Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  Then I started; I looked at the tree’s leaves. What was wrong with them? The leaves were tattered, there were holes in them, or else they were only half-leaves. The summer glowed, but in the tree some disease was wreaking its havoc or some insect was gnawing at the green mantle without which the tree would not live for long.

  I jumped up and pulled a branch down. Now I saw: the branch was, in fact, a highway, along it hurried an endless stream of wanderers, and suddenly its fresh top leaf moved. Not because of the wind, for the day was still. Something was happening on the underside of the leaf: its point detached itself. It looked as though someone had cut the leaf with small, sharp scissors, as accurately as a seamstress a length of fabric.

  Immediately the detached piece began to move. I could see that it was carried by a stocky but agile pine sawyer whose jaws, in relation to its size, were disproportionately massive.

  Well! It was only than I understood that everywhere in the tree the same thing was happening: leaves and pieces of leaves were wandering along the roads of the branches as if of their own accord, but all in the same direction: downward, toward the earth!

  I saw that a well-trafficked road passed close by my shoe. Every one of those who followed it carried a juicy piece of leaf, they looked like green pennants. I followed the procession with my eyes. It went round the stone, disappeared for a moment between bunches of grass turned brown by the sun, but then appeared again and zig-zagged once more, until – where did it go?

  I bent over and saw that the leaf-cutters were marching, one after another, into a shady crevice under the earth and with them, bit by bit, the tree’s summer, its green garment, disappeared into the darkness.

  What were they making from it under the earth? Were they cooking themselves a tasty stew, were they making themselves clothes or a soft bed of love for themselves and their heirs?

  I could have sat under that tree all that sunny day, and the procession would never have ended. One stream led out of the crevice and up the trunk, another down the trunk and back inside the earth, bearing its verdant booty. It was their job, it was probably heavy labour, real drudgery; but no task has ever looked to me as easy or as much fun or as meaningful as the work of the leaf-cutters.

  But they were destroyers, were they not, they were gnawing away at the life-force of the tree. And nevertheless I felt toward them deep understanding, kinship, real tenderness . . .

  How long would the tree suffer its loss? How could it defend itself against such numerous robbers?

  The tree could not run away, it could not dash its enemies to pieces with its massive branches. But I wanted to believe that it would survive. For the tree was large and the leaves many, so many that the leaf-cutters would not be able to cut all of them. When autumn arrived, their work would be over, they would sink into a torpor in their den. And in the spring the tree would recover. It would be able to start from the beginning and put out leaves with new energy.

  It was already late. He had not come, and would not now come. I went away, but as I walked I thought only of the leaf-cutters: that day after day, all through the long southern summer, the same streams would flow in and beneath the tree. Whatever happened, the leaf-cutters would hurry on there and their flags would flutter.

  Those leaf-cutters – they know what they are doing, they do not stray. Each of their flags is a sign of hope, their path is sign posted far into the future. And their tree of life still flourishes: the more leaves are cut from it, the more zealously it puts out new greenery.

  While I become gruffer and gloomier day by day, smile more slowly and more seldom, and my face becomes dry and pallid. I have to sleep in the afternoons, and I am no longer to be seen at openings or sales or demonstrations, nor do I visit the southern harbour when the ice is breaking.

  But the leaf-cutters continue – they do not grow tired. Their flags do not crease. Their soundless marseillaise for their own species, their own life-form, still echoes in my mind like a hymn of victory of a strength that will never arise from my own lips.

  Just a Shadow?

  Just as Thisbe had his mulberry tree and the gods their Yggdrasil, I, too, have my own tree. I have encountered it only once, as Alexander the Great encountered a tree whose branches bore fruit in the form of speaking animals’ heads. It was as large as the redwoods under which, in the silence of film, Kim Novak wandered, wanting to remember. In their sap runs the common memory, the calligraphy of larvae on their bark is history that does not err.

