Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  He was ashamed of their friendship.

  The next day, when he was sitting on the climbing frame and reading a Superman comic, the pelican came out of the door of number six.

  “Good morning,” he greeted the boy. “So you could not come yesterday, then.”

  “No, I had something else to do.” Emil flushed lightly and continued: “Unfortunately.”

  “Of course, of course, completely understandable. I took a quiet little turn to St. Mary’s Park by myself. The sky was completely clear, did you notice? Autumn is coming. Imagine, I had no idea before that the stars were suns and that space is infinite. Now I have been reading Astronomy for Fun, it is very educational.”

  The pelican sat down next to Emil on the climbing frame and swung his legs. Emil glanced worriedly at the fifth floor windows. He was bothered by the idea that Elsa might be watching them and laughing.

  But Elsa wasn’t at the window, Elsa was at that moment walking across the car park and coming towards them, swinging her cardigan in her hand. Her mouth was already turning up at the corners, of course. Why did the pelican have to come and talk to him right now, and what was worse, sit on the climbing frame? It looked so weird. For a moment Emil almost hated the bird, who was sitting there looking rather satisfied, but without the dignity of either an adult human or an animal.

  “Good morning,” the pelican shouted while Elsa was still far off.

  “Morning.”

  Elsa nodded, but her eyes glanced mockingly sideways at Emil.

  “You are Miss Elsa?”

  The girl was visibly confused. She tittered and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She wasn’t used to people calling her miss, and now Emil was also annoyed that the pelican had to speak in such a formal manner. Before it had seemed to him like an amusing idiosyncrasy, and being addressed with such respect had actually improved his self-esteem.

  “Ye-eah, yes I am. Elsa Campbell.”

  The pelican had hopped down from the climbing-frame and raised his felt hat gracefully.

  “Good day to you, Elsa Campbell. I am Mr. Henderson.” The creature shook the girl’s hand, and she tittered again, and Emil was so embarrassed that he stared at the ground.

  “And now, since we have become more closely acquainted, which I have hoped for a long time might occur, perhaps I might make a suggestion?”

  What had he come up with now? Emil felt nervous. He kept a close eye on Elsa’s reaction.

  “I have planned an outing to Black Rocks, what would you say to that?”

  Neither of the listeners said anything, they just stared at him expectantly.

  The bird continued, a little more uncertainly: “I had thought of tomorrow, tomorrow I have no rehearsals at the Opera and the radio has promised good weather. What would you say? I would, of course, provide refreshments, you would not need to concern yourselves over that.”

  He looked from one to the other.

  “Well, I’m not really sure . . . ” Emil began, but Elsa interrupted him.

  “That would be lovely.”

  Emil looked at the girl, surprised. She looked genuinely enthusiastic, and the pelican rubbed his wings together.

  “That is precisely what it would be. Lovely is the very word.”

  The bird turned towards Emil. “Mr. Wildgoose is coming as well, from what I hear he has never been on an outing in his life. And, in fact, neither have I. But now the matter shall be remedied.” With half-closed eyes and an ecstatic look on his face, the bird said slowly: “Rest by this spring a moment! Here we shall take a small breakfast: red wine with aniseed and fresh snipe.”

  “I shall have to inquire about the aniseed,” he muttered. “But the snipe was certainly unnecessary, it should have been allowed to stay in the sky.”

  “Where’s that from?” Emil asked. His annoyance had almost completely evaporated.

  “From a book. I read ceaselessly these days. Books are a wonderful thing. Won-der-ful! But for my ability to read them I can thank this young gentleman here.” The pelican stood on tip-toes to reach up and pat Emil’s shoulder. “Perhaps you did not know,” he turned to Elsa, “that Emil is my former teacher. An excellent teacher!”

  Elsa looked surprised and didn’t say anything. Emil was embarrassed.

  “But we shall meet again tomorrow, children. We shall meet here, by the climbing frame, let us say at ten o’clock. Yes, at precisely ten o’clock.” He waved his hand at them and left to sway towards the town.

  “He’s nice after all,” said Elsa to Emil when they were alone.

  “Of course he is,” Emil said, relieved now and proud.

  “But sometimes I have this funny feeling, you know . . . ” Elsa stopped to think and chewed her hair. It was dark and shining and fell prettily onto her shoulders.

  “What kind of feeling?” Emil asked, uneasy for some reason.

  “Like he’s not really a normal person.”

  “Not a person? What is he, then?” Emil gave a fake laugh. He thought about telling Elsa, but he wasn’t sure that the pelican would like it. On the other hand, he himself had spoken freely about his earlier illiteracy. No, he wouldn’t tell her after all. Let the pelican tell her himself if he wanted, or let Elsa work it out if she could.

  “Some kind of big bird,” Elsa said slowly and looked unflinchingly at Emil. “Do you feel like that too?”

  Emil turned his head away. “Maybe sometimes, I don’t know.”

  “And what was he talking about, saying that he couldn’t read before? That you supposedly taught him how? Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “How strange. I mean, I suppose he is still a grown-up man, isn’t he?”

  “A grown-up, certainly.” That, at least, was not too much to say.

  “Elsa!” Someone called the girl from the fifth floor window.

  Emil thought that it was good that Elsa left. Because if they had continued their conversation for a little longer, Mr. Henderson’s secret would certainly have been revealed. But what would Elsa’s face have looked like if he had said: “Look, you’re right. He is a big bird. But he wants to be human.”

  And what would Elsa have thought of Emil, who was on such friendly terms with such a strange creature?

  The Picnic Club

  At any rate, in the morning Emil was already sitting on the climbing frame at ten to ten. It was the morning of a cloudless day, one of the last fair days that was forecast. What could be more fitting for an outing?

  A bus stopped in front of the supermarket and Wildgoose the pianist stepped out. He had a small round basket on his arm, and his bald spot was covered by a checked handkerchief. He was also carrying a fishing rod.

  “Morning, Emil. I was afraid I was late, but the leader of this trip doesn’t seem to have arrived yet either.”

  “No, but I suppose he’ll turn up soon,” Emil muttered. He never really knew what he should talk to the pianist about.

  But by now Elsa was there too, her hair neatly plaited back, wearing a t-shirt, shorts and trainers. That was when Emil noticed, embarrassed, that Elsa had small breasts too.

  “Good morning, Elsa,” the pianist greeted the girl as he had Emil, stretching out his right hand. “I heard yesterday that you were coming too. That’s marvellous, absolutely marvellous. I am Jeremy Wildgoose.”

  Elsa nodded, but glanced at Emil again from under her fringe as she had on the previous day. Emil began to have misgivings about the whole outing, given that such different people—and animals—were involved. He felt like going back home, and maybe reading the encyclopaedia. The week before he had got as far as F, but then he had stopped. He had finished Fortune and still remembered that she was the goddess of luck and chance. There was a picture of her too, which showed a winged woman. She had some kind of horn in her left hand, and a ball and a rudder in her right. What did they signify?

  The pelican came lumbering towards them energetically, dragging a large basket. He beamed brighter than the just-risen sun.


  “My dear children,” was how he addressed them once again, although the term didn’t really fit Mr. Wildgoose.

  “My dear children! I hope that each one of us will enjoy this Thursday, whose brilliance infuses everything with a new vigour, boldness and joy, which calls us to new tasks and triumphs, to new exertions, to new . . . ” (Here his flow of words began to dry up.) “In a word: the outing has begun! Forward, avanti!”

  He had already managed to learn foreign languages as well. With his back twisted from the weight of the basket, but with energetic gesticulations, the creature began to lead the group towards the edge of the estate and the countryside that was dimly visible there.

  Elsa and Emil walked behind him, and last, with slightly dragging steps, came Wildgoose the pianist. Emil soon began to feel sorry for the bird, with his bent posture, and he tapped him on the back.

  “Can I carry the food for a while?”

