Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  There is a girl whose aunt, Perpetua Pöntiö, is a geologist who lives in the Mare Serenitatis on the Moon. The girl spends her vacation each year visiting her aunt. The Moon, once carefully maintained, is no longer what it used to be. The colonies have been abandoned and their technology has fallen into disrepair. The girl’s aunt is the last remaining resident.

  None of this matters to Perpetua, quite the contrary. She is happy with stagnation and solitude. She likes dust, emptiness, and the long lunar nights. What’s more, she now has plenty of space to race around in her moon buggy.

  However, men from the government have got it in their heads that the Moon is nothing but a nuisance and must be demolished and gotten out of the way. Of course, the girl’s aunt will have to move back to Earth. In the end, she refuses and makes a different choice.

  “Mare Serenitatis” is a description of the persistence of a strong person, the kind that won’t be pushed around. All of us know at least one Aunt Perpetua, or at least wish we did.

  The same conflict between the common good and individual happiness is explored in another story from Secrets, “New Opabinia” (“Uusi Opabinia”), which is set on Earth rather than the Moon.

  Julia buys a new animal for her aquarium. It has five eyes and a proboscis with pincers on the end. She soon notices that it is of very old stock. The entire genus of Opabinia became extinct 500 million years ago.

  Fame, fortune, and scientific breakthroughs. These are what Julia’s brother expects this prehistoric find to bring. Julia disagrees, however. She is more concerned with the wellbeing of the animal than with scientific results or getting her face on the front page of a newspaper. So, she decides to release the strange creature into nature.

  The other stories in Secrets are also filled with mysteries, as befits the name. Extinguished stars, secret passages to other times, and invisibility. There is happiness of one kind or another to be found in all of them, just as well all have our bright sides.

  Who is the Armpit’s Spouse?

  What if shirts are meant to be misbuttoned? What if there is someone behind every traffic light directing traffic? Or if coffee could speak? Or the world was floating in a soap bubble? Or if the knee were the armpit’s spouse?

  One of Krohn’s recurring subjects is the questioning of the self-evident, the shaking of received truths. She believes that, as humans, we are held prisoner by our senses—hearing, taste, and the rest only register a fraction of our surroundings. What is there to be found in the places they do not reach, or cannot or will not detect?

  The novel Umbra (1990) looks at these questions from twenty-seven angles.

  Umbra is a middle-aged, balding gentleman who spends his free time collecting paradoxes and pondering the meaning of infinity. His job is to help those with an illness of the mind or body, but he has a habit of being distracted by his hobbies.

  Umbra meets a great many people through his work. In the hospital, he meets a girl who swallowed a five-mark coin who is getting the contents of her stomach x-rayed and a mute woman who contorts her body into the shapes of symbols. Umbra spends his Friday’s in an aid service for the exhausted solving all kinds of problems, from marital crises to panic attacks suffered by an AI. At the clinic, he tries unsuccessfully to cure sex offenders, rapists and pedophiles. Umbra is not necessarily good at helping people, though, as his ruminations on infinity, free will, and morality keep unexpectedly popping into his head while he’s working. He’s actually a terrible therapist when you think about it. Gruff, selfish, and self-absorbed.

  What if one side of a card bears the text “The sentence on the other side of this card is true,” while the other side reads “The sentence on the other side of this card is not true”? These are the kinds of paradoxes that Umbra collects for a book he is working on. It seems that the world is full of irrational things, however, which keeps him from finishing it. And the most frightening of paradoxes, dizzying in its scale, is of course infinity.

  The people Umbra meets react to infinity in different ways. Some are paralyzed by its scope, like the astronaut Aleks G., who after three years in space comes to realize the infinite nature of the universe and the meaninglessness of his own life in comparison, leading him to become a smuggler, a thief, and a rapist. Others, when faced by the infinite, come to appreciate their miniscule lives and their daily sources of joy. One of them is the father of a little girl, who discovers the finiteness of life and comes to look at things with more receptive eyes when his daughter swallows a coin.

  If your brain needs a good workout, Umbra is just the thing for you. It throws many dizzying questions into the ring about morality, guilt and innocence, making or failing to make choices, the nature of reality, and much more.

  Those looking for a lighter examination of the nature of reality will likely enjoy Sphinx or Robot (Sfinksi vai robotti, 1999). Its stories are filled with wild ideas and focus on the adventures of young Lydia, who grows older with each tale.

  Lydia lives with her father and wonders at the strangeness of the universe from every angle. Where did Uncle Kauto disappear to? What if there was no gravity? Are we actually living on the inner surface of a hollow Earth? And why are there so many slipping accidents and floods during the winter months?

  Sphinx or Robot differs from many of Krohn’s other works in its humor. There is a sharp but refined sense of joy bubbling under the surface of its stories, though the book deals with many themes familiar from Krohn’s other work, such as celestial bodies and mirrors and one’s relationship with the universe and with oneself.

  Lydia is obsessed with mirrors. She takes a hand mirror everywhere she goes and looks at the world through reflections. On her fifteenth birthday, she is given a giant looking glass, which she can use to explore the depths of the oceans. Lydia believes that mirrors are gates into another world, a world with another Lydia, who appears in the mirror whenever she looks into it. What is true and what is not? Which Lydia is the genuine one in the end?

  Lydia also studies the stars and marvels at the infiniteness of space. When the Earth is passed by a comet that may have company, Lydia waves at it. Just in case. “If a thing is possible, it will happen sooner or later. But sometimes even the impossible can happen.”

  Krohn continues to survey the border between what is real and what is not in Datura (2001). The narrator in Datura works as a subeditor for The New Anomalist, a magazine covering paranormal phenomena. Her life is rather lonely, and the magazine’s eccentric contributors provide some much needed excitement, as does the datura plant, which she begins to use to treat her asthma. However, she soon notices that her home remedy is transporting her to other worlds and realities.

  The book is a collection of different ways of seeing the world. It does not pass judgment on which way is better, but merely shows that there is more than one way to approach reality. For example, there is the man who listens to silence using a device of his own making, or the housewife who finds the face of Jesus on a piece of cheese. My favorite is the little child who admires the wisdom of the people who thought to put up their building next to a puddle of rainwater.

  Datura is one of Krohn’s few works that could be considered easy reading. At least at first glance. If you can accept the paranormal theories as part of the story, you will find some of the same underlying themes as in Krohn’s other books. In this case, the realization of one’s own limitations in observing the world—we are all held prisoner by our senses.

  Machines and Mortals

  In the twilight, I ran from a street sweeping machine. Pebbles strike my ankles and the water spray wets my toes. I look back, out of breath. Perhaps I’m not on my way to work after all, but in one of Krohn’s books.

  What is death? Immortality? Where is the border between life and artificial life? Is there one?

  Several of Krohn’s texts explore these kinds of brainteasers. Without a doubt, the best-known of them is Mathematical Creatures or Shared Dreams (Matemaattisia olioita or jaettuja unia, 1992),
the book that won the Finlandia prize in 1992.

  It is a difficult book to fit into any set mold. It begins as a series of essays, but soon transforms into a collection of short stories that one can link up into a coherent novel in one’s mind. Either way, the stories return time and again to the issue of mortality.

  I killed a person. I ate a person. So what? These are the issues pondered by a cannibal who ate his bride in the story “The Wedding Guests” (“Häävieraat”). The atmospheric piece “Lucilia illustris” approaches murder from the angle of a person who determines the time of death of bodies. She must keep her head even in the presence of flyblown corpses with the stench of decay heavy in the air.

  Other stories follow the last days of a dying person in the hospital, a woman’s violent awakening to her own impermanence, and methods of coping with grief.

  The twelve stories in the collection distance the reader and pull them closer depending on how the narrators are addressed. First-person narrators get in closer than third-person. At the same time, Krohn has skillfully shuffled the deck of good and bad characters. It cannot be taken for granted that an aggressive drunk is any worse a person than a discreet grandmother.

  Mathematical Creatures ends with a rumination on immortality—to some, immortality is the works they leave behind, to others, the genes they pass on to their children and grandchildren.

  Håkan, Håkan, Håkan. No, this isn’t from an episode of the Swedish Chef, but from Krohn’s book Pereat Mundus: A Novel of Sorts (Pereat mundus, Romaani, eräänlainen, 1998). It is, indeed, a sort of novel. The main characters of its short-story-like episodes are a selection of Håkans. The theme, like before, is immortality, but this time examined though a variety of visions of the future.

  Pereat Mundus dives into the future from the perspective of countless Håkans. There’s a scientist, a teacher, a mentally challenged Håkan, and a student Håkan. Every now and again, the book pops in for a visit with Doctor Fakelove, whose biggest problem is a client named Håkan who won’t stop talking about the apocalypse and who eventually drives the doctor into burnout.

  Things are not right in this future. Religious and political extremist groups abound, the young have been stricken by an epidemic that ages them before their time, and school children have been reduced to idiocy. Racism is rearing its head, animals are becoming extinct, and citizens are seeking solace in drugs and increasingly long periods of sleep that they only interrupt for meals.

  Despite all this, technological development is continuing apace: the boundaries between organic and inorganic, human and inhuman, have been blurred. Robots have usurped the place of God and are teaching their human disciples. Someone has figured out how to splice human genes with those of three animals with great success, and science is marching steadily towards achieving immortality. One of the Håkans freezes bodies for the Cryo Foundation, and one of his namesakes has transferred his mind into a virtual machine. The flesh may die, but memory doesn’t.

  The most narratively impressive of these alternative future scenarios begins with a community in which no one has eyes. Krohn’s approach to the story is alluring. She begins with colors—yellow, blue, red—that used to exist, but do not any longer. They were lost long before Håkan was born, around the same time that eyes were replaced by smooth skin.

  Pereat Mundus is a challenging dystopia that offers no readily digested answers. Each of its thirty-six snapshots fluently builds its own vision of the future, whether dark or a touch brighter.

  What about the Håkans, then? Krohn has said in an interview that they represent all of humanity, they are everymen. She is more interested in what joins us than what drives us apart, and she believes that humanity has a kind of shared consciousness, not unlike that of an ant nest. All men, women, and children are working towards the same goal, though it is an invisible one.

  Is That the Past Crying?

  “If there is one quality that could be isolated as purely human, I think it would be the imagination.” (Krohn in Seinäjoki, February 11th, 1998)

  Yesterday, tomorrow. The past, the future. Leena Krohn has developed a liking for time and for the changes it brings. In her stories, time is stretched to the breaking point. As in “In Sulevi’s Eyes” (“Sulevin silmissä”), from Sphinx or Robot, in which Sulevi begins to see the passage of time. To him, a running person is a chain of people, an old woman a line of figures passing from newborn to the present moment. Sometimes, time is twisted, as happens to the titular character in Umbra’s “rreH nieK,” a man who keeps growing younger.

  Sometimes time flows just as it should, but people try to resist it. This is the case in “The Victor of Time” (“Ajanvoittaja”) from the collection Do Not Read This Book (Älä lue tätä kirjaa, 1994). Uncle has been dead for three hundred years, his head frozen. Now he has been revived and his head attached to a strange body. His name from the neck down is Hyyppä, except for his heart, which is Törngren, and his liver, which is Piu-Pung.

  Siblings Lassi and Lulu live in the same skyscraper as Uncle. They get to know the man, who tells them that he is not happy in this new time. He has realized that it is best to live fully in the time you were born in and not long for the past or the future. “Everyone is a child of their time.”

  The same fear of the future is experienced by a space captain in the short story “Protégé of the Stars” (“Tähtien turvatti”) from the collection Stories (Kertomuksia, 1976). A celebrated hero returns to Earth from his voyages only to find that things have changed a great deal in his absence. His home town is protected by a dome, because its surroundings have become a polluted wasteland. The changes in the environment are reflected in the rest of society: all works describing nature before it was lost and criticizing civilization have been banned books.

  The captain is distressed by the changes and wants to join the next trip out, no matter the destination. To him, the Earth becomes more beautiful the farther away he is from it.

  A more recent book for the young at heart, What Trees Do in August (Mitä puut tekevät elokuussa, 2000), digs into the struggle between the past and the present from a number of angles. In the book’s seven stories, the past is conserved in museums, information on ancestors is unearthed, people return to the present from the past as ghosts, and old grudges are forgiven.

  The story that most firmly grasps the theme of living in the moment is “Glittering Days” (“Päivien kimallus”), a story about the village of Nyhjälä, which has been made into a museum about just one person. This once successful businessman no longer has time for anything, because he is fully occupied by documenting the days that came before. But who cares what Rainer Ryysä did on June 14th, 1967.

  The story “The Secret Kaffeeklatsch” (“Salakahvit”) takes the gentlest view of the past. The story is about a meeting between Veera and a boy who died in the early 1900s. Veera lazes about on a sunny pier, writes in her diary, and offers cold coffee to the boy, who happens by from time to time. This atmospheric story offers flashes from the past, but does not seek to raise the hairs on the back of your neck like a traditional ghost story would.

  The best story in the collection, however, does not look to the past or the future, but is firmly planted in the present. The VSP, or Very Special People, club has three members. Inka floats above the ground whenever she gets exited, Hanno has no shadow, and Antero has no reflection. They used to get teased, but ever since they founded the club, everyone wants to be a member.

  The short story “Very Special People” (“Hyvin erikoisia ihmisiä”) encourages everyone to be themselves regardless of what other people think. It may not be possible to buy a used shadow, but the support of a friend can make up for many shadows.

  Monsters and Passion

  “Divorce is not just the end of a relationship, -- , it is also a separation from one’s former self.” (Krohn in The Pen and the Machine, 1996)

  Most of the characters created by Leena Krohn are quite androgynous. This is true even of their names, to p
revent you from processing events, from the perspective of a man or a woman, even by accident. Given this fact, it is quite surprising that Krohn’s work includes some heavily sexually charged works.

  Many of these stories were in the Stories collection published in the 1970s. The twelve stories in the collection take place both at the start and end of the human life cycle, beginning at the cusp of puberty and ending in old age. The frolicking of teenagers is full of hope, while the old recall their youth with melancholy.

  “The Boy in the Meadow” (“Poika niityllä”) takes a fairly cautious approach to the joys and sorrows of sexuality. Fourteen-year-old Nikke has a crush on his older cousin and is jealous of his cousin’s boyfriend. What happens when Nikke clumsily tries to approach the lovely Taina?

  “Bladan E 605” throws caution to the wind. The story’s narrator recalls his grandfather’s housekeeper Elma, who committed suicide with Bladan brand pesticide. The narrator heard Elma’s dying throes, smelled her vomit, but also saw her in a moment of passion before her death. The description of the housekeeper’s masturbation is only a few sentences long, but manages to feed the imagination while turning one’s thoughts inside out.

  Krohn’s more recent work “Presence” (“Läsnäolo”) from the collection That Distance Shall Not Yearn (Ettei etäisyys ikävöisi, 1995) also deals with sexuality. There are two things about this book that are special; first, it is divided into two approximately one-hundred-page novellas, and two, the prose is quite light by Krohn’s standards, being more weighted towards dialogue.

  Sofi is a designer of movie monsters who has been fired. She has had an abortion following an affair with a colleague and is facing returning home to her husband. Not everything is as it should be, because Sofi has lost her ability to trust people. The treachery of other people is more frightening to her than monsters.

  Thus, Sofi begins having conversations with an invisible creature who becomes her confidant, and even her lover. Though no one else can see the creature, it affects the lives of everyone close to Sofi. While Sofi’s husband and father try to draw the line between fact and fiction, this invisible person becomes real to them in a way as well.