Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (76 page)

The bright squares of light in the enormous blocks where people’s lives were stacked one above the other went out, one by one. Emil drew the curtains and turned out his own light.

When he was little he had been afraid of the dark, and avoided sleeping. Not any more. You couldn’t run from it forever anyway, it always caught you in the end. Fish slept at night too, even swifts high in the air; ants and hedgehogs slept all winter. So-called reality and wakefulness couldn’t be borne for even twenty-four hours at a stretch. Sleep, proper sleep before dreams came, took everything away, every single thing, but it was an enormous relief. The lights went away, the colours and the sounds, the house that he carried with him went away, the fields around it, the gloomy woods behind it all disappeared. There was no mother and father any more, no books or objects.

What came in their place? Nothing, nothing at all, but that was the best thing you could have. It was as if a crushing weight had been lifted from his back, and that weight was reality: people, houses and things, woods and fields, the bright, glittering river, and now this city, heavy as iron or steel. They were all loaded onto his back during the day, the whole world, and it was heavy.

The night took everything, even his own body. And nevertheless, perhaps the following night he would delay the arrival of sleep once more, because the relief of nothingness was so easily forgotten.

But once he had come that far, to the door of deep slumber, no call could make him turn back willingly. Night was the most tempting of all shades, silence was the only sound he heard. For him there was only one scent in existence, and it couldn’t be sensed with the nose; only one taste, but the tongue was unnecessary.

And then came the dreams. Everything came back, but in a slightly different form. He didn’t need eyes, he didn’t need light: he saw anyway.

It was strange.

Meeting

When Emil woke up, his mother had already gone to work. On the table were a pot of yoghurt, some boiled eggs and an empty paper bag, on which was written REMEMBER TO GO TO THE CAFE.

Emil felt embarrassed as he walked back through the door, but he knew it had to be done. The same men from the day before were sitting at the corner table drinking lager. The same waitress was wiping the tables with a similar-looking cloth, and she looked just as tired as on the day before, although it was only morning.

The waitress recognised him immediately and guessed what he had come about. It all went unexpectedly easily.

“We were in a bit of a hurry yesterday, were we darling?” she said, and laughed. Laughing, she was almost beautiful, but Emil didn’t like being called
darling.
“Seven pounds twenty, if you please. We’d get rich pretty quick here if all the customers were like you.” And she went to clear the empty bottles from the corner table. Emil left, relieved.

The wind was cold, as if it were already autumn, and on the other side of the street flapped a familiar scarf.

The pelican! He had almost forgotten about him.

He was strolling along on his short legs with a rolling gait, looking ridiculous in his felt hat, like any animal dressed up in human gear. But not one of the crowd of people who filled the pavements and shops, who were buying food and doing business in the post offices, banks and offices, not one of them paid the slightest bit of attention to him, as if a bright reddish beak and a lower-jaw-pouch were everyday sights in the bustle of the city centre.

Emil set off to follow him once more.

They arrived at a park and the gravel crunched under their feet, the bird’s in his paddle-shaped shoes and Emil’s in his trainers. The pelican slowed his pace, gazing at the tops of the lime trees, where the wind fussed about; he seemed to be breathing deeply, and he sounded as if he might have been humming something.

Then a scrap of paper fell out of his pocket. Emil hurried to pick it up—the bird himself hadn’t noticed anything. On it large letter As were scrawled over and over again in a shaky, spidery (or was that pelicany?) hand.

The bird was learning the alphabet!

Emil ran after him.

“Excuse me, but you dropped this.”

The pelican turned towards him and croaked a polite thank-you, but he looked worried. Maybe he was embarrassed that someone had found out that he was learning the alphabet—at his age!

“You’re welcome, Mr. Pelican,” Emil said in a loud voice.

The bird started visibly, and dropped the piece of paper again. He tried to pick it up off the ground with clumsy, trembling wings. Emil picked it up again.

“Here you are, Mr. Pelican,” he said again, staring determinedly into the bird’s round yellow eyes, which were suddenly hidden behind transparent eyelids. But he had had time before that to note a panicked look in them, and pity squeezed his heart, surprising him. “You don’t need to be afraid, I won’t tell anyone,” he reassured him now, in a low voice.

Near where they were standing was a park bench, and next to the bench was a small drinking fountain, the kind that sends a low jet of water into the air when you turn the tap at the side. The bird went over to the fountain with tottering steps and drank, keeping his other wing on his heart. Then he sank down onto the bench so that his pipe-cleaner legs inside his tweed trousers stuck straight out into the air. Emil sat down next to the bird and looked tactfully elsewhere while he tried to regain his composure.

After a short time he heard that strange cawing voice once again: “May I be so bold as to inquire,” (his way of speaking was very educated), “how you came to discover my,” (here he hesitated for a moment), “my origins?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” The boy was amazed. “There was no discovering about it. It’s obvious.”

“Not to humans,” the bird argued. “Humans have such special eyes that they can’t see anything with them except what they think they see. But perhaps you aren’t human.”

He looked at Emil hopefully.

“No, I am,” Emil assured him. He sounded almost apologetic.

“Are you completely sure?”

“Yes, completely sure.”

“I can’t deny that you look human. But one can never be too careful . . . ”

Emil felt uncomfortable with those sulphur yellow eyes examining him so searchingly. For a moment he thought that maybe the bird was right and he was wrong: that deep down he was something very different from those creatures who crowded the streets and the buildings, who had last names and first names, jobs and tax brackets.

But the pelican stopped staring and sighed. “Up until now people have only seen my clothes. And they are the clothes of a gentleman; beautiful clothes, are they not?”

He fingered the lapel of his jacket and looked at Emil demandingly. Emil admitted that he did have elegant clothes.

“Because I wear human clothes, I am human. That is the general consensus.”

The bird drew a large A in the sand with his walking stick, but it came out looking wrong.

“It’s not quite like that,” Emil said. He bent down and corrected the letter with his finger.

“Really; so you know how to write,” said the pelican thoughtfully.

“Of course,” Emil said, trying not to laugh. “I’m going into the year nine of Victoria Park Secondary School in the autumn.”

“Is that so?”

Now the bird drew wings in the sand, both extended for flight and folded down.

“It is a difficult art,” he said as if to himself, and then pushed the tip of his walking stick hard into the sand.

“Would you agree to teach me? I would pay, of course.” He stared at Emil once more with unflinching yellow eyes. “Would you teach me to read and write?”

Emil hesitated. “I’ve never taught anyone before. I’m not sure if I know how.” But when he noticed the bird’s face (insofar as it could be called a face) falling and his whole posture sagging, he hurriedly continued. “I can try, though.”

The pelican rose and shook his future teacher’s hand formally—though it could hardly be called a handshake: it was just the brush of a wing, feather-light.

“Shall we agree then to meet tomorrow, at five o’clock?”

“Tomorrow at five,” Emil repeated.

They parted by a statue of a long-dead general.

The Alphabet

The next day Emil stood outside the pelican’s door, on the eighth floor of number six, at exactly five o’clock. The nameplate did indeed read Henderson. He rang the doorbell, and after a short while splashing noises began to be audible from the other side of the door. Bare flippers, Emil guessed. The pelican opened the door in a dazzling red dressing-gown, which had green and blue peacocks embroidered on it. (His partiality to bright colours was becoming more and more apparent).

“Do come in,” he urged politely.

Emil stepped into the living room. It looked like the sort of bachelor pad that he had seen in his mother’s old interior decoration magazines. There was a teak bookcase equipped with a drinks cabinet, a sofa-bed, a stereo and a television. But the room had an uninhabited air about it.

“Just a moment,” the bird said from the doorway. “I will change my clothes. This clothing is perhaps not completely appropriate for a writing lesson. I was just in the bath, you see.”

“In fact,” he continued, more slowly and with greater emphasis, “I am always in the bath.”

The bird gave the boy a sidelong glance, as if he was expecting to see some sign of surprise in his face. But Emil nodded seriously. That would explain the vacant feel of the living room.

“I live in the bathtub,” the pelican added defiantly, and because Emil felt that he ought to say something he muttered:

“Well of course, you miss the water. You must be from the coast originally.”

“The coast,” the bird repeated dreamily, and his eyes began to glisten with moisture.

