Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  Before, when I had shaken it, it had been as if I had been able to see tiny flashes – a little red, some green. But now: nothing. And in this room, too, flowered the slimy frills of Serpula lacrymans.

  Sad! So sad. As if one were looking at a familiar person whom illness had made almost unrecognisable . . .

  ‘I’m cold,’ said Mrs Raa. ‘This is like a burial vault.’

  ‘For God’s sake, let us get out of here,’ said Latona, the daughter of Pontanus. ‘I feel as if that fungus had infected me, too. As if I had its spores in my throat.’

  There was an edge of hysteria in her voice which did not please us. But she was right: we had seen enough. We needed to be under the clear sky.

  That is how we became acquainted with Serpula lacrymans, the weeping fungus. And we realised that it is impossible to banish it if it has gained even an inch. But it itself drives all mortals into exile, both owners and tenants. For none of us would consent to live as a room-mate of Serpula lacrymans, moistened all over by its incessantly falling tears.

  At the Grave of the Tuatara

  Who would place a flower on the grave of the tuatara, that little monster? Who would feel longing or regret? Is it not, rather, a relief to know that one will never again have to look into its cold, round, skull-eye, which reflected the movements of the heavens so accurately, but in whose convex distorting mirror one saw one’s own form bowing, out of proportion and ridiculously large-headed?

  But when they arrived at that insignificant mound of earth, surrounded by stones that the children had placed in a circle so that, in its solitude, it recalled the graves of the Etruscans, they saw Babel there. Mr Babel, in other words, he who was also sometimes known by the name Mr Good-as-Gold.

  He was crouching on the low stone like a frog, his face damp and contorted. He had not brought the tuatara flowers, either, although there were flowers to be seen there: a field of scabious, whose reddish, ball-like flowers nodded at the heads of their long stalks both inside the stone circle and outside it.

  As always when they saw Babel, they were embarrassed, because they did not know what language they should speak to him; but, as was his custom, he released them from their difficulty by bursting into speech himself – at first, it was true, interruptedly, for deep sobs tore his chest.

  Oh, had they not already had their share of weeping inside the rotting rooms of the Tabernacle . . . But these tears were of a different kind; they were fresh and yet warm.

  And soon Babel’s stream of speech was pattering as plentifully and naturally as real spring rain, and they could not understand his words any better than before. But they could hear that he was speaking sincerely and directly and of everything that was in his heart.

  When he clasped their hands, one by one, and pressed them, looking into their faces with shining eyes, they began to comfort him like a child who has fallen over, and at the same time themselves and each other, as if the deceased were their dear and only friend or their own little one, as if he had only just been laid to rest and they were all part of a great funeral procession.

  Were they hoping, at the grave of the tuatara, that when their turn came there would be someone whose words – if he were to remember them – would hold as living an echo as Babel’s double Dutch?

  But scarcely even one of them thought that the sorrow Babel expressed so freely concerned only the reptile’s death. They could not know whether Babel was grieving more for the lost age of the Gold-Washers and the ruination of the Tabernacle or some private sorrow of which they knew nothing.

  Or was he lamenting that apparently no fate had been prepared for them other than the one that small, scaly creature had already met, with its tail and its three eyes and its blood-spattering, wrinkled eyelids . . .

  A Light Hand

  Babel had squeezed my hand, too. When I withdrew my hand from his, I happened to look at my own. I raised it quite close to my eyes, and saw it, clearer than clear.

  I turned it around in astonishment. How dry and white it had become. How full it was of criss-crossing, furrowed pathways!

  I knew it already: they did not lead anywhere. I had traversed them all back and forth, back and forth, wearing them always deeper.

  And there was scarcely anything more to be seen than the paths; there were so many of them, and they completely covered the continent formed by the back of my hand.

  I made my hand into a fist, and a chain of mountains rose before my eyes: the lumpy bones of my knuckles. I saw the veins, which also rose as high, blue ridges. I spread my fingers in the air: and there was a trembling fan through which flew the wind of the mound.

