Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (16 page)

‘That part of the city no longer exists,’ he said calmly.

‘Not an earthquake, surely?’ I asked fearfully, although I could not yet feel any tremors.

‘No, they are merely demolishing the former Tainaron,’ Longhorn said.

Longhorn raised his finger and pointed westward. And there, too, I saw demolition work, destruction, collapse, landslides. But almost at the same time, in place of the former constructions, new forms began to appear, softly curving mall complexes, flights of stairs that still ended in air, solitary spiral towers and colonnades which progressed meanderingly toward the empty shore.

‘But . . . ’ I began.

‘Shh,’ Longhorn said. ‘Look over there.’

I looked. There, where a straight boulevard had run a moment ago, narrow paths now wandered. Their network branched over a larger and larger area before my very eyes.

‘And this goes on all the time, incessantly,’ he said. ‘Tainaron is not a place, as you perhaps think. It is an event which no one measures. It is no use anyone trying to make maps. It would be a waste of time and effort. Do you understand now?’

I could not deny that I understood that Tainaron lived in the same way as many of its inhabitants; it too was a creature that was shaped by irresistible forces. Now I also understood that I should never again taste those smoke-scented wafers which I had wanted so much this morning. And yet I understood very little.

‘I am thirsty,’ I said to Longhorn, longing once more for the foam of dayma.

The Dangler

the twenty-third letter

I really must say that many of the inhabitants of Tainaron have the most extraordinary habits, at least to the eyes of one who has come from so far away. Quite close to here, in the same block, lives a gentleman, tall and thin, who is in the habit of hanging upside-down from his balcony for a number of hours every day. This strange position does not seem to interest passers-by in the least, but when I passed under him for the first time I was so startled that I immediately thought of running for help. I thought, you see, that there had been an accident and that the man was clinging to the wrought-iron decorations of the balcony with his feet. Longhorn, who was beside me, remarked coolly that he had selected his pose through his own free choice and that I would be wise not to interfere so eagerly in other people’s lives. I admit that I was offended by his remark, but recently I have begun meekly to take his advice.

I see the man most days, and whenever I walk under his balcony I greet him, even though he never responds. In fact, I think he is either asleep or meditating. In his chosen state he is so limp and floating that he recalls a garment that a washerwoman has hung out to dry. With incomparable calm he suspends his head above the busy street without stirring, even when the fire brigade drives under him, sirens wailing. He always looks the same: a bright, even gaudy, green, so that one can make him out from the broad steps of the bank at the end of the state like a living leaf against a red brick wall . . .

Does he dream as he hangs there, sometimes suspended from just one limb, but nevertheless apparently completely relaxed? I believe that is exactly how it is. I know from my own experience the difference between the immobility of fear and the immobility of the hunter, but this is neither. I believe he dreams, dreams swiftly, passionately and incessantly, dreams with death-defying intensity without sacrificing even a jot of consciousness to the struggles of everyday waking life. I believe he must have long ago become convinced that all action is unnecessary, or even dangerous.

There are days when I think that this gentleman is admirable and his way of spending moments of his life most enviable. On such days I, too, would like to concentrate on sweet communion with my private visions as headlong and with the same kind of mental calm as he. But do not imagine that it would be possible. In the evenings, even if I shut my window tightly, turn out my lamp and fill my ears with cotton-wool, this city teems before me, still more restless and colourful than in full daylight. Then I should like to get up and got to see whether the green gentleman is still hanging head-first from his balcony. I should like to climb up there myself and position my limbs just like his. Then, with my blood flooding my head, all of Tainaron would begin to dissolve into the mists and I, too, should begin a dream, endless and leaf-green . . .

But if, in the morning, my nocturnal experiences return to mind, if I have idled through agonising labyrinths, I know that I would not wish to spend my life in the city of dreams. If, on such a morning, I pass under the Dangler’s balcony, I am more inclined to pity him than to admire him.

Then I know that in my dreams I can never capture the same sun-glow and that the air that I breathe can never, there, flow as freshly in my cells, and I can never see so sharply or so far; and I believe once more that what is true can be seen by everyone, everyone.

The Guardian of the Oddfellows

the twenty-fourth letter

I admire her; I call her the Queen Bee. But Longhorn has another name for her, the name of an already forgotten saint: The Guardian of the Oddfellows. And indeed that is the nature of the Queen Bee: she cares tenderly for those whom many here in Tainaron consider strange and to be avoided: street singers, beggars and ladies of joy, people who are cracked in various ways or lost in their own drug-worlds.

All sorts of people visit the Queen Bee, both by day and by night. The light is always on in her house and the door is always swinging – to and fro, for it is a double-hinged door of the kind that one sometimes finds in obscure cafés. There is no threshold or latch, and the hubbub and singing from the Queen Bee’s house can be heard distinctly a couple of blocks off.

There is room for everyone, although her house is not large. No, it is very, very medium in size and as modest in its external appearance as countless other houses outskirts of the city.

But sometimes, although the house is full of people, it is very quiet, and then the neighbours say that the Guardian of the Oddfellows is holding a Great Day of Remembrance once again.

‘Whose memory are they celebrating?’ I asked Longhorn, and it became clear that it was not a question of any particular dead person. The matter is as follows: the Queen Bee gathers memories; she lives off memories, and it is perhaps only on account of memories that she receives so many people of so many different kinds. But she is not satisfied with any old memory; no, she can use only happy, sweet memories that sparkle with happiness, and if anyone were to try to offer her something cold and gloomy I think she would drive them mercilessly from her house.

Longhorn said that everyone who needs it receives both a meal and a bed for the night at the Queen Bee’s house, but on certain days of the month everyone must bring her at least one happy memory in payment. That is the rent she demands, and there is no haggling.

On that day the Queen Bee spreads a white cloth on the table and lights dozens of candles so that it looks as if Christmas has come. But the table is not set, for on the Great Day of Remembrance no food is offered, only memories.

‘But they really do satisfy your appetite,’ says the Queen Bee, and all her drunks and madmen and beggars agree, as they must in order to be able next day to partake of a proper meal.

‘Can I, too, participate in the Great Day of Remembrance some time?’ I asked Longhorn.

‘Everyone can,’ he said, ‘but not everyone wants to. And remember to take a really happy memory with you.’

‘Oh, I have plenty of them,’ I said light-heartedly, and when the next Great Day of Remembrance dawned I was sitting in the Queen Bee’s house side by side with her Oddfellows.

I had already heard a few things about my table companions, so I sat a fair distance away from the Pickpocket (as if I had something valuable with me!) and even farther (although I felt ashamed of myself) from a black and spotted creature whom all the people of Tainaron dreaded, and who was called the Disease Carrier. But as I glanced around me, the Queen Bee’s Oddfellows did not look to me any stranger than the people of Tainaron in general, and it was my turn to feel embarrassed when I realised what curious and even suspicious glances were being directed at my own person. I, too, was now one of the Oddfellows, perhaps the most obvious of the entire company in my foreignness. I, who have always believed I can merge into almost any crowd, who have always believed I can examine others while myself staying in the background, was now experiencing what it was like to be the object of the Tainaronians’ attention.

But the Queen Bee was sitting opposite me and, once I had recovered from the confusion, I could at least gaze at her as much as I liked, her motherly form and her tight, tiger-striped dress, and her tousled, dark face, lit by the hazy glow of her seeing tubes.

‘Let us begin!’ shouted the Queen Bee in her resonant bass, which brought to mind the buzzing of a sunny meadow. ‘Psammotettix, you are the first.’

I turned and saw that with this handsomely reverberant name she was addressing a greying, modest and clumsy-looking gentleman who had, since the beginning of the session, been mumbling incessantly to himself. I suppose he was repeating the memory he had chosen so that he would not forget it at the decisive moment.

With extraordinary speed, Psammotettix began a long story of which I understood scarcely a word, for it was interrupted – perhaps for effect – by a remarkable smacking and croaking noise which, at points of emphasis – so I supposed – became a rough croaking. The few words I could understand, because Psammotettix repeated them a number of times, were ‘foam’ and ‘bubble’; but that was all.

On the other hand, the other participants in the Remembrance Festival followed Psammotettix’s performance with interest, and when it was over they showed their approval in an extraordinarily wide range of ways: by clicking the chitin plates of their backs together, drumming, glowing, changing their colour or clapping their limbs together.

The Queen Bee raised a little hammer or club which gleamed gold in the candlelight, knocked it on the table and said: ‘Accepted!’, at the same time turning toward the Pickpocket, motioning him to start with a gesture of her hand.

‘Once I went abroad,’ the Pickpocket began hurriedly in a small voice, obviously nervous. The other Oddfellows interrupted him, howling:

‘Not true! Not true!’

Then the hammer fell again, the others fell silent, and the Pickpocket began: ‘Once in a foreign country, in a big city, my job took me to a certain department store. It was the eve of a great festival, and the people were swarming about, announcements and music flooded from the loudspeakers and the shoppers’ attention was taken up with the brilliant displays and the shouts of the product demonstrators. The conditions were perfect, one could say, and for that reason that day was perhaps the most productive of my entire career.’

At this point the Pickpocket paused; grumbling began to be heard around the table and I saw the Queen Bee purse her lips.

‘I cannot accept this,’ she was beginning, but the Pickpocket shouted hurriedly, ‘I have not finished, that is not all. You see, just as the department store was closing and I was already leaving with my swag, a fine lady swept past me with a bag on her shoulder, decorated with pearls. My practised eye noticed immediately that its silver lock only seemed to be closed and in a second I had caught up with the lady. I did this (and he waved a sharp nail in the air), the bag opened soundlessly, and in my own pocket there was – so I thought – a fine wad of the country’s currency. But (and the Pickpocket raised a limp, demanding silence, for the guests had begun to babble once more) what did I see when I examined my trophy more closely? The notes were merely thin piles of paper, quite empty all except one. On it was written, on it was written . . . ’

And here the Pickpocket’s voice fell and he began to writhe on his chair, looking beseechingly at the Queen Bee.

‘Carry on,’ she said, nodding approvingly, but this did not seem to calm the Pickpocket.

‘No, I can’t, not with all these people listening,’ he managed to mutter, gesturing at the other guests.

‘He has forgotten his memory!’ came a shout, and another: ‘That’s not a happy memory at all!’

‘Come here,’ ordered the Queen Bee. ‘Whisper it in my ear. I shall consider the matter.’

And the Pickpocket went up to the Queen Bee and whispered a couple of words into her ear.

I tried to prick up my ears, but I was far too far away, and I regretted my choice of place, for I desperately wanted to know what could have been written on the paper that could turn the Pickpocket’s disappointment into a happy memory.

‘Accepted!’ acceded the Queen Bee, and to my horror she turned to look at me, and the lenses of her seeing tubes glittered with strange colours.

Then something unexpected happened to me: my past disappeared. It sank among millions of other pasts, so that I could no longer distinguish a single one of my own memories, happy or sad, from among the swarm of countless memories.

It was as if walls and fences had fallen, as if dams – very necessary – had burst, and in the floodwater there floated long-forgotten fragments of conversations that I had happened to overhear, remarks from novels and films and a vortex of human faces and destinies which sped past me like bubbles in a surging wake.

Through it I could, however, see the unwavering face of the Queen Bee, which was still waiting in front of me, majestic and demanding, a trace of dissatisfaction already apparent in her expression. Desperately I grabbed one of the memories that spun around me and, extraordinarily enough, I knew its origin: it was a survey from a weekly magazine whose readers were asked to remember star moments from their lives. Praying mentally that it would be good enough for the Queen Bee and that my deception would not be noticed, I began:

‘This happened ten years ago. My lover was massaging my face. Then, suddenly, I was seized by a sensation of lightness. Before my eyes a door opened, and behind it was a lighted room. Such a light room I have never seen, before or since. I went into the room. I have never felt as good as I did then.’