Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  So, I had to find myself a job. With my illiteracy and poor grasp of human language, I did not think I would be able to find any light indoor work. On the other hand, I was also short and weak, and I did not have the strength to lift very heavy weights or dig ditches; besides, I did not have any hands, only wings, which were rather impractical on land.

  I walked along the river bank pondering my employment problems. Two women were walking in front of me; one of them was pushing a pram. Their conversation was carried to my ears.

  “It’s really difficult these days,” one said, “you don’t seem to be able to get a trustworthy nanny anywhere. The last one only lasted three days, the tart, she didn’t do anything all day except do her hair and talk on the phone.”

  “You can’t trust that sort of girl,” the other one said. “You’d really be better off with someone older.”

  A sudden impulse spurred me to action. I hurried in front of the women and politely raised my cap. They looked at me suspiciously.

  “Excuse me, but I happened to overhear what you were just talking about. And the fact of the matter is, I am accustomed to children and I am very fond of them. It happens that I am currently out of work, and I would gladly accept a position of this kind . . . ” My voice became more and more unsure; the women were eyeing me with such unfriendly, even offended expressions.

  “But you’re a man,” said the one with the pram finally.

  Yes, I admitted that I was a man.

  “Well, of course I was looking for an older woman.”

  What could be done about that? I couldn’t turn myself into an older woman, and so I raised my cap again dejectedly. But my gaze fell on the pram, in which the true employer was sitting. He stared at me with bright, curious eyes, and said suddenly:

  “Mummy, bird.”

  The women laughed, and I laughed too, though rather artificially to tell the truth. The one who had been addressed as mummy patted the top of the boy’s head, looking contented.

  “Billy has such an active imagination.”

  You are the one with the imagination, I thought, if you think that everything that wears trousers is a man or a human, but to please the women I joined in with their admiration for the little boy.

  “What kind of work did you do before?” the mother asked.

  “Mmmmm . . . I was in the food business.”

  I thought that that was quick thinking, nor was it a complete lie, since fishing is certainly included within that field.

  “But you’ve also looked after children?”

  “I have eleven of my own.”

  “Dear God in Heaven!” the women were amazed. “Do people these days still have such large families? Your wife must have been busy.”

  “I took care of them right alongside my wife,” I boasted.

  “Just think! My husband’s never even changed Billy’s nappy once.”

  The women’s glances were now considerably friendlier. Billy extended an arm towards me and yelled,

  “Want beak! Want beak!”

  Why not? I offered my beak to him to experiment with and he stroked it and my beak-pouch gently, and even rubbed his cheek against my neck-feathers.

  “Billy seems to approve of you,” the mother said in a softer voice. “What was your name again?”

  I didn’t want to say my Italian name, since I was afraid that the women too would start talking about passports. Besides, I felt that my language skills—thanks to my phenomenal ear for language—had improved significantly over the course of the day. I believed I could pass for a native of the city, or at least a labourer who had moved there from the nearby area, so I said the first name that came into my head.

  “Henderson.”

  “Well, Mr. Henderson, maybe we can come to some arrangement. I’m Mrs. Dexter, and this is Billy. You seem to really get on with children. You’d only have to come for four hours a day, I only work part-time. Whereabouts d’you live, by the way?”

  Pride and timidity kept me from saying that I was homeless. I was afraid that the women would drive me away or alert the blue men. Therefore I merely waved my arm in a wide arc that could have implied almost any part of the city. To my amazement the woman was satisfied with this, gave me her address and said simply: “Come by eight o’ clock, then, that’s when I have to leave.”

  I didn’t dare to ask anything about money—I suppose one says salary in these cases—but I knew that first thing in the morning I would have to bring it up. I needed an advance. But although I was still penniless and homeless, I had taken an important step: I had transformed myself from a vagrant to a worker, and in this way I had also come closer—as I understood it—to my goal of humanity.

  I wandered around the streets, observing their bustle, and a new feeling of self-respect swelled in my breast. But when evening fell and the street-lights lit up, exhaustion and homesickness triumphed once more. There was a new night ahead of me, and I did not know where I would spend it, since I could not go to the park again.

  I climbed onto a bridge that crossed over the river and stood there, leaning on the railing. With my head supported by my wings I stared into the impenetrable water, thinking of other waters, cooler and bluer, ornamented with stripes of foam and clear all the way to the bottom. Leaning there, my gaze fell on some boats that had been pulled up onto the river bank, of which several where upside down. I realised immediately that my night’s sleep would be secure, and when the boulevard seemed to be empty, I took the risk and flew over the railing to a small green- and white-painted boat. I crept under it, but my tail-feathers bristled when a voice rang out in the darkness:

  “This is taken.”

  I muttered an apology and withdrew hastily. I hesitated for a moment before I dared to knock on the side of the neighbouring, beautifully varnished wooden boat. There was no answer, and I ventured to edge my way inside. That night I was able to sleep in perfect peace.

  When I crept out the next morning, another sleeper appeared from under the neighbouring boat. He must have been the same man who had shouted “Taken” at me in the evening when I had tried to enter his space.

  “Good morning,” I said politely.

  He did not answer, but merely scowled and began, using both hands, to scratch both his head and his hairy chest, which was partially visible through the front of his shirt.

  “Do you have an itch?” I inquired, trying to keep up the conversation.

  The man stopped scratching for a moment and shot me a sombre glance.

  “D’you want a knuckle sandwich?”

  “Indeed, I am beginning to feel hungry,” I said, delighted that the man had spoken at all. I had not heard of a knuckle sandwich before, but I supposed it was some special kind of ordinary sandwich.

  To my surprise the man grimaced at me and shook his fist.

  “No one takes the mick outta me,” he muttered.

  To tell the truth, I was beginning to be a little afraid, for the man was sturdy and broad-shouldered, while I have no shoulders to speak of. I began to withdraw back into the shelter of my boat, apologising. The man glanced at me scornfully and began to scratch himself again without wasting any more words on me. When he had had enough of this activity, he stumbled to his feet, stretched, and yawned, his eyes slits. Before he climbed up onto the bank he shot me one more glance and said over his shoulder:

  “It takes all sorts.”

  And in that he was undeniably correct.

  But once the man had gone I, too, had to hurry. I did not have a watch, nor would I have been able to read one, but I asked the first person I met for the time. It was a child, a small boy, who was obviously on his way to school. I had known about the existence of ‘school’ for a long time, the word was frequently repeated in human conversation, especially that of human children. It seemed that the child carried the time on his wrist: he glanced at it and said:

  “It’s seven fifteen.”

  “I see. But what comes after that?”

  “After what?
”

  “Seven fifteen.”

  “Seven sixteen, of course.” The child looked at me suspiciously and turned to continue his journey. I seized him by the elbow.

  “I wonder if you could help me a little? If you help me, I will show you something exciting.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “I will show you how to fly.”

  The child dropped his schoolbag on the ground in an instant.

  “OK. What have I got to do?”

  “Tell me everything about that.” I pointed at his wrist. We moved out of the street into a quiet archway. At a quarter to eight I knew everything about clocks. I knew that an hour is divided into sixty minutes and a minute into sixty seconds, and that a day and a night is twenty-four hours. And that’s not all: I also knew of the existence of weeks and months and years. I heard that the earth circles the sun, which at first I did not believe, and that each circuit takes a year, three hundred and sixty-five days.

  Thus, at a quarter to eight I was significantly wiser than at a quarter past seven, but I was also in significantly much more of a hurry. I had an appointment at precisely eight o’clock with Mrs. Dexter and her son.

  “Would you be so kind as to tell me where Turncoat Street is?”

  “It’s this one here,” the child answered.

  “I must still find number 8A, Mrs. Dexter’s apartment.”

  The child guided me to the right staircase and went with me up to the highest floor.

  “There it is, but now show me the flying.”

  “In that case, you must remember not to tell anyone else about this. It is a secret.”

  The child looked delighted. The staircase was empty, and through the centre was a deep pit, which reached all the way to the ground floor. I leaped up to sit on the railing.

  “Watch closely now.” I dropped into the emptiness and glided elegantly down to the ground floor, using my wings to slow my descent. I looked up at the child, who was staring at me admiringly from the top floor landing.

  “Here I come again.”

  And in the same moment I was at the top next to him.

  “Do not try to do this yourself,” I warned. “You will not succeed.”

  He shook his head gravely. He had obviously already worked this out for himself. I thanked him and he ran down the stairs.

  “I’m late for school,” he said. “But it was worth it.”

  Mrs. Dexter opened the door before I had time to knock. That was lucky, for, as I later learned, one does not generally knock on apartment doors: they have doorbells or buzzers.

  She already had her jacket on and Billy was hanging on to her sleeve, crying.

  “We’ve been waiting. I’ve got to fly.” (I was startled to hear this, since she did not seem to have any wings.) “Billy’s food is in the fridge, warm it up and feed him at eleven. The sand pit is in the park, you’ll have no problem finding it.”

  And then she was gone, not flying but running, and I was left alone with Billy. He stared at me open-mouthed, looking amazed, his cheeks still wet, but quieter now. Then a faint smile lit up his face: “The bird’s here!”

  “You are a wise man,” I said to Billy. “And I am a wise bird. I think we shall get on.”

  And we did. But before I took him to the park, I had a look around the apartment. I was in a human nest for the first time, and many things there amazed me. The most surprising thing was that the walls were so close to each other, and the ceiling so close to the floor. And behind the walls and the ceilings and the floors there were other nests, stacked closely together.

  Almost all the objects in the nest were new to me: books, mirrors and pictures, the stove and the refrigerator, the radio and television. Billy was a great help to me: he walked behind me and named all the objects: he had just learned the skill and enjoyed displaying it. But names do not, of course, tell you everything, they do not tell you what a certain object is for.

  Equipping the young lad for the outdoors turned out to be unexpectedly troublesome. He had bare feet, and I had noticed that without exception humans in the city used some kind of foot protection. I found some very small shoes in the hall, they were obviously Billy’s, but I had to struggle for a long time before I could squeeze his feet into them. There was also a small coat hanging on a hook in the hall, which I managed to dress Billy in, but it was covered in buttons and button holes, which were rather troublesome. With his shoes on the boy walked with much more difficulty than without them, so that I had to carry him to the park.

  The sandpit was overflowing with children of Billy’s size, some a little smaller, some a little larger. Many women were sitting at the edge of the pit; some were knitting, one had a book, but most of them were talking amongst themselves and occasionally yelling out prohibitions or encouragements to their offspring who were hard at work in the sandpit.

  My own chicks loved sand, but there in my homeland the sand is whiter, smoother and cleaner, its grains are rounder and shinier, for the salt water has polished them.

  “Here comes Billy,” one of the women said as we approached. All those seated around the sandpit, and some who were in it as well, turned to watch our arrival. Billy was riding on my shoulders and keeping firm hold of my cheek feathers.

  “There’s a bird coming,” rang out a clear voice from the sandpit, but the women didn’t pay any attention to it. They were staring at Billy, who I put down in the sandpit with the other young ones.

  “Dear Lord,” said one of the women, the one with the knitting.

  Was something wrong with Billy? It was true that the jacket didn’t seem to fit him very well, the collar reached almost to his mouth and his arms stuck out of the sleeves like sticks.

  “Why is his jacket on upside-down?”

  So that was what was wrong. Blushing under my feathers, I pulled Billy into my lap and tried to undo the buttons that had ended up at the back. When I was not immediately successful, the knitting woman offered her help gently, but shaking her head. A younger woman who was sitting next to her giggled and pointed at Billy’s feet.

  “His shoes are on the wrong feet as well.”

  Billy looked content to be getting attention, he was twisted and turned about skilfully and the women’s hands had soon taken care of the matter.

  I was embarrassed, as I heard someone further away whispering, “That Sylvia comes up with all sorts, now she’s taken on a man as a nanny.”

  I was tempted to defend myself: “My good woman, these minor misdemeanours do not proceed from the fact that I am a man, but rather from the fact that I am a bird, as was quite rightly observed only a moment ago. And a bird that has lived among people for only three days cannot be expected to understand all of the peculiar ways of humans.” But wisely I stayed quiet and swallowed my shame. I went to sit beside Billy in the sandpit, I let the women say what they were saying and I allowed the sand to flow through my wing-feathers. The youngsters gathered around me. They wanted to stroke my wings and touch my narrow beak.

  I sang them a song about cows.

  The cow’s a respectable creature,

  It’s gentle and solid of feature.

  From under the milking shed’s awning

  It gives us our cream in the morning.

  If our lives are but snatches of story

  Let’s enjoy beef in all of its glory;

  For power and wealth breed resentment,

  But a rump steak gives only contentment.

  Once I had returned home I was confronted with a new problem: feeding Billy. Mrs. Dexter had said that the food was in the fridge and I had to warm it up, but she had not said how. Of course, I had seen the fridge as soon as I stepped into the kitchen for the first time. Billy had pointed to it and named it for me. I got it open easily as well; it hummed in an odd way and the chill of ice-fields wafted into my eyes. It was full of all sorts of pots and jars, fruit and vegetables, but there were also, oh wondrous day, two large fish: a pike and a bream. I had once more fasted for the whole mo
rning, and I was feeling very weak, but I did not dare to touch the fish yet. Instead, I decided to ask Mrs. Dexter for it as my first day’s wages as soon as she returned.

  I tried to offer Billy some pike, but his lower lip began to tremble and he turned his head away. A tomato seemed to suit him, but I doubted that it would be enough. Finally I found a small pot which had a picture of a laughing baby on it.

  “Is this yours?” I inquired and the boy nodded vigorously.

  It was stone cold, and I warmed it up in my wings, so that they, too, began to feel cold. Was this what Mrs. Dexter had meant by warming up? It took a long time before it reached body temperature, and by then Billy had become impatient; he whimpered and rolled around on the floor. But I still had to get it open, and it is not so easy to turn the lid of a jar with your wings. When I finally succeeded, Billy didn’t want to eat anymore, but instead I was so dreadfully hungry, that I was forced to take advantage of a portion of the boy’s lunch. Billy was so excited at seeing me eating some of the odd-smelling paste from the jar, that he insisted on feeding me himself. When I tried to keep my beak shut and direct the spoon which Billy was poking me with towards his own mouth, he screamed as if he were in mortal peril, so that I had to hastily accept what he gave me. Nor did I find it at all unpleasant.

  This was the tableau that we formed on the kitchen floor when Mrs. Dexter stepped inside.

  “You horrible man!” she cried. “You’re eating the child’s food!” In vain I tried to explain that the child himself wanted me to eat it, that I was on the verge of starvation while the child did not seem to care a whit for the food.

  “I should have guessed,” she lamented, “that I shouldn’t have anything to do with anyone who looked like that. I don’t know if you’re a real person, maybe you’re a monster.”

  She sank down to sit on a kitchen stool, hugging Billy against her chest and crying. “How could I have entrusted my child into the hands of a man like that! I’m a bad mother. Billy darling, Billy sweetheart, you have a bad mother.”

  Billy was crying as well, but I tried to console the woman.