‘That was a long time ago,’ she said cautiously.
‘Very long indeed,’ the dragon enthused. ‘Nowadays he can be found in Heaven and in church paintings. And since then the mountains have collapsed and the boulders I had piled up have all rolled down into the ravine. It’s been several hundred years since any other Tom, Dick or Harry has turned up here trying to poke me with spears and swords. My beloved wife came and went. She was always on the move, she was what they call a flying dragon, a real beauty. Her wings were like the fin on my back but far, far greater. I always told her all that flying around and gallivanting would be the ruin of her, and just as I predicted, one day she perished in a flying accident. I waited for her, I waited and hoped with all my heart, but it was only many decades later that I heard how, on a stormy night, she had plummeted into the sea in a ball of flames near a Phoenician fishing boat. At that moment the storm abated and the sea calmed, and you can imagine all the stories those fishermen told until the end of their days.’ Viivian nodded in sympathy. She could feel her eyelids becoming gradually heavier and heavier.
‘Times went from bad to worse and gradually people stopped bringing young maidens out here, and to be perfectly honest it was a great relief. They tasted awful, I can tell you. And on top of this I realised I was in fact allergic to young women. Before I had ever met a young woman my head was beautiful and smooth like other lizards, but I soon came out in a rash, and became covered in scabs and warts – the itching was unbearable, I would scratch my head night and day. And look at me now, there are almost horns on my head. Not once did anyone ever think to bring me a tender, young piglet or a well-done veal cutlet, just maiden upon maiden.’
‘You shouldn’t scratch your head,’ said Viivian sleepily. ‘Anyway, how do you know what pork and veal taste like if no one has ever brought you pigs or calfs?’
‘I have many cookery books, I very much enjoy leafing through them. In fact I have quite an extensive library. I would invite you in to look at it, but I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting company. I haven’t tidied up …’ said the dragon, a touch embarrassed, and scratched his ear.
‘Don’t scratch!’ said Viivian sharply, then burst out laughing as she realised that she too was thinking about scratching her head. Other people’s bad habits catch on without our noticing. ‘Tidying up isn’t so terribly important. If only you could see our bedroom on a Sunday morning.’
The dragon looked at her suspiciously. ‘I can’t help scratching. Just thinking about young maidens makes me itchy. You can’t imagine what they are like, some bits are full of fat, others chewy and sinewy, ugh!’ At this he shuddered from top to toe.
‘You must stop thinking about it,’ she said comfortingly. ‘You need to learn to concentrate. Just keep thinking: I must not scratch, I will not scratch. And if the itching gets so bad that you can no longer control yourself, then pick a spot and scratch it very softly, just one spot, though, not your whole head. That’s what I do, and gradually you’ll stop doing it altogether.’
‘Aha!’ exclaimed the dragon excitedly.
‘Still, it’s your own fault,’ she continued. ‘As far as I can see you could have hidden or stayed in your room and let the maidens run away and go about their business.’
‘I tried, I swear, I tried my best,’ the dragon shouted sadly. ‘Some of them ran off and sunk into the quicksand. There’s still a lot of quicksand on the path, isn’t there? Others couldn’t escape at all. Their only thought was that now they had been sacrificed to the dragon and so they came into the cave and searched for me amongst the rocks. Once, when I had gone out for a walk especially so that the day’s victim could leave in peace, what should I do but bump into her in the gorge and she died of fright. They all eventually found me and died of shock. Tell me, do I really look so frightening?’ the dragon asked, his voice full of a profound sadness.
Viivian took a close look at him.
‘No,’ she said finally. ‘I’d say you’re – to put it mildly – rather untidy looking.’
‘Am I not repulsive?’ asked the dragon eagerly.
‘Not in that way,’ she replied after careful consideration.
‘Am I not terribly ugly?’ the dragon asked in all but a whisper.
