Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (87 page)

That was how Emil looked at his mother, as if he had walked a little distance ahead and then stopped and turned his head. He saw weakness and disintegration where he had believed there to be strength and life’s eternal home. And into his days there trickled damply the knowledge that humans never, even in their prime, stop being vulnerable to the crushing hands of reality.

Exposure

The next evening Emil rang the pelican’s doorbell. He rang repeatedly and for a long time, but the pelican was obviously not home, which was unusual at that time of day. Or maybe he didn’t want to open the door, or maybe he was in the bath and didn’t hear the doorbell.

Emil opened the letter box and peeked in, but he couldn’t see anything except a section of the dim hall. He heard the sound of running water, but it came from the next flat; the pelican’s flat was perfectly quiet.

He visited the next morning and evening as well, just as fruitlessly. He was beginning to worry. More than that: he was beginning to be afraid.

At the door to number six he ran into the pelican’s neighbour lugging an empty rubbish bin. She was an unbelievably fat woman, whose ankles spilled out over the top of her tightly laced leather shoes.

“Excuse me, I don’t suppose you know if Mr. Henderson has moved?”

“Don’t talk to me about ‘Mr.’,” the woman said in a spiteful tone.

“But doesn’t he live here any more?” Emil insisted.

“There’s living and living. Can you call it living when he doesn’t do anything else except sit in the bath? Water gurgling all the time, day and night. No one could bear that.”

“So he’s gone then. Do you know where at all?”

“Why’re you bothering me? You’re always hanging on his coattails, don’t think I haven’t seen you. I wonder if your mother knows who you’ve been keeping company with.”

Emil swallowed. The feeling of danger inside him became more urgent. The woman was already on her way up the steps, but she turned her head once more so that her left cheek folded on top of her shoulder:

“You should spend more of your time with decent people.”

Emil froze. The woman had not emphasised the word “decent,” which would have been natural if she had meant some person she considered a bad example. She had emphasised the word ‘people.’ Could there be more than one explanation for that?

He returned to his own staircase and rang Elsa’s doorbell for the first time. The girl herself opened the door. She stepped half a step back when she saw Emil, and her eyes widened. She didn’t say anything, as if she was so frightened that she couldn’t make her voice work. Emil had not expected such a reception.

“The pelican’s disappeared,” he said. “Did you know?”

For some reason he was certain that Elsa had known before him.

“Well, yes, actually . . . ” Elsa looked away. “I’d heard about it.”

“Who told you? Where did you hear?”

“They were talking about it out there in the yard, that’s all. Of course people knew.”

“They knew that he’d left? But he didn’t tell me that he was going to go somewhere. He should have done, I was his friend.” Emil’s voice trembled. He felt now that the way the pelican had acted towards him had been deeply wrong.

Elsa leaned against the hall wall and shifted on her feet. She didn’t ask Emil in. The kitchen door was half open, and he could hear from the sounds that someone was washing up in there.

“Did he go back there then, to his family?”

Elsa suddenly turned towards the wall and her shoulders shook. “You don’t understand anything at all.” She was openly crying. “He didn’t go anywhere, he was taken.”

“What do you mean taken? Back there?”

“Not there,” the girl shouted. “To the zoo.”

Emil’s heart thumped. A terrible misfortune had occurred, something irreversible and with far-reaching consequences. The pelican was behind bars, he had been disgraced and thrown in jail, his chances for a respectable life either as a person or an animal stripped away from him.

“How is that possible?” he spluttered. “How did it happen? Who did it?”

“I did.” Elsa looked at him, her eyes black with despair.

“You. That’s not true. It couldn’t have been you.”

“It was me. I didn’t take him there, but I made it happen. First I told my mum and dad that Mr. Henderson wasn’t human, but they didn’t believe me.”

“My mum didn’t believe me either.”

“Then I told the janitor. He didn’t believe me at first either, but I told him to look at Mr. Henderson’s hands and feet. I asked him if he thought that any human could have hands and feet like that. Then he started to think. He started to watch Mrs. Greatorex’s tenant. Yesterday morning, when I was on my way out, he was just coming out of the basement and he said: ‘You have sharp eyes, young lady, and the rest of us have been as blind as bats. If he’s not a bird, I’ll eat the crown jewels. I’ve called the zoo and they’re coming today to get him.’

“I asked what they were going to do with him, and he laughed. ‘What d’you think zoos are for? He’ll get his own little box that he won’t even have to pay rent for, free board and plenty of admirers. Mrs. Greatorex herself can go there to gawp at her tenant, for a small fee.’

“I went home, and I haven’t been out since. But mum told me that Mr. Henderson went off somewhere yesterday with two strange men in a delivery van. There are odd rumours going round the building. From what I hear, someone other than me’d been saying that Mr. Henderson wasn’t human at all, but they’re also gossiping that he belonged to some kind of criminal gang, along with the men in the van. They’re saying he had links with the underworld. That’s all a load of rubbish of course.”

“Of course.”

“Except that he wasn’t human. And that he’s been taken away. And it’s my fault.”

“Blaming yourself isn’t going to help,” Emil said, as more experienced people sometimes said. His face, too, looked for a moment like an adult’s, stern and brave. It was prepared to cope with that which was irreversible, but with the strength of his clenched fists he would change that which he still could.

The pelican himself, perhaps in a fit of insane courage and defiance, had shown himself to Elsa as a bird, and he certainly hadn’t forbidden her from passing the information on to others. Maybe it wasn’t even a question of overconfidence, maybe he had even been hoping in some way that the truth would get out? Maybe he had wanted to test humans, to see how they would react to a creature in their midst who was no longer an animal, but not a human either? Maybe Emil and Elsa—because remembering his suspicions and the cooling of his feelings towards the pelican, Emil felt himself just as responsible for this ‘occurrence’ as Elsa—had merely functioned to further and carry out some kind of plan.

“Blaming yourself isn’t going to help,” Emil repeated. “Now we need action.”

Prisoners

A more accurate name for the zoo would be “animal prison.” But even the worst criminals these days don’t end up in such dismal boxes as a bear caught in the wilderness, who is used during the summertime to wandering for leagues every day across swamps and boundless woodland, can find himself in. Even nine square metres of concrete floor and walls made of bars are not enough punishment for him, although he has committed no crime. A theatre is made of his misery, money is earned from his despair, his shattered life provides entertainment for thousands. Day after day the bear goes around the same circle, ten steps east and ten west, but he will never again see the sun rise or set from the wild woods. People pay to be able to gape at his misfortune, they chew roast beef sandwiches noisily in front of his prison and they throw one or two pieces on the floor in front of him so that they can laugh at his clumsy movements and imagine themselves to be animal lovers. His fur turns grey in captivity, and the smell of humans, which in former days he made long circuits to avoid, clings to him.

And the tiger? The tiger in the northern zoo, the tiger from the Indian jungle, where orchids bloom wild and a tree grows from a seed in a single summer, although that is, to be fair, a long time there? We dare not even contemplate the tiger, the night walker, who can leap three times as far and high as his cell. For he does not even have the consolation of hibernation, which for the bear still opens a single door back to the blueberry woods.

There is no joy for birds there either, except for mallards and peacocks, which strut at the day-trippers’ feet, and actually enjoy being able to unfurl their magnificent tails to be gawped and pointed at.

But the sea eagle’s cage is narrow and tall. A dead tree has been put there for him, and he crouches on its highest branch like a statue, a dark monument. He is one of the last of his species as well, outside the cage there no longer live many who carry his honourable name. Nor can this life be called life, for what is the sea eagle without the sea? What will he do with his metre-long wings when the wind will never again have the chance to lift them?

The pelican was the only one of his kind in the zoo, and Emil found him easily. His cage was lower than the sea eagle’s, and there was a wading pool in it. On the chain-link fence a sign said: Dalmatian Pelican,
Pelecanus crispus.

