Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  At this moment, too, they are rioting in the street. I can hear pounding and booming. Someone is yelling hollowly and incessantly, ah – ah – ah, as if in great pain. No one goes to see what is wrong; I don’t go myself. We all know what is happening, for mixed with the shouting is a child’s laughter – that is the worst thing. The Espite children are attacking a Gebri again; they are amused when he writhes in the street at their mercy. And they still talk about childlike innocence.

  Now I can hear a clattering in my own stairwell. They are climbing the steps, shouting and beating the door with their sticks and iron rods. The building creaks and booms like a great drum. Floor by floor they come nearer; soon they will be at my door.

  Answer me, Leo! For the love of God!

  After the noise had died down, Håkan went to post the letter, increasingly restless. It had suddenly turned unusually cold and dark. The street-lamps came on, although it was still early in the afternoon. Håkan hurried his steps both because of an increasing feeling of haste and because of the cold, but near the post office his pace slowed because of the crowds.

  On the street corner someone was preaching. He could see it was an Espite who was handing out pamphlets and spreading his poisonous message through his loudspeaker.

  ‘The Gebris think they own this city,’ the man shouted. ‘They walk around and throw their money about. I am an Espite and I can assure you that every Espite knows that Gebris are no more than brainless animals! But do you know what else they are? They are all Antichrists, that’s right! They are not proper people and this city does not belong to them. It has never belonged to them and it never will.’

  It began to snow, the first snow of winter. At last! How Håkan had loved the first snow as a child, in this city. He had walked, mouth open, trapping snowflakes with his tongue. The snow muffled sounds and softened outlines; even its coldness was gentle and merciful. But now he did not have time to enjoy it.

  Now Håkan felt suspicious glances directed at him as he tried to penetrate the human wall toward the post office. Someone grabbed his arm and said, ‘You again, you Gebri moron. Get the fuck out of here!’

  Håkan felt a jab in his side and then a burning lash at his waist. A boy of about twelve had hit him with a bicycle chain and was now staring at him with curiosity and triumph. Håkan flew into a rage, pushed the boy and grabbed the chain from him.

  ‘That man hit a child!’ a woman cried.

  New blows rained down on Håkan’s sides, back and neck. The chain was with the boy again, and he lashed out at Håkan again, this time on the thigh. The snowfall grew thicker. Someone grabbed him by the hand. This touch was different, sympathetic and soft. A voice said: ‘Quick, quick. Follow me.’

  For some reason the people left him and his escort in peace. Perhaps it was just because of the coming of the snow. Now it was snowing so thickly that they could hardly see a metre ahead of them. The small woman pulled Håkan behind her, and Håkan followed without resistance, like a lamb, in some kind of shock. They came to Håkan’s apartment, but the woman continued to lead him forward as the snowflakes melted on their cheeks and their bare fingers. Håkan could still hear angry shouts.

  The woman walked ahead of him, still pulling Håkan by the sleeve, down some narrow stone steps into the basement of an old house. They found themselves in a cellar which did not have any real windows, just a kind of ventilation vent through which a little daylight was reflected. A large, woolly dog came to meet them, and Håkan jumped backwards. He realised he knew the dog. It licked his hand, the touch of its tongue was rough and warm, its eyes were full of a deep melancholy. After the blows he had just had to endure, Håkan felt such a deep gratitude for the animal’s friendliness that his eyes brimmed with tears.

  Håkan now understood that he must also know his escort. It was the same misshapen woman whom he had loathed for so long.

  The dog left him in peace and withdrew tactfully to lie underneath a small table. The room was lit by a single lamp hanging from the ceiling. In its light, Håkan finally gained a better view of his escort, his guide, his saviour. Her face was anxious and sorrowful, but wise. It was difficult now for Håkan to understand why he had seen the woman as so ugly.

  The woman put out the light.

  ‘Quiet!’ She raised her finger to her lips. For a long moment they remained silent. Håkan’s heart was still hammering like a factory. The shouts grew more distant and died away completely.