  It was a light, light hand, but it had become heavier and heavier to lift. That was because of the weight of memories, actions that originated here, but most of all those which it had never carried out. Just as the weeping fungus ate wood, memories ate human flesh, both good memories and bad ones.

  They flowed with the increasingly sluggish circulation of the blood. They became the vital juice of humanity, its sap.

  The more memories, the less blood. But they were not capable of nourishing people; they could nourish only their own independence.

  Yes, I think that when a person dies, his memories go their own way: they fly in flocks of images and dreams, as a flight of birds leaving an impoverished nest. They float everywhere, let he who wishes grasp them; they no longer have a master, a homeland.

  Babel and Mrs Raa and Latona, the daughter of Pontanus, were walking along, their heads close together, bent over, in the shadow cast by the waste heap.

  How steep the sides of the heap had become, how its peaks grazed the clouds, like Aconcaqua, like Macchu Picchu.

  Their triple shadow proceeded slowly along the sand road, past the fungus-eaten Tabernacle and the blackened framework of the pavilion. The pine-tree was green above them. ‘Wait!’

  I ran after them, limping with my left foot. Above the pine, very high, white slivers of wind had appeared, the first omens of approaching bad weather. The wind was already moving the swing that had once, long ago, been fixed to the lower branches of the pine, and on which the Child of the Tabernacle had once swung. It moved in wider and wider arcs. A thunderstorm would fly over the Tabernacle, perhaps quite soon. There had been more and more of them in recent times, and it was said that they presaged a fundamental change in the climate. It was time to return to the City of the Golden Road.

  I listened as I stumbled forward. Was there the echo of a proud voice: ‘Lived, but not gone, for it has been lived’?

  Nothing like it was to be heard. But it was quiet, so deserted all around the grass-covered courtyard of the Tabernacle that behind the rising wind one could well have distinguished the merest whisper of one’s own heart.

  Like the wooden statue of the Tabernacle, and just as stiff, I felt the slimy touch of Serpula lacrymans.

  But at that moment Babel stood still and gestured to me.

  I saw his mouth move, but he was already so far away that I could hear nothing. And even if I had heard, I would hardly have understood.

  Suddenly something screeched in the opposite direction, not very close by. Was that what Babel had meant? It came from the abandoned building, from inside the darkening rooms of the Tabernacle.

  And I knew that sound. It was the bowed harp which one of the Gold-Washers had scraped long ago. Just a couple of mischievous scrapes of the bow, which one could have confused with the wind that wound round the wings of the Tabernacle. But I had listened to the bowed harp so often with the Gold-Washers, during long evenings in the Tabernacle, that I remembered, that I knew, that I did not doubt for a second.

  We were nearing the Tabernacle once more. And the bowed harp chirruped like a flock of memories.

  The Secret of Famine-bread

  Wheat-bread and Famine-bread

  We had been invited to the Tabernacle for dinner, to the Gold-Washers’, I and Mrs Raa and Latona, the daughter of Pontanus, and the Customs Officer, who dissects bodies for
a living.

  Everyone expected something more excellent than usual: new and exotic foods, surprises and entertainments, nuances of enjoyment not only for the palate but also for the eyes and the ears. For the Gold-Washers knew how to arrange festivals, whether there was any reason for them or not.

  For my part, I can openly confess my astonishment when we arrived in the dining-room and saw that it had not been decorated in any way. The table had been set, it was true, but there was no cloth, let alone flowers or candles. Plain white plates and ordinary water-glasses had been set directly on the scratched, wooden surface of the table.

  We sat down. For some reason – or perhaps merely because of the frugal surroundings – everyone changed, became melancholy and silent. Even Mr Babel, who, as we had entered the room, had managed to clap his hands together and say melodiously, ‘Chanta!’ – even he was silent, as was the Gold-Washer whose monologue had already lasted for many years. Only the Kinswoman guffawed to herself and seemed satisfied with her surroundings.

