Tuomas Kyrö's novel
Kerjäläinen ja jänis (The Beggar and the Hare, 2011) is at once a homage to the better-known book by Arto Paasilinna,
Jäniksen vuosi (The Year of the Hare, 1977), and an affectionate pastiche of it. Kyrö takes the theme of "man and animal" and turns it into a satire on the life of modern Finland, with its uncertain position between an affluent and introspective Scandinavia and an impoverished but outward-bound Eastern Europe. The novel's great virtue lies in its author's ability to go further and convert this local drama into a human comedy, where elements of social and political strife become part of a universal moral tale.
Here's an excerpt from the early part of the book, in my translation:
From
Kerjäläinen ja jänis [The Beggar and
the Hare] by Tuomas Kyrö
[pp.
29-33]
Yegor
Kugar was a professional in the security sector whose career began in the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Later on the artificial Union filed for
bankruptcy, but that change of affairs had no effect on Yegor Kugar’s life and
deeds – at least not of a negative kind. Regimes may fall, but the security
police remains. The security police is
the regime. From Kugar’s professional point of view the nosedive of the Bolshies
was actually a positive event, one that improved the state of the markets. Unstable
domestic politics and power vacuums always mean brilliant new opportunities for
those with no shortage of nerve and testosterone.
“I brought the poppy
flowers of the mullahs to the nouveau-riches of my own land. A briefcase full
of opium, several briefcases full of banknotes. Our kind of agricultural
subsidy. That way the level of my income rather swiftly reached that of my
clients. I bought a Nokia mobile phone the size of a beer-crate but couldn’t use
it to call anyone, as there weren’t any network towers in our neck of the woods
yet.”
At
first Yegor sold sackfuls of poppies, then opium, but having been brought up on
the street he soon realized that the longer a small businessman works up his
raw stock the fatter his wallet will be. With his takings Yegor Kugar bought
what every newly-rich motherfucker throughout the world buys: an outsize
four-by-four. It might also suit the tramcar-riding intelligentsia to find out what
it feels like to go rolling along in one’s very own bulletproof, family-car-eating
Hummer.
Yegor
needed a temporary residence for vacations, so he bought a floor of the former
Party members’ apartment block. When the heroes of the Great Patriotic War on
the floor above complained about the noise, Yegor bought that floor as well and
moved the heroes out to the street. In his new home Yegor Kugar celebrated his own ego, the good sides of his time at the summit of world history in the
company of presidents, sports stars and the bearded, pointy hat-wearing
radicals of the Orthodox Church. An endless shindig, like the one in Yegor’s
favourite book The Dirt, which
describes the everyday life – or rave-up – of the band Mötley Crüe. For in
Yegor’s eyes two beings were superior to all others: Vince Neil and Joseph
Stalin. Yegor himself puts it like this:
“I’ll tell you
straight, as it’s important if you want to understand my character and don’t
just want to stick me in the slammer. I’m mad about fucking. It’s the only way
I know to get the shit out of my head when I’m under this goddamn stress all
the time. Fucking is better than fighting, no? At first I never did drugs myself
because I knew it would immediately bugger the stock records and the sales
chain follow-up.
“What’s the alternative? Drinking puts you out
of action for several days. It’s better to empty your head with fucking.
“Two
weeks of business, two weeks in my pad with Miss Uzbekistan. There are all
kinds of broads in the world, of all races, sizes, smells and tastes. There are
the Pam Andersons and the Armi Aavikkos, but there are also the junkies, the
halfwits and the Alla Pugachovas. There are the semi-uglies who are also hypersexual
marvels in an easy-going sort of way. There are the seventeen year-olds who
look like women of thirty and there are the forty-seven year-olds who’ve kept their
resale value. There are the rump roasts who are bigger and lovelier than the
sum of their holes. And there the ones who are just holes, for whom I was
equivalent to money, drugs and
connections, in other words a hole through which they could sniff coke with NHL
hockey players. But fun was always
had on both sides, until it got embarrassing, at which point I’d tell the girls to go, and order new ones. It didn’t
seem possible that such a life would ever end.
“I
just can’t sleep alone, I need someone beside me, it doesn’t matter who it is
as long as she has a good body. That’s how it is with the women back home, but
over here the ladies have been let into the labour market, they have too many
opportunities to let their bodies go and quit wearing makeup.”
Yegor
Kugar wanted more serious challenges in his life, and so he expanded his
business activities from drugs to arms. A market was offered to him on a plate:
hostile armies. The most important thing was that the conflicts were ongoing,
that no peace negotiations were started, that the situation did not become
normalized. As long as the hostile army was within binocular range and
antagonistic, one could trade drugs for arms.
“Shitistan,
Blackanistan and blah-blah-blah. I got my supply of happy dust from the tribal
warlords, paid cash in Kalashnikovs. Then, just for form’s sake, a little skirmish
with the same crew, and at the same time an application to HQ for leave, which
was granted of course as I slipped in some powder as a sweetener.
“The
problems began when the enemy side began to tighten up their morale. Worst of
all were the separatists, read B-league fundamentalists, read clerics. They’re
an obstacle to free trade, a bit like your social democracy here. They scared
the pants off me, because they weren’t scared of us at all. Kind of like the
Finns during the Winter War: let the Russkies bring their millions of tanks,
we’ll mow them down with our bows and catapults. In place of fear and flight they
had hate and faith. Extremely dangerous. I respected them and despised them.
But goddammit, if they’d gained such unlimited power, why on earth did they go
on living in caves and ruins? They made threatening videos, took hostages and
muttered their holy scripture, though they’d have done better to make music videos and build swimming pools in their basements with pole
dancing, billiard tables and drink cupboards.
“I realized
that they didn’t know much about fucking, either. That they could only get it
up when they were able to rape someone. Their male cousins.”
