrs Pykström gave the rabbit a pair of bootees and a baby bonnet that had belonged to her children.

On the van’s radio the announcer was listing the temperatures for the coast and archipelago from the various weather stations. The rabbit lay in an empty bucket on Vatanescu’s lap, and Vatanescu gazed at the red and brown tints of the forests, he gazed ahead at the gently rising contours of the landscape, he gazed at the stretches of water and lines of fells that glittered in the distance. Between the dwarf birches a man or a reindeer would trot into view for a moment. Unexpected words suddenly issued from Mrs Pykström’s mouth.

‘Harri has some boyish dreams. Harri is an old man who is dying. How can I make him see that?’

Yes
.

‘He’ll listen to you, but not to anyone else. He’s never listened to what anyone else says.’

I didn’t say anything to him. I don’t know him. You mustn’t mix me up in anything.

‘That’s just it. You didn’t say anything to Harri.’

I want to go home. I want a home.

I want football boots for my son.

‘Do you think I’m really interested in Zumba? Under normal conditions I’d be studying the cultural significance of that craze, but here I have to be a part of it.’

Mrs Pykström turned the van off the main road and onto a forest track. She got out to move the Forestry
Commission barrier aside and drove deep into the forest.

Mrs Pykström unloaded the buckets from the back of the van and pointed in the direction of where Vatanescu would find the yellow berries. She rummaged in the pockets of her windcheater, found a mobile phone and gave it to him. There was a pre-paid SIM card in it, with one phone number in its memory. Harri Pykström’s number, which he was to call as soon as he had found the berries. They would come and collect him.

T
he trees creaked as if they were talking to one another. While Vatanescu studied the map, the rabbit caught sight of a lemming. The creatures looked at each other, perhaps wondering what fellow member of their species had arrived, or what rival was trying to usurp their territory. Vatanescu chased away the last effects of his hangover with a handful of pungent lingonberries. Mrs Pykström had marked the best places for berries with a red circle, the slightly less good areas with a blue one, and on the least important areas she had put a cross.

Bilberries.

Lingonberries.

Bilberries. Lingonberries. Bilberries lingonberries bilberries lingonberries.

The rabbit grew tired, came to sit at Vatanescu’s feet, and from there returned to the sling.

Let’s look until we find something.

According to the map we’re only a mile or two from our destination.

Now and then Vatanescu lost his bearings, now and then the compass needle whirled unsteadily and
several times he felt like giving up. But he trusted in what his fat Finnish friend and his wife had told him, and so he decided to make one last search. If he didn’t find anything he would have to look in the mirror and admit his own failure. He would have to go home
empty-handed
, blisters on his heels, his spirits shattered.

Exactly on the edge of the circle that Mrs Pykström had drawn he saw the first glimmer of gold.

F
rom tussock to tussock, with duckboards in between, then churning knee-deep through marshes, the beggar and the hare went on side by side.

Eldorado.

Football boots.

Cloudberries.

Vatanescu pulled himself through the marsh like some legendary Finnish skiing champion of former days.

Come to daddy.

No sacrifice will have been in vain.

After a scree, a hillock and another scree, before their eyes stretched a marsh the size of four football pitches, bordered by hills and bursting with orange-yellow berries just waiting to be picked.

I’m… rich…

Served on Lapland cheese, as the base for a liqueur, made into jam, as a flavouring – the further the process of refinement was taken, the greater the profit. Vatanescu thrust both of his hands into the berries and dug, showering a handful all over himself. He chewed them, soft as raspberry on the outside, on the inside a grainy sensation, the seeds.

Sour.

Unpleasant.

Never mind.

They’re scarce.

So they’re expensive.

His mood brightening, Vatanescu began to fill the buckets.

I’ll be the owner of the team my son plays for. He’ll have the best football boots that money can buy, I’ll teach him how to tie double knots and I’ll stand at the edge of the pitch.

I won’t shout like a madman. I won’t yell abuse at the other team. I won’t need to.

Miklos will be the best. The son of a newly rich
berry-picker
.

Vatanescu picked berries late into the evening and on into early morning, without missing a single one, and when dawn broke he had filled all of the Pykströms’ buckets. He made the tent that Mrs Pykström had given him into a large bag some five feet wide, and soon it too was full. Leaving the now denuded marsh behind him, Vatanescu lugged the tent back to his base camp, put it beside the buckets and felt his pockets.

Harri Pykström will take me and the berries to a place where I can sell them.

The phone?

The phone!

On the way Vatanescu’s phone had fallen into the depths of the marsh, where it mouldered away and oxidised. If anyone ever found it again it would probably be an archaeologist who was studying the toils and troubles of humanity in the first decade of the
twenty-first
century, in the age of accumulation.

Don’t panic.

Vatanescu looked at his compass. He would easily find the direction from which he had come.

Two steps forward, one step back.

A road.

A car and a road.

A main road. That way.

I can carry eight buckets at once.

Vatanescu found a long, strong tree branch to make a carrying device. He lifted the branch onto his shoulders like the slaves in Egypt and the women in Häme. He asked the rabbit to go on ahead, to lead the way, to help them avoid getting wet.

Where there’s a road, there’s a man. Someone will surely come. A rescuer. A German camping trailer. A local lad in his drag car.

After the third heavy step there was an explosion.

Gravel, stones and moss flew above him.

Now I died.

V
atanescu had lost his hearing. He could hear nothing outside his body, but the beating of his heart thumped inside his head as if the neighbours were playing Rammstein on their stereo.

I didn’t die?

Did the rabbit die?

The rabbit sat trembling on a lump of stone that had fallen beside it. Vatanescu approached the rabbit very quietly, took it in his cupped hands and hid it in the shelter of his armpit. Then he gathered the remaining buckets of berries.

A military exercise?

A war?

A nuclear explosion?

The end of the world?

Vatanescu set off through the marsh in a random
direction, guided now not by the compass or by reason but by the fear of death and the state of panic from which he was only a moment away. Suddenly under his feet the ground was firmer, more even, a path trodden by people or reindeer.

If there’s a path…

…at its end there’ll be a road…

If there’s a road…

…at its end there’ll be…

…a human being.

The path continued towards some dwarf birches and on to somewhere beyond his field of vision.

For an explosion you need a human being. The author of the explosion will have a car. The car will have a tow bar. It can be used to attach a trailer. The berries will go in the trailer.

Vatanescu felt his body shake, and wondered whether it was simply the beating of his heart. Probably not, as the shaking seemed to begin in the soles of his feet.

It was an accelerating rhythm, tuh-toom, muh-toom, buh-boom!

Perhaps I really did die.

Perhaps I’m in hell.