by Unknown
552
The spring tide is over, and Oceanos is murmuring its winter story. It is unlikely that I shall ever again come to gaze longingly over its swelling waters.
553
If now it were to happen that a letter were to drop on to my doormat, I know what it would say. You would write: 'Why do you not go away?'
554
I can hear you say it, rather coldly and a little didactically, as if you were offering me something on a plate, but looking away at the same time. And I admit that I have heard those words before; I have asked myself the same question. And perhaps, if someone were to say the word, I would go. I taste the word in my mouth; how fresh and pure it tastes.
555
I had my reasons for coming to Tainaron; I am sure they were important reasons, but I have nevertheless forgotten what they were.
556
'Come!' What if I were to say that to you? It would be in vain, quite in vain, for all I could show you would be the wintry stalks of the umbellifers in the meadow at the Botanical Gardens.
557
Upright like them, I remain in this land of sleepers.
558
Date as postmark - the twenty-eighth letter
559
Today I opened the door, and before me rose the Rhinoceros beetle, as gloomy and simple as a mountain. He is a friend of Longhorn, but I have only met him in passing before.
560
'Come inside,' I asked, but he went on standing on the spot, swaying, and I could not fathom what he wanted.
561
'Have you seen Longhorn recently?' I asked at length, for I had not seen Longhorn for many days.
562
'It was Longhorn who sent me here,' he responded, and fell silent once more.
563
'And how is he?' I asked, becoming a little impatient.
564
'He told me to come here and ask if there is anything I can do for you,' the Rhinoceros Beetle managed to say, swaying in ever greater circles. I think he must weigh more than one hundred kilograms.
565
'Thank you, but I do not need anything,' I said in astonishment. 'But where is Longhorn himself?'
566
'I thought you already knew,' said the Rhinoceros Beetle, suddenly standing still.
567
'I do not know anything,' I said, fearing the worst. 'Has something happened to Longhorn?'
568
I felt like shaking the Rhinoceros Beetle, who remained motionless, but he was too wide. I thought I understood.
569
'Ah, he is already asleep,' I said, and was very offended. It was not polite to retire for the winter without even saying goodnight.
570
'He is in his pupal cell,' said the Rhinoceros Beetle, becoming even more massive than before.
571
This information came as a shock to me. For the sake of the Rhinoceros Beetle, I managed, with difficulty, to restrain myself, for I would have liked to have cursed him: 'Damned longhorn beetle! How dare you!'
572
The Rhinoceros Beetle left, but I went on standing in the doorway. I should never meet Longhorn again; not the Longhorn who had for so long been my patient guide in this strange city. If he were to return and step before me, I did not know who or what he would then be, or even when it would happen, for everything here has its own time and particular moment, unknown to others.
573
I should never again be able to turn to him, but when he nevertheless stepped before me, into the place where the Rhinoceros Beetle had just been standing, stood there and began to grow as the dead grow.
574
Then I saw that I had never known him and that I had never even wanted to know him. And as he grew, he became thinner and more indistinct; his form slipped into the darkness of the stairwell and he no longer had shape or mass.
575
But his eyes, his eyes remained, and his gaze, which is as black and piercing as it ever was, and as impenetrable. And when I look into the darkness of his eyes they gradually begin to sparkle like double stars, like the planets on which the sun shines and on which there are seas and continents, roads, valleys and waterfalls and great forests where many can live and sing.
576
Then I went inside and closed the door, a little less sad. For it was, after all, now clear that although I had lived beside him from the beginning to the end, not just one life but two or three, I would never have learned to know him. His outline, which I had once drawn around him, in order to be able to show him and name him, had now disappeared. It liberated the great stranger who was a much realer Longhorn than the person I once knew, small and separate.
577
Such is my farewell to Longhorn today, date as postmark, in the city of Tainaron.
578
Passing bells - the twenty-ninth letter
579
What a rumbling! Over all of Tainaron it spread, echoing from wall to wall, shaking the window-panes and resonating in my own chest. When I pressed my fingers against the table, I could even feel the sound of the ore bells in my fingertips. And my toes, the soles of my feet, my elbows heard it, for the floor, all the soil of Tainaron quivered and resounded.
580
The prince had died, and now in all the churches, cathedrals and temples of the city, the many of them that there were, passing bells were being rung. They roared from morning to night as if to restore to the deceased the respect which no one had accorded to him before his death.
581
'What happened to the prince?' I asked the Rhinoceros Beetle. For the cause of his death had not been divulged on the news.
582
'Him? He just died,' the Rhinoceros Beetle answered, turning his slow gaze upon me. 'It was high time. He was an old man.'
583
'But was it not almost too fitting a time?'
584
I had seen, in the heart tower, what I had seen: the thin, expectant form of the prince, huddled on a simple chair which had been set in the middle of the floor without the company of adjutants or even the most lowly guardsman. His cloak was surrounded, like another cloak, by the aura of his fast approaching end. And it was not a natural end.
585
'Did it not happen very suddenly?'
586
'No more suddenly than anything else,' the Rhinoceros Beetle growled, even more dully than usual.
587
Slow-blooded, simple-minded creature! How could Longhorn ever have imagined that the Rhinoceros Beetle could have replaced him as my guide to Tainaron?
588
'I should like to know what will happen next,' I said.
589
'Now power will change hands,' the Rhinoceros Beetle said.
590
'Yes, of course,' I said impatiently. I knew that, of course, but I wanted to find out what it would mean in practice and what kind of leadership Tainaron would now receive. But as I looked at the Rhinoceros Beetle I realised that it was not worth pursuing the subject. I could already see that nothing could have interested him less.
591
At that moment he glanced at me askance, and behind the membrane that covered his black eyes there flashed something - like amusement. Was the Rhinoceros Beetle really capable of being amused by something? For a moment I felt I might have been mistaken in regard to him, as if his dullness might veil completely different characteristics which he hid for who knew what reason. I tried to find the light again, but his gaze extinguished, as normal. Perhaps the fleeting impression was caused merely by the lighting or by my own state of mind.
592
'Will you go to a memorial service in one of the temples? What religion do you belong to?' I found myself asking, for I wished to change the subject, which had proved fruitless.
593
'Each in turn,' he said. 'Naturally.'
594
'Each in turn? Surely that is not possible,' I said,
stunned. And 'naturally' - surely that was too much.
595
'Why not?' he said, chewing something in his massive jaws. 'One must be impartial. At the moment I belong to the temple of the highest knowledge. Next month I shall move to - oh, I do not think I can remember the name of the parish.'
596
'But if where you are now has the highest knowledge, why is it worth moving to another parish?'
597
He did not answer, but chewed and swallowed some tough and gluey substance which from time to time stuck his jaws together. I could still hear the ringing of the passing bells, from both far and high, both low and from quite close by.
598
'Do you recognise the bells of your own temple?' I asked.
599
'I think they are the ones that clattering quite close by,' he said. 'Or else those where you can hear a double ring between the low strokes. No, listen, I think after all that they are those slower ones from farther east, that always ring three and one, three and one,' he said.
600
I listened in vain. I could not distinguish the bells from each other; all I could hear was a roaring in which they were all mixed up. These Tainaronians! I do not suppose I shall ever learn to understand them. I am beginning to be weary of my long visit; yes, now I am weary.
601
The Rhinoceros Beetle has gone, but the prince's passing bells are still booming. And why should I not admit that today I am plagued by home-sickness. I am sick with home-sickness. But Oceanos is freezing for the winter, and not a single ship will leave the harbour before spring.
602
The tall trees of my home courtyard are now tossing in the grip of a storm. The slanting brightness of autumn falls into my room. I see the room's books and pictures and carefully chosen things; I remember its calm and its secret joy. It was at just this time of year, before winter, long ago, that you came into my room.
