Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  I was surprised that the Marquis was so enthusiastic about the book and knew so much about it.

  “The alphabet doesn’t resemble any European writing system. Yet it supposedly originates in Europe, although the words are shorter than in Latin, English, German, or French. Not to mention the Scandinavian languages.”

  “The handwriting is beautiful,” I said.

  “But notice,” he said, “that it’s written in two different hands. The writers were highly educated and skillful, they didn’t make any corrections to the text. But it doesn’t seem to be just a matter of different handwriting, but of different languages or at least different dialects. There is a great deal of repetition in both of them, the entropy of the text, as they say, is very low.”

  The Marquis seemed pleased to be able to surprise me with his expertise.

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It means that the text could be written in some code; it’s a combination of numbers and various symbols. One researcher tried to argue that each character is composed of up to twenty strokes, each of which he thought could have been an individual letter. That theory hasn’t gotten much support. It’s possible that the Voynich manuscript is some kind of encyclopedia. It also could be that the language doesn’t exist at all, that it’s just nonsense, a practical joke, a hoax.”

  “These plants . . . ”

  “They say that even botanists can’t identify the species. I want you to write a short essay on the Voynich manuscript.”

  I enjoy looking at and flipping through this book. I’ve already read many articles about it and started my own. For some reason, though, it’s stalled, I can’t get past the introduction.

  The Voynich manuscript is an odd book, but then again, all books are odd. Often when I leaf through this manuscript or even when I happen to just lay my eyes on it, I’m astonished. Many times I’ve found myself thinking of writing in general, books, their meaning, the way in which they exist. I ask myself what writing actually is. How the personal changes into the public, and why it must be so.

  There are moments when everything is new, as if seen or heard for the first time, even language, words that I’ve read a thousand times. People, landscapes, items, even books. Now and then I stop at a familiar word as I read, and all of a sudden it amazes me, and I savour it like a new taste. For a fraction of a second I hesitate: what does the word refer to, does it really signify anything at all?

  In those moments, I’m like a newborn. I see the world like I once saw a flower that had been picked from the garden and placed in a vase. I wake up as if from another dream and look around myself for the first time. At times like that, all books are like the Voynich manuscript to me: ciphers, cryptographies, beyond all interpretation.

  Mineral, Plant, or Animal Kingdom?

  “Soul? What are they talking about?” the Marquis once asked. “What’s that supposed to be? Give me a hint. Does it belong to the mineral, plant, or animal kingdom?”

  What a cynical person. And this man, this extreme rationalist, was the editor of The New Anomalist! There was something almost immoral about it.

  The Marquis secretly made fun of the magazine’s readers, but their money, that he was more than happy to take.

  “I founded the The New Anomalist because there was a demand for this kind of magazine. Because I reckoned that sooner or later it would become a success. I had no so-called ideological motives, purely commercial ones. Why should I believe in the garbage that gets published in The New Anomalist? I’m a sane, mature, rational, and well-read person,” he said. “I firmly believe in the ability of science to explain the world around us.”

  “You think that the world has been designed by some kind of project development manager,” I said.

  I disapproved of his attitude towards editing the magazine, though I wasn’t sure that mine was any more honorable.

  “You don’t see an ethical problem here?” I asked. “Can a vegetarian open a steak house?” I asked. “For you to publish The New Anomalist is just as strange.”

  ”I think the question you should ask is can a meat eater open a vegetarian restaurant? And my answer is: why on earth not? If I don’t do it, someone else would publish this magazine,” and probably do a much worse job.”

  “That’s one argument,” I said, “but not a good one.”

  As I examined my own relationship to the magazine and its endless anomalies, I had to confess that it, too, was problematic. As the Marquis once remarked, I flirted with the so-called paranormal. I evaded, denied, rejected, and laughed at it, and then was drawn towards it again.

  “Do you believe that one day science could explain the ultimate secrets of existence?” I once asked him.

  “Of course not,” he said, “because no such secrets exists.”

  “Tell me then, what do you believe in?” I insisted.

  The Marquis fell silent for a while, and then gave the following speech. It was clear and, for him, so well-put that I suspected he had read it somewhere. The Marquis had a good memory. For that I’m grateful to him.

  “I believe, as I assume you also believe, that the universe was created by chance—pure, free, blind chance. I believe that it’s lifeless, that it has no meaning or creator. I believe that organic life, not to mention human life, is a unique exception in the universe. Neither have any meaning in or to the universe. The universe doesn’t see us, hear us, know anything about us, or care one bit about our thoughts and hopes. In all probability, humans represent the highest form of intelligent life in the universe.

  “Reality can be observed through senses or instruments. Humans suffer the same ultimate fate as all flesh, because we are our bodies and nothing more. Heredity and environment define us completely. Intellect is a by-product of physical energy.

  “I believe that only humans are conscious. Falling in love, religious and ecstatic experiences, prophecies and visions, are all dysfunctions of the brain when the intellect momentarily loses control. There is no consciousness without brain activity. Death is, therefore, the inexorable end of the intellect and the so-called soul.”

