It Came from the North

by Carita Forsgren

  “‘Time turbulences,’” I repeated. “‘Back-vortexes’?”

  “I don’t really believe in that,” Alice laughed. She frowned and poked me in the side with her elbow. “The boat’s stuck in something, of course; some scrap vehicle, or something not visible from here.”

  I looked on, spellbound, as grapnels were thrown to the crew of the petrified boat. The hooks stopped mid-air, a few hand-lengths before they could reach the statue-like crew, the ropes hanging in air that seemed to have become viscous, as if a large bowl of jelly had been dumped over the crew and boat.

  The men didn’t seem to be reacting in any way to what was happening around them. Not even the strong wind blowing over the river appeared to have an effect on their clothes or hair.

  To avoid a threatening headache, I turned away from the river and the boats. “If this Heathcliff wasn’t an exaggerated figure, we’d hardly be talking about him here. Really interesting characters are always exaggerated. The essence of literature requires it. Think about Captain Ahab for instance. Are you saying you remember a single flat person in literature?”

  “Josef K? Apropos whales—remind me to buy some fish at the market. I haven’t told you: an acquaintance’s cat fell in love with me when I was visiting, and it decided to move in with me. Its original mistress came over five times to fetch it, but finally got bored with having to fetch the creature. After the sixth time, she solemnly announced that Starback—the cat, that is—would in future be officially my responsibility. The bastard ripped up my reading chair, but I guess I’ll let him stay. I’m going to change his name, though. Too obvious. The hairball seems to belong to me in some mysterious way. Or rather, I belong to him. Do you ever get that kind of feeling?”

  I smiled to myself.

  We started to walk away from the river, towards a little café on Waffle Street, a few blocks away. They sold such sinfully delicious cinnamon buns that after eating them you’d need absolution, and besides that, the back tables hid you from people’s probing eyes. I hailed us a taxi. The next morning’s newspapers would provide quite enough information about time discharges, river pollution, and what all that would mean in practice. The day was much too sweet to be wasted on anything except the 352nd meeting of the Literary Discussion Club with a Lady Librarian called Alice.

  In the café Alice suddenly blanched. I followed her eyes and saw the family at the window table. Their disabled child was grinning and gabbling away peculiarly; talking was obviously difficult for the boy. Alice couldn’t take her eyes off the child, and seemed actually ill. To redirect her attention, I cautiously began talking about my dreams as a sort of natural sequel to all the other strange events.

  “Do your dreams include a white villa by the seaside?” Alice suddenly asked.

  Thursday

  Gradually people began to notice the blind man, who sat huddled in a wheelchair and seemed to be waiting for something. Whoever was this person, buffeted by fate, who spent days on end sitting outside in the Library courtyard?

  I could feel eyes probing me, like an itch on my skin. I already recognized several of the footsteps that regularly passed by me. As they drew closer, their rhythm would always falter slightly. A few times somebody even decided to approach me, although I tried to look as self-sufficient and unfriendly as possible. Do you need help, sir? Are you perhaps going to the Library, sir?

  No thanks, I used to answer. I’m just here to look at the scenery, that’s quite obvious, isn’t it? Please remove yourself; you’re obstructing my view.

  Without exception, my rudeness was followed by a moment’s surprised silence and then a sound of receding footsteps. Offense felt has its very own rhythm, and nothing offends people quite as much as a rude rebuff of proffered help.

  I felt stupid, like a lunatic even, not because I was being rude to kind people—it’s not for blind cripples to be friendly, after all—but because I did indeed spend all my days sitting in front of the Library, just like some crazy pigeon expecting an undefined but pleasant miracle.

  If only I’d gone into the Library the first time, like I’d intended. I wanted nothing, except to know whether a certain person I’d imagined to be there really did sit upstairs. To be sure, I had no rational grounds for my belief. I just had to know. That’s why I came here the first time, and that’s why I returned every morning.

  But I hesitated too long. I could neither go forward nor withdraw. In vain, a voice from some ancient movie kept yelling in my head: Soldier, don’t lie down under fire!

