Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (92 page)

As I was passing the man at a distance of a few steps – and of course I had immediately looked away from him – he let out a strange sound, an inhuman roar, a grunt of unbridled rage. It was a war cry!

And the man followed me, his pupils dark and wide, his feet oddly spread. His hand was raised to strike, his face contorted in a demonic grimace –.

It would have been no mere slap – it seemed to me that he focused all his available energy on the blow that was aimed at my – head? chest? And how is it possible that this rather frail and liquor-ridden body could muster such an amount of hostile strength as seemed to be loaded in that instantaneous blow? In which boundless storehouses of hatred did it originate?

I smelled his rancid stench and held my breath. Dried urine, booze, shit, rotten teeth, who knows what noxious fumes.

I made a sideways leap, it must have looked ridiculous. But the unexpected and dreadful aggression required a reaction. The unfairness of the man’s hatred hurt me deeply.

I ran a few hasty steps and managed to push open the door to the station hall. I saw passers-by turn to look and was ashamed. I was certain the man would pursue me, and as I glanced back I thought I saw his horrific shape push, or fall, in through the swinging doors.

I ran, heavily, clumsily, flailing my arms. I swept through the station hall, past the people sitting on their trunks. It had been months, even years since I last ran, and for the very fact this person had forced me to, I hated him.

I even ran down the escalator, I was sure he was panting right behind me. As I rushed through the subway station, up the stairs, through the arcade, I imagined all the while that I heard this nightmare stomp at my heels. My shoulder bag swung and hit an old lady in the side, but I didn’t wait for her reaction.

I pushed through the revolving doors into the department store. I passed a sales representative lifting a novel, automatic dish brush with a refillable container for dish soap. It looked handy and I had time to think I’d buy one later.

I was beginning to calm down. My near vicinity was so crowded with people in a flurry of movement in all directions that I didn’t think my tormentor could track me anymore. I went out through another door and crossed the street to a café that has a doorman at all times.

I took a paper from the rack, folded the blue scarf onto the adjacent chair and ordered a cappuccino, as is my habit in this café. I still breathed unevenly. The light of a calm winter’s day fell onto my paper through the skylight.

A sideboard was decorated with a seven-branched candelabrum for Christmas.

But the figure of the man still loomed before me, big and terrible, like a genie released from its bottle, towering to the ceiling. I shuddered. The memory of his odorous aura must have caused it.

I thought: my life and his have no point of contact. Nothing, except the merciless blow I managed to dodge. I come from an entirely different world. I don’t think I bother anyone. I don’t live at anyone’s expense. I lead a quiet and simple life that has, if not luxury, then at least a certain quality to it. I mind my own business without burdening others with them. I have studied almost all my life and still do. I have my office and my research, which give me profound satisfaction. An apartment of my own, albeit mortgaged. My daughter and my son. Relatives, and a male friend, and many female friends. I eat well but with moderation. I change my underwear every day. Does this put me in debt to those who are not as satisfied with their lives? Should I apologize for all this to those who live more poorly and are less happy than I am?

I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I have worries that wake me up every night. And I feel they should be payment enough for all I have. But I may be wrong. Maybe I have had so much and so undeservingly that I can pay back my debts only when I die, if then. Yet I find it inconceivable that my debt would be to that outcast at the station rather than to my parents and ancestors, my own children, my teachers and friends. I see no dependency between us, no reason to believe that I live well because he lives badly, or vice versa.

He! What was he? Why should I waste a second to consider my attitude towards such a creature? I can form a closer contact with a cat, a sparrow, even a bumblebee than with a person like him. Towards them I feel compassion, and, to an extent, I can understand them, even try to put myself in their place. What is it like to be a bumblebee on a northern sundrop? A sparrow in a snowstorm? Without a doubt I respect them – unlike him.

They are what they are completely: cats, sparrows, bumblebees. Each of them wholly represents the idea of its species. They are exactly what they are meant to be. They fulfill their purpose to the last detail. They never stray. But whatever a man is meant to be, it’s definitely nothing like him.

