‘No, you were right,’ her mother replied.
Inside the ice cream van sat Håkan tapping away at a small portable typewriter. Håkan was wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a dark blue silk tie. His typing was very concentrated and solemn, his back straight. Every now and then his eyes would absent-mindedly glance at the horizon and the empty beach.
‘It’s a new ice cream man!’ said Elsa.
‘Looks like it,’ said her mother. ‘What an outfit.’
‘How odd,’ said Elsa. ‘He’s sitting in the van typing. Whatever for?’
‘You get the ice cream,’ said her mother, languidly closing her eyes again. ‘I’ll wait in the shade. I’m sure he’ll be able to leave his writing to sell you a cone or two. At least you won’t have to queue like normal.’
‘Aren’t you having one?’
‘Yes, I’ll have the mango if they’ve got any,’ her mother said.
Elsa looked at the ice cream van. A faint haze was shimmering above the sand. The van looked like it was inside a cloud, a cloud of words.
As Elsa approached the van Håkan removed his fingers from the typewriter.
‘And what’s it to be?’ he asked.
‘Why are you writing?’ asked Elsa.
‘Because I have to.’
‘Aha. What are you writing?’
‘A will,’ he replied. ‘ … of sorts.’
‘You mean where you say who gets your things when you die?’
‘Another kind of will,’ he said. ‘And what would you like?’
‘Mango. Two. Are you going to die soon?’
Håkan took two wafer cones and filled each one with two scoops of yellow mango ice cream.
‘I have no intention of dying, but it might very well happen. And not just to me either. That’ll be eighteen marks.’
Elsa looked in her purse and gave Håkan the exact change.
‘Other people too, you mean?’
‘Have you noticed,’ he asked, ‘how there seems to be no end to this heat wave?’
‘I know,’ said Elsa. ‘It’s great. I can come to the beach every day.’
‘Well, great, I suppose, however you wish to understand it,’ said Håkan. ‘We must be prepared for all eventualities.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Heat waves are not entirely harmless,’ he said.
‘Do you mean someone could die from the heat?’ Elsa asked sceptically.
‘And why not?’ he replied. He had returned to his typing and no longer took any notice of Elsa.
By the time Elsa got back to the shade with the cones the ice cream was half melted.
‘The ice cream man was saying funny things,’ she told her mother. ‘He frightened me.’
‘Was he scaring you?’
‘He said somebody might die. And he’s writing a will.’
‘He’s just pulling your leg,’ her mother said. She walked over towards the ice cream van. Håkan was typing so intensely that at first he did not notice the new customer. Elsa’s mother tapped her nails on the desk, Håkan raised his head and stopped typing.
‘I hope you’re not frightening little children,’ her mother said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Håkan.
‘Did you just tell my daughter that someone might die?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘ That you said that to her?’
‘That someone might die.’
‘Of course they might, but there’s no need for an ice cream vendor to discuss such things with little children.’
‘Not normally, no. But these are exceptional times. There are many things one should talk about, many things one should prepare for, especially those with a family.’
‘What are you talking about? What times?’
‘Consider the weather, for instance. And the birds.’
‘The birds?’
Elsa’s mother looked around her at the beach and the sea. She could not see any birds.
‘There aren’t any birds here.’
‘No,’ said Håkan. ‘Nor are there any people. Strange, don’t you think?’
She walked back and joined Elsa. ‘Best not to pay any attention to what he says. I think he’s a bit … a bit …’
‘A bit of a weirdo.’ Elsa suggested.
‘That’s right,’ said her mother. ‘He’s very strange in any case.’
‘Ugh!’ Elsa shouted. She had found her bottle of suntan lotion.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked her mother.
‘The suntan lotion! It’s leaked into the bag. The sunglasses, the comb, your book – they’re all covered in it!’
‘Isn’t the lid on properly?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Elsa.
‘There must be a hole in it, then,’ said her mother.
Elsa wiped the bottle and the lid and checked them both carefully.
‘But there isn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s not damaged at all.’
‘Show me.’
Her mother bent down and fished the bottle of suntan lotion out of the bag. The lid was indeed shut tight. Her fingers slid as she tried in vain to open it, but still everything in the bag was smeared with yellow oil.
‘It’s a mystery,’ said Elsa contentedly. ‘Maybe we’ll never know what happened.’
‘Maybe. Aren’t you going swimming?’ asked her mother.
‘Yes, but I’d like another ice cream first,’ she replied.
In fact she did not really want another ice cream. She wanted to carry on talking to Håkan.
‘This will be your last one today,’ said her mother. ‘And don’t hang around talking to that man.’
‘More mango?’ asked Håkan.
‘No, something else this time.’
‘We also have pistachio,’ he told her. ‘You can’t get it everywhere. Did I scare you earlier? I didn’t mean to do that, but facts are facts.’
‘Not really. I’ll have the pistachio then,’ she said. ‘Large.’
Her temples had begun to throb. Something like the faint smell of sulphur hung in the air.
‘Are you a real ice cream man?’ Elsa could not help but ask.
‘No. I’m just a stand-in.’
‘Do all stand-ins wear suits like that?’
‘Not normally. Neither do the full-time employees.’
‘So why are you wearing one?’
‘To commemorate this special day.’
‘Is it your birthday?’
‘Quite the opposite,’ replied Håkan.
‘Oh.’ Elsa had to start eating the ice cream, as it was already dripping through the cone.
‘Do you know what the temperature is today?’
‘Yes, I’ve got a thermometer,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It reads nine and thirty.’
‘Wow!’ exclaimed Elsa. ‘Can you die from that?’
‘Not really,’ replied Håkan. ‘If you’re healthy, that is.’
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly healthy.’
‘While it lasts,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Health. But now perhaps it’s time to go.’
‘Where?’
‘Back home,’ said Håkan. ‘I’ll be leaving shortly too.’
‘Is the beach closing?’ asked Elsa.
‘It ought to be closed.’
Elsa rejoined her mother, who had wet a towel and placed it over her face.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s thirty-nine degrees. But the man said you can’t die from that.’
Her mother sneered. ‘Well, that’s comforting. Why did you go and talk to him?’
‘He said we’ll have to leave.’
‘Oh did he now! What a shameless man. The ice cream man doesn’t decide how long we can and can’t stay on the beach.’
‘But he said the whole beach should be closed.’
‘What on earth for? Don’t go up to that van again. You never know with people like that. Who knows what they’ll come u
p with next?’
‘Do you know what,’ said Elsa. ‘It feels like I’m in an aeroplane. My ears have popped.’
‘Try swallowing. Maybe it’s the air pressure, it’s probably dropped.’
Elsa thought for a moment as she swallowed and licked her ice cream. ‘I wonder if the thing with the suntan lotion had something to do with that. Maybe there’s a storm coming or something,’ she said slightly worried.
‘Maybe,’ replied her mother. ‘The weather’s changing, that’s for sure. It can’t go on like this for long. I think a real storm is brewing. Maybe we really should go home, but not because of that ice cream man.’
‘I want to go swimming first. That’s why we came here.’
‘Off you go then. Maybe I should go too,’ said her mother. ‘Though the water is probably boiling hot, it won’t cool us down much.’
They lazily walked over to the water’s edge, Elsa slightly ahead. Just before her toes touched the water she stopped in her tracks.
‘What’s wrong?’ her mother asked.
‘Let’s not go,’ she said. ‘The water looks strange. There’s something in it.’
‘Fish!’ exclaimed her mother.
‘Look, they’re all swimming upside down.’
‘They’re not swimming at all.’
There in the shallow waters floated many different kinds of fish of all shapes and sizes. Their white stomachs shone. They stank.
‘Are they dead?’ asked Elsa.
‘It looks like it. Strange that the birds haven’t noticed them yet,’ said her mother. Elsa looked up at the hot, empty sky.
‘The birds have left,’ a voice said. The ice cream man was standing on the sand in his exquisite suit. His black shoes were gleaming. How ceremoniously quiet it was.
‘They look like they’ve been cooked,’ said Elsa as she stared at the fish.
‘My dear, they are cooked,’ replied Håkan fondly. ‘Look.’
It was dead calm. The reeds stood regally like javelins. Further away amidst the rushes, where the mist hid everything from view, came the sound of bubbling. The water was rippling and babbling.
‘Why is the water moving like that?’ asked Elsa.
They looked in turn at the bubbling surface of the water and the thickening haze. It began to surge and swell, its density building. More fish were washing up on the beach, piling on top of each other. The humid, stinking fog swirled around them, dampening their hair.
‘It’s steam,’ said Håkan. ‘The sea is boiling.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Elsa’s mother exclaimed, flabberghasted. ‘In front of children.’
‘Run!’ he shouted to Elsa. ‘Who’ll be first back to the car?’ He turned and looked at her mother and said sharply: ‘You too, madam.’
Elsa’s mother grabbed her by the hand and they ran like never before. At one point Elsa almost tripped over and looked over her shoulder. There amongst the steam she could see the figure of the ice cream man, standing upright in his black suit. He was not running.
The ice cream man raised his hand in a wave and behind him, far out across the sea, loomed a great white bubble, round like a mother’s breast. It bulged and swelled like a dream beneath a strange, incandescent sun.
Three Prose Poems
Markku Paasonen
Markku Paasonen (born 1967) is a poet whose style often approaches prose, and in particular the vignette. Paasonen’s prose fragments play with the boundaries of reality, as with uninhibited imagination he conjures up images which could stem equally from horror films, film noir or a Dalí painting. Simultaneously he takes a very close look at the world around him, whilst regularly allowing the world of dreams to put in a satirical appearance. The three prose poems featured here were first published in the collection Voittokulku (‘The Triumphal March’, 2001).
Despilfar
Despilfar is displayed in a great glass cabinet. We know it is Despilfar, because its name has been engraved on a small brass plaque. If there were no plaque, no one would be able to call it by that name. It has a pleated shell, or armour, beneath which curl eight tentacles. Their chelae turn inwards as if they were pointing to the weight dangling from the nerve of its heart. Each time the museum clock strikes eight, Despilfar jolts one degree. In a year it completes two full rotations around an invisible axis; the question as to whether this motion is endogenous or governed by the planets excites researchers who convene each year around Despilfar like a fraternity. They examine its circuits, attach probes to its gnarled back and return home, their sole prize a sense of collegial unanimity: a bygone science has offered them this being which is a stone, a machine or a fish. I believe that, one day, they too will surrender the contents of their studies to their successors like a dream beyond interpretation.
Punishment
I have seen an author’s head. I saw it in Paris at the natural history museum. On display were the skeletons of Siamese twins, cirrhotic livers and other examples of nature’s playful scourges. They were stored in glass jars filled with formalin, but time had seeped through the glass and warped the tissues so that now they were grey. I would gladly have learnt what the liver looks like, what the spleen and the heart look like, but now all I can say is this: they all looked dull with white filament drifting around them, their tips swaying back and forth in the aquarium filled with formalin like the hair of the Medusa. The only exception was the author’s head. His bloodless face was frozen in violent spasms and his white hair fumbled at the surrounding liquid as if fishing to recapture the escaped spirit of a novel. You could tell straight away that he had never achieved what he had longed for with those tens of thousands of pages now being nibbled away by mites in the basements of second-hand book shops. Though his pen had probed deeper and more purulent cavities than any other, though he had thrust his hand into the ragged gullies of the gullet and with his nails ripped bloody discords from the vocal cords, he had not dared to reach deep enough and had not pierced his readers’ stomachs with hooks of pleasure. That is what it said on a label stuck to the side of the jar. His punishment was to spend the rest of eternity pickled in formalin with all his senses intact, and thus with frozen eyes he could do nothing but stare at the tourists whose secretly cherished feelings as they walked past were a mixture of satisfaction, shame and sympathy.
Final Assignment
One more assignment to be carried through and I would be given the key to a room with space for a mattress and a roof that didn’t leak, that’s what the boss promised me when I went down to the office, dragging my foot down the endless staircase, down in amongst the labyrinth of boiler rooms and parking levels. He stared at me intensely from behind the sharp points of his shoes resting on the desk and made me give up any ideas I had had of leaving the case. Now at least I had an assignment and I felt the soles of my feet press into the same mud as those hurrying to work every morning tread with their shining shoes; I could make out individual pairs of eyes amidst the human pulp oozing from the mouth of the underground station, and I sensed that they could see the same as my eyes, their like, a pair of eyes with a small yet unyielding place amidst the scheme of moving parts throughout the city. The boss had explained exactly where I had to go, he had said I couldn’t go wrong, and now I felt that the world was leaning in precisely the right direction. Water rinsing the streets rushed the same direction as me, a solitary bird shook loose its feathers and searched for a new direction, precisely where I was going. Once I reached the cranes I increased my pace, though this took its toll for someone dragging his foot. Then I saw him! The back of his coat was dark, as if at that spot all light had disappeared from the world. He was walking in front of me towards the furthest crane and didn’t so much as jump at the blasts from the funnels of ships breaking loose from the quayside. When I think about it more carefully, I’m sure that the ships didn’t make a sound, the fog was so thick that it caught around the tips of the birds’ feathers, the air thick with tar groped at the collar of my jacket making it stand up rig
id with fear. I clasped my fist tighter around a paper bag containing the last sandwich crumbs I had saved, stamped my healthy foot more purposefully against the surface of the road and thanked my luck, which I rarely had any recourse to address. Then I saw him! The back of his coat was dark, as if at that spot all light had disappeared from the world. He was walking much faster than me. I thrust my hands into my pockets and threw everything I found over the railings: orange peel which may yet have yielded a few drops, a coin which may have had some value in a neighbouring country, a thumb and a ring finger wrapped in paper which I kept as proof that I had carried out my previous assignment to the letter. Then I saw him! The back of his coat was dark, as if at that spot all light had disappeared from the world. He was walking so fast that I had to run. You can imagine, it wasn’t easy. Dusk was falling and every time I saw him he was walking ahead much faster than me. I cast my hat aside and removed pieces of beard hanging stiff beneath my chin. Nothing made any difference. When night finally swallowed him up, I had come full circle to the neighbourhood from which I set out. I found my very own nook, lifted the grille aside and curled up to go to sleep thinking of how the following day would be the same. I curl up in my nook evening after evening, lighter and lighter, until one day all that is left is the back of a dark coat, as if at that spot all light had disappeared from the world.
The Golden Apple
Sari Peltoniemi
Sari Peltoniemi (born 1963) has published many books for children and young people, whilst her science fiction and fantasy short stories have been published in several magazines. Her novels have twice been shortlisted for the Finlandia Junior Prize. In addition to this she has written the lyrics to numerous rock songs. Peltoniemi’s texts often deal with the weakest, most vulnerable members of society, people upon whose lives myth and fantasy begin to encroach. Finnish mythology is especially close to her writing. The short story ‘The Golden Apple’ was first published in the magazine Portti.
The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy Page 27