  There it was, the Marquis’s credo. Yet despite his ultra-rationalism he carries amulets with him, which makes me question his commitment to his declared world view. Once a pendant with some kind of hieroglyph engraved on it fell from his pocket.

  “What’s this?” I asked, as I picked it up. “Is it yours?”

  “What does it matter?” he said childishly and put it back in his pocket.

  I came across the same symbol by accident, as I was checking an article sent to us about Egyptian cosmology. I learned that it stood for khu, the human soul.

  The Quiet Asphalt

  That morning I felt so bad that I almost couldn’t get out of bed. It wasn’t the asthma. My symptoms were milder than they often were in the spring, and I believed it was because of the datura. But now my eyes were sensitive to light, my head hurt, my mouth was dry, and my heart was pounding. I thought I might be suffering some sort of migraine, an experience I hadn’t had before. There was another possibility, but I refused to even consider it.

  It wasn’t until the afternoon that I dragged my aching body to the office. As a result, I ended up sitting there late into the night answering emails and reading a transcription of the Voynich manuscript:

  POAR.G.SOE.TOEOR.

  PZOE.TOR.TDZ.TOPTOE.OHCCA.

  I was left none the wiser.

  The thaw had come, and snow had changed to rain. I watched the raindrops that rolled down the window every now and again. It’s a pastime, a cheap amusement, that I’ve been fond of since childhood. Some raindrops seem to hesitate and slow down; others are more hasty and immediately go their solitary way, but many come together to form broad streams. All raindrops seek their own path, as if each had its own will and personality and future, some other option than just falling from the eaves into a puddle. In my basement hole in the wall, I contemplated whether it was possible that each of them had their own soul, wh
ich was born when they separated from the cloud and died when they joined the earth’s waterways.

  I fell asleep in the armchair for a while, comforted by the sound of rain. I woke a couple of times thinking that someone had turned on the light or that maybe there had been a flash of lightning. I’d had the same experience many nights now, and I had started to wonder whether there really was something wrong with my eyes. Only the reading lamp with a green lamp shade shone on my desk and I didn’t hear any thunder. I drifted off once more.

  As I woke, I felt more healthy and alert. I had slept into the early morning hours and the rain had stopped. Buses and trams didn’t run at this hour and I didn’t have money for a cab. With the weather having improved, I decided to walk home and take in the mild night air.

  There was still life at the hotdog and taxi stands. A final few bursts of revellers erupted from the bars and restaurants. Here and there, I could hear drunken brawling and fits of laughter. Some nutcase was walking unsteadily along the tram rails screaming abuse at an invisible antagonist. There was hardly any traffic, but every once in a while a cab would speed by. I took a longer route home, walking swiftly. I didn’t want to walk through the park alone at night.

  As I reached the footbridge, I stopped, even though I was feeling a bit cold. I stood and gazed at the pastel dawn spreading across the horizon. Under the bridge ran a beltway, glistening black from the rain. I’d never seen it this empty. I’d read somewhere that a type of quiet asphalt was being tested around this area, a compound that would lessen the sounds of car tires. From the east, where the dawn was beginning to turn to daylight, a silent column of cars was approaching.

  For some reason I waited for them to pass under the bridge. I leaned on the railing under the brightening sky and watched the advancing convoy. It moved toward the bridge in a long line. I started to feel nervous, but didn’t understand why right away. The vehicles were new and shiny, all the same color, metallic gray. They were a strange and unusual shape, elongated somehow, and I couldn’t recognize the make.

  The cars moved remarkably steadily. I estimated that they were travelling 50 miles per hour, which was the speed limit. But there was something odd about this procession, something frightening. The cars were driving just a few yards apart. Far too close to one another at that speed, and on a wet road no less. The drivers must have been extremely skilled, because as I followed their progress, the distances between all the cars seemed to remain the same down to an inch. It was as if they had been linked together like rail cars, only with invisible connectors.

  From my vantage point I could watch the cars’ procession for a good while before they reached the bridge. I watched them the whole way, forgetting my weariness and even where I was, because there was something magical about the cars’ movement. A moment before they reached me, I noticed something that nearly made my knees go weak, nearly made me sick. I grabbed the railing with both hands.

  The windshield of the first car was clean and clear. I could clearly see the steering wheel, even the pattern of the fabric on the driver’s seat—geometric figures, green-tinted spirals on a blue background—the harsh halogen lights of the bridge revealed the inside of the car. I couldn’t see a driver. I couldn’t see a single soul in the car. No one was driving the vehicle. That’s what I saw, no driver, not even a single passenger. It moved along empty and shining and new. I looked at the next vehicle and the front seat was also empty. Then came the third, the fourth. All empty.

  I was consumed with fear. My diaphragm stiffened. I asked myself whether hallucinations can also be negative: that you don’t see things that are, that must be, there. There was the possibility that the cars themselves were a delusion, but I refused to believe it, I had seen the details of each car so clearly and felt the gusts of dispersed air as they drove by.