At first Emil just watched him for a long time; he didn’t want to go up to the cage straight away. And besides, there was a family there who were trying to tempt the bird closer with pieces of biscuit. Emil was sure that the pelican would have felt humiliated if someone he knew had seen him in that position. So he waited until the family, tired of their fruitless attempts at persuasion, announced that they were going to the monkey house.

“Stupid bird,” a little girl dressed in a fringed skirt tossed scornfully at him as they left.

The pelican stood by the back wall of the cage with his tail turned to his audience, taking no more notice of the pieces of biscuit than the mocking comments. Dignity, which an animal easily loses when dressed in human clothes, had returned to his bearing.

Emil approached the chain-link fence with his heart in his throat. No one was staring now, perhaps he would have time to exchange a couple of words with the bird.

“Pelican!” he whispered. He didn’t dare speak out loud. Only now did he realise that he didn’t know any first name to call him by, not counting Papageno.

The bird turned round immediately. He didn’t seem surprised to see him, but instead Emil was amazed at the change that had occurred in him during the short time they had been apart. He had become old and sorrowful and grave, and he no longer walked with a spring as he had before. His bearing had, however, remained unchanged.

They spoke in whispers and stopped as soon as any passer-by came near the bird cages.

“I knew you would appear here before long,” the pelican said. “Here at Pentonwood Scrubs,” he added with a brief smile.

He spoke to Emil as an equal now for the first time, and Emil did the same to him. They had probably never been as close to each other before as they were now, separated by the bars.

“Elsa told me you were here.”

“Elsa, yes. Send her my greetings.”

“She’s very unhappy.”

“Tell her that that is unnecessary. That events here occurred just as they were meant to.”

“Did you want to come here then?” Emil was horrified.

“No, that I cannot say,” the bird admitted. “But I suppose that I had to experience this as well.”

“But you can’t stay here.”

“No, I must return to my own kind. But I cannot get out of here without help.”

“I’ll help you,” Emil promised. “Maybe I could break in here tonight.”

“I have considered this matter. Would you happen to have pliers or pincers at home? I think they would be enough. The wire mesh on these small cages is light, and there is only one night watchman after the gates are shut. He will not cause problems, he cannot be in all places at once and we can certainly make a large enough hole in the mesh quickly. But then we still have to cope with the fence.”

“That’s easy,” Emil assured him. He knew a place where a large lime tree thrust a thick branch over the fence.

“But I cannot leave like this—naked,” the bird said. “I will be brought back in an instant.”

“I’m sure I have some jeans and a shirt, if they only fit.”

“They shall have to suffice,” the bird said. “Where shall we find anything else to help us in this hour of need?”

But he sounded slightly dissatisfied. Perhaps his frivolity and liking for bright clothes had risen once more to the fore, perhaps he would have wished to present himself more tastefully dressed as he passed through the city for the last time as a human.

“Come at around midnight,” the bird said. “I will be waiting. What else can I do?”

They said goodbye, and the boy set off reluctantly towards the exit. He stopped halfway along the path, because the pelican had begun to hum something. He saw his profile, which could not even with the best of wills be called beautiful, with his beak-pouch, his huge, pale, multi-coloured bill and his s-shaped neck which alternately straightened and bent as the creature’s muffled voice rose and fell:

Freedom took the swallow’s wings

The human hands, the fish’s fins;

It entered the world as a deer, wild and fleet,

Climbed the highest of trees with the puma’s soft feet.

But hands grow tired and fins grow dim,

Wings wear out and legs give in,

And only a clanking and tightening chain

Will bring understanding of what is to blame.

I pity the prisoner, I pity the guard,

And the people who come here to peer through the bars.

The ones who condemned me to live in this cell

Will find that fate will chain them, as well.

Flight

His mother wasn’t home again, but on the floor in the hall there was a letter addressed to Emil. It was from his grandmother.

Inside was a fifty-pound note and a birthday card. It was his birthday, he hadn’t remembered, but his mother hadn’t either.