  Even if I wished it, I could not do to my tree what the leaf-cutters do. I can only look, look, look, for of course I do not have a tree, but only the shadow of a tree. Only the cooling shade of my tree of Araby! No bird will ever be able to land on its branches to scream its sad tidings.

  At night, twenty years ago or twenty-five, I stood in a city courtyard, surrounded on every side by walls of stone, walls of brick, I stood and gazed at the windowless wall, unable to tear my eyes away from it, in the sway of an extraordinary rapture, holding my breath.

  What did I think I saw there? There was nothing but a shadow, the shadow of a tree fell across the building’s wall, so that the sun must have been shining, the day was clear.

  I did not see the tree itself, but it must have been growing behind me; it did not interest me enough for me to turn and look. What kind of tree was it? Perhaps a broad-leafed, hardwood tree, it was so extraordinarily luxuriant, its crown branched broadly over the entire surface of the wall.

  What I saw were only shadow-branches, a shadow-trunk and shadow-foliage, as yet quite tender, as the spring was early.

  I looked: how naturally, with what undeniable self-assurance the branches grew from the trunk and spread into the unbounded space of freedom, even if this was only a wall, perhaps the dilapidated brick wall of a school. But the sun had so completely saturated its surface that it already radiated the heat of the coming summer – and of all past summers.

  There was a breath of wind and the leaves moved and rustled, and I, I bowed before the shadow cast by the tree as though before a real prince, bowed stammering, almost whimpering, out of my mind with joy.

  Who was there with me? What other people were there? Schoolchildren and teachers? Father and mother? Sisters and brothers?

  A whole crowd stood silent in the yard as I took a step, two, and my hand rose to point to the tree’s shadow, which the wind was moving on the wall’s bricks: Oh look, look, oh look, look, look . . .

  I sank down before it, faltered and demanded that everyone around me should take part in what was happening on the wall’s surface – and, more and more triumphant, indescribably beautiful, swayed the shadow of spring, bearing in its branches the quality of qualities, as simple and immense as everything raised by the sun.

  Did I not then dare, did I lack the courage, to turn and encounter the tree itself that threw the shadow? My eyes and its leaves, my body and its trunk, hands and branches, blood and sap, words, soughing and our common verticality – face to face, eye to eye . . .

  No, I never turned.

  But could it have added anything to its own shadow, in which its spirit lived?

  Spring comes to the Gold-Washers

  The End

  Pontanus’s door, which he generally kept tightly closed, was now wide open. I happened to walk past it and, without immediately understanding what I saw, returned to look.

  A storm had passed through Pontanus’s peaceful chamber.

  Inside, a horror of destruction predominated. The little bottles that had stood in rows on the shelves, each with its own name-label, had been flung to the floor so that it glittered with broken glass. The scales were twisted. The warming tray was cold. Books lay open on the floor, and pages had been torn from them. A dark, smelly liquid had been poured on top of the broken glass and papers; a powder, perhaps iron filings, hung in the room so that, even standing on the threshold, one began to sneeze.

  ‘Where is Pontanus?’ asked one of the Gold-Washers. He had appeared unnoticed beside
me. ‘Poor Pontanus. What will happen to him now?’

  ‘Vandalism,’ said a second Gold-Washer, peering over the shoulder of the first. ‘Don’t tell the Glass-Girl about this. She will go mad if she sees such a lot of broken glass.’

  Too late. The Glass-Girl was coming toward us. We all turned to look. We could not shelter her from anything at all. Did we even want to? In our way of looking at her was an interest that was not entirely benevolent.

  She approached us with her head raised and her legs moving evenly, like a sleep-walker’s. She appeared already to have received news of what had happened, for her eyes glittered like pieces of glass.

  ‘Close the door,’ said the second Gold-Washer, but the Glass-Girl pushed him out of her way with unexpected force.

  She walked in and, first from under her heels, then from her throat, came a high, shattering, toneless word of glass.

  She walked back and forth in the room, treading heavily, then jumped up and down on the spot and took a couple of the steps as if in a minuet. She picked up a prism that had not broken from where it had fallen on the floor, wiped it with her sleeve and set it back on the window-sill. Then she looked at us, standing in the doorway staring, constantly on our guard, and smiled, almost triumphantly, with a new, cruel face.

  We looked at it in fright. She was not, after all, the person, the lamb-like creature, we had believed her to be.

  ‘Fetch a brush,’ she said, calmly and nobly.

  But before anyone could obey, Pontanus arrived on the spot.

  ‘Pontanus, there’s been an accident,’ said the second Gold-Washer. ‘But it isn’t the end. Everything can still be restored.’

  ‘I’ll just tidy up a little here,’ said the Glass-Girl, suddenly herself again.

  ‘Yes, we shall tidy up a little first. You wait upstairs,’ I, too, said.

  ‘You can start again, and with better luck than before,’ said the second Gold-Washer. ‘It will all sort itself out.’

  ‘Let it be,’ said Pontanus.

  When we looked at his forehead, we saw that this was no surprise to Pontanus. When we looked at his mouth, which no longer said anything, we began to understand. When we saw his desolate eyes, we already knew who had created the confusion of his lonely room.

  Pontanus shut his door. We realised that this must mean the end. And now we, too, left, dispersed, each of us sorrowful at heart, although none of us had ever believed what he had believed.

  The Winter Egg

  The Winter Egg was of the Executioner’s making. It was not wooden, like most of the Executioner’s work, but of pale marble.

  The Winter Egg was set in a small square that was the culmination of five streets. There was no pedestal to the Winter Egg, but the square was paved in such a way that the egg lay at the centre of stone radii. It looked as if one third of the egg was underground, and as if it had just pushed its way through the paving. It looked as if it were still growing. The veins of the marble, slender, pale green, reddish, bluish like streaks of watercolour wandered across the curved surface of the egg-universe.

  Many people passed by the Winter Egg on foggy, cold days which portended still gloomier times, and many regarded it almost with yearning. How easy it would be to live through the long, cold, dry season if one were like the Winter Egg or a hard-husked seed or a pale root which has penetrated so deep into the subsoil that not even the frost can choke it . . .

  In spring and summer idle folk spent their time in the square, young people hung around, drunks, lovers, the unemployed. There were no benches there, and so many leaned their backs against the egg. Once someone put an enormous plastic bag over the egg, like a condom. It was removed the same day, but later in the summer the egg was decorated with a broad-brimmed straw hat. Although it was far too small for the Winter Egg, it gave it humanity, a face and a personality.

  Once in spring, as I was crossing the square at midnight, I stopped to look at a girl who was dancing in the square before the Winter Egg. She danced quite alone, and on her feet were high boots that snapped as they resounded against the stones of the square.

  What kind of dance was it? What music was the girl dancing to? I could not hear anything, no drums or tambourines, castanets or guitar, and even the handful of people who had gathered around her were astonishingly quiet.

  An old couple walked past me, and the woman said: ‘She’s still dancing.’

  Now I understood what dance it was. I understood that the girl had wanted to stop long ago, but that she could not. For the dance that she must dance was the tarantella, a terrible dance. Some who had begun dancing it had had to dance until their deaths.

  Then a group of men approached the tireless dancer. They grabbed the girl’s arms roughly, without a word. The tossing of her limbs was restrained with a purposeful grasp, malevolent even. Three or four men half led, half carried her to a small lane off the square; two more followed them without looking around them.

  But the stamping of her boots did not calm down; again and again her hands broke free. They waved and gesticulated above the men’s heads as if making signs to the spectators who had stayed in the square.

  Next time I passed through the square, I saw that the statue was broken. It must have happened the same day, for pieces of the shell lay all around on the stones. I had imagined the Winter Egg was made of solid marble, but now I could see that it was hollow inside, like all eggs.

