The Rabbit Back Literature Society

by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

  He didn’t long for death. His problem was thinking too much. He was always over-thinking things, and it was sapping his strength, day by day.

  As he gazed into the distance, he could see that the world was full of people who longed for death because they couldn’t bear the weight of their own thoughts. Thinking might be fun at first, but then you got hooked on it. People were even encouraged to do it in school, and in many popular pastimes. In the end, though, it made you miserable.

  Winter didn’t know many writers who weren’t unhappy—and he knew a lot of writers, both in the Society and all around the world. The great majority of them suffered from alcoholism, mental health problems and stress. Excessive thinking was eating writers away from the inside out. Four writers he knew had recently committed suicide. Just two days earlier he’d learned that a Chilean colleague had shot himself in the head.

  Alcohol only made a person’s thoughts deeper and darker, even if it did offer a brief period of respite. The answer was to eat.

  Winter had hit on something important: the happiest people were the ones who existed as little more than dimly conscious food-ingestion devices that enjoyed the occasional orgasm. Intelligence and thinking were really only needed for acquiring food. Once a person’s belly was full and he had some food stored close by, thinking was reduced to a minimum and worries and needs could gradually be forgotten entirely.

  So Winter escaped from the world and excessive thinking into his kitchen, his monastery. He had only to devote himself to eating, he needn’t worry about anything else—not his unfinished novel, or dogs, or women, or the origins of the universe or the meaning of life. And he knew that in the end he wouldn’t regret his sausagey fingers, or even his penis, left behind on the other side of his expanding corporeal self.

  19

  ELLA MILANA went to the grocery store, and there were three writers from the Rabbit Back Literature Society there. They weren’t there together. Each was on his or her own mission.

  Oona Kariniemi was standing in the middle of the fruit section with a large, red hat on her head. She was squeezing the plums and also watching an old woman who was taking some time to examine the pears. The woman’s wrinkled face trembled with extreme concentration and deliberation. She went through nine pears in all before she found the perfect one and put it in her bag.

  Kariniemi smiled and turned to look for another subject. Ella went around her at a suitable distance.

  It was annoyingly difficult to get anywhere. People were milling around in the aisles, alone or with their families, clogging up the place, pushing past each other, peering around, babies crying, their mouths gaping, whining and bawling, the squeaky shopping trolley wheels clattering through the crowd, the air dense with odours, the ventilation inadequate for such a large number of people, splashes of coffee and something else, something sticky, on the floor, children shoving and Creatureville characters appearing from someplace to pass out sweets—Look kids! It’s Bobo Clickclack and the Odd Critter—and when the Odd Critter took off its head to go and have a cigarette, Mother Snow came out from a back room to take over. Ella tried to move farther away but Bobo Clickclack was behind her and he elbowed her lightly between her shoulder blades. She turned around, angry and overheated, but he thrust a basket of sweets in front of her, so she took one, thanked him and kept moving. Then she saw another member of the Society. Elias Kangasniemi was standing in the baby supply section, expensively dressed, apparently absorbed in his cell phone, and just behind him a couple was arguing, holding a greyish baby and pushing a shopping trolley full to the brim with infant formula and beer, the man growling and the woman whimpering, and when she looked more closely at Kangasniemi, Ella was almost certain that he was recording their conversation with his phone because it was good material and he didn’t want to miss a single word of it. When the couple moved on Kangasniemi followed them with his phone in his hand pretending to look at the shelves and Ella thought of what Douglas Dogson said in Martti Winter’s novel Hidden Agendas: Are writers the torchbearers of humanity? It’s a romantic idea, but it’s complete rubbish. We writers are the crocodiles in the river.

  There was a series of soft thuds from the fruit department. A member of staff came running because someone had caused an avalanche of oranges. The floor was covered in orange balls, which people were kicking around the store.