  ‘Now you can go,’ the woman said.

  Håkan tried to thank the woman, even embrace her, but she pushed him away, almost in horror, repeating: ‘Go, go now.’

  Håkan stood in the street once again. He looked behind him, and it was so dark that he could no longer see the cellar door from which he had just come. In the snow all he could see were his own tracks.

  She whom I loved, Håkan thought, abandoned me. She whom I despised and loathed saved me.

  After that, with the winter snow, humility and shame descended into his life. His fury had dispersed; all that was left was the quiet of the snow.

  The Breathers

  Håkan, too, belonged to the Breathers. The Breathers’ dogma was spreading ever wider through the land. Breathers lived just as people were ordered to live in the holiest scriptures. They were modest, unselfish, generous, tolerant. They respected past generations and their achievements. They did not keep count of the hours they worked; they cared for their children, their old folk and their sick.

  Breathers limited their families voluntarily to one or two children. They renounced all weapons. They had abandoned bad habits, private cars, use of alcohol, sex outside marriage, shopping, meat-eating, slander and coffee.

  Breathers recycled everything that could possibly be recycled, they gave their used clothes to charity shops and their newspapers to paper collection.

  Breathers had founded ethical investment funds and banks whose loans entailed only nominal interest. They preferred to offer loans to those who did not have any assets, in other words the poorest of all.

  Breathers worked incessantly for world peace, freedom, democracy, human rights and a clean environment.

  They believed that before long educational opportunities would be on offer to everyone, that mass unemployment, hunger and poverty would disappear as a result of their efforts. They would live in paradise.

  ‘I do not believe it,’ said Håkan’s father, a former carpenter. ‘Not a bit of it. The things you come up with. The opposite is true. Don’t be so bloody complacent. You think you’re virtuous, but your righteousness is idiocy, thoroughgoing weakness.’

  Like the other Breathers, Håkan had, in addition to meat, milk, fish and eggs, eliminated nuts and vegetables from his diet. Most of the Breathers survived on a diet of fruit, and even these they ate in astonishingly small quantities.

  Many decided to leave even fruit uneaten. They were the Hyper-Breathers. They sought unity with the universe and believed they could live like plants, on nothing but air and sun. This ever-increasing elite gathered every morning as the sun rose in the city’s sacred places, which were generally hillocks or open meadows. They were called refineries.

  Recently new refineries had been dedicated for use. In their refineries, the Hyper-Breathers lapsed into meditation, occasionally sipping at a bottle of water. The sun gave them, as it gave plants, so they believed, all the energy they needed. It was simple, quite automatic: all one needed to do was breathe. All that was needed in addition was water.

  Håkan, too, had decided to join the Hyper-Breathers. Håkan’s old father became furious when his son announced his decision. Håkan was afraid his father would hit him.

  ‘Must I watch my only son die on account of such nonsense?’ he asked.

  ‘But I am not intending to die at all,’ Håkan said. ‘I’m in better health than ever.’

  ‘Oh are you indeed? And getting better all the time? As white as an elm and hardly fatter than a piece of rope. When did you last eat?’

  ‘I d
on’t eat,’ Håkan said, smiling beatifically. ‘I breathe.’

  ‘Good God, I’m going to put you in care,’ his father raged. ‘Tube-feeding, to put it politely. Where’s the world going? It will soon end at this rate; the human race will disappear from the face of the earth.’

  ‘Would that be such a disaster?’ Håkan asked.

  ‘Don’t be such a bloody sheep!’ his father shouted. ‘Try to act like a man for once! Don’t you understand that it isn’t virtue that makes the world go round? You also need a bit of what is called vice. You need money, flesh and sex, fighting and war, blood and sweat, tears and curses. The world needs them as it needs mudslides, forest fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, ice ages, earthquakes. Part of humanity is always the victim, and it’s terrible, of course. But without such upheavals nothing can be renewed. In them lies the world’s future.’

  ‘Your doctrine is terrible,’ Håkan said. ‘I would prefer to choose death rather than follow such teachings.’

