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Fiction

Letter to Lethe

By Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Translated from Finnish by Lola Rogers
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen's dementia patient loses his memory but develops second sight.

Just so you know, my beloved daughter, they tell me I was a charming man, the kind of witty rascal whose arms women had the bad habit of throwing themselves into. “You would have liked yourself,” I’m often told. “It was impossible to be bored in your company.” On the other hand, they also say that I was a compulsive Don Juan, that erotic conquests were as natural and indispensable to me as reading is to a bookworm.

I’ve heard other things about me, too. I have a notebook where I’ve collected anecdotes about myself, which I use to study the past. Some of them make me wish that I had known myself. Some don’t.

I was married for many years. Evidently I didn’t let this circumstance interfere with my active love life, for which my first wife more or less paid the price. Back then I felt like she had deceived me—or us—in the worst possible way.

So in the beginning I was what I was. Then, when I turned thirty-four, I tasted the waters of Lethe and my self was washed away.

What I’m going to tell you is based on my notes. The notes are based mainly on what I’ve been told and what I’m going to be told. Some of it I managed to write down between my diagnosis and eventual breakdown. I’ve tried to fill the numerous holes in my story with more-or-less educated guesses. Partly it is pure fiction and fabulation. I might have literature in my genes, you know. You might one day be a beloved and respected author whose works will live in literary history. That’s the poeme I’ve written for myself, to remember, although I ought not succumb to that urge. Poemes come and poemes go, and it isn’t wise to cling to them.

More about that later.

The emptying of my memory began almost imperceptibly. The first phase was something familiar from patients’ histories in magazines: names that escaped me, expectant, unfamiliar faces followed by offended expressions, lost glasses, keys and wallets. The postman brought magazines and packages that I couldn’t remember ordering. At work I was tripped up by words and numbers I was supposed to have at hand. The people around me were behaving strangely. I found reminders on my calendar that I hadn’t written. People had stopped telling me things. I couldn’t understand what everyone was talking about.

I blamed the computer. Obviously there was some mix-up with the software. I was constantly apologizing for errors large and small. My boss and workmates first suggested, then insisted, that I go to the health clinic. I made jokes through gritted teeth about my absentmindedness; I blamed stress.

I read the papers, and I thought for a long time that I might be the victim of an unusually broad and well-organized bullying campaign.

But after hundreds of newspaper and Internet articles, I came to the conclusion that the problem wasn’t in the computer system or the office staff, but in myself. The dreaded diagnosis was obviously just one doctor’s visit away. Alzheimer’s. Stroke. Something wrong with my frontal lobe.

I didn’t want to go to the doctor. Self-deception isn’t such a bad a way to keep up your hopes when the truth in its detestable inescapability would crush them. Besides, when I thought about the matter it seemed that it might simply be due to fatigue, or a vitamin B deficiency. I bought a large selection of vitamins. For a while I felt better.

Then one evening I happened to look through some photo albums. My forehead broke out in a sweat and my stomach tied in knots. I didn’t recognize the events in the photos, and nowhere near all of the people. The sunny child in the old black-and-whites was me, but who were the man and woman with me, the ones who looked like that boy’s parents? Who was the tall woman who seemed often to be around when pictures were taken? A friend of the family? An aunt, or perhaps a big sister? I realized that I wasn’t even sure whether I had any siblings.

In several of the pictures there were a disturbingly large number of strangers.

I started to sense the approach of the darkness. The first time I’d encountered it was in high school. It was during a long, tedious lesson on Greek mythology. I’d come to school in spite of a fever. The world slipped farther away and then the darkness fell and its sharp edge cut me loose from everything.

The Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades, the teacher said, her voice a thousand miles away. As I sank, I grabbed onto the word like someone drowning.

Lethe . . .

When I came to on the classroom floor, all I remembered was a vast coldness and darkness, and that I had imagined a little hand suddenly grabbing my own, as if to console me.

Two decades later the series of changes that had taken place in my brain came to a head when my home began to teeter like a ship run aground. I think I was sitting on the toilet when suddenly my whole life began to sink into a river of oblivion. It was as if cold water was seeping into my consciousness and covering things that I’d had in my mind just a moment before.

I imagine I was awfully frightened. I stumbled out of the bathroom to look for my wife, Leila. I was terrified and alone. I wanted to see her sweet face and feel her soothing touch. It was night. I’m sure I wondered why she wasn’t there. I tried hard to remember whether she had gone out for some reason. I called her. To my relief, she answered right away.

When I started explaining my situation, the call was cut off.

I called again five or six times. Finally she agreed to listen. The fear in my voice told her that I wasn’t making this up.

She reminded me that we didn’t live together anymore. She had moved away six months ago, surely I remembered that? We’d filed for divorce. Apparently I knew very well why.

I didn’t remember and I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I wanted to lay my head in her lap and be comforted.

My wife’s voice on the phone explained that I should get some rest now and go see the doctor in the morning. I wasn’t able to bring her face to mind. The cold waters of the Lethe had washed her features away.

Delfoilic dementia.

A white room. A woman who smelled of cigarette smoke, wearing a white coat, and a man in a shabby coat. The doctor smiled uncomfortably. I struggled to appear politely interested, hiding my panic. They’d done more tests than I cared to count. The diagnosis hung between us like a bizarre joke.

She handed me a booklet describing my illness, and explained.

It was a relatively rare brain disorder associated with the déjà vu phenomenon. The past would be lost, because part of my memory was breaking down, but in its place I would remember the future. Or I would believe I was remembering the future, she hastened to clarify, laughing drily. The mind is flexible, and compensates for its injury. Medical science naturally did not recommend putting any faith in these delusions.

I nodded. A memory arose in my mind of calling her at home and telling her she was wrong, that I really can remember the future, that there’s proof if she wants it. A moment’s silence, and then she says in a broken voice that it certainly seems I was right. Then she thanks me for the call and apologizes for not believing me at the time. Before hanging up she adds that she won’t be working anymore because her lung cancer is in the terminal stage.

The doctor looked at me searchingly, had a coughing fit, and smiled. A bit of smoker’s cough. I really ought to quit, it’s such a bad habit, especially for a doctor, but . . . Right. If you have any questions, call me.

I thought for a moment and then said, “I’m sorry, but if you don’t quit, you really will get cancer. I seem to remember something like that.”

She wrinkled her brow, wrote down her name and a number I would call one night months or perhaps years later, if my memory of the future was to be believed.

I decided to write the conversation down before I forgot it, and apparently I did write it down. I thanked her and left with the nurse.

I spent the next day at home watching helplessly as the waters of Lethe wreaked their destruction. My past broke apart, crumbled, and collapsed as I was writing and dictating reminders as fast as I could. A large portion of recent years was already lost. Only the happy beginnings of my marriage were left. But I still remembered an amazing amount. I had never thought about what a massive construct an entire thirty-year past is, but of course a healthy person doesn’t think about such things. People, places, events. Trips to Paris, Stockholm, Prague. College romances. Classroom insights. All the places of my childhood. A fight with the neighbor boy who mocked my beautiful, sad aunt. My father’s anger and his occasional good moments. Talking for hours with my mother at night, her gentle touch on my hair, while I pretended to sleep. Reading Donald Duck, Tarzan, and Reader’s Digest in my grandmother’s attic. Card games with Grandma. Picnics and trips with my aunts to the theater. Books they read to me. My first kiss. My first sexual experiences.

I wanted to record all of it, but I was too slow.

I was revealing intimate details of a boyhood experience on the dictaphone when the girl’s name and face suddenly slipped away. As I groped for memories of my life I realized that I couldn’t reach any of my other women, either. Not their names, faces, bodies, or touch. None of the pleasure. The memories of my sexual experiences had run off the road like wild geese.

I can’t say how I reacted. Maybe I was mute with sadness. Maybe I cried. I may have thrown things. When I think about it now, I see myself with a sob in my voice, like a lost child.

A thirty-four-year empty space had opened up inside me. The past had been excised. A hole had been carved out of me. My soul had been quarried, crushed, and scattered on the wind.

I wasn’t exactly an invalid: I could still speak, move, count, use my home appliances. I knew who was president. I knew how to make salsa and when World War II ended. But everything personal was gone. I had knowledge, but no memories. I recognized the world around me, but it felt as if I had never lived there.

I lived for some days in a state of nonexistence. I don’t know whether family or friends came to see me. If they did, I’m sure I didn’t recognize them. A home-care nurse came over occasionally to make sure my body was still working.

The phantom of my mind wandered in the realm of the dead trying with all its might to feel something, even sorrow, frustration or anger, which I could sense flowing in floods of their own someplace near.

But how could I feel sorrow when I didn’t know what all I had lost? Even sorrows are riches, because they’re always connected with some longed-for, beautiful memory. Emptiness begets only emptiness.

I roamed back and forth on the shores of this internal Lethe in the hope that it might nevertheless offer something back up to me. I didn’t dare to hope for very much. Any small memory to cherish would have been enough.

Days passed. Then I found something. Like seashells on a deserted shore. Colorful, beautiful.

I picked them up to look at them.

What a thrilling discovery! Memories! Full of people and events!

And I was in them . . .

Gradually I realized that they weren’t about the past. In these unfolding memories I spoke to people about my condition in a lively tone, and I had clearly got through the worst. In one I was caressing a woman’s bare stomach, scratching my balls, sticky from lovemaking (sorry for the vulgarity, my dear daughter, but in a situation like mine one begins to value the details) and saying:

Don’t worry, sweetheart, I don’t have anything contagious—just delfoilic dementia. So I don’t remember my past for more than a few hours. Right now I don’t even know if we’ve ever met before, because if my poemes can be trusted, you will soon gather up your clothes and rush indignantly away, refusing to say anything, which is a pity, but I remember our subsequent meetings. There are just two at the moment, but my poemes often change. The first will happen in two weeks on a department store escalator. You’ll turn around and I’ll be behind you. You’ll look at me expectantly, but you won’t say anything. Don’t be offended, but I won’t recognize you—unless you put aside your disbelief and erase this poeme and create a new one by introducing yourself to me all over again on the escalator and reminding me of today and what we did here. If you do that, I’ll remember all of it now. What is a poeme? A pre-memory of a potential. It’s the word we use in the delfoilics’ support group. I’m sorry— I can see that this is baffling to you . . . No, I’m not trying to play a joke on you, I’m very sorry if you think . . . Go, then . . . It is confusing, I can’t deny that, but life is what it is.

I picked up my memory book.

Desperation was replaced by a growing excitement, a frenzy. I was on the verge of my own rebirth.

The memory book reminded me: According to the doctor, as the disease progresses, I will believe that I’m remembering the future. This, however, is just the mind’s way of compensating for the damage it has suffered. These thoughts are illusions. Don’t believe them.

But I didn’t want to disbelieve. All I had was these new . . . (I paused here to make some notes in my memory book. I put a large question mark over the doctor’s warning.)

New what?

My strange, new memories. My treasures. Fragments of the future that might come true as they were, or might not. My poemes. I wrote them down so I wouldn’t lose them, too.

I couldn’t see my entire future, of course. It was several decades long, after all. Too large to piece together all at once. I only remembered the most important things about my future and a varying assortment of more or less meaningless details. If I made an effort the images that arose in my mind would sharpen, become more complete, and sometimes more distorted. Memory has its limits, whether it’s aimed toward the past or the future. Which is good. A crueler fate than memory loss would be to possess a memory that never deceived you.

And so I got my life back, a very different life, but a workable one. I ventured out among people again. I went into town, shopping, to bars.

I taught myself to always take notes, because my working memory only reached a few minutes into the past. But remembering the future helped me to operate in the present.

It did take some getting used to. If I got caught up in a conversation at a bar, I noticed that I knew ahead of time how the discussion would progress. Everything anyone said would sound familiar the moment the words were spoken. Over the next few days I read and reread the doctor’s warning about the deceptiveness of memories having to do with the future and thought about it. Finally I decided to perform a test.

There was a blonde woman sitting in the back of a bar. Not particularly beautiful. Closer to middle age than youth. Attractive enough to arouse my desires. Our eyes met. Brown eyes. I liked them. Her name came into my mind: Silja. I wrote down the name and a summary of what I remembered about the conversation we were about to have. Then I approached her. She introduced herself as Silja. I wrote it down.

She asked what I was writing.

On a momentary whim I told her that I was a writer and was working out a new novel. I thought I was behaving spontaneously. But when I looked at the previous page, I saw that I had written: S asks what I’m writing. I pretend to be a writer. This makes her interested.

Up to this point Silja seemed vaguely friendly. Now she was electrified and uttered the line that I had written on the previous page: A writer? Really? I never read books, but writers are interesting. Tell me: if we end up in bed and have unforgettable sex, might I find myself in one of your books later?

The question was a seemingly lighthearted one. But I remembered how desperately she would try to make an impression on me in bed. I answered in the affirmative. The poeme was irresistible.

And so we went to my apartment, and to bed. The experience may have been meant to be something to remember forever, but it faded from my mind as soon as it happened. I found myself lying naked in bed watching a blonde lazily get dressed. All I remembered about her was what she would say just before she left. I wrote it down: I hope you liked that. I’ve never done things like that before. What kinds of books did you say you write?

So remembering the future seemed to be a real phenomenon. This was a subject of vehement discussion in the delfoilic dementia support group where I found myself about six months later. Even before then I had written down a poeme about the group.

At that point there were about twenty members. Every week two or three more came. Some remembered that as the years went by the membership would grow into the hundreds and new groups would be founded. For one reason or another delfoilic dementia was becoming more common. Various reasons were given for this fact—food additives, sun spots, a virus, radiation from new electronic devices. There will be no complete consensus in my lifetime.

On my third visit I was vaguely nervous. My poemes slipped away like wet bars of soap. I tried to focus on my memory book. It seemed that after Silja I’d had sex with three other women. They were Anna, Helena, and Noriko. I made notes about them based on my poemes and also at the time of the experience or immediately afterward whenever I had an opportunity. I’d also started writing down memories of some things about Johanna and Birgitta, whom I would meet in the near future.

Anna. Chubby, curly-haired. Oral fixation, giggles and hums in bed, smells like candy. Bursts into tears when she comes, and can’t stop. We meet four or five times. After that she tells me she’s married and leaves.

Helena. Delicate, slender, and shy. Surprisingly hairy once she’s naked, almost like a female ape. Becomes aroused slowly but once she gets going she bites, scratches, and growls like a little monster. Demanding, probably impossible to satisfy completely. Scary. I don’t get in touch with her after the first time. She calls me about once a week. Finally throws a rock through my kitchen window.

Noriko. Japanese-born poetry lover. Passive in bed, keeps her eyes closed, permits anything and whispers that I should do all kinds of strange things, enjoys it, but doesn’t visibly react at all. Slips away without a word. Comes back two more times, then disappears.

The notes were horribly hollow attempts to describe nuanced experiences that I had, naturally, forgotten. I read through them over and over and struggled in my imagination to dramatize them into makeshift memories. But as a delfoilic I was only able to enjoy the memories of experiences still to come. The closer they came to fruition, the clearer they became.

Johanna and Birgitta, however, were still in the future, so I remembered them with photographic clarity. I reminisced about Johanna’s dark-tipped nipples standing stiff as soldiers and her violence in bed and Birgitta’s creamy pale playfulness and sweet ass. I enjoyed my poemes but at the same time it vexed me to think that when I finally actually met these women and left a mark on their memories I would lose my own memories of them. I tried fruitlessly to remember what it felt like not to remember them. The rules of delfoilic dementia aren’t easy to characterize, though a person suffering from it knows very well from his poemes almost everything he will ever learn about the disease.

This peculiar exchange of memory for experience, which is repeated every time a poeme comes true, is like Dante’s ironic punishment for my earlier life, when I thirsted for experience and collected memories of women like a philatelist collects stamps. Once again I wished that I was a better writer, or perhaps a painter or composer, so that I could capture something of the experiences to come.

I had tried recording my experience in photographs. But the pictures were filled with people who were complete strangers. It was terrible to think that they remembered me, knew all sorts of intimate things about me, and could return to those shared moments whenever they wanted, like Peeping Toms, remembering my intimate habits, my nakedness.

The photos became hateful to me. I destroyed them and hid the camera.

I’ve also tried recording my life on video. Everyone in the support group has tried it at some point. Like many people, I found myself unable to look at the videos. The camera in its merciless reality was a paltry substitute for memory. And in any case the poemes, with all their vacillations, were more interesting than staring at the past. The delfoilics group had a saying: Why mourn for what you’ve left behind when you can focus on remembering the happiness to come!

Then a thin, brown-haired woman with an ironic smile on her lips stepped to the front of the group. As far as I knew we had never met before. Yet I had for some time known her better than I know myself. But I had imagined that we wouldn’t meet each other until years later.

“Hi everybody. As your poemes no doubt tell you, I’m Amalia and I suffer from delfoilic dementia. I was diagnosed two years ago. I’ve probably never been here before. I don’t know why or how I came here today – I don’t have any notes about this day—but here I am, I guess . . .”

“Hi, Amalia.”

They all greeted the newcomer and listened to her story.

She spoke until our eyes met. Her words became confused and she grew quiet. A poeme came into my mind of us kissing passionately in the rain. I looked out the window. The day had been sunny, and it was still sunny.

If a nondelfoilic person had been there they wouldn’t have had any conception of what was happening. The situation became even stranger when everyone turned to look at me and Amalia with beaming smiles.

Before anyone could say a word, I wrote in my memory book so I wouldn’t forget: They congratulate us. They all remember our engagement, a year from now, and the wedding a couple of months later. We’re going to be married.

There was a round of applause.

I felt dizzy. Something had changed. The poemes were in a whirl. Things were happening differently than I had remembered them.

The poemes about Johanna and Birgitta quickly faded away and were replaced by memories of Amalia. It was often said in the group that you shouldn’t count on poemes, because when causalities crash together in unexpected ways, they can come off the rails and cause a chain reaction, which also changes the future.

It is perhaps not hard to believe that predestination is a popular topic of discussion in delfoilic circles.

Amalia had been sitting in front of me. Now she came to the back row, where I was sitting. The others made space for her.

Our hands grasped each other. We couldn’t speak. The poemes crashed in rapids in both our minds as we adjusted to our new position.

The next person went to the front and began his story.

Gradually the window darkened. When the rain started to patter on the roof, Amalia and I looked at each other, stood up, and left.

That same evening she fetched her most important possessions from her apartment and moved in with me.

I don’t know what happened for the next week. Maybe we talked the whole time about the decades of shared future before us. Maybe we made love. Maybe we just watched television together. Something can be deduced from the fact that neither of us wrote any notes. When I picked up my memory book again a week later, I saw that I had written a poeme that said we had kissed just outside the support group meeting, in the rain, under a street lamp, and a yellow blimp had floated across the wet sky above us.

I showed the text to Amalia. Tears came to her eyes and she made me promise that I would remind her often.

A delfoilic dementia romance has its own set of challenges, but once love ignites, things progress quickly. Why dillydally once your shared future is clear in both your minds? There’s no need for a period of deliberation. The delfoilic partners know each other best at the very beginning of the relationship, because all their most important shared experiences are still more or less clearly ahead of them and haven’t yet been experienced and forgotten.

Every day lived together makes the two people a little less familiar to each other as their beautiful memories come true and are forgotten one by one. The depth of the relationship in its beginning phases gradually disappears and the warm togetherness is replaced by the kind of excitement the comes when two people no longer know each other through and through.

When their shared time comes to an end, delfoilics wake up and find themselves living with a stranger. It is then that they go their separate ways, without any memories. If the relationship ends with the death of one partner, the widowed person sits through the funeral dry-eyed, if they show up at all. The person lying in the coffin is a complete stranger. No memories, no emotions.

From my memory book I see that now and then I think about my life before the disease. The man I used to be was married for years. Lethe, have I told you that before he became ill your father was said to be charming company, the kind of witty rascal whose arms women had the bad habit of throwing themselves into, that I was sometimes even accused of being a Don Juan?

Well, delfoilics hear all kinds of things about themselves. When your past is partly dependent on hearsay, it’s wise to be careful about whose stories you listen to. You need many points of view. I’ve even collected stories I’ve heard about myself in my memory book and used them to interpret the past. They include my former wife’s account of who I used to be.

One evening, after living with Amalia for several months, a beautiful, stylishly dressed woman appeared at our door.

I was home alone. I remembered that Amalia would come home late and tell me she got so involved in her shopping that she lost track of time. She would also have a surprise for me—an electronic smart journal designed for delfoilics. The idea of it had cheered me all day. It was a shame that in a few hours I would receive the gift and forget the happiness the surprise of it gave me.

The question of surprising delfoilics is of course problematic. We’re very hard to surprise. The joy that others take in gifts and other unexpected events isn’t diminished, however, by the fact that they are sometimes remembered years in advance. Human memory isn’t perfect, whether it reaches into the past or the future. We can be genuinely surprised if something completely slips our mind before it happens. That was how it was for me when this woman appeared at our door. She stared at me without speaking. The situation was awkward. Just a couple of seconds before the poeme came true, I had remembered her introducing herself as my ex-wife, Leila, and saying she had come for my signature on divorce papers.

We shook hands. When I said my own name, she laughed, sighed, and said there was no need to introduce myself; she remembered me very well from our many years of marriage.

I made some coffee and we chatted. With her permission, I recorded the conversation. I was curious to know for future reference what kind of man she felt she had been married to. The poeme about my wife’s account was in its clearest state, but it would soon disappear completely, and then I would have to rely on my notes.

The first few years were wonderful, full of happiness. You were wonderful. I guess I was too. We had dreams. I have wonderful memories of those years. Thank you for those! We talked about having children. You wanted to have children right away, while I wanted it one day. We agreed that it would be wise for us to build our careers first, so that when the time came we could provide a good, rich life for a child.

Then our life faded, somehow. Maybe I got a little depressed. The present seemed meaningless and the future gray. I thought I had a digestive disease. But I was pregnant. I didn’t say anything to you. I knew that it wasn’t the right time, not yet. I wasn’t ready, and the situation at work was such that there was just no way I could . . .

So I secretly ended the pregnancy. I thought I was saving your feelings by keeping the matter to myself. I felt terribly guilty. I imagined I would gradually forget the whole thing. But I told one of my girlfriends, and she got a little drunk at a party and let it slip out. Maybe it wasn’t an accident; she had always been jealous of my relationship with you. You turned to look at me and I felt myself turn to stone under your gaze. You said that you didn’t feel well, and you gave your apologies and went home to bed.

I remember the next morning. We were sitting at the breakfast table. I was waiting for you to yell at me. Wishing you would. I wanted you to hit me, make me bleed, break my bones; your look made me feel like I deserved it, or something even worse. But you didn’t. You just looked at me like you were seeing me clearly for the first time. Looking right down inside me, at the place that was left empty, which started to hurt. Then you asked me in an absolutely ordinary voice to pass the marmalade, and I knew that there was no going back.

Oh, God, you were so cruel! The worst part was that you kept being so kind to me. We stopped arguing completely. You were always distant, cool, and pleasant. If I tried to start an argument you would look at me and smile, and under that horrible smile, you hated me. At some point I realized that you had other women. You didn’t rub your whoring in my face but gradually it became clear. A couple of years went by. I closed my eyes to your affairs. I decided to let you have them. I thought my suffering would make up for what I’d done, a little at a time, and that eventually you would forgive me.

Then one day I was cleaning the house and I happened to open a drawer in your desk. I found a stack of letters. You had written them to your future daughter—you were convinced it would be a daughter. The first one was written when we had been together for three months. You told your future daughter that you’d found the woman who would be her mother. In later letters you described me in such wonderful words, the way only a man in love can describe a woman. You told your daughter that you had always admired women—your own mother, aunts, and grandmothers, with whom you’d had a warm relationship as a child—and that was the reason you wanted a daughter of your own, to take care of her, to watch her grow up, to protect her.

You also said that you mourned the suffering of the women in your life. Your father was a depressive and an alcoholic and your mother had to take care of him, until he got a knife in the chest in a drunken fight. One of your aunts was married to a violent man and was always covered in bruises. Another was in a car accident and lost her husband and suffered from horrendous pain for the rest of her life. Your grandmother spent her last years languishing with cancer. In many of the letters you promised to do everything you could so that your daughter would never suffer like that.

The last letter was dated two days after the party where you learned what had happened.

All it said was: “Beloved Daughter.”

When I’d read it I realized that you could never forget what happened, never forgive me. I told you I wanted a divorce. You smiled at me over the newspaper and asked me to pass the marmalade.

My ex-wife’s story told me a lot about who I once was, and why. I might have felt regret if I really felt myself to be that man. But he had been washed away by the waters of Lethe.

In his defense it should be said that his cruelty toward his wife welled up from his love for his daughter—for you, a child who waited in nonexistence and had probably taken hold of your father’s hand as far back as his youth, that first time he sank into the river of Lethe.

That man who ended up with such a stony heart was your father just as much as I was, and if nothing else unites us, our love for you does.

Amalia finally came home and I got my electronic journal. The device made it easier to take notes in different situations. While writing this letter I’ve also been dictating both my old notes and those precious poemes that deal with mine and Amalia’s shared future. I’m trying to give them clarity as I make a decision about whether to be home when Amalia gets back from the support group.

Our future holds a lot of love, tenderness, and ecstasy. In a couple of years we’ll go to Paris. While we’re there we’ll experience all the things they talk about in love songs. We’ll live for each other, to the point of pain.

Naturally we’ll bicker about all kinds of little things. We have two or three really big fights ahead of us. But the reasons for them aren’t so serious that they’ll cast a shadow over our marriage. Delfoilics’ fights are forgotten as soon as they’re done, and we almost always laugh about them months before, though they tear us up when they’re happening.

If my memory is correct, then, we have many fantastic years ahead of us. We’ll try not to think too much about unpleasant things. Old hat for delfoilics.

Five years from now, you’ll be born. You’ll be a beautiful child. Really beautiful. I remember that your name will be Lethe, because that’s what your name is. It’s not just the river of forgetting, it’s also the name of a goddess. The same name every third daughter of delfoilics has, but so be it—there’s good reason for its popularity.

You’ll have the best possible childhood. You’ll lack for nothing. Not love, not attention. We’ll take you out wherever you want to go. But we won’t spoil you with toys. You’ll have safe boundaries. We’ll make sure of your welfare with regular trips to a therapist, since you will, after all, be the child of two delfoilics.

The only unpleasant event of your childhood will be when you’re hit by a car and have a cast on your leg for a summer. You won’t be able to go swimming and it will upset you, but we’ll read your favorite books to you.

In short, we’ll give you our all. You’ll be grateful for all of this and show it by being a perfect daughter in every way, although we’ll make it clear that you have a right to get into trouble if you feel like it.

When you’re twenty-one, you’ll become a writer. Praised around the world, beloved, successful. After just five years the critics will be unanimous in their opinion that your works will live in literary history. All three novels. They’ll call it The Agony Trilogy.

When you’re twenty-five, in a television interview, you’ll talk about your wonderful parents and the love they gave you and how guilty you felt about it. You’ll say that for as long as you can remember you’ve wanted to die. You’ll talk about how when you were a child you screwed up your courage and ran out in front of a car, and how disappointed you were that it didn’t kill you. After the interview you’ll go home and open the veins in your wrists. You’ll survive, because I’ll come home in time.

You’ll look at me. Your eyes will be empty and your words will stab me in the heart. I’ve written them down.

Dad, don’t let me suffer.

You would be a beautiful child that we would love so much. I’ve written this poeme to myself to remember it, but a person shouldn’t give in and do such a thing. Poemes come and poemes go. It isn’t wise to cling to them. 

“Kirje Lethelle” © Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Lola Rogers. All rights reserved.

English Finnish (Original)

Just so you know, my beloved daughter, they tell me I was a charming man, the kind of witty rascal whose arms women had the bad habit of throwing themselves into. “You would have liked yourself,” I’m often told. “It was impossible to be bored in your company.” On the other hand, they also say that I was a compulsive Don Juan, that erotic conquests were as natural and indispensable to me as reading is to a bookworm.

I’ve heard other things about me, too. I have a notebook where I’ve collected anecdotes about myself, which I use to study the past. Some of them make me wish that I had known myself. Some don’t.

I was married for many years. Evidently I didn’t let this circumstance interfere with my active love life, for which my first wife more or less paid the price. Back then I felt like she had deceived me—or us—in the worst possible way.

So in the beginning I was what I was. Then, when I turned thirty-four, I tasted the waters of Lethe and my self was washed away.

What I’m going to tell you is based on my notes. The notes are based mainly on what I’ve been told and what I’m going to be told. Some of it I managed to write down between my diagnosis and eventual breakdown. I’ve tried to fill the numerous holes in my story with more-or-less educated guesses. Partly it is pure fiction and fabulation. I might have literature in my genes, you know. You might one day be a beloved and respected author whose works will live in literary history. That’s the poeme I’ve written for myself, to remember, although I ought not succumb to that urge. Poemes come and poemes go, and it isn’t wise to cling to them.

More about that later.

The emptying of my memory began almost imperceptibly. The first phase was something familiar from patients’ histories in magazines: names that escaped me, expectant, unfamiliar faces followed by offended expressions, lost glasses, keys and wallets. The postman brought magazines and packages that I couldn’t remember ordering. At work I was tripped up by words and numbers I was supposed to have at hand. The people around me were behaving strangely. I found reminders on my calendar that I hadn’t written. People had stopped telling me things. I couldn’t understand what everyone was talking about.

I blamed the computer. Obviously there was some mix-up with the software. I was constantly apologizing for errors large and small. My boss and workmates first suggested, then insisted, that I go to the health clinic. I made jokes through gritted teeth about my absentmindedness; I blamed stress.

I read the papers, and I thought for a long time that I might be the victim of an unusually broad and well-organized bullying campaign.

But after hundreds of newspaper and Internet articles, I came to the conclusion that the problem wasn’t in the computer system or the office staff, but in myself. The dreaded diagnosis was obviously just one doctor’s visit away. Alzheimer’s. Stroke. Something wrong with my frontal lobe.

I didn’t want to go to the doctor. Self-deception isn’t such a bad a way to keep up your hopes when the truth in its detestable inescapability would crush them. Besides, when I thought about the matter it seemed that it might simply be due to fatigue, or a vitamin B deficiency. I bought a large selection of vitamins. For a while I felt better.

Then one evening I happened to look through some photo albums. My forehead broke out in a sweat and my stomach tied in knots. I didn’t recognize the events in the photos, and nowhere near all of the people. The sunny child in the old black-and-whites was me, but who were the man and woman with me, the ones who looked like that boy’s parents? Who was the tall woman who seemed often to be around when pictures were taken? A friend of the family? An aunt, or perhaps a big sister? I realized that I wasn’t even sure whether I had any siblings.

In several of the pictures there were a disturbingly large number of strangers.

I started to sense the approach of the darkness. The first time I’d encountered it was in high school. It was during a long, tedious lesson on Greek mythology. I’d come to school in spite of a fever. The world slipped farther away and then the darkness fell and its sharp edge cut me loose from everything.

The Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades, the teacher said, her voice a thousand miles away. As I sank, I grabbed onto the word like someone drowning.

Lethe . . .

When I came to on the classroom floor, all I remembered was a vast coldness and darkness, and that I had imagined a little hand suddenly grabbing my own, as if to console me.

Two decades later the series of changes that had taken place in my brain came to a head when my home began to teeter like a ship run aground. I think I was sitting on the toilet when suddenly my whole life began to sink into a river of oblivion. It was as if cold water was seeping into my consciousness and covering things that I’d had in my mind just a moment before.

I imagine I was awfully frightened. I stumbled out of the bathroom to look for my wife, Leila. I was terrified and alone. I wanted to see her sweet face and feel her soothing touch. It was night. I’m sure I wondered why she wasn’t there. I tried hard to remember whether she had gone out for some reason. I called her. To my relief, she answered right away.

When I started explaining my situation, the call was cut off.

I called again five or six times. Finally she agreed to listen. The fear in my voice told her that I wasn’t making this up.

She reminded me that we didn’t live together anymore. She had moved away six months ago, surely I remembered that? We’d filed for divorce. Apparently I knew very well why.

I didn’t remember and I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I wanted to lay my head in her lap and be comforted.

My wife’s voice on the phone explained that I should get some rest now and go see the doctor in the morning. I wasn’t able to bring her face to mind. The cold waters of the Lethe had washed her features away.

Delfoilic dementia.

A white room. A woman who smelled of cigarette smoke, wearing a white coat, and a man in a shabby coat. The doctor smiled uncomfortably. I struggled to appear politely interested, hiding my panic. They’d done more tests than I cared to count. The diagnosis hung between us like a bizarre joke.

She handed me a booklet describing my illness, and explained.

It was a relatively rare brain disorder associated with the déjà vu phenomenon. The past would be lost, because part of my memory was breaking down, but in its place I would remember the future. Or I would believe I was remembering the future, she hastened to clarify, laughing drily. The mind is flexible, and compensates for its injury. Medical science naturally did not recommend putting any faith in these delusions.

I nodded. A memory arose in my mind of calling her at home and telling her she was wrong, that I really can remember the future, that there’s proof if she wants it. A moment’s silence, and then she says in a broken voice that it certainly seems I was right. Then she thanks me for the call and apologizes for not believing me at the time. Before hanging up she adds that she won’t be working anymore because her lung cancer is in the terminal stage.

The doctor looked at me searchingly, had a coughing fit, and smiled. A bit of smoker’s cough. I really ought to quit, it’s such a bad habit, especially for a doctor, but . . . Right. If you have any questions, call me.

I thought for a moment and then said, “I’m sorry, but if you don’t quit, you really will get cancer. I seem to remember something like that.”

She wrinkled her brow, wrote down her name and a number I would call one night months or perhaps years later, if my memory of the future was to be believed.

I decided to write the conversation down before I forgot it, and apparently I did write it down. I thanked her and left with the nurse.

I spent the next day at home watching helplessly as the waters of Lethe wreaked their destruction. My past broke apart, crumbled, and collapsed as I was writing and dictating reminders as fast as I could. A large portion of recent years was already lost. Only the happy beginnings of my marriage were left. But I still remembered an amazing amount. I had never thought about what a massive construct an entire thirty-year past is, but of course a healthy person doesn’t think about such things. People, places, events. Trips to Paris, Stockholm, Prague. College romances. Classroom insights. All the places of my childhood. A fight with the neighbor boy who mocked my beautiful, sad aunt. My father’s anger and his occasional good moments. Talking for hours with my mother at night, her gentle touch on my hair, while I pretended to sleep. Reading Donald Duck, Tarzan, and Reader’s Digest in my grandmother’s attic. Card games with Grandma. Picnics and trips with my aunts to the theater. Books they read to me. My first kiss. My first sexual experiences.

I wanted to record all of it, but I was too slow.

I was revealing intimate details of a boyhood experience on the dictaphone when the girl’s name and face suddenly slipped away. As I groped for memories of my life I realized that I couldn’t reach any of my other women, either. Not their names, faces, bodies, or touch. None of the pleasure. The memories of my sexual experiences had run off the road like wild geese.

I can’t say how I reacted. Maybe I was mute with sadness. Maybe I cried. I may have thrown things. When I think about it now, I see myself with a sob in my voice, like a lost child.

A thirty-four-year empty space had opened up inside me. The past had been excised. A hole had been carved out of me. My soul had been quarried, crushed, and scattered on the wind.

I wasn’t exactly an invalid: I could still speak, move, count, use my home appliances. I knew who was president. I knew how to make salsa and when World War II ended. But everything personal was gone. I had knowledge, but no memories. I recognized the world around me, but it felt as if I had never lived there.

I lived for some days in a state of nonexistence. I don’t know whether family or friends came to see me. If they did, I’m sure I didn’t recognize them. A home-care nurse came over occasionally to make sure my body was still working.

The phantom of my mind wandered in the realm of the dead trying with all its might to feel something, even sorrow, frustration or anger, which I could sense flowing in floods of their own someplace near.

But how could I feel sorrow when I didn’t know what all I had lost? Even sorrows are riches, because they’re always connected with some longed-for, beautiful memory. Emptiness begets only emptiness.

I roamed back and forth on the shores of this internal Lethe in the hope that it might nevertheless offer something back up to me. I didn’t dare to hope for very much. Any small memory to cherish would have been enough.

Days passed. Then I found something. Like seashells on a deserted shore. Colorful, beautiful.

I picked them up to look at them.

What a thrilling discovery! Memories! Full of people and events!

And I was in them . . .

Gradually I realized that they weren’t about the past. In these unfolding memories I spoke to people about my condition in a lively tone, and I had clearly got through the worst. In one I was caressing a woman’s bare stomach, scratching my balls, sticky from lovemaking (sorry for the vulgarity, my dear daughter, but in a situation like mine one begins to value the details) and saying:

Don’t worry, sweetheart, I don’t have anything contagious—just delfoilic dementia. So I don’t remember my past for more than a few hours. Right now I don’t even know if we’ve ever met before, because if my poemes can be trusted, you will soon gather up your clothes and rush indignantly away, refusing to say anything, which is a pity, but I remember our subsequent meetings. There are just two at the moment, but my poemes often change. The first will happen in two weeks on a department store escalator. You’ll turn around and I’ll be behind you. You’ll look at me expectantly, but you won’t say anything. Don’t be offended, but I won’t recognize you—unless you put aside your disbelief and erase this poeme and create a new one by introducing yourself to me all over again on the escalator and reminding me of today and what we did here. If you do that, I’ll remember all of it now. What is a poeme? A pre-memory of a potential. It’s the word we use in the delfoilics’ support group. I’m sorry— I can see that this is baffling to you . . . No, I’m not trying to play a joke on you, I’m very sorry if you think . . . Go, then . . . It is confusing, I can’t deny that, but life is what it is.

