The Uninvited Guest by John Degen Page A

suitcase. At the border it was only a matter of packing cigarettes, a small cheese or fine chocolates on the very top of the suitcase, some small gift for the border guards, and everything else in the case made it through safely. It was a game in itself to discover the desires of certain border guards.
    The very best players at contraband kept lists of the likes and dislikes of all the customs men at Otopeni Airport, and at the rail borders. They kept work schedules and knew when vacations were due. In this way, they could be certain of who would be greeting them on their return to Romania, and what little token to pack on the top of the clothes in the suitcase. Nicolae knew of one fellow who had no interest in the traditional bribes—the cigarettes, cigars, cheeses or chocolates. And he wanted nothing for a woman. He was a very successful bachelor and never had to bother with winning the attentions of ladies. All this man wanted was fishing tackle.
    This particular border guard fished in every spare moment. When he was not at Otopeni, opening the suitcases of visiting dignitaries, thumbing through their underwear for state secrets, he was at one of the many lakes in Bucharest. He fished for carp, mostly, and also brown trout, though these were quite rare in the city. To get past this man was a simple matter of visiting a sporting goods store on your travels and picking up the most extravagant and ridiculous looking piece of fishing tackle you could find. You would do well to buy some spare fishing line as well, and a few plain hooks; but some colourful piece of fish silliness was a certain free pass back into the country. Something from Finland was best, shaped like a fish and painted like no fish in nature, something with feathers and beads and parts that flutter or twirl in the water.
    â€œI’m not sure if this man ever used any of this crazy Finnish tackle—he was always just as pleased to see the line and plain hooks—but he was certainly amused by it.”
    In fact, this guard’s crazy foreign fishing tackle fed that significant and mysterious national pride all border officials seem to possess. He looked at these strange and wonderful lures as evidence of Western decadence and the futility of the capitalist system. “Look at this ridiculous contraption,” he could be heard to say. “What self-respecting fish would ever try to eat this thing with its feathers and beads and funny noises? Maybe Finnish fish need to be amused before they are caught, but a good Romanian carp wants just a bug on a hook.” Nevertheless, an absurd Finnish piece of tackle, some cheap line and plain hooks cleared the path for, no doubt, hundreds of kilos of contraband chocolate from Geneva, or cigars from Amsterdam, Camembert from Paris, or prosciutto from Rome.
    Perhaps they even cleared the path for a strange table set made of a metal slab with stones for pieces. Stranger things were brought into Romania in the suitcases of those privileged few who could cross borders with ease. Perhaps this game that haunted Nicolae belonged to an official who was eventually discredited, and it was then confiscated from his apartment along with all his wife’s underwear, the television and any good food he had stashed away in the cupboards.
    â€œYou are getting a sense of how things worked in Romania, yes?” Nicolae smiles a sad smile and takes a drink from his small bottle of beer. “Probably how things still work if I am right, but who knows? It is no longer my concern. I am no longer Romanian. Now I am a Canadian immigrant from Israel. Nothing to do with Romania any more, except when it is time to return and witness my son getting married.”
    Possibly, the police stole some poor man’s handmade table set before they put him in a secret camp to spend a few years doing the laundry of hundreds of criminals. It’s entirely possible they didn’t even know how to play backgammon, these two