The Core of the Sun

by Johanna Sinisalo

  Every creature that has a use.

  And what if they rebel? What then?

  They can be beaten into silence. Pierced and chained. Branded.

  Bought and sold.

  Locked up in a dark place where they lie in their own excrement and do nothing but wait, numb and helpless, to be used again.

  Used in any way that can be imagined. Any way at all. Anything is possible.

  For the pleasure of those who take pleasure from complete debasement.

  Oh, eusistocracy.

  To keep the loudest ones happy you brought a known drug into the reach of the many.

  You thought you were liberating sex.

  But you liberated something else.

  Power.

  One taste of it just leads to larger and larger doses.

  Ridiculously large doses.

  Incomprehensible amounts.

  Sickening amounts.

  Doses so large that the brain can’t comprehend them.

  The mind just explodes in white light.

  My boat is light and swift.

  I float over the edge of worlds.

  My feet wander along the spine of the sky.

  My eyes see the dying suns of netherworlds.

  Invisible I wander,

  dangerous, traversing dangerous country.

  I see the waning moon

  collide with the waxing moon,

  see it die

  and fall.

  I see the east and west

  fight over who will run

  over a hole filled with sharp pieces of bone.

  The snow under their feet

  shines in the fiery light.

  I take her by the hair

  and pull her up from under the moss,

  the black water deeper than death.

  I’m rocking, rocking Manna.

  Oh, my tender little sister. Sister with a heart of chocolate, hands full of comfort, a brain of pink froth. My fair-haired, sweet-souled sister.

  Your round head covered in platinum curls, your cute little turned-up nose, your narrow shoulders, full breasts, curving waist, tush like a peach. They’re all gone. They don’t matter anymore.

  Rocking and rocking Manna. “Aa-aa,” I say.

  There’s only one thing I can do for her now.

  With one small tug, a barely noticeable motion, I break the slight, hair-thin, gleaming thread that ties her to her tortured body, and I enfold her in myself.

  I know where to bring her.

  We can be together in the Cellar.

  We’ll be there forever.

  No one can harm us there. The Cellar’s walls are so strong, dug so deep. We can both float there in the warm black water, the eternal night.

  I don’t know if I’m walking or flying or lying on the ground, but I’m moving my wings, the wings of the Core of the Sun, and rocking and rocking Manna.

  No. Not Manna.

  Mira.

  Vera and Mira. Sisters who are the truth, who are a miracle.

  VERA/MIRA NOW

  I wake to noise and shaking and someone dabbing my forehead.

  I’m sitting in a chair like a bus seat, strapped in. It’s not like a car seat belt, doesn’t go over my shoulder, just across my lap.

  There are a lot of people, and little, round windows.

  Outside the windows I see glimpses of racing clouds.

  A woman in a uniform, dark, with a large nose and short hair—obviously a morlock, but wearing makeup for some reason—is bending over me. Jare is sitting beside me holding my hand. In his other hand he holds a soft paper napkin and dabs my face with it. He’s wiping the sweat away.

  I’m still on a hell of a high.

  Then I sense her. Clear as sight.

  Mira is curled up in the Cellar. In a dark, warm, sheltered corner of my mind, nestled like a child in the womb.

  Where no one from the outside can ever reach her again.

  Safe. Finally safe.

  I owe such a debt to you. Without you, without you to be my model, I would have strayed from my designated role and been destroyed. All through our childhood and all through our youth , you were teaching me. You focused my eyes so I could see.

  You gave me a means of escape.

  You were my sun, and now you are my core.

  I don’t know if you’ll live in the Cellar from now on or if you’ll be there only when I use the Fire Within to summon you, but you always have the right to be there. You played an unintentional part in building the Cellar, and now it’s yours.

  I whisper: “Happy birthday, Mira.”

  The Core of the Sun hums in my veins.

  My boat is light and swift!

  Its flight guides the birds.

  The smaller bird is called Mira,

  and it carries her, too.

  My two souls say,

  Let us keep hold of both sides of the boat

  and we will fly to unknown lands.

  I fly invisibly, seeing all that is

  and carrying the knowledge in my breast

  like a bird carrying food to its nest.

  “Is everything all right now?” the woman asks, speaking half to me and half to Jare, and Mira’s whisper echoes in the Cellar: Everything’s all right now, and she curls up still tighter and safer in her fetal position, and falls asleep.

  “Yes, she’s all right again now,” Jare says, and squeezes my hand. “The little lady’s just a bit nervous. She’s not used to flying.”

  Excerpt from Åke Wallenquist’s Astronomy and the World Today

  National Publishing (1954)

  The sun’s photosphere—its visible surface—is amazingly thin. The fragile brightness of this heavenly object can make you forget what dark, matter-smashing forces hide deep within its core.

  AFTERWORD

  One of the inspirations for this book was Tiina Raevaara’s wonderful nonfiction book Koiraksi ihmiselle (On Dogs and Humans, Teos, 2001), where I first learned of Belyayev’s domestication experiments. Belyayev’s observations were also presented in the March 2011 issue of National Geographic. Many thanks to Tiina for directing me to articles on neoteny and the significance of sex in evolution.

  Warm thanks to Jukka “Fatalii” Kilpinen for adding to my chili pepper knowledge, for giving me the opportunity to visit his chili farm and greenhouses, and for his other assistance with the book.

  The stream-of-consciousness fragments on pages 296–300 are based in large part on the spirit journey songs of Chukchi shamans Nuwat and Ukwun. The original texts can be found in Anna-Leena Siikala’s book Suomalainen samanismi: Mielikuvien historiaa (Mythic Images and Shamanism: A Perspective on Kalevala Poetry, SKS, 1992).

  The article on human sterilization excerpted on pages 223–225 is, with the exception of a very few word changes, taken from an actual article in the second April 1935 issue of Kotiliesi (Hearth and Home) magazine.

  Wallenquist’s Astronomy and the World Today is an actual book. The quote on page 303, however, is not actually taken from it.

  The Transcendental Capsaicinophilic Society is a real, though somewhat tongue-in-cheek, group that can be found on the Internet. The “Litany Against Pain” is borrowed directly from the society.

  Any errors, misconstructions, or other inaccuracies are naturally my own.

 

 

 
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