Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  From kilometres away came a faint rustling, a buzzing from a nest whose inhabitants were always awake.

  Fakelove sat on the bottom step and felt the roughness of the gravel beneath his feet. He grieved. Not so much for Ella; but he suddenly wanted to go back home, back to his mother. The earth continued endlessly under his feet, spreading out in all directions. But there was no direction in which his mother lived. He also thought about his only daughter, Lisa, and helplessness, worry and longing made him feel the weight of years.

  The strongest bond, Fakelove thought now, was vertical, not horizontal: it ran in the direction of the arrow of time, from generation to generation. What happened between the sexes was something much more momentary.

  How many people, how much sorrow, how many human actions, the earth was able to bear. Beyond the fence the sand of the yard mixed with the forest earth and the darkness of the tangled roots.

  At that moment Fakelove felt only tiredness and absence, coldness and weariness. This was the end of love, but it had not ended, nevertheless.

  In his mind the old question beat like a drum: ‘Who? Who with, then?’

  He did not dare ask. In the hallway he heard the cautious steps of Ella’s bare feet.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Ella said. ‘That’s just the way it is.’

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ Fakelove said irritably. ‘You’ll get cold. I’ll come back soon.’

  Yes, that was just the way it was: he would lose Ella, her serious, almost sombre face, which could light up unexpectedly in a delighted smile, her white thighs and arms with their blue veins. Ella herself had not yet decided anything, or rather: she had decided to stay with Fakelove. But the thing that was stronger than her will would soon lead her away from Fakelove.

  And Fakelove began already to think about the practical matters that he would soon have to address. Above all he wanted to do what he could to ensure that the end of this relationship would not affect his practice, his trustworthiness and his professional success. Such information would spread fast. How believable could he be as a sexual adviser if his partner left him?

  But what and who was that person whom he would soon be losing. He tried to get all of Ella into his sight at once, to deal with her once and for all, so that he could then let her go. But it was impossible; he could only get a partial view.

  Fakelove wanted the night to end. He wanted the day back, with all its cares, with all its colours.

  With Colourful Lamps

  Before, there was something that was called yellow and blue and red. And green. The world was brightly coloured, and that meant: full of colours. But that was long before Håkan was born.

  Their compound name had been colours and they had something to do with light. Colours were something that could be seen in objects, in everything there was. Every object had a colour, but colours were not characteristics of objects. It was really quite complicated. But water and air did not have colours; it was said that they were colourless. On the other hand, Håkan had heard that the sky and the sea were called blue, so that he did not really know what to believe. Colours were characteristics in something of the sense of size or shape. They were – a quality.

  There was, however, no certainty or information about an object’s real colour. You could not, apparently, even speak of a ‘real’ colour. The colour, so Håkan had read, depended on the viewer, the time, the space, and the colours, contrasts, shadows, reflections of other nearby objects . . .

  They were words whose meaning no one really knew any more.

  Colours, shadows, reflections could not be felt, heard or smelled. They were seen. Seeing was what it was called then, and everyone knew how to see. But no one really knew any longer what seeing meant, except that human beings had once had such a capacity. People had had some kind of organs in their heads for seeing, on either side of the nose. They were called eyes.

  Now smooth skin covered the places where eyes had once been. But it was very fine skin.

  Seeing was a sense that operated at a distance, like hearing. But it was nevertheless something quite different. If you could see, you did not need to smell, taste or feel an object. The seeing person knew from a distance, without grasping objects, their characteristics, even whether something was small or large.

  Now they could only know by feeling. The teacher said that this was better, but Håkan was not so sure. He would so much have liked to be able to see.

  Sometimes Håkan felt his face. He imagined that beneath his skin there were still soft eyeballs that wanted to see. He fancied he could feel them move when he felt the right places on either side of his nose. He thought that if he dared puncture the skin, they would come out again. He believed that his eyes were always open there, and were just waiting and waiting. If he allowed them to see, he would finally know what seeing really was.

