Juhani Brander: Necrologies – short prose

Juhani Brander: Necrologies (Nekrologeja, Sammakko 2010, 128 pp.)

UFOIZED NEAR KAUSTINEN
 
Editor-in-chief of Kisser magazine and father of Finnish peripherology Mailis Kiiminki has died of his own choice at the age of 73 near Kaustinen. It was a stubble field. Kiiminki was born between two reindeer, as his mother Pällylä, who served as public woman in Sodankylä, was herding them in a hut. Kiiminki’s youth was difficult and full of Samis. He made snow angels and experienced his first aliens at the age of ten, when he was abducted by a space ship while branding the herd. Kiiminki was held in the ship either four hours or 68 days. Estimates vary. Kiiminki was ultimately found three reindeer-pisses away and was rushed to the hospital. There he was immunized against polio, just to be on the safe side. Kiiminki enrolled in the University of Turku to study Finnish literature, but his studies were gradually displaced by a growing interest in UFOs. By the mid-1970s he was up to his neck in them. He criss-crossed the country interviewing village idiots, rural devils, and tractor apes about light phenomena. He wrote down word for word what every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the county told him. He did not question or indite marginalia. He was a popular lecturer on the spring season opening cruise of the Humane Humanoids Society, of which Kiiminki was a founding member. He was also one of the first disseminators of fliers and eventually the editor-in-chief of the 100% UFO-focused paper TimeTours. Kiiminki married Molle “Opera” Varjonen, who claimed to have been born of a squabble between Mother Earth and Julius the Plow Ox, after having served the Holy Elm, the Holy Stockdove, and the Holy Pastor as housekeeper since 5 BC. Together they formed a nuclear family and reproduced five times. Their children’s names were Jupiter, Moon-Heli, Louse, Manga Misery, and Hider. All of them finished high school and received white caps. Kiiminki’s spiritual inheritance is now under the care of us, his followers, children of the next Parakeet age.
 
The Parakeets (Aulis, Sari, and Tyyrni)
The necrologists are in court-mandated care in Kellokoski, without full rights as citizens

DRIFTER
 
The drifter came at the state’s request. She had once been a beautiful woman, but life had bunged her up a bit. She didn’t know how to be. She refused to watch the news or even to sit down, preferred to stand and look out the window. She was offered chores, but refused every one. Always answered, dragging it out, “I don’t wanna do thaaat.” She slept in our crib and snored. Then our baby was born and the drifter had to get out of the way. She willingly moved to the floor, said she understood. Sometimes when we woke in the morning she had cheerfully made coffee, boiled porridge, fried eggs, scrubbed the toilet. On bad days she just stood there spitting in the corner. Finally there came the day when she refused everything. The baked bread straight from the oven, the floor, the warm shower, my husband’s widower brother, to whom she was rude and inaccessible. She said she’d rather be celibate. A lot of people heard her say that, we had people over for a party. My husband was the first to say he wanted to be rid of her, defended his brother’s honor. I felt sort of sorry for her when I told her she would just have to be on her way, but she didn’t mind, for the first time smiled broadly and was so moved that she gave the whole family trembly hugs. Years after she left she was still sending us cards from around the world, but then they stopped coming for five years. One December evening, in nearly the sixth year since she had left, the doorbell rang, our daughter opened. It was the drifter, asking to crash at our place for the night. We talked about old times, drank some wine, ate pastries. She climbed in the crib to sleep, just like all those years before. In the morning she was dead. Our dog Snuffles howled for a moment. After our morning coffee we took the separation papers to the county courthouse.
 
Hilkka and Teijo Vuorisola
The necrologists knew the drifter in her own way

AUNE EARNED ETERNAL LIFE
 
Aune was walking in the woods when God’s foot came down from heaven and crushed her. God regretted this and brought her back to life. God gave Aune a home and she moved under God’s toenail. She made a warm nest there. God nevertheless noticed that memories of her execution caused her spiritual pain. God lifted his foot and took it to another continent so that Aune might view the secret of existence. And it came to pass on that day that a train passed through a car window and one of the passengers on the train fell in love with the driver and they had a relationship and a bag of waters in the time it took the train to pass through the car window without breaking anything. God took Aune to a movie that dramatized this event. God and Aune watched the movie and God ate fruit candies. Aune filed God’s toenail and thought about the trunk of the car and the masks that ran away from a theater that were dancing there. She felt she now understood everything important and forcibly kissed a bald man in the front row, who was so frightened that he struck her dead. God washed His hands of the whole thing, slipped unnoticed out of the theater, and let the funeral proceed as planned.
 
