Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (59 page)

The number of subscribers doubled within just a few years, but the editor and the assistant editor still had to do everything ourselves.

As time went by, the Marquis turned more and more tasks over to his subeditor, meaning, me. My inbox would have dozens of new messages every morning, and my desk would be covered with random material, both letters from readers and newspaper articles in English, French, and German.

I became an expert on concepts like “vibrational frequency,” “bioenergy,” and “energy field.” Many of the terms had been appropriated from theoretical physics or information technology. I learned what kind of creatures the Nguoi Rungs were and that ectoplasm was a slimy, disgusting looking substance that would gush from the ears and mouths of turn-of-the-century mediums.

The Marquis seldom came to the office, but I had to spend nearly six hours a day in that rathole. I tried to make it a bit more cozy. I put a rug on the concrete floor and brought in an armchair with torn corduroy upholstery that I’d found at a flea market. By throwing a blanket over the armchair, I managed to make it look neat and welcoming. I put a table lamp with a green lampshade on my desk and even put a light therapy lamp on the windowsill. I grew a couple of Phalaenopsis orchids in its glow.

My first
Anomalist
winter was especially dark. There was no snow, only icy drizzle. Still, I must confess that even then I liked the midwinter, even if it was snowless, the bleakest time imaginable. The dead of winter is like a pocket you can hide in. Winter offers one of the best illusions: the illusion that time can stop. If nothing grows, blooms, or flourishes, nothing can wither away, either.

The city in winter is more present and real than during other seasons. The lights of windows, cars, shops, and theaters, all of them speak of presence, that there are others like me. When the lights fade as the sun climbs higher, when the growing season begins and summer finally comes, I almost forget about people. I concentrate on the world of vegetation, the vibrant life of sprouts, shoots, and buds.

But there, back then, the short days repeated as if they were one and the same day, and we, too, repeated the day before again and again.

“Old clouds never clear

Dawn breaks with them lowering.

And each new day here

its own verse neverending.”

We lived in the eternity of winter, thinking we would always remain the same, trying not to see what was changing.

The Master of Sound

“Sounds are everywhere, even where you wouldn’t think mumblemumble. We don’t hear them, but they exist. Even in the most silent of silences.”

The lowering silver sky, the Master of Sound’s suit, and his muted voice were all of one color.

“I’m sorry, but could you explain this alternative audiotechnology a bit more,” I said, slightly impatiently. “I’ve only worked here a few weeks. There are so many important topics in this field that I’ve never heard of before.”

“Alternative audiotechnology is a means to reveal sounds that the human ear usually can’t mumblemumble,” the Master of Sound explained in a friendly, but extremely quiet voice.

I was annoyed. I felt like I would have needed alternative audiotechnology just to be able to hear what this man had to say.

“Everyday life would be quite chaotic, though, if we could hear every single noise,” I said. “I’d think the fact that the human ear can hear only as much as it does is practical, lucky even.”

“The brain’s task is, of course, to mumblemumble,” he concurred. “The brain cannot take in everything. But the mumblemumblemumble of our hearing leads us to believe that there is nothing else to be heard. The same goes with all our senses, even mumblemumblemumble”.

His voice became so quiet again that I had to concentrate. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Even our intellect and knowledge,” he repeated. “We cannot begin to know what we don’t know! We can’t even begin to guess!”

“You’re right about that,” I said. It was actually a completely new idea to me despite its simplicity.

“And still we are so convinced that we know something substantial mumblemumble mum mumble mum.”

“Pardon me?” He was really starting to get on my nerves.

“Something substantial about the laws and regularities of the universe,” he said.

“Don’t we, then?”

“A little of this and that, without a doubt. But reality isn’t limited to the world we know. And sometimes we should mumblemumble or at least mumblemumble to hear a bit more than we normally hear,” he continued. “It does wonders to broaden one’s mumble. That’s why I’ve created a mumblemumble mumble.

“Excuse me?”