  I searched for some passerby, anyone, an eyewitness, who could tell me that what I saw was real—or not. I was afraid of both alternatives, but I didn’t know which one scared me more. If the witness didn’t see what I saw—or more precisely, saw what I didn’t see—I’d think I’d lost my mind. If the witness saw the same thing I did—an empty line of shining cars—then, so I thought, the world would be even more strange than I’d ever believed.

  No one came, no one passed by. I wouldn’t have had time to look for a witness at any rate, as the last phantom car of the procession had already passed under the bridge. I saw the shining line disappear humming into the distance like some mechanical worm. The separate vehicles seemed to have flowed into each other organically and irrevocably.

  But where were the people? Where had they been left behind?

  Those perfect machines glistening in the sunrise seemed to me to be racing toward the future, where humans no longer had any role to play, not as drivers, not even as passengers. And before the hard light of the day eclipsed the colors of sunrise, the cars sped up, and their wheels seemed to lift off the dirty road, and they flew over the quiet asphalt like phantoms of the new millennium.

  The Parastore

  My state of mind and health fluctuated violently that year. There were days when I wandered around in a state of agitation from morning until night and it was hard for me to sit still and concentrate on anything. I was constantly thirsty and always carried a water bottle that I had to refill several times a day. I felt that I was full of a new and different kind of energy. I’d be tempted to say alternative if that hadn’t become such a worn-out word.

  And then there were days when I was washed out, I felt ancient and I could sleep for fourteen hours straight without stirring. I also suffered from anxiety attacks and dizzy spells. That had never happened before. At night my eyes would sometimes snap wide open. It was as though someone had switched on the light, even though it was pitch black.

  On one such day of weariness, as the winter air pushed sleet and the smell of exhaust fumes into the office, someone knocked on the door.

  “I have an idea,” the Marquis said.

  “Really?” I said cautiously.

  “Let’s open up a store, a parastore!”

  “In here?”

  “Don’t look so shocked. It could be a mail-order service. It could have all sorts of things that people could order by email, things relating to the magazine’s profile, stuff that would interest our readers.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, you know, healing crystals, floral scent remedies, tarot cards, magnets, amulets, ouija boards . . . ”

  I started to get angry. “Oh, I know, believe me. Worthless junk that silly teenagers spend their allowances on. Don’t even think of trying to make me run the store.”

  “Don’t kill my idea right off the bat. Take it easy. Just consider it. The store might become a success.”

  “Physical objects don’t move from place to place digitally. Tell me, where are we going to fit everything? And who do you think is going to handle the orders, and pack and mail them?”

  The Marquis looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “Not under any circumstances. I refuse, completely. I came to work here as a subeditor, not as some door-to-door salesman.”

  “Nothing cheers people up in hard times like this kind of junk,” the Marquis said, dreamily. “Take a look at this. This could be one sales item. It falls into the goth subculture, I’d say.”

  He handed me a small box. I opened it and saw a phosphorescent miniature skeleton.

  The shop was set up, as had been clear it would from the start. Not even a month went by before I was unpacking parcels. The Marquis had ordered merchandise all the way from China, India, and the United States. With great displeasure I rooted around in styrofoam peanuts for small aromatherapy vials, crystal balls, healing stones, Tibetan chimes, yin-yang pendants, T-shirts with pictures of the Chupacabra, the Sphinx, and werewolves. Amethysts and rose quartz. Small glass pyramids. Scented candles, essential oils, herbal tea. Ritualistic items, African amulets, and sharks’ teeth. Chinese doormats with dragon designs. Those I liked, an
d I took the liberty of putting one by the door to the office.

  A whole fortune was invested in this eclectic collection of items, and I was afraid that if they didn’t sell The New Anomalist—and me with it—would be driven into financial ruin.

  Products could be ordered by email or bought directly from our office, although I fought that to the last. My territory was reduced by half, with the parastore taking up the other half. Officially it was only open on Thursday and Friday afternoons, but in practice the doorbell would ring on any day of the week and in would walk someone who just had to have a shark’s tooth or a skeleton puzzle or a fake crystal. And I obliged, what else could I have done?

  One day the Marquis swept in and put a sign on the counter: IN GOD WE TRUST. EVERYONE ELSE PAYS CASH. He thought it was funny, so it was there to stay.

  He also gave me a new task. “How about you write an article about the death of Countess Cornelia di Bandi for our next issue.”

  “Who?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of her. Not local, I presume.”

  “No,” he said. “Check it out online. Spontaneous human combustion. We haven’t had anything on the subject for a long time. The countess died in 1731, as far as I can remember. I need the article by Monday. Three hundred words will be fine.”

  I looked the case up. It really wasn’t news anymore, even Charles Dickens had written about it. The countess’s chamber maid had found the remains of Cornelia di Bandi in the countess’s bedroom. Not much left. Only her disembodied feet were left lying on the floor with her head between them. The rest of her body had burned down to a small pile of ash, but the room was otherwise untouched.

  Since for whatever reason the Marquis thought it was necessary, I started to write a short account of the countess and her wretched fate. But I also had an article on the early life of Nicola Tesla to finish.