Tuire Suksela
The necrologist owns a forest parcel and jogs every autumn

THE AVENGER
 
She had waited for the moment. She had said nothing, only hinted. She knew, of course. She had smelled the other woman’s perfume, registered the lipstick on his collar, tasted alien pubic hairs during oral sex. He acted as if nothing was wrong, and that’s the thing, men always act as if it was nothing. This is antievolutionary. She supposedly had a Girls’ Night Out but he noticed that her face was blank. That’s the thing, women never have blank faces. It’s antievolutionary. He blew up, slammed his fist into the TV, blood ran down his knuckles, she kissed them with her eyes closed. When her cab came he heard her giggling as the brake lights faded into the dark. He ran around the snowy yard, foaming at the mouth. Her dog from a previous life knew better than to join in. He went into the woodshed and chopped already chopped firewood. The ax slipped and opened up his knee. You could see the bone. He crawled almost unconscious into the house, the snow was dyed red, the dog from her previous life howled at the bloody track. He managed to call the emergency number, they took him to the clinic. He had to wait to see a doctor. When the doctor finally came to stitch up the knee his hair was a mess and his top shirt buttons were undone. The doctor was breathing heavily. The patient smelled a familiar perfume, saw lipstick on the doctor’s collar, watched as the doctor pulled an orange pubic hair from between his teeth. It felt like he was being axed in the head, and he asked the doctor to check, but the doctor said that only a single ax blow had struck his leg. She came to see her husband in the clinic, formally shook hands with the doctor, introduced herself as the injured man’s wife, asked how he was. As the doctor gave her a quick overview she nodded at three-second intervals. She and the doctor shook hands once more and the doctor left. She looked at her husband and he looked at her. He asked about her Girls’ Night Out and she said it went as expected. He said uh huh expected. She said that’s right expected. He and she sat there silent for half an hour, until he decided to expire.
 
Toivo Parjanen
The necrologist knows what a woman tastes like

PIKE
 
The bourgeois boy was excited that his working-class friends took him pike-fishing. They sat in the rowboat in perfect harmony. They were in fact all in the same class at school. The bourgeois boy managed to borrow a rod and lure. A pike struck on his second cast, but the bourgeois boy did not manage to land the fish in the boat. Still, the bourgeois boy was happy about his friends, the drizzle, and the pike he almost caught. On the dock he thanked his working-class friends for the experience. The bourgeois boy ran home and called his father, told him proudly that he had almost caught a pike. His father was proud that his son had gone fishing and was becoming a man. The bourgeois boy also described his friends as good sorts. He didn’t know that they had started to talk shit about him the instant he’d left. His working-class friends described the bourgeois boy as a spoiled brat who had been given everything on a silver platter while their own fathers and mothers had slaved away on production lines, construction sites, and docks. The working-class friends laughed at the bourgeois boy’s inability to land even a single pike in the boat. At home they told their parents about the bourgeois boy, and they all laughed at his ineptitude. At school the bourgeois boy came up to talk to them about the great fishing trip. His working-class friends behaved contemptuously and suggested that the bourgeois boy keep to his own sort. The bourgeois boy was hurt, and didn’t understand what was happening. Playing floorball in PE the working-class friends mercilessly tackled the bourgeois boy, who struggled to maintain his dignity. To everyone’s surprise in the middle of the game one of the gym walls exploded and the almost-caught pike marched into the game and clubbed the working-class laughers into the Stygean ferryman’s arms with a stolen stick. The pike was hustled into a Black Maria and taken downtown for questioning. The pike would not admit a motive, but promised to spill his guts about a certain capsized flat-bottomed rowboat and its crew from the time before life vests and temperance activists’ barn-building spirit.
 
Pellervo Mäkivaara
The necrologist plays floorball in the fourth division (back)
 

ENEMY
 
The enemy came with the bulk mail and made himself at home. I stole the enemy’s first girlfriend thirty years ago. The relationship only lasted a day, but the enemy never forgave me for it. The enemy tried to strangle me to death every night, but I always woke up and fought back until he gave it up. Sometimes he disguised himself as my wife and tried to get close enough that way, intimately, to get his hands on my throat. I always sensed the man’s energy and thick fingers and managed to plant a fist in his face. Over the months he got better and better at disguising himself. He got himself liposuctioned with my money, bought a gym membership, got into body pumping, spinning, and hot yoga. He slimmed his fingers down and ate live food. He practiced talking like a woman and dressed up in my wife’s old clothes. He flirted in front of the mirror and gossiped on the phone. He and my wife became girlfriends. Went shopping and jogging together, took classes together at the community college. I didn’t always know what to think about all this, but I trusted my wife, after all we’d said our vows before God. Finally came the night when after three bottles of Jack Daniels I couldn’t tell him from my wife. He could have killed me then, but couldn’t pull it off, he had some kind of fit. He started to cry and said I didn’t understand him. Finally we gave him an official bed in the shed. We outfitted it together, built a fireplace and chimney. My wife often worried on winter nights whether we shouldn’t really let him come inside. I said no. The enemy died of carbon monoxide poisoning. That would have been late February or so. We never found out who secretly closed the flue.
 
Maija and Kari-Pekka Tuomola
The necrologists are childless and own stock, mostly in the forestry business

Translated from the Finnish by Douglas Robinson, through a translation grant from FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange