Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  Well! There he stood, with his camera in his outstretched hand, as if he had at once divined my intention.

  I raised the viewfinder to my eyes and passed it along the horizon and the surface of the water. But did my eyes deceive me? Where now were all the colours? I could no longer see hundreds of coloured lanterns, the mirror of the water did not shimmer and the sunset had vanished. I saw only a burnt-out, ash-coloured landscape, and a single streak of blood in the western sky above it.

  Now the viewfinder was angled so that I could see only water through it. It was like this: I no longer saw water rippling in the lights. I saw beneath the surface. It was dark and leaden like the sky, but transparent none the less. And there, beneath the water, surrounded by the town and the harbour, rested two immense beings.

  They lolled side by side, and their broad carcasses covered the entire bottom of the bay from one shore to the other. One of them lay on its back so that its white belly showed; to me it looked like a cross between a pig and a fish. The trunk of the other was more reptilian; it recalled a leguana or the tuatara of the Tabernacle, but much bigger.

  I did not regard the couple with shock or horror, but an immense stupefaction made the camera so heavy that it slipped from my hand on to the balcony floor.

  I made no move to lift it. The bang was audible, perhaps something broke, too, probably the lens. But my friend, whose name I still simply cannot remember, did not seem even to notice what had happened. He stood motionless, his arms hanging by his side, and his unfocused gaze was dusted with the same ash as the evening sky. We did not exchange a single word, but I knew he knew.

  My head was bare, the cap of good fortune had gone. I was once more at the mercy of chance and necessity.

  But I simply cannot any longer remember even the features of my friend’s face, or even whether he was clothed or naked. And where his face should be I see only a misty oval, as featureless as Venus covered by cloud.

  Prisoners of Glass and Mirror

  The Triumphal Fanfare of Yikuhatsa

  There was a great deal of glass in the Tabernacle. There were many windows, and they were large. On autumn evenings, when all lights were burning, the Tabernacle was as transparent as Pontanus’s bottle or the Gold-Washer’s terrarium.

  Pontanus was visiting the book-lice in the room of the Gold-Washer who was writing about the past, significance and fate of the book-louse.

  On the window-sill was a large and carefully tended terrarium. The Gold-Washer had gone to a great deal of trouble to transform the glass vessel into a landscape worthy of the book-lice. There was a hillock covered in a thin layer of new grass. There was forest – a couple of sword ferns, and a blue lake in a squat plastic cup. There was a steep cliff on which the book-lice were able to practise alpine climbing, and boulders in whose crevices they could sleep through the hottest moment of the day.

  ‘Neither people nor book-lice – ’ said Pontanus, who had bent down to follow the insects’ activity. Two lice were gnawing at a third, which was still wriggling.

  We awaited the continuation of the phrase in vain. From another room, the whistling of the Kinswoman could be heard and, behind it, the silence of the chess-players.

  ‘ – nor the tuatara.’ Pontanus said. ‘All of them are only trials. Experiments, endless variations. They take time, a long, long time, and the experiments may seem cruel, but’ (his finger rose) ‘they are necessary. For another age will dawn. It will develop from this age like a caterpillar from its chrysalis.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the Gold-Washer. ‘But whether it will be a better age, that we don’t know.’

  ‘Time will tell,’ said Pontanus. “The millennia will decide.’

  ‘They will decide in favour of the book-louse,’ said the Gold-Washer. ‘We shall go the way of the dinosaurs, but the book-louse will go on haunting the earth’s crust. And if that happens, it will be because it must happen.’

  ‘Come,’ said a Gold-Washer who stood, panting, on the threshold, on his head a worn-out hat. When he opened the door, they smelled smoke. ‘Over there – on the waste heap – oh! an amazing fire!’

  They all went out to look. The smoke seemed to be floating down the cordilleras of waste, but in fact the fire was not there, but much farther off. The sky glowed red over the southern half of the City of the Golden Reed, and the windows of the Tabernacle were blazing. They heard the sound of sirens.

  The ravens of Edom were there, too. They sat on a sofa that had been carried out into the courtyard, dressed in their best clothes, as if attending a first night. The distant red touched their foreheads, too, and made them younger by years, by decades.

  ‘Something terrible is happening there, I know it,’ the Glass-Girl said. ‘Assassinations. Arson. Massacres.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said the Gold-Washer. ‘Look at them. They know how to get the best out of this.’

  Between the ravens of Edom sat an old Gold-Washer, who was continuing his lifelong sentence: ‘even if he never admitted it was true, there was not a doubt as to what was really going on, although it must be admitted frankly that none of us at that time understood that even he – in those difficult circumstances . . . ’

  ‘Vittere tele!’ Babel shouted. He had climbed a little way up the side of the waste heap and was gazing through a pair of binoculars.

  ‘What did he say?’ Latona asked Pontanus.

  ‘He said it’s a fine view.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ countered a Gold-Washer. ‘He said the flames of hell warm us so sweetly. He said that without hell we would all freeze.’

  ‘Is the whole city on fire? Shouldn’t we do something?’ the Glass-Girl asked, and coughed.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said a Gold-Washer. ‘Bring my glass harmonica and take the bull-roarers for yourself. You, Latona, can fetch the bowed harp.’

  In a moment the Gold-Washer announced: ‘The name of this piece is the Triumphal Fanfare of Yikuhatsa.’

  And, rotating his glass harmonica under the red sky, the Gold-Washer joined his triumphal fanfare to the simple, disconsolate song of the sirens.

  Sediment

  ‘In my bottle,’ said Pontanus to the turbaned Gold-Washer, ‘spring and summer and autumn and winter alternate. It is the universe in five decilitres. Matter within it changes in the same way as matter outside. When I look into the bottle, I see what happens to you and to me.’

  ‘What happens to us?’ the Gold-Washer asked.

  ‘You know it all,’ Pontanus said. ‘Birth and death, growth and copulation and resurrection.’

  ‘Really, oh, that’s what you mean,’ said the Gold-Washer. Beside the scales on Pontanus’s table they saw a pestle, a mortar and a small bar magnet, as well as a pastry-brush, which Pontanus used in handling his fine powders. He warned us not to move or open the bottles.

  ‘The impurity must remain on the bottom,’ he said. ‘It must be left in peace.’

  ‘What are you doing today?’ asked the Child of the Tabernacle as a curtain of snow floated outside the window.

  ‘I shall take four parts of antimony and two parts of iron and mix them together thoroughly.’

  ‘What will you do next?’

  ‘Then I shall add the Secret Fire and heat it.’

  I was there, too, when the snow had melted, and saw his head bent over his work and his incipient baldness. Because the window was open to April, drop followed drop until night in a continual race. When the sun struck the bottle on the window-sill, it threw a crooked rainbow on the wall; it was pale, but it still contained all the colours.

  ‘What are you doing today?’ asked the Child of the Tabernacle.

  ‘Today I shall wait.’

  ‘What will you wait for?’

  ‘For this mixture to turn white,’ said Pontanus. ‘There is nothing else to do.’

  And the days fly by; very soon the autumn equinox is at hand.

  ‘What are you doing today?’ asked the Child of the Tabernacle.

  ‘I shall dry this mixture,
’ said Pontanus, ‘and pound it to a fine powder with the pestle. Then I shall take three parts of it and mix with one part of Sun, add a little Secret Fire and heat it again.’

  ‘I can’t make head or tail of this,’ said the Gold-Washer, who stepped in with a crooked smile, wearing a tricorn hat.

  ‘All the skill!’ said Pontanus, raising his finger, ‘is in differentiating between the fine and the rough. All the skill! For God’s sake! Don’t touch that bottle. The sediment must not be moved.’

  The Gold-Washer set the bottle down carefully on the table and patted Pontanus on the shoulder.

  ‘You certainly make an effort,’ he said. ‘Thank you for that, Pontanus.’