  Of course I could’ve braved it and asked someone I heard coming out the Library, “Excuse me, but was there a middle-aged woman working in the adult fiction department, a lady with shoulder-length brown hair, with a little grey in it, dark eyes and glasses, and rather small breasts? Yes, and such exciting lines under her eyes?”

  I could have had certainty so easily. And that’s where the problem lay: I was deadly afraid of an answer. “No, there was no such woman. There was a young, blond lady with big breasts, and sometimes there’s a spindly young man with glasses. I’m sorry, I’ve never seen a middle-aged lady with brown hair and small breasts in the Library.”

  I was sitting in the yard, maybe for the eighth day, when my wheelchair suddenly gave a jolt and started moving. “What on earth?” I squealed.

  “I’m sorry if I startled you,” a voice said behind me. “I’ll help you into the Library, and there’s a lift in the foyer. It’s too cold to stay outside, waiting. Besides, you are in people’s way, you with your chair. What’s that supposed to mean, anyway, sit in the Library courtyard for days without coming in? Do you expect the books to come running into your arms?”

  “Where did you get the idea that I was even on my way to the Library?” I protested.

  “Yes, you are,” the woman answered, wheeling me around quickly. “Hoopla, here’s the start of the stairs! Sorry for the bumpy ride, they’ll probably never put up a ramp here. Just lucky they haven’t wheeled the books away yet.”

  “You behave as if we were old acquaintances,” I said. I noticed I was sounding like a grumpy old geezer.

  The woman was silent a moment; we stopped in the middle of the stairs. “But so we are,” she said then, her voice tense. “Old acquaintances. I’ve walked past you on so many Thursdays already. It took me quite a while before I realized. Recognized. I almost missed you in those sunglasses and that wheelchair. You are different in my . . . ”

  There was a pause. I listened to her puffing as she resumed pulling my wheelchair up the staircase.

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, sorry. I must sound crazy!” the woman said. “It’s just me being silly, a sign of my peculiar sense of humor. You know what dedicated lady librarians are like. One’s got to read as many books as possible so one knows what’s there on the shelves, and one’s poor head gets all mixed up in the process. Something like this happened in a book I read, and I just—oh, sorry. I won’t bother you anymore. I’m not mad, just a little impulsive sometimes. I kidnap innocent people to play my own little games. I keep my imagination on a rather long and loose tether and every now and again it sort of escapes to bother bystanders. Well, here’s the lift. Oops, oh my, your legs almost got stuck in the doors. Are you feeling ill?”

  I felt breathless; I was moving altogether too fast from one nerve-racking situation to another. “The lift? I don’t really feel comfortable in lifts,” I said. “When I was young, a miserable lift cable broke along with its miserable emergency backup, and I fell seven floors inside the lift. A freak accident that couldn’t possibly happen, they said. That’s what they told me afterwards. My legs were broken in every possible place, and my eyesight knocked straight out of my brainpan. And since I now have certain difficulties getting up stairs, I’ve been avoiding buildings with more than one floor.”

  My explanation sounded silly. There was no need for me to explain anything. I always talked too much when I wasn’t in control of a situation.

  “Now me, I don’t like
swimming,” the woman said. “I’m sorry I forced you into the lift. I assume you don’t live in an apartment building, then.”

  “Actually, I do. On the ground floor. But sometimes I dream of moving to a detached house. It can even have two floors; I should be fine falling one floor in a good lift. I wish I could move into a big white villa by the seaside, for instance. I’ve dreamt about one like that sometimes. If I ever win the lottery, I’ll buy a big white villa by the sea, even build one, if there isn’t one available. But then, I never buy lottery tickets.”

  I waited for the woman’s reaction to my words. I thought I recognized her now, however irrational the idea seemed, but if only I could ask her to describe herself. Excuse me, Ms. Librarian, but do you happen to have pretty small breasts and brown hair? My cheeks felt hot.