“A Detector of Silent Sounds.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A very simple device,” he said. “ I have a tape recorder that is activated by even the weakest of sounds. I leave it in an empty room, when I go to work. No one else has a mumble to the room.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No one else has a key to the room. Last year I had the walls mumblemumble. When I get back from work, I listen to the tape.”

“Every day?”

“Every day. It’s become a mumblemumble.”

“I’m sorry?”

“A habit. But, naturally, there isn’t always anything to listen to.”

“Are you saying that there are times when you’ve heard something peculiar? Sounds in an empty and locked room?”

“Certainly, many times. Sometimes I’ve heard a buzz as if from a mumble nest. Other times it sounds like some mumblemumblemumblemumble.”

“Excuse me?

“Like some vehicle is accelerating and decelerating.”

“I see,” I said. “Hmm. Very interesting. Would you perhaps consider writing an article for
The New Anomalist
about this phenomenon?”

“Why not?” said the Master of Sound. “That’s what I had in mind. But there is no reason to mumblemum only on this phenomenon. Alternative mumblemumble, of course, has so much more to offer. It can reveal to us totally mumblemumble things about the universe and human life.”

“Is that so?”

“Maybe you’ve heard of instrumental mumblemumblemumble?”

“Pardon me?”

“Instrumental transcommunication.”

“I must say I haven’t.”

“Or of Doctor Konstantin Raudive and his mumblemumble.”

“Excuse me”

“Of his goniometer.”

“No, unfortunately not.”

He looked displeased.

“Well, maybe you’ve heard of EVP, then?”

“I’m not familiar with that either,” I said, already embarrassed at the gap in my education.

“EVP stands for electronic voice phenomenon,” he explained patiently.

“I seem to learn something new every day in this job.”

“EVP sounds typically last only a mumble or two and can barely be heard. Usually you must use good mumblemumble and train your mumble to be able to distinguish them.”

I stopped listening to him at some point, I was so tired and annoyed. It was hard having to constantly strain my hearing, although what he was talking about was strange and new to me, and interesting in that sense, at least.

“Very well,” I said, rudely interrupting his mumbling at long last. “Excellent. Write a short article about this subject for us. Of course, I can’t guarantee it will be published. Let’s aim for the next issue. Your deadline is at the beginning of March.”

“Mumblemumble!” he uttered, seemingly pleased. “Goodbye. Mumblemumblemumble!”

“Excuse me?”

“It was nice to meet you,” whispered the Master of Sound, disappearing silently into the pale winter’s day.

The Voynich Manuscript

My cough was no longer as hacking and tormenting as before. I didn’t need my inhaler anymore. Each night I ate a tomato sandwich with a few datura seeds on top or drank tea made from datura leaves. There were some side effects, though. I had to drink much more than normal, because datura was dehydrating. That’s why it worked well as cough medicine.

At times I also had some difficulty focusing my eyes. When I glanced in the mirror, I saw that my pupils were large and unusually glassy. In that way, datura had a similar effect to belladonna. It made my eyes beautiful.

A facsimile edition of an ancient manuscript had appeared on the corner table. The Marquis had also brought me various articles in French and Latin that he said were attempts to interpret the manuscript. I didn’t know what he expected me to do with them. I only knew basic Latin and my French wasn’t very good either. I didn’t recognize the language of the manuscript or even the alphabet. I reckoned, however, that it might have been Romanic or Arabic. The hand was skilled and beautiful; there were no corrections to be seen.

I flipped through the manuscript, getting more intrigued by the minute. It looked medieval and was richly illuminated: symbols, maps, circles, celestial bodies or maybe cells, it was impossible to know. Naked women with rosy cheeks bathing, and animals of unknown species, possibly frogs, salamanders, fish, cats, lions . . .

The colorful etchings, which depicted odd flowers and herbs, appealed to me the most. Some of them looked like they were connected to man-made components, maybe tubes or cables. Or were they snakes? Some of the imaginary plants had been linked together into some kind of dancing line.

