I dug a little bottle from my bosom and took a sip of strengthening. It eased my mind quickly, but I knew I could no longer stop. For a moment I lifted up my arms and looked at the figures on my hands. There was a curled snake in both hands. One had been made by Heron, so long ago its color had faded, and the other was made by Peregrine, on my birthday. That one shone brightly and seemed to guide me, but it was I who was guiding myself. It was I who was driving myself.
Since I got no help from the marsh, I got myself other means. I had to make careful preparations, and so it was evening when I once more arrived to the manor. During the day I even started to hesitate, but whenever doubt entered my mind, I only had to think of Peregrine. I only had to remember how he entered my home and looked at me the first time.
I let the snakes loose from my sack as soon as I got to the courtyard. I told them to go and do evil, and they obeyed me yet, even though I forced them to act against their nature. They were thick black adders, and they slithered across the courtyard towards the doors so that the sand seemed to be moving and darkening. They left curly patterns in the sand, as if somebody had raked the whole courtyard.
I hurried behind my snakes into the main building. I’d never been there, but knew to head towards the staircase, since there was a terrible bawling and crying to be heard from upstairs. The double doors to the hall were open. A group of women—the mistress, the daughters and some ladies I did not recognize—were rushing about the room and trying to shake off the snakes. The snakes were hanging from their arms, necks and hair, and not releasing their grip. Pieces of furniture were falling down, crockery flying and breaking on the floor; even a window broke with a clink when something was thrown against it. I couldn’t help smiling. Then I noticed an infant crying on the floor and saw that she, too, had been bitten. With a wry mouth I shouted:
“Where is Peregrine?”
No one was able to answer; hardly anyone even noticed my presence. I left the women to their pain and returned downstairs. I found my way to the servants’ quarters and the kitchen, where my adders were attacking the cook and the maids. They were not able to run away, nor did they yet scream like the ladies upstairs, they just kept staring at the snakes, mouths and eyes wide open.
“Peregrine?” I asked.
“He is not here anymore,” one of the maids finally managed to answer.
I told my snakes to stop. “Where has he gone?”
“He went to Heron’s.”
Had I been mistaken? Had all my work been in vain? “Did he leave a message for me?” I screamed. Again I felt my face twisting while I screamed so hard it hurt. Even my voice sounded distorted and strange.
The cook begged me to call off the snakes, but the maid answered:
“He left no message to anybody. He just came and went, and when he left he said that if we need him, we should henceforth seek him in Heron’s cottage. No longer at Thistel’s.”
I waved my arms and the snakes continued their work. I knew they were just as horrified as their victims, but I cared nothing about them, either. I went on my way, dark and terrible, tireless.
Heron’s hut was in worse shape than mine: the roof hanging over the leaning wall like the cap of a rotten mushroom. The window looked like there would never be anyone there on the alert for incomers, everybody would just be allowed to come and go as they pleased. And yet, Heron never got tired of insisting that he did his work better than I do mine. That in each of his figures he left a seed for good to grow from. He really did not understand that people would not care for his shoots, however regularly he would seed them.
And yet I had considered Heron my only friend. Time and time again I’d let him into my cabin and even visited him myself. Sometimes I had shut him out and sometimes left him myself, when I’d got tired of his whining and babbling. But was that enough of a reason to take back one’s gift?
I kicked the door open. Inside it was dark as ever and I had to blink my eyes to get used to the darkness. I opened my bag, but then I heard the voice of Peregrine:
“No use bothering the creatures. Let them go.”
I did as he told. Then I went to him and put my hand on his cheek.
“Why did you leave? And why did you leave in secret?” Peregrine kissed me on the mouth and turned his back. I was left looking at the tattooed snakes on my hands. They could be discerned, though it was dark. In the darkness even the older snake was more visible than in daylight, and only now did I realize that the snakes were identical. They mirrored each other.
So, finally, I was not surprised when Peregrine again turned towards me, and it was Heron standing in front of me. Peregrine’s smooth head was covered with Heron’s long hair. The child’s face had resumed a beard and a rough surface. I could just get out the words:
“You are not able to do this.”
“You’ve always underestimated me, Thistel. For my sake you sent your adders to bring death to the manor folk. But don’t you worry; I’ve taken care of them.”
As if I’d been sorry for the manor folk.
He stroked my hair. Then I felt fatigue filling me. I realized how much of my power I’d passionately wasted during the day, and I knew it was too much. I was completely empty.
“Stay with me, Thistel. Teach me and let me teach you. We are old already. We should not waste . . . ”
“Was this why you went to such great trouble?”
“I did not wish to annoy you. You know I’m not evil-minded.” He helped me up when I asked and tried to take me in his arms. I dragged myself to the door, anyway, and out. He did not call after me but I felt his eyes. I had no strength left for walking and fell down.
Heron came to me and carried me back to the cottage. He covered me with a fur softened by wear and started to mix something in the pestle.
My eyes started to close.
“I will not have your shoots,” I whispered, but Peregrine came into my dreams and lay beside me.
