The Listener

by Tove Jansson

  Inside, they were talking. And suddenly there was a new voice, indistinct and threatening – the man on the floor. A voice that came from far away, from out of a vast indifference. Then he shouted, with a terrible rage. The girl, Leila, began to tremble. I’ll go home, she thought. I’ll just open the door and go.

  She waited. They came back, and the doctor walked past her again without glancing up, looking just as annoyed.

  “Is he getting an ambulance?” she asked.

  The boy sat down on the floor and said, “We have to stay here. He’s not going to the hospital, but he’s going to throw up in the morning.”

  “What do you mean we’re staying here?” the girl shouted. “I won’t do it.”

  He drew up his knees and put his arms around them. “So go, then,” he said sullenly. “I’m going to do what they told me to do. You do what you like.”

  They sat silently and listened to the man breathing in the next room.

  “And if he does throw up,” the girl said, “we have to find a bowl. Or a bucket.”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders. He’d put his head down on his knees.

  “Will you come in the kitchen and help me look?” she asked, submissively.

  “No,” Ralf said.

  She went into the kitchen and turned on the light. There was a packing case in front of the kitchen counter, and across the address label it said ‘Household’. She went back and said, “There’s stuff in a packing case, but I can’t get it open.”

  “Really?” said Ralf. “And where the hell do you think I’m going to get my hands on tools in the middle of the night?”

  She looked at him, critically and patiently, and said, “If they wrote ‘Household’ on a box, then they’ve surely written ‘Tools’ on another. And they can’t have nailed it shut.”

  They found a hammer and a crowbar. They put a dishpan beside the sleeping man. They found a towel for him, and blankets.

  “Do you think we should turn off the light?” Leila wondered. “Is it better if it’s light or dark when he wakes up?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know him. This fluorescent light is horrible; maybe it’s better if it’s dark.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said. “If it’s dark, then maybe he’ll think he’s dead, or get scared, and anyway he needs to see where he’s supposed to be sick.”

  “Listen,” Ralf said. “It’s four o’clock. Why don’t we get some sleep?” He spread out a blanket on the hall floor.

  “I’ll sleep over here in the corner,” Leila said.

  “And why can’t you sleep here next to me?”

  “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “And why not? Now, suddenly?”

  “Him!” she whispered vehemently. “Him in there. What if he dies?”

  The boy rolled himself up in the blanket with his face to the wall. “You’re as conventional as your mother,” he said. And then, a little later, “Leila, come over here and you’ll feel better.”

  She went to him at once and he spread the blanket over the two of them. It was dark in the hall, but the light from the next room surrounded them, bluish fluorescent light like a hospital ward.

  “Ralf?” said Leila.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you mean when you said that we never do anything important together?”

  “Nothing much. What I said. We never do anything important, we just get together. Nothing that matters.”

  “And why does this matter? I think it’s nasty.”

  “I don’t know,” Ralf said. “I thought it was a good thing, and I wanted you along. Now I’m not so sure. Let’s try to sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep.” She put her arm around him and whispered, “Maybe you mean that it was a comfort for you to have me along.”

  “Nonsense,” Ralf said. “What do you mean, ‘comfort’?”

  She pulled her arm back and sat up and said, “Anyway, I was the one who thought of getting him a bowl!”

  The man in the next room called out in his sleep, a long cry, as if from a person sinking, lost and distant. They jumped to their feet and grabbed hold of each other.

  “Now he’s dying!” Leila screamed. “Do something!”

  The boy pushed her away and walked stiffly into the room and looked at the man. He had turned and rolled in towards the wall. One hand was pounding the floor, over and over, and now he cried out again, a long, wailing cry. Leila had come into the room and stood by the door listening.

  “Go back and lie down,” Ralf said. “He’s just dreaming.”

  Her face was worried. She came further into the room and said, “He’s scared. He’s awfully unhappy.” She sat down on her heels beside the sleeping man and tried to look into his face. “It’s going to be all right,” she said to him. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  The man turned in his sleep and his hand touched hers. Suddenly he took hold of it and held it tight.

  “Leila!” the boy burst out.

  “Quiet. Be completely quiet,” she whispered. “He’ll go back to sleep.”

  The man on the floor held her hand. He stopped moaning and turned his face away.

  “See?” she said. “I’m holding his hand.”

  Gradually his grip relaxed and his hand opened. She stood up and looked at Ralf, made a tiny gesture, a command. He lifted the sleeping man’s head and laid it carefully on the cushion, shifted the bowl closer, and spread the blanket to cover him.

  “And some water,” Leila said.

  Ralf went after a glass of water and put it on the floor. It was almost 4.30. They lay down next to each other on the front hall floor and listened to the silence in the unfamiliar building.

  “He’s scared,” Leila explained. “He’s terribly scared.”

  The boy put his arms around her.

  “Wake me early,” she said. “We’ve got to find the coffee.”

  Black-White

  Homage to Edward Gorey

  HIS WIFE’S NAME WAS STELLA, and she was an interior designer – Stella, his beautiful star. Sometimes he tried to sketch her face, which was always at rest, open and accessible, but he never succeeded. Her hands were white and strong and she wore no rings. She worked quickly and without hesitation.

  They lived in a house that Stella had designed, an enormous openwork of glass and unpainted wood. The heavy planking had been chosen for its unusually attractive grain and fastened with large brass screws. There were no unnecessary objects to hide the structural materials. When dusk entered their rooms, it was met with low, veiled lighting, while the glass walls reflected the night but held it at a distance. They stepped out onto the terrace, and hidden spotlights came on in the bushes. The darkness crept away, and they stood side by side, throwing no shadows, and he thought, This is perfect. Nothing can change.

  She never flirted. She looked straight at the person she was speaking to, and when she undressed at night she did it almost absentmindedly. The house was like her, its eyes were wide open, and sometimes he worried that someone might look in on them from the darkness. But the garden was surrounded by a wall, and the gates were locked.

  They often entertained. In the summer, they hung lanterns in the trees and Stella’s house resembled an illuminated seashell in the night. Happy people in strong colours moved within this picture in groups or in twos and threes, some of them inside the glass walls and some outside. It was a lovely pageant.

  He was an illustrator. He worked mostly for magazines; now and then he did a book jacket.

  The only thing that bothered him was a mild but persistent pain in his back, which may have resulted from the excessively low furniture. There was a large black bearskin in front of the fireplace, and sometimes he wanted to lie on it with outstretched arms and legs, bury his face in the fur and roll around like a dog to rest his back. But he never did. The walls were glass, and there were no doors between the rooms.

  The large table by the fireplace was also of glass. He was in the habit of laying out his
drawings on it in order to show them to Stella before sending them on to the client. These moments meant a great deal to him.

  Stella came and looked at his work. “It’s good,” she said. “Your use of line is perfect. All I’m missing is a dominant element.”

  “You mean it’s too grey?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “It needs more white, more light.”

  They stood at the low table and he saw his drawings from a distance. They really were very grey.

  “I think what it needs is black,” he said. “But you need to look at them up close.”

  Afterwards he thought for a long time about black as a focus. He was uneasy, and his back was worse.

  The commission came in November. He went in to his wife and said, “Stella, I’ve been given a job that really intrigues me.” He was happy, almost excited. Stella put down her pen and looked at him. She was always able to interrupt her work without annoyance.

  “It’s a terror anthology,” he said. “Fifteen stories, with black-and-white illustrations and vignettes. I know I can do it. It suits me. It’s my kind of thing, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely,” said his wife. “Are they in a rush?”

  “Rush!” he burst out, and laughed. “This isn’t some two-bit assignment, this is a serious piece of work. Full pages. They’re giving me a couple of months.” He rested his hands on her work table and leaned forwards. “Stella,” he said gravely, “I’m going to use black as a dominant element. I’m going to do darkness. Grey, well, I’ll only use grey when it’s like holding your breath, like when you’re waiting to be afraid.”

  She smiled. “It’s so nice you’ve got something you find interesting.”

  The text arrived, and he lay down on his bed and read the first three stories, no more. He wanted to begin work believing that the best material would come further on and so retain his expectations as long as possible. The third story gave him an idea, and he sat down at the table and cut himself a piece of thick, chalk-white, rag paper with an embossed maker’s mark in the corner.

  The house was quiet and they weren’t expecting guests.

  It had been very hard for him to get used to this paper, because he couldn’t forget how much it cost. Drawings on less expensive paper tended to be freer and better. But this time it was different. He loved the feel of the pen as it ran across the elegant surface in clean lines and at the same time he relished the barely discernible resistance that brought the lines to life.

  It was midday. He closed the curtains, turned on the lamp, and began to work.

  They ate dinner together, and he was very quiet. Stella asked no questions. Finally he said, “It’s no good. There’s too much light.”

  “But can’t you close the curtains?”

  “I did,” he said. “But somehow it’s still too light. It only gets grey, it doesn’t get black!” He waited until the cook had finished serving and gone away. “There aren’t any doors in this house,” he burst out. “I can’t close myself in!”

  Stella stopped eating and looked at him. “You mean it’s just not working,” she said.

  “No. All I get is grey.”

  “Then I think you should find another studio,” said his wife. They went on eating, the tension gone. Over coffee she said, “My aunt’s old house is standing empty. But I think there’s still furniture in the little attic apartment. You could give it a try.”

  She called Jansson and asked him to put a heater in the attic room. Mrs Jansson promised to leave food on the steps every day and to make sure the room was clean. Otherwise he’d have to keep house for himself and take a hotplate with him. It took only a few minutes to make all the arrangements.

  When the bus appeared around the bend in the road, he turned earnestly to his wife. “Stella,” he said. “It will only be for a couple of weeks, then I can finish up at home. I’m going to concentrate while I’m there. I won’t be writing any letters, just working.”