I picked up my memory book.

Desperation was replaced by a growing excitement, a frenzy. I was on the verge of my own rebirth.

The memory book reminded me: According to the doctor, as the disease progresses, I will believe that I’m remembering the future. This, however, is just the mind’s way of compensating for the damage it has suffered. These thoughts are illusions. Don’t believe them.

But I didn’t want to disbelieve. All I had was these new . . . (I paused here to make some notes in my memory book. I put a large question mark over the doctor’s warning.)

New what?

My strange, new memories. My treasures. Fragments of the future that might come true as they were, or might not. My poemes. I wrote them down so I wouldn’t lose them, too.

I couldn’t see my entire future, of course. It was several decades long, after all. Too large to piece together all at once. I only remembered the most important things about my future and a varying assortment of more or less meaningless details. If I made an effort the images that arose in my mind would sharpen, become more complete, and sometimes more distorted. Memory has its limits, whether it’s aimed toward the past or the future. Which is good. A crueler fate than memory loss would be to possess a memory that never deceived you.

And so I got my life back, a very different life, but a workable one. I ventured out among people again. I went into town, shopping, to bars.

I taught myself to always take notes, because my working memory only reached a few minutes into the past. But remembering the future helped me to operate in the present.

It did take some getting used to. If I got caught up in a conversation at a bar, I noticed that I knew ahead of time how the discussion would progress. Everything anyone said would sound familiar the moment the words were spoken. Over the next few days I read and reread the doctor’s warning about the deceptiveness of memories having to do with the future and thought about it. Finally I decided to perform a test.

There was a blonde woman sitting in the back of a bar. Not particularly beautiful. Closer to middle age than youth. Attractive enough to arouse my desires. Our eyes met. Brown eyes. I liked them. Her name came into my mind: Silja. I wrote down the name and a summary of what I remembered about the conversation we were about to have. Then I approached her. She introduced herself as Silja. I wrote it down.

She asked what I was writing.

On a momentary whim I told her that I was a writer and was working out a new novel. I thought I was behaving spontaneously. But when I looked at the previous page, I saw that I had written: S asks what I’m writing. I pretend to be a writer. This makes her interested.

Up to this point Silja seemed vaguely friendly. Now she was electrified and uttered the line that I had written on the previous page: A writer? Really? I never read books, but writers are interesting. Tell me: if we end up in bed and have unforgettable sex, might I find myself in one of your books later?

The question was a seemingly lighthearted one. But I remembered how desperately she would try to make an impression on me in bed. I answered in the affirmative. The poeme was irresistible.

And so we went to my apartment, and to bed. The experience may have been meant to be something to remember forever, but it faded from my mind as soon as it happened. I found myself lying naked in bed watching a blonde lazily get dressed. All I remembered about her was what she would say just before she left. I wrote it down: I hope you liked that. I’ve never done things like that before. What kinds of books did you say you write?

So remembering the future seemed to be a real phenomenon. This was a subject of vehement discussion in the delfoilic dementia support group where I found myself about six months later. Even before then I had written down a poeme about the group.

At that point there were about twenty members. Every week two or three more came. Some remembered that as the years went by the membership would grow into the hundreds and new groups would be founded. For one reason or another delfoilic dementia was becoming more common. Various reasons were given for this fact—food additives, sun spots, a virus, radiation from new electronic devices. There will be no complete consensus in my lifetime.

On my third visit I was vaguely nervous. My poemes slipped away like wet bars of soap. I tried to focus on my memory book. It seemed that after Silja I’d had sex with three other women. They were Anna, Helena, and Noriko. I made notes about them based on my poemes and also at the time of the experience or immediately afterward whenever I had an opportunity. I’d also started writing down memories of some things about Johanna and Birgitta, whom I would meet in the near future.

Anna. Chubby, curly-haired. Oral fixation, giggles and hums in bed, smells like candy. Bursts into tears when she comes, and can’t stop. We meet four or five times. After that she tells me she’s married and leaves.

Helena. Delicate, slender, and shy. Surprisingly hairy once she’s naked, almost like a female ape. Becomes aroused slowly but once she gets going she bites, scratches, and growls like a little monster. Demanding, probably impossible to satisfy completely. Scary. I don’t get in touch with her after the first time. She calls me about once a week. Finally throws a rock through my kitchen window.

Noriko. Japanese-born poetry lover. Passive in bed, keeps her eyes closed, permits anything and whispers that I should do all kinds of strange things, enjoys it, but doesn’t visibly react at all. Slips away without a word. Comes back two more times, then disappears.

The notes were horribly hollow attempts to describe nuanced experiences that I had, naturally, forgotten. I read through them over and over and struggled in my imagination to dramatize them into makeshift memories. But as a delfoilic I was only able to enjoy the memories of experiences still to come. The closer they came to fruition, the clearer they became.

Johanna and Birgitta, however, were still in the future, so I remembered them with photographic clarity. I reminisced about Johanna’s dark-tipped nipples standing stiff as soldiers and her violence in bed and Birgitta’s creamy pale playfulness and sweet ass. I enjoyed my poemes but at the same time it vexed me to think that when I finally actually met these women and left a mark on their memories I would lose my own memories of them. I tried fruitlessly to remember what it felt like not to remember them. The rules of delfoilic dementia aren’t easy to characterize, though a person suffering from it knows very well from his poemes almost everything he will ever learn about the disease.

This peculiar exchange of memory for experience, which is repeated every time a poeme comes true, is like Dante’s ironic punishment for my earlier life, when I thirsted for experience and collected memories of women like a philatelist collects stamps. Once again I wished that I was a better writer, or perhaps a painter or composer, so that I could capture something of the experiences to come.

I had tried recording my experience in photographs. But the pictures were filled with people who were complete strangers. It was terrible to think that they remembered me, knew all sorts of intimate things about me, and could return to those shared moments whenever they wanted, like Peeping Toms, remembering my intimate habits, my nakedness.

The photos became hateful to me. I destroyed them and hid the camera.

I’ve also tried recording my life on video. Everyone in the support group has tried it at some point. Like many people, I found myself unable to look at the videos. The camera in its merciless reality was a paltry substitute for memory. And in any case the poemes, with all their vacillations, were more interesting than staring at the past. The delfoilics group had a saying: Why mourn for what you’ve left behind when you can focus on remembering the happiness to come!

Then a thin, brown-haired woman with an ironic smile on her lips stepped to the front of the group. As far as I knew we had never met before. Yet I had for some time known her better than I know myself. But I had imagined that we wouldn’t meet each other until years later.

“Hi everybody. As your poemes no doubt tell you, I’m Amalia and I suffer from delfoilic dementia. I was diagnosed two years ago. I’ve probably never been here before. I don’t know why or how I came here today – I don’t have any notes about this day—but here I am, I guess . . .”

“Hi, Amalia.”

They all greeted the newcomer and listened to her story.

She spoke until our eyes met. Her words became confused and she grew quiet. A poeme came into my mind of us kissing passionately in the rain. I looked out the window. The day had been sunny, and it was still sunny.

If a nondelfoilic person had been there they wouldn’t have had any conception of what was happening. The situation became even stranger when everyone turned to look at me and Amalia with beaming smiles.

Before anyone could say a word, I wrote in my memory book so I wouldn’t forget: They congratulate us. They all remember our engagement, a year from now, and the wedding a couple of months later. We’re going to be married.

There was a round of applause.

I felt dizzy. Something had changed. The poemes were in a whirl. Things were happening differently than I had remembered them.

The poemes about Johanna and Birgitta quickly faded away and were replaced by memories of Amalia. It was often said in the group that you shouldn’t count on poemes, because when causalities crash together in unexpected ways, they can come off the rails and cause a chain reaction, which also changes the future.

It is perhaps not hard to believe that predestination is a popular topic of discussion in delfoilic circles.

Amalia had been sitting in front of me. Now she came to the back row, where I was sitting. The others made space for her.

Our hands grasped each other. We couldn’t speak. The poemes crashed in rapids in both our minds as we adjusted to our new position.

The next person went to the front and began his story.

Gradually the window darkened. When the rain started to patter on the roof, Amalia and I looked at each other, stood up, and left.

That same evening she fetched her most important possessions from her apartment and moved in with me.

I don’t know what happened for the next week. Maybe we talked the whole time about the decades of shared future before us. Maybe we made love. Maybe we just watched television together. Something can be deduced from the fact that neither of us wrote any notes. When I picked up my memory book again a week later, I saw that I had written a poeme that said we had kissed just outside the support group meeting, in the rain, under a street lamp, and a yellow blimp had floated across the wet sky above us.

I showed the text to Amalia. Tears came to her eyes and she made me promise that I would remind her often.

A delfoilic dementia romance has its own set of challenges, but once love ignites, things progress quickly. Why dillydally once your shared future is clear in both your minds? There’s no need for a period of deliberation. The delfoilic partners know each other best at the very beginning of the relationship, because all their most important shared experiences are still more or less clearly ahead of them and haven’t yet been experienced and forgotten.

Every day lived together makes the two people a little less familiar to each other as their beautiful memories come true and are forgotten one by one. The depth of the relationship in its beginning phases gradually disappears and the warm togetherness is replaced by the kind of excitement the comes when two people no longer know each other through and through.

When their shared time comes to an end, delfoilics wake up and find themselves living with a stranger. It is then that they go their separate ways, without any memories. If the relationship ends with the death of one partner, the widowed person sits through the funeral dry-eyed, if they show up at all. The person lying in the coffin is a complete stranger. No memories, no emotions.

From my memory book I see that now and then I think about my life before the disease. The man I used to be was married for years. Lethe, have I told you that before he became ill your father was said to be charming company, the kind of witty rascal whose arms women had the bad habit of throwing themselves into, that I was sometimes even accused of being a Don Juan?

Well, delfoilics hear all kinds of things about themselves. When your past is partly dependent on hearsay, it’s wise to be careful about whose stories you listen to. You need many points of view. I’ve even collected stories I’ve heard about myself in my memory book and used them to interpret the past. They include my former wife’s account of who I used to be.

One evening, after living with Amalia for several months, a beautiful, stylishly dressed woman appeared at our door.

I was home alone. I remembered that Amalia would come home late and tell me she got so involved in her shopping that she lost track of time. She would also have a surprise for me—an electronic smart journal designed for delfoilics. The idea of it had cheered me all day. It was a shame that in a few hours I would receive the gift and forget the happiness the surprise of it gave me.

The question of surprising delfoilics is of course problematic. We’re very hard to surprise. The joy that others take in gifts and other unexpected events isn’t diminished, however, by the fact that they are sometimes remembered years in advance. Human memory isn’t perfect, whether it reaches into the past or the future. We can be genuinely surprised if something completely slips our mind before it happens. That was how it was for me when this woman appeared at our door. She stared at me without speaking. The situation was awkward. Just a couple of seconds before the poeme came true, I had remembered her introducing herself as my ex-wife, Leila, and saying she had come for my signature on divorce papers.

We shook hands. When I said my own name, she laughed, sighed, and said there was no need to introduce myself; she remembered me very well from our many years of marriage.

I made some coffee and we chatted. With her permission, I recorded the conversation. I was curious to know for future reference what kind of man she felt she had been married to. The poeme about my wife’s account was in its clearest state, but it would soon disappear completely, and then I would have to rely on my notes.

The first few years were wonderful, full of happiness. You were wonderful. I guess I was too. We had dreams. I have wonderful memories of those years. Thank you for those! We talked about having children. You wanted to have children right away, while I wanted it one day. We agreed that it would be wise for us to build our careers first, so that when the time came we could provide a good, rich life for a child.

Then our life faded, somehow. Maybe I got a little depressed. The present seemed meaningless and the future gray. I thought I had a digestive disease. But I was pregnant. I didn’t say anything to you. I knew that it wasn’t the right time, not yet. I wasn’t ready, and the situation at work was such that there was just no way I could . . .

So I secretly ended the pregnancy. I thought I was saving your feelings by keeping the matter to myself. I felt terribly guilty. I imagined I would gradually forget the whole thing. But I told one of my girlfriends, and she got a little drunk at a party and let it slip out. Maybe it wasn’t an accident; she had always been jealous of my relationship with you. You turned to look at me and I felt myself turn to stone under your gaze. You said that you didn’t feel well, and you gave your apologies and went home to bed.

I remember the next morning. We were sitting at the breakfast table. I was waiting for you to yell at me. Wishing you would. I wanted you to hit me, make me bleed, break my bones; your look made me feel like I deserved it, or something even worse. But you didn’t. You just looked at me like you were seeing me clearly for the first time. Looking right down inside me, at the place that was left empty, which started to hurt. Then you asked me in an absolutely ordinary voice to pass the marmalade, and I knew that there was no going back.

