Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  ‘It was Longhorn who sent me here,’ he responded, and fell silent once more.

  ‘And how is he?’ I asked, becoming a little impatient.

  ‘He told me to come here and ask if there is anything I can do for you,’ the Rhinoceros Beetle managed to say, swaying in ever greater circles. I think he must weigh more than one hundred kilograms.

  ‘Thank you, but I do not need anything,’ I said in astonishment. ‘But where is Longhorn himself?’

  ‘I thought you already knew,’ said the Rhinoceros Beetle, suddenly standing still.

  ‘I do not know anything,’ I said, fearing the worst. ‘Has something happened to Longhorn?’

  I felt like shaking the Rhinoceros Beetle, who remained motionless, but he was too wide. I thought I understood.

  ‘Ah, he is already asleep,’ I said, and was very offended. It was not polite to retire for the winter without even saying goodnight.

  ‘He is in his pupal cell,’ said the Rhinoceros Beetle, becoming even more massive than before.

  This information came as a shock to me. For the sake of the Rhinoceros Beetle, I managed, with difficulty, to restrain myself, for I would have liked to have cursed him: ‘Damned longhorn beetle! How dare you!’

  The Rhinoceros Beetle left, but I went on standing in the doorway. I should never meet Longhorn again; not the Longhorn who had for so long been my patient guide in this strange city. If he were to return and step before me, I did not know who or what he would then be, or even when it would happen, for everything here has its own time and particular moment, unknown to others.

  I should never again be able to turn to him, but he nevertheless stepped before me, into the place where the Rhinoceros Beetle had just been standing, stood there and began to grow as the dead grow.

  Then I saw that I had never known him and that I had never even wanted to know him. And as he grew, he became thinner and more indistinct; his form slipped into the darkness of the stairwell and he no longer had shape or mass.

  But his eyes, his eyes remained, and his gaze, which is as black and piercing as it ever was, and as impenetrable. And when I look into the darkness of his eyes they gradually begin to sparkle like double stars, like the planets on which the sun shines and on which there are seas and continents, roads, valleys and waterfalls and great forests where many can live and sing.

  Then I went inside and closed the door, a little less sad. For it was, after all, now clear that although I had lived beside him from the beginning to the end, not just one life but two or three, I would never have learned to know him. His outline, which I had once drawn around him, in order to be able to show him and name him, had now disappeared. It liberated the great stranger who was a much realer Longhorn than the person I once knew, small and separate.

  Such is my farewell to Longhorn today, date as postmark, in the city of Tainaron.

  Passing Bells

  the twenty-ninth letter

  What a rumbling! Over all of Tainaron it spread, echoing from wall to wall, shaking the windowpanes and resonating in my own chest. When I pressed my fingers against the table, I could even feel the sound of the ore bells in my fingertips. And my toes, the soles of my feet, my elbows heard it, for the floor, all the soil of Tainaron quivered and resounded.

  The prince had died, and now in all the churches, cathedrals and temples of the city, the many of them that there were, passing bells were being rung. They roared from morning to night as if to restore to the deceased the respect which no one had accorded to him before his death.

  ‘What happened to the prince?’ I asked the Rhinoceros Beetle. For the cause of his death had not been divulged on the news.

  ‘Him? He just died,’ the Rhinoceros Beetle answered, turning his slow gaze upon me. ‘It was high time. He was an old man.’

  ‘But was it not almost too fitting a time?’

  I had seen, in the heart tower, what I had seen: the thin, expectant form of the prince, huddled on a simple chair which had been set in the middle of the floor without the company of adjutants or even the most lowly guardsman. His cloak was surrounded, like another cloak, by the aura of his fast approaching end. And it was not a natural end.

  ‘Did it not happen very suddenly?’

  ‘No more suddenly than anything else,’ the Rhinoceros Beetle growled, even more dully than usual.

  Slow-blooded, simple-minded creature! How could Longhorn ever have imagined that the Rhinoceros Beetle could have replaced him as my guide to Tainaron?

  ‘I should like to know what will happen next,’ I said.

