Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  The cloudy day was motionless over the city, and the Pantheon was dim. The semicircular niches, which had been empty on Mrs Raa’s previous visit, now had several inhabitants. The Executioner had carved more oddities: a cat-mummy and a basilisk, a monopod and an androgyne, a Ziz bird and a four-faced woman who had eight arms, like a winged wheel.

  In the last wall-niche, closest to the door that led to the saloon, stood a large torso, the figure of a youth which was, unlike the others, so vividly and naturalistically carved that it looked like flesh and blood. It had a serious face, a bald, handsomely shaped head and a naked upper body, slim and firm, but the sculptor had clothed its lower body in blue jeans. Both the arms of the sculpture were broken off just below the upper arm.

  ‘Wait!’

  A deep, soft voice halted Mrs Raa just as she was about to open the door that led to the saloon. But the hall was empty, apart from the wooden oddities; neither, as she glanced back, could she see anyone at the outer door.

  Then the Torso leaped, smiling, down the few steps that had been built in front of each wall-niche (as if all the inhabitants could come and go as the fancy took them) and approached her, smiling companionably.

  Mrs Raa took a step backward. Of course, as she retreated, she already understood that the statue had, naturally, not come to life, but that before her stood a real man. But it would have been easier for her to confront a speaking statue than a person who had been so terribly mutilated.

  Why was he standing in the niche? Mrs Raa could not immediately think of a reason, but the question remained in her mind all evening, as black and as unyielding as the figures in the niches.

  Mrs Raa had offered her hand before she remembered what she had first noticed: there was no hand for her to shake. Her hand dropped at once, but the boy had already noticed her gesture, and his smile changed: it became tainted and dimmed.

  Mrs Raa remembered now: she had known the boy when he still had all his limbs.

  She saw the boy under another sky, offering coins to an ice-cream vendor, throwing a ball on a sports field, dragging his mother’s shopping bag with both hands.

  ‘What has happened to you?’ she was unable to stop herself from whispering.

  ‘An accident,’ the Torso replied shortly and shrugged his handsome shoulders, whose continuation was merely the dim air. The amputation had been done neatly, as if with two strokes of an axe, and apparently long ago; the scars had faded.

  Mrs Raa wanted to ask why no artificial arms had been made for the boy. Very willingly she would have thrown some garment across the Torso’s shoulders to cover the stumps of his arms, but she was not wearing anything superfluous. And she knew, knew from the Torso’s expression and stance and nakedness, that this would have been the worst insult; the Torso did not want artificial limbs or clothes. He wanted to appear to people just as he was: a torso.

  The boy came closer, as if he intended to tell Mrs Raa something else, perhaps connected with the accident, but at that moment they heard behind them running steps. It was the Glass-Girl. She did not appear to notice Mrs Raa, but she grasped the Torso by the waist and drew him aside and began excitedly to whisper something to him, something to which the boy seemed to listen impatiently and silently.

  Mrs Raa went to look for the Gold-Washers, but throughout the evening she bumped into the Torso in different rooms, on the terrace, in the pavilion and by the artificial ruin. Even at the dining-table, she could not resist glancing from time to time at how the Glass-Girl, who had whispered in the hall, gave food and drink to the Torso, who had not covered his upper body even for dinner.

  ‘Will you have some?’ asked his girl-friend again and again, although she had already filled the Torso’s plate to overflowing. But the Torso ate little, and appeared to become more and more impatient and sombre.

  No one who looked at the Torso at the great feast of the Tabernacle wanted to see him, but the Torso had deliberately positioned himself in the light of the brightest lamp.

  There he sat, bearing his deficiency before him with the hands he did not have. He himself remained in hiding so that they did not see him; they saw only what was absent. And when they saw it, they were afraid.

  Suddenly the thought crossed Mrs Raa’s mind: At least he doesn’t have to think what to do with his hands.

  And she was ashamed. To her astonishment, Mrs Raa began to discern in herself something like a dawning anger. As if she had wanted to shout: ‘It’s not true! You’re making a bad mistake!’

  For she felt that the Torso was forcing her to remember what has to be forgotten. Health was oblivion, but the Torso wanted them to remember because he had had to learn to remember. He wanted to force them to acknowledge their bodies, to believe that they themselves were bodies. And his mutilated nakedness was an ultimatum which they accepted because they could do nothing else.

  And all the things they did when their eyes strayed to him; and when they quickly withdrew once more – leaned their heads on their hands, lit cigarettes, stirred their soup with a spoon, slapped a friend on the shoulder so that the wine splashed in the glass – or when they drew absent-mindedly with their finger on the table-top, they did it in the knowledge that the Torso would never do the same.

  But with the Torso before her eyes, Mrs Raa remembered her life. It emerged like flotsam amid the tumult of other facts for just long enough for her to recognise it and admit – ‘That’s mine’ – before it sank into oblivion once more.

  And then Mrs Raa could not but acknowledge that the others, too, with their gloves decorated with winged wheels, were like the Torso, and stilI more torso-like than the Torso. That their torso-ness – although it was not as striking as that of the boy without arms – laid bare its withered stumps each autumn day when they could have unfastened and lifted, carried and cradled, worked and touched, but did not.

  The Secret

  There is also a child in the Tabernacle. How is it that I had not noticed him at once? Short, hair like mist, dressed in red overalls. Had he always lived in the Tabernacle?

  Now I saw him everywhere. His slender, playful form hurried like a will-o’-the-wisp through all the rooms of the Tabernacle, Pontanus’s chamber and the Kinswoman’s roseroom, the Pantheon, the courtyard and the pavilion. He flashed through the landing, but immediately rose into the air, speeded by the swing.

  When I hastened inside, he stood in front of me and asked: ‘Who are you?’

  I told him my name as if that were an answer. He ran away without hearing all of it. I was a little disappointed, as if I had expected the child to give a better answer to his own question.

  Seeing his narrow back, I remembered how I had once thought adults were keeping a great, unimaginable secret. I wanted to grow up soon so that I could learn it. Then, at last, I would know why people lived and how. Then – I believed – all the curtains would open and all the stage-sets would be moved aside. Every day would be an answer, as bright as a mother’s face.

  But now, as the Child of the Tabernacle ran on his way, it looked as if it was he who was the keeper of the secret, so light and fast and sure was he.

  This secret could not be spoken, but it was apparent at every moment as the Child moved through the Tabernacle, laughed and talked, ate and played.

  But after the visit of the Torso the Child changed; it was as if he became immersed in his own thoughts. Day after day I saw him, between his games, looking at his hands, turning them before him, putting them together, spreading his fingers and squeezing his hands into fists. A strange child.

  Until once the Child went to the Gold-Washer who always sat inside his endless monologue. When the Gold-Washer turned his gaze on the Child, he interrupted his own work. ‘Tell me why I have these hands,’ asked the Child of the Tabernacle.

  I heard his question and pitied him. I was wrong in imagining that he had the secret in his possession. For the Child was one of those who do not feel anything in the world to be their own, not even their hands, their feet, their eyes.
What others put to use immediately, self-evidently, they grasp timidly, and cannot hold on to anything. They have nothing, nothing; but their poverty is a whole continent, just risen from the water.

  But the Gold-Washer, too, looked at his own hands and said, remembering the Torso: ‘If you had no hands, you would know why.’

  The Phantom

  All the same, the Torso had arms. They were invisible arms, and he could not grasp anything with them, or embrace or hit. But they definitely existed – although only for him, personally – for they ached almost incessantly. Any other evidence of the existence of his arms was not vouchsafed to the Torso; but it was enough.

  These immaterial arms hung limply by the Torso’s sides and he could not influence their activity with his will. Even if he had bellowed ‘Rise!’ at them with all his strength – and his voice was as resonant and deep and metallic as a trombone – they would not have moved.

