Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  ‘Aren’t you?’ Téa said. ‘You will certainly have to consider the matter seriously, I’d say. For my part, there is nothing to consider. For me, the SVE is over.’

  ‘But no one else needs to know about this, do they. You’ve made the appointment, haven’t you?’ Håkan asked.

  ‘The appointment where?’

  ‘Where these things are taken care of. The abortion clinic.’

  ‘I am not going to go to the abortion clinic.’

  ‘Are you going to use a private doctor? It will be very expensive. But perhaps it will be better. We’ll be all right. I’ll look after the money side, of course; next week I can draw my student loan. And Tette’ – Håkan used the pet name of their tender moments – ‘I am really very sorry. This should not have happened. We – I should have been more careful.’

  ‘I’m not sorry, not now. I was for a couple of hours, right at the beginning, after the pregnancy test. But no more,’ Téa said.

  ‘I am happy that you are so calm about it,’ Håkan said. He found it difficult to conceal his horror, which also contained a drop of anger. He felt that when this matter was over, he would not wish to meet Téa alone again.

  ‘I’ve heard that you can go home the same day. Nowadays the anaesthetic they use does not make you at all sick.’ Håkan spoke quickly, saying too much.

  ‘I don’t think you quite understood. I am not going to have it removed,’ Téa said. ‘Besides, it’s beginning to be too late.’

  Håkan was not sure he had heard right. Or perhaps Téa had said something she did not mean.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I am not going to have it removed,’ Téa said again. She was not looking at Håkan.

  ‘Are you going to make me a father?’ Håkan asked after a long silence during which it felt as if both had stopped breathing. Håkan was sitting as straight as a post. Téa said nothing. The acute knowledge pierced Håkan and he shuddered.

  ‘You cannot do this to me,’ Håkan whispered. His vocal cords were locked for a second.

  But now Téa, too, began to grow angry. ‘To you! Don’t just think about yourself. You don’t have to be a father, after all.’

  She looked Håkan straight in the eye, her chin rose and she looked as certain as when she had lectured on the path to progressive knowledge on Thursday nights.

  ‘Do you understand what you’re saying?’ Håkan said, leaning toward Téa and gripping his coffee cup with both hands. Agitation turned the tips of his fingers white, but on his high, pale forehead, just above his nose, a bright red patch had appeared. ‘If I have fathered the child, I am its father, it’s as simple as that. It is of the same cell line as I am, whether I meet it or not, whether I pay for it or not. Nothing you can say can change that fact.’

  ‘But you don’t need to be its social father,’ Téa explained. She swallowed the last drop of her juice.

  ‘Good God, Téa, I don’t want to be any kind of father. You if anyone should know that.’

  The thought crossed Håkan’s mind that countless couples before them had had just the same kinds of conversations, and would have them in the future. In their case their repetition was ridiculous, humiliating and unnecessary.

  ‘How many years have we already been discussing these things! Rational suicide! The path to progressive knowledge!’

  Téa looked past him. ‘True, we have talked and talked. But at some point the talking has to stop. People change,’ she said, quite apologetically.

  ‘Not so fast, or so much! It is – like some kind of seizure, it’s not normal. Tomorrow you’ll think differently, definitely.’

  Téa was silent.

  ‘You are no longer the person I knew. You seem to have abandoned all the SVE’s principles. When did you start to want to be a mother?’

  ‘After the pregnancy test,’ Téa confessed. ‘Three months ago.’

  Téa’s stance, and the strange stillness of her face, persuaded Håkan. He saw in his mind’s eye a series of new Håkans spreading out form him in every direction, into alternative futures that were lost to view.

  He saw the endless extent of family, its tireless varying repetition of itself, the eternal continuum of life, the selfish, blind procession of the genes, indifferent to all rationality and morals.

  ‘You must,’ he said to Téa in a thin, tearful voice, like a small boy. ‘You must!’

  Téa looked at him, silent and still, from far away within her fresh motherhood. To Håkan, it seemed that there shimmered on her lips an almost-smile, the cruel, serious, mysterious smile of a Madonna.

  He was horrified by the fact that where Téa was, where for almost thirty years there had been only one person, one catastrophe, although such a lovely one, there were now two. And that the reason was him, that he had made it happen, and it meant nothing that it had happened against his will.

  Téa had deceived him. Håkan thought he would not want to even see Téa again. But how could it be possible in this situation? He felt such a strong aggression that for the first time in his life he wanted to lash out. To prevent anything so terrible from happening, Håkan began to get ready to leave. Conversation was pointless, in any case.

  He had intended, in his own case, to break the chain of cause and effect – very simply, just by declining to make a new life. He had wanted to be the last, it had been his intention to break a particular cell line which had begun more than three billion years ago. Such a simple and clear task – and such a complete failure.

  Håkan went on looking at the continuum of couples: families ripened like ears of corn, series of cymes spread out from mothers and fathers: families, clans, tribes, peoples and nations. He stood in the midst of the restlessly surging field of humanity. And from him, through him, a new harvest had been sown, which would shake the new shoots of humankind far into the unknown future.

  His eyes burned with hot tears of rage and shame. He, too, was now an Adam, a father, a prime mover, who could not find redemption.

  If Håkan had now stood on a pair of scales, they would undoubtedly have shown a weight gain: so heavy did the knowledge that he had just received make his entire physical existence. He had sat down at the table as a free individual; he rose a prisoner, a father, for life.

  The Duty Officer

  ‘Cryo-care, good morning, how can I help?’ Håkan said into the telephone receiver for the twelfth time that morning. It looked as if he would not be able to take his lunch break for a while yet.

  The company was doing well. Times had picked up after the long recession. During the previous decade, few people had resources to devote to their own immortality.

  Håkan worked in a branch office of the Cryo Foundation. His job was to offer advice by telephone and e-mail and to demonstrate to hesitant clients how reasonable it was to invest in their futures. There was not, after all, a single person whose future did not entail old age, illness, death and the grave.

  But – so Håkan spun it – old age is an illness that will soon no longer be mortal. And even the grave could be avoided if certain measures were taken. Of course, there was a charge, and not an entirely negligible one.

  At the Cryo Foundation, the words death and corpse were mentioned only seldom. Corpses belonged to the funeral parlours and graveyards; the Foundation had only investors. Day after day, Håkan told potential investors about the details and costs of bio preservation and the cryospan program.

  Investors were divided into two groups: neuro-investors and whole body investors. Only the head of the former group was preserved. For neuro-investors, the care program, bio preservation and all the complex measures required cost 320,000 marks; for whole body investors the cost was 687,500 marks.

  He emphasised to inquirers that if they chose the cryo-process for themselves or their dear ones, they would be completely safe – absolutely safe, he added. In the Foundation’s laboratories bodies were frozen at such low temperatures that they could no longer decay or putrefy. They awaited their awakening in a reinforced concrete, c
omputer-controlled space which was protected from earthquakes, wind, fire, flood and vandalism.

  Håkan told them that it was necessary to begin the process before the legal moment of death, on the threshold of exitus. Problems caused by loss of oxygen were avoided by minimizing the metabolism of the brain using barbiturates, e.g. Nembutal.

  The body was cooled as rapidly as possible to a little above zero Celsius. The blood was replaced with other fluids to discourage the growth of bacteria. This was followed by a slower cooling to the temperature of liquid nitrogen. The biological state of an individual thus frozen no longer changed if it was stored correctly.

  Håkan stressed to possible investors that the choice of cryo-preservation was a rational alternative. No absolute guarantee of its success could be given, but on the other hand – if we do not embrace what was in some people’s opinion a rather slender possibility – what is left?

  The absolute certainty of death.

  In addition to giving information, a couple of times a week Håkan took a turn supervising the functions of the control room, checking the meter readings and the clients’ figures and making sure that all was as it should be in the vault. Håkan could not help it that he always found the neural patients’ department a little unpleasant. He did not in the least like being on duty there. All those pale severed heads . . .

  Sometimes he felt that when he walked past them they were peeping at him through their closed eyelids and that their bloodless lips were trying to form words, perhaps a plea.

  But in general Håkan was satisfied with his job and his relatively high salary. Recently, however, more demanding and suspicious clients had begun to appear. There were even those who demanded guarantees against the end of the world.

  Today, too, Håkan had a difficult client, Mrs. Sona, the future widow of a technology guru. Her husband had been diagnosed with a consuming illness which would probably lead to death before long. They had decided to contact the Cryo Foundation in good time, and if they could reach a satisfactory agreement for the man’s treatment, the wife had also promised herself as a client – when the time came.

  The wife had plenty of questions, but the Cryo Foundation had good reason to keep hold of such creditworthy clients, so Håkan exercised patience.

  ‘How can we be sure that my husband will be the same person as before when he is woken up?’ the wife asked.

  ‘We already know a few things about cryobiology and the effects of low temperatures on organic systems,’ Håkan pronounced. He knew his stuff; he had been required to attend a three-month course and pass a test before beginning work as a duty officer.

  ‘All mental activity ceases in supercooled small animals and nevertheless, if their body temperature is raised again, they recover and their memory returns. When your husband’s brain is activated again, you may be certain that his memory will also return. It would be a different matter if, for example, he had Alzheimer’s disease. It is extremely difficult to recover lost information. In such a case we recommend starting treatment as soon as possible. But if the disease in question does not affect the brain, it is best to wait as long as possible on account of the development of cryo-technologies.’

  ‘And what about comets?’ the wife asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Håkan said.

  ‘Well, those comets, you know what they say about them. That if one of sufficient size hits the Earth, all that will be left of humankind will be a damp patch.’

  ‘Yes,’ Håkan said, ‘that would be a great pity. The Cryo Foundation could do nothing about that. But it could of course be the case that the Cryo Foundation’s vaults survived. I would imagine so. They certainly would,’ Håkan added, remembering that he was always required to support the Foundation.

  ‘Mmm,’ the wife said. ‘But if no one is left alive, who will wake us up?’

  ‘You can always hope that there will be some remnants of humankind will survive, and with them current knowledge.’

  The wife pondered this reply, and Håkan hoped lunchtime was imminent.

  ‘And what if species appear that are more intelligent than humans and who resuscitate your clients just to make them their slaves?’ the wife asked.

  ‘Goodness me, madam,’ Håkan said, ‘does that seem likely to you?’

  ‘Whyever not? And what if the client does not want to get up? What if he wakes in a complete panic?’

  ‘We can use quick-acting tranquilizers and effective therapy,’ Håkan explained.

  ‘And what if, having woken up, he realises that the world has become such an unpleasant place that he doesn’t want to live there at all? What if he would like to sleep for the next hundred or three hundred years and then try his luck again?’

  ‘In that eventuality, madam, he would of course have to make a new payment,’ Häkan explained. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little unreasonable?’ the wife said. ‘At these prices, the Cryo Foundation could surely foot the bill for a little extra sleep.’

  ‘Madam, we cannot of course anticipate all possibilities,’ Håkan explained. ‘You must understand that the company cannot anticipate absolutely everything.’

  ‘At these prices, it should,’ the wife said.

  ‘Immortality comes at a price,’ Håkan said. ‘That’s true, of course. But on the other hand: what could be a more valuable commodity?’

  This finally left the wife speechless.

  ‘What about it? Shall we make an agreement?’ Håkan enquired. He could already taste his bacon hamburger.

  Aging Early

  Who would have believed that the boy was only seventeen? His eyes had sunk deep into shadow and his skin was as wrinkled as frog leather. His head was bald and the few remaining hairs were as grey as dust. The young man’s hands shook, he walked with a stoop and his stride had become uncertain. He had incontinence problems, his voice was weak and crackly, his eyes were red and incessantly weeping.

  ‘Sit down, madam.’

  His mother had come with him to the appointment, a woman still young. She was a lone parent; this shaking old man was her only son.

  ‘What was your name?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Håkan,’ Håkan said.

  ‘Quite right, Håkan, I am sure you already know what this is about.’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Håkan said, coughing up some phlegm. Submissive grief lay in his pale eyes.

  ‘You know that there is not much to be done.’

  His mother rose to her feet, looking restless and anguished.

  ‘There must be something.’

  ‘Not at the moment, madam. Håkan has fallen victim to an epidemic for which there is at present no treatment. But the symptoms can of course be alleviated.’

  ‘How long . . . ?’ Håkan asked.

  ‘No one dares say. If you take care of yourself, eat and rest sufficiently, don’t exert yourself unnecessarily, perhaps three, four years. Maybe even five. In the best case.’

  ‘Yes,’ Håkan said, hanging his head.

  ‘You have many companions in misfortune. There is even a support group which you could perhaps join. Wait, I have the contact information . . . Aging Early, that’s the group’s name.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Håkan said.

  ‘Can you still go to school?’

  ‘I try,’ Håkan nodded submissively. ‘But it’s hard. I keep falling asleep. I’m the third in our class to have the disease. One of them has already . . . ’

  He fell silent and glanced at his mother, who was sitting still, her lips and hands pressed tightly together.

  ‘I’ll prescribe you something to give you strength,’ the doctor said.

  Håkan looked as if he was sinking into some kind of trance.

  ‘I am the same as before,’ he said suddenly with a start, a moment later. ‘As long as I don’t look into the mirror.’

  ‘A typical case,’ said the health-centre doctor after Håkan and his mother had left.

  The nurse gazed after Håkan. A paradoxic
al young man, she thought, a bizarre figure, almost a monster, combining lack of experience and knowledge, immaturity and decay.

  ‘Another new diagnosis of old age,’ said the doctor. ‘How many of them have we made in the last six months?’

  ‘Wait a minute . . . Five hundred and fourteen,’ the nurse said after leafing through her papers.

  ‘And all of them under twenty, a few not even sexually mature. I have heard that recently suspicious cases have even been found in pediatric clinics.’

  ‘Twenty-three,’ the nurse remarked.

  ‘Truly,’ the doctor said; the poet was right when he wrote, “Here babes are born old men, and youths are fit for the grave”.’

  ‘He hasn’t had a chance to experience any more than other people of his age,’ the nurse said. ‘But he seems so wise.’

  ‘He has the experience of old age. It changes anyone. In the space of a couple of years his body has become that of an eighty-year-old. His metabolism has increased by a factor of about seven. He should have seven nights and seven days in each twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Pity the mother,’ the nurse said. ‘She will have to bury her son as a weak old man.’

  ‘Pity us all,’ the doctor said, and sighed. ‘Soon we will be living on a star where everyone is old. But the oldest of all will be the young.’

  Small Fusion Bombs

  ‘Have you heard of tabun, sarin, soman? Do you know how cheaply the entire human race can be done away with?

  ‘I am sure you imagine that the threat of World War Three has receded, since relatively small resources are now devoted to armaments. That is a naïve figment of the imagination.’

  As time goes on, Håkan’s messages have become increasingly fundamentalist and taken on a more threatening tone.

  ‘It may completely have escaped your notice that the arms race has begun again, and is accelerating? Do you remember what enriched uranium really means? What about fissible material? The danger of a nuclear war started by accident is even greater than a couple of decades ago. The threat of a deliberately started conflict much more likely. It is relatively easy for almost anyone, including terrorists and other criminals, to lay their hands on the raw materials for atomic weapons. It is even possible to make small fusion bombs without plutonium or enriched uranium.