Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (83 page)

“He fell at the woman’s feet, wringing his hands.

“It was terribly pitiable, but I began to be embarrassed to be watching such an intimate family scene, so I rose and left the place. I wasn’t completely sure whether they knew that there was such a number of people watching their private affairs, or whether it really was just a certain kind of opera, about which I know everything these days. Were they doing everything merely for the sake of the watchers? Tell me.”

“Yes, they were,” Emil confirmed.

“I guessed as much,” the pelican sighed. “Yesterday I went past the same place once more and I wanted to see what the window would show now. I could not see the couple from the day before, even the room had gone, and the window was open onto a great road. We rushed along it, myself and the other watchers, the whole hall, and strange landscapes slipped past us. It is difficult to comprehend, but we were at the same time both on the road and in the hall, inside in the darkness and outside in the sunlight, moving with dizzying speed and immobile in our seats. We were elsewhere from where we were, and we did other things than what we did; I have never yet experienced such a thing in my life as a bird.

“Events succeeded each other with breathtaking speed. The window showed people who talked and walked, opened and closed doors, made love and argued in elegant apartments, but in the same moment they were somewhere else as well, they were riding in wide meadows or rocking in a yacht on the ocean waves. And wherever they went, we went with them.

“I also saw a man who stepped into a flood-lit building and took a shiny object from his pocket. When he pointed it at people like a finger there were loud bangs and many of the people in the room fell to the floor and began to bleed. This was outrageous, but the humans around me sat completely still without trying to help, and I—I am ashamed to admit—followed their example.

“Besides, there was no longer anyone who might have needed help. The building had disappeared, the man had disappeared and all the bleeding people were gone, only the great road appeared once more before our eyes and we rushed forward, towards who knows what adventures, what happiness or suffering, until the lights came on and that too faded away. The window closed and the red curtains slid in front of it just as in the Opera, as people crowded out of the main door chatting and laughing.

“I was just pondering the events in the dark hall when you rang the doorbell. I was thinking that what happened there was merely a shadow, pictures and dreams. It was not something that had been born of itself, but rather created and imagined. I was thinking that humans have an irresistible attraction to lies and effigies; I know it myself, I experienced it immediately from my first day as a human onwards. Reality is not enough for humans, one world is not enough for them, they have to make more and more new ones forever and ever.”

Glass and Diamonds

Once, when he was visiting the pelican’s bathroom, Emil noticed that there was a framed photograph hanging above the bathtub. It was a whole-body picture of a girl dressed in a cloud of white tulle and ballet shoes, whose dark hair was pulled back so that her forehead and ears were left bare.

That same evening the pelican, to Emil’s surprise, steered the conversation round to the beauty of women.

“The most beautiful thing about human women is their ears,” he said. “Birds don’t have ears at all, just ear-openings, and even they are hidden by feathers. But women have naked and rose-pink ears. It is very beautiful, especially if they know how to use them.

“I know a certain woman who knows,” he continued dreamily. “She knows how to listen extraordinarily well, and to dance as well. In
Swan Lake
she was one of the little swans, the best one of all, the most beautiful one of all.”

“Is it her in the picture above the bathtub?” Emil dared to ask.

“Yes, that is she,” the pelican admitted, his yellowish eyes disappearing behind his transparent eyelids. “On the stage she is as I am: both a bird and a human. But she is a beautiful bird, a swan, while I on the other hand am heavy and clumsy. Her name is Elizabeth, but her friends call her Liza. Once the Opera’s harp player was looking for her. I saw her in the cafeteria and said ‘Elizabeth, the harp is looking for you.’ And she smiled so beautifully and said: ‘You can call me Liza.’

“Yesterday I saw her again: she was just coming out of the dressing room door as we finished our rehearsal. ‘Good afternoon, Liza,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Henderson,’ she said, and smiled again. ‘How’s the singing going?’ I told her that it had not gone particularly well that day, because two of the sopranos had become hoarse, and she told me that they had had a dull rehearsal too, because the prima ballerina had been having a tantrum.

“Then I said: ‘Perhaps we could console ourselves with a cake,’ although for my own part I do not particularly care for cakes. ‘I’m on a diet, of course,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure one cake wouldn’t wreck it.’

“So I bought her coffee and cake (she chose a fondant fancy) in the Opera café and we talked about this and that. I told her about my life, and it was precisely then that I observed that she knows how to listen, and that she has the most wonderful ears . . . ”

“Did you tell her about your life as a bird or about your life as a human?”

“Only as a human. But one day I will tell her about everything, and she will understand. Perhaps I shall ask her to tea next Saturday.”

Emil didn’t say anything, but personally he wasn’t so sure about the understanding part.

After that many days passed during which Emil didn’t hear a word about the Opera’s beautiful Elizabeth. But the pelican had begun to dress with more care than previously. He always brushed his paddle-shaped shoes as he was leaving, and his wig shone as well, as he had bought some Brylcreme. He didn’t talk about his family. He seemed distracted but happy.

After the weekend Elizabeth’s picture had disappeared from the bathroom wall, and the pelican no longer smelled of Brylcreme. Emil never found out what had actually happened, but it was clear that the ballerina really had come to visit.

The pelican sprawled in Mrs. Greatorex’s armchair, his legs thrown over one of the arms. He sipped red liquid from a long-stemmed glass, an air of fake cheerfulness about him.

“This is sparkling wine,” the bird explained. “Let us have a toast!”

“I’d rather have tea.”

“Tea, tea,” the bird said, “that filthy dishwater. I don’t know what humans like about it. Well, I will not stop you, go ahead and slurp your tea, since you do not understand any better. I will sing you a song about tea. And about glass and diamonds.”

“Is it new?”

“Brand new.”

He tipped the glass in his dark brown hand-feathers, inclined his head, swung his legs and sang:

So tea and sympathy went cold,

And as she left she slammed the door;

She did not know that with her cake

She’d swallowed down my poisoned scorn.

I tuck my head beneath my wing;

The autumn makes my eyes grow dim;

And stubborn sorrow comes once more

To taunt me from behind the door.

I keep awake with all my might

As day gives in to silken night

And truths emerge from under dreams

Like autumn golds from under greens.

Bleed! maple tree, and shriek! Come rain!

Wash love’s reminders from the grass.

Reality to dreams is just

As gleaming diamond is to glass.

Reality to dreams is just

As gleaming diamond is to glass.

When he had sung the refrain, the bird threw the glass far into the corner so that it shattered into fragments and red wine stained the carpet. He raised his wing to his eyes, and burning tears flowed between his hand-feathers.

“I don’t know where this water is coming from,” he sobbed into his wing. “But it is salty like the waves of the sea.”

“Tomorrow I will sing that in the bar and I will get a good price for it. It will certainly be a hit, a real tango success, and people will dance to it pressed against each other, breathing hotly into each other’s ears.”

Emil sat with his head bowed and stared at the floor. He didn’t know what to say. But whoever has once seen a weeping bird will never forget the sight.

Elsa

The lessons and the pelican’s reminiscings had come to an end, but the friendship between him and Emil continued. Emil also met Mr. Wildgoose, the pianist, who really did have warts on his fingers and who seemed sorrowful but good-natured. On those evenings when neither of them had to perform, he came to visit his friend almost like clockwork. He didn’t say much, but he listened to the pelican’s anecdotes, smoked and smiled, looking contented with his lot. If he heard in advance that Emil was going to be there as well, he would bring sweets with him, usually French liquorice. Emil didn’t like liquorice, but he didn’t dare refuse when Mr. Wildgoose pressed them on him, and so he chewed the bitter pieces patiently all night to please the pianist.

August was drawing to a close, the summer and the summer holidays would soon be gone. Emil hadn’t learned to recognise anyone from the whole building other than the pelican and Elsa, who lived on the same floor as him and his mother. But even then he only knew her name and what she looked like, so that they nodded at one another if they happened to meet on the stairs or in the hall.

The pelican knew what Elsa looked like as well. “Who is that girl who has such a happy laugh?” he asked one day.

“That’s Elsa,” Emil said. That was all he knew.

But one day when Emil was coming back from the shops, Elsa was sitting on the landing in front of her door, looking miserable.

“I forgot the key,” she said. “And no one’ll be home at ours till the evening, and I can’t find the janitor anywhere.”

Emil hesitated. He had never asked anyone over before, not even the pelican, because for some reason he felt that his mother wouldn’t like it. But Elsa looked so depressed and cold sitting there; her skirt and cardigan were wet, as it was raining outside, and she had obviously been shopping just like Emil. A shopping bag leaned against her leg and a French stick and a carton of milk stuck out of the top.

“You could come and wait at ours,” Emil said shyly.

“I’ll be fine sitting here,” Elsa said hesitantly.

“Come on now, it’s cold on the stairs and I was going to make cocoa.”

“Is your mother home?”

City people rarely talked about ‘your mother’ and “our mother”; instead, most often they said “your old lady.” Emil wasn’t used to that term, and he hoped that maybe Elsa was from somewhere else, since she didn’t speak that way.

She
was
from somewhere else, from even further north than Emil. And it turned out that she had only lived in the city for a couple of months and that in the autumn she would go to the same school as Emil, but in the year below.

“Is it a nice school?”

“No-oo, I don’t like it. I don’t think school can be nice.”

They didn’t think of anything else to talk about straight away, and Emil began to fidget in his chair. “Would you like some more cocoa?”

“No thank you. Hey, what’s that strange-looking man’s name, the one who lives in number 6? I’ve seen you with him sometimes.”

“That’s the peli—, Mr. Henderson.”

“He has such an amazing nose. And he’s so short. It always makes me laugh when I meet him in the courtyard, he wobbles about so funnily when he walks.”

Emil felt offended by this. So that was what the ‘happy laugh’ that the pelican had talked about was.

“You can’t do anything about the way you look,” he said curtly. He was beginning to get a bit tired of Elsa.

“Of course not,” the girl agreed hastily. “I didn’t mean anything by that, I just . . . ”

There was another awkward silence, and Elsa started to talk about leaving.

“No one’s come back to yours yet. We’d hear it in here if the door opened.”

“No, but maybe the janitor’s home now.” Elsa collected her things. “Bye then.”

“Bye.”

She had gone, and the kitchen became dreary and empty. The taps glittered, the plumbing rumbled downstairs and the fridge hummed into life. Emil sat on the stool with an empty cocoa cup in front of him, empty himself.

He didn’t go to meet the pelican that day, although he had promised. Actually it was because of what Elsa had said. Or more accurately what she had meant, what Emil thought she had meant. ‘You hang around with all sorts of funny-looking types,’ that was what Elsa had thought. Too short, and with too big noses, bizarre in every way. The pelican had suggested that they go out for a walk that evening, but suddenly Emil didn’t want people to see him in the bird’s company. Above all, he didn’t want Elsa to see them.

He was ashamed of their friendship.

The next day, when he was sitting on the climbing frame and reading a Superman comic, the pelican came out of the door of number six.

“Good morning,” he greeted the boy. “So you could not come yesterday, then.”

“No, I had something else to do.” Emil flushed lightly and continued: “Unfortunately.”

“Of course, of course, completely understandable. I took a quiet little turn to St. Mary’s Park by myself. The sky was completely clear, did you notice? Autumn is coming. Imagine, I had no idea before that the stars were suns and that space is infinite. Now I have been reading
Astronomy for Fun,
it is very educational.”

The pelican sat down next to Emil on the climbing frame and swung his legs. Emil glanced worriedly at the fifth floor windows. He was bothered by the idea that Elsa might be watching them and laughing.

But Elsa wasn’t at the window, Elsa was at that moment walking across the car park and coming towards them, swinging her cardigan in her hand. Her mouth was already turning up at the corners, of course. Why did the pelican have to come and talk to him right now, and what was worse, sit on the climbing frame? It looked so weird. For a moment Emil almost hated the bird, who was sitting there looking rather satisfied, but without the dignity of either an adult human or an animal.