  “Of course,” said his wife. “Now, take care of yourself. And call me from the general store if there’s anything you need.” They kissed, and he climbed onto the bus. It was afternoon, and sleeting. Stella didn’t wave, but she stood and watched until the bus was hidden by the trees. Then she closed the gate and walked back up to her house.

  He recognised the bus stop and the evergreen hedge, but it had grown higher and greyer. He was also surprised that the hill was so steep. The road went straight up, bordered by a confused mass of withered undergrowth and cut by deep furrows where the rain had washed sand and gravel down the slope. The house clung tightly to the hill at an impossible angle just below the crown, and the house, the fence, the outbuildings, the fir trees, all seemed to be holding themselves upright with a terrible effort.

  He stopped at the steps and looked up at the façade. The house was very tall and narrow, and the windows looked like arrowslits. The snow was melting, and in the silence he could hear nothing but water dripping in among the firs. He walked around to the back. At the rear of the house was a one-storey kitchen that merged with the hill in a messy, ill-defined rampart of rubbish. Here in the shadow of the firs lay everything the old house had spat out in the course of its life, everything worn out and unnecessary, everything not to be seen. In the darkening winter evening, this landscape was utterly abandoned, a territory that had no meaning for anyone but him. He found it beautiful. Unhurried, he went into the house and up to the attic. He closed the door behind him. Jansson had been there with the heater, a glowing red rectangle over by the bed. He walked to the window and looked down the hill. It seemed to him that the house leaned outwards, tired of clinging to the slope. With great love and admiration, he thought of his wife, who had made it so easy for him to leave. He felt his darkness drawing closer.

  After a long night without dreams, he set to work. He dipped his pen in the India ink and drew calmly – small, tight, skilful lines. But now he knew that grey is only the patient dusk that makes preparation for the night. He could wait. He was no longer working to make a picture but only in order to draw.

  In the dusk he walked to the window and saw that the house was leaning outwards. He wrote a letter.

  Beloved Stella, the first full page is finished and I think it’s good. It’s warm here and very quiet. The Janssons had cleaned, and this afternoon they left a canister of food on the steps – lamb wrapped in cabbage, and milk. I make coffee on the hotplate. Don’t worry about me, I’m getting along fine. I’ve been thinking about leaving the margins ragged – maybe I’ve been too conventional. Anyway, I was right that the dominant needs to be black. Thinking of you, a great deal.

  He walked down to the general store and posted the letter after dark. The wind had come up a bit and the fir trees sighed as he walked home. The weather was still warm, snow was melting and running down the hill in furrows of sand and gravel. He had meant to write a longer, different letter.

  The days passed quietly, and he worked steadily. The margins had grown fluid, and his pictures began in a vague and shadowy grey that felt its way inwards, seeking darkness.

  He had read the whole anthology and found it banal. There was only one story that was truly frightening. It placed its terror in full daylight in an ordinary room. But all the others gave him the opportunity to draw night or dusk. His vignettes were workmanlike depictions of the people and places the author and the reader would want to see. But they were uninteresting. Again and again he returned to his dark-filled pages. His back no longer ached.

  It’s the unexpressed that interests me, he thought. I’ve been drawing too explicitly; it’s a mistake to clarify everything. He wrote to Stella.

  You know, I begin to think I’ve been depicting things for much too long. Now I’m trying to do something new that’s all my own. It’s much more important to suggest than to portray. I see my work as pieces of reality or unreality carved at random from a long and ineluctable course of events – the darkness I draw continues on endlessly. I cut across it with narrow and dangerous
shafts of light … Stella, I’m not illustrating any longer. I’m making my own pictures, and they follow no text. Some day, someone will explain them. Every time I finish a drawing, I go to the window and think about you.

  Your loving husband

  He walked down to the general store and posted the letter. On his way home he ran into Jansson, who asked if there was a lot of water in the cellar.

  “I haven’t been in the cellar,” he said.

  “Maybe you could have a look,” Jansson said. “What with all the rain we’ve had this year.”

  He unlocked the cellar and turned on the light. The bulb was mirrored in a motionless expanse of water, as shiny and black as oil. The cellar stairs descended into the water and vanished. He stood still and stared. The walls lay in deep shadow, hollowed out where pieces of the wall had collapsed, and the fallen pieces – lumps of stone and cement – lay half hidden under the water like swimming animals. It seemed to him that they swam backwards, towards the angle where the cellar hallway turned and went further in under the house. I must draw this house, he thought. Quickly. I need to hurry, while it lasts.

  He drew the cellar. He drew the back yard, a chaos of carelessly discarded fragments, useless, coal-black, and entirely anonymous in the snow. It was a picture of quiet, gloomy confusion. He drew the sitting room, he drew the verandah. Never before had he been so fully awake. His sleep was deep and easy, the way it had been as a boy. He woke instantaneously, without that half-conscious, uneasy borderland that breaks up sleep and poisons it. Sometimes he slept during the day and worked at night. He lived in a state of furious expectation. He finished one drawing after another. There were more than fifteen, many times more. He no longer bothered with the vignettes.