Oh, God, you were so cruel! The worst part was that you kept being so kind to me. We stopped arguing completely. You were always distant, cool, and pleasant. If I tried to start an argument you would look at me and smile, and under that horrible smile, you hated me. At some point I realized that you had other women. You didn’t rub your whoring in my face but gradually it became clear. A couple of years went by. I closed my eyes to your affairs. I decided to let you have them. I thought my suffering would make up for what I’d done, a little at a time, and that eventually you would forgive me.

Then one day I was cleaning the house and I happened to open a drawer in your desk. I found a stack of letters. You had written them to your future daughter—you were convinced it would be a daughter. The first one was written when we had been together for three months. You told your future daughter that you’d found the woman who would be her mother. In later letters you described me in such wonderful words, the way only a man in love can describe a woman. You told your daughter that you had always admired women—your own mother, aunts, and grandmothers, with whom you’d had a warm relationship as a child—and that was the reason you wanted a daughter of your own, to take care of her, to watch her grow up, to protect her.

You also said that you mourned the suffering of the women in your life. Your father was a depressive and an alcoholic and your mother had to take care of him, until he got a knife in the chest in a drunken fight. One of your aunts was married to a violent man and was always covered in bruises. Another was in a car accident and lost her husband and suffered from horrendous pain for the rest of her life. Your grandmother spent her last years languishing with cancer. In many of the letters you promised to do everything you could so that your daughter would never suffer like that.

The last letter was dated two days after the party where you learned what had happened.

All it said was: “Beloved Daughter.”

When I’d read it I realized that you could never forget what happened, never forgive me. I told you I wanted a divorce. You smiled at me over the newspaper and asked me to pass the marmalade.

My ex-wife’s story told me a lot about who I once was, and why. I might have felt regret if I really felt myself to be that man. But he had been washed away by the waters of Lethe.

In his defense it should be said that his cruelty toward his wife welled up from his love for his daughter—for you, a child who waited in nonexistence and had probably taken hold of your father’s hand as far back as his youth, that first time he sank into the river of Lethe.

That man who ended up with such a stony heart was your father just as much as I was, and if nothing else unites us, our love for you does.

Amalia finally came home and I got my electronic journal. The device made it easier to take notes in different situations. While writing this letter I’ve also been dictating both my old notes and those precious poemes that deal with mine and Amalia’s shared future. I’m trying to give them clarity as I make a decision about whether to be home when Amalia gets back from the support group.

Our future holds a lot of love, tenderness, and ecstasy. In a couple of years we’ll go to Paris. While we’re there we’ll experience all the things they talk about in love songs. We’ll live for each other, to the point of pain.

Naturally we’ll bicker about all kinds of little things. We have two or three really big fights ahead of us. But the reasons for them aren’t so serious that they’ll cast a shadow over our marriage. Delfoilics’ fights are forgotten as soon as they’re done, and we almost always laugh about them months before, though they tear us up when they’re happening.

If my memory is correct, then, we have many fantastic years ahead of us. We’ll try not to think too much about unpleasant things. Old hat for delfoilics.

Five years from now, you’ll be born. You’ll be a beautiful child. Really beautiful. I remember that your name will be Lethe, because that’s what your name is. It’s not just the river of forgetting, it’s also the name of a goddess. The same name every third daughter of delfoilics has, but so be it—there’s good reason for its popularity.

You’ll have the best possible childhood. You’ll lack for nothing. Not love, not attention. We’ll take you out wherever you want to go. But we won’t spoil you with toys. You’ll have safe boundaries. We’ll make sure of your welfare with regular trips to a therapist, since you will, after all, be the child of two delfoilics.

The only unpleasant event of your childhood will be when you’re hit by a car and have a cast on your leg for a summer. You won’t be able to go swimming and it will upset you, but we’ll read your favorite books to you.

In short, we’ll give you our all. You’ll be grateful for all of this and show it by being a perfect daughter in every way, although we’ll make it clear that you have a right to get into trouble if you feel like it.

When you’re twenty-one, you’ll become a writer. Praised around the world, beloved, successful. After just five years the critics will be unanimous in their opinion that your works will live in literary history. All three novels. They’ll call it The Agony Trilogy.

When you’re twenty-five, in a television interview, you’ll talk about your wonderful parents and the love they gave you and how guilty you felt about it. You’ll say that for as long as you can remember you’ve wanted to die. You’ll talk about how when you were a child you screwed up your courage and ran out in front of a car, and how disappointed you were that it didn’t kill you. After the interview you’ll go home and open the veins in your wrists. You’ll survive, because I’ll come home in time.

You’ll look at me. Your eyes will be empty and your words will stab me in the heart. I’ve written them down.

Dad, don’t let me suffer.

You would be a beautiful child that we would love so much. I’ve written this poeme to myself to remember it, but a person shouldn’t give in and do such a thing. Poemes come and poemes go. It isn’t wise to cling to them. 

“Kirje Lethelle” © Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Lola Rogers. All rights reserved.

Kirje Lethelle

Tiedoksi sinullekin, rakas tyttäreni, että kertovat minun olleen hurmaava seuramies, sellainen sanavalmis veijari, joka syliin naisilla on paha tapa langeta. ”Olisit tykännyt itsestäsi”, minulle usein sanotaan. ”Seurassasi oli mahdotonta ikävystyä.” Toisaalta minua on syytetty pakkomielteiseksi Don Juaniksi, jolle naisten eroottinen valloittaminen oli yhtä luontevaa ja välttämätöntä kuin kirjojen lukeminen lukutoukalle. 

Muunlaisiakin juttuja olen kuullut kerrottavan. Olenkin kerännyt kaskuja itsestäni muistikirjaan, jota käytän menneisyyden tutkimiseen. Jotkut niistä saavat minut toivomaan, että minäkin olisin tuntenut itseni. Toiset eivät. 

Olin vuosia naimisissa. Selvästikään en antanut tämän seikan häiritä eloisaa rakkauselämääni, joka lienee jossain määrin tarkoitettu rangaistukseksi ensimmäiselle vaimolleni. Tuolloin koin hänen pettäneen minut – tai meidät – pahimmalla mahdollisella tavalla.

Alussa siis olin mitä olin ja sitten, täytettyäni 34, maistoin Lethen vettä ja minuuteni huuhtoutui pois. 

Se, mitä nyt kerron, perustuu muistiinpanoihini. Ne puolestaan perustuvat enimmäkseen siihen, mitä minulle on kerrottu ja mitä minulle vielä tullaan kertomaan. Jotkut asiat ehdin kirjata muistiin diagnoosin ja lopullisen romahduksen välillä. Tarinani lukuisia aukkoja olen täyttänyt enemmän tai vähemmän valistuneilla arvauksilla. Osittain kysymys on silkasta fiktiosta ja fabuloinnista. Minullahan saattaa olla kirjallisia geenejä: tulisihan sinusta, tyttäreni, rakastettu ja ylistetty kirjailija, jonka tuotanto jäisi elämään kirjallisuushistoriaan. Tällaisen poemin olen kirjannut itselleni muistiin, vaikka sellaista ei pitäisi sortua tekemään. Poemeja tulee ja menee eikä niihin ole viisasta takertua. 

Siitä lisää myöhemmin.

Muistini tyhjentyminen alkoi miltei huomaamatta. Tapahtumien alkuvaihe lienee tuttu monista aikakauslehtien sairauskertomuksista: karkailevia nimiä, tunnistamista odottavia kasvoja ja loukkaantuneita ilmeitä, kadonneita silmälaseja, avaimia ja lompakkoja. Posti toi lehtiä ja tavaroita, joita en ollut tilannut. Töissä sotkeuduin sanoihin ja sekoitin numerot, joista minun oli tarkoitus huolehtia. Ihmiset ympärilläni käyttäytyivät oudosti. Kalenteristani löytyi merkintöjä, joita en itse ollut tehnyt. Minulle ei enää kerrottu asioita. En ymmärtänyt, mistä muut puhuivat. 

Syytin tietokonetta ja sen ohjelmia, jotka selvästikin olivat seonneet. Pahoittelin päivittäin pienempiä ja isompia virheitä. Työkaverit ja pomo ensin ehdottivat ja sitten vaativat, että hakeutuisin työterveyteen. Laskin hampaita kiristellen leikkiä hajamielisyydestäni ja syytin stressiä. 

Luin aikakauslehtiä ja mietin pitkään, olinko joutunut harvinaisen laajamittaisen ja järjestelmällisen työpaikkakiusaamisen uhriksi. 

Satojen lehti- ja nettiartikkeleiden jälkeen päädyin siihen, ettei vika ollut tietokoneessa eikä muussa ihmiskunnassa vaan minussa. Raskauttava diagnoosi ilmeisesti olisi vain yhden lääkärikäynnin päässä. Alzheimer. AVH. Tai miltä kuulostaisi otsalohkorappeuma.

En halunnut mennä lääkäriin. Itsepetos on mainettaan parempi tapa ylläpitää toivoa, jonka totuus saattaa tympeässä vaihtoehdottomuudessaan murskata. Sitä paitsi kun asiaa tarkemmin mietin, kyse saattoi sittenkin olla vain väsymyksestä tai B-vitamiinin puutostilasta. Ostin mittavan valikoiman vitamiineja. Jonkin aikaa oloni tuntui paremmalta.

Eräänä iltana tulin selailleeksi valokuva-albumeita. Otsani puski suolavettä ja vatsaani väänsi. En tunnistanut valokuvien tilanteita enkä läheskään kaikkia ihmisiä. Vanhojen mustavalkokuvien aurinkoinen lapsi olin minä, mutta keitä olivat seurassani esiintyvät mies ja nainen, jotka vaikuttivat kuvan pojan vanhemmilta? Kuka oli pitkä nainen, joka näytti olevan usein paikalla, kun otettiin valokuvia? Perhetuttu? Täti tai isosisko ehkä? Huomasin, etten ollut varma, oliko minulla yleensä sisaruksia.

Uudemmissakin kuvissa oli häiritsevän paljon vieraita ihmisiä.

Olin alkanut aistia tutun pimeyden läheisyyden. Ensimmäisen kerran olin kohdannut sen lukiolaisena. Menossa oli ollut pitkäveteinen oppitunti kreikkalaisesta mytologiasta. Olin tullut kouluun, vaikka olin kuumeinen. Pyörrytti. Maailma lipui etäälle ja sitten pimeys putosi ja sen terävä reuna leikkasi minut irti kaikesta.

Lethe on yksi Haadeksen viidestä joesta, sanoi opettajan ääni tuhannen kilometrin päästä. Vajotessani tarrasin sanaan kuin hukkuva. 

Lethe…

Kun tulin tajuihini luokan lattialla, muistin vain suunnattoman suuren kylmyyden ja pimeyden ja sen, että olin kuvitellut pienen käden äkkiä tarttuvan omaani kuin lohduttaen. 

Kaksi vuosikymmentä siitä ja aivoissani tapahtunut muutosten sarja huipentui siihen, että kotini keikahti kuin karille ajanut laiva. Luulen istuneeni vessassa pytyllä, kun äkkiä koko elämäni alkoi upota unohduksen virtaan. Tajuntaani ikään kuin tihkui kylmää vettä, joka peitti minulta asioita, jotka vielä hetki sitten olivat olleet mielessäni. 

Kuvittelisin pelästyneeni pahasti. Kompuroin ulos vessasta ja etsin vaimoani Leilaa. Olin kauhuissani ja yksin. Halusin nähdä hänen lempeät kasvonsa ja tuntea hänen rauhoittavan kosketuksensa. Oli yö. Ihmettelin varmasti hänen poissaoloaan. Yritin kovasti muistaa, oliko hänellä jokin meno. Soitin hänelle. Helpotuksekseni hän vastasi heti. 

Kun aloin selittää tilannetta, puhelu katkesi. 

Soitin uudestaan viisi tai kuusi kertaa. Lopulta hän suostui kuuntelemaan. Pelästynyt ääneni vakuutti hänet siitä, etten pilaillut. 

Vaimoni muistutti, ettei enää asunut samassa osoitteessa kanssani. Hänhän oli muuttanut pois jo puoli vuotta aikaisemmin, kai muistin? Olimme hakeneet avioeroa. Kuulemma tiesin hyvin, miksi. 

En muistanut enkä tiennyt. Tiesin vain, että halusin painaa pääni hänen syliinsä ja saada lohtua.

Vaimoni ääni selitti, että nyt minun pitäisi levätä ja mennä heti aamulla lääkäriin. En pystynyt palauttamaan mieleeni hänen kasvojaan. Lethen kylmä vesi oli pessyt piirteet pois mielestäni.

Delfoilainen dementia.

Valkoinen miljöö. Tupakantuoksuinen nainen valkoisessa takissa ja mies nuhruisessa puvussa. Tohtori hymyili kiusaantuneesti. Ponnistelin näyttääkseni kohteliaan kiinnostuneelta ja kätkeäkseni paniikin. Kokeita oli tehty enemmän kuin välitin laskea. Diagnoosi riippui välillämme kuin outo vitsi.

Tohtori ojensi vihkosen, jossa kerrottiin sairaudestani. Hän selitti.

Kyse oli kohtuullisen harvinaisesta aivojen häiriötilasta, joka oli sukua déjà vu -ilmiölle. Menneisyyden menettäisin, siltä osin muistini tuhoutuisi, mutta menneen sijasta muistaisin tulevan. Tai luulisin muistavani, tohtori kiirehti tarkentamaan kuivasti naurahtaen. Joustavan ihmismielen tapa kompensoida kärsimäänsä vauriota. Tietenkään lääketiede ei kannustanut ketään uskomaan harhoihinsa.

Nyökkäsin. Mieleeni nousi muistikuva, jossa soitan tohtorille kotiin ja sanon hänen olleen väärässä – muistan todellakin tulevaisuuden ja siitä löytyy todisteitakin, jos tohtori sellaisia kaipaa. Hetken hiljaisuuden jälkeen tohtori vastaa särkyneellä äänellä, että siltähän se tosiaan vaikuttaa. Sitten hän kiittää soitosta ja varoituksesta ja pahoittelee, ettei aikoinaan sitä uskonut. Ennen puhelimen sulkemista hän lisää vielä, ettei enää työskentele lääkärinä, koska keuhkosyöpä on terminaalivaiheessa.

Tohtori katsoi minua tutkivasti, sai yskänpuuskan ja hymähti: – Pikkuinen tupakkayskä. Pitäisi lopettaa, tiedän kyllä, paha tapa lääkärille erityisesti, mutta… Niin. Jos tulee jotain kysyttävää, soittakaa minulle. 

Mietin hetken ja sanoin sitten: – Anteeksi, mutta jos te ette lopeta, te tosiaan saatte syövän. Sellaisen asian minä nyt kuvittelen muistavani.

Hän rypisti otsaa, kirjoitti lapulle nimensä ja numeronsa, johon soittaisin yöllä kuukausia tai ehkä vuosia myöhemmin, jos tulevaisuutta koskevaan muistikuvaani oli luottaminen. 

Päätin kirjoittaa keskustelun muistiin ennen kuin unohtaisin sen ja näköjään kirjoitinkin. Kiitin ja lähdin hoitajan mukaan.

Seuraavat päivät vietin kotona seuraten avuttomana, kuinka Lethen vesi teki tuhojaan. Menneisyyteni haurastui, mureni ja sortui samalla kun kirjoitin ja sanelin sitä muistiin niin paljon kuin vain ehdin. Viimeiset vuodet olivat suurelta osin jo menneet. Avioliitostanikin olivat jäljellä vain onnelliset alkuajat. Muistin kuitenkin yhä hämmästyttävän paljon. En ollut aiemmin tullut ajatelleeksi, miten massiivinen rakennelma kolmenkymmenen vuoden kokoinen menneisyys on, eihän terve ihminen tietenkään tuollaisia mieti. Ihmisiä, paikkoja, tapahtumia. Matkat Pariisiin, Tukholmaan, Prahaan. Opiskeluaikojen romanssit. Oivallukset luennoilla. Kaikki lapsuuteni miljööt. Tappelu naapurin pojan kanssa, joka pilkkasi kaunista mutta surullista tätiäni. Isän vihaisuus ja ajoittaiset hyvät hetket. Tuntikausien yölliset keskustelut äidin kanssa ja hänen hellä kosketuksensa hiuksissa, kun teeskentelin nukkuvani. Mummolan vintillä lukemani Aku Ankat, Tarzanit ja Valitut Palat. Korttipelit mummon kanssa. Piknikit ja teatterireissut, joille tädit minua kiikuttivat. Kirjat, joita he lukivat minulle ääneen. Ensimmäinen suudelma. Ensimmäiset seksikokeilut. 

Kaiken tämän halusin saada talteen, mutta olin liian hidas. 

Olin paljastamassa sanelukoneelle intiimejä yksityiskohtia poikuuteni menetyksestä, kun tytön nimi ja kasvot äkkiä liukenivat pois. Aikani muistia harottuani tajusin, etten tavoittanut muitakaan naisiani. En nimiä, kasvoja, vartaloita enkä kosketuksia. En nautintoa. Muistot seksuaalisista kokemuksistani olivat paenneet kasvavan tyhjyyden tieltä kuin villihanhet. 

En osaa sanoa, miten reagoin. Ehkä mykistyin surusta. Ehkä itkin. Saatoin heitellä esineitä. Kun nyt ajattelen asiaa, näen itseni nyyhkyttämässä ääneen kuin eksynyt lapsi.

Sisälleni oli avautunut 34 vuoden kokoinen tyhjä tila. Menneisyys oli amputoitu. Minut oli koverrettu ontoksi. Sieluni oli louhittu, murskattu ja levitetty tuuleen. 

En ollut varsinaisesti invalidi: osasin yhä puhua, liikkua, laskea ja käyttää kodin laitteita. Tiesin kuka oli presidenttinä. Tiesin, miten chilikastiketta tehtiin ja milloin toinen maailmansota päättyi. Kaiken henkilökohtaisen kuitenkin olin menettänyt. Minulla oli tietoa mutta ei muistoja. Tunsin itseäni ympäröivän maailman, mutta oli kuin en olisi itse koskaan elänyt siinä.

Elin joitakin päiviä olemattomassa olotilassa. En tiedä, vierailiko luonani sukulaisia tai ystäviä. Jos vieraili, en varmaankaan tunnistanut heitä. Kotisairaanhoitaja kävi välillä varmistamassa, että ruumiini toimi yhä. 

Mieleni haamu harhaili manan majoilla yrittäen kaiketi tuntea jotain – edes surua, tuskaa ja vihaa, joiden uumoilin virtaavan omina vuolaina jokinaan jossain lähellä. 

Mutta miten surra, kun ei tiedä, mitä kaikkea on menettänyt. Surukin on rikkautta, sillä siihen liittyy aina kaipaava, kaunis muisto. Tyhjyydestä sikiää vain tyhjyyttä.

Kuljeskelin edestakaisin sisäisen Letheni rantamilla siltä varalta, että se sittenkin luovuttaisi minulle takaisin jotain. En uskaltanut edes toivoa paljon. Minulle olisi riittänyt aivan pieni muisto, jota vaalia. 

Päivät kuluivat. Sitten löysin jotain. Kuin simpukankuoria autiolla rannalla. Värikkäitä, kauniita. 

Poimin niitä tutkittavaksi.

Kuinka kiihdyttävä havainto! Muistoja! Täynnä ihmisiä ja tapahtumia! 

Ja minä itse niissä…

Vähitellen huomasin, ettei kyse ollut menneisyydestä. Avautuvissa muistikuvissa puhuin ihmisille tilanteestani reippaaseen sävyyn ja olin selvästi päässyt pahimman yli. Yhdessä hivelen naisen paljasta vatsaa, raaputan rakastelusta tahmaisia muniani – anteeksi vulgaariuteni, tyttökulta, mutta minun tilanteessani alkaa arvostaa yksityiskohtia – ja selitän: 

Ei minulla mitään tarttuvaa sairautta ole, älä kultaseni hermostu, vaan delfoilainen dementia. En siis muista menneisyyttäni muutamaa tuntia kauemmaksi. Juuri nyt en tiedä edes, olemmeko kohdanneet aikaisemmin, koska jos poemiini on luottaminen, ihan kohta keräät vaatteesi ja ryntäät tuohtuneena pois etkä suostu sanomaan mitään, mikä on sääli, mutta muistan seuraavat kohtaamisemme. Niitä on tällä haavaa vain kaksi, mutta poemit muuttuvat usein. Ensimmäinen kohtaaminen tapahtuu kahden viikon kuluttua tavaratalon liukuportaissa. Käännyt ja olen takanasi. Katsot minua odottavasti mutta et sano mitään. Älä loukkaannu, en nimittäin tunnista sinua – paitsi jos sivuutat epäuskoisuutesi ja pyyhit tämän poemin ja luot uuden esittelemällä itsesi minulle uudestaan liukuportaissa ja muistuttamalla tästä tapaamisesta ja sen luonteesta. Jos teet sen, muistan sen kaiken jo nyt. Mikäkö poem on? Potentiaalinen ennakkomuisto. Käytämme sanaa delfoilaisten tukiryhmässä. Anteeksi, näen, että tämä hämmentää sinua… Ei, en yritä pilailla kanssasi, olen pahoillani, jos niin luulet… No mene sitten… Sekavaahan tämä on, en voi kieltää, mutta elämäni on mitä on.

Otin esille muistikirjani. 

Epätoivon tilalle oli tullut kasvava innostus ja vimma. Olin sentään oman jälleensyntymäni äärellä.

Muistikirja muistutti: Tohtorin mukaan sairauden edetessä luulen muistavani tulevaisuuden. Se kuitenkin on vain mielen tapa kompensoida kärsimäänsä vauriota. Kyse on harhoista. Älä usko niihin.

En kuitenkaan halunnut olla uskomatta. Eihän minulla ollut mitään muutakaan kuin nämä uudet… (Tässä kohdassa tein merkintöjä muistikirjaan. Piirsin suuren kysymysmerkin tohtorin varoitusten päälle.) 

Uudet mitkä? 

Uudet, kummalliset muistoni. Aarteeni. Tulevaisuuden sirpaleet, jotka saattaisivat toteutua sellaisinaan tai toisaalta olla toteutumattakin. Minun poemini. Kirjoitin niitä muistiin siltä varalta, että menettäisin nekin.

Tietenkään en nähnyt koko tulevaisuuttani. Sehän oli useiden kymmenien vuosien kokoinen. Liian suuri kerralla hahmotettavaksi. Muistin tulevaisuudestani vain tärkeimmät asiat ja vaihtelevan valikoiman enemmän tai vähemmän merkityksettömiä yksityiskohtia. Kun ponnistelin, mieleen nousseet kuvajaiset tarkentuivat, täydentyivät ja joskus vääristyivät. Muistilla on rajoituksensa, suuntautuupa se menneeseen tai tulevaan. Hyvä niin. Muistinmenetystäkin julmempi kohtalo olisi omata muisti, joka ei koskaan petä.

Näin siis sain elämäni takaisin, kovin erilaisena mutta käyttökelpoisena kuitenkin. Uskaltauduin taas ihmisten ilmoille. Kävin kaupungilla, ostoksilla, baareissa. 

Opettelin tekemään koko ajan muistiinpanoja, koska työmuistini ulottui vain muutaman minuutin päähän menneisyyteen. Tulevaisuuden muistaminen kuitenkin auttoi operoimaan nykyhetkessä. 

Se toki vaati totuttelua. Kun baarissa antauduin juttusille ihmisten kanssa, huomasin tietäväni etukäteen, kuinka keskustelu tulisi etenemään. Kaikki sanottu kuulosti tutulta sillä hetkellä kun repliikit kuulin. Seuraavien päivien aikana luin yhä uudestaan lääkärin varoituksen tulevaisuutta koskevien muistikuvien valheellisuudesta ja mietin asiaa. Lopulta päätin tehdä testin. 

Baarin takaosassa istui yksin vaalea nainen. Ei erityisen kaunis. Pikemminkin keski-ikäinen kuin nuori. Kyllin viehättävä herättääkseen minussa haluja. Katseemme kohtasivat. Ruskeat silmät. Pidin niistä. Mieleeni nousi hänen nimensä: Silja. Kirjoitin muistikirjaan nimen ja yhteenvedon siitä, mitä muistin hetken kuluttua alkavasta keskustelustamme. Sitten lähestyin häntä. Hän esittäytyi Siljaksi. Juttelimme. Tein samalla muistiinpanoja. 

Silja kysyi, mitä kirjoitin. 

Hetken mielijohteesta sanoin olevani kirjailija ja hahmottelevani uutta romaania. Mielestäni toimin spontaanisti. Mutta kun vilkaisin edelliselle sivulle, huomasin kirjoittaneeni: S kysyy, mitä kirjoitan. Esittäydyn kirjailijaksi. Saan hänet kiinnostumaan. 

Tähän saakka Silja oli vaikuttanut hajamielisen ystävälliseltä. Nyt hän sähköistyi ja lausui repliikin, jonka olin kirjannut edelliselle sivulle: Kirjailija? Ihan totta? En lue koskaan kirjoja, mutta kirjailijat ovat kiinnostavia. Kerrohan: jos me päädymme tänään sänkyyn ja saat minulta ikimuistoista seksiä, mahdanko löytää itseni myöhemmin sinun kirjastasi?

