Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

The evening darkens; I leave my room and open the garden gate without a sound. When I remember I am a goat, I do nothing but long to wander in a meadow. When my wolf’s nature wins, I run into the deep forest, strange sounds rise from my throat and I dance alone. Sometimes I disappear for weeks. When I wish to be a chimpanzee, I clamber nimbly into tall trees and like to sit on the roof of our house. I look at the night sky in wonderment. The stars glitter, I hum to myself and my hoofs tap hollowly on the tin roof.

  Locally, there is talk of strange things. It is said that one night a lamb was found torn to pieces in the meadow, but that the toothmarks that were found on it were human. My mother gives me a long look, her eyes full of anxiety.

  I cannot find anyone like me.

  The Very Thought!

  Doctor Fakelove’s working week was ending. But he found time to read the last message of the day.

  ‘I should like to talk to you about the end of the world,’ it read.

  One single sentence, whose content did nothing to astonish Fakelove. Fear of the end of the world was at least as understandable as that of moths. The message was signed, simply, Håkan.

  Fakelove decided that he would answer just this one message more; then his working week would be over.

  ‘I understand your situation to be that the idea of the end of the world has begun to dominate your imagination,’ Fakelove answered. ‘How long have you been experiencing fear concerning the end of the world? Does it disturb your everyday life, for example your family relations and your work? Does it keep you awake at night? And when and how do you suppose the world will end?’

  On Monday morning Håkan’s response awaited Doctor Fakelove. He wrote volubly, without grammatical errors.

  The end would be swift, but Håkan did not necessarily expect it to happen within the next year. There were numerous alternative ways in which the world might end. Some, however, were more likely than others.

  ‘I could immediately cite at least thirty different ways in which the end of the world might begin,’ Håkan wrote. He distinguished four main classes of world’s end: the end of mankind, the end of the entire biological population of the earth, the end of the solar system, and universal apocalypse. From the point of view of human beings, of course, they would all be equally total.

  Doctor Fakelove attempted to calm Håkan by commenting that the end of the world had been feared in all centuries, always in vain.

  Håkan answered: ‘Do you suppose that because the end of the world has not yet come, it is unlikely that it will ever come? I have an excellent appreciation of the historical perspective. It is pointless to try to fox me with such foolish explanations. I am completely calm, but unfortunately I know more than most. It is clear that the probability of the destruction of the world is growing ever greater. Now, in the last century of the second millennium, we are in a completely different situation from ever before; that must of course be admitted.’

  Without troubling himself to answer Håkan’s question, Doctor Fakelove wrote: ‘I believe that in your case the question really concerns not the end of the world, but something much more fundamental. Phobias derive from shocks to the personal emotional life, generally childhood traumas. Now we should think what the original conflict may have been. You are fleeing some memory of yours. You have not told me anything about your childhood. Perhaps the origin of these obsessive thoughts lies in your past. We should now direct our attention a little toward both your current life situation and your background. When did these fears begin? Are they linked to some particular event in your life? Were there any particular problems in your relationship with your father?’

  Håkan, for his part, ignored Fakelove’s questions completely. ‘I assume you are aware,’ Håkan wrote, ‘that unusually strong sunspot activity is expected next July. It will cause unprecedented flooding, tornados and earthquakes. The consequences of El Niño are nothing in comparison. The very thought. There will also soon be a shift in the Earth’s axis, whose effect is completely unpredictable.’

  Fakelove felt it best not to react to this message.

  ‘You know, don’t you,’ Håkan wrote, ‘that more than 20 per cent of all the Earth’s plant and animal species will soon be completely extinct. And there is no hope that the pace of extinction will slow; quite the opposite. Biodiversity is declining at an accelerating pace. The balance is already seriously affected, and before long life on this Earth will be extinct, much more quickly than even the greatest pessimists dare predict.’

  ‘Your knowledge and information on the subject are impressive,’ Fakelove answered. ‘But I should nevertheless like to suggest that we move on to more personal ground.’

  ‘Asteroids,’ Håkan wrote, ‘can easily be overlooked by even the most accurate telescopes until they have almost entered our atmosphere. Then there is no longer time to react. Perhaps you have noticed that at the moment a dense group of comets is approaching the solar system. It is entirely within the realms of possibility that its fringes will impact the Earth. The very thought of the kind of destruction such a collision will wreak is terrifying. The supposed fate of the dinosaurs may be familiar to you, but you are perhaps not cognizant of the kinds of effects caused by comets in, for example, the Bronze Age.’

  Doctor Fakelove began to be a little irritated by his new client. Håkan did not seem in the least willing to co-operate.

  ‘Try to find new objects of interest in your life,’ Fakelove wrote. ‘Do you have any hobbies? Concentrate on them, revive your former leisure activities or choose, for the sake of change, some new, exciting way of passing the time. Perhaps you might consider something really physical, such as downhill racing, surfing or diving, which force you to concentrate on the present moment.’

  ‘The population crisis is now critical,’ Håkan answered. ‘Our planet cannot sustain even the current population. A billion people are already starving. Imagine, if you will, the situation in fifty years’ time, when our food supply, which will have been depleted by eco-catastrophes, will need to feed twenty-seven billion mouths. The very thought!’

