Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction
Page 77
But now I saw that Joonas, too, was awake. He had raised himself up on one elbow and was listening.
When the tremor stopped, he squeezed my hand, but we did not say anything. It was not my heart. It was the earth itself that trembled and vibrated, the earth that bore and fed people and animals only to finally digest them for its own nourishment. Here the earth sang like the nightingale floor, but no samurai would be able to stop the approaching footsteps. They would come when they would, and their ever louder rumbling would deafen our ears.
The next morning, Hiroko and I went back to the antique shop. I assumed that I would be able to find something interesting for a homecoming present, even if it probably wouldn’t be as perfect as that patina’ed bronze buddha.
The shopkeeper greeted us like old acquaintances as soon as we entered. Hiroko exchanged a few words with him, and he smiled, nodded, and went into the back room.
‘What did you say?’ I asked Hiroko.
‘I wanted to know if a similar buddha to the one you bought yesterday might put in an appearance,’ she said. Then she, too, smiled.
The shopkeeper returned, carrying a sleeping buddha in each hand. I cried out with delight. The sculptures were almost identical to yesterday’s buddha, except that I found their facial features a little more severe, their expression a little more solemn.
‘The shopkeeper received them this very morning,’ Hiroko explained. ‘I am amazed that three sleeping buddhas have appeared to us. The Buddha himself rewarded you for giving him away.’
At the end of November, after we had returned home, Hiroko wrote: ‘The evergreen camellias already budding. Their leafiness is timelessly shiny, and thus they are committed to the sun summer and winter.’
When I had finished, I noticed that my fellow club members were still looking at me as if still waiting for more and somewhat puzzled. I understood that my story had not met their expectations.
‘Was that all, then?’ Anatol asked, a little timidly.
No one knows how to manufacture the blue glass in the cathedral at Chartres.
The sun’s core is ice.
Colder regions are inhabited by lonelier bees.
Under this town lies another town.
Inside this earth is another sun.
FOUR FROM
FALSE WINDOW
2009
Translated by Leena Likitalo
Valeikkuna (False Window) is a loosely connected collection of stories about a post-human wise man, a former student of philosophy who lives in a flotation tank in his home. The man’s hometown is ruled by a group called the Divider’s League, which uses violence to accomplish its goals. Customers come to the wise man to seek his advice for problems they can’t solve on their own. While he offers them words of solace—rarely actual solutions—he struggles to come to terms with his own fading interest in humanity. The selection dealing with a terrorist is, in the novel, tied to the chapter “Picture Book,” in that the thinker considers whether one of his potential offspring could become a “metamaatti” or “metamatician.”
The Divider
Right before a series of murders started in our city, the following manifesto-like text was published in the media:
In our city, you will see in the near future a street-art series, Ash and Chaos, that contains metamorphosic art. I seek chaos with the means of order. I study suffering, and my pieces are at the same time both scientific experiments and artistic performances. My project is in need of both assistants and subjects who will be helped to undergo a full metamorphosis in a short time period. The assistants will be chosen based on the applications, and the subjects will be randomly picked based on certain geometric principles. My pieces will actualize at the same time randomly and according to natural laws as does everything in this Universe. I combine mathematics, horror, and beauty in my science-art in a unique way. I thus invite the audience to follow the free performances of metamorphosis.
The manifesto was signed by Metamaatti, which some take to mean “Metamatician.” This Metamaatti is the Compass-League’s founder and leader, although he never speaks of the league but always of the “project.” Metamaatti has acquired his strange name for a couple of reasons. He’s a former math student, who is rumored to have developed his own branch of meta-mathematics. In addition to that, he sees that in his metamorphosic performances he has created a whole new “science-art” division. It is claimed that many young men positively impose themselves as “assistants” to Metamaatti’s projects, and that he doesn’t by any means accept everyone willing. It is also claimed—but I don’t know if there’s any grain of truth—that Metamaatti is a Luddite who hates new technology and hence doesn’t use a computer. Instead he reputedly builds complex mechanical machines that he uses to help him pick his subjects. (When Metamaatti speaks of subjects, we others speak of victims.) District street codes, the magnetic compass, the square, and the watch are also Metamaatti’s instruments. It is said that Metamaatti has a notebook that is written in code and if it were found and its codes could be solved, one could find out the principles of the murders.
Metamaatti is a determinist, for he believes that nothing could happen differently than it does. His deeds, like the deeds of everyone, are loops in the unbreakable, infinity-reaching, and pre-determined chain of reasons. There’s no freedom of will, and thus he is never responsible for his choices. He could do nothing differently from what he does.
We know quite a lot about Metamaatti because he also has his own loyal reporter who interviews him at regular intervals in unknown places. The magazine is always sold out when the newspaper poster contains Metamaatti’s blurred silhouette. Metamaatti has admirers and secret protectors; otherwise he couldn’t have hidden from the fist of law for this long. It is rumored that there are also some admirers among public servants and politicians, but especially to many persons of culture he is a guru and a cult figure.
– One must be systematic, he has stated in an interview. – Even the state has its system. In a criminal state only a criminal is a man of honor.
Quite often the Compassists, in other words Metamaatti’s assistants, acquire a new victim who is determined by a geometric shape unknown to others. Even they don’t know the person’s name or age beforehand. The one who at a certain beat of the clock happens upon a certain spot in the city, in the intersection of lines determined by Metamaatti, ends up as a subject of a Compass project and experiences “perfect metamorphosis”, regardless of whether the person is a child or elder, a man or woman. Every day rumors circulate of where the metamorphosis point is, but no one ever guesses the right spot beforehand. At times people avoid the neighborhood of railway stations or busy market streets, at other times the paths of the central park or certain banks, office buildings, hospitals, coffee houses, restaurants, night clubs, movie theaters . . . But neither is it known at which time of day and at which stroke of the clock it will start to happen. When the show starts, masked men—or perhaps women are involved too—appear as if out of thin air and surround their victim. No one has ever wanted to intervene in what happens next, or perhaps just hasn’t been fast enough. A flame blazes, fire rages in a storm, eyes smoke and the smell of burning spreads to the surrounding blocks. When silence returns, what remains is a charred torso and fatty ashes. A human being’s shape—everything that was order, memories, knowledge, and love—has been turned into insignificant chaos.
The league or project is said to constantly grow. Supposedly already one thousand members belong to it, those called assistants, perhaps more. I can’t fathom it or believe in such numbers. What makes people join such an organization?
I often think that I want to meet Metamaatti. But why, really? So that I could assure him of the insanity of his theories and deeds? Or out of sheer curiosity? Or just to understand? To ask, why does he use the best that humankind has developed to create the worst? To debate with him the philosophic questions of history and of what is good and bad, free will, freedom, and responsibility?
Picture Book
Yesterday I was presented with a very special book. My tank’s wall was knocked on loudly and impatiently. I was waiting for a familiar customer who was late, a student who wanted to discuss the existence of after-images. He was leaning toward the opinion that one couldn’t say that they really existed. I was waiting impatiently, because I rarely get to discuss with anyone the question that I once studied for a long time and even with some enthusiasm. I had already opened the front door for him with my remote control, with which I control not only my tank’s lighting and temperature but also all the functionalities of my apartment. But instead of the student, I saw to my disappointment through the crack of my tank’s sliding door an odd nose push forth that was followed by the owner, a youngish well-dressed man. I inquired in an irritated manner what was going on and who the stranger was. The man presented himself as a sales representative—he didn’t mention his name—and announced that he had a special offer of a book, a picture book, a map to be exact, that would surely be of interest to me.
– Definitely worth exploring, he said, scrutinizing through the door crack both me and my cramped habitat. From his upper lip I could deduce that I didn’t please the visitor’s eye in the least as I floated there before him, my belly button rising tautly right above the brine’s surface. But he was the one who’d burst into my lair.
– I wouldn’t have bothered to visit if I hadn’t been certain of my cause, he added. – This offer can’t simply be bypassed! It’s fan-tas-tic! he assured me, emphasizing for some reason the second syllable of the word “fantastic.”
– Unfortunately I don’t believe that I have any use for maps, I coldly stated. – That is to say, I don’t travel anymore at all, I don’t even drive a car. And why does one need paper maps these days anyway? Or books for that matter.
– But this isn’t a travel atlas, he pointed out. – There’s no need for a car, nor does one need to travel any place. And the offer is optimized precisely for you. Personally—consider that.
I was already about to remark that I hadn’t asked for any personalized optimizations and didn’t need that, but my curiosity started to stir a little. And maybe glancing at the book would be the easiest and fastest way to rid myself of the sales representative. Though I wondered if this sort of selling of physical books was at all profitable these days.
– All right, go ahead and show me, I said and fully opened the door. – But I have only very little time, I added rudely as the man pushed himself through without any ceremony, bearing an uncommonly large book clutched against his side.
– Would you not get up to see . . . So that the book wouldn’t get wet . . . Besides, this is rather heavy.
– Don’t worry, I’m used to reading even in these circumstances, I remarked.
He leaned over the tank’s edge and, with both hands, reluctantly handed over the tome, which indeed was uncommonly heavy.
– This is just a lesser fragment of the whole masterpiece, solely a foretaste, he remarked. – Only a thousand pages.
– I beg your pardon? A thousand pages! How vast is the whole book? I asked, confused.
– Thirty-two trillion pages, he replied as if he really were serious.
– Thirty-two trillion pages! I repeated with a laugh, but he didn’t alter his expression, only continued: – As said, the sample edition has been compiled solely for you.
This was quite ridiculous. Confused and doubtful, I nonetheless started to browse the tome. It was indeed, as I floated, a little arduous to handle. When I opened it, I didn’t see anything even remotely resembling a map: no roads, cities, bodies of water, or mountains. To my surprise, the book didn’t have text either, at least at first glance I didn’t find any. Even the title, it was just a long series of numbers or a code that I have already forgotten.
