The Beggar and the Hare (25 page)

‘We’ve been waiting for you every day.’ he said. ‘Good boots for a good boy.’

‘Eh?’ said Miklos.

Ulla fetched her better, gold-rimmed cups from the dresser and served coffee for Vatanescu. For Miklos there was a mug, fruit squash and a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Vatanescu looked at the couple and then at his son, who was silently eating a large hunk of coffee bread. He followed it with a second
hunk, and a third. He examined the football boots, he breathed in the smell of real leather, felt the tips of the toes. The boots were heavy, came from a different time, creaked. Never in a million years would he wear them; they would ruin his reputation and his athletic ability, but he had been brought up by his grandmother and he knew the right words to use so as not to offend the old couple.

‘They’re really valuable,’ he said. ‘They’d probably fetch hundreds of euros on an auction website.’

Ulla took Pentti’s hand and stroked it, then passed her hand over his rough cheek for a moment.

‘And the rabbit, we really adore it,’ Ulla said. ‘Do you have it with you?’

While Ulla inquired after the rabbit, Esko Sirpale removed the safety seat from the front of the car, got out and brought a tearful Anneli to Vatanescu. The rabbit also tried to escape through the open door, but it was shut in front of its nose. Long gone were the days of its freedom, the open road, its indispensable role in surprising turns of events. Now it had become either an extension of Vatanescu or a soft toy enclosed by four walls, without having sought either role. It bounced from the gearstick onto the back seat and then up to the rear window ledge.

From there it watched the humans recede, and heard the unpleasant sound of crying grow fainter. If it could, the rabbit would have covered its ears with its paws in order not to hear that noise. Human offspring were a strange force of nature engaged either in defecating, vomiting or smiling, the last of which the rabbit knew to be only a sign of wind anyway, and yet in those who looked after them they awoke enormous feelings of love and a desire to protect. These feelings in turn became
houses, cars, insurance policies, summer cottages, holiday villages, playgrounds, educational institutions and amusement parks. The rabbit did not understand why human infants cried, for animals didn’t cry; they learned to cope as soon as they were able to walk. They couldn’t afford to cry, as there was always a fox or a hunter or a hawk about somewhere.

But this wasn’t really crying. Rather, it was a request and a demand.

Anneli was saying she was hungry, and she shook her little fist in the air to emphasise the fact.

Ulla got up from her chair to look at the child, and quietly sang to her. The grandfather clock ticked from the wall. The refrigerator gave a rattling snore now and then – as did Pentti – and Ulla touched the tip of Anneli Vatanescu-Pommakka’s nose, whereupon the little girl’s crying stopped for a moment. Vatanescu took the child out of the baby seat and calmed her, then fished a bottle with a teat and a carton of baby milk out of his briefcase. With the ease of an expert he unscrewed the teat, opened the carton with his teeth and poured the correct amount into the bottle.

D
rink your milk, little one who was conceived on the train.

They would have made good parents. They have a house that was made for it, a solid post-war veterans’ house. Flexible interiors, an unused room upstairs.

A wide, well-tended stretch of forest, with clear boundaries. A reasonable number of wild nocturnal carnivores.

There’s a carrot patch and a potato patch.

All they need now is a child, who would be happy living there.

They will still make good parents.

Drink your milk, little one.

T
he window on the driver’s side was partly open. The rabbit, forgotten and thirsty, wriggled its way out and wondered if it should leap away across the fields into the wilds or out onto the road to dash about in desperation this way and that, as others of its species had done as their last deed. The rabbit saw Vatanescu inside the house with the baby on his knee. The rabbit saw Miklos helping himself to a fourth hunk of coffee bread. The rabbit studied Pentti and Ulla, Ulla and Pentti, and through the porch flowed something powerful, something that only an animal could sense without a word being exchanged. The rabbit looked at the little boy who had ignited into being within the old man when Miklos arrived, and the surge of protective care in the old woman when the little baby was also present. The rabbit quietly hopped towards the gently crumbling concrete steps of the veterans’ house, put its paws on the first step, then on the second, pushed its small head through the doorway and slipped inside. It bounded over the rag rug, traversed the tip of Esko Sirpale’s foot and jumped up on the bench. From there it leapt onto the table,
circumnavigating
a pack of butter, a carton of whole milk and a tin of anchovies, and arrived in front of Ulla and Pentti. The rabbit threw itself onto Ulla’s lap. The rabbit turned its gaze on Pentti, the rabbit turned its gaze on Ulla, the rabbit smelled the smells of this home, the smell of flannel, of sweat, of resin, of tar, of yeast bread and pine soap. The rabbit made itself into a warm, homely bundle. The rabbit instantly made itself irreplaceable, Ulla and Pentti’s very own Violet or Martti.

G
ood rabbits circulate, we might think, as Ulla and Pentti make a nest for the rabbit in a cardboard box. Lousy Mercs roll, we might think, as Esko Sirpale steers the car along the forest road towards the highways, towards the rest of the life that is beginning on this day.

Esko Sirpale puts a cassette in the car stereo; it is one of Tapio Rautavaara’s best songs, and even Vatanescu knows the tune and the words, because this song about the Sandman is the one that is certain to make Anneli Vatanescu-Pommakka fall asleep, and Vatanescu himself, and all of his numerous family, and the whole of Finland too, because it’s a good song to fall asleep to.