‘No, you’re not,’ she laughed. ‘You are rather strange looking, but not at all ugly. You’re a very nice colour …’ Viivian looked very closely at the dragon, and the dragon looked back. ‘In fact, you’re rather beautiful,’ she said, somewhat surprised herself at the statement. ‘Allow me to clean you up a little,’ she decided. ‘I don’t suppose you have any soap.’
A little embarrassed, the dragon shook his head.
‘Well, I’m sure a basinful of water and a curry-comb will do wonders.’
‘I do have a bottle brush somewhere,’ the dragon informed her.
‘Excellent!’
So whilst the dragon clattering and throwing things around rummaged for the bottle brush Viivian took a battered old basin and collected water from the brook and brought it to the mouth of the cave. Then with the help of a few ferns she swept a large area clear of ancient, dried leftovers.
‘Right,’ she said firmly as the dragon stepped hesitantly out of the cave. He sat down and Viivian began cleaning him up. She began with the dragon’s spiky back, which after a thorough wash and a scrub gradually looked less and less like a broken umbrella and began to shine in all the colours of the rainbow. Viivian brushed, scrubbed, scraped and polished. Using the curry-comb and some sand she made the dragon’s armoured back change colour and it soon began to gleam a light shade of green. Viivian scrubbed and brushed the dragon from the tips of his ears right down to the end of his tail; every now and then she ran over to the brook to fetch more fresh water, by now dripping with sweat. The dragon sat up on his hind legs and Viivian brushed his stomach, covered in soft downy hair, until it shone as white as snow.
‘The twenty-third basinful,’ she said quite out of breath. ‘After this I’ll fetch some rinsing water. But I don’t know how to wash your hair. My mother always washes our hair.’
‘Surely it can’t be all that dangerous, let’s get it done too now that we’ve started,’ said the dragon who was also gasping for breath.
‘Very well then, but you mustn’t start crying,’ she said and, clenching her teeth, poured a basin of water over the dragon’s head.
‘The water’s going in my eyes,’ he shouted in dismay.
‘It’ll soon come out again. That’s what Mother always says,’ she explained rubbing the dragon’s head with sand as hard as she could. Once she had rinsed his head she cleaned the dragon’s ears and his trumpet-shaped snout, a task for which the bottle brush was the perfect tool. And once she had fetched twenty basins of rinsing water she finally stopped and admired the dragon with her arms folded.
‘How sad that you can’t see yourself,’ she said, satisfied. ‘You look altogether different.’
The dragon turned his neck and examined himself as much as he could, and looked very pleased at what he saw.
‘I feel suddenly very hungry,’ he said somewhat surprised.
‘I normally become very thirsty after washing myself,’ Viivian replied quickly. ‘But I certainly could eat something too. What do you normally eat at this time?’
The dragon looked her up and down, then back again, and a mischievous grin spread across his face. Viivian sensed the warmth suddenly drain from her cheeks and she felt very cold. All at once her hands and feet seemed numb. But then the dragon could not help but burst into laughter.
‘Mushrooms. Nowadays I eat nothing but mushrooms,’ he said with a giggle. ‘I grow them in the cave where my bed used to be. But there are very few of them and they grow very slowly indeed.’
‘You frightened me,’ Viivian said very quietly.
‘I don’t have a single tooth left,’ he chuckled.
‘That’s true, we didn’t brush your teeth,’ she thought. ‘You should be glad you don’t have any teeth, there is nothing wo
rse than visiting the dentist,’ she said casually. ‘I could cook you some porridge and other soft food instead.’
‘You thought I was going to eat you,’ the dragon smirked.
‘But first of all I’ll cook you some oat porridge,’ she said. At this the dragon grimaced. ‘Oat porridge is very good for you. And even though you don’t have any teeth, you still ought to gurgle and clean your mouth every day. Breath out,’ she said sternly and the dragon breathed out.
‘Hhhhaaaah.’ Viivian felt herself lifted from the ground; there she floated high, high up above the treetops.
‘Huh,’ she said to herself, the dragon’s breath smelt truly rancid and revolting. The watch in her pocket seemed to be moving, its little hands pulling at her and tickling her hips.
