Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction (7 page)

The blue and red mobile that she has hung on the curtain-rail spins slowly in the draught from the crack of the open window. On the table is an avocado whose furrowed skin is deep green, like late summer. I want to sit as silently as she, but I have travelled here from a great distance across the bustle of the city, and I have caught the restlessness of the streets.

There was something I absolutely had to tell her. What was it? What was it? I forget so much every time I step into this room.

When I look at Doña Quixote, she seems suddenly to have shrunk, as if the dimensions of the room had changed and there were dozens of yards between our chairs, as if she were already moving to the far side of where my voice can reach her.

I feel longing. I can no longer sit in one place, I get up and go to the kitchen to make coffee.

When I return, there is no sign of her. From the threshold, where I am standing, if I turn my head a little I can see the whole of the small room and the hall. I am sure I would have heard if she had gone out.

The bathroom door is ajar and it is dark inside: no one there. I tear open the alcove curtain, but she is not in her bed. A deep panic overwhelms me and I pull open the doors of all the cupboards and wardrobes. I rummage among her clothes as if she could have hidden herself among them.

I go into the alcove again and bend down to look under her bed. Do I really think I will see her irises there, in the dust and the darkness?

Then she speaks my name from the room behind me, low and gently. She is sitting beside the radiator in her own chair, in exactly the same position as when I got up and went into the kitchen to make coffee.

‘Where were you?’ I ask, angry now.

‘I was here,’ she says. ‘But I’ve been sitting here all the time.’

‘Be quiet,’ I say. ‘And don’t do it again. It makes me ill.’

She smiles a little, and that makes me even angrier. I would like to say something hurtful to her as she sits there, so immovable and distant. I would like to say I shall never come here again, because she is – because she is – so thoroughly strange and different from everyone else. But when I even think of seeing her elongated form for the last time, hot grief flows like a liquid right out into my toes and my fingertips, and I sit down in my old place.

‘Talk to me,’ I say, ‘and put an end to my trembling.’

I see her lips moving, I see she is speaking, but what she is saying I cannot hear. She talks and talks, but between us is something heavy and difficult. I struggle to understand, but I merely notice I am still afraid and that I do not recognise her whom I call Doña Quixote and who murmurs like a tree in a strange place.

Then she comes to me and strokes my hair.

Now I hear her say: ‘It goes before me, and I can see the hem of its coat. And even were it to go through the gates of death, I must follow.’

‘Doña Quixote,’ I say, ‘what are you talking about?’

‘People lose everything,’ she said. ‘Knowledge and skill and all human abilities. Strength crumbles and beauty is snuffed out like a flame. Faith goes, and hope, and only one thing remains, the thing whose name I do not wish to repeat in vain.’

A tree stands before the window, the last ray of daylight encircles its trunk, which sways imperceptibly.

‘One doesn’t get used to living,’ it says, as quietly and inwardly as if the wind had merely rustled its crown.

And I repeat, as swiftly as if its breathing had been transferred to me: ‘That’s how it is, one never gets used to living.’

A Gate Built in Water

It is perfectly true that, south from here, off the shore of a certain island, stands a Gate Built in Water.

I believe it has stood in the same place for many centuries. It is made of wood and, when some part of it rots, it is rebuilt exactly the same as it has always been.

I imagine the gate is so narrow that an oarsman must ship his oars to pass through it without difficulty.

I imagine it, because I have never seen the Gate Built in Water, and I do not wish to see it. The journey is too long, and even if I were to make it, I would prefer to stay in the hotel and draw the curtains.

But I have seen a picture of the Gate Built in Water, and I know the most important thing: it is beautiful. I remember it often and I am happy that it is there and remains there. I think if the island were overwhelmed by a natural disaster or by war, the surviving inhabitants would rebuild the Gate Built in Water before schools, shops and temples.

I hope it has no meaning. That whichever direction one chooses to pass through it, one goes nowhere. The water ripples around its pillars and they rise straight from the cold deeps and a dull sound is heard if they are touched by the blade of an oar.

Why would anyone sail through the Gate Built in Water? Why indeed, when one can sail past it just as well – and with far less trouble – on either side . . .

Nevertheless, wherever the Gate Built in Water is seen, everyone, at every time and in every place, will unquestionably go through it, and not only once, but again and again.

The Measuring Line of Zerubbabel

Doña Quixote, who was hanging half out of her window, reappeared completely in the room. I saw she had a pair of binoculars in her hand, and that she was for some reason agitated.

‘That’s what it is,’ she muttered. ‘Without a doubt.’

She passed me the binoculars and said: ‘Look for yourself. There, there on the roof, do you see?’

Even with the naked eye it was easy to see that, far away, two men were climbing on a red tile roof. To me it did not look at all unusual; after all, there are chimney-sweeps, roof-menders, snow-shifters.

When I examined the two men through the binoculars, I saw they were connected by a long, pale rope, perhaps a measuring tape, which they were moving along the ridge of the roof.

The sight did not agitate me.

‘It looks to me,’ I said to Doña Quixote, ‘as if they’re measuring something. Probably the roof will be replaced soon.’

‘Yes, they’re measuring,’ Doña Quixote conceded. ‘That’s exactly what they’re doing. But I know more. For I know the name of their measuring tape.’

I was amazed.

‘Do you? How could you know that?’

‘Because I happened to read it this morning, just after I woke up. It is the measuring line of Zerubbabel.’

She fetched a black book from her book-case and began to read:

‘And I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand!

‘Then I said, “Where are you going?” And he said to me, “To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its breadth and what is its length.”

‘And behold, the angel who talked with me came forward to meet him,

‘And said to him, “Run, say to that young man, ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of men and cattle in it’.” ’

She read in a deep, carrying voice, and whenever she wanted to give a word a particular emphasis, she gave me a sharp look.

‘ “For who has despised the day of small things? They shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. These seven are the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole of the earth.” ’

She slammed the book shut.

‘What do you say?’

‘Well. It certainly is . . . ’

‘’’It certainly is, it certainly is,” she mimicked, ‘When will your ears open. And your eyes – ’

‘Is there something wrong with them, too?’

‘You look at me with sceptical and cold eyes,’ Doña Quixote said accusingly. ‘The eyes of the world. Where have you hidden your own?’

‘I don’t know, yet, which are my own, Doña Quixote,’ I said, a little ashamed. ‘There are so many eyes. Many more than seven.’

‘It is time to choose,’ she said slowly. ‘Truly, it is high time.’

‘And what’s more,’ she flared up once more, ‘don’t come and talk to me about eyes.’

I fell silent.

‘Not eyes,’ she said, ‘not eyes, but the seeing gaze . . . ’

Her eyelids closed.

‘How bright it is today! Today, today too, it is a day of small things . . . Look, can you still see Zerubbabel there?’

I got up to peer out of the window.

‘No, he has gone.’

And Doña Quixote refused to speak any more of Zerubbabel.

When we went out to eat, it was already growing dark. In the last light, the light crescent moon was floating, and it had begun to freeze.

On the street we walked along almost all the windows were lit, just as in the street that ran across it, and in the square where the street ended. It looked as if the entire city, encircled by darkness, had stayed at home that night.

‘There are so many people there, so many . . . ’ I seemed to hear Doña Quixote mutter as the ice on the puddles cracked under our shoes and one circle of light after another moved toward us.

TAINARON.
MAIL FROM ANOTHER CITY

1985

Translated by Hildi Hawkins

You are not in a place; the place is in you.

Angelus Silesius

For Elias, J. H. Fabre and the house of the Queen Bee

The Meadow and the Honey Pattern

the first letter

How could I forget the spring when we walked in the University’s botanical gardens; for there is such a park here in Tainaron, too, large and carefully tended. If you saw it you would be astonished, for it contains many plants that no one at home knows; even a species that flowers underground.

But most of all I like the meadow attached to the gardens, where only wild flowers grow: cornflower, cotton thistle, toadflax, spiked speedwell. But you would be wrong if you supposed them to be ordinary flowers of the field. No, they are some

kind of hybrid, supernaturally large. Many of the knapweeds are as tall as a man, and their corollas are as broad as a human face; but I have also seen flowers into which one can step as if into a sunny bower.

It gives me pleasure to imagine that I might one day take you there, beneath the thistles. Their lovely corymbs are veiled by a downy web, which floats high above like the crowns of trees on a beach promenade.

You would enjoy a visit to the meadow, for in Tainaron it is summer and one can look at the flowers face to face. They are as open as the day itself and the hieroglyphs of the honey-patterns are precise and clear. We gaze at them, but they gaze only

at the sun, which they resemble. It is so difficult to believe, in the warmth of the day’s heart – just as difficult as before the face of children – that the colour and light of which they are made are matter, and that some time, soon, this very night, their dazzle will be extinguished and will no longer be visible.

Much happens in the meadow; it is a stage for fervent activity and a theatre of war. But everything serves just one purpose: immortality. The insects who are pursuing their own interests there do not know that they are at the same time fulfilling the flowers’ hidden desires, any more than the flowers understand that to the insects, whom they consider their slaves, they are life and livelihood. Thus the selfishness of each individual works, in the meadow, for the happiness of all.

But it is not only the ordinary hover-flies and sawflies that come to the meadow of the botanical gardens to amuse themselves: the idle cityfolk spend their free moments here, whiling away their time in a way that is undeniably strange to us.

‘Admiral! Admiral!’ I heard Longhorn shout delightedly one Sunday, when once again we were wandering along the paths that criss-cross the meadow.

I looked around me past the flower-stalks – some of them were as strong as the trunks of young birch trees – but I could not see whom Longhorn had been talking to until he pointed to the corolla of an orchid-like flower. On its brilliantly red, slightly mottled lips there sat – or rather, skipped about on the spot – someone who seemed very anxious and very happy.

This Tainaronian waved all his legs at Longhorn, and began to whine earnestly: ‘This way, ladies and gentlemen, please don’t be shy!’

I must admit that his behaviour bewildered me, for he went on with his unsteady dance, bouncing from one petal to another and from time to time rubbing his backside against it. All of a sudden he dropped limply flat on his face and seemed to chew enthusiastically on the fine, downy fluff that straggled around the base of the lip. Well, we were in a public place, and I turned my face away from such debauchery.

But Longhorn peeped at my face and began to smile; and that only made me more angry.

‘What a puritan!’ he said. ‘You disapprove of lonely people’s most innocent and cheapest weekend amusements? They make love to the flowers and the flowers make them drunk; they go from flower to flower and at the same time pollinate them; is that not beneficial to the entire meadow, the entire city?’

At that very moment Longhorn’s friend leaned over toward us from the broad, generously curving lip of the orchid, which swayed and rocked violently beneath him. Now I could see that he was stained from head to foot with sticky pollen, and when I looked upward, shading my eyes from the sun, a sweet droplet trickled from his long, fumbling proboscis and on to my lips. I licked it away; it was not unpleasant, but at the same time I remembered some lines I had read long ago.

Appeased, I would have liked to have recited them at once to Longhorn, but his friend was now speaking incessantly.

‘My dear friends,’ the Admiral stammered, ‘I wager you have never seen nectaries like these, aaaah, follow me, quickly, I know the way . . . ’

And with that he disappeared into the depths of the huge corolla, so that I could make out only one of his hind legs, wriggling deep in the quivering cavity.

‘No,’ I said finally, ‘I will not go in there.’

‘Well then,’ said Longhorn amicably, ‘let us continue on our way. Perhaps I may introduce you some other time. Let us continue now, and see whether the meadowsweet has flowered.’

As we wandered beneath the flowers, I knew their desire and their thirst, knew that what was visible of them, all their finery, was merely a stepping-stone for their seed. And I could not stop myself from teasing Longhorn by reciting the lines that the foolish Admiral had just recalled to my mind: