Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (48 page)

After this, all was quiet on the world’s end front. Until the Man with Twenty-One Faces made his appearance.

‘I have compulsive thoughts associated with food which I would like to escape,’ his new client wrote. ‘I am particularly interested in chocolate, chocolate bars and chocolate fingers, milk chocolate and dark chocolate, mint chocolate, coconut chocolate, chocolate-coated liqueur sweets, any chocolate at all. When I got to the shops I make a kind of inventory of the shop’s chocolate selection, examining their packages and wrappings. Do you know why? I am examining what sort of chocolate packages it would be easiest to push a syringe into. Imagine! Have you ever had a case like this? I cannot help but think that what almost happened in the east could also happen here – without prior warning.’

In the east? What was about to happen in the east, and when? The message gave Fakelove a chill, and the pseudonym was at first incomprehensible to him.

‘I would like you to tell me a little more about your obsession,’ Fakelove said. ‘I specialize in all sorts of disorders related to food and eating and I am sure we will find the means to help you.’

Fakelove began to seek information about the Man with Twenty-One Faces. It appeared that there was a terrorist organisation of the same name which had poisoned chocolate displays in Japanese shops with cyanide. Consumers had, it was true, been warned in advance – it was not known by whom. The poisoned packets had been found and destroyed, so that the only damage was economic.

The Man with Twenty-One Faces did not respond to Fakelove’s offer. The man might be a harmless case, but one could not be completely sure. His message had come through an anonymous server, so Fakelove could not determine his true e-mail address. Perhaps Fakelove should now contact the authorities, but before that he wished to find out a little more about the case.

‘I should like to continue the discussion personally,’ Fakelove wrote again. ‘Could we meet in my office, perhaps as early as this week?’

No answer. The Man with Twenty-One Faces was stubbornly silent. But fear crept into Fakelove’s life.

First, he suspected that the Man with Twenty-One Faces was also in fact Håkan. Second, Fakelove liked chocolate a great deal, and generally in the afternoons, after lunch, he bought a bar of chocolate from the kiosk. It cheered him up, and was kinder to the stomach than coffee. Now he noticed that always at the kiosk – just as he intended to buy his bar of chocolate – he began suddenly to hesitate, and then decided to buy something else, liquorice or just the evening paper.

Fakelove admitted that if he himself had tendencies to any phobia, they were centred on food. On no account did he intend to lose his life to food poisoning.

He had irritable bowel syndrome and suffered alternately from diarrhoea and constipation. Fakelove was very careful about the sell-by dates on milk cartons and ready-meal packets. Often he threw products that read ‘best before’ in to the bin the day before.

Fakelove always smelled an opened milk carton before he poured a drop into his coffee cup. He examined bread carefully from every angle for specks of mould, even if he well knew that it had been bought only the day before.

He did not like to eat dishes containing mushrooms, morels never. Attached to the tap in his kitchen was a filter which was supposed to purge water of 99 per cent of all harmful residues.

Nevertheless Fakelove sometimes surprised himself thinking what terrors might be concealed in the remaining one per cent.

But he had never before doubted chocolate. Now that enjoyment had been taken from him. It was infuriating, it was diabolical, but he could no longer force himself to eat chocolate, even though his mouth watered when he saw his favourite blue-wrapped chocolate bar on the shelf.

And this modest, innocent sensuous pleasure had been torn from him from the completely unknown Man with Twenty-One Faces or – even worse – Håkan, that unbearable bird of ill omen.

The Restaurant is Closed

In the most northerly part of the city, in a modest and old residential area, a new restaurant had been opened. In fact it was the only real restaurant in the whole town. For Håkan and his neighbours, the new restaurant was a welcome sign of prosperity.

‘Out here, you’ve never been able to eat anywhere but the Grill Bar,’ Håkan said to his wife.

But everyone knew that the food at the Grill Bar was greasy and bad and that the local drunks and petty criminals used it as their haunt. People like Håkan, who had a regular job and whose pension plans were in order, did not frequent it. They never took their wives and children there for Sunday lunch.

The new restaurant had appeared after Håkan’s summer holiday in business premises formerly occupied by a bank. But the bank had ceased trading and the property had already been empty for a couple of years.

The restaurant’s external appearance was not enticing. The building itself was low and ugly; its façade was of grey prefabricated slabs. Only an old maple tree that spread its branches at the corner of the building embellished the street scene’s inimical air. Beside the entrance, where better restaurants place pots thrown by a ceramicist and plant in them blue petunias and white tufted pansies, there grew luxuriant bunches of nettles.

And this eating place did not even have a name. The large windows had been painted opaque white right up to the top. On one window was the simple message: Restaurant. Oriental food. It delighted Håkan, for he liked oriental food; it was, in his opinion, light but nevertheless strongly spiced.

He decided to take his wife to the new place in the very near future. But day after day the restaurant’s door remained closed and Håkan never, as he passed by, detected any food smells.

Once, when the restaurant’s main door was ajar, Håkan peered in and saw cane chairs and round tables decked with white table-cloths. The aesthetic quality of what he saw delighted Håkan. In its classicism and simplicity, the restaurant space satisfied his demanding taste. With increasing impatience, he wished to make himself familiar with the place’s menu.

But after that time, for at least two weeks, the door stayed tightly shut and no menu, or even any announcement of the place’s opening hours, was to be seen. But at last one Saturday, when his wife had sent Håkan to the supermarket to fetch the dried yeast she had forgotten, he noticed that two or three cars with foreign plates had stopped under the maple, half-on the pavement. Well-dressed people came out of the restaurant’s doors and disappeared into the cars.

Returning from the shop, Håkan decided to take a closer look at the place. He hoped that he and his wife, and perhaps even his sister-in-law too, who was coming to visit, would at last be able to sample the products of the new kitchen. But when Håkan came out of the shop with his plastic bag, the restaurant door was tightly shut once more. He knocked for a long time, but no one came to open up, although he thought he heard the hum of conversation from inside.

Håkan went on his way empty-handed and puzzled. The exotic lunch would have to wait.

The new restaurant was not advertised in the local papers. A strange business, thought Håkan, if it was able to survive without advertisements or customers. No meals appeared to be served in the restaurant, at least not to ordinary customers, or at least to locals.

But a few things were happening around the place. From time to time as he passed by, Håkan saw well-dressed strangers coming and going through the doors with hurried steps. Then a dazzlingly bright light shone through the restaurant windows. A man whose coat and bearing were familiar to Håkan knocked on the window and was allowed in. Håkan thought he recognised him as a passing acquaintance, one of his neighbours, who had moved to the area only a few months previously.

Perhaps there will be food there today, Håkan thought, and curiosity and a healthy appetite made him hurry to the restaurant door. But when he reached the threshold, the door was closed once more.

This time Håkan grew angry and pounded on the door for a long time, without however attracting any attention.

Later that week, Håkan was sitting in the bus beside the neighbour whom he had seen disappearing into the restaurant.

‘Didn’t you go to that oriental restaurant the other day,’ Håkan said. ‘What was the food like there?’

‘What, me?’ the man said, visibly startled. ‘I haven’t been there. You must have seen someone else, someone who looks like me. I never eat out. According to my wife, she makes better food than any restaurant chef. And much cheaper.’

He laughed and changed the subject to the terrible weather. When Håkan got off the bus in the city, before the man, he happened to glance back when he reached the door. The man was staring at him, his brows wrinkled, in an unfriendly manner which Håkan could not understand. It had nothing to do with the quality of their acquaintance or their everyday conversation.

But Håkan was now certain that this was exactly the man he had seen.

Finally one day, at lunchtime, Håkan saw that the door of the restaurant was wide open. He simply walked in. In the lobby was an empty coat-rack; he hung his mackintosh up on it. The restaurant itself was bathed in dazzling light. It was tidy and deserted.

On the tables were starched white table-cloths; the cutlery glittered and gleamed and the napkins were folded into tall cones. But Håkan could not detect any smell of food.

He chose a table next to the window, although he was sorry that he could not really see out, because the white paint ran all the way up. Beside him, suddenly, there stood a strange man. The man must have moved with very light steps, for Håkan had not heard him approach.