  After that Håkan no longer visited his father. He moved, and did not tell his father his address; all contact between them was over.

  In the morning he woke up extremely early, filled his water bottle and wandered to the refinery outside the city. The Breathers had to be on the hillock before sunrise, in order to gain the energy they needed. With the other Breathers, Håkan prayed and bowed to the rising star, his only life-giver.

  Despite his devotions, he felt himself growing weaker day by day. One morning he was no longer able to get up before sunrise. Håkan had a dream in which he was still a boy and was walking with his father through an autumn forest. It had just rained; the sunshine glittered through the pine branches on the hummocks of sphagnum moss. His father was picking lingonberries and Håkan mushrooms. There were plenty of them – ringed boletus, ceps, milk caps, chanterelles.

  ‘Today we’ll be able to eat spuds and mushroom stew,’ his father said, ‘and make lingonberry jam.’

  Håkan felt an immense hunger rise inside him. It was an incontrovertible and primitive greed, it was a passion which could not be directed or calmed. The sun caught fire inside Håkan, the clean, hot flame of his body, the last truth of his flesh.

  The Man with Twenty-One Faces

  Fakelove had a new patient, a nicotine addict, who went by the name of Chain-Smoker and said he wanted finally to give up smoking. After a few messages, once Fakelove had dealt him the same routine advice as he did to others who were possessed by the addition to cigarettes, Chain-Smoker suddenly began to analyse the general state of world politics. He characterized the near future as extraordinarily unpleasant, predicting the sudden collapse of the liberal market economy and warning of the eleventh hour. Some of his turns of phrase made Doctor Fakelove suspicious. They seemed more than familiar.

  ‘How typical of our times,’ Chain-Smoker wrote, ‘that even in our city there are already oxygen bars, and that we must soon buy the air we breathe. Before long only the rich will be able to afford it, and the time will come when we will no longer be able to claim our basic right to breathe for any sum of money.’

  ‘You as a smoker,’ Fakelove responded, ‘have easy and even free access to fresher air if only you give up your useless and expensive habit. Before that it is useless for you to worry about air pollution. I also wonder if it is possible that you have been my client before?’

  The man avoided the question and continued: ‘It is clear that the quality of men’s sperm has declined globally in recent years. Among the reasons may be poisonous compounds such as phtalates, polychlorinated dibenzodioxides and organic tin compounds. When they enter the human body, they act like hormones. Before long, the result will be total infertility and the end of the human race.’

  ‘Dear Chain-Smoker alias Håkan,’ Fakelove wrote. ‘It is clear that we have met before. Our client relationship will not be a long-term one this time either. I have already stated once that I do not wish to and cannot take responsibility for your treatment.’

  After this he did not hear from Chain-Smoker again.

  But in May, just before Fakelove intended to cease work and begin his holiday, he received a message from a correspondent whose pseudonym was Universal Inflation.

  ‘Are you aware,’ Universal Inflation wrote, ‘that you as a therapist have a responsibility to discuss the future seriously with your patients. They must have time to prepare themselves for the coming upheavals.’

  Fakelove now began to have an inkling of what was to come. After the next message he knew for certain. Universal Inflation wrote:

  ‘Even the most minimal changes in the mass of super-heavy elementary particles can produce radical effects. They can make all matter extremely radioactive. Undoubtedly including human beings. Gigadeath threatens the entire chain of life.’

  ‘I have the certain conviction that you are not writing to me for the first time. Did you perhaps in previous communications use the name Håkan? Or Chain-Smoker?’ Fakelove enquired of Universal Inflation.

  The man avoided the question coolly and continued, picking up the theme that had become so familiar to Fakelove: ‘It may be that before long we will find ourselves in the wrong vacuum, so to speak. The very thought. The space in which we live may suddenly disappear if a real bubble of vacuum appears. This bubble may grow at almost the speed of light, pierce our galaxy and travel ever onward. All the conditions of life would then change. I am now speaking of an extreme ecological catastrophe. The laws of chemistry and physics with which we are familiar would no longer hold. Life as we have learned to know it would become impossible.’