  ‘Now power will change hands,’ the Rhinoceros Beetle said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said impatiently. I knew that, of course, but I wanted to find out what it would mean in practice and what kind of leadership Tainaron would now receive. But as I looked at the Rhinoceros Beetle I realised that it was not worth pursuing the subject. I could already see that nothing could have interested him less.

  At that moment he glanced at me askance, and behind the membrane that covered his black eyes there flashed something – like amusement. Was the Rhinoceros Beetle really capable of being amused by something? For a moment I felt I might have been mistaken in regard to him, as if his dullness might veil completely different characteristics which he hid for who knew what reason. I tried to find the light again, but his gaze extinguished, as normal. Perhaps the fleeting impression was caused merely by the lighting or by my own state of mind.

  ‘Will you go to a memorial service in one of the temples? What religion do you belong to?’ I found myself asking, for I wished to change the subject, which had proved fruitless.

  ‘Each in turn,’ he said. ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Each in turn? Surely that is not possible,’ I said, stunned. And ‘naturally’ – surely that was too much.

  ‘Why not?’ he said, chewing something in his massive jaws. ‘One must be impartial. At the moment I belong to the temple of the highest knowledge. Next month I shall move to – oh, I do not think I can remember the name of the parish.’

  ‘But if where you are now has the highest knowledge, why is it worth moving to another parish?’

  He did not answer, but chewed and swallowed some tough and gluey substance which from time to time stuck his jaws together. I could still hear the ringing of the passing bells, from both far and high, both low and from quite close by.

  ‘Do you recognise the bells of your own temple?’ I asked.

  ‘I think they are the ones that are clattering quite close by,’ he said. ‘Or else those where you can hear a double ring between the low strokes. No, listen, I think after all that they are those slower ones from farther east, that always ring three and one, three and one,’ he said.

  I listened in vain. I could not distinguish the bells from each other; all I could hear was a roaring in which they were all mixed up. These Tainaronians! I do not suppose I shall ever learn to understand them. I am beginning to be weary of my long visit; yes, now I am weary.

  The Rhinoceros Beetle has gone, but the prince’s passing bells are still booming. And why should I not admit that today I am plagued by home-sickness? I am sick with home-sickness. But Oceanos is freezing for the winter, and not a single ship will leave the harbour before spring.

  The tall trees of my home courtyard are now tossing in the grip of a storm. The slanting brightness of autumn falls into my room. I see the room’s books and pictures and carefully chosen things; I remember its calm and its secret joy. It was at just this time of year, before winter, long ago, that you came into my room.

  You came into my room as the morning dawned, and I did not know whether I slept or woke. I did not stir, but you, you squeezed your hard, salt-weathered lips silently to my throat, where the pulse beats, and then they pressed my temples and moved, hot, over my eyelids, until finally you felt for my mouth and opened it with your own lips. Then I tasted your taste, the taste of your thirst, and I answered, and answered, and moaned.

  The Pupal Cell of
my Home

  the thirtieth letter

  How long I searched for a home back then. Before me furnished and cold rooms opened, broken rental agreements fell, houses with destruction orders collapsed, and the endless queues of housing offices wound in long roads without issue.

  Now all that is in the past. In the room in which I now live I have everything I need, and more: if I step on to my balcony, I see the white pennants and golden cupolas of Tainaron, the cloud-girt mountains and the blue heart-waters of Oceanos.

  Nevertheless, I have now started to prepare a new dwelling for myself, just in case. Yes, it is almost ready for me to move in, my little pupal cell; it can no longer be unsuccessful. It has the fresh smell of mud and algae and reeds, for I have gathered almost all the materials myself from the beach where I once almost found myself in the jaws of death. I have done it all with my own hands, and when I look inside I am satisfied. It is just my size, like a well-fitting garment which does not pull anywhere. It is small on the outside but spacious inside, just as a good dwelling-place should be.

  It is dark there. When I peer in through its only opening which, when the occasion arises, I shall close from inside, I am overcome by irresistible sleepiness. I do not believe that the lack of space will trouble me, for once I reach it it will be as wide as the night.

  The mail will go on being delivered for some time, so I have heard, but the city now seems dead. More and more people are withdrawing for their winter rest, some of them – like Longhorn and, before long, I myself too – will be away for much longer. I spoke of sleeping just now, but of course we shall not merely be resting, but changing. Will I know how? Will it be hard work? Will it bring pain or pleasure or will it mean the disappearance, too, of all regrets?

  Some change imperceptibly, little by little, others quickly and once and for all, but everyone changes, and for that reason it is in vain to ask whose fate is the best.

  My entire room stinks like an estuary! There was something I still had to tell you, but the smell of the sludge dulls my thoughts. I shall remember it once more when it is spring, and that will come soon, soon, the seventeenth, and all around will sparkle – droplets! and I shall rise; and we shall see again . . .

  GOLD OF OPHIR

  1987

  Translated by Hildi Hawkins

  I will make men more rare than fine gold,

  and mankind than the gold of Ophir.

  Isaiah 13:12

  Serpula Lacrymans

  The Weeping House

  ‘Look!’ I said, and raised my forefinger so that the others could see. A little cotton-wool-like foam had stuck to it. ‘What on earth is this?’

  We were cold although outside the sun was shining. It was August, the rotten month. That day, I and Mrs Raa and Latona, the daughter of Pontanus, saw the Tabernacle once more. It was empty now the Gold-Washers were gone.

  The pavilion had burned or been burnt, but the main building looked, on the surface, unchanged, as solitary as before and ready for flight with its wings, its pillars and its domed roof.

  Like vandals, we had broken a pane, although it was already cracked, and climbed in through the window. We wondered why the glass was misty, as though people had been bathing or boiling water inside. The high skies of August were forgotten behind the panes. We stood in the Pantheon, and the great circular hall from which doors opened to all the rooms of the ground floor echoed our presence.

  The statues were still there. The full-scale wooden caricatures lurked in their wall-cupboards in the positions I remembered. But they looked mouldy and blackened, as if they had been abandoned under the empty sky to the mercy of innumerable hard winters.

  And when we looked around us, I and Mrs Raa and Latona, the daughter of Pontanus, we were still more astonished. The floor beneath our feet, the curving walls, the high roof – why did they look like that? So dark, so damp, so cold . . . For it seemed as if they were all covered with a layer of something dark, like rust.

  With my finger, I pressed a mocha-brown lump, surrounded by foam, which spread into a large stain on the curved wall. Pontanus’ daughter touched its uneven, leathery surface and screamed. Mrs Raa came up to me and scratched the lump with her nail. She smelled the crumbs and said: ‘I know this. It is Serpula lacryrmans, the weeping fungus.’

  True enough, we were wrong in supposing that no one lived in the house any more. Serpula lacrymans lived there. The name of the weeping fungus should have been written on the name-plate and in the deeds. Serpula lacrymans was now the master of the Tabernacle; it was the guardian spirit of the place.

  We examined the Tabernacle from the crypt to the upper floor. The fungus’s sabotage had, it seemed, begun in the cellar, but from there it had climbed by various different routes into the Pantheon and all the living rooms.

  How can I describe Serpula lacrymans? It is not encountered in what is known as nature, only where people live. It is the most resourceful of creatures, for it feeds itself: it can not only steal, but also make, water. The weeping fungus drips cold tears, and the wood to which it clings, which it eats with its rust-rough, furrowed tongue, darkens, becomes fragile and crumbles into dust. It both grows inside the wood and spreads, in thick, labyrinthine tendons, along the wood’s surface. With the effortlessness of an acrobat, it hurls its formlessness a metre or two across stone, concrete and glass to reach untouched, healthy wood.

  And now, here in the Tabernacle, Serpula lacrymans had covered the walls and floors of the house around it with a furrowed, white-edged, dripping coverlet, and had also licked the ceilings with its greedy tongue. It seemed to me as if it had, here, also learned to eat stone . . .

  All the visible surfaces were darkened, spotted with stains of mould and already partially rotted. Everywhere, paint was peeling or coming away in sheets, as though it had rained inside. This had been achieved by the incessant weeping of Serpula lacrymans.