  ‘I would urge you,’ Fakelove wrote, ‘to put the population crisis aside for a moment and give more serious consideration to your own personal crisis. You hardly have the means to solve the former, but we have plenty of time to consider the causes and possible solutions of the latter. Your situation appears to me an acute one, and deserves all your attention.’

  ‘Just one erroneous letter in a computer program can lead to catastrophe,’ Håkan replied, ‘just think of that! Just one wrong character! An entire communications system can be paralysed, cities go dark, nuclear power stations’ cooling systems fail.

  ‘We are more vulnerable than ever.’

  Håkan and the X-Creatures

  Everything I know about x-creatures, I have heard from my big brother, Håkan. That’s a lot. Where he got his information he will not tell me. I am sure there must be a book somewhere, where he read it all.

  At the beginning, Håkan forbade me to speak to others, particularly Mum and Dad, about them. Later he said that I could tell anyone, or not tell them – people wouldn’t believe him, anyway. But I don’t tell anyone, why should I.

  Håkan likes to talk about his x-creatures in the evenings, after Mum has said goodnight and turned out the light. Our beds are on the same long wall. Between them is a bedside table which we share, and glasses of water, in case we are thirsty in the night, and a lamp whose shade is decorated with dried flowers.

  We lie head to head. Håkan lies on his back, his hands under his neck, and even though the lamp has been switched off I can see, if I just lean up a little and turn, his serious face in the light of the street-lamp that shines through the curtain.

  I am so close that I can even hear his whispers. Sometimes I fall asleep as he talks. He makes the same claims and I ask the same questions.

  ‘X-creatures live in hyperspace,’ says Håkan.

  ‘Where is hyperspace?’ I ask.

  ‘Silly question,
’ Håkan announces. ‘It’s everywhere. It’s really the same as space, but I call it hyperspace for your sake. To help you understand that it is not the kind of space people usually talk about. We are three-dimensional beings and so we inhabit only part of space as a whole. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that although we live in the same place as x-creatures, we can only sense a tiny part of our surroundings.

  ‘You must understand that, although we are complicated, there are much more complicated creatures than ourselves. Some of them live in five-dimensional space, others have seven dimensions, some thirty-five or more. Every universe, even the world of creatures that live in only two dimensions – ’

  ‘Are there such things?’ I interrupt. ‘Are there creatures that live in just one dimension?’

  ‘ – is perfect in itself,’ Håkan continues, undisturbed. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything missing. But if you happen to live in a world with fewer dimensions, you will not know anything about those with more.’

  ‘But you know, don’t you,’ I say. ‘And so do I.’

  ‘I only know that they exist,’ Håkan explains, once more. ‘I do not really know what they are like. In fact, I cannot know.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ I say.

  ‘You don’t need to think of it like that,’ Håkan comments. ‘We cannot see x-creatures, but they can see us. They can take any object from us as easily as taking sweets from a child: a car, a book, a house – and to us it looks as if they disappear into thin air before our eyes.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I say, and I begin to feel like yawning. ‘Whoever has seen anything like that?’

  ‘Oh, lots of people,’ says Håkan. ‘But they have no idea that x-creatures are behind it. X-creatures can see inside us. They can take our spleen, liver and brains.’

  ‘What is a spleen, anyway?’ I ask. ‘What does it do?’

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ Håkan says. ‘They can even take our heart, without leaving a scratch on the skin.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ I say. ‘I’ve certainly never heard of them taking anyone’s heart.’

  ‘You don’t read everything in the papers,’ Håkan says sharply. ‘Doctors have their professional discretion. They can change a right-hand glove into a left-hand glove. And vice versa. Knots that we make, even the tightest, can be undone in a moment in the hands of an x-object. They can take us away from ourselves, and x-creatures have taken many of the missing persons who are the subjects of notices in the papers.’

  ‘Why would they do such a thing?’ I ask.

  ‘Search me,’ Håkan says. ‘They need us for their own purposes. But what they might be, we would not understand, even if they wanted to explain it to us. And they do not even try, as little as we try to explain things to ants.’

  ‘I don’t think I like them very much,’ I say.

  ‘That’s not the point here,’ Håkan says, impatiently. ‘They have senses we have never even heard of. That’s why they also know a lot more than us.’

  ‘What kind of senses?’ I ask.

  ‘Good heavens,’ Håkan says. ‘If only you would listen! Didn’t I just say that no human being can understand them? How could I explain them to you? You don’t even know how you see and hear. They know more than us, and we cannot even ask them what. We don’t know what we can’t know.’

  ‘Have you ever met them?’ I want to know. I have often asked this question. I am still a little nervous. I am afraid that he will one day tell me that he has met them in person.

  But once again, Håkan does not reply to the question. It is as if he had not heard it. But he wants me to understand his silence as an affirmative answer. I am happy with his silence; I did not expect more. But if I did not ask what I asked, Håkan would be disappointed.

  ‘What’s work to us is play to them,’ he says.

  ‘Can they play, too?’ I ask.