  And the Gold-Washer raised his tricorn hat.

  ‘You make an effort, although the days darken and speed away. For a Gold-Washer, life is too short and too simple. It is as cramped as your bottle. There is no progress to be seen, we simply wander back and forth and disturb the sediment.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ said Pontanus. ‘But you must go now. For I must start the fermentation.’

  ‘Let us go,’ the Gold-Washer said. ‘But carry on, Pontanus, carry on, carry on. What other difference is there between our lives and those of the book-lice except this futile labour, your toil, Pontanus, and my madness and this tricorn hat.’

  The feasts of paupers continue.

  Our glasses are filled with dregs.

  So rarely does the peacock

  show the brilliance of its tail.

  As soon as the peacock turns,

  grasp the moment now.

  Take hold of its loveliest feather.

  Take with you the whole rainbow.

  The Shattering Path

  ‘What on earth is she doing?’ I asked Mrs Raa. Both our gazes were fixed on the Glass-Girl, who was moving among the guests, looking anxious, in her hand a brush and dustpan.

  ‘Don’t you know where she got her name?’ Mrs Raa asked. ‘You can see for yourself what she’s doing.’

  It was true. The Glass-Girl was sweeping again. She slipped between the guests, reached out, bent down, and swept the floor with her brush here and there between the shoes and chair-legs.

  It has to be said that it was not the best possible time for such an activity. The Glass-Girl’s slow and uncertain way of moving recalled a person fumbling in a dark, unfamiliar room; she took each step as if she feared a trap.

  Some guests lifted their shoes, smiled and moved out of her way, but others frowned and stood their ground without interrupting their conversations. Some paid no attention to her whatsoever.

  ‘Who told her to do that?’ I asked. ‘In the middle of a party?’

  ‘No one,’ said Mrs Raa, who knew. ‘Do you really still not know the Glass-Girl? Now she is having one of her turns again. Let us just be thankful she doesn’t use a vacuum cleaner.’

  Now the Glass-Girl had reached the corner where we were sitting on uncomfortable trelliswork chairs. They had been designed by the Executioner. She nodded vaguely to us, thinking of other things, apologised and bent to look under the chairs, one after the other.

  ‘Have you lost something?’ I asked.

  But she replied with another question: ‘Have you broken anything? Perhaps a glass?’

  And she gestured toward the stemmed glass I held in my hand.

  A most unexpected question. I, too, looked at the glass, doubtfully as if seeking a crack. It was a very good glass, clear and cold; the lights of the evening glittered in its frost.

  ‘This one is certainly sound,’ I said to the girl, and she said quickly: ‘Yes, of course, perhaps that one is. But it looks to me as if there are splinters over there. As if something were glittering there.’

  She was still staring into some corner underneath the chair. I got up quickly and moved my chair aside.

  ‘Look. Nothing but dust.’

  ‘But in it, it seems to me . . . Don’t you see? Tiny little fragments, a little broken glass . . . It’s no trouble, I’ll just . . . ’

  And she grasped her brush and gracefully, with a charming and economical movement, swept the dust into her dust-pan. Relief flickered across her pale, clean face.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Mrs Raa. ‘Rest a while. I’ll bring you something.’

  But she was already looking at another corner, her eyes narrowing, her brush still at the ready.

  ‘In just a moment, thank you very much. I just have to . . . Just a moment . . . Goodbye!’

  And in a moment she was far away, among the other guests, busy at work whose necessity she alone understood.

  Later, when the evening was already far advanced, a bonfire was lit in the courtyard and the guests of the Tabernacle gathered around it.

  Then I thought I heard a crackling that did not come from the fire. It had rhythm and weight, it came from footsteps. But never before had walking on sand given rise to such a sharp sound – it was as if someone had been crunching on hard bread.

  I turned to see who had such a biting tread. I could distinguish the shape of the Glass-Girl, but now she did not have a brush. I saw her small face as a lantern in the light of the lanterns. But while the other lanterns had been hung in the trees to mark the Gold-Washers’ territory in the night, her face flickered alone in the shade of the Tabernacle.

