Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (62 page)

As I listened to the Ethnobotanist, I recalled some lines from
Spoon River.

“My thanks, friends of the

County Scientific Association,

Twice I tried to join your honored body,

And was rejected

And when my little brochure

On the intelligence of plants

Began to attract attention

You almost voted me in . . . ”

I call him the Ethnobotanist, though he had made an academic career studying lichens. He had then moved on to unorthodox research topics, ethnobotanics, and the psychology of plants. I enjoyed listening to him—he was so enthusiastic, spoke so passionately about things that were so different from what the chief editor of
The New Anomalist
was interested in. I wrote down just some of his thoughts.

“For one thing,” he said, “I hope you understand that plants, too, are conscious. The consciousness of plants resembles human dreaming. That, too, is consciousness. Everywhere in the universe, there is consciousness. It is senseless reason that seeks to set humans apart.

“We are convinced that having a brain is an indispensable precondition for intelligence. Not true at all! Intelligence, memory, mind, and spirit run through all flora and fauna, all the way down to single-celled organisms. Where there’s life, there’s consciousness. It is different for every species and differs at each stage of a plant’s life. Woody and herbaceous plants, naturally, have very different ways of thinking and viewing the world. There are many plants, such as tomatoes, that are unusually aware of their environment and are more easily disturbed by human touch.

“Isn’t it odd,” the Ethnobotanist continued, “that when humans perceive their environment and react appropriately to its changes, we call it intelligence. But when other animals, let alone plants, act the same way, we no longer call it intelligence, but instinct, which we consider inferior. We think that reason,
ratio,
guides our actions. But it does very little of that, which is perhaps a lucky thing. No, it is what we do not feel, what we know nothing about, that also guides us.

“Plants don’t change their location nor do they speak the same way as we do. Is that what makes us think of them as them idiots? They move upward, towards the light. That’s what we, too, should be doing. The dialogue that plants have with the air and the sun is the foundation of our lives. When will we remember, when will we acknowledge, that our lives are completely and entirely dependent on and at the mercy of plants?

“Plants have conversations with other individuals and even other species, but in their own ways, such as through chemical signals. Did you know that trees have a tremendously keen sense of smell?” the Ethnobotanist asked. “They know when the larva of a pest insect are crawling on their leaves. They start taking specific counter-measures, each according to its species. They even communicate and scheme with other species in order to banish the saboteurs. Security specialists could learn a lot from the alarm systems of plants.

“Perhaps you remember a Dr. Singh? He studied the effect of music on the growth of plants.”

“His name sounds familiar,” I said. “Wasn’t it his research team that made the observation that jazz and classical music accelerated growth, whereas heavy metal slowed it down?”

“He’s the one. Many researchers since then have continued his line of study and verified his results. And how about Mr. Backster? By measuring electric impulses, he proved that plants even reacted to his thoughts, and that they also had memories.”

He stroked the petal of my Phalaenopsis with the nail of his index finger.

“The geometry of plants, their mathematical perfection, never ceases to amaze me. Each flower is a wheel of life, its own microcosm. The development of every plant vindicates the philosophy of eternal return.

“We don’t actually know,” he continued, “what plants really are. We think they are passive, weak, harmless. What a delusion! The earth holds no greater power than the energy of the plant kingdom. Mankind’s clumsy dabbling on the earth cannot compare to such creativity.”

The Heretics

There are people, such as one of the subscribers to
The New Anomalist,
an old crafts teacher, to whom Swedenborg’s angels are as concrete, as real, as the cashier at the local grocery store. Another reader claimed to receive messages from the beyond just by closing her eyes and holding a pen over an empty piece of paper. When she opened her eyes, there was a message, always some kind and comforting words, such as, “It is so beautiful here” or “Everything is fine now.”

A third reader wasn’t as lucky. He wrote that his home was being terrorized by a poltergeist. It would rattle his wok pan in the kitchenette of his rented one-bedroom apartment and would make his cellphone ring even when he had switched it off. During the night, it would roll up his blanket so that he would wake up shivering from cold and fright. It would even turn on the espresso machine he’d just switched off.

He called
The New Anomalist
to get information on how to exorcise an evil or earthbound spirit. I didn’t have anything to give him. All I could say was: “Keep calm and try to ignore it.”

He was disappointed. “What a pity that there are no competent exorcists in our parish,” he said. I never heard from him again, and I don’t know whether the disturbance ever stopped.

Most of our subscribers, however, were completely average people, to whom nothing truly extraordinary ever happened. They read our magazine out of casual interest, seeking novelty, or because they were hungry for sensation.

They were all gnawed at by problems that could not be answered satisfactorily by social awareness, science, religion, art, history, culture, or technological development. In that, too, they were like the rest of humanity. But I did meet several true eccentrics and monomaniacs, or at least corresponded with them. I got attached to some of them, and their likenesses, voices, and obsessions even found their way into my dreams.

It wasn’t true that our subscribers were just ignorant morons, as the Marquis would sometimes claim when he was in a bad mood. Our readers were by no means a homogeneous group of people, and some of them were highly educated private thinkers. Many of them were only passionate about a specific, narrow subject. Someone who was interested in synchronisms wouldn’t necessarily have any interest in lost continents or the aquatic ape hypothesis.

And let’s consider their attitudes towards the connection of mind and body, or mortality and immortality. The readers of
The New Anomalist
had as many opinions on these fundamental questions as any random sample of people. There were those who believed in the immortality of the soul and even that it could evolve to higher planes through reincarnation, eventually reaching divinity. Some thought that individual consciousness lived on for only a short time after the body died, merging then with the world spirit. Others were convinced that it’s all over when the brain dies.

All of them couldn’t be right, but it was hard to disprove anyone’s opinion.