A Heart Clothed in Black
(an excerpt from Pereat Mundus: A Novel, Sort Of)
Leena Krohn
Translated by Hildi Hawkins
Leena Krohn is one of Finland’s most respected contemporary authors. A diverse and prolific writer, her work includes novels, short stories, essays, and books for children; her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. In 1992, she won the Finlandia Prize, Finland’s most prestigious literary award. Krohn’s brilliant novella Tainaron: Mail from Another Cityis available in English, as is Datura, out this year from Cheeky Frawg. Pereat Mundus,the novel from which this excerpt is taken, won the Young Aleksis Kivi Prize when it was published in 1998. In the vignette to follow, the novel’s many-faceted protagonist, Håkan, takes the form of a disgruntled literary critic, who is about to experience yet another odd encounter . . .
Håkan opened a new cardboard folder. He was talking to himself, as was his habit.
“What have they got for us this time?”
It was another collection of poetry. Fretful even before starting to read it, Håkan began to leaf through the pile of paper which, in terms of thickness, could have been a novel. Håkan read: “the bleary backyards, eyes open like fevered lilies,” “the noise of the telephone lines of desire speeds to you,” “the traps of stamenate letters await you as their prey.”
Håkan did indeed feel himself to be prey, in a clamp and a trap. He bent humbly over the keyboard and began what was already his fourth report that week: “This extensive collection demonstrates its writer’s industry and ambition. However, the writer uses very unwieldy imagery. Such expressions as ‘amorous geldings’ or ‘adverse furniture’ etc. will leave the reader a little cold.”
Håkan’s job was to read the manuscripts of amateur writers for a large publisher: prose poems, essays, collections of poetry, short stories and aphorisms, historical novels, fantasy novels, autobiographies, and in recent times also experimental, interactive fiction. He had been reading for more than a decade: three, four or even five manuscrip
ts a week. That was almost twenty manuscripts a month, a couple of hundred a year.
And Håkan did not merely read: he wrote a page or page and a half reporting on each manuscript and left it with the publisher’s literature department.
Håkan did his work without any particular lust for power, his only aim to earn his living, which remained modest despite a considerable number of weekly hours worked. The fee for each report had remained the same for more than a decade. Without any wish to do so, Håkan wielded cultural and political power. Relying on his reports, the publisher decided to publish or reject the manuscripts. Almost always, it rejected them, for only one or two percent of the manuscripts it received were put on the publisher’s list.
Once Håkan himself had thought he would be a writer. But when, as a young student of literature, as a result of a request from a publisher friend, he had begun to read other people’s attempts, he had quickly, almost as if beaten, abandoned his dream.
In those manuscripts he had seen, as if reproduced in the fragments of a mirror, his own incapacity. Their narcissism, artificiality, lack of concreteness, scattered thoughts, and feeble emotions were also among his own weaknesses. He was man enough to admit it to himself. When he wrote poems and little stories, he always, as he began, seemed to see before him, in the space of thought, a text which he only had to write down. It was bright, light, logical, and universal. But it was an entirely different piece of writing from the one which appeared painfully on the screen of his computer. The original text escaped irretrievably from his grasp. The prey remained uncaught.
Over the years, his work as a reader had become increasingly burdensome and unpleasant to Håkan. Only once or twice a year did he bring back to his studio a manuscript that brought him a little hope and confidence. Writing reports took Håkan longer and longer. He had begun to feel that reading a manuscript exacted much more from him than the time he could have used for real literature. And real literature did exist, although at his most miserable he was in danger of forgetting it. Reading manuscripts also robbed him of his enthusiasm for life, his self-respect, and his belief in humankind.
Sometimes Håkan still believed that if he had never started working as a reader, he might after all have developed into a writer. Now it was, in any case, too late. The destructive flood of manuscripts had drowned beneath it his flexibility, his open world-view, and who knows, any talents of his that might have been worth developing.
There were months in which he only managed to read ten or fifteen manuscripts, and then he lived on tuna fish and porridge and was forced to ask his bank to give him a month’s mortgage holiday.
As he read, Håkan often gesticulated and grimaced. He would grind his teeth, snort contemptuously, even swear aloud. Sometimes he said: “For heaven’s sake!” or “Oh, really?” At others he would hiss, “That’s it!” And, with increasing regularity, “Completely pointless!”
An expression of contempt had begun to establish itself on his increasingly bony features.
At first, Håkan had signed his reports with his own name. But a few years ago he had abandoned this incontestably decent habit. He now submitted his reports anonymously and sent them straight to the editors in the literary department. The publisher did not reveal the name of the report-writer, even on request.
It had become necessary to adopt this slightly impolite procedure because of increasing numbers of telephone calls and letters. Only those whose manuscripts had been rejected and who felt they had been treated unfairly contacted Håkan. But, of course, they were in the majority, by a long way.
A certain case, which was in itself insignificant but which had enraged Håkan, had given him the final grounds for anonymity. One Tuesday, when Håkan was getting off the local train carrying a heavy briefcase full of manuscripts that he intended to return to the publisher, an unknown male stopped him.
“So you are Håkan B.,” he had said.
Unsuspecting, Håkan had conceded that he was indeed the person in question.
