Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  Phyllobates Terribilis

  The creature was electric blue, the kind of incredibly bright colour that glows like an advertising sign. Its azure skin was spotted with shiny black hieroglyphs on which the pond’s water fell in droplets, which reflected both the creature’s own colour and the shimmer of the evening sky. Its plump thighs quivered; between the four toes of its back legs stretched a tough, transparent membrane. Its round, black eyes, beneath their thick upper lids, were full of the bright darkness of the bog, but every now and then a membrane-like lower lid obscured its gaze. It breathed air rapidly and efficiently. But it could not escape. Håkan had trapped it.

  Something rustled in the shield ferns, and Håkan raised his head hopefully. Perhaps he would find another frog. But the noise was that of a spruce cone falling.

  Whenever Håkan looked at the shield ferns and the adder’s ferns, the slender, narrow fingers of the club moss, the cascading tree ferns and the bundled horsetails, he remembered a time when people did not yet exist. That is how, sometimes, he really felt: he remembered it like his own past. He remembered how the pteridophytes swayed evergreen, forming a jungle dozens of metres high. Håkan felt a deep peace in thinking about such trees, and he would have liked to wander beneath them.

  And he often looked at the club moss and the horsetails and the tree ferns, for he spent all his holidays in damp and shady woodlands, on the edges of ditches or in open bogs and string fens coloured red by sphagnum moss. He had seen the pale yellow bird’s-nest and could distinguish between the mountain heath and the wild azalea. Summer after summer he had gazed into the dark waters of ponds, tramped the muddy estuaries of rivers and trudged through springy fens at the mercy of mosquitoes.

  They were the homeland of frogs, and Håkan loved frogs. He had practised herpetology for more than ten years, from sixth-form college onward, and he had specialized in frogs early on.

  Håkan gazed at the frog’s broad, flat body and its loose, slimy skin with a feeling of great pleasure. From the markings and the garish colours he knew immediately that it belonged to the large order of Dendrobatidae, or frogs which are sometimes also called poison dart frogs. They defend themselves by secreting poisonous substances through glands in their skin.

  Three members of the order were also poisonous to humans. But Håkan had never succeeded even in seeing one. He knew that many of the scholars who frequented these parts always wore rubber gloves for safety’s sake, but in Håkan’s opinion this was unnecessary cautious.

  This individual was smallish, like most Dendrobatidae frogs. From the blue colour, Håkan concluded that it must be Dendrobates lazure.

  Despite his admiration, Håkan was conscious of his deep and unrelenting depression. It spread in his mind like a difficult case of poisoning.

  It was hardly three years since his last visit to the bog, but then his spoils had been much richer. If only he could imagine that this was just a coincidental decrease, a normal variation. But Håkan had studied the situation too closely to be able to deceive himself. He knew for certain that all over the world the genus of frog was rapidly disappearing. In the past ten years, dozens of species had already become extinct.

  There were, to be sure, other sorrows in his life, but the threatened extinction of the frogs was undoubtedly among the greatest of them.

  The losses were not merely local, and their cause was not clear. References were made to dryness and insect poisons, the loss of the ozone layer, acid rain and the disappearance of wetlands. But the widespread decrease in frogs was clear even in conservation areas, where conditions were ideal.

  Håkan knew that the red-legged frog, once so common, was now encountered only in the distant region of Riverside. The brilliant yellow fog of the Costa Rican rain-forests was not, as far as was known, any longer reproducing, for in recent years only a couple of ancient individuals had been seen. The multicoloured harlequin frog was also gone.

  Now he had already spent five days in the southeastern bog area without seeing even a glimpse of a frog. Håkan should have found, hereabouts, hundreds or thousands of frogs per hectare, but his sharp and schooled ear could not distinguish even the faintest of croaking. Dendrobates lazure was, on the whole long trip, his only discovery, although it was a prize specimen, as it happened.