The book was full of tiny, minute high quality photographs, or holograms to be exact, all pictures of children, girls and boys. The children were white-skinned and looked to be of the same age, only one-and-a-half or two years at max. Under the pictures were just numbers; the children’s names were not mentioned. I browsed and soon became so immersed in the stream of holograms so that I forgot the sales representative altogether.
It must be said that I have never been particularly interested in small children. Rather, I try to avoid closer contact with them, because I don’t quite know how to relate to them. I don’t know how to behave naturally in their company. Actually, I’m shy and apprehensive of them. I also get disconcerted by the fact that little children often stare at a stranger like animals, unashamedly direct and for a long time. At other times very young kids bring me to a peculiar and unusual state of mind that one could maybe even call distress. During our time, it’s really no wonder, because even seeing a child, let alone meeting one, has become a rarer and rarer experience. My state of mind then approaches happiness and tenderness, but my head and eyelids turn so heavy that I yearn to return to my tank, close my eyes, and fall asleep.
Maybe this distress could also describe my reaction to that book, because before long I started to get anxious. Most of the children were so sweet and healthy-looking, but there were also pictures that presented severely handicapped, sick, or malformed kids. Those weren’t easy to look at. One unfortunate had a huge hydrocephalus, with the back of his head like a stretched watermelon, and another one was clearly blind, but the eyes of the third one couldn’t see at all, because a gloomy mushroom-shaped tumor filled half of her face. I ended up on a spread where I saw even more terrible developmental errors. One little boy was double-headed, but his other head resembled more some sort of grasshopper’s head than a human’s. One child,—or more like abnormality—had two mouths, but neither was at the customary spot: one was on the forehead and the other on the top of the head. The forehead’s lips were akin to painted red, they smiled mockingly or as if knowing something I didn’t. The top of the head’s mouth was, on the other hand, a kind of snout, from which peeked out a knife-sharp tongue. A pitiful creature to whom one could wish only fast death.
There was also a faceless child or rather a child who had only a face, solely a smooth face that didn’t contain anything else belonging to a face but a nose. Where had I seen such a face before? I remembered after thinking for a while: in the museum of Kyklaadi art, of course. Five thousand years ago Kyklaadis created small marble statues whose lyre-shaped heads had no other details than the nose. Actually, the desolation of those faces downright pleased me.
I saw other faces that were so attractive that I got stuck staring at them, spell-bound for several minutes. Especially one little boy (or possibly a girl; sex is difficult to deduce from these young children solely based on a facial picture), the second to last child on page 613, radiated unique charm, vitality and precocious wisdom. Staring at that face, I felt something new—or maybe more accurately a feeling familiar from early youth—something akin to love, an agonizingly painful longing. But my attention was caught by the fact that not one of the children smiled; they were somewhat expressionless or on their faces rested in a kind of precocious baseline-seriousness. Despite the great deviations, all the children, even the oddest and ugliest, resembled to some extent each other (the term “family-resemblance” surfaced in my mind), and in all of them, anyway, there was something incredibly familiar. This familiarity perhaps distressed me the most, like the distress of a word waiting on the tip of the tongue that never gets out.
What sort of children were they actually? Whose children? The pictures looked like passport holograms: the kids were shot directly from the front and everyone (except of course the blind one and eyeless) looked directly into the camera. Their background was just a white sky or maybe a curtain, I couldn’t tell. They also looked naked, though in the pictures only a bit of bare, delicate shoulders showed.
Why did these children feel so incredibly familiar to me? Every page contained at least a hundred holograms, but after each page I became more and more certain that I must have in some place seen the young people in the pictures. But how could that be possible? I hadn’t met such a huge number of kids in my entire life.
The flurry of thousands of children’s faces numbed me, but on one page I suddenly stopped. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a childhood picture of my own daughter, Aava. There was no doubt about it: in the picture was Aava. How could I not recognize her pure blue eyes, those that even in that age bore a quizzical gaze, and the fine arch of her brows? But I had never seen such a picture of my daughter.
– Where did you get this picture? I harshly asked. – Who has taken it?
– But no one took it, he replied, seeming confused. No, no one did. It’s a fully synthetic and automatically developed hologram.
– How? I asked.
– Based on your genetic map of course. Does this child then really exist?
– Most certainly and really she does exist.
The man leaned from the pool’s thin rim to peek at the book. Because I had to hold it up with both hands, I couldn’t point at the picture with my finger. He followed my gaze and pointed correctly at my daughter’s picture with his own forefinger. I couldn’t help noticing that on his finger gleamed a gaudy ring. He must have progressed in his career commendably.
– This child? he asked.
– The very child! That’s Aava, my own daughter, now sixteen.
I must have looked not only appalled but also angry. I was overcome by dizziness and the sense of falling though the brine supported me and the book as loyally as before. That sensation was caused by the surprise brought by a new certainty. Finally and at last I understood, knew with absolute certainty, why these children looked so familiar: because they all resembled me. My mouth let out a kind of grunt before I managed to say: