Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (39 page)

Many times Håkan had also caught pupils who were hardly sexually mature copulating anywhere, in cleaning cupboards, on the mattresses in the gym, one, after hours, even under the table in the school office.

Direct aggression was a daily phenomenon. Metal detectors had, of course, been in use for years, but damage could be done with baseball bats and even with bare hands. Even though breaks were supervised by men from a security firm, ambulance men and policemen were weekly visitors.

The headmaster stood at the staff room window and stared into the playground. The sound of hammering was coming from there. A motor saw buzzed into action.

‘Look at them now,’ the headmaster said to Håkan. ‘What on earth are they building?’

‘Isn’t it a good thing for them to learn how to use a hammer and awl. Perhaps they’re doing something sensible for a change,’ Håkan said wearily, glancing at the playground.

‘Does that look sensible?’ the headmaster asked. ‘To me it looks just, just . . . ’

‘Just like some kind of execution scaffold,’ Håkan said in wonderment. Further off, someone was being strangled, encouraged by rhythmic shouts of support.

‘That’s what I think,’ the headmaster said. ‘It must be a guillotine, yes, yes. Look how its blade glitters in the sunshine! Where did they manage to get such a fine blade?’

‘Come and have some coffee,’ said the biology teacher. ‘I’m sure the Securitas boys will do their work.’

At the beginning of the next lesson, Håkan stepped into 2B. He had with him a couple of pictures. He turned the first over so that the image was visible.

‘Today we have a small test,’ he shouted, making his own modest contribution to the usual chaotic sound landscape.

‘Tell me, who is in this picture?’

‘The pope,’ someone said.

‘The headmaster.’

‘Your mother-in-law.’

‘Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It is Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Does anyone know who he was? When he lived? What he did?

‘He put shots,’ someone shouted.

‘Nah, he wrote a book,’ said a little girl who represented the class’s intellectual tendency. ‘He wrote a book called
Pinnie the Woo.
Or was it
Hoo
?

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Some wanker!’

‘A rock star!’

‘A caretaker!’

‘Let it be. We’ll come back to it later. But you must have heard of this person. What was his name again?’ Håkan lifted up a new picture.

‘Terrible hair.’

‘Not a skinhead, anyway. Needs a scalping.’

‘Some kind of queer.’

‘A celebrity. I’ve seen him on the Saturday Show.’

‘I’ll give you a hint. Our calendar begins with his birth.’

‘He’s the one that invented the telly,’ someone shouted.

For some reason this answer was too much for Håkan.

‘My God!’ he shouted. ‘You don’t even know Jesus of Nazareth. And you’ve all been to confirmation school!’

The class burst into laughter and then went back to doing their own things.

‘That’s enough. That’s the limit . . . I’m off,’ Håkan screamed. ‘Did you hear! Would you be so kind as to give me your attention for a moment? This is my last day as a teacher. Hey there! Listen! Attention! Good news! You are going to be rid of me straight away, today, this minute.’

Something extraordinary was going on in the map cupboard.

‘Ronaldo Räsänen, what are you doing in the cupboard?’

‘Having a pee,’ said Ronaldo Räsänen.

‘You monster! Shameless beast! Life in this class is always just as awful. Where is your humanity? Where is your sense? I’m sorry, I can’t go on.’

Now Håkan was sniffing pitiably, which merely provoked a couple of giggles in the front rows.

‘I am sorry that I have bothered you with trivial matters. Literacy, enlightenment, civilisation – they are not for you. Go outside, get out of my sight. Wallow in your own mud, lift your legs like curs, couple where you like.

‘If only Mr. Watson could see you. He was an American scientist, a behaviourist, do you hear? He lived from 1878 to 1958, commit that to memory. He believed that children can become anything at all through education. Anything! If he were to see you, he would go into the corner and cry with shame. Stupid man! Serve him right.’

This outburst did not really cause any kind of reaction in the class. The girls in the front row stared at him listlessly, their eyes half-closed. Diana had headphones and was absorbed in the morning soap opera on her wrist television. In the back rows quite a scuffle was in progress.

‘Do you hear!’ Håkan shouted. ‘Goodbye now! Behave like human beings! Or no, what am I saying, don’t even try; it’s already too late.’

‘Did he say he’s going!’ whispered Boogie to his neighbour.

‘He’s going! He’s going!’

Finally the news hit home. The class united in delight at the end of the day.

‘Just one moment, please. Be so kind as to listen to this, then you’ll be rid of me,’ Håkan asked.

He opened a book and read: ‘“A person is above all a spirit, a creation not of nature but of history”’.

‘Yes,’ Håkan said, his finger raised. ‘Above all a spirit! The creation of history!’

Desks were overturned as the suddenly enlivened young people rushed out. The slower pupils were trampled underfoot and squealed like pigs.

‘Only gradually, step by step, have people realised their own value and freed themselves from the models and privileges set for them by the minorities who preceded them. Such consciousness was not formed by brutal physiological stimuli, but develops through the rational reflection of some members, then of the whole class, which is directed at certain facts and the tools for their change, after which these facts do not merely mean vassaldom, but change first into signals first of resistance and then of social renewal.’

A draught slammed the door against the corridor wall. Håkan was reading to an empty classroom. There were no longer any listeners.

The Godmother and 32768

When Håkan was a child, his godmother had entrusted him with a secret.

‘Do you want to hear a secret?’ his godmother had asked as Håkan drank his evening cocoa and brushed his teeth. His godmother was staying with them for a week to look after Håkan while Håkan’s parents traveled to a conference in another town.

Håkan was not really interested in his old godmother’s secrets, but he did not want to disappoint her.

‘Is it about me?’ he asked.

‘Both you and me, the whole of humankind,’ his godmother said.

That did not sound very important to Håkan. What concerned his godmother and all of humankind could hardly concern him personally, that was more or less what he thought then.

‘Do you know,’ his godmother asked, ‘that a human being is born again and again, a little more developed each time. And when he is finally sufficiently developed, he becomes a god. That is life’s final meaning and goal.’

‘Does everyone become a god?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ his godmother said. ‘But for many people it takes a terribly long time, maybe millions of years.’

‘Does it take longer for bad people than good ones?’

‘Perhaps you could say that too,’ his aunt conceded. ‘But evil and good are of course very relative concepts.’

‘But why do we need so many gods? Don’t they start to quarrel between themselves?’

‘Gods don’t quarrel,’ his godmother claimed. ‘That’s one of the reasons they’re gods.’

‘Oh. But why isn’t one god enough?’

‘Every god rules a different star system,’ his godmother explained. ‘Everyone has his own planet and all its inhabitants.’

‘Do the gods have a god?’

‘That’s something I haven’t thought about. Perhaps they do,’ his godmother said.

‘But what if someone doesn’t want to become a god,’ Håkan said. ‘What happens then? Does everyone have to?’

‘I believe everyone wants to – when they have developed enough,’ his godmother surmised.

‘I suppose I mustn’t have yet,’ Håkan said, ‘for I don’t really want to be a god.’

‘Why not?’ his godmother asked.

‘Because it’s so difficult to do everything right, and a god has to do everything right. God can’t make mistakes. I don’t think so, anyway.’

‘No.’

‘But if a person’s goal is to become a god, what’s a god’s goal?’

‘A god’s?’ his godmother said. ‘I don’t think he needs a goal. I’m sure it’s enough for him to be a god.’

‘But you would think that he would try to become as good a god as possible,’ Håkan conjectured. ‘Unless he tried to become a human again.’

‘I don’t think he has to try to do anything,’ his godmother said, doubtfully.

‘Godmother?’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t think we have a god here yet.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because not everything is right here.’

‘Perhaps we just don’t think it is. Perhaps everything is really just as it should be. Perhaps it couldn’t be any other way. Go to sleep now.’

‘But I think that if we have a god, he has only just started. He isn’t very good yet. He must still be practising. He’s still only little.’

‘Just go to sleep now.’

‘When he grows up, I’m sure he’ll learn,’ Håkan hoped, already half asleep.

Håkan’s godmother had died long ago. Her theology had not convinced Håkan, and Håkan did not know anyone who believed what she did. He did not know the name of his godmother’s religion, or whether indeed it had a name at all.

Now Håkan had already been a grown-up for a long time, and he still did not want to become a god. If humanity had a god, as his godmother had believed, he had not yet completed the syllabus of a god’s compulsory education – he had not completed the parts on infallibility, justice, or mercy. He was still practising and playing, that stupid, irresponsible brat. And not just stupid, but malicious, a barbarian, badly brought-up even.

There was another possibility, but Håkan did not know if it was any better: if god was not stupid and malicious, then he was helpless and weak. What would anyone do with such a god?

For in order to be a real god, he must be omnipotent and omniscient, Håkan thought. Such a creature was, of course, a logical impossibility for many reasons, for example that no one can know the contents of their own memory.

Håkan had studied first natural history and then world history. The latter was that part of natural history in which human beings were responsible. Nature was terrible and history was terrible. He did not know which of the two was more awful.

Let us take as an example the French Revolution. Everyone appears to think that the French Revolution was in some sense inevitable, and that the age of enlightenment and democracy had begun afterwards. But Håkan could not forget the victims of liberty, fraternity and equality, such as the children who were taken by boat to the middle of a river and then drowned. Why? What on earth for?

He saw on the television how people rejoiced in the street because another atom bomb had been exploded. He read the headlines on the Hindus’ newspaper: ‘A moment of pride’, ‘Fireworks of self-respect’, ‘A new road!’.

It was useless to imagine that humankind had learned anything from its terrible mistakes and tough experiences. Even Håkan’s own studies had been abandoned halfway. He had grown tired of exams and begun to write. He completed a couple of plays, which were performed in a small theatre and which were even reasonably successful in certain circles.

Håkan had once tried out a program that generated plots for stories and plays. It was intended for film scriptwriters and dramatists. He had a choice of 32768 possible story-forms, of which each one defined the story’s deep structure. He was asked questions and the more questions he answered, the fewer story forms were left. His choice shrank and shrank. What was left to Håkan?

Nothing but the plot of
Hamlet.

And he thought that perhaps God could originally choose from an infinite number of possibilities. That had been his program, his game. He had answered an infinite number of questions, his own questions, and in the end there was only one alternative left.

That was history.

Before the Singularity

Anna was trying on her new silver-grey blazer in front of the mirror. She was on her way to a study group held by an artilect.

Artilects was what they were called, or just
them.
People had made them themselves, but they were now much wiser than people. In the beginning they were considered machines and were even called robots, but then they themselves forbade such nomenclature. They said that they were certainly not automatons. That people themselves were much more automatic than they were. Now they were already teaching people in folk high schools, polytechnics and universities.

Anna’s study circle met every week, in Håkan’s opinion much too often. Håkan looked at Anna’s expression of concentration in the mirror and thought that perhaps his wife was a little infatuated with the leader of the study group. It undoubtedly worried him, although he knew well that the director was not a real man.

‘What does he look like?’ Håkan had once asked.

‘What do you mean? He doesn’t look like anything,’ Anna had said. ‘I’ve never seen him. We just hear his voice.’

That calmed Håkan a little and curbed his jealousy.

‘What time will you be home?’ Håkan asked. ‘We could order some nice movie.’

‘Oh darling, I’m sure it’ll be late,’ Anna said. ‘Our group is going out for a little supper after the lecture. To celebrate Artie’s third birthday.’

‘Artie? Are you on first-name terms?’

‘Of course. Its real name is Arthur B4.’

‘And what if I were to come too?’

‘Would you?’ Anna did not seem to like the idea particularly. ‘But you’ve always said that you’re not amused by listening to what those eunuchs have to say.’

‘Have I? Well OK, this would be a perfectly good evening to improve myself a little. What’s he talking about tonight?’

‘Singularities, as far as I remember,’ Anna said.

Håkan was not sure what it meant. Perhaps he should know?

Many of Håkan’s acquaintances had joined a cult that worshipped the artilects as gods. Håkan hated it. They had, after all, been made by humans, and humans were their models. False gods, idols, they were in Håkan’s opinion.