  One of the Gold-Washers circled the table and poured water, plain water into each glass from a carafe. A second Gold-Washer had taken up a position next to the wall a stringed instrument in his lap. From time to time the instrument let out a tired squeak.

  A third Gold-Washer clapped his hands and suggested we raise our glasses. Our glasses? When all we had to drink was water . . .

  What should we drink to?

  ‘First,’ said the first Gold-Washer, ‘I suggest we drink to poverty.’

  ‘Poverty? Really?’ asked Mrs Raa.

  But Babel was ready at once. He leaped up and nodded to everyone, his water-glass outstretched. Very well, we drank to poverty, why not drink to poverty.

  ‘Second,’ said the first Gold-Washer, ‘I suggest we drink to solitude.’

  ‘We should clink just one glass to that,’ said Pontanus. ‘That would be the true sound of solitude.’

  But we clinked glasses to solitude with everyone, with every glass.

  ‘Third,’ said the first Gold-Washer, ‘I suggest we drink to thirst.’

  ‘I suppose we should clink empty glasses,’ said Pontanus, the father of Latona. ‘That is the sound of thirst.’

  But there was still a drop of water in our glasses, and so we drank, too, to thirst, and at the same time drained our glasses.

  Then the third Gold-Washer came in, bearing aloft a great tray. We did not see what was on the tray until he set it on the table before us.

  On it was some kind of cake, still steaming, rather soggy, of indeterminate shape. It recalled a piece of peat or a cowpat, and its smell, too, was that of earth in autumn.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Mrs Raa.

  ‘It is famine-bread.’ said the first Gold-Washer.

  ‘Famine-bread,’ said Mrs Raa. ‘Yes, of course, what else.’

  ‘What is the recipe for famine-bread?’ I asked.

  ‘Spread straw on the threshing-floor,’ said the Gold-Washer. ‘Then take a stamper and thrash with it until the ears come away from the stems. Grind to flour with the straw, husks and chaff. Add water and yeast, if you have it. Mix into a dough and pat into loaves. That is the secret of famine-bread.’

  Silence descended on the company at table, the long silence of a famine-year. There was a glimmer over the cake as the third Gold-Washer raised a silver cake-trowel. It was the only costly thing at this dining table.

  ‘Well,’ he said commandingly, ‘who will go first?’

  Mrs Raa offered her plate hesitantly, and then I and Mr Babel, a real epicure, and Pontanus and the Kinswoman and everyone else; no one refused.

  The famine-bread had just been taken from the oven and was still so hot that we rolled it on our tongues for a long time. It was rough. It was bitter. It was hard to chew, and still harder to swallow, it seemed to be full of awns that stuck in the throat, so that the second Gold-Washer had constantly to fill our glasses.

  But as soon as the first sensation of the famine-bread had reached some distant shore within me, I began to see with the taste-buds of my tongue. I saw the serrated edge of the wildwoods, and grey, shingle-covered cabins, low cowsheds, storehouses, saunas, barns and stables. I saw in and I saw out. A thin nag dragged its load up a sandy slope, the shadows of cockroaches flitted through smoke-darkened rooms. A mongrel growled. An old man went into the forest, an axe on his shoulder.

  My land and my people! Who existed no longer. I stood at the edge of a field of stubble, a flock of crows flew over the dazzling surface of the lake. Women were binding sheaves; in a basket at the edge of the field a baby was crying with hunger.

  ‘A very singular taste,’ said the Customs Officer.

  He coughed and drank. On Mr Babel’s now pallid face there was real suffering, but his teeth went on grinding away.

  ‘Say it straight: it’s horrible,’ said the first Gold-Washer. ‘You don’t like it, and I don’t like it, either. It’s the taste of pine-bark, which we have long since forgotten. It is the taste of hunger. Now we are tasting it, so that we may remember. Accustom yourselves to its aromas. Be tolerant toward it. Perhaps there will yet come a time when we shall rejoice even in crumbs of famine-bread – if we do not fight over them. Perhaps there will come a time when it is our daily bread, for which we have to beg. Play!’