Kysymys oli näennäisen kepeä. Muistin kuitenkin, kuinka epätoivoisen kiihkeästi hän yrittäisi tehdä minuun sängyssä vaikutuksen. Vastasin myöntävästi. Poem oli vastustamaton.

Niinpä menimme asunnolleni ja sänkyyn. Jos kokemus olikin tarkoitettu ikimuistoiseksi, minun päästäni se haihtui heti tapahduttuaan. Huomasin makaavani sängyssä alastomana ja katselevani laiskasti pukeutuvaa blondia. Muistin hänestä vain sen, mitä hän sanoisi juuri ennen lähtöään. Kirjoitin sen muistikirjaan: Toivottavasti tykkäsit. En ole ikinä ennen tehnyt tuollaisia juttuja. Millaisia kirjoja sinä sanoitkaan kirjoittavasi?

Tulevaisuuden muistaminen siis vaikutti todelliselta ilmiöltä. Asiasta väitellään toisinaan kiivaastikin delfoilaisten dementikkojen tukiryhmässä, jonka kokouksesta löysin itseni puolisen vuotta myöhemmin. Jo sitä ennen olin tehnyt muistiinpanoja ryhmää koskevista poemeista.

Siinä vaiheessa jäseniä oli parisenkymmentä. Joka viikko tuli kaksi tai kolme uutta. Jotkut muistelivat, että vuosien varrella jäsenmäärä kasvaisi jopa satoihin ja uusia ryhmiä perustettaisiin. Syystä tai toisesta delfoilainen dementia on yleistymään päin. Sen väitetään johtuvan milloin mistäkin – elintarvikkeiden lisäaineista, auringonpilkkujen muutoksista, viruksesta, uusien elektronisten laitteiden säteilystä. Täydelliseen yksimielisyyteen ei päästä minun elinaikanani. 

Kolmannella käynnilläni olin epämääräisen hermostunut. Poemini lipsuivat kuin märät saippuat. Yritin keskittyä muistikirjaani. Ilmeisesti olin Siljan jälkeen harrastanut seksiä kaikkiaan kolmen eri naisen kanssa. He olivat Anna, Helena ja Noriko. Olin tehnyt heistä muistiinpanoja poemieni perusteella ja mahdollisuuksien mukaan myös itse kokemuksen aikana tai heti sen jälkeen. Olin alkanut kirjoitella muistiin joitakin asioita myös Johannasta ja Birgitasta, jotka tapaisin lähitulevaisuudessa. 

Anna. Pulleahko kikkarapää. Oraalinen fiksaatio, kikattaa ja hyräilee sängyssä, tuoksuu karamelleilta. Purskahtaa lauetessaan itkuun, josta ei ole tulla loppua. Tapaamme neljä tai viisi kertaa. Sen jälkeen hän ilmoittaa olevansa naimisissa ja lähtee.

Helena. Hento, hoikka ja arka. Alastomana hämmästyttävän karvainen, melkein kuin apinanaaras. Kiihottuu hitaasti mutta vauhtiin päästyään puree, raapii ja murisee kuin pikkupeto. Vaatelias, ilmeisen mahdoton tyydyttää täydellisesti. Pelottava. En ota yhteyttä ensimmäisen kerran jälkeen. Soittelee perään viikon verran. Heittää lopulta kiven keittiön ikkunan läpi.

Noriko. Japanilaissyntyinen runojen ystävä. Passiivinen sängyssä, pitää silmät kiinni, sallii kaiken ja kehottaa kuiskaten tekemään erilaisia outojakin asioita, nauttii, ei kuitenkaan reagoi näkyvästi mitenkään. Livahtaa pois mitään sanomatta. Käy vielä kaksi kertaa, sitten katoaa.

Tekstit olivat kammottavan onttoja yrityksiä kuvata monivivahteisia kokemuksia, jotka olin luonnollisesti jo unohtanut. Luin niitä läpi yhä uudestaan ja pinnistin mielikuvitustani dramatisoidakseni niistä keinotekoisia muistoja. Delfoilaisena dementikkona pystyn kuitenkin nauttimaan vain niiden kokemusten muistoista, jotka ovat vasta tulossa. Mitä lähempänä niiden toteutuminen on, sitä kirkkaammiksi ne käyvät. 

Johanna ja Birgitta kuitenkin olivat vielä tulevaisuudessa ja heidät muistin valokuvantarkasti. Pyörittelin mielessäni Johannan sotaisan tummakärkisiä törörintoja ja hänen väkivaltaista sänkykäytöstään ja Birgitan kermanvaalean kujeilevaa olemusta ja pakaroiden suolaisuutta. Nautin poemeistani, mutta samalla minua ahdisti ajatella, että kun lopulta todella tapaisin heidät ja jättäisin jäljen itsestäni heidän muistiinsa, kadottaisin samalla omat muistoni heistä. Yritin turhaan muistaa, miltä tuntuisi olla muistamatta. Delfoilaisen dementian säännöt eivät ole helppoja hahmottaa, vaikka siitä kärsivä tietääkin poemiensa kautta heti alussa lähes kaiken, mitä ikinä tulee sairaudestaan oppimaan.

Merkillinen vaihtokauppa,  joka toistui joka kerta poemin toteutuessa, oli kuin Danten ironinen rangaistus aiemmasta elämästäni, jossa janosin kokemuksia ja keräsin muistoja naisista kuin filatelisti postimerkkejä. Toivoin taas kerran, että osaisin kirjoittaa paremmin, tai vaikka maalata tai säveltää niin että saisin tulevista kokemuksista talteen edes jotain. 

Olin yrittänyt tallentaa kokemuksiani valokuvien avulla. Kuvissa kuitenkin oli minulle täysin vieraita ihmisiä. Oli kauheaa ajatella, että he muistivat ja tiesivät minusta kaikenlaista intiimiä ja voisivat milloin tahansa palata yhteisiin hetkiimme kuin salavihkaiset tirkistelijät, muistaen intiimit tapani ja alastomuuteni. 

Kuvat alkoivat inhottaa minua. Hävitin ne ja piilotin kameran. 

Olin kokeillut myös elämäni videoimista. Kaikki tukiryhmässä kokeilivat sitä jossain vaiheessa. Useimpien lailla huomasin, etten pystynyt katsomaan nauhoituksia. Armottomassa totuudellisuudessaan kamera on surkea muistin korvike. Sitä paitsi poemit ovat kaikessa häilyvyydessäänkin kiinnostavampia kuin menneisyyteen tuijottaminen. Delfoi-ryhmäläiset tapaavat sanoa: Miksi murehtia jotain jo taakse jäänyttä, kun voi keskittyä muistelemaan tulevia iloja!

Sitten ryhmäläisten eteen asteli hoikka, ruskeatukkainen nainen, jonka huulilla oli pysyvä ironinen hymy. Emme tietääkseni olleet koskaan aiemmin tavanneet. Silti olin jo jonkin aikaa tuntenut hänet paremmin kuin itseni. Olin kuitenkin kuvitellut, että tapaisimme toisemme vasta vuosia myöhemmin.

– Hei kaikki. Kuten poeminne varmaan kertovat, olen Amalia ja kärsin delfoilaisesta dementiasta. Sain diagnoosin kaksi vuotta sitten. En kai ole koskaan ennen käynyt täällä. En tiedä, miksi ja miten tulin tänään tänne, minulla kun ei ole minkäänlaisia muistiinpanoja tästä päivästä, mutta tässä näköjään olen…

– Hei, Amalia…

Kaikki tervehtivät tulokasta ja kuuntelivat sen jälkeen hänen selviytymistarinaansa. 

Amalia puhui, kunnes katseemme kohtasivat. Hän sekosi sanoissaan ja vaikeni. Mieleeni nousi poem, jossa suutelemme kiihkeästi sateessa. Vilkaisin ikkunaa. Päivä oli ollut aurinkoinen ja oli yhä. 

Jos paikalla oli ei-delfoilainen tarkkailija, hän ei voinut mitenkään käsittää, mitä oli tekeillä. Tilanne kävi yhä oudommaksi, kun kaikki kääntyivät katsomaan minua ja Amaliaa aurinkoisesti hymyillen.

 Ennen kuin kukaan ehti sanoa mitään, kirjoitin muistikirjaani, jotten unohtaisi: Meitä onnitellaan. Kaikki muistavat kihlauksemme vuoden kuluttua ja häät pari kuukautta sen jälkeen. Olemmehan tuleva aviopari.

Saimme aplodit. 

Minua huimasi. Jokin oli muuttunut, poemit kieppuivat, asiat olivat tapahtuneet toisin kuin olin aikaisemmin muistanut. 

Johannaa ja Birgittaa koskevat poemit kauhtuivat nopeasti Amaliaa koskevien muistojen tieltä. Ryhmässä sanottiin usein, ettei poemeihin kannattanut kiintyä, sillä kun kausaliteetit toisinaan törmäilivät ennalta-arvaamattomasti, suistuivat raiteiltaan ja käynnistivät ketjureaktion, myös tulevaisuus muuttui. 

Ei liene vaikea uskoa, että predestinaatio on delfoi-piireissä suosittu puheenaihe. 

Amalia oli istunut edessä. Nyt hän tuli viereeni takariviin. Hänelle tehtiin tilaa.

Kätemme tarttuivat toisiinsa. Emme pystyneet puhumaan. Poemit pauhasivat koskina molempien mielessä asettuessaan uusiin asemiin. 

Seuraava puhuja meni eteen ja aloitti tarinansa. 

Vähitellen ikkuna tummeni. Kun vesi alkoi ropista kattoon, me Amalian kanssa katsoimme toisiimme, nousimme ja lähdimme. 

Vielä samana iltana hän haki asunnostaan tärkeimmät tavaransa ja muutti luokseni. 

En tiedä, mitä tapahtui seuraavan viikon aikana. Ehkä puhuimme koko ajan edessämme häämöttävästä vuosikymmenten kokoisesta yhteisestä tulevaisuudesta. Ehkä rakastelimme. Ehkä vain katsoimme televisiota yhdessä. Jotain voi yrittää päätellä siitä, ettei kumpikaan tullut tehneeksi muistiinpanoja. Kun viikon kuluttua otin jälleen muistikirjan esille, huomasin kirjaamani poemin, jonka mukaan olimme suudelleet heti kokouspaikan ulkopuolella, sateessa, katulamppujen alla, ja märällä taivaalla ylitsemme oli lipunut keltainen ilmalaiva. 

Näytin tekstin Amalialle. Hänen silmiinsä nousi kyyneliä ja hän vaati minulta lupauksen, että muistuttaisin häntä säännöllisesti.

 

Delfoilaisten dementikkojen romansseissa on omat hankaluutensa, mutta kun lempi roihahtaa, asiassa edetään nopeasti. Miksi viivytelläkään, kun yhteinen tulevaisuus kerran on kirkkaana kummankin mielessä. Harkinta-aikaa ei tarvita. Osapuolet tuntevat toisensa parhaiten heti suhteen alussa, koska kaikki tärkeimmät yhteiset kokemukset häämöttävät vielä enemmän tai vähemmän kirkkaina edessäpäin eikä asioita ole vielä koettu unohduksiin. 

Jokainen yhdessä eletty päivä muuttaa osapuolet vähän vieraammiksi toisilleen, kun kauniit muistot käyvät yksi kerrallaan toteen ja unohtuvat. Suhteen alkuaikojen syvyys katoaa vähitellen ja lämpimän yhteisyyden tilalle tulee sitä jännitystä, joka liittyy siihen, etteivät puolisot enää tunnekaan toisiaan läpikotaisin. 

Kun yhteinen aika loppuu, delfoilaiset havahtuvat siihen, että elävät muukalaisen kanssa. Silloin lähdetään ilman muistoja eri suuntiin. Jos suhde päättyy toisen kuolemaan, leski istuu hautajaiset läpi kuivin silmin sikäli kuin lainkaan vaivautuu paikalle. Arkussahan makaa hänelle täysin vieras ihminen. Ei muistoja, ei tunteita.

Muistiinpanoistani näen miettiväni silloin tällöin elämääni ennen sairastumista. Mies, joka olin, oli sentään vuosia naimisissa. Tyttäreni, olenko jo kertonut sinulle, että isäsi sanotaan ennen sairastumistaan olleen hurmaava seuramies, sellainen sanavalmis veijari, joka syliin naisilla on paha tapa langeta, ja että minua on syytetty jopa Don Juaniksi? 