  Ella closed her eyes for a moment and cursed the crowd. It was usually quiet in the market, the lines short, but the sign on the door explained the situation: RABBIT MARKET’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY! COME IN FOR COFFEE AND CAKE! She had seen the sign and yet she had come in anyway. Good Lord. She couldn’t stand crowds.

  She opened her eyes and started powering her way to the cashier, her temples throbbing. She didn’t want any coffee or cake. She didn’t want to do her shopping anymore. She was weak and sweaty, trying to find some open space, and when she passed too close to the shelf and something fell on the floor, she didn’t want to know what it was. She hadn’t had a proper meal and her blood sugar was low. She dug in her pocket, trying to find the caramel Bobo Clickclack had given her.

  Then an orange rolled out from under a shelf, slowly, with fateful dignity.

  She watched it come towards her, transfixed.

  But her feet kept walking, and she stepped on it.

  The next thing she knew, both feet were in the air. It was all so ridiculous! She expected to land on the floor with a flop and was surprised when she realized she was falling upward.

  She woke up and found herself lying on something high in the air.

  Gusts of wind tore at her clothes. There was snow in the air. She sat up, looked around, and realized she was still in Rabbit Market. She had flown up to the top shelf in the middle aisle. She thought for a moment and figured out what had happened: the store’s super-charged ventilation system must have had a thrombosis that carried even the customers along with it.

  The shelves were surprisingly high, at least ten metres up. The air there was thin, but it was fresher than down near the floor. The loaded shelves swayed in the wind. She felt like she was standing on the deck of a ship. She looked down at the people pushing their shopping trolleys. No one looked up.

  Ella felt contented there. She could walk quickly on the top of the shelves to the cashier and get out of the place.

  Someone whistled to her.

  Three shelves away, near the coffee, was Oona Kariniemi, swinging her legs in front of the packages of Costa Rican. Her mouth was spread in an amused grin, her pearly white teeth peeping out between red-painted lips. Kariniemi winked at Ella, and Ella winked back.

  There was a flutter somewhere above them. Elias Kangasniemi was gliding among the ceiling lights with his arms spread. His expensive wool coat flapped like outspread wings.

  He noticed Ella, flew closer, smiled warmly, and tipped his hat to her. Gazing upward at him, Ella curtseyed. It seemed appropriate. She felt a respect for his flying skills.

  “I was thinking I would write a novel up here,” Kangasniemi shouted. “No rest for the weary.”

  Ella nodded, grinning. She was enjoying watching him fly. He banked, riding a current of air, manoeuvring adeptly through the falling snow.

  Then he looked troubled.

  Oona Kariniemi whispered that it wasn’t polite to watch a colleague at work. She turned her back on Kangasniemi and motioned for Ella to do the same. Before Ella could obey, Kangasniemi opened his mouth and screeched like a hawk. The cry made one of the light fixtures rattle. The store dimmed and cooled a little. Then, stretching his arms in front of him, he shot away between the shelves.

  Ella looked after him. Had he fallen? He soon came back into view, making his way upward again, panting and sweating into the air, dragging a fat woman with him. He wobbled, collided with a shelf, made a small turn, and finally landed next to Ella with his prey. The shelf shook. A package of cookies fell down into the depths and onto a customer’s head. Ella heard a cry of surprise.

  Elias Kangasniemi s
traightened his tie and said with careful articulation, “I don’t know if you noticed, but this woman has a very interesting way of talking to people. I just had to have it. I’ll probably throw the rest away.”

  He took a large hunting knife from under his coat, bent over the woman he’d just nabbed, then stopped and smiled at Ella in polite supplication. Ella remembered her manners and turned away, then became frightened when something large, cold and hard was pressed against her cheek.

  The world reeled. She gulped for air as if she were just being born.

  She was lying on her back on the floor. Around her were oranges, puddles and standing feet. Someone wondered aloud whether the former substitute teacher was drunk in the middle of the day.

  Ella saw Silja Saaristo’s face in front of her. She blinked.

  “Honey,” Saaristo whispered. “I have bad news for you.”

  Ella made a questioning sound.

  “You’re dead,” Saaristo said. “You were shot four times, stabbed three times, and struck on the head twice, once with Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian and once with A History of Finnish Literature. There seem to have been nine murderers.”

  There followed a moment of silence.

  Ella looked at Saaristo. Her head buzzed hollowly. She felt a chill. “Dead?” she said.

  Saaristo giggled. “Come on, you. You must have fainted.”

  Saaristo helped her up. The crowd went about their business.

  “It was a lovely collapse,” Saaristo said. “Like something out of an old melodrama. All that was missing were the smelling salts. It’s no wonder you fainted in this crowd. Free coffee and cake will get the masses out better than resurrection day.” She looked around, smiled broadly, and said, “But if you want to find characters for a book, this is a good place to do it, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I found bits of a serial killer’s mother, half of a hero’s lover, and three whole peripheral characters today. A nice haul.”

  20

  IN THE BACK ROOM OF the library was Ingrid Katz’s desk and its drawer, which hadn’t been unlocked in two months. There was only one key to the drawer in existence. It was hanging around Ingrid Katz’s neck.

  Two months earlier she’d had her interest piqued by a damaged book, a first edition of the first book in the Creatureville series. It had been published in 1963 and its title was simply Creatureville.

  Laura White’s works had always managed to avoid the book plague, but a small boy had brought this copy of Creatureville back and reported that the words were in the wrong order. There was nothing in the book to read, and if you did read it, it didn’t make any sense.

  Ingrid Katz checked and saw that the book had become badly tainted. The words had changed places, the letters were jumbled. If you stared at the text long enough you might even see small alterations occurring before your eyes.

  She had wondered for some time what would happen to the books that had the plague if you left them alone. For years she had been burning all the tainted books immediately, but burning a first edition Laura White wasn’t something to be done lightly.

  So, on a momentary impulse, she had wrapped Creatureville in Christmas paper, shoved it in the drawer, and locked it.

  She wouldn’t open the drawer again today, or tomorrow, and probably not for another month. She wouldn’t do it until the time was right—when she was sure that enough time had passed, and sure that she herself was ready to see the result.

  21

  FEBRUARY IN RABBIT BACK HAD been dark, cold and snowy, and Laura White’s body hadn’t been found.

  People had started to have dreams about it and talked about their dreams everywhere—in line at the store, at cafés, kiosks and bank machines. On her Thursday visit to Mother White’s Café, Ella heard detailed accounts of how the authoress’s body had been sitting in people’s kitchens, living rooms, attics and nursery rooms, reading her own books aloud “through dry lips that rustled like paper”, as one old man put it. Ella could see that the man’s talk was alarming old Eleanoora, who was standing behind the counter trying to arrange the baked goods.

  When she’d finished her coffee, Ella walked through the woods back to the village and popped into the bookstore to buy some notebooks and pens. The bookstore owner was recounting his dream of the night before to the sales clerk loudly enough that Ella could hear the whole thing as she walked among the shelves:

  I heard a child screaming and I ran to the kids’ room. Saku and Irina were in their beds, and at first I didn’t see anything unusual. The kids didn’t say a word, but I could see that they were quite white and stiff and their eyes were spinning in their heads like tops. Then I saw that Laura White’s body was sitting on the wall, just as if it were a floor, you know what I mean? She was holding the Creatureville book that Saku got from his grandma last Christmas and reading it out loud to the children. And her voice was the most awful thing, like rustling dry leaves, and I knew that no one could make her stop until she’d read the book all the way to the end.

  I woke up all sweaty. And it’s obvious that my kids have had similar dreams. I wouldn’t dare to ask them about it, but they’ve been sleeping with the lights on. I’m sure it won’t be long before they clear up what happened to her…

  March approached without any change in the weather. The sky was still lightless and the snow fell constantly. Rabbit Back wrapped itself in a blanket of unending dusk fringed with bad dreams.