  To begin with, after the accident, the Torso’s phantom arms had been the same in every respect as his former, bodily arms. The only difference was that no one could see them. But with the months and years, the phantom arms began to shrink. It was as if they were withdrawing into him, becoming reabsorbed by the stumps of his arms. Now he felt that his elbows had already risen almost to the level of his lungs. The Torso sometimes wondered when he would feel his palms and long fingers straggling from his upper arms.

  ‘And what will that look like,’ the Torso thought. ‘Like a fish’s fins.’

  But as soon as he had thought this, the Torso remembered that it would not look like anything at all.

  When his arms had finally been reabsorbed into him, would the pain stop? Or would yet a third pair of arms appear from somewhere?

  ‘Let me massage them,’ said the Glass-Girl sometimes. She noticed when the Torso’s arms were aching, although he never complained.

  ‘Massage what?’ asked the Torso, and laughed maliciously.

  But sometimes, if the pain was so nerve-racking that the Torso’s invisible hands existed more than everything that was left between the left and the right – his visible body – the Torso allowed the Glass-Girl to touch him, Or not him, but the air at his sides,

  ‘Here?’ the Glass-Girl asked shyly.

  Did the Torso’s ghostly hands feel the caressing touch of the Glass-Girl’s fingers? Not really, for there was no sensation in them but their own pain. But from the Glass-Girl’s light fingers flowed a warmth that turned away the most nerve-racking hook of the pain.

  ‘If I could, I would graft my own hands on to you just like new branches are grafted on to apple trees in spring,’ the Glass-Girl said once.

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ the Torso said, ‘How do you know what I would do with them? I’m not trustworthy, don’t even think about it. You don’t know the first thing I’d do wouldn’t be to strangle you with your own hands.’

  As soon as he had said this, and when the Glass-Girl had turned, silenced, toward the door, the Torso felt once again that where his self ought to be there was only an empty space separating those two, right and left, from each other. And they were real, while what was between them was mere desolation.

  Such was his body: the branchless trunk of a non-existent tree.

  And this understanding wounded the Torso so painfully that he called the Glass-Girl and she turned, With a new humility in his voice, the Torso asked: ‘Would you give me my wallet?’

  Knowing well what was being demanded of her, the Glass-Girl obediently took the wallet from the back pocket of the Torso’s trousers, opened its side section and took from it a small, flat box.

  ‘How many?’ said the Glass-Girl tonelessly, without looking at the Torso.

  ‘Two, no – give me three,’ said the Torso, opening his mouth in preparation like a young bird.

  Soon, very soon, a different atmosphere spread around the Torso. Something had changed both around him and within him – all because of a few shiny capsules. He knew the change would not last, but it was real none the less; almost as astonishing as if something reminiscent of gold had condensed itself from Pontanus’s reeking brews . . .

  The Torso did not notice that the Glass-Girl had long since left, the banging of a brush was heard from the next room; the Glass-Girl was cleaning there.

  From room to room she moved in the draughty mansion of the Tabernacle, searching one corner after another, as if by tidying them she could also brighten the Torso’s gloom. As if she could find what she sought there: the miracle that would turn the Torso’s indifference into love, the tender flame that would warm his coldness to a glow and make of suffering the bread of life.

  Such was the Glass-Girl’s Great Work.

  Colour or Ash

  The Cap of Good Fortune

  Sometimes the cap of good fortune descended on to my head. I believe the Gold-Washer’s iridescent hat was related to my own extraordinary headdress.

  It was not mine, of course; I was merely allowed to carry it for a few moments, like a princess her diadem. I do not know where it came from and why it came to my head in particular, neither could I predict when it would appear. Suddenly it was simply there, a covering for my hair; I felt with my scalp, my temples, its light, sweet weight, as if a caressing hand had been left forgotten on my head.