  I do not know, and neither did Mrs Raa or Latona, daughter of Pontanus, whether the Tabernacle had been abandoned on account of the fungus or whether it had conquered the house only after all the other inhabitants had left. Perhaps the Tabernacle had fallen ill because the Gold-Washers had abandoned it. Or perhaps the Gold-Washers had infected it with their own sickness . . .

  It was certainly sad in the Pantheon, to look at the work of the hand of the Executioner, the Ziz bird, which the fungus was choking, and the eight-armed woman. For Serpula lacrymans had still more arms, whose sinewy branches embraced the smooth waist of the wooden girl. But the destruction looked worst upstairs, in the Kinswoman’s former room.

  Once that room had seemed to me more beautiful than any other home I knew. I had admired its lightness, its wall-paintings and its finely patinated parquet, its intarsia writing-desk, the tile stove and the royal blue carpet into which was woven the tree of life.

  The writing-desk and the chest of drawers were now unpolished and blackened, the carpet dripping with water. How sad! The polished looking-glass, too, whose engraved frames were of the finest craftsmanship, the mirror, which had shown me my former face, had become dark and dull. One of the room’s windows was gone, now that the perspective of the looking-glass was broken. Where, formerly, a way had opened to another, equally beautiful, world, the dirty map of an unknown continent had now appeared.

  The room was now in harmony with the view that opened up to the west: there the refuse heaps of the Golden Reed welled up, a Hades of deceased objects.

  Latona opened the door of the bookcase. I saw that Serpula lacrymans had climbed up the side of the bookcase and that its damp embrace had already vanquished many works. I remembered leafing through those same books, but now they were so badly eaten away that I could distinguish their names only with difficulty: The Ancient World, The Tiger-Cat, Notebook, The Secret of the Cathedrals.

  We turned our gaze to the other corner.

  A porcelain jug and cups were on the table, a samovar, a pile of neatly folded napkins whose corners were embroidered with violets. Once, these
objects had reflected cleanliness, beauty and humanity into the room. But the weeping fungus had not passed even them by; no. Its lewd protuberances had grasped the table and its elastic, branching projections fringed even this little vision of happiness.

  Serpula lacrymans crept under the plates, it hung in scrolls from the lip of the jug, the napkins had dulcified into rags at its touch, and the table-cloth, on which some sweet soul – probably the Glass-Girl – had embroidered ox-eye daisies, hung mouldily, full of holes.

  ‘Let us take that crockery away from here,’ said Mrs Raa.

  But we did not want to touch it. Although Serpula lacrymans could not, of course, eat copper or porcelain, its touch seemed irrevocably to have destroyed even those beautiful objects.

  I looked at them and thought: is this the end? I had never expected that the end could be like this, so damp and quiet.

  We visited the other rooms, too. Most of them were empty, unlike the Kinswoman’s room. In one, nevertheless, a terrarium had been left, which I had liked to look at when one of the Gold-Washers had kept book-lice there. Now it contained only stones and dust: the landscape itself, with its miniature pools, hillocks and copses had disappeared forever. When I pressed my forehead to the glass – how cold it was! – I thought I saw among the stones a single, yellowed wing, a few dry pieces of skin. That was all that was left of the book-lice.

  We opened another door.

  ‘Wasn’t this my father’s room?’ asked Latona, the daughter of Pontanus.

  Yes, this was Pontanus’s chamber. My nose still sensed a fine trace of sulphur, although the instruments and crucibles were now gone.

  But not all of them. There was a small test-tube in a stand on the dusty shelf, which the scrolls of the weeping fungus were already reaching for.

  I took it in my hand and turned it over. Why! Was it not familiar? Had I not held the same tube in my fingers before? There was no label on the tube, but I imagined that I recognised it. I opened the cork and sniffed. Inside was a dark, thick liquid. It did not smell of anything and it did not look like anything, but I believed that it had once held an example of the best results of Pontanus’s work: a liquid that contained all the colours, the Peacock’s Tail.