Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  The Heretics

  There are people, such as one of the subscribers to The New Anomalist, an old crafts teacher, to whom Swedenborg’s angels are as concrete, as real, as the cashier at the local grocery store. Another reader claimed to receive messages from the beyond just by closing her eyes and holding a pen over an empty piece of paper. When she opened her eyes, there was a message, always some kind and comforting words, such as, “It is so beautiful here” or “Everything is fine now.”

  A third reader wasn’t as lucky. He wrote that his home was being terrorized by a poltergeist. It would rattle his wok pan in the kitchenette of his rented one-bedroom apartment and would make his cellphone ring even when he had switched it off. During the night, it would roll up his blanket so that he would wake up shivering from cold and fright. It would even turn on the espresso machine he’d just switched off.

  He called The New Anomalist to get information on how to exorcise an evil or earthbound spirit. I didn’t have anything to give him. All I could say was: “Keep calm and try to ignore it.”

  He was disappointed. “What a pity that there are no competent exorcists in our parish,” he said. I never heard from him again, and I don’t know whether the disturbance ever stopped.

  Most of our subscribers, however, were completely average people, to whom nothing truly extraordinary ever happened. They read our magazine out of casual interest, seeking novelty, or because they were hungry for sensation.

  They were all gnawed at by problems that could not be answered satisfactorily by social awareness, science, religion, art, history, culture, or technological development. In that, too, they were like the rest of humanity. But I did meet several true eccentrics and monomaniacs, or at least corresponded with them. I got attached to some of them, and their likenesses, voices, and obsessions even found their way into my dreams.

  It wasn’t true that our subscribers were just ignorant morons, as the Marquis would sometimes claim when he was in a bad mood. Our readers were by no means a homogeneous group of people, and some of them were highly educated private thinkers. Many of them were only passionate about a specific, narrow subject. Someone who was interested in synchronisms wouldn’t necessarily have any interest in lost continents or the aquatic ape hypothesis.

  And let’s consider their attitudes towards the connection of mind and body, or mortality and immortality. The readers of The New Anomalist had as many opinions on these fundamental questions as any random sample of people. There were those who believed in the immortality of the soul and even that it could evolve to higher planes through reincarnation, eventually reaching divinity. Some thought that individual consciousness lived on for only a short time after the body died, merging then with the world spirit. Others were convinced that it’s all over when the brain dies.

  All of them couldn’t be right, but it was hard to disprove anyone’s opinion.

  For instance, Saulus once said, “Let’s assume that you fall to your death from a cliff one hundred yards high. What’s your first thought right after? You think, ‘Oh, I didn’t die after all!’ ”

  “Saulus,” I said, “You are a modern-day heretic.”

  If only I’d asked, Saulus would have given the Marquis an entire lecture on what the soul is. He would have said: First we must examine what the body is.

  Saulus believed that there were seven levels of consciousness and humans had seven bodies. Only two of them exist on the physical plane, the physical and etheric bodies. Our third body is the astral body. The body, therefore, consists of a physical side, which we experience through our senses. We can feel its weight, and are forced to give it up at the moment of death. But the body consists of so much more. The astral body is the same as our personal consciousness, whereas the mental body could be called our soul or ego. Seven levels lie between pure spiritual consciousness and physical consciousness, Saulus claimed.

  “What?” I once asked Saulus. “You’re mixing up bodies and souls. Isn’t that a bit strange?”

  “It’s a mistake to think that these things would be simple,” Saulus replied. “You say my words are confusing. But what do you think of the latest scientific theories? Now those are unbelievable, wouldn’t you say? They want us to believe that elementary particles can be in two places at the same time. And even that’s not enough! Recently I heard a hypotheses that it’s likely that the world we perceive actually behaves like the world of atoms—we’re just not aware of it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the chair that we’re sitting on or the apple we’re about to sink our teeth into is simultaneously in some other place. What do you say to that? And not just in some other place, but in an infinite number of other places, and not just the chair we sit on or the apple we bite into, but first and foremost the person sitting in the chair or eating the apple. You see, some scientists suggest that there are countless universes. They say that every possible state of affairs must have its own universe, and hence these new universes are born all the time. Apparently, this is the logical result of quantum theory.”

  “Fine, then,” I said. “Of course it sounds incredible. But nevertheless, it’s a theory that has been created to explain something otherwise unexplainable. In a way, it’s incredibility is necessary. Unlike your theory.”

  “How do you figure that?” Saulus asked, somewhat offended.

  “Well, for example, who’s to say that there aren’t six or eight levels between pure spiritual and raw physical consciousness?”

  “Because it’s been known for centuries that there are seven,” Saulus said.

  “Known by whom?” I asked.

  “By the holders of secret wisdom,” he replied.

  Old Faith

  Whenever the Marquis would run off to the library or the bar or wherever, Faith, his aged dog, would often stay with me the whole day. She’s a mutt, half-spaniel, half-collie. She’s black and white like a yin and yang.

