“It sounds as if the old man’s got you convinced.”
“He’s got a point about the money,” Ivari insisted. “When I took over from Paps as head ranger, we got on all right with the Government. They didn’t let us bathe in asses’ milk, but they granted us funds for a lot of projects. Nowadays I spend half my time in Tallinn with my cap in my hands.” He poured himself another drink and looked at the glass. “Oh, sure, the President comes up here a lot. The Prime Minister, as well. Lots of ministers. And what do we get?” He knocked back the drink in one swallow. “Flowers. Fruit. Fluffy toys.”
“Governments change, Ivari.”
“Nah,” Ivari said, pouring another drink. He held up the bottle. “You want?”
“Yes,” said Rudi, taking the bottle from his brother. He topped up his drink, put the bottle on the floor by his feet, out of Ivari’s reach.
“Nah,” Ivari said again. “It’s institutionalised now. This arsehole, he’s made everyone realise just how much we can help them feather their own nests.”
Rudi shook his head. “It can’t work. The park can’t possibly earn enough from tourism to be self-supporting.”
“Paps is talking about getting the Laulupidu moved out here.”
“The song festival? That’s never going to happen.”
Ivari looked at him. “Why not? It wasn’t in Tallinn originally; it was in Tartu.”
“But the Festival Grounds are there, the Lauluväljak. It’s where the Singing Revolution happened. Nobody’s going to move the festival from there.”
Ivari looked sourly at him. “With Paps’s contacts in the folk-song community? All it takes is his pals to decide to boycott the festival and come here and have a rival one of their own.” He shook his head. “Not even difficult. Those old guys love him, Rudi. They’d walk into hell if he asked them to. Nah.” He shook his head again. “All he has to do is say the word, and the Laulupidu happens right here. Let Tallinn keep the Lauluväljak for heavy metal concerts.”
One of the biggest song festivals along the Baltic. Tens of thousands of people. If they could turn it into an annual event, rather than every five years, it might generate enough revenue to make a difference. If they could build a suitable venue for it here.
Rudi said, “He has to go to the UN with the proposal. Their fact-finding study alone could last ten years.”
“He’s got a precedent.”
Rudi felt his blood chill.
“That place in Berlin. The one with the anarchists.”
“New Potsdam,” Rudi said dully.
Ivari nodded. “That was a spontaneous thing. Paps thinks that if it happens spontaneously enough here, the UN will concede to it, just like they did with New Potsdam.”
“The government could keep him in a UN Special Court for the rest of his life, arguing about that,” Rudi said, grasping at straws.
“True. But in the interim, the UN has no power to prevent a provisional government being set up here. We’d have to accept Peacekeepers, but let’s face it, they might come in handy.”
Rudi put a hand to his face and rubbed it in a horrified, circular motion, as if trying to erase his features. “The old bastard,” he said, not without admiration. “He wants to hand the UN a fait accompli and let them sort it out.”
“And by the time they do have it sorted out…”
“…this is a functioning country and they have no right to abolish it. They have to recognise it.” Rudi blinked. “Fucking hell.” It was, he thought, either the work of a genius or a madman. With his father, it was usually impossible to tell which.
“Of course, we’d have to prove that we were a functioning country, in the interim,” said Ivari. “But Paps has it all costed out. He’s got spreadsheets, he’s got presentations, he’s got the results of divinations from the entrails of chickens. God only knows what he has. He’s bent the figures so far out of shape they don’t even look like numbers any more. He’s got a Constitution and a Parliament. In an emergency he’s got a government that looks a lot like the Divine Right of Kings.” Ivari held his hand out flat, about a metre above the floor. “He’s got a stack of notes and proposals and suggestions this high.”
“Could it work?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen all his paperwork. Half of it looks as though it was written by Aleister Crowley. On a costings level? We’d have a few tight years in the beginning, then we’d start to show a profit. We’d licence settlers, sell visas. Make the visas really arty so people would regard them as souvenirs. We should have a park mascot. Villem the Bear. Everyone loves bears. Especially if we design him right.” Ivari put his hand to the side of his head as though massaging away a pain.
“There aren’t enough people here to defend the borders,” Rudi said.
“Haven’t you been listening?” Ivari shouted, taking his hand from his head. “The United Nations will do that for us.”
Rudi raised a hand. “Okay. My mistake.”
Ivari sighed. “Can I have a drink, please?”
Rudi looked at the bottle of Scotch. After a while he picked it up and passed it over. Then he sat back and lit another cigar.
“Either he’s going to be the saviour of the park,” Ivari said, pouring a very large measure of whisky into his glass and carefully putting the bottle down where he could get at it when he needed it again, “or he’s going to destroy us.” He picked up his glass and took a big drink. “And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know which it’s going to be.”
Rudi looked at his brother, caught between a rock and a hard place. “We could always kill him,” he suggested.
“You see?” Ivari gestured with his glass, slopping whisky over his hand. “I knew you’d take this seriously!”
Rudi sighed. “I’ll talk to him.”
“That sounds like a rash promise.”
“I know.”
“And it won’t work anyway.”
“You underestimate my powers of persuasion.”
“You underestimate how stubborn Paps is.”
Rudi shook his head. “No. No, I never did that.”
THE ABSENCE OF his mother didn’t bother him at the time. His father told him that she’d had to go away for a little while, and she’d be joining them in Lahemaa when they got settled. That was fine by him. There was the excitement of the move, packing stuff up, saying solemn goodbyes to his few friends at school, promising to keep in touch. Then there was the day of the move itself. Their furniture and most of their possessions had gone ahead a day or so earlier, so they were sleeping in an empty apartment, using sleeping bags and eating takeaway pizzas. Rudi didn’t sleep at all the night before, too excited by the prospect of the great adventure ahead. He couldn’t work out why his father wasn’t excited too. Couldn’t work out why he actually seemed rather sad. Ivari too.
The next morning, of course, he was exhausted. Years later, he found he couldn’t actually remember leaving the apartment for the last time. Or the car journey to Lahemaa. He thought he may have slept through the whole thing, because his first concrete memory of Palmse wasn’t the Manor itself, or the forests, or the Gulf. It was his father balancing precariously on the roof of the little house they shared on the estate, trying to attach a satellite dish to the chimney.