‘But how can I make porridge and light a fire when I don’t have any matches?’ she asked.
‘Psst, psst! It’s seven o’clock!’ hissed the little ants. Their whispers were becoming louder and louder.
‘Oh, I have to go now,’ she shouted in a panic. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she said holding with both hands as tightly as she could to the hay sack as it flew above the trees, over small houses, across the town the dragon had spoken about.
‘I’ll bring some matches next time,’ she said. She flew further and further away, as if carried upon a great gust of wind, first into the darkness, then into a grey light gradually becoming brighter and almost blinding.
‘That’s all I need, I’ve fallen into the sea,’ she said to herself. ‘And now I’m coming up to the surface. Those Phoenician fishermen will have something to talk about again.’
‘It’s a good thing I remembered to unsaddle the horse,’ she said just as her head burst through the surface of the water and she was finally able to take a deep breath.
Mother was standing leaning over her. The smell of the dragon’s breath still hung in the air around her. Hopefully Mother would not notice. What a stroke of luck that she had returned to her bed before morning. She must have lost consciousness and the kind fishermen must have brought her home.
‘Good morning, it’s seven o’clock,’ said Mother quietly. ‘Time to go to school. Bath, breakfast, books and bus – the four B’s,’ she said as if it were some kind of joke.
In the next bed Stumpy stretched her arms and legs and opened her eyes, looking dazed as if the dawning of a new day were a miracle. Then she gave Viivian a broad smile.
‘And what do you think you’re staring at?’ Viivian shouted grumpily.
A Diseased Man
Boris Hurtta
Boris Hurtta (born 1946) is a pseudonym. He is a prolific writer, whose areas of particular interest are history, mythology and horror fantasy. In addition to his numerous novels he has published over 70 short stories. He has a very distinctive style, drawing upon both an archaic narrative tradition and the rich dialects of Finnish, and his voice is as much at home in the realistic depiction of the everyday life of a bygone age as it is in entirely imaginary milieux. The short story in the present volume, ‘A Diseased Man’, was first published in the magazine Portti.
As a man, Kaarlo Huovinen was like a slab of concrete discarded on a building site: strong and unyielding, but by now crumbling around the edges and riddled with hairline cracks. Was his core really as rotten as it felt? Would it take only one smack of a crowbar to reduce the whole block to a pile of cement dust and a mesh of rusty supporting irons? Or was there life in the old boy yet? Another five years? Three even? Surely a person can never be in such bad shape that they don’t expect to make it through the next twelve months.
At the last count Huovinen had turned sixty-eight, but only last autumn had he finally traded in his ten-wheeled Volvo with all its trailers and MOT licences and started thinking about things besides shifting whole gravel piles from one place to another for wiser men to refine and sell. He had been a carefree man, without a debt to his name, for two whole weeks, but he still didn’t know what to do with this sudden spare time; he began to feel bored. He didn’t feel like going out hunting, the idea of a long holiday didn’t take his fancy, and neither did sitting in the pub all day. The missus had left him over a quarter of a century ago, bitter after years of fourteen-hour days and seven-day weeks. It would have been a bit pathetic to look her up now and see if they could patch things up. The paper and the television, those were his only friends, and now he could allow himself to get cheesed off with them in a different way from before, when he could only spend an hour or so in their company before dozing off for the night.
His idle body decided to start playing up and soon Huovinen noticed that even a trip to the supermarket and carrying the slightest bags of shopping up to the front door felt as much like hard work as shovelling gravel on to the back of a lorry as a young man. Still, not to bother the doctor. No wonder he was tired, he hadn’t had a holiday in donkey’s years.
The winter passed and Kaarlo Huovinen gradually became as brittle and smelly as an October mushroom. He suffered his joints and swollen feet like a man, along with the chest pains and the dizziness, but it gave him a real fright when his stomach, which over the years had put up with rich, fatty foods at any hour of the day, finally threw in the towel. It felt like he was shitting juniper bushes, though all that came out was a thin reddish brown sludge splashing down the sides of the toilet bowl and dirtying his backside in the process.