I see he is human-shaped like me. He has hands and feet and presumably all his internal organs in the same places as anyone else, but this makes the strangeness even more total. It makes this creature more inconceivable than a cat, or a dog, or an insect. It makes my revulsion even deeper, turns it into something resembling horror. For how is it possible that such a creature is human?

His metabolism and his vital functions are similar to mine, although he, of course, is a man and I am a woman. His nails grow at the same speed with mine, as does his hair. I know that our DNAs are next to identical, because we are members of the same species. But I feel he is entirely different from me, or any of my acquaintances or relatives. Something in him doesn’t seem human to me, to me he doesn’t represent the idea of a human like a sparrow represents the idea of a sparrow.

You laugh at me! You say: As if you know what this idea is like! But in fact you, too, think you know, you are just ashamed to say it. I have the courage to say: A human being should be beautiful, good, wise, and just. I am not, and neither are you, but wouldn’t we very much want to be all this?

He doesn’t, not in the least.

Towards him and his likes I do not feel and cannot feel any sympathy, not even abstractly and from afar. And why should I? I won’t be the hypocrite to say I ought to. I have no obligation to, and what would he gain from it anyway. And I’m not going to apologize for my lack of compassion.

I picked up a tabloid someone had left on the table, but I was barely able to scan the headlines. I had to admit that my agitation had still not settled. Still the diabolical travesty of a man held sway over my thoughts.

And now I’m trying to be fair. I want to appreciate the various reasons, both genetic and environmental, that have put him into his current, undoubtedly miserable state. How could I know if he should be blamed for any of it? Or I given the credit for not being where he is? I don’t know if he ever chose anything.

But if it could be proved that he either chose or didn’t, what then? I see it and react to it. The visible is not just surface and reality is not only behind all that is visible. He is also what he seems. This is one reason why he is where he is. As for the reasons why he appears the way he appears, they are irrelevant to me. How could I follow their chain of causality to its beginning? What else should I, what else could I react to, than what he appears to be?

Besides, at times I think – as cruel as it may sound – that without a doubt every man alone is to blame not only for what he does but also for what others do to him, what happens to him, how he ends up. And now is such a time. Right now I am convinced that we all choose our own misfortunes.

But even as I think this way, I have to confess I am at a dead-end: Are there no victims, no scapegoats? In that case I would have to admit that the blow he aimed at me was in a sense justified and that I caused it myself. Very well, I do remember my gaze, which was an act. I take full responsibility for it, whatever that means. But as a matter of fact I think I had not meant to aim such a gaze at the man. And if I hadn’t meant to, how can I take responsibility? It just happened.

And as I say this, I remember that many people who have killed say the very same words: “It just happened.” Does “just happening” in any way free them from acts they nevertheless committed? Or do all acts, even the most deliberate ones, ultimately just happen?

But why do I still feel deeply offended?

And what if his blow had struck me? What if he had kicked me down and battered me to death? Should I say: I gave him such and such a look. Thus I got what I deserved.

That would be too much, really.

But perhaps it was not just about that gaze but instead about all my acts and failures previous to that unpleasant incident. And in that case the man would have acted as an instrument of fate.

Even in that case I would loathe him, and his blow would be, in a sense, as unfair!

But I still aspire to be a good and broad-minded person. And if I was asked to contribute to a charity for his benefit, I would. Why wouldn’t I, even though I’m convinced no charity will improve his state. But it would be ridiculous and unreasonable to ask me to sympathize as well.

I listened to the hum of the espresso machine. The porcelain and the spoons chinked as clearly as glass bells. At the next table someone said: “He always does that; he never considers the feelings of others.”

The fact is I hate him without restraint. If I am sincere I have to admit that it’s a great misfortune his kind even exists. Undoubtedly he is both a criminal and a psychopath. He is vile socially, psychologically, and biologically, a total failure of a being. My mental hygiene suffers when I as much as remember him. If I have to smell him again, I shall throw up.

But he, too, hates me. Even more so: he wants to destroy me, and all my kind, this is clear as day.

But I don’t strive to destroy him. I don’t spit at him. I merely step aside. As far as I’m concerned, he can be wherever he will, as long as he doesn’t attack me. I didn’t put him in his current state. I’m neither his oppressor nor his exploiter.

Wherever he is, I don’t wish to be. Why doesn’t he, then, allow me even a brief, narrow opening, when all I want is to pass him quickly?

The waiter came to bring my coffee, a glass of water, and a brioche. I drank the water promptly. I was still shaken.

Now I knew. In that familiar, pleasant, and peaceful room I couldn’t help but know that the fury and the unfairness, which had preyed me on the station through the unknown bum and which I had only barely avoided, would once strike me with all its destructive power. The bedrock I had rested on at the start of this day was no longer under me. My life had started to flutter like a flame that someone had tried to blow out but had not succeeded to just yet.

I knew: in the end he would succeed. He would find me – no matter how inconspicuous and aloof I tried to be. I might avoid him for a time, make abrupt evasive movements, I might run – but how long, how far?

For the aggression that was aimed at me was life’s own rampant, destructive energy, which will – as soon as I forget myself, look at it at the right moment, and reveal my unprotected, soft face – hit the mark. And even not forgetting and staying on guard at all times wouldn’t save me. It would be no longer about my vigilance and reactions.

That vile creature stood for the reality that existed behind my everyday life, a life that was peaceful only in appearance. For any unexpected reason it might be torn apart to reveal what I didn’t want to see: the inevitable advent of my doom.

Hadn’t I this very morning thought – and it wasn’t even a thought but instead feebleminded confidence – that everything was tidily in its place, and that everything would stay the way it was. Against my better knowledge I wanted to believe that life is predictable and controllable.

I did know, if I cast a searching eye on my certainty, that it was deceptive and illusory. But it still is what I cling to as my days pass: the treaty of life’s normalcy. But who has ratified it? Who guarantees that days follow one another the way they have until now? That all disasters are avoidable or at least abatable?

Of course it wouldn’t be him. It wouldn’t need to be him. It was improbable that the same man would attack me again. I wasn’t going to give him another chance.

But this man who revealed his savage face to me was but one of the numerous demons. He represented the horror that might leap at me anytime and anywhere – even where I haven’t expected any danger. Even from inside my own cells. Some of them might mutiny, ally, proliferate exponentially and wreak havoc and chaos until I sicken. Until I die. Or sudden braking, hydroplaning, unchecked skidding of a car. And with me inside! I would be crushed – my liver, my kidneys, my own sad heart, my body, so naked under all its clothing – between the armrest of the backseat and the crumpled roof of the car.

It would happen. It will happen. How can I live, knowing this? Only by forgetting it time after time?

The dishes of the previous customers and a crumpled candy paper lay on the marble table in front of me.

I paused to look at those dishes, an espresso cup and a mulled wine glass, and didn’t want to think of my tormentor any more. I looked at them with devotion. There still was a drop of cold coffee in one of the cups.

Those objects were filled with peace, safety, and human touch. They were useful, everyday, real, that’s how it felt. As long as I could concentrate on them, nothing would threaten me.

I thought about the people who had drunk from the cups and left before I entered. Who had they been? A mother and a daughter? A man and a wife? Two friends? What had they talked about? Where did they go?

I didn’t know anything about them expect that there were two of them. Nevertheless, I could almost see them leaning towards each other and could almost sense the faint memory of their voices about my table.

Towards them I felt a compassion I could never feel towards the scum at the station. We sat at the same table, even though we couldn’t see each other. It’s one way to meet, even though the ones who had left first didn’t know it.

And a certainty that made my ears roar now told me who he was. He was one of the Lords of Death, one of the fifty-eight blood-drinking deities I would meet in my final desolation, eye to eye, one after the other.