Then he was gone, and the gurgling of water running down the plughole was mixed with the sound of a husky voice singing:

It murmurs, it murmurs,

The sea it murmurs,

The deeps grow dim as night draws down,

The white-caps fade, light drops to drown

In Neptune’s nets,

In silent depths;

It rocks the gulls towards their rest.

He returned wearing a sweater and velvet trousers, and a cloud of aftershave hung in the air around him, although it was clear that he had never in his life needed to shave.

“To work, to work,” he urged briskly, and Emil took his old primer out of his rucksack.

The letters were not in alphabetical order; instead the book began with E and O. On the first page there was a picture of a train engine, and there was nothing written there except EE O OO OOO. They were simple letters and the bird quickly learned to write them and especially to pronounce them. He didn’t just imitate the train’s whistle, he
was
the train’s whistle, so much so that Emil, in his role as the teacher, had to ask him to go on to the next page before the janitor came to ring the doorbell. After all, trains were not allowed to whistle in council flats.

The pelican was a phenomenal student. By the time the evening began to darken he was already, with Emil’s help, able to understand the following chapter passably well: TOOT TOOT GOES THE LORRY. THE ENGINE CHUGS. IT IS A BIG LORRY. IT GOES FAST. IT BRINGS EGGS TO THE SHOPS. WILL YOU FALL OFF? ASKS THE DRIVER. I WON’T FALL OFF. LET’S GO. I’M HOLDING ON TIGHT.

The pelican was extremely pleased with the last sentences. He closed his eyes as if he was remembering something funny and repeated: LET’S GO. I’M HOLDING ON TIGHT.

To end the lesson Emil recited
This Little Piggy
to the pelican, who was still listening with great concentration. All the time he was reciting it, the bird stared with admiration at Emil’s bare feet, and as each toe was mentioned he touched Emil’s corresponding toe with his wingtip.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET,

THIS LITTLE PIGGY STAYED AT HOME,

THIS LITTLE PIGGY HAD ROAST BEEF,

THIS LITTLE PIGGY HAD NONE,

AND THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT “WEE WEE WEE”

ALL THE WAY HOME.

It was now so late that the pelican had to turn on the light. He had shown himself to be a diligent and attentive student, who would obviously soon be able to read fluently. But, to the pelican’s mind, there was nothing to complain about as far as the teacher was concerned either.

“You have excellent pedagogical skills,” he praised. “And now, some light refreshments.” He disappeared into the kitchen, from where the sound of clinking plates could soon be heard. When he reappeared, he was carrying a tray on which a teacup, some sandwiches and meringues, and a dish of raw herring were elegantly arranged. “That is for myself,” he said, indicating the dish. “Everything else is for the professor.”

They set to with a good appetite, although Emil sometimes forgot his own food as he watched how the herring disappeared into the bird’s impressive throat-bag.

When they had finished enjoying the snack, the pelican settled himself into a more comfortable position in his chair.

“Perhaps you are wondering why an . . . individual . . . such as myself would live and dress as a human, learning your language and striving in every way to behave just as you do?”

Emil admitted that he had indeed been wondering just that.

“Would you care to hear my story? I warn you, it is long.”

But without waiting for Emil’s answer, the pelican began his tale.

The Pelican’s Story 1

Into the World of Humans

I come originally from the southern coast, were the sea is salty and warm and the waves of high tide crash against the sand dunes. I lived there happily among my family and friends in a great flock; we divided our time between fishing, caring for our children and enjoyable social interaction.

But as time went on humans became ever more intrusive. They were no longer satisfied merely with hunting us: they began to build their factories and power stations on the beaches of our homeland as well. Their sewage and run-off drove the fish further and further away, so that we began to suffer from hunger and all kinds of discomforts. We moved on again and again, and thus we finally ended up in the North. My loved ones settled in, but I began to think: humans flourish and live well, humans spread in all directions and make their lives more and more comfortable. Animals have a different lot: the better life is for humans, the worse it is for us. Our homes are destroyed by chainsaws and bulldozers, our food becomes ever scarcer and our homes more cramped. Dead fish float to the surface, the soil is poisoned and eggshells become so brittle that they break before the chicks are fully-grown.