  ‘You are the first to go,’ Håkan thought aloud. ‘We will forget you and go about our own important business here. But wait, others will come after us, there will be plenty of travelers on the road to extinction. And finally we will come too; we will join the same great society of oblivion.’

  Håkan lifted the cage in order to carry it to his tent. Then he noticed that under the cage there grew small mushrooms, some kind of magic mushroom. Håkan began to pick one of them with his left hands, for its cap was unusually sharp, and he had also learned a great deal about mushrooms on his journeys.

  But before he could grasp the mushroom he pulled his hand away. Something had nipped his finger like a nettle. At the same time, from under a fern that the back of his hand had brushed, a large, red-spotted frog emerged. It disappeared into the shade of some bog arums.

  Håkan returned to blue frog in a state of excitement. It was not so important that he had not been able to catch the other frog. He had seen it, so he knew that there was still a population in this area. Hope was not lost.

  How amazing that at this moment, when he had already lost faith, the frog should touch his hand as if in greeting. He was overjoyed, even though the creature’s greeting was as itchy and painful as a wasp-sting.

  On reaching the tent, Håkan glanced at his hand and started. The skin of the back of his left hand was red and rough all over. The hand was also clearly swollen, right up to the wrist. The burning sensation had not faded; on the contrary, it felt as if it were becoming more widespread and changing from moment to moment into a deeper ache.

  A doubt awakened in him. The frog that he had touched had been red-spotted. It was not impossible that it was Phyllobates terribilis, one of the species which could be dangerous to humans. Håkan had read that Phyllobates terribilis was so poisonous that its touch could kill.

  Håkan crawled into his tent. He understood that he must hurry. He had intended to spend the night in the forest, but now he must reach the road before dark. Håkan began to drag his possessions together, but he could only use his right hand; his left was tender and stiff. The thick dusk descended rapidly over the endless tussocks of the bog.

  Håkan looked at his left hand again. More changes had occurred. The fingers had swollen and the skin now looked as dark and dry as the bark of a coniferous tree. He felt the hand pulse as if it contained a second heart.

  It began to rain. As if that wasn’t enough! Through the increasing soughing of the rain Håkan began to hear small chirping sounds whose direction was difficult to determine. It sounded as if a small battery-operated radio had not found the right station. But the interference was joined by another interference – as if on another frequency – and then another. As they sometimes fell silent and then increased in volume again, he began to feel as if there were some conversation in progress, whose participants were at considerable distances from one another.

  Håkan was worried. He wondered if he was suffering from sound delusions caused by fever. The pulsing of his hand kept increasing, and he felt its temperature rising. But then one of the speakers moved quite close to him, almost up to his ear behind the thin tent canvas. Now he recognised the voice. How could he not have known it immediately?

  A new wave of fever made him tremble, but it was accompanied by a surge of joy. At first doubtful, but then increasingly certain of his perceptions, he understood that he was listening to the ancient, original voices of the bog. The speakers were croaking; there was no longer any doubt about it.

  From time to time there rose from the group a particularly audible, astonishingly harmonious and deep voice. It made Håkan’s heart jump for joy, for he knew that the owner of such a voice was also unusually capable of reprod
ucing. When Håkan glanced out of the opening of his tent, he could no longer distinguish the trees’ branches from the sky. He understood that he was hopelessly late. He would have to spend the night in the damp tent.

  But now the idea no longer made Håkan anxious. He no longer wished to leave the forest; he wished to listen to the concert. Perhaps the swelling would be gone by morning.

  One idea overcame him completely, completely unexpectedly. It was so strong that it was impossible for him to resist it. Håkan fetched the blue frog’s terrarium, lifted the lid and tilted it a little. Let it join its like!

  Dendrobates lazure stared at the bog’s new evening with eyes that were blacker than night. It appeared to hesitate for a moment; its neck rose and fell until, with a brisk spring, it disappeared into the group of softly rustling horsetails.

  And how many croakers were in voice now! On every side, new musicians joined the passionate concert. Shivers of cold shook Håkan and he crawled into his sleeping bag with all his clothes on. He listened with closed eyes, forgot his painful hand, and a comfortable languor stole over his body. But at the same time his hearing remained sharp and alert.

  Håkan felt he could distinguish dozens of different pitches and rhythms. Some sang high and densely, others’ deep, heavy bass resonated as if underground. Håkan understood: the frog genus had not been destroyed, it had merely remained hidden for a time, in remote hollows, secret crevices, underground kingdoms where no one would seek it. How happy he was that he had been wrong, that all the experts had been mistaken.

  But now they had returned! Why, Håkan did not know. It was not because of Håkan’s love and care. Perhaps it was merely a merciful coincidence that Håkan had had the privilege of witnessing their return to their old habitats.

  In a trance, his hand already numb and senseless, accompanied by the rustle of the rain and the croaking of the frogs, Håkan was taken through the eras toward the wondrous time when he did not yet exist.

  A Letter from a Colleague

  Dear Doctor,

  I turn to you to ask whether you might be able to offer any elucidation of the case of Phineas Gage. I am surprised that anyone – let alone in a foreign country – still remembers his case history, and is in addition able to link it correctly with my grandfather’s name. I have studied this case and read my grandfather’s detailed notes about it. This man was his patient almost forty years ago, and as far as I can understand, Phineas Gage was one of the most important people in his life.

  You will perhaps also know that Gage’s case was reported at the time in both the Vermont Mercury and Boston’s medical and surgical journal.

  It was the late summer of 1848, and it had apparently been a hot summer, too. The accident happened on one of the summer’s sultriest days here in Vermont, in the town of Cavendish. I too was born here, grew up, studied and did the same work as my grandfather. Now I am already much older than he was when he died.

  The working week had begun and things were busy at the Rutford & Burlington railway construction site. That summer, tracks had been laid as far as the banks of the banks of the Black River.

  The railway is a matter of course, an everyday thing, for people today, and we no longer remember what it meant for people in the 19th century. For our town, too, the coming of the railway was a thrilling experience, an unparalleled innovation.

  When I hear a train whistle or the distant judder of the tracks under the elm in my garden, where I sit in the afternoons with my cider, I sometimes remember my grandfather’s former patient. I think then that Phineas Gage was, in his own particular way, one of the millions of so-called victims of progress.

  Phineas Gage had worked at Rutford for a long time, but he was still a young man, only twenty-five years old. Gage was a quick and accurate worker, so I have been told. And it was just as well to be accurate in his job, for Gage was responsible for explosions.

  That day, however, something went wrong. A hole had been drilled in the rock and Gage had already pushed the explosive agent and the detonator into the hole. I cannot claim to understand these matters, but the explosive must apparently be covered with sand, and that was the assistant’s job. Gage asked him to bring the sand, but before he had time to fill the hole, Gage went and struck the gunpowder with an iron rod. Why did he do it? It was claimed that someone shouted his name, and he was distracted at the decisive moment.

  The explosion was ear-splitting, but the rock itself remained untouched. It was said that afterwards a strange, whistling sound was heard. The entire construction site fell silent. Everyone abandoned what they were doing. Phineas Gage lay on his back in the dust. The iron rod had pierced his left cheek and emerged from his skull. The explosion was so powerful that the rod flew another hundred feet and embedded itself bloodily in the ground, covered in scraps of brain.

  Phineas Gage was lying on his back, but he was not dead. He was not even unconscious. He was heard to say something, no one heard precisely what. Some of the men carried him to an ox-drawn cart, but he did not wish to lie down there. He wanted to sit, and he did as he wished. Gage sat for the entire journey to Mr. Adams’s house.

  Mr. Adams and his wife also tried to get Phineas Gage to lie down. But he would not. He was taken to the porch and there he sat on a bench, straight as an arrow, the terrible opening in his head. It was said that he wanted something to drink, and when cold lemonade was brought, he drank it thirstily.