603
You came into my room as the morning dawned, and I did not know whether I slept or woke. I did not stir, but you, you squeezed your hard, salt-weathered lips silently to my throat, where the pulse beats, and then they pressed my temples and moved, hot, over my eyelids, until finally you felt for my mouth and opened it with your own lips. Then I tasted your taste, the taste of your thirst, and I answered, and answered, and moaned.
604
605
The pupal cell of my home - the thirtieth letter
606
How long I searched for a home back than. Before me furnished and cold rooms opened, broken rental agreements fell, houses with destruction orders collapsed, and the endless queues of housing offices wound in long roads without issue.
607
Now all that is in the past. In the room in which I now live I have everything I need, and more: if I step on to my balcony, I see the white pennants and golden cupolas of Tainaron, the cloud-girt mountains and the blue heart-waters of Oceanos.
608
Nevertheless, I have now started to prepare a new dwelling for myself, just in case. Yes, it is almost ready for me to move in, my little pupal cell; it can no longer be unsuccessful. It has the fresh smell of mud and algae and reeds, for I have gathered almost all the materials myself from the beach where I once almost found myself in the jaws of death. I have done it all with my own hands, and when I look inside I am satisfied. It is just my size, like a well-fitting garment which does not pull anywhere. It is small on the outside but spacious inside, just as a good dwelling-place should be.
609
It is dark there. When I peer in through its only opening which, when the occasion arises, I shall close from inside, I am overcome by irresistible sleepiness. I do not believe that the lack of space will trouble me, for once I reach it it will be as wide as the night.
610
The mail will go on being delivered for some time, so I have heard, but the city now seems dead. More and more people are withdrawing for their winter rest, some of them - like Longhorn and, before long, I myself too - will be away for much longer. I spoke of sleeping just now, but of course we shall not merely be resting, but changing. Will I know how? Will it be hard work? Will it bring pain or pleasure or will it mean the disappearance, too, of all regrets?
611
Some change imperceptibly, little by little, others quickly and once and for all, but everyone changes, and for that reason it is in vain to ask whose fate is the best.
612
My entire room stinks like an estuary! There was something I still had to tell you, but the smell of the sludge dulls my thoughts. I shall remember it once more when it is spring, and that will come soon, soon, the seventeenth, and all around will sparkle - droplets! and I shall rise; and we shall see again....
613
About the Author
614
Leena Krohn
615
Leena Krohn was born 1947 in Helsinki. She studied philosophy, psychology and literature at Helsinki University. She lives as a free writer in Helsinki.
616
Leena Krohn has written about twenty-five books, novels, short stories, fantasy stories for children, poems, essays and radio plays.
617
Krohn's collection of stories and essays, Matemaattisia olentoja tai jaettuja unia [Mathemathical Beings or Shared Dreams], was awarded the Finlandia Prize (1992).
618
Krohn lives in Pern?-Pernaja south-east of Helsinki with her companion Mikael B??k. Her only child Elias Krohn was born 1977.
619
Leena Krohn's readers have access to a number of her writings and works via the World Wide Web where her home page is located at ‹http://www.kaapeli.fi/krohn/›
620
621
Selected Bibliography:
622
Ihmisen vaatteissa (1976); I M?nniskokl?der (transl. into Swedish by Thomas Warburton 1989). This fantasy story has also appeared in Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, Norwegian, Bulgarian and Estonian. The movie PelicanMan, directed by Liisa Helminen (Lumifilm 2004), is based on this novel.
623
Donna Quijote ja muita kaupunkilaisia (1983); Donna Quijote (sel. transl. into Swedish by Henrika Ringbom, Artes vol 4, 1998, ss 94-101); Donna Quijote has also appeared in English (transl. by Hildi Hawkins, Carcanet 1996), French (transl. by Pierre-Alain Gendre, Ed. ?sprit ouvert, 1998) and Hungarian (transl. by Eva Pap and Ottilia Kovacs, Polar 1998).