Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (45 page)

Håkan chose the morning road. He hurried along it so quickly that he almost ran into the wall of the first building. The buildings were astonishingly beautiful and harmoniously proportioned; he admired their new architecture, their towers, windows and balconies. He saw clouds reflected in the window-glass. The morning turned red and spread. The lanterns went out, but now the gardens were lit by the crowns of flowers. Children woke up to play in the courtyards and laugh. Håkan saw the sky; it was deep, but the earth rose into a mountain to reach its depth. The valley was green, oh how green it was. This was what summer was like.

But when the real morning came, Håkan did not see it, he only heard it. And it was the same kind of morning as before, without a single colourful lantern.

After that dream, Håkan knew what seeing was. After that, he knew what colours were. They could no longer be forgotten. He wanted to gather them back in. He wanted all the colourful lanterns.

Håkan announced at that day’s lecture that he had something to say. Everyone would be able to hear it.

‘OK,’ said the guide, ‘tell us.’

‘I now know what seeing is,’ Håkan said.

‘How can that be?’ the guide asked. ‘No one knows what seeing is any more.’

Håkan said that he had had a dream. He surmised that it was perhaps a kind of greeting from centuries ago, from his seeing ancestors. He now hoped that he would have dreams every night.

This announcement caused a long silence in the lecture hall. The pupils looked at Håkan as if he were a strange being. Some giggled. Finally the guide said: ‘Håkan, you really should not hope for anything like that. Seeing, even if it is the seeing of visions, is abnormal, and a symptom of serious illness.’

Soon afterwards, Håkan was sent for a medical examination.

‘Doctor, there’s something underneath, I can feel it. They’re moving, they’re trying to see. I want you to let them out.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘You certainly know, we all have them, you too. It’s just that people don’t want to talk about them.’

‘It would be best for you to forget them.’

‘If you won’t do it, I’ll do it myself.’

‘One person can’t live seeing if everyone else is blind.’

‘That’s my business. I cannot live unseeing any more. Help me. It’s just a little surgical procedure.’

‘You cannot be the judge of that. And what about afterwards – if you do not like what you see – will you hold me responsible? Remember that you will perhaps never be able to close your eyes again.’

‘I will absolve you of all responsibility.’

Håkan came to slowly after the operation. His first seeing morning began to loom before him. Håkan felt pain on both sides of his nose. But the pain and pressure were at the same time light. Håkan screamed. He wanted to put the morning away. He wanted to go back to the night he had previously inhabited. But at the same time he did not.

Something moved before Håkan. He stretched out his hand and it was grasped. Håkan looked at the linking hands and made out their fingers. Seeing was movement which went from the world to him and then back again. It was like a shaking of hands for which two are always needed.

‘How are you?’ someone asked. It was the surgeon.

‘Is this seeing?’

‘How could I know? You forget that I, of course, do not know what seeing is. But if you are now experiencing something you have never before experienced, something completely different, I suppose you may conclude that it is seeing.’

‘I believe it. There is too much light, far too much.’

‘Perhaps you will grow accustomed to it. That is what you wanted, after all. Would you like a bandage for your eyes, or do you wish to go on practising seeing?’

‘I want,’ Håkan whimpered, ‘I want to want!’

‘That is right,’ said Liisa, who had come into the room. ‘Wish!’

Liisa touched his hair, his forehead, his mouth, cautiously stroked his new-born eyes. Then Håkan saw, for the first time, a human face.

A Scroll When it is Rolled Together

Håkan had come to a square in which a many hundred-headed mass of people was surging. Hallelujah! Over there, Ismael was preaching, Ismael who had gone to the same school as Håkan, although three years above him. Then he had not been called Ismael, but simply Jari.

He had not been good at school; he had had to repeat two classes and had left just before the others received their matriculation certificates. Later he had begun a career as a prophet and had begun to give sermons, first in neighbouring districts, but as he gained supporters and fame Ismael bought a run-down plot on the outskirts of his old hometown. There he had founded a kind of monastery, so Håkan had heard. Hundreds of townspeople now belonged to Ismael’s congregation.

Håkan felt a little uncomfortable on seeing the crowd. The vision reminded him of his dreams, in which there were always many people, both familiar and strange. Perhaps the reason why his dreams were so colourful and busy was the fact that his unemployed days in a small bedsit on a housing estate were so lonely and quiet.

Håkan smelled the crowd’s suppressed excitement. Aggression it was not, merely impatient waiting.

The more people gather together, the more insignificant they look, like an army of insects, Håkan thought. It was the same with everything else: the more of it there was, the more valueless it became.

Laughter and shouting came from the street café’s marquee. Inside, a piano was being played.

Håkan stood at the edge of the square, his back against a lamppost, and listened carefully. He was trying to understand what the prophet Ismael was saying.

Ismael was giving his congregation instructions against the last day: ‘Listen, my friends. You all know that the day of judgement has come, the end is at hand. But hear me: we still have an hour and a quarter of earthly time. In that time, do you realise, you can still do all sorts of things. If you still have unresolved matters in this life, go and sort them out, do you hear. Forget quarrels, ask forgiveness, give forgiveness, settle disputes where you can. For it is much lighter to step into the hereafter when matters are in order here.’

‘Håkan!’

Håkan turned and saw his old history teacher waving at him from inside the marquee, from the street café where the unbelievers sat.

‘Come here, Håkan!’

Like a lamb, Håkan obeyed and detached himself from the crowd. He made his way through the disciples as they prayed and muttered to themselves, to the road and across it to the café in the marquee.

‘You haven’t become one of Ismael’s disciples, have you?’

‘I was just listening,’ Håkan said, a little embarrassed.

‘Would you like a pint?’

‘No thank you, I don’t drink beer.’

‘Coffee then. They make great espresso here; have some, it’s on me!’

‘The winepress of God’s wrath is full,’ shouted Ismael. ‘It has been written that the heaven will depart as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island will be moved out of their places.’

‘Sugar?’

‘Yes, please,’ Håkan said.

‘Our bodies will suffer for a moment,’ Ismael shouted, ‘but listen, it will pass. It will not touch our immortal souls. After a short travail eternal life awaits us, life of a kind we cannot even dream of. We will be plucked into eternity from this cursed planet, of which only a duststorm will remain.’

‘Deranged,’ the teacher said. ‘But in no way new. They are nutcases, but then the majority of the human race have always been nutcases. This Ismael – at school he was Ari or Jari, I can never remember which. A hopeless pupil.’

‘How many times is this, sir?’ Håkan asked.

‘At least the fourth,’ his teacher said. ‘If not the fifth. Jesus is coming – catch!’

Håkan looked at his teacher in wonderment. He was excited and in a strange mood, quite different from at school.

‘How can they always go on believing that the world will come to an end? Tomorrow they will certainly be embarrassed,’ Håkan said.

‘Don’t you believe it. They will talk of a small error of calculation and begin to prepare themselves for the next happening.’

‘But I read that many of them have sold everything, their houses, their cars, their things,’ Håkan said.

‘It is strange. Why bother to sell anything if you believe the world is coming to an end. You’re not going to have any use for cash then. Or property, for that matter.’

The evening grew bluer and denser. The street lamps came on, the stars began to shine, but the crowd still stood where it was.

‘Hear me, it has been written that the sun will become black as sackcloth of hair and the moon as blood,’ Ismael thundered.

‘It is not completely harmless,’ the teacher said. ‘That idiot is spreading panic. It’s nothing new, of course. Panic hit Constantinople for the same reason in 398, and Rome in 410.’

‘But you, my friends, have no need to fear. For we belong to the Lord’s chosen people,’ Ismael announced. ‘We have bleached our clothes in the Lamb’s blood.’

‘Does he mean us too?’ Håkan asked hopefully.

‘Just his own disciples,’ his teacher said. ‘He is speaking like Zoroaster.’

‘Who was he?’

‘A prophet from central Asia who lived in the 15th century before Christ. So the end of the world was spoken of even before the beginning of our calendar, can you imagine? Zoroaster believed, like Ismael, in the immortality of the chosen and the destruction of the evil, the complete transformation of existence. He too, with his disciples, awaited the immediate end of the world, the last battle between good and evil, the resurrection of the dead and the great judgement.’