  A messenger was sent for my grandfather, but he was delivering a baby, the cantor’s wife’s fifth, so that the first to reach the house was Doctor Edward Williams, a younger colleague of my grandfather’s. It was then an hour since the accident, the sun was already setting, and the heat was easing a little.

  ‘Here’s a job for you,’ Mr. Adams apparently said to Williams. And indeed it was. No one had ever seen such a hole in a living man’s head. And Mr. Gage was still alive, answering Williams’s questions willingly and rationally. When my grandfather arrived, it still looked as if he was in hardly any pain – a man who had just lost a third of his skull. The iron rod which had caused the destruction was later measured, and it weighed more than thirteen pounds. Its length was three feet seven inches and its diameter an inch and a quarter. The end that first pierced Gage’s cheek was, however, sharp; according to some people, that this fact was decisive to his survival.

  Once he had recovered, incidentally, Gage developed a particular dependence on this bird of ill omen; he carried the rod with him everywhere as if he were deeply attached to it.

  As soon as my grandfather arrived, he used surgical spirit to clean the cheek and the black-edged hole as thoroughly as he could and tried to dry the already clearly inflamed wounds by every possible means. But wound fever was of course to be expected. Nothing could prevent such craters becoming infected. Gage’s temperature rose the following night, he began to be delirious in the morning and was very uncomfortable. For the next two weeks, my grandfather prescribed morphine for him three times a day. His mother, sister and my grandfather took turns to sit by Gage’s bedside. His temperature remained high for the next six days and there developed on his head a painful abscess which my grandfather lanced.

  After a week, to everyone’s astonishment, not least my grandfather’s, an unexpected development occurred. Phineas Gage recovered, and my grandfather received his share of the halo of the miraculous cure. But in fact his recovery was very questionable. There came a time when my grandfather felt that it would have been better if he had died of wound fever. I almost think that his poor mother and sister secretly thought the same.

  The only significant physical consequence was the loss of the sight of his left eye. The sight of his right eye, on the other hand, was faultless. A strange-looking swelling remained on his skull, but his hair soon covered it. On his cheek was a star-shaped scar which faded with time, and it did not make the burly man significantly uglier. Gage spoke clearly, saw and heard, smelled and tasted. He was not even temporarily paralysed, he walked confidently and us
ed his hands like any young man.

  But my grandfather reported that many of the town-dwellers said: ‘Gage is no longer Gage.’ They were right. I could also quote his own words from that time: ‘The balance between his intellectual abilities and his animal instincts was disturbed.’

  In fact the real and original Phineas Gage really did die in the summer of 1848 at the Rutford & Burlington construction site. His physical body remained, but the soul that had given it life was a poor-quality after-image of the real Gage. Before the accident, Gage had been a decent, balanced and modest young man. He had excellent powers of concentration, his projects were realistic and he could put his plans into practice.

  After the accident, he showed indifference, even arrogance, toward the people he came in contact with. He was as impatient as a small child, capricious and greedy. For women, Gage was a direct threat; I know of a couple of unpleasant cases which I do not care to relate in detail. It was a wonder that he did not wind up in court. The best of advice from both my grandfather and Gage’s poor mother fell on deaf ears.

  Gage returned to his old job at Rutford, but he carried out his responsibilities negligently and untrustworthily. His work-mates at first treated him with tolerance and understanding, but his behaviour toward them was substandard, so unfriendly and frankly brutal, that soon an empty space formed around him. He could not and would not remain at Rutford.

  After his resignation, Gage sought out jobs that did not suit him at all. It was as if he had no comprehension of his own qualifications. A horse farm was just one example; he did not stay there long. Even horses did not like him, as he was unable to treat them with respect, any more than he could humans. He had ceased to understand the nuances of human speech as well as the wordless messages of animals. Thus his own fate became increasingly gloomy.