  “If you insist . . . ”

  He relinquished the basket to Emil with obvious pleasure, and began to whistle. It was astonishing that he could whistle with a beak like that, but from it came, with a clear and lovely sound, “Jerusalem,” “Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush” and “The Quartermaster’s Stores.”

  They had entered the woods some time before. The sounds of the city had faded into a shapeless hum, and soon that too disappeared. They had followed a path, and then left it, they had walked on flowering heather, the ridges of cliffs and through blueberry bushes. Mr. Wildgoose was carrying the basket now, and Emil felt like they had already walked at least ten miles.

  “How far is it to these Black Rocks?” whispered Elsa. Emil had no way of knowing, but the pelican had heard the whisper, and turned.

  “We shall be there any moment now, any moment. If the lady and gentlemen can just hold on for another couple of yards . . . ”

  But it wasn’t a couple of yards, not even ten, in fact they still had to cover well over a mile. The cliff sloped up and up, the pine trees became sparser and lower. They arrived at the top. Below there was a lake, so clear that they could see the bottom, the shores of which were uninhabited. A single white cloud descended into the lake, and another drifted across the peaceful sky.

  “Is this Black Rocks?” asked Emil, while Elsa just clicked her tongue, drew a breath the way that girls sometimes do, and sighed: “Oh!”

  “These are they.”

  “Why are they called black?”

  “Ye-es, well, they were black in the olden days.”

  “That doesn’t sound very likely,” said Wildgoose the pianist. He set off down towards the shore with his fishing rod over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” said the pelican emphatically. “They were black and shiny like ivory.”

  “Ivory is white,” said Elsa.

  “Ivory from a black elephant, is what I meant of course,” the bird snapped, and shot Elsa such a look that she didn’t continue. “But one day the elephant got anaemia, it became paler and paler until . . . ”

  “What happened?”

  “Well,” the creature said fiercely, “after that the rocks were no longer black, but the name remained.”

  “But what does that have to do with . . . ”

  “Let’s set the table,” the bird interrupted. “You can unpack the picnic basket.” He pointed at Elsa.

  “But wouldn’t it be better to eat on the rocks by the shore? Since Mr. Wildgoose is already there. And if he catches a fish, we can make a fire by the water.”

  “An excellent idea,” the bird said, nodding approvingly. “Let us dine at the water’s edge. I should think that everyone has quite an appétit by now.”

  Avanti and appétit, Emil thought. Where did he find that kind of foreign expression? He must have been reading phrasebooks with unquenchable enthusiasm.

  They found a smooth, flat rock on the beach which served well as a table. The picnic basket was pleasingly well-stocked: not only was there the obligatory herring, but also fruit juice, cheese and roast beef sandwiches, fairy cakes, bananas and chocolate. Jeremy Wildgoose also brought his own contribution: a thermos full of coffee, wholemeal rolls and of course French liquorice. But he didn’t catch any fish.

  “I remembered that these were Emil’s favourites,” he said, and glanced at Emil. The boy smiled with pretend gratitude, but Elsa stared at the pelican open-mouthed. He was currently stuffing raw herring into his beak-bag, and at the same time gesturing generously with his wing towards the pile of remaining herring. Elsa shook her head, thunderstruck, and the pelican shrugged his non-existent shoulders, calmly continuing his meal. Elsa finally managed to tear her gaze away.

  “Maybe we should swim?”

  “We should, but before eating,” the pianist said pedantically.

  “Before eating, after eating and while eating,” said the pelican. He was already in the water, splashing and diving, but his throat was still making swallowing movements. His clothes were in a bundle on the beach.

  “He doesn’t have a swimming costume,” Elsa complained.

  The pelican frolicked about in the water more and more energetically; at times only his tail was visible, and then he would bounce back to the surface, splashing water in every direction, with a floundering fish in his beak.

  “But it is a bird!” cried Elsa.

  “No, it’s a fish,” said Wildgoose. “A humpbacked perch, actually.”

  “No, but Mr. Henderson, he’s a big bird!”