‘You ask how to recognise the Antichrist,’ Ismael shouted. ‘He is here today.’

‘In the spring of the year 1000,’ the teacher said, ‘people enthusiastically awaited the last judgement and made conjectures about the Antichrist. At that time, you see, natural forces raged, an earthquake shook Europe and a comet even put in an appearance to celebrate the new millennium. Even the devil made an appearance, at least so Ralph Glaber claimed. It was black as soot, it had the teeth of a dog, the beard of a goat and a flat nose. The flagellants wandered from town to town scourging themselves.’

‘It has been written that smoke will arise out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace: and the sun and the air will be darkened by reason of the smoke out of the pit,’ shouted Ismael into his loudspeaker.

‘And in the second century the heretical Montanists lived in constant expectation of the end of time. They were certain that the new Jerusalem would soon descend into Phrygia. Montanus voluntary suffered a martyr’s death when his prophecies were not fulfilled.’

‘It has been written that the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment,’ Ismael shouted.

‘Have you heard of the Toledo Letter?’ their teacher asked.

‘What was it?’

‘The Toledo Letter circulated in Europe in the 12th century. In it the Astrologist Corumphiza predicted that the upper and lower planets would reach a conjunction under the sign of Libra in September 1186. This would be followed by horrifying upheavals, he believed. A strong wind would blow, darken the air and pollute it with its poisonous stench. This Corumphiza claimed that sand and dust would cover the cities and that Mecca, Barsara, Baghdad and Babylon would be destroyed completely. But did this happen?’

‘I don’t suppose so,’ Håkan guessed.

‘Of course not. But despite that, the very same letter circulated through Europe incessantly. And not only for decades, but for centuries: only the dates were changed. People have always been mad.

‘In the 1260s, when Europe had been tested by famine, plague and wars, it was also believed that the old world would soon end and the age of the Holy Spirit would follow.’

‘ . . . and Satan will fall from the sky like lightning,’ Ismael shouted.

‘Some preacher!’ the teacher snorted. ‘In the 15th century the Taborites believed that only they could live through Christ’s second coming. Their original pacifism was soon replaced by bloodlust, and they became a cruel military junta. A sect that left the Taborites, the Adamites, did nothing but kill, until the Taborites put them out of their misery.’

‘It has been written that soil will become brimstone and the earth will burn like tar,’ Ismael was practically shrieking.

‘That boy can certainly talk. What kind of a Savonarola does he think he is? Do you remember: in the 1490s Savonarola declared Florence the New Jerusalem.’

‘Aha,’ Håkan said uncertainly.

‘Savonarola was part of the year ten course,’ his teacher said, a little reproachfully. ‘The pope went ballistic, and so Savonarola had to be turned into coal.’

The moon wandered rapidly into view through the fleeting clouds, and dived again into a nocturnal cloud.

‘You’re not afraid, are you?’ the teacher asked.

‘No, I’m not,’ Håkan said quickly. He raised his cup to his lips to disguise his discomfiture.

‘And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest, the seller, the lender, the borrower,’ said Ismael.

‘Professor Johan Hilten predicted the end of the world for the year 1651. And then of course there was Partridge.’

‘ . . . and the people shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire,’ said Ismael.

‘What Partridge?’

‘The preacher Partridge, who prophesied that the end of the world would come in 1697. The following year he published another tract in which he noted that the world really had ended in 1697, but that no one had noticed it.’

‘Perhaps he was right,’ Håkan said. ‘People are not very perspicacious.’

‘That’s true,’ said his teacher, laughing. ‘And no one remembers the Millerites any more, farmer Miller’s disciples. Miller predicted the second coming of Christ for 1843, but when the year ended without His appearance, Miller moved the day to the following year. When nothing happened even on the promised day, the disciples wept and wept until dawn.’

‘Hear me, my friends, let us all now say yes to God, even though he is about to destroy this visible world in a moment. For hear me, it is the greatest blessing we can have. Let us say yes! All together, yes!’