Human faces were everywhere, in astronomical pictures as well as hidden in the leaves and roots of plants.

“What is this?” I asked the Marquis.

“It’s the Voynich manuscript.”

“Who’s Voynich?”

“Voynich was the name of the American book dealer who found the manuscript in a Jesuit monastery in Frascati at the turn of the last century, though it’s been suspected that Voynich himself was the author. He believed that it was written by Doctor Mirabilis, Roger Bacon. The real origin of the manuscript is still unknown. No one knows where or when it was written or who wrote it. But usually it’s dated to the fifteenth century at the earliest.”

“This language . . . ”

“This is the only known example of the language. But it seems to contain elements from various languages. It might be a cipher, some dead language, or some sort of ancient artificial language. Many cryptologists have tried to decipher it for almost a hundred years now, and there are many transcriptions. Yet no one has been able to interpret the manuscript.”

I was surprised that the Marquis was so enthusiastic about the book and knew so much about it.

“The alphabet doesn’t resemble any European writing system. Yet it supposedly originates in Europe, although the words are shorter than in Latin, English, German, or French. Not to mention the Scandinavian languages.”

“The handwriting is beautiful,” I said.

“But notice,” he said, “that it’s written in two different hands. The writers were highly educated and skillful, they didn’t make any corrections to the text. But it doesn’t seem to be just a matter of different handwriting, but of different languages or at least different dialects. There is a great deal of repetition in both of them, the entropy of the text, as they say, is very low.”

The Marquis seemed pleased to be able to surprise me with his expertise.

“So what does that mean?”

“It means that the text could be written in some code; it’s a combination of numbers and various symbols. One researcher tried to argue that each character is composed of up to twenty strokes, each of which he thought could have been an individual letter. That theory hasn’t gotten much support. It’s possible that the Voynich manuscript is some kind of encyclopedia. It also could be that the language doesn’t exist at all, that it’s just nonsense, a practical joke, a hoax.”

“These plants . . . ”

“They say that even botanists can’t identify the species. I want you to write a short essay on the Voynich manuscript.”

I enjoy looking at and flipping through this book. I’ve already read many articles about it and started my own. For some reason, though, it’s stalled, I can’t get past the introduction.

The Voynich manuscript is an odd book, but then again, all books are odd. Often when I leaf through this manuscript or even when I happen to just lay my eyes on it, I’m astonished. Many times I’ve found myself thinking of writing in general, books, their meaning, the way in which they exist. I ask myself what writing actually is. How the personal changes into the public, and why it must be so.

There are moments when everything is new, as if seen or heard for the first time, even language, words that I’ve read a thousand times. People, landscapes, items, even books. Now and then I stop at a familiar word as I read, and all of a sudden it amazes me, and I savour it like a new taste. For a fraction of a second I hesitate: what does the word refer to, does it really signify anything at all?

In those moments, I’m like a newborn. I see the world like I once saw a flower that had been picked from the garden and placed in a vase. I wake up as if from another dream and look around myself for the first time. At times like that, all books are like the Voynich manuscript to me: ciphers, cryptographies, beyond all interpretation.

Mineral, Plant, or Animal Kingdom?

“Soul? What are they talking about?” the Marquis once asked. “What’s that supposed to be? Give me a hint. Does it belong to the mineral, plant, or animal kingdom?”

What a cynical person. And this man, this extreme rationalist, was the editor of
The New Anomalist
! There was something almost immoral about it.

The Marquis secretly made fun of the magazine’s readers, but their money,
that
he was more than happy to take.

“I founded the
The New Anomalist
because there was a demand for this kind of magazine. Because I reckoned that sooner or later it would become a success. I had no so-called ideological motives, purely commercial ones. Why should I believe in the garbage that gets published in
The New Anomalist
? I’m a sane, mature, rational, and well-read person,” he said. “I firmly believe in the ability of science to explain the world around us.”