  The guide said that colours were not really exist outside people, that they did not really exist. People put them into objects just by looking at them.

  Now no one knew anything about seeing, and it was not appropriate even to talk about it, except in a purely symbolic sense. Now only machines knew it, if even they did. Machines could see, but perhaps differently from how people had seen.

  Some historians claimed that it had begun even before the third millennium. Not all newborn children any longer had eyes. At first it had been a great misfortune; later it had begun to be considered normal. In their time, no newborns had eyes any more.

  The guide said that seeing was a characteristic that had been discarded as useless as the human race developed. It was a primitive relic. That in fact all it brought was trouble and strife.

  Eyes were unnecessary, even dangerous, because they prevented deeper seeing and thus put a brake on the intellectual and spiritual development of humanity.

  But Håkan had a friend, Liisa, who thought differently.

  ‘They’re lying,’ Liisa said. ‘The truth is that we are losing our senses, one after another. And what do we get instead? Talk about deeper seeing is just deliberately confusing. Every sense gives information, as you know. We cannot live without getting information about our surroundings, and I do not even want to live in such a way. The end of the human race is just one or two generations away.

  ‘But something completely different has always been said,’ Håkan said.

  ‘True! We’re being cheated. Try to understand what history predicts for us. First to disappear were colours, then distances and forms, then we no longer saw anything. Our senses of taste and smell are also beginning to deteriorate. Soon we will no longer recognise the smell of smoke, the scent of seaweed on the beaches, the aroma of our morning cup of coffee. Soon we will not care what we eat, for everything will taste the same – in other words, of nothing. Hearing will be the last to disappear. After that we will still, for a time, feel touch, weight, wetness, cold and hot.

  ‘And then?’ Håkan asked.

  ‘Then only thinking will be left,’ Liisa answered. ‘And that, too, will disappear. Do you think that, without senses, there can be any thought, soul, consciousness? The sense of beauty, of justice, of goodwill will go. Everything will go away, so far, so far. You can hear bird-wings beating, far away, far away.’

  ‘Is it a poem?’ Håkan asked.

  ‘It is a poem that someone wrote long ago.’

  One night, Håkan had a vision. Before that he had not really had visions; he had only heard, tasted, smelled and felt his dreams. But now he could see. Strangely enough, he felt as if he had always been able to see. It was quite natural.

  In his dream, he was standing at a crossroads. One road was the night road and the other was the day road. Along the night road there were many houses, but none had their lights on. Along the morning road the street-lamps were still burning, although the sun was already rising, lamps glowed in the windows and in the gardens shone yellow, red and green lanterns. He know that they were red and yellow and green, although he had never seen red or yellow or green.

  Håka
n chose the morning road. He hurried along it so quickly that he almost ran into the wall of the first building. The buildings were astonishingly beautiful and harmoniously proportioned; he admired their new architecture, their towers, windows and balconies. He saw clouds reflected in the window-glass. The morning turned red and spread. The lanterns went out, but now the gardens were lit by the crowns of flowers. Children woke up to play in the courtyards and laugh. Håkan saw the sky; it was deep, but the earth rose into a mountain to reach its depth. The valley was green, oh how green it was. This was what summer was like.

  But when the real morning came, Håkan did not see it, he only heard it. And it was the same kind of morning as before, without a single colourful lantern.

  After that dream, Håkan knew what seeing was. After that, he knew what colours were. They could no longer be forgotten. He wanted to gather them back in. He wanted all the colourful lanterns.

  Håkan announced at that day’s lecture that he had something to say. Everyone would be able to hear it.

  ‘OK,’ said the guide, ‘tell us.’

  ‘I now know what seeing is,’ Håkan said.

  ‘How can that be?’ the guide asked. ‘No one knows what seeing is any more.’

  Håkan said that he had had a dream. He surmised that it was perhaps a kind of greeting from centuries ago, from his seeing ancestors. He now hoped that he would have dreams every night.

  This announcement caused a long silence in the lecture hall. The pupils looked at Håkan as if he were a strange being. Some giggled. Finally the guide said: ‘Håkan, you really should not hope for anything like that. Seeing, even if it is the seeing of visions, is abnormal, and a symptom of serious illness.’

  Soon afterwards, Håkan was sent for a medical examination.

  ‘Doctor, there’s something underneath, I can feel it. They’re moving, they’re trying to see. I want you to let them out.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘You certainly know, we all have them, you too. It’s just that people don’t want to talk about them.’

  ‘It would be best for you to forget them.’

  ‘If you won’t do it, I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘One person can’t live seeing if everyone else is blind.’

  ‘That’s my business. I cannot live unseeing any more. Help me. It’s just a little surgical procedure.’

  ‘You cannot be the judge of that. And what about afterwards – if you do not like what you see – will you hold me responsible? Remember that you will perhaps never be able to close your eyes again.’

  ‘I will absolve you of all responsibility.’

  Håkan came to slowly after the operation. His first seeing morning began to loom before him. Håkan felt pain on both sides of his nose. But the pain and pressure were at the same time light. Håkan screamed. He wanted to put the morning away. He wanted to go back to the night he had previously inhabited. But at the same time he did not.

  Something moved before Håkan. He stretched out his hand and it was grasped. Håkan looked at the linking hands and made out their fingers. Seeing was movement which went from the world to him and then back again. It was like a shaking of hands for which two are always needed.

  ‘How are you?’ someone asked. It was the surgeon.

  ‘Is this seeing?’

  ‘How could I know? You forget that I, of course, do not know what seeing is. But if you are now experiencing something you have never before experienced, something completely different, I suppose you may conclude that it is seeing.’

  ‘I believe it. There is too much light, far too much.’

  ‘Perhaps you will grow accustomed to it. That is what you wanted, after all. Would you like a bandage for your eyes, or do you wish to go on practising seeing?’

  ‘I want,’ Håkan whimpered, ‘I want to want!’

  ‘That is right,’ said Liisa, who had come into the room. ‘Wish!’

  Liisa touched his hair, his forehead, his mouth, cautiously stroked his new-born eyes. Then Håkan saw, for the first time, a human face.

  A Scroll When it is Rolled Together

  Håkan had come to a square in which a many hundred-headed mass of people was surging. Hallelujah! Over there, Ismael was preaching, Ismael who had gone to the same school as Håkan, although three years above him. Then he had not been called Ismael, but simply Jari.

  He had not been good at school; he had had to repeat two classes and had left just before the others received their matriculation certificates. Later he had begun a career as a prophet and had begun to give sermons, first in neighbouring districts, but as he gained supporters and fame Ismael bought a run-down plot on the outskirts of his old hometown. There he had founded a kind of monastery, so Håkan had heard. Hundreds of townspeople now belonged to Ismael’s congregation.

  Håkan felt a little uncomfortable on seeing the crowd. The vision reminded him of his dreams, in which there were always many people, both familiar and strange. Perhaps the reason why his dreams were so colourful and busy was the fact that his unemployed days in a small bedsit on a housing estate were so lonely and quiet.

  Håkan smelled the crowd’s suppressed excitement. Aggression it was not, merely impatient waiting.

  The more people gather together, the more insignificant they look, like an army of insects, Håkan thought. It was the same with everything else: the more of it there was, the more valueless it became.

  Laughter and shouting came from the street café’s marquee. Inside, a piano was being played.

  Håkan stood at the edge of the square, his back against a lamppost, and listened carefully. He was trying to understand what the prophet Ismael was saying.

  Ismael was giving his congregation instructions against the last day: ‘Listen, my friends. You all know that the day of judgement has come, the end is at hand. But hear me: we still have an hour and a quarter of earthly time. In that time, do you realise, you can still do all sorts of things. If you still have unresolved matters in this life, go and sort them out, do you hear. Forget quarrels, ask forgiveness, give forgiveness, settle disputes where you can. For it is much lighter to step into the hereafter when matters are in order here.’

  ‘Håkan!’

  Håkan turned and saw his old history teacher waving at him from inside the marquee, from the street café where the unbelievers sat.

  ‘Come here, Håkan!’

  Like a lamb, Håkan obeyed and detached himself from the crowd. He made his way through the disciples as they prayed and muttered to themselves, to the road and across it to the café in the marquee.

  ‘You haven’t become one of Ismael’s disciples, have you?’

  ‘I was just listening,’ Håkan said, a little embarrassed.

  ‘Would you like a pint?’

  ‘No thank you, I don’t drink beer.’

  ‘Coffee then. They make great espresso here; have some, it’s on me!’

  ‘The winepress of God’s wrath is full,’ shouted Ismael. ‘It has been written that the heaven will depart as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island will be moved out of their places.’

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Håkan said.

  ‘Our bodies will suffer for a moment,’ Ismael shouted, ‘but listen, it will pass. It will not touch our immortal souls. After a short travail eternal life awaits us, life of a kind we cannot even dream of. We will be plucked into eternity from this cursed planet, of which only a duststorm will remain.’

  ‘Deranged,’ the teacher said. ‘But in no way new. They are nutcases, but then the majority of the human race have always been nutcases. This Ismael – at school he was Ari or Jari, I can never remember which. A hopeless pupil.’

  ‘How many times is this, sir?’ Håkan asked.

  ‘At least the fourth,’ his teacher said. ‘If not the fifth. Jesus is coming – catch!’

  Håkan looked at his teacher in wonderment. He was excited and in a strange mood, quite different from at school.
r />   ‘How can they always go on believing that the world will come to an end? Tomorrow they will certainly be embarrassed,’ Håkan said.

  ‘Don’t you believe it. They will talk of a small error of calculation and begin to prepare themselves for the next happening.’

  ‘But I read that many of them have sold everything, their houses, their cars, their things,’ Håkan said.

  ‘It is strange. Why bother to sell anything if you believe the world is coming to an end. You’re not going to have any use for cash then. Or property, for that matter.’

  The evening grew bluer and denser. The street lamps came on, the stars began to shine, but the crowd still stood where it was.

  ‘Hear me, it has been written that the sun will become black as sackcloth of hair and the moon as blood,’ Ismael thundered.

  ‘It is not completely harmless,’ the teacher said. ‘That idiot is spreading panic. It’s nothing new, of course. Panic hit Constantinople for the same reason in 398, and Rome in 410.’

  ‘But you, my friends, have no need to fear. For we belong to the Lord’s chosen people,’ Ismael announced. ‘We have bleached our clothes in the Lamb’s blood.’

  ‘Does he mean us too?’ Håkan asked hopefully.

  ‘Just his own disciples,’ his teacher said. ‘He is speaking like Zoroaster.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘A prophet from central Asia who lived in the 15th century before Christ. So the end of the world was spoken of even before the beginning of our calendar, can you imagine? Zoroaster believed, like Ismael, in the immortality of the chosen and the destruction of the evil, the complete transformation of existence. He too, with his disciples, awaited the immediate end of the world, the last battle between good and evil, the resurrection of the dead and the great judgement.’

  ‘You ask how to recognise the Antichrist,’ Ismael shouted. ‘He is here today.’

  ‘In the spring of the year 1000,’ the teacher said, ‘people enthusiastically awaited the last judgement and made conjectures about the Antichrist. At that time, you see, natural forces raged, an earthquake shook Europe and a comet even put in an appearance to celebrate the new millennium. Even the devil made an appearance, at least so Ralph Glaber claimed. It was black as soot, it had the teeth of a dog, the beard of a goat and a flat nose. The flagellants wandered from town to town scourging themselves.’