  ‘My dear Universal Inflation, alias Chain-Smoker, alias Håkan,’ Fakelove wrote. ‘I now feel myself to be in the wrong vacuum. It may be that if you do not stop force-feeding me your world’s end fantasies, I will accuse you of the deliberate prevention from practising a trade. Do not contact me again; otherwise, the consequences may be catastrophic for your economic future. The very thought!’

  After this, all was quiet on the world’s end front. Until the Man with Twenty-One Faces made his appearance.

  ‘I have compulsive thoughts associated with food which I would like to escape,’ his new client wrote. ‘I am particularly interested in chocolate, chocolate bars and chocolate fingers, milk chocolate and dark chocolate, mint chocolate, coconut chocolate, chocolate-coated liqueur sweets, any chocolate at all. When I got to the shops I make a kind of inventory of the shop’s chocolate selection, examining their packages and wrappings. Do you know why? I am examining what sort of chocolate packages it would be easiest to push a syringe into. Imagine! Have you ever had a case like this? I cannot help but think that what almost happened in the east could also happen here – without prior warning.’

  In the east? What was about to happen in the east, and when? The message gave Fakelove a chill, and the pseudonym was at first incomprehensible to him.

  ‘I would like you to tell me a little more about your obsession,’ Fakelove said. ‘I specialize in all sorts of disorders related to food and eating and I am sure we will find the means to help you.’

  Fakelove began to seek information about the Man with Twenty-One Faces. It appeared that there was a terrorist organisation of the same name which had poisoned chocolate displays in Japanese shops with cyanide. Consumers had, it was true, been warned in advance – it was not known by whom. The poisoned packets had been found and destroyed, so that the only damage was economic.

  The Man with Twenty-One Faces did not respond to Fakelove’s offer. The man might be a harmless case, but one could not be completely sure. His message had come through an anonymous server, so Fakelove could not determine his true e-mail address. Perhaps Fakelove should now contact the authorities, but before that he wished to find out a little more about the case.

  ‘I should like to continue the discussion personally,’ Fakelove wrote again. ‘Could we meet in my office, perhaps as early as this week?’

  No answer. The Man with Twenty-One Faces was stubbornly silent. But fear crept
into Fakelove’s life.

  First, he suspected that the Man with Twenty-One Faces was also in fact Håkan. Second, Fakelove liked chocolate a great deal, and generally in the afternoons, after lunch, he bought a bar of chocolate from the kiosk. It cheered him up, and was kinder to the stomach than coffee. Now he noticed that always at the kiosk – just as he intended to buy his bar of chocolate – he began suddenly to hesitate, and then decided to buy something else, liquorice or just the evening paper.

  Fakelove admitted that if he himself had tendencies to any phobia, they were centred on food. On no account did he intend to lose his life to food poisoning.

  He had irritable bowel syndrome and suffered alternately from diarrhoea and constipation. Fakelove was very careful about the sell-by dates on milk cartons and ready-meal packets. Often he threw products that read ‘best before’ in to the bin the day before.

  Fakelove always smelled an opened milk carton before he poured a drop into his coffee cup. He examined bread carefully from every angle for specks of mould, even if he well knew that it had been bought only the day before.

  He did not like to eat dishes containing mushrooms, morels never. Attached to the tap in his kitchen was a filter which was supposed to purge water of 99 per cent of all harmful residues.

  Nevertheless Fakelove sometimes surprised himself thinking what terrors might be concealed in the remaining one per cent.

  But he had never before doubted chocolate. Now that enjoyment had been taken from him. It was infuriating, it was diabolical, but he could no longer force himself to eat chocolate, even though his mouth watered when he saw his favourite blue-wrapped chocolate bar on the shelf.

  And this modest, innocent sensuous pleasure had been torn from him from the completely unknown Man with Twenty-One Faces or – even worse – Håkan, that unbearable bird of ill omen.