‘I was ashamed of how thoughtless I had been – I had almost condemned us all to ruin. And so to preserve Grandpa’s peace of mind we never spoke about it again. Except once, some time afterwards, when I tried to ask Grandma what the lion had looked like and how she had managed to drive it out of the house, but Grandma got very angry and told me to be quiet – what’s done is done, she said, there’s no need to go on about it.’
Marmot is quietly fidgeting. ‘So had the lion left for good?’ he asks gravely.
Father shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid not. It couldn’t bring itself to leave us alone. All the time I could still feel its presence close by. Sometimes it would disappear for a few days at a time and I would hope that it had finally gone or frozen stiff in the forest, but it would always come back to stalk us. It was always careful to stay hidden, but sometimes the wind would carry its scent into the garden. It was there somewhere, pacing round the house watching us.
‘It was waiting, just like the elephant. By now the cold weather had killed or driven away all the other animals that had survived the crash, but the lion and the elephant were tough. They stayed put, even though winter was well on its way. The elephant longed for our company just as the lion craved our flesh – their motives were that simple.
‘And then came the night when the lion tried to eat me. It was too cold at night now to sleep in the attic so I had started sleeping in the kitchen next to Grandma. And imagine: in the middle of the night I awoke to a heavy odour, to the lion’s strong, fusty breath, which went in through my nostrils, filled my lungs and my head and almost choked me.
‘When I opened my eyes, there it was. It was very dark and I couldn’t really see anything, but it was there, no doubt about it, the same lion that had been circling the house. Its eyes were glowing menacingly through the dark and little by little I could make out its shape: its dirty mane and its damp muzzle, every last piece of the enormous, long-suffering creature. It was standing right next to me, its yellow eyes watching me, as if it were wondering which bit of me might taste the nicest. There was a low, thunderous rumbling sound coming from its stomach. And its breath smelt so bad that all at once I was about to throw up and faint, and I knew it had come to get me, to tear me to pieces and kill me and gobble me up.
‘I decided to lie perfectly still and pretend to be asleep. I remember thinking like a coward that if I lay still enough it might eat Grandma instead and leave me in peace.
‘Then suddenly there came a piercing scream. I don’t know whether it was me or Grandma who screamed, but the lion began to roar so loudly that the plates shook in the cupboard and I wet myself, and then it leapt up on to the bed and the bed creaked so much I thought it would collapse under the weight of the beast, and then, before I even had time to be afraid, it hit me round the head with its great big paw.
‘Even though it was dark I could see bright lights and red, black and green spots and all the noise sounded as if it was coming from far away and I could feel myself being dragged somewhere dark and wet. I remember faintly thinking that now it had finally happened: I was dead and the lion was dragging my lifeless body into the forest to eat it.’
Father looks at Marmot and suddenly realises how pale the boy has turned. ‘You’re not afraid, are you?’ he says somewhat taken aback. ‘You know the lion didn’t kill me or gobble me up – here I am!’
‘I know,’ mumbles Marmot, though he does not seem at all convinced; he finds it difficult to believe that the boy in the story could have survived a situation as desperate as being trapped in the lion’s jaws. ‘You mean the lion didn’t eat you after all? What happened?’
‘When I finally came to, it was already light. It was day. I realised I was in bed. My face hurt and when Grandma brought me a mirror I saw that it was all bruised and swollen. Still, I was pretty much alive. When I asked her about the lion, she wiped my face with a cool cloth and said that there had never been any lion and that everything was all right, everything would be fine and I would never have to worry again.
‘Then I asked her about Grandpa. Grandma said that he was in his workroom, but that she had told him all about what had happened, and he had been very stern indeed and promised that something like this would never happen again. I asked her whether the lion had gone for good and she stroked my forehead and told me once again that there was nothing for me to worry about, that everything would be just fine.
‘And then Grandma made me some beetroot hot chocolate and I decided that Grandpa must have gone and told the lion to be on its way now that he knew it existed. I wanted to ask Grandma whether that meant the elephant had gone too, but decided not to say anything, because I could tell she didn’t like talking about all the animals.’
‘Well, had the lion and the elephant finally gone?’ Marmot asks excitedly.
‘The lion appeared to have gone, but I wasn’t sure about the elephant. I wondered whether the elephant had been frightened by the noise that night and retreated deeper into the forest, but I was sure that it would come back again some day. Nonetheless after a few weeks I began to accept that both animals had probably moved on. Maybe the elephant had tired of staring at our house and had gone off in search of a better place to spend the winter.
‘Little by little life began to seem normal again. Of course, Grandpa still spent every day and night in his workroom, but, as I said, I didn’t give him a second thought. Grandma got on with things in the house and tried to keep us afloat; she would go into town and do little sewing jobs for people and she earned just enough so that we didn’t starve. She often went to the home of a school mistress and this lady very kindly gave me the first and last book I ever owned, The Tales of Ensign Ståhl.
‘After all, in the odd spare moment Grandma had taught me to read and at the age of six I was already quite a good reader. So I would spend hours on end sitting in the kitchen with my nose buried in the book reading Runeberg’s heroic stories. And I was just reading the tale of Sven Dufva when I heard a bang come from the workroom.