‘May I have a menu,’ Håkan said. He supposed the man was a waiter.

‘I am sorry, but this place is closed,’ the man said, clearly but slightly accenting Håkan’s mother tongue.

‘The door was certainly open,’ Håkan said. ‘Otherwise I could hardly have walked in.’

‘We were just airing the room,’ the man said.

‘Why are you always closed?’ Håkan asked irritably. ‘This restaurant has been here for six months, but no one has been able to eat here. Or not me, at any rate. Don’t you need customers.’

‘We will open in the near future,’ the man said.

‘I am hungry now,’ Håkan said, almost arrogantly.

‘I cannot help that,’ the man said. ‘Would you leave?’

‘Are you throwing me out?’ Håkan said, raising his voice. ‘You can’t just do that.’

‘You must leave now,’ the man repeated.

‘No! I want to eat!’ Håkan announced. ‘Is that too much to ask? In that window it says that this is a restaurant. Restaurants serve food for money. I have money – look! I intend to pay for my meal.’

He put his wallet on the table and opened it so that two large notes were visible. From the back room he heard muttering, as if there were a large number of people there.

‘It is lunchtime now,’ Håkan said. ‘Bring me the menu.’

‘There is no menu,’ the man said gloomily.

‘What! No menu! Well then, bring me whatever you have. Herring, pig’s trotters, sauerkraut, green peas, whatever. You must have something, after all. I want to eat!

And suddenly, in a fit of pathos highly uncharacteristic of him, Håkan took a knife and fork and dug their points into the table.

‘You cannot eat here,’ the man said. ‘We do not have anything. Not yet.’

‘You are the strangest of restaurants,’ Håkan said. ‘Although I’ve been wondering for a long time. Perhaps I should report you. I don’t think this really is a restaurant. Perhaps you are doing something completely different here, something which cannot necessarily bear the light of day. Something which should not have anything to do with restaurants at all.’

‘It is perfectly true,’ the man now said, calmly and politely. He looked at Håkan more attentively than before.

Håkan was astonished. Was he right, and had the man admitted it just like that? But something in the man’s expression made Håkan wary.

‘Well then,’ he said. ‘I will go elsewhere, to a place where something is being served.’

‘You will not go anywhere,’ said the man.

‘What?’ Håkan asked, very startled.

The man walked to the door with a fast and springy tread. He turned the key, and the chink of the turning tumblers was heard. Håkan, too, had risen to his feet. He went after the man to the door. As he walked he noticed that his legs were shaking. The man was standing with his back against the door, and his hands behind his back.

‘Move aside,’ Håkan said in a loud voice.

‘Calm down and go back to your table,’ the man said.

‘This is extraordinary,’ Håkan said. ‘Quite singular. You are behaving inappropriately. I intend to leave now.’

The man did not say anything, but did not move either. The situation had changed from silly to unpleasant. Håkan felt that after this anything was possible. He had found himself imprisoned illegally and without reason in his own neighbourhood, just because he had wanted to eat lunch. The entire alphabet of normal behaviour had been forsaken in this place that called itself a restaurant.

‘Move aside or I shall call the police,’ Håkan said.

The man did not react to this in any way. Håkan examined the face of the man who stood before him. It was an uneven face, as if made of many parts that did not belong together. When one looked at them from a new angle, they quickly rebuilt themselves. Håkan could not hazard a guess as to the man’s homeland. His appearance seemed to combine many ethnic groups. His skin was dark, and when the man turned his profile, he looked Indian to Håkan. The word ‘Aztec’ came unbidden to his mind.

When, on the other hand, one looked at the man from directly in front, his narrow eyes and high cheek-bones made Håkan remember Caucasia and horses. But the most extraordinary thing about his face were the lips, which were unusually red, and so clearly defined that, despite their width, they looked very feminine.

Håkan saw the lips open and the man shouted, looking at the door that led into the inner rooms, a single word. Perhaps it was a name, but Håkan had never heard such a name, as if he had said
tokorikato
or
koripikaro
or
rokokitato,