  The Glass-Girl was walking away from me and away from the bonfire. I rose to call her. How could her footsteps, formerly so soft, so cautious, crunch so loudly in the frosty night of the Tabernacle?

  But I did not call her; I fell silent when I saw the path on which she was walking. At first I thought that it was hoarfrost, that the ground was frozen. That her heels were crushing the surface of a puddle that had shrunk into a crust of ice.

  Where was she going? In each of her footsteps there was both the crackling of the fire and the tinkling of ice, but now I could see more clearly: there was neither fire nor ice – she was treading pure glass, splinters, fragments. Her fear had combined with the sand like soda, and the secret fire that burned her in vain had ripened, in its kiln, a sparkling harvest. The Glass-Girl’s path was now covered in broken glass; it shattered, tinkling, under her steps, and behind her opened the silver wake of her own fear.

  How magically it sparkled and glittered!

  What Was Seen in the Knife

  Ash-trays filled. Glasses and eyes emptied. Through the veil of smoke and buzz of conversation they pierced passages from one group to another, from the book-case to the window, from the superabundance of the tables to the centre of the floor, from the crush of the sofa to the solitude of the doorway. In this way they wove into the room a shimmering network, a force-field, that flexed and expanded with the warmth of their steps, their speech and their gazes.

  Then the longing for a mirror began once more in Latona.

  She became absent-minded and could no longer bear to listen to the arguments of her father and a Gold-Washer, or to Babel’s impassioned cries.

  ‘It’s a question of balance,’ said her father. ‘The right timing . . . so that the quintessence does not . . . not to mention control of temperature.’

  ‘Watu wazuri.’ said Babel. ‘Vehosek – sermanahan . . . ’ The Gold-Washer tried to catch her eye, but Latona herself could not meet his: her eyes had become mixed up with the flock of strangers’ eyes.

  How she yearned for her own eyes! But there was not a single mirror in the room, only empty walls and some strange pictures, such as the engraving above the sofa. It was framed, but it had no glass, no reflections.

  Instead of her eyes, she saw a medieval city with three cubes floating in the air above the towers and bridges.

  It was a long time, many hours, since Latona had last seen her own image. Her face must already have changed many times.

  Was it vanity that now made her uncomfortable? Latona, the daughter of Pontanus, pressed her hands to her cheeks, but her fingers were blind; they did not tell her how she looked.

  What had happened to her face during these unguarded hours? She
felt she could no longer control it. In whose power was it? Perhaps it had already changed or aged unrecognisably. Perhaps it had become diseased, perhaps it had even been infected by another face that she had looked at, such as the Torso’s or the Kinswoman’s.

  Latona felt as if she had, against her will, raised into the realm of the gaze strange expressions and insinuations that anyone at all could read and pick in passing.

  Troubled, Latona wanted to wipe them from her skin, but ordinary water could not wash them off; she must bend over the surface of a mirror.

  She looked at the window, seeking her own reflection, but it was still so early that the windows conducted gazes through them. Latona did not see her eyes; she saw only the Child of the Tabernacle, who was cradling his solitude, a black silhouette against the slanting spring light.

  Latona looked at the tables and saw that the plates and glasses had already been cleared away. But on one of the side-tables was a cheese-tray, bottles and a knife that no one had yet used. It was serene, as clear as spring-water.

  Latona walked up to the table and grasped the knife as though she intended to cut a piece of Tilsit cheese. She tilted it with quick fingers until the light shone on it and, relieved, she saw something pale and questioning, solitary and her own, something which hesitated and which was encircled by a glimmer of hair.

  And when her hand moved, almost imperceptibly, the clean blade gave back first the drawing and a corner of the ceiling, then the back of the trellis chair and her father’s stooped shoulder and forefinger and finally the Gold-Washer in his glittering top hat, who was calling to her with all his eloquence and all his mischievousness in the knife-bright distance of the room.