It was another few months before Huovinen eventually decided to pick up the yellow pages. There were very few doctors and lots of patients, all more urgent, more impatient and more demanding than he was. If you can hold on a while, Sir, let’s see … there’s a slot with the doctor in five weeks’ time at 15.15, that should be easy to remember. Until then drink lots of water and eat only gruel, porridge and vegetables. If the trouble goes away, as it probably will, then you should call and cancel the appointment, so as not to waste the doctor’s precious time.
There can’t be anywhere quite as depressing as the waiting room at the local surgery. Certainly not for someone whose body and soul had held a private meeting and passed a pretty grim sentence. Deep down you know it’s not worth it, you miserable creature. You left it too late. You should have taken the initial signs more seriously; you could have tried to get an earlier appointment; you could have gone to a private clinic with fast, experienced, efficient staff, assuming you’ve got the cash – and you had plenty.
The room was wide with a low ceiling and lots of pillars and dark corners filled with all kinds of people killing time, all of them probably very ill, but some appearing sicker than others. Whining children, drunks herded about by the police, looking in astonishment at their makeshift bandages, and a tribe of gypsies were all in need of help before anybody else.
The doctor proffered his hand as merrily as any freshly graduated engineer and politely tried to chivvy along Huovinen’s lengthy explanation of events. Tests and photographs would have to be taken and a new appointment was quickly scheduled. Had this been giving him trouble for long? All through last winter, Huovinen replied. Though, in fact, hadn’t he actually seen this coming for a while, by giving up his job driving the gravel truck, sorting out the work he had promised his friends and finding a decent buyer for the lorry? All told, the process had taken about three years.
And so eventually it turned out to be cancer looming above him, and the prognosis wasn’t good. If only he had reacted three or even two years earlier his chances would have been far better, explained a different, greyer and altogether more serious doctor. It’ll require an operation, he said and cleared a slot for the following week.
Kaarlo Huovinen didn’t feel like dying just yet, especially since he had been taking part in the ice-fishing competitions on the sunny lake at Pyhäjärvi – albeit with a cold sweat on his brow and his legs quivering. He had caught such a whopper of a pike that even the experienced fishermen were left green with envy and for the first time since his retirement he had felt human again. It had weighed over six kilos and, as if to taunt him, it h
ad had a nasty growth on its tail, like lots of pikes nowadays. Huovinen gulped down a large cup of black coffee – but no cake – in the surgery cafeteria and with a heavy heart he decided that he would never return to this building again. This was going to be nothing but an open and shut case, an exercise to make the staff feel that they had done everything they could, then send him off to an early grave with a nice, specific diagnosis. Now was the time to see Aatami Määttä again.
By the end of the Continuation War Kaarlo Huovinen had finally become a man. As a conscript he had served in the forest garrison where discipline had been strict and the conditions harsh. Back then leave was like gold dust. Transport services were poor and conscripts never had cars of their own. It was best to forget about evenings off and other such luxuries and just sit in the canteen, or the mess as all the boys called it back then, listening to the radio and playing billiards.
Esko Huttunen, the son of a wealthy farmer, slept on the upper bunk. Lady Luck had certainly been shining on him as, after careful consideration, he had been granted three days’ leave to go home. But everything was about to go pear-shaped when he fell ill at the last minute, and the sergeant major of the company never sent home soldiers who were not in tip-top condition, not even those who had been relieved of outdoor duties, let alone those with a high fever. And Huttunen had a rising temperature, his cheeks were as red as a cider apple, his speech was quicker and his movements more fidgety than usual. Without a shadow of a doubt this was going to be one for the reception and the infirmary, and maybe even a transfer to the field hospital. But for Esko Huttunen, this leave was of the highest importance: he had the matter of his inheritance and some woman problems to attend to, and as it turned out he did come back to the unit with an engagement ring on his finger.
But before that something strange happened. Back then the boys in the company knew a good few ways of bringing up a fever and quickly creating visible symptoms, but as for the other way round …
The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy Page 19