No, delfoilaiset kuulevat itsestään kaikenlaista. Kun on menneisyytensä osalta kuulopuheiden varassa, kannattaa olla tarkka sen suhteen, kenen juttuja itsestään suostuu kuuntelemaan. Tarvitaan riittävän monta näkökulmaa. Olenkin kerännyt juttuja itsestäni muistikirjaan, jota käytän menneisyyden tutkimiseen. Mukana on myös entisen vaimoni kertomus siitä, joka olin.

 

Elettyämme Amalian kanssa muutamia kuukausia ovellemme ilmaantui eräänä iltapäivänä kaunis, tyylikkäästi pukeutunut nainen.

Olin yksin kotona. Muistin Amalian palaavan vasta myöhään illalla ja kertovan, että hän oli innostunut shoppailemaan niin, että oli menettänyt ajantajunsa. Hänellä olisi minulle myös yllätyslahja: delfoilaisille suunniteltu sähköinen älymuistikirja. Ajatus oli ilahduttanut minua suuresti koko päivän. Harmitti, että jo muutaman tunnin kuluttua saisin lahjani ja unohtaisin yllätyksen tuottaman ilon. 

Delfoilaisten ollessa kyseessä yllätyksen käsite on tietenkin kyseenalainen. Olemme vaikeasti yllätettäviä. Lahjojen ja muiden iloisten sattumusten tuottama riemu ei kuitenkaan pienene siitä, että ne muistetaan joskus vuosiakin etukäteen. Ihmismuisti ei myöskään ole täydellinen, suuntautuipa se menneeseen tai tulevaan. Voimme yllättyä aidosti, kun jokin asia kertakaikkisesti pääsee lipsahtamaan mielestä ennen tapahtumistaan. Minulle kävi näin ovellemme ilmestyneen naisen suhteen. Hän tuijotti minua mitään sanomatta. Tilanne kävi vaivaannuttavaksi. Vain pari sekuntia ennen kuin poem toteutui, muistin naisen esittäytyvän entiseksi vaimokseni Leilaksi, joka oli tullut hakemaan allekirjoitustani avioeropapereihin. 

Kättelimme. Kun sanoin oman nimeni, nainen naurahti, huokaisi ja sanoi, ettei se ollut tarpeen – hän muisti minut melko hyvin vuosia kestäneestä avioliitostamme. 

Keitin kahvit ja juttelimme. Hänen luvallaan nauhoitin keskustelun. Olin utelias tietämään jatkossakin, millaisen miehen kanssa hän oli mielestään ollut naimisissa. Poem entisen vaimoni kertomuksesta oli nyt kirkkaimmillaan, mutta pian se katoaisi kokonaan ja sen jälkeen olisin muistiinpanojeni varassa.

 

Ensimmäiset vuodet olivat ihania, täynnä iloa. Sinä olit ihana. Minäkin, kai. Meillä oli haaveita. Minulla on ihania muistoja niistä ajoista. Kiitos niistä! Puhuimme, että hankkisimme lapsia. Sinä halusit isäksi heti, minä sitten joskus. Sovimme, että meidän olisi järkevää luoda ensin uraa, jotta voisimme antaa lapselle hyvän ja rikkaan elämän sitten, kun se lopulta tulisi. 

Sitten elämämme jotenkin haalistui. Minä taisin masentua pikkuisen. Nykyhetki tuntui merkityksettömältä ja tulevaisuus harmaalta. Luulin saaneeni mahataudin. Olinkin tullut raskaaksi. En sanonut sinulle mitään. Tiesin, ettei ollut sopiva hetki, ei vielä. En jaksanut, ja töissäkin oli sellainen tilanne, etten minä mitenkään voinut… 

Niinpä minä sitten keskeytin raskauden kaikessa hiljaisuudessa. Ajattelin säästää tunteitasi pitämällä tapahtuneen omana tietonani. Oloni on kamala. Kuvittelin, että unohtaisin vähitellen koko asian. Kerroin kuitenkin eräälle ystävättärelle ja eräillä kutsuilla hän lipsautti asian juovuspäissään sinulle. Ehkä se ei ollut vahinko, hän oli aina kadehtinut sinua minulta. Sinä käännyt katsomaan minua ja tunsin muuttuvani silmissäsi kiveksi. Sanoit, ettet voinut hyvin, ja lähdit pahoitellen kotiin nukkumaan.   

Muistan hyvin seuraavan aamun. Istuimme aamiaispöydässä. Odotin, että sinä huutaisit minulle. Toivoin sitä. Halusin, että sinä löisit minua niin että vuotaisin verta ja luuni katkeaisivat, sinua katsoessani tajusin ansainneeni sen ja jotain vielä pahempaa. Mutta ei. Sinä vain katsoit minua niin kuin olisit ensimmäisen kerran nähnyt minut selvästi. Katsoit suoraan sisälleni, sinne jääneeseen tyhjään kohtaan, johon alkoi sattua. Kun sinä sitten pyysit ihan tavallisella äänellä minua ojentamaan marmeladirasian, tiesin, ettei paluuta entiseen olisi.

Voi Luoja, kuinka julma sinä olitkaan! Pahinta oli, että sinä olit kaiken aikaa ystävällinen minua kohtaan. Me lakkasimme kokonaan riitelemästä. Olit aina etäinen, viileä ja ystävällinen. Jos minä yritin haastaa riitaa, sinä katsoit minua ja hymyilit, ja sen kauhean hymyn takana sinä vihasit minua. Jossain vaiheessa huomasin, että sinulla oli muita naisia. Et sinä huoraamistasi minun kasvoihini hieronut, mutta vähitellen se kävi yhä selvemmäksi. Kului pari vuotta. Suljin silmäni seikkailuiltasi. Päätin suoda ne sinulle. Arvelin, että kärsimykseni hyvittäisi tekoani vähän kerrallaan ja lopulta saisin anteeksi.

 Sitten kerran siivotessani taloa tulin avanneeksi kirjoituspöytäsi laatikon. Löysin nipun kirjeitä. Olit kirjoittanut ne tulevalle tyttärellesi – olit vakuuttunut siitä, että saisit nimenomaan tyttären. Ensimmäinen oli kirjoitettu, kun olimme seurustelleet kolme kuukautta. Kerroit siinä tulevalle tyttärellesi löytäneesi elämäsi naisen, josta tulisi hänen äitinsä. Myöhemmissä kirjeissä kuvailit minua niin ihanasti kuin vain rakastunut mies voi naista kuvailla. Selitit tyttärellesi, että olit aina ihaillut naisia – omaa äitiäsi, tätejäsi ja isoäitiäsi, joihin kaikkiin sinulla oli lapsena ollut lämmin ja läheinen suhde – ja että halusit siksi saada oman tyttären, josta huolehtia, jonka kasvua seurata ja jota suojella. 

Kerroit myös, että surit elämäsi naisten kärsimyksiä. Isäsi oli depressiivinen juoppo, josta äitisi joutui huolehtimaan, kunnes isäsi sai juovuspäissään puukon rintaansa. Yksi tädeistäsi oli naimisissa väkivaltaisen miehen kanssa ja aina mustelmilla. Toinen menetti auto-onnettomuudessa puolisonsa ja kärsi itse loppuikänsä hirmuisista kivuista. Isoäitisi riutui viimeiset vuotensa syöpäpotilaana. Lupasit monessa kirjeessä tehdä kaikkesi, jottei tyttäresi joutuisi koskaan kärsimään samalla tavalla.

Viimeinen kirje oli päivätty kaksi päivää niiden kutsujen jälkeen, joissa sait tietää. 

Siinä luki vain: ”Rakas tyttäreni.”

Kirjeet luettuani tajusin, ettet voisi koskaan unohtaa tai antaa anteeksi. Ilmoitin, että haluan erota. Sinä hymyilit minulle sanomalehden yli ja pyysit ojentamaan marmeladirasian.

 

Entisen vaimoni kertomus kertoo paljon siitä, kuka joskus olin ja miksi. Tuntisin kai katumusta, jos kokisin todella olleeni tuo mies. Hänet kuitenkin on pesty minusta Lethen vedellä. 

Hänen puolustuksekseen on sanottava, että julmuus vaimoa kohtaan kumpusi rakkaudesta tyttäreen – sinuun, joka odotat olemattomuudessa ja kaiketi tartuit isääsi kädestä jo kun hän nuorukaisena ensimmäisen kerran tuli vajonneeksi Letheen. 

Tuo kivisydämiseksi päätynyt mies oli sinun isäsi siinä missä minäkin, ja jos meitä ei muu yhdistä, niin ainakin rakkaus sinuun. 

Amalia tuli lopulta kotiin ja sain elektronisen älymuistikirjani. Sen avulla on helpompi hallita muistiinpanojaan erilaisissa tilanteissa. Tätä kirjettä kirjoittaessani olen samalla sanellut sen muistiin niin vanhoja merkintöjäni kuin niitä kallisarvoisia poemejakin, jotka käsittelevät minun ja Amalian yhteistä tulevaisuutta. Yritän saada siihen selkoa tehdessäni päätöstä siitä, olenko kotona kun Amalia palaa ryhmän kokouksesta.

Yhteiseen tulevaisuuteemme kuuluu paljon rakkautta, hellyyttä ja huumaa. Matkustamme parin vuoden kuluttua yhdessä Pariisiin. Siellä koemme kaiken sen, mistä lauluissa puhutaan. Elämme toisillemme niin että sattuu. 

Toki nahistelemme tuon tuostakin kaikenlaisista pikkuasioista. On edessä kaksi tai kolme todella isoakin riitaa. Syyt eivät lopulta kuitenkaan ole niin vakavia, että ne loisivat pahemmin varjoa avioliittomme ylle. Delfoilaisten riidat unohtuvat heti kun ne on käyty, ja miltei aina niille nauretaan kuukausia etukäteen, vaikka ne tapahtuessaan ovatkin olevinaan kovin riipiviä.

Sikäli kuin muistamme, edessämme on siis monta upeaa vuotta. Yritämme olla ajattelematta liikaa ikäviä asioita. Tuttu juttu delfoilaisille. 

Sinä synnyt viiden vuoden kuluttua. Olet kaunis lapsi. Oikeasti kaunis. Muistan, että saat nimeksesi Lethe, sillä sehän sinun nimesi on. Paitsi unohduksen virta Lethe on myös jumalattaren nimi. Sama nimi on joka kolmannella delfoilaisten tyttölapsella, mutta olkoon – nimen suosioon on syynsä.

Lapsuutesi tulee olemaan paras mahdollinen. Sinulta ei tule puuttumaan mitään. Ei rakkautta, ei huomiota. Käymme kanssasi ulkomailla, kaikkialla minne haluat mennä. Ei sinua toisaalta pilallekaan lellitä. Sinulla on turvalliset rajat. Varmistamme hyvinvointisi säännöllisillä terapiaistunnoilla, olethan sentään kahden delfoilaisen dementikon lapsi. 

Ainoa ikävämpi sattumus lapsuudessasi on se, kun jäät auton alle ja jalkasi kipsataan kesäloman ajaksi. Et pääse uimaan ja se harmittaa sinua, mutta me luemme sinulle ääneen lempikirjojasi. 

Lyhyesti sanottuna teemme kaikkemme. Olet kiitollinen kaikesta ja osoitat sen olemalla kaikin tavoin täydellinen tytär, vaikka teemme selväksi, että sinulla on oikeus heittäytyä myös hankalaksi, jos siltä tuntuu.

21-vuotiaana sinusta tulee kirjailija. Maailmanlaajuisesti ylistetty, rakastettu ja menestyvä. Jo viiden vuoden uran jälkeen kriitikot ovat yksimielisiä siitä, että tuotantosi tulee jäämään kirjallisuushistoriaan. Kaikki kolme romaania. Tuskan trilogiaksi niitä sanotaan. 

25-vuotiaana puhut televisiohaastattelussa ihanista vanhemmistasi ja saamastasi rakkaudesta ja sen vuoksi tuntemastasi syyllisyydestä. Kerrot, että niin kauan kuin muistat, olet halunnut kuolla. Kerrot, kuinka lapsena keräsit rohkeutta ja juoksit lopulta auton eteen ja kuinka petyit, kun jäit henkiin. Haastattelun jälkeen menet kotiin ja avaat ranteesi. Jäät henkiin, koska minä tulen paikalle ajoissa. 

Katsot minua. Silmäsi ovat tyhjät ja sanasi särkevät sydämeni. Olen kirjoittanut ne muistiin. 

Isä, älä anna minun kärsiä.

Sinusta tulisi kaunis lapsi, jota me rakastaisimme kovasti. Tällaisen poemin olen kirjannut itselleni muistiin, vaikka eihän sellaista pitäisi sortua tekemään. Poemeja tulee ja menee. Niihin ei ole viisasta takertua. 

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