  But it was not a hand, nor anything human. For the moment it lingered on my head, I felt secure, as if I were sheltered by all-enveloping, warming, elastic armour. I was immune to sudden strokes of destiny, invisible demons who sought their victims from house to house, quarter to quarter. And, more astonishing still: not even time or its vassals could tyrannise me when I bore on my head the cap of good fortune.

  I recognised the shimmering gaze that I saw in my own mirror-eyes always when I wore the cap of good fortune. The Torso looked around him in the same way when the Glass-Girl put two or three white capsules on his tongue. This gaze, it seemed to me, was bright enough to change and make new, to clean and ennoble everything it touched. As the owner of the cap of good fortune, I was even convinced that I could never again be unhappy or ill. I knew then that joy is the state for which human beings are born and in which they are meant to live and die.

  The cap or skullcap pressed more tightly against my eyebrows and my skull began to experience pleasure all over. It was localised but it belonged to the entire organism, like sexual pleasure. Strong, wise, and with sovereign pride I looked around me: the square was paved with precious stones, and a flaming mirror had been raised against the sun. It was a high building whose western side was nothing but sunset windows.

  Every word I heard then resonated in my skull like the sound of a wonderful instrument.

  ‘It is beautiful,’ said the woman beside me at the meat counter of the supermarket as the shop assistant held out a joint of meat for her to see.

  And the woman was right: anything as beautiful as that juicy red lump, bloody, fresh, had hardly been seen.

  A strange pleasure! What was its origin? What was its destination? Its rapid current, which sped me along in its foam as I sat, peaceful and independent, at the marble table of a cafe and watched the progress of a ray of sunshine on the green frond of a palm, washed the shores of both day and night.

  Perhaps Pontanus’s dry water swirled in its eddies, for I never got wet from its spray or drowned in its waves.

  Poor Pontanus. In my own state of immortality, his efforts and his Great Work seemed more futile than ever before. For all had already been given; that, too, for which I had not remembered to ask. I had no debts, no dues. I was permitted to rest in the golden seedcase of the world in gratitude and praise.

  If there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit, did not the cap of good fortune pour it over me? Did it not show itself in the meaning that filled everything I perceived? A meaning that glowed with the colours of a peacock like a hot summer’s day, like summer at its height . . .

  How their enchanting fan refreshed my gaze, wherever I looked: at the earth or at the sky, at people’s clothes or into
their eyes, at carved or uncarved wood, at the solitude of my own room or at the stones of the street, trodden by all.

  The Lens

  A friend, whose name I do not now happen to remember, lived in another town. It was a small coastal town, beautiful and old. In summer it was visited by many travellers, for a deep, narrow bay penetrated into its centre, an ideal harbour for yachtsmen.

  There must have been a time – years ago – when I, too, visited it every summer.

  My friend lived alone some distance from the centre of the town, on the side of a hill. About his house I can now say only that it had a wooden balcony with a direct view of the bay. Indeed, all other recollections flee headlong from the flickering light of my memory.

  We stood on the balcony side by side – or perhaps my friend was slightly behind me, but I leaned on the rail and drank in the evening’s landscape with my eyes, one draught after another.

  Coloured lamps had been lit on the piers and shoreline boulevards as if a great feast were approaching, and their reflections rippled in the clear water. But the western sky had not completely dimmed, either; a glowing strip threw its golden reflection over the whole town, and over us, up here on the balcony.

  And then I felt again a touch on my hair.

  My god, how happy I was! – just as if the gold came from us ourselves, up here on the balcony . . . As if we, our own eyes, had reflected drinkable gold into the water, on to the town, on to the dizzying sky’s last shore.

  I never remembered having seen a view to match it . . . Joy, which had flickered miserably for long years, received new fuel from the glow in the west and now burst into tall flames.

  But my friend, whose name I still cannot recall, did not share my admiration. Then I did not ask the reason, for I outstripped his mood with the wind of my own indescribable joy. I wanted somehow to record the moment that was so great, and thought: I shall take a photograph of the view! At once I turned to my friend, whose name I do not remember, and asked to borrow his camera.