One day, before leaving home for a long,long time, my father told me, "Don't enter anyone's house. When the night falls, try not to turn on your lamp. Just imagine, for instance, that the oil has run out. Soon, from outside your window you'll hear harsh breathing. And wracking coughs. You'll find everything you need at the far side of the attic".
Having said that, he was gone - my
father.
And then Margla came to my window,
and man, I felt those floor boards groan as my heels took root in them
out of terror. It was the first time in my life I felt her so close. I
remember, I snatched up my father's letter-opener and stood still for a
very long slice of time.
"Where on earth did she crawl out of?" I thought, numb with dread now. "The oldest people in our small town remember her from time out of mind, though no one has ever talked to her, because she's gor no face. They say, she can even lure people away. But where to?!"
I had never traveled outside of the
valley in my whole life. Long ago, in the dead of my childhood's winter,
I remember that we ran out of firewood. My father got ready and left for
the mountains for the first time. Then he returned, all frostbitten - and
even now I'm scared to remember him raving in bed, dreadful, his eyes burning
wild, I can hear him trying to sing some song, but his cough always choked
back the words. His hands clawed for some invisible fiddle-stick, cutting
and chopping the air with violent, convulsive jerks of his wrists, knocking
over candles by the pillow...
He recovered later, but never breathed
a word of what had happened to him. He simply began going out more and
more often, for longer periods of time, each time saying awkward goodbyes
to me, his eyes always hidden. I felt scared without him, scared of the
old woman appearing from thin air in different places, her figure always
twisted and still.
Now she's overtaken me, old Margla,
and here I stand still listening to the wheezing and whistling of her breath.
It seems as if there was no one else in the whole world, only two of us.
At the same moment, in the gnashing of her decrepit lungs, I suddenly sensed
someone else's voice, young and mournful, strangely familiar to me. I can't
remember now if the voice was singing or weeping; but it sounded as if
it was calling from afar, from some faraway place I had never been before,
living in my valley for all my life, and some other people's lives too.
At the far side of the attic I found them, my father's old boots. The split fiddle and disheveled bow, too, were nearby, wrapped in Mom's downy shawl, the last trace of her that still lingered.
As for me, I'd never played a single
note. He had patiently tried to show me how, but no, I'd given up straight
away. In those days traveling actors came to town, so we boys spent our
days through with them in their caravan, hardly thinking of anything else.
So when right out of the blue I managed
to start that song for Margla I was shaken. "Wow, never thought I could
do that!" she joined me and sang it back to me, so mournful, so tender
and pure that no one could tell in that darkness, is it an old woman singigng
or someone else... That's when I realized that I would leave
the valley, someday very soon! - and the very next morning I greased my
father's boots with rank sunflower seed oil.
But Margla never returned.
I kept playing those songs for her
every night, hoping she'd be back one day. I still play them, with no hope
left and for no particular reason.
These days I don't come very close
to people. They say my fingers are getting crooked, and my face becomes
more terrifying to look at. And it wasn't so bad, or at least I hadn't
noticed it until yesterday, when I scared their girl so much that she dropped
a pailful of water when crossing my path.
I think I'll pay her a visit tomorrow
night. Right under her window, playing some of old Margla's songs for her
might please me a lot.
At least she might agree to leave the
valley with me?
A MAN AND A WIND
(The tale I heard from a Suomi girl in a hotel bed in the freezing city of St. Petersburgh)Far, far away, at the Northernmost tip of the Earth, there lived a Man in his small wooden hut. He was very lonely and very old. Every year when the leaves on the trees began turning brown, and autumn was ready to come to its end, the North Wind stopped by the Old Man's hut on his long, long way from the North Pole to take a rest, warm himself up with a tea made from the fallen maple leaves, and listen to the Old Man's fairy tales. The Old Man and the Wind would talk till midnight or even later, and in the morning the Wind would leave and continue his important journey, bringing winter to the people of the Earth. The Old Man would always come out to have a smoke with the Wind and say, "Bye, come again". And he would begin his long waiting for his friend, till the next year.
And they both were happy with each other. But once upon a time, when the autumn was coming to its end and the days were getting shorter and shorter, the North Wind flew right up to the hut's door and found it locked. He was very surprised and shouted, "Hey, Old Man! Are you asleep?" But no one answered. The Wind was very tired and cold; he wanted the Old Man to let him in IMMEDIATELY, the way it had always been. He knocked again and again, but nobody opened the door.
And the North Wind felt very lonely and very angry. He gathered all his might and blew and kicked and crashed the door, and the hut fell down smitten to pieces.
And only then the Wind saw that nobody was inside.
"Silly, silly Wind!" said the Oak Tree
that was growing near the hut. "What have you done? The Old Man just ran
out of firewood, went to the forest, and will be back very soon..."
BIRDS OVER THE ABYSS
(The tale my father told me before I left)
But one morning a horrible thing happened. The earthquake came, and the mountains and rocks began to tremble and crack to pieces. And below the mountains' feet a vast bottomless Abyss opened wide and cut them off from the rest of the world. And the Nest itself was already slipping down into the burning lava floating all around from under the solid rocks.
And so the Eagle had to carry his sons away from the nest, all the way over the Abyss to a safer place. He took the elder son and, holding him tight with his talons, flew over the dreadful pit.
And right in the middle of their way, just as they flew over the most terrifying place, the father said to his son:
"Well, son, my time is coming. I'm getting old, and very soon I won't be able to feed you any longer, and I won't be able to fly neither. Will you treat me then the way I've been treating you, and will you take care of me till the very last breath of my life?"
The elder son looked into his fathers eyes, then looked down into the dreadful Abyss below and answered, his voice terrified:
"Sure, Father, how can you ask me such a thing? I'm your son, and I'll be with you, and of course I'll be treating you the way you've been treating me, and I will be bringing you food till the very last sparkle of life in your eyes!.."
The old Eagle listened to his elder son, shook his head bitterly and unclenched his talons -- and his elder son fell head over heels down into the dreadful Abyss.
So the Eagle flew back to their nest for the younger son, and took him in his talons, and flew again, holdind him tight, and as they were crossing the scariest place of the Abyss, he asked him as well:
"Tell me, son. Very soon I'll be unable to take care of you any more. I'll be too old even to fly. Will you then treat me the way I've been treating you, and will you take care of me the rest of my days?"
The younger son looked into the horrible pit below, and then looked straight into his father's eyes. And answered, all trembling with fear:
"No, Father. I'll have my own sons then, and I'll be treating them exactly the way you treated me, and will be taking care of them the way like you did as long as I can..."
The Eagle didn't say anything. Very
carefully he carried his younger son to the safer edge of the Abyss. Then
he rose up high, very high to the sky above and folded his wings there,
and dropped down, like a heavy stone, into the most dreadful part of the
Abyss.