  And the stringed instrument, which had fallen silent for a moment, began to whine once more. What a dinner party! We picked the chaff from the corners of our mouths and drank more water. For many, eating became overwhelmingly difficult after the first mouthful, and knives and forks remained on the plate beside almost untouched pieces of famine-bread.

  The stringed instrument did not cease screeching in my ear. The Gold-Washer who strummed it hummed over my head:

  As you bite into the loaf

  The illusion’s shed

  What you thought was wheat

  Is pine-bark, famine-bread.

  Only the jaws of Mr Babel and the first Gold-Washer continued to move until their plates were empty.

  ‘Just a little practice,’ the first Gold-Washer encouraged the dinner-guests. ‘If you just chew carefully, it’s not too bad, we mustn’t be discouraged. We’ll get used to it.’

  But he pushed his plate away and raised his glass.

  ‘Relax,’ he shouted earsplittingly, and clapped his hands once more.

  The door opened again. Through it came more Gold-Washers, carrying trays, their arms held out before them. They were laden with bottles of wine and Burgundy ham, roast pheasant and Caribbean heart stew and, to crown it all: a lemon syllabub.

  The stringed instrument was put away, but a guitar and a bamboo flute began to play, a glass harmonica tinkled and a triangle, bright as silver. Chrysanthemums and thin-stemmed glasses appeared on the table, and candles were lit in every room and in the garden, where it was already night.

  The plates of famine-bread were speeded away. At once the atmosphere lightened. We ate and laughed. The heavy weight of the famine-bread had disappeared from the table, and the reek of poverty from our nostrils.

  This was, once more, the Tabernacle we knew.

  The Wafer

  Later, as we walked in the garden lit by lamps and candles, animated by the wine, we saw under a tree the tuatara, the strange pet of the Gold-Washers. It was eating. The remains of our first course had been set before it, the bitter famine food of our forefathers.

  Would it be fit even for the tuatara? It looked as if it was, and more: the tuatara smacked its lips and sneezed as it ate, but it ate with devotion, entirely absorbed in its task. The tuatara was not fastidious.

  Only as I watched it did I notice that autumn had come to the garden. How quickly it had come! While we had been fretfully chewing our famine-bread . . .

  Everything, everything withered, and the colours of autumn spread over the earth in a golden cloak. Blazing with its autumn, a tree shed its leaves on the slipper back of the tuatara. They fell and covered its third eye, poured over the corrugated ridge on its back, blew in endl
ess showers over its nocturnal meal, over the Tabernacle’s bitter bread of life, the wafer we had rejected.

  Home-sickness

  The City of the Golden Reed

  This is the city, the rowdy village, that the angel measured with his golden reed. It is twelve thousand furlongs in length and breadth and height.

  The smoke of the city spreads far. Its light-pollution hides the stars and the night from view. Stone everywhere, flesh everywhere. Jasper and sardonyx. Concrete and glass. And sometimes flesh is colder than stone, and sometimes stone is as warm and seductive as human skin.

  Here is a drink that never ceases to ferment, a fortified extract. So dense with events that the gaze must be like a knife in order to clear its own path to this point.

  Who can predict the movements and future of so complex an organism? In its incompleteness it is as alluring as a glimpse of a stranger. He steps out of nothing and points toward the window of a florist’s shop just as the tram turns down another street, so that his gesture is never completed.

  But I turn my eyes in time, and behind the panes of glass, from the other side of the reflections and their reflections, blaze the cooling flames of gerberas, irises and narcissi.

  Eyes cruise up and down the streets, always two by two. Refractors. Pupils. Tunnels of lenses. Through them pass the lights of the city and through them, out of a night protected by the vitreous humour, out of a seeing invisibility, the whole city has streamed forth.

  When their former owners disappear, the eyes seek new ones for themselves. And many of them have indeed disappeared! One no longer sees even officers here, their greatcoats flapping in the constant wind, or weavers or swordsmiths or Mrs Bock, who used to ride in the magistrate’s carriage in her frock decorated with rosettes.