“So it’s you,” the man continued, piercing him with a glance; its significance was by no means clear.
Håkan waited for the man to introduce himself, but this he did not do. The unknown man was well-dressed and had recently paid a visit to the barber’s. To judge by his appearance, he could have worked at a bank or in a life-insurance office. He was certainly not a manual worker or in receipt of unemployment benefit.
As Håkan walked on along the station bridge, the man attached himself to Håkan’s left side.
“What an ass!” the man said, and Håkan started strongly. He did not believe he had heard correctly.
But the man said again: “Ass!”
Håkan continued walking steadily without glancing at the man again. His voice deep with hatred, the man hissed new and quite extraordinary insults and curses into Håkan’s left ear.
Håkan tried desperately to remember where he might have met this character and how he had hurt him. As their shoes clattered in rhythm on the tarmac he thought he understood. It seemed that they had never met. Perhaps the man’s abuse was not really personal, although he seemed somehow to have discovered Håkan’s name.
“You,” the man said, “are lacking in both intelligence and heart. I doubt you even have a cortex.”
A cortex? Swallows twittered and pecked at something between the rails. The station clock shone in the cold morning twilight like a second moon. They pushed forward toward the station’s swinging doors, side by side like comrades, in the thick torrent of people hurrying to work.
How, when, and where had this completely unfamiliar man gained such an extraordinarily unflattering image of him? Håkan pressed on as usual, his shoulders a little hunched forward, still not responding to the man’s aggressive outbursts.
“Has no one ever told you that those articles in the Literary Critics’ Society yearbook are pathetic scribbles? They should never have been published.”
Once again, Håkan did not respond, and the man did not appear to expect him to. The two articles to which his persecutor referred had appeared in the yearbook five and eight years earlier. It was quite extraordinary that anyone should still remember them. Both of them dealt with a subject that one would not think passion-provoking: they pondered the problems of the philosophy of art, with particular reference to the relationship between the authentic and the copy.
Håkan felt the man’s nervous panting in his ear. For a moment he felt him shake with an anger that had no doubt been seeking an opening for some time. Håkan feared that the worst could happen at any moment: the man would hardly be able to control his rage for much longer, but would soon attack him physically, push him into the cold mud of the bridge and strangle him with the soft green scarf that Håkan had recently bought to guard against the cold November winds.
But Håkan pushed open the heavy glass door and nothing fateful happened. Now the man shifted from literary scholarship to something completely different.
“Only an idiot like you,” the man said, “could wear a scarf of such a ghastly color.”
It was as if he had grasped Håkan’s thought about the scarf he would be strangled with. Only when they had reached the newspaper kiosk did Håkan turn suddenly toward the man and say simply: “Goodbye,” and for some reason made to grasp the man by the hand.
At the last moment he realized how completely at variance with the situation his impulse was, and pulled his hand away.
The man had stopped in front of him, very close to him; his flood of words had now ceased. He stared at Håkan with wide eyes made sharp by hatred. Håkan felt that the inimical stranger could see him, his faults and mistakes, as if enlarged, without subterfuge or defence. The man could see his bad posture, the ugliness of his aging body, the boil on his chin, and the folds in the flabby skin on his neck—as if they had been what was essential about Håkan. It occurred to Håkan that perhaps the green scarf, which had delighted him, did not suit him at all. Perhaps it made his pallid cheeks unpleasantly green.
“You think you are looking at me,” Håkan said soundlessly, “but you are wrong. I am quite different.”
Hatred is not blind—but nevertheless, it is, for unlike love, it sees only what is visible. And for a moment Håkan felt himself to be one and the same as his intellectual, emotional, and physical weaknesses, to be their sum and nothing but.
Håkan descended the elevator with his head bowed, unnaturally stiff. He still felt the man’s burning gaze on his neck. Only as he reached the station tunnel did he understand that he had probably read the man’s manuscript and written a report on it. It could not have been a flattering one.
As soon as he reached the publisher’s office, after leaving the manuscripts and his opinions with the editorial assistant, he announced that from now on he did not intend to sign his reports with his own name. The leading editor of the literary department was fetched. He approved Håkan’s demand so calmly and as such a matter of course that Håkan was amazed. It was only now that it occurred to him that the publisher’s other readers (whose identity he did not himself know) perhaps never appeared under their own names. He alone had been so naïve that he had for years signed his reports and thus submitted himself to the intrusions and anger of rejected writers.
After this Håkan became more cautious as a writer of reports. He did not wish for any more lifelong enemies in addition to the numerous ones he imagined he already had. Sometimes, as he lay awake, Håkan felt an unknown anger seeking, in the darkness, his slowed heart.
But at the same time he could feel his self-respect crumbling. Håkan had once believed in honesty, unconditional and unflinching directness. But now he knew that the consequences of frankness could be terrible and completely unpredictable. He was not only afraid for his own peace of mind. After all, there was some primitive sympathy in him even for the writers. Who stood to benefit from his sincerity? How much would it weigh against the damage he had caused? Could he pride himself in a directness that resulted in deep and lengthy discomfort, perhaps even in acts of desperation?
It Came from the North Page 21