  “A white villa by the sea would certainly be nice,” the woman finally said. “But it’d be sad to live alone in a house like that. The nearness of the sea can feel heavy if one lives alone. I read that somewhere. Now think of all that roaring, and the long lonely strips of beach . . .. Besides, you’d have to install cross-country tires on your wheelchair so you wouldn’t get stuck in the wet sand. And a strong motor, so you won’t get caught by the rising tide.”

  “Well, I have actually dreamed of a charming daughter, as well; so I wouldn’t be alone. She could push me along the beach.”

  “Giselle,” the woman said. “Her name might be Giselle, for instance.”

  “Violin,” I said. “Would play it. Giselle, that is. Poorly.”

  The words slipped out my mouth in every direction; I couldn’t get a grip on them. I kept swallowing loudly. Our conversation had turned completely absurd, but it had its own peculiar logic. If I’d had a pair of functioning legs under me, they’d have buckled by now and I would have fallen and hit my head against the lift wall.

  “Ms. Lindeman’s spaniel,” the woman continued in the same vein.

  I clutched my chair. I was afraid I’d fall to the floor, at her feet. Last night’s dream, I thought, head humming. We were having a lift conversation about the very same things. Two excited children might have talked much the same way about a wonderful but forbidden TV program, of which each happened to see only fragments.

  The lift came to a stop. The cables barked in the lift shaft. Something banged metallically. The doors, however, refused to open. The woman had stopped us between floors. I felt her cinnamon breath warm on my skin. She’d had buns for breakfast. She loved cinnamon buns, yes. She had small boyish breasts, brown hair, and she ate cinnamon buns morning, noon, and evening. Chewed them with a blissful expression on her face. I knew it. She bent down towards me, surely looking at me carefully, her hair touching my ear.

  “Dug it up from the sand,” I said. “That spaniel. The violin.”

  She started to laugh, or actually to guffaw, and I’d have joined in her laughter if I hadn’t been so afraid of the lift pulling the same trick on me as its ancient colleague had done. The recollection of Ms. Lindeman standing in the doorway was simply so madly ridiculous, though nothing like that had ever happened in reality. Ms. Lindeman with the sandy violin in one hand, the spaniel’s leash in the other, and a sullen, shocked expression on her perpetually worried face. “I know this violin!” Ms. Lindeman had cried, her flabby wattle trembling. “Don’t you believe for a moment that I wouldn’t recognize this violin, poor little Giselle’s poor dear instrument! You uncivilized barbarians!”

  In my life, many people had asked me whether the blind see dreams. Generally I acted as though I hadn’t heard the question, and most people immediately realized they’d crossed over the lines of propriety and never asked again. Yes they do, the answer sounded in my mind. And they wake up from their dreams, hearts ready to burst, with the remains of laughter still lingering on dry lips. On their retinas: a fading, beloved image.

  The lift jolted and started its ascent again. The doors opened. I sensed a wide plateau opening up in front of me, filled with bookshelves. This was the place that I came to in my dreams to meet the lady I didn’t really know, but with whom I was deeply in love. In the dream I always ascended the stairs on my own two feet and met the Lady Librarian with eyes that could see.

  “Excuse me,” said a male voice. It hinted at slight intoxication. “You’re not allowed to bring cats in here. The cat library is somewhere else, if anywhere. I don’t know if they read anything, do you? Oh, Ms. Boumgarden, good morning to you. That your cat? The lift seemed to get stuck for a moment. I took the liberty of using the lift key when I noticed it, though the alarm bells didn’t ring. Did you push the stop button by accident? Or did the cat do it? The cat, of course: they’re always up to mischief as soon as you turn your eyes.”

  “Good morning to you, Porter. No, the cat’s not mine,” Alice said. “I don’t have a cat. Perhaps it mistook the building. There’s a cat food factory a couple of blocks away.”

  “Neither have I,” I said. “I don’t like cats. They scratch. Is there a cat here?”

  A cat’s moist lips touched my hand then, as if reminding me of something I’d forgotten. Perhaps mildly reproaching me for not remembering. It wasn’t mine, but for some reason I suddenly felt responsible for it. I scratched it carefully, experimentally, and a moment later there was a warm, live furry blanket in my lap, that trembled lightly.