For instance, Saulus once said, “Let’s assume that you fall to your death from a cliff one hundred yards high. What’s your first thought right after? You think, ‘Oh, I didn’t die after all!’ ”

“Saulus,” I said, “You are a modern-day heretic.”

If only I’d asked, Saulus would have given the Marquis an entire lecture on what the soul is. He would have said: First we must examine what the body is.

Saulus believed that there were seven levels of consciousness and humans had seven bodies. Only two of them exist on the physical plane, the physical and etheric bodies. Our third body is the astral body. The body, therefore, consists of a physical side, which we experience through our senses. We can feel its weight, and are forced to give it up at the moment of death. But the body consists of so much more. The astral body is the same as our personal consciousness, whereas the mental body could be called our soul or ego. Seven levels lie between pure spiritual consciousness and physical consciousness, Saulus claimed.

“What?” I once asked Saulus. “You’re mixing up bodies and souls. Isn’t that a bit strange?”

“It’s a mistake to think that these things would be simple,” Saulus replied. “You say my words are confusing. But what do you think of the latest scientific theories? Now those are unbelievable, wouldn’t you say? They want us to believe that elementary particles can be in two places at the same time. And even that’s not enough! Recently I heard a hypotheses that it’s likely that the world we perceive actually behaves like the world of atoms—we’re just not aware of it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the chair that we’re sitting on or the apple we’re about to sink our teeth into is simultaneously in some other place. What do you say to that? And not just in
some
other place, but in an infinite number of other places, and not just the chair we sit on or the apple we bite into, but first and foremost the person sitting in the chair or eating the apple. You see, some scientists suggest that there are countless universes. They say that every possible state of affairs must have its own universe, and hence these new universes are born all the time. Apparently, this is the logical result of quantum theory.”

“Fine, then,” I said. “Of course it sounds incredible. But nevertheless, it’s a theory that has been created to explain something otherwise unexplainable. In a way, it’s incredibility is necessary. Unlike your theory.”

“How do you figure that?” Saulus asked, somewhat offended.

“Well, for example, who’s to say that there aren’t six or eight levels between pure spiritual and raw physical consciousness?”

“Because it’s been known for centuries that there are seven,” Saulus said.

“Known by whom?” I asked.

“By the holders of secret wisdom,” he replied.

Old Faith

Whenever the Marquis would run off to the library or the bar or wherever, Faith, his aged dog, would often stay with me the whole day. She’s a mutt, half-spaniel, half-collie. She’s black and white like a yin and yang.

Once upon a time, she was a weanling, a sleepy and whimpering puppy. Once upon a time she darted after candy wrappers whirling in the wind, learned to sit and shake and heel, barked at squirrels, dug holes in the compost heap, stalked the shadow that the smoke from the coffee roastery cast on the pavement.

Every species has its time. A dog’s time seems so short from the human perspective. Ten or twelve years pass, and adult humans are almost the same as before, or at least they think they are. But the course of Faith’s life is already nearing nightfall. The fur of her black spots has turned a shade of silver at the ends. Faith is almost deaf. There’s no use in calling her name when she’s ambling ahead of me. She can’t hear my call in the midst of city’s clamor.

Faith is on a special low-protein diet to slow the failing of her kidneys. She suffers from a weak heart, and each morning a bitter tablet has to be crushed and mixed into her lean food.

Her dignified and melancholy being, full of a sort of underlying sorrow, gives the room a distinct atmosphere. It becomes filled with her presence.

From where does that melancholy stem? Not just from old age. Every dog has the same problem. Their lives are balancing acts between a humanized being and a older, wilder nature. Dogs are interstitial beings, not yet human, but no longer wolves. That is the unresolved paradox of doghood. There is no returning to the past—or if there is, it would mean a total break of their bond with humans—but humanity is also a mystery to them, something they can never attain.

When Faith looks out the window, I study her profile. The small movements of her eyes reveal what’s happening outside. When Faith gets tired, and nowadays that happens from lighter and lighter exertions, she lies down with a grunt on the Chinese doormat, the one decorated with the image of a blue dragon. I see Faith dreaming. Her eyelids and the dark corners of her mouth move, her heavy paws tremble as if she were dreaming of running in a summer meadow.

At times I think how strange and wonderful it is that a completely different species of mammal participates so closely in our lives. I watch these lowly creatures, the ones we call dogs, just dogs. I watch the movements of their ears, the patterns and color schemes of their coats, the various types of tails they have and the expressiveness of these tails, and I am filled with deep awe.

I see these four-legged creatures stroll obediently by their masters or pull frantically at their leashes in a direction of their own choosing. I see them sniffing around and playing in parks, I see them in trains and buses, tied up in front of stores, waiting paitiently for their owners, panting in the heat. No city or town soundscape could be complete without the sound of dogs barking. How much less lively and more impoverished this city would be without the participation of dogs. Much of our thoughts and daily doings fall beyond dogs’ understanding. These creatures are not concerned with buying and selling, election-year opinion polls, the downfall of the Nepalese royal family or the Tobin tax. The universe of smells and memories, the sphere in which dogs live, extends beyond our reach. The things that grab our attention, our sense of time, the sensitivity of our senses, and our entire perception are different.

And yet we can make contact with each other, and that, if anything, is a miracle in my opinion.

The spiritual bond between dog and human is different, more durable and resilient, than the bond we have with any other animal. It cannot be severed. It cannot be disowned.

I often talk to Faith. No one listens to me better than she does, tilting her head, taking in my every nuance of tone and state of mind. She understands the jist, I have no doubt about that. Her inquisitive, intense gaze could easily be called human.

But no, why would she be human? Only because she is so full of consciousness?