  It did not look as if the sculpture had been broken from the outside, but as if an internal force, like an explosion, had shattered it. What had the Executioner hidden inside it, or what had he forgotten? What embryo had grown so big that the thick marble had cracked like the chalk shell of a real egg?

  Whatever it was, it had now got out. There will come a day when it walks toward me at a crossroads in new clothes and I will not recognise it or know where it has come from.

  The pieces of marble were cleared up and the remains of the Winter Egg, too, were removed from the paving stones, Soon a new statue was erected in its place, showing a statesman with one hand on his breast, the other on the statute book.

  The Sun

  Nevertheless, the spring also came to the Gold-Washers. It was not the spring that Pontanus awaited so eagerly, when the crowns and haloes of flowers begin to glitter among the rot of the refuse dump. The waste-heaps rose more steeply than before, and when the snow had melted they began to smell. But it was the real spring, all the same, and the grass grew for the first time on the tuatara’s grave. The earth turned toward the south as a great expanse of melting snow, it was Sunday and the thaw-water muttered its own babble.

  The Gold-Washers had lifted a blue sofa from one of the inside rooms on to the terrace. On it the Kinswoman slept the light sleep of spring.

  The Torso and the old Gold-Washer were playing chess in the pavilion. The Glass-Girl, who recalled a crocus in her after-winter tinge of blue, moved the pieces according to the Torso’s instructions.

  ‘A three, I said, for God’s sake, three! Do you want the pawn to be taken at once, eh?’

  Crocus’s timid fingers grasped the piece once more, and a long silence took the Gold-Washer’s hand to his forehead. The game went on, but in the sun the board shrank and shrank.

  And, move by move, the spring advanced on all fronts: above the Gold-Washer’s glittering top hat and in the grass, where the tuatara had once slashed his paths, and under the roots of the grass, in the ground, which melted its great home-sickness and all its three eyes.

  Whatever the Gold-Washers did, it was not enough. They could not go completely inside the spring day, something was always left outside. Restlessness stirred, it drove them here and there, inside and out, into the city and back. But nothing they could think of to do was enough. In one way or another, they always remained deprived, without rights. They were spring’s gatecrashers.

  A fist struck Pontanus’s door.

  ‘Come out, spook, the sun’s shining!’ shouted the top-hatted Gold-Washer. ‘Come and see the book-li
ce.’

  It was a moment before Pontanus opened the door. ‘Oh, father, how pale you are,’ Latona said.

  Over the winter Pontanus’s nose had become marbled; it looked like the Winter Egg.

  ‘Really,’ Pontanus said. ‘The spring seems to have come. But I am old and tired.’

  ‘Forget it,’ the Gold-Washer said. ‘What has it got to do with you. But look at them!’

  The other Gold-Washer had carried his terrarium into the courtyard. He had opened its lid and bent down into it, between the stones, a couple of branches of golden rain. Along these arched bridges the book-lice were walking to freedom, one after the other, their snouts and antennae twitching.

  Babel, too, was standing with his hands behind his back, watching the book-lice’s first spring day.

  ‘Is your study ready?’ Pontanus asked the Gold-Washer.

  ‘The material is complete,’ said the Gold-Washer. ‘I no longer need the book-lice.’

  The ravens of Edom were walking slowly round the courtyard, clockwise, hand in hand. They, too, stopped beside the terrarium, examining it silently, from a distance, as if from Edom.

  ‘Go,’ the Gold-Washer hurried his little creatures. ‘And live blamelessly, as you have until now. Eat, copulate, give birth, sleep. That is enough. That is all.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’ Pontanus muttered, lost in his own thoughts.

  But one of the lice seemed to wish to remain in its glass prison. It went a certain way along the branch, but soon turned back and returned to the bottom of the terrarium. Then the Gold-Washer picked it up, set it on the palm of his hand and put it down on a blade of grass.

  Babel bent over and said to it, waving his finger: ‘Monda perfida.’

  ‘Do you think they notice any difference between prison and freedom?’ Pontanus asked.