  ‘Why not?’ Håkan says. He lies with his hands behind his neck and looks at the street-lamp through the curtain. I know what he is going to say next.

  ‘What is impossible for us is simpler than simple for them. What is magic for us is everyday reality for them. What is supernatural for us is natural for them.’

  ‘I would like to meet one of them one day,’ I say suddenly, although in fact I am not at all sure about it. I shiver a little.

  ‘If he were to come up to you,’ Håkan says, ‘you would not recognise him. We are nothing in the eyes of the x-creatures. They pity us because we have so little of anything. A few dimensions and senses, a little understanding and a little knowledge.’

  I begin once again to feel sorry for us humans. ‘It’s not fair that they know everything about us, but we hardly know anything about them,’ I say. ‘And I do not even believe that they know everything about us. No one can understand human beings unless they are human themselves.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Håkan says. ‘We know more about fish than they do about themselves.’

  ‘But we do not know the most important thing, what it’s like to be a fish. And they shouldn’t feel sorry for human beings,’ I argue. ‘We know much more than they think.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Håkan says. ‘But we’re rather primitive creatures.’

  ‘We’re learning all the time,’ I say.

  ‘No one can learn new dimensions unless they are born to them,’ Håkan contests. ‘Human beings are what they are. They are born human and stay human. They watch us from afar, and we do not even know that they are watching us. Although sometimes we may have a strange feeling.’

  ‘Don’t you know, either?’ I ask.

  ‘I certainly do. I can sense their gaze. But soon they will go away and forget about us.’

  Håkan falls silent, lies motionless, and we forget about them.

  Individually Wrapped Cheese Slices

  Håkan was reading a newspaper article that said: ‘What makes so many people so sure that aliens want to visit us? Why should species that are able to travel throughout the universe and make contact with much more intelligent species be interested in our company? For we cannot even leave our own solar system.’

  Håkan decided to write a response. He had found many answers to these questions. But he had only just written: ‘Because we can offer . . . ’ when the doorbell rang. It was his brother.

  ‘What’s up with Operation Squirrel?’ his brother asked.

  ‘For the moment, nothing,’ Håkan said, a little irritably.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ his brother said, and laughed.

  Håkan was used to that kind of laughter. Håkan was a heretic. He had original opinions which his family and his friends did not understand, ideas which no one wanted to listen to in bars, points of view which were not acceptable at church or at the university. Operation Squirrel was one of his special hobbies, otherwise known as the Squirrel Revival Project.

  The simplicity of life made Håkan feel dizzy. He looked at people and saw that they were vacuums inside a vacuum. Håkan believed that the world did not exist. It had not begun and would never end. Time did not exist, either. Like colours, tastes and sounds, time and space were also only apparent. They were not realities, they were only tricks of the mind which we used to try to explain and classify our experiences and perceptions.

  Perceptions of what? Something about which we do not, and cannot, know a thing.

  ‘You never hear anything about it any more,’ his brother said.

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ Håkan said.

  Håkan believed that the concept of reality created by the mind was comparable to the quivering image of a television screen or, rather, the graphics generated by a computer. He was also convinced that basic physical concepts such as ‘mass’ and ‘acceleration’ were not real, but mathematical values created by the imagination, errors, as was gravity. In fact all the concepts of both classical and modern physics were based on error.

  As a child he had had some unusual experiences. In the evenings, he had heard someone breathing as if a
sleep in his room, although he was there alone. It actually made him feel safe. Night after night Håkan fell asleep to that insensible and invisible peaceful breathing.

  In the summer, Håkan spent a fortnight living with his father and brother. Sometimes his father took them on long cruises, sometimes he rented a cabin on the seashore. Once when, late on midsummer’s eve, they were rowing on the lake, he heard the beating of a large bird’s wings in the bright twilight.

  Håkan was holding the tiller. He looked up to see the bird, but all he could see was blue, falling from the sky to the water’s surface. But now it was full of a sighing that proceeded from island to island, from the reeds to the open water and to the last glowing stripe of sunset. Håkan sought his own excitement in his father’s face, but his father was rowing with long, even strokes, lost in thought. Håkan realised that he was the only one to have heard the beating of the wings. That knowledge made him lonely.

  And there was more, like the flash in the nocturnal shore-meadow, as if a searchlight had been switched on. He had been walking with his then girlfriend in the twilight of a summer’s evening, and beside the path was a tussock of grass.

  ‘Look!’ he said to the girl, touching the grass’s panicles.

  Then they lit up, the entire meadow flared for a moment, bright as in the midday sun. Håkan looked behind him and saw a dazzling arc of light above the serrated edge of the forest which, as he watched, withdrew and disappeared once more into the night.

  Once, in a weak moment, he told his brother of these experiences. His brother said that even healthy and balanced people can experience things that seem frightening and inexplicable, but they are simply the results of neural activity.

  ‘Just neural activity?’ Håkan said. ‘Hah!’

  ‘Not that I consider you to be healthy or balanced,’ his brother added. ‘Not after that squirrel business. Nothing you can say can surprise me any more after that. But you can be sure that there really is something that exists objectively, which is not at all dependent on ourselves. And something that exists only subjectively, and that is not true.’