‘The book fell from my hands and since then I have never read a book again.’
Marmot gulps loudly. ‘And then you ran up to Grandpa’s workroom and battered a hole in the door with an axe and looked through the hole and saw …’
Marmot’s father picks him up and sits him on his knee, something which does not happen very often, strokes his head and looks him deep in the eyes. He takes a moment, then he finishes telling the story.
‘Somehow the lion had managed to get inside Grandpa’s workroom, probably through an open window. Maybe it had been trying to get into the house that way so that it could eat me or Grandma.
‘But when it got into the workroom it met Grandpa, who as we know was always on his guard and was already very angry. And so Grandpa fought furiously with the beast. The workroom was covered in blood and there were tufts of the lion’s fur on the walls. Grandpa had shot the lion and wounded it fatally, but before it had died it had managed to bite a large chunk out of Grandpa. And there they lay, dead in each other’s grip, Grandpa and the starved lion.
‘When Grandma came home we dragged the lion’s carcass into the forest and buried it there and we agreed never to talk about it again – the lion had become so thin that it hardly weighed anything at all. And Grandpa was buried in the churchyard, the same place where Grandma was buried last summer. We told everyone that Grandpa had been cleaning his pistol when it had gone off by accident with tragic consequences.
‘After the funeral I noticed that the elephant had returned: it was standing once again at the edge of the forest, grieving, staring sadly at our house. It must have been frightfully cold because there had been lots of snow and the weather was getting colder by the day. It stood there for about two or three weeks, then finally went on its way and I never saw it again. Perhaps it died of the cold, or maybe its hide thickened and it grew used to the cold weather, I don’t know.
‘But sometimes I get the feeling that it’s still around here somewhere, that
it’s living somewhere close by, perhaps in one of those black and white areas around Warren’s Marsh. Because even though I never saw the elephant again, there were times when I thought I could feel something very big and very sad watching our house from the safety of the forest.’
Marmot is about to ask something, when his father’s eyes close like someone drawing the curtains and turning off the lights. He stands up and Marmot remains seated, watching him as he dozily walks into the kitchen.
Something makes Marmot sense that Father’s talkative period is now over, perhaps forever. Marmot sits down on Grandma’s old sofa and stares out of the window. He sees his mother coming in from the forest. She looks very tired indeed.
When Mother walks into the house her lips form a smile. Father is making coffee in the other room, not dandelion coffee this time but real Costa Rica from the shop. The old grandfather clock is rattling in the corner of the room. During the day you hardly notice it at all, but at night it makes a ghostly sound that makes Marmot pull his covers over his head and hate the stupid clock with all his heart.
It is very hot and Marmot does not have the energy to do anything special, so he just sits there thinking things over until evening comes and it is time to go to sleep. There isn’t even a television at Grandma’s house, which is strange. There is a radio, but who on earth listens to the radio?
That night Marmot sleeps on the fold-out bed in the kitchen. Or rather, he does not really sleep: instead he lies listening to Mother and Father talking in the next room. The words they use are different from before; they are no longer tense and angry, but somehow softer and sad. Like when someone’s dog has been run over. Mother and Father are talking about something which is ‘awfully final’, as he hears his mother say several times.
Just before Marmot finally dozes off to sleep, words from the other room floating around his ears like dark night butterflies, he can almost hear the sound of a great, heavy animal plodding across the garden. The sound of its footsteps is very sorrowful indeed, thump, thump, thump, scuff, it stops for a moment to look at the house, then returns with slow, heavy steps back to the forest.
The following morning Marmot and his mother drive back into town by themselves. Father does not come with them; he remains sitting on the steps outside the house as Mother steers the car out of the driveway. For a moment Marmot wonders whether she has simply forgotten to take Father with them, since it is just as easy not to notice when he is missing as when he is there, but decides not to get involved in something that doesn’t really concern him.
When Marmot waves out of the rear window, Father does not respond; instead he just stares blankly out into the forest. He must be dreaming with his eyes open again.
Datura and Pereat Mundus (extracts)
Leena Krohn
Leena Krohn (born 1947) began her career as an author of children’s fiction. Her works for adults are highly original, often sarcastic explorations of strange realities and the nature of awareness. In 1992 Krohn was awarded the Finlandia Prize for her work Matemaattisia olio–ita tai jaettuja unia (‘Mathematical Beings or Divided Dreams’). Other works available in English are Tainaron (1985; ‘Tainaron: Mail from Another City’, trans. 2004) and Doña Quijote ja muita kaupunkilaisia (1983; ‘Doña Quixote and Other Citizens’, trans. 1995). The first three extracts in this anthology are from her novel Datura (2001), while ‘The Ice Cream Man’ is from Pereat Mundus (1998).
The Lord of Sounds
‘There are sounds all around us, everywhere you might not think mummummum. We cannot hear them, but they exist nonetheless – there in the most silent of silences.’
The same colour tinged the silver sky, the Lord of Sounds’ suit and his level voice.