  “That’s odd,” the Porter said. “I somehow imagined Ms. Librarian would have a cat. Perhaps I’ve only dreamed it, then. Pardon my French, ma’am, sir, I’m just a loudmouth. Jabbering on about my dreams to ladies and library customers. Me, I say what comes to mind; listening is your own responsibility. Shut your ears, ladies and gentlemen, here comes the Library porter! An irresponsible orator but you’d be hard pushed to find a better ladler of soup! But the cat, though . . . it’s got to go out. The lending terminals don’t know how to record cats’ fingers. Do cats have fingers? I don’t know.”

  When the porter had left (his endless babble still sounding from the descending lift), the Lady Librarian kissed me directly on the mouth without warning. I lifted my hand and lightly touched one of her small breasts, thereby confirming her identity one more time, and pulled back my hand a moment before the touch would have become too obvious, even vulgar. The kiss also ended as soon as it had begun, but it resounded in my flesh like the toll of a great bell of destiny.

  The cat in my lap purred contentedly. “Listen, is there a star on the cat’s back?” I asked.

  “You know there is,” the Lady Librarian said.

  The Golden Chain of Days

  Wednesday never opened up to me. All the other weekdays became clear, one at a time, but for some reason I never remembered Wednesday. We found each other one weekday after the other; we steadily became aware of the existence of the other weekdays, and so the days gradually linked up into a kind of golden chain. In the phase when the days neared complete clarity in our minds, they began to settle in our minds into an unbroken, almost seamless continuity.

  After Thursday we lived on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Sunday was followed by Monday and Monday by Tuesday, but between Tuesday and Thursday there seemed to be a black hole. Wednesday always was to me the dark spot of the week, so that I moved directly from Tuesday to Thursday. Alice never admitted to remembering anything from Wednesday. The strange truth about Wednesday was revealed to me only much later, after Alice’s death, and with it many other problems occupying my mind were solved.

  It was paradoxical that the clearer we remembered the different days of the week, the more confused our lives became. Our residences kept changing from one day to another, and so did our family relations, our personal histories, even our feelings. The city around us took on different forms in different days. Buildings differed, and so did traffic arrangements. Our city was already known for its complicated driving routes, which nobody could learn to master. Where one day a market square would exist in one place, a bus station or a park would have sprung up the next. Perhaps the dreams originating from other days of the
week were causing the mix-ups.

  Thursdays I woke up blind and paralyzed. After I remembered the other days, I started to loath my Thursday’s wheelchair. Finally, I didn’t even bother to get out of bed then, which eventually caused me all kinds of nasty physical complaints from bedsores to muscular atrophy. My body in Thursday remained paralyzed by the childhood lift accident, while in contrast my mind was freed from those restrictions and afflictions through my dreams and memories of the other weekdays. Gradually though, I was forced to rehabilitate myself, and live again in Thursdays, too.

  Fridays I thirsted for Alice on the one hand, but on the other I also loved my wife Marissa; just like Alice also genuinely cared for her own Mr. Boumgarden, who had never run away from her. We didn’t even touch each other in that weekday, although we could remember, with painful vividness, what we meant to each other in the other days of the week, and what we did together. We even abstained to the last from kisses. We met under platonic circumstances in the daytime, at our Literary Discussion Club get-togethers, where we indeed only discussed literature, and we always parted again and went to bed with our beloved spouses. We knew that when next we opened our eyes, it’d be Saturday, and Alice and I would lie naked in each other’s arms in the bedroom of our two-room flat, at least half a city away from the place where we’d gone to sleep in Friday.

  Saturdays it felt strange to think that our spouses Marissa and Mr. Boumgarden were left behind; when they woke up in the morning, they found us next to them, since they still lived in Friday. When Alice and I had finally lived through all the other days of the week (except maybe Wednesday) and woke in the next Friday, we returned to the arms of our spouses. They never had the faintest idea that we’d been living other lives in the meantime. We felt a strange guilt for what was happening, and yet, in the reality of our spouses, we’d slept through the night decently next to them.