  “A bird, certainly,” Wildgoose confirmed. “A very special bird.”

  He smoked quietly, no longer trying to fish, since they wouldn’t be biting any more anyway, with the pelican splashing so furiously.

  “You knew,” Elsa hissed at Emil.

  “Yes.”

  Elsa rose and moved ostentatiously away into the scrub by the shore. Emil guessed she was undressing in the shelter of a clump of alders. Then he saw her walking slowly to the water; she had put up her plait and he could see the back of her pale neck, all of her back and her buttocks.

  She was beautiful, Emil thought, for the first time. Beautiful, that was the right word. But he turned his gaze away.

  The pelican had already caught his third fish, and the pianist was collecting twigs for the camp fire. Emil began to do the same, collecting pine cones into the empty picnic basket at the same time.

  The fire was already burning when Elsa arrived at the table, her wet fringe curling. Subdued, they ate and drank, waiting for the fish to grill. Occasionally a branch popped in the fire. Sparks flew, the fire crackled and the glass-clear air shimmered above the flames. Elsa stirred her coffee with a sullen expression, without looking at anyone.

  The pelican and the pianist didn’t seem to have noticed her bad mood. Wildgoose had taken off his socks and shoes, he was lying almost on top of the table with his eyes shut, his hands behind his head, perhaps already asleep. The pelican tended the fire and the fish quite naked, and nothing was clearer than the fact that he really was a pelican. Humming to himself he stoked up the fire, threw the pine cones into it one by one, and now and then tested the state of the fish with a stick that the pianist had carved for the purpose. Emil found himself enjoying watching the bird at work, he stretched out on his back as well, with his hands on the warmer granite, and forgot about Elsa’s sulking. Very high up in the dazzle of the tranquil sky the last swallows of summer darted, cried and frolicked.

  “Emil.”

  It was Elsa. She leaned over Emil so that the hairs on the boy’s temple were stirred by her breath.

  “What?”

  Emil had opened his eyes and was looking straight into Elsa’s left eye. The pupil was small and black, the iris a warm brown, but her eyelashes hid half of it. Emil would have liked her to lean even closer, but she drew back and crushed some sorrel between her fingers.

  “This sort of thing doesn’t happen.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “You know. Birds talking and acting and dressing and living like people.”

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p; “I hadn’t heard of it before either. I suppose it’s pretty rare.”

  “Not rare: impossible.”

  “But it’s true anyway.” Emil nodded towards the sturdy white figure who was still busying himself by the fire. Elsa leaned closer to him again and whispered, almost into his mouth: “What if that’s a disguise too?”

  “What do you mean?” Emil was startled.

  “Just like his human clothes were a disguise, what if this is the same? Another disguise underneath? What if underneath the feathers and the beak there’s something else?”

  They stared at each other, pupils widening. Then Emil laughed. “That’s crazy. Of course he’s a real pelican. What could be underneath, anyway?”

  Elsa sucked her lip, thinking.

  “Well maybe some kind of . . . monster.”

  “You do talk some rubbish.”

  “Or not a monster at all. What if there was a—person?”

  “And another bird underneath the person?” Emil laughed again. Elsa looked offended once more.

  “Say what you like, but I think there’s something—wrong—about this. Completely unnatural. That’s right, unnatural’s the right word. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen.”

  “It’s ready,” said the pelican then, and turned towards them from the edge of the fire smiling brightly, a blackened fish hanging from the end of the stick. Noticing the grave and critical gazes directed at him, he became more serious.

  ‘An animal doesn’t smile,’ thought Emil. ‘But this one smiles. Can he be an animal, then?’ Doubt gnawed in his breast, but he himself didn’t really know where it was directed. He was angry with Elsa, she had kindled it.

  He rose and went to the pelican and praised the appearance of the fish and the smell that arose from it. The pianist also woke up, and they all picked up a fish except Elsa, who claimed that she was already full of coffee and rolls. She stayed further away, and watched them. But the fish was delicious, and they made short work of it even without Elsa.