  Once upon a time, she was a weanling, a sleepy and whimpering puppy. Once upon a time she darted after candy wrappers whirling in the wind, learned to sit and shake and heel, barked at squirrels, dug holes in the compost heap, stalked the shadow that the smoke from the coffee roastery cast on the pavement.

  Every species has its time. A dog’s time seems so short from the human perspective. Ten or twelve years pass, and adult humans are almost the same as before, or at least they think they are. But the course of Faith’s life is already nearing nightfall. The fur of her black spots has turned a shade of silver at the ends. Faith is almost deaf. There’s no use in calling her name when she’s ambling ahead of me. She can’t hear my call in the midst of city’s clamor.

  Faith is on a special low-protein diet to slow the failing of her kidneys. She suffers from a weak heart, and each morning a bitter tablet has to be crushed and mixed into her lean food.

  Her dignified and melancholy being, full of a sort of underlying sorrow, gives the room a distinct atmosphere. It becomes filled with her presence.

  From where does that melancholy stem? Not just from old age. Every dog has the same problem. Their lives are balancing acts between a humanized being and a older, wilder nature. Dogs are interstitial beings, not yet human, but no longer wolves. That is the unresolved paradox of doghood. There is no returning to the past—or if there is, it would mean a total break of their bond with humans—but humanity is also a mystery to them, something they can never attain.

  When Faith looks out the window, I study her profile. The small movements of her eyes reveal what’s happening outside. When Faith gets tired, and nowadays that happens from lighter and lighter exertions, she lies down with a grunt on the Chinese doormat, the one decorated with the image of a blue dragon. I see Faith dreaming. Her eyelids and the dark corners of her mouth move, her heavy paws tremble as if she were dreaming of running in a summer meadow.

  At times I think how strange and wonderful it is that a completely different species of mammal participates so closely in our lives. I w
atch these lowly creatures, the ones we call dogs, just dogs. I watch the movements of their ears, the patterns and color schemes of their coats, the various types of tails they have and the expressiveness of these tails, and I am filled with deep awe.

  I see these four-legged creatures stroll obediently by their masters or pull frantically at their leashes in a direction of their own choosing. I see them sniffing around and playing in parks, I see them in trains and buses, tied up in front of stores, waiting paitiently for their owners, panting in the heat. No city or town soundscape could be complete without the sound of dogs barking. How much less lively and more impoverished this city would be without the participation of dogs. Much of our thoughts and daily doings fall beyond dogs’ understanding. These creatures are not concerned with buying and selling, election-year opinion polls, the downfall of the Nepalese royal family or the Tobin tax. The universe of smells and memories, the sphere in which dogs live, extends beyond our reach. The things that grab our attention, our sense of time, the sensitivity of our senses, and our entire perception are different.

  And yet we can make contact with each other, and that, if anything, is a miracle in my opinion.

  The spiritual bond between dog and human is different, more durable and resilient, than the bond we have with any other animal. It cannot be severed. It cannot be disowned.

  I often talk to Faith. No one listens to me better than she does, tilting her head, taking in my every nuance of tone and state of mind. She understands the jist, I have no doubt about that. Her inquisitive, intense gaze could easily be called human.

  But no, why would she be human? Only because she is so full of consciousness?

  Faith knows before anyone else when her master is coming to the office. Half an hour before the Marquis arrives, she will lie down by the front door. She won’t sleep, only grunt now and then to herself.

  When I was a child, I had a German picture book called Tiere sehen Dich an. The shining black gaze of an ostrich from the height of its long neck and the round, thoughtful eyes of a monkey dressed in a colorful children’s jacket. The convict gaze of a fox being farmed for its fur, trapped behind the chicken wire of its cage.

  Victims, friends, collegues, housemates, pets . . . Even when we live together, we live in different worlds. They live in the universes of other senses and perceptions, but our gazes and deeds connect our fates. We feed them and feed on them, we hunt them and clothe ourselves in their skins. Our power over them is terrifying.

  The gaze of other species defines humanity, gives us our bearings. How could our own language give us this information? Only in the eyes of a stranger can we read who we are and what we are like.

  A Lesson

  I was looking at the dust on my desk and thought that maybe it was time to do some cleaning, for the sake of my own health if for no other reason, when Ursula, the building janitor, walked in. I was expecting her.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  “Just dust,” I said.

  “Do you know what dust is, where it actually comes from? From volcanoes, distant stars, the cloaks of ancient kings . . . ”

  “I’ll just wipe it off,” I said. “Then we can begin the lesson.”

  Ursula, who had studied yoga meditation for decades, had promised to teach me some mind-centering techniques.

  “Western people believe in the subconscious, but don’t even know the superconscious exists,” she said.

  “The key is what people focus their attention on,” she said. “To become conscious of consciousness, to perceive the perceiver, that takes real skill.

  “Our goal is to reach a state of pure consciousness,” she said. “It’s a lofty goal, but you have to aim high. You have to control the flow of your consciusness and attention and learn to direct it.You do know that you can’t focus attention on many things at the same time, don’t you?”

  I nodded absent-mindedly. I was thinking about an article that had been sent to us, which I’d have to cut. It dealt with how the phases of the moon affect the luck of Las Vegas gamblers.