‘I’m sorry, could you tell me more about this alternative audiotechnology?’ I asked, a touch impatient. ‘I’ve only been at the editorial office for a few weeks. Of course, there are lots of important matters in this job that I’ve never heard of.’
‘Alternative audiotechnology is a way of revealing sounds which the human ear cannot normally mummum.’ The Lord of Sounds explained things in a friendly but rather hushed voice.
I felt frustrated. It seemed that I needed some of this alternative audiotechnology myself just to understand what he was saying.
‘But everyday life would be very unsettling if we could hear every possible sound,’ I said. ‘It’s surely only practical and fortunate that the human ear only discerns as much as it can.’
‘Of course, the function of the brain is mummum,’ he agreed. ‘It cannot process absolutely everything. But the mummummum of our hearing tricks us into believing that there is nothing else to be heard. The same goes for our other senses naturally, even our mummummum.’
His voice became so inaudible that I had to cut him short once again. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear.’
‘ … even our common sense and our intelligence, our rationale,’ he repeated. ‘After all, how can we know what we do not know! We cannot even guess at it!’
‘You’re right there,’ I said. Despite its apparent simplicity, this notion was in fact quite new to me.
‘And still we are convinced that we know something fundamental about mummummum mum mummummum.’
‘Excuse me?’ He was beginning to try my patience.
‘ … something fundamental about the laws and regularities of the universe,’ he said.
‘Well don’t we?’
‘This and that; that goes without saying. But reality is not confined merely to our empirical world. And sometimes it would be mummum, or at the very least mummum, to be able to hear more than we normally can,’ he continued. ‘It really broadens people’s mummummum. It is with this in mind that I have developed the mummummum mummum mummummum.’
‘The what?’
‘The Silent Sound Detector.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘It is a very simple device,’ he explained. ‘I use a cassette recorder, which is triggered by the faintest sound and begins to record. I place it in an empty room when I go to work. There are no mummummum to the room.’
‘It didn’t catch that.’
‘ … no keys to the room except the ones I have. Last year I mummummum the walls in the room. When I get back from work I listen to the tape.’
‘Every day?’
‘Every day. It has become something of a mummummum.’
‘Pardon?’
‘ … a habit. Of course, sometimes there is nothing to hear.’
‘But does that mean that sometimes you can hear noises? Sounds in a locked, empty room?’
‘Oh absolutely, very often in fact. Sometimes it sounds like the buzzing of a mummum nest; at other times you might think a high-powered machine had been switched on. Then sometimes it sounds like some form of mummum.’
‘Sorry?’
‘ … like a vehicle slowing down, then accelerating again.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Hmm. How fascinating. Have you thought of writing an article about this phenomenon for the New Anomalist?’
‘Yes, why not indeed!’ said the Lord of Sounds. ‘That was my intention. But that is no reason to mummummum about this phenomenon alone. Of course, alternative mummummum encompasses much more besides. It can reveal previously unknown mummum about the universe and humanity itself.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Perhaps you have heard of instrumental mummummum?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘ … instrumental transcommunication.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’
‘Or Dr. Konstantin Raudive and his mummummum?’
‘Pardon?’
‘ … and his goniometer.’
‘Sadly not.’
He looked displeased.
‘Well what about EVP?’
‘I’m not familiar with that either, I’m afraid,’ I replied, somewhat embarrassed at my ignorance of the subject.
‘EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena,’ he explained pa
tiently.
‘It seems one learns new things every day in this business.’
‘EVP sounds last typically only a few mummum and are extremely difficult to hear. One generally has to use a good set of mummummum and train one’s mummummum in order to make them out properly.’
At some point – out of tiredness and frustration – I gave up trying to listen to him. It was very hard work indeed having to strain my ears constantly, even though there was no doubt that what he was saying was strange and entirely new to me, and as such highly interesting.
‘Very well,’ I said, rudely interrupting his mumbling. ‘That’s splendid. If you’d kindly agree to write a short article on this subject. We’ll have a look at it. Unfortunately we can’t guarantee that it will be published. What about the next issue? The deadline would be the beginning of March.’
‘Mummum!’ he exclaimed, clearly satisfied with matters, and disappeared into the winter paleness.
The Trepanist
If I was asked which of the subscribers to the New Anomalist should be put in the Raving Mad category, after slight hesitation I would certainly choose the man we refer to as the Earl of Cork. The hesitation is due to the fact that I once met, albeit only by e-mail, a woman who believed in what she called Inverted Speech. This young woman was convinced that if we record the speech of any given person, then listen to the recording backwards, we will then discover what that person truly means. As far as I understood, she shared this conviction with a substantial number of people, if not an entire cult. Even if the recorded person were to lie, the young woman had written, his or her hidden agenda would nonetheless be revealed for all to hear. Inverted Speech thus exposes lies and tells us what people take such pains to conceal.
This aside, The Cork was a far more serious case. He was volatile and focused in a way that made me shudder. It is at least for legal reasons, therefore, that his identity shall remain undisclosed.
The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy Page 25