  It had been two weeks since Martti Winter had called Ella’s number. Since then Ella had been laying out a strategy. She had to find a way to challenge Winter. He was, after all, the most important, best-known member of the Society and thus her most important informant. Unfortunately, he had no desire to see anyone or to play The Game.

  Ella had been reading through the works of Laura White and the writers of the Literature Society, especially Martti Winter’s books. She wanted to be up to speed when she did her research, and writers are known by their works.

  She had driven past Winter’s house three times, stopping to assess the situation. Martti Winter was no less careful than the other Society members after ten in the evening, perhaps more so. His house was a fortress. You couldn’t just walk in. The front door was locked even in the daytime, and if the house had a back door it must open on to the back garden, which was protected by a ludicrously high wall.

  Ella made a note of the fact that the house seemed to attract dogs. She couldn’t imagine what that meant, but she wrote it down anyway. The smallest detail might prove significant, as any researcher knows.

  She had also spent a lot of time trying to interpret what Winter had said on the phone. It’s out there again. It’s standing in the garden staring at the house. Those were his words.

  Could he have been talking about a dog? It was possible, but why just “it” when there were dozens of dogs around? And how could a dog have got into the garden anyway, when it had a wall around it? Or maybe some member of the Society had been lurking outside, perhaps sci-fi housewife Arne C. Ahlqvist—she had been willing to climb ladders to try to get into Ella’s window.

  But even members of the Rabbit Back Literature Society couldn’t fly over those walls.

  As Ella left the bookstore, the snow began to fall more heavily. Large flakes landed on her face and melted. It occurred to her that it would be terribly sweet and uninhibited to stick out her tongue and catch snowflakes. After all, she’d done it as a child. At least she hoped she had—it seemed a beautiful thought.

  For a moment Ella Milana wanted to be the kind of person who catches snowflakes on her tongue. For a couple of minutes she even tried in earnest to catch at least one snowflake, just to see what that kind of spontaneity felt like.

  Then it occurred to her that thinking about catching snowflakes in this way ruined any possibility of spontaneity. She let the snowflakes fall to the ground undisturbed.

  Ella went into Rabbit Market. There was no free coffee and no overabundance of customers, which suited her very well. In the deli sect
ion, she filled her cart with items from her list. Then an idea occurred to her, and she wadded up the list and started gathering boxes of chocolates, marmalade, chocolate bars, day-old marzipan pastries and cheap packets of biscuits.

  22

  M ARTT I WINTER’S PHONE RANG.

  It was good news, from Rabbit Market. For its anniversary, the market wished to acknowledge its most faithful customers with special baskets of treats. Would Mr Winter be at home to receive a gift delivery?

  23

  WHEN THE BELL RANG for the fifth time, Martti Winter opened the door a crack and peeped out.

  A delivery girl stood halfway up the porch steps with a basket in her arms and a billed cap that hid her eyes. Winter opened the door all the way. He was wearing an English smoking jacket and well-tailored trousers with suede slippers peeping out under the hem. He felt he looked respectable.

  The girl greeted him and expressed her apologies, explaining that there were a lot of baskets to deliver and the other delivery girl had suddenly taken ill and unfortunately Winter’s gift basket was the last one on the list.

  She glanced at her watch. “It’s already after ten. So late! I’m very sorry, Mr Winter. You must already be getting ready for bed at this hour…”

  Martti Winter gave a vague smile, waved a hand and assured her that no harm had been done.

  The delivery girl smiled with relief and handed the basket to him. He took it with pleasure, thanked her, wished her a pleasant evening and warned her not to get too close to the dogs, who weren’t to be trusted.

  As he turned to go back inside, the girl strode quickly up the last two stairs, grabbed hold of his sleeve and flashed a sheepish grin.