  “Try to focus your attention on the center of your brain. If you lose focus, hold your breath for a while. That usually helps to refocus on the essential.”

  I did as I was told, held my breath for a while, but it wasn’t all that easy to find the center of my brain. I had to let my breath flow again, and I soon became sleepy, forgetting even Las Vegas.

  “Sooner or later you will hear sounds at different pitches. They aren’t just the hum of your ears and it’s not just your ears that you’re hearing them with.”

  I didn’t ask her what the sounds were, as I was trying hard to follow her instructions. But a tram turned somewhere on the other side of the block and the screech extinguished all my potential inner sounds. A toilet was flushed upstairs, and someone whistled outside the window, as if giving a prearranged signal.

  “Focus on the highest sound and let it lift you higher and higher. Don’t listen to it with your left ear, use your right. Move it to the center of your head, where the Sahasrara chakra lies.”

  “What chakra?”I asked.

  “That’s not important now. The more you concentrate, the better you can hear that sound. When you learn to follow it, it’ll fill your body, your whole environment, and some day, when you open your eyes afterwards, everything around you will be blindingly bright, even at midnight.”

  I remembered the nocturnal lights that I’d seen with my eyes closed and not open. I wondered whether I had unwittingly practiced the method Ursula was now teaching me. But the sound that she was talking about, that I didn’t remember having heard. Only a whistle.

  “If this technique doesn’t work, close your eyes and focus on the spot that is between your eyebrows, the place that’s called the center of the third eye. Can you see different colored figures floating in the dark?”

  As I watched them, I happened to remember an interview with a woman, who had recently lost her sight. “People think that the blind see only darkness,” she’d said. “That’s not true. I’m never in the darkness. Shapes of various colors swim in front of me in a mist. I try not to pay any attention to them.”

  With my eyes closed, I kept thinking about blindness and how, if you were blind from birth, you wouldn’t be able to know that you were missing something unless you knew someone who could see.

  “Are you listening to me?” Ursula asked.

  “Sorry.”

  “Can you see figures?”

  “Yes, pale rings or loops.”

  “Follow their movement and transformation as if you were watching a film. Focus on the smallest one and push through it.”

  I tried to do that, but the figure expanded into a cloud of mist and I opened my eyes. I didn’t feel like I’d gotten much out of the lesson, and I think Ursula sensed my disappointment.

  “It’s a process that takes a lot of time and determination,” she said. “It couldn’t really be any other way. Pure consciousness is divinity. If you’re patient, if you learn real focus, you’ll get closer to it. Did you know that chakras are like flowers, like flower petals of spiraling light?”

  When she said that, I thought about the datura. There was something sacred about that plant.

  After Ursula had gone, I vacuumed and emptied the trash can.

  “It sure is clean in here today,” said the Marquis, who came in just as I had organized the papers on my desk into three comparatively neat stacks. I hadn’t heard his usual knock. He looked around with approval.

  I looked around as well. I was fairly content with what I saw. The office actually looked cozy.

  “There were too many cloaks of ancient kings in here,” I said.

  He didn’t ask what on earth I was talking about.

  “I see you’ve fought against disorder and entropy. That is the right path, the purpose of mankind on this earth.”

  I looked at the Marquis, surprised. He didn’t ordinarily talk in such a pompous and preacherly manner.

&nb
sp; “But have you ever thought that chaos might be the sum of order, that sensible details could build a senseless whole, and not the other way around, as we’d so much like to believe. Quite a terrible thought, isn’t it? Think about it,” he said and left again before I had time to say anything.

  But I agreed that it was a terrible thought.

  Half an hour later there was a knock on the door, the Marquis returned, and said again, “It sure is clean in here today. Have you finished the article on the Voynich manuscript?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “First I have to cut down that Las Vegas article. But what was it that you were talking about earlier?”

  “I’m sorry, when?”

  “Half an hour ago. You said something about the fundamental senselessness of the universe . . . ”

  “This is my first visit here today,” the Marquis said and looked at me slowly. “You’re not making any sense yourself. Maybe you should take some time off.”

  My heart ran cold. He was lying to me. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to consider the obvious and even more repellent alternative: that he was telling the truth.

  Nicola’s Formative Years

  Nicola Tesla has been dubbed the man who invented the twentieth century. And yet this scholar and inventor, the father of the radio, alternating current, wireless communication, the induction motor, and many others, was forgotten for decades. Now those who chase after free energy and believe in perpetual motion machines swear by Tesla’s name, and online you can order Tesla mosquito repellent, Tesla biomagnets, and Tesla space oil.

  Nicola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Croatia, in 1856. Already as a child he was clearly an extraordinary individual of unusual skill. A powerful imagination and awe-inspiring memory, clarity and purity of thought defined his life from his early years on. His orthodox father wanted Nicola to become a priest, while Nicola himself set his sights on becoming an engineer.

  He was hypersensitive to smells and other sensory stimuli. A piece of campher somewhere in the house gave him fits of extreme disgust. If Asperger’s syndrome had been known in his time, he probably would have been diagnosed with it.