The Listener by Tove Jansson Read Free Book Online Page B

written. They have their own shelf and I never mix them with ordinary books. I live by them, though it’s not easy. I believe in them. I’m your disciple.”
    The astonishing, archaic word “disciple” hung there between them, as palpable and exacting as the silence that followed his strange and chilly music. Now I need not say anything more, she thought. This was right, he liked it.
    Finally he spoke the way he wrote, and only to her. With precision and respect he said, “My dear friend.” And these unusual words hovered in the air, filled the room, and were impossible to follow. It was too much, it was overwhelming. In blind ecstasy and terror she grasped his hand, quite hard, and pressed it to her mouth. A terrible embarrassment overcame them. They stood up simultaneously and heard someone open the hall door and come into the room. He spoke quickly and very softly. “You are my protectress. I shall not forget you.” With a cautious grip on her elbow, he escorted her out into the front hall and helped her on with her coat. He opened the door. The person who had come in was large and tall, but she never saw him, only his boots, and nowshe was out on the stairs and then on the street, and the night was bright and quite warm. She walked up one street and down another and thought, My dear friend, My protectress, I shall not forget you. After such words, there was no longer any need to speak to each other ever again, and with great sincerity she decided that this was in fact a beautiful thing. She went home and went to bed and slept the whole night as peacefully as people do when a difficult work is completed – and completed with honour.
    The next morning was a Sunday. She lay in bed for a long time and tried to recall every remark, every silence, every gesture, all the colours and the lighting and the chilly music, but it all flowed together, further and further away, as unreal as in his books. She rolled over in bed and fell back asleep with her arms wound tightly around her body in a caress of quiet respect and expectation.

A Love Story
    H E WAS A PAINTER . For years, art exhibitions of all kinds had bored or depressed him. But when he walked into a tiny connecting room at the Biennale in Venice, he stopped abruptly and was suddenly wide awake. He stood in sincere and undivided admiration of a representational, almost naturalistic sculpture of a woman’s buttocks – in pink marble, cut off a bit above the knee as in classical representations of the torso, but also just above the navel. The sculptor had not cared about anything other than this free-standing, consummate posterior. Certainly he knew the Callipygian Venus, Venus with the beautiful buttocks who lifts her garment to assure herself with a glance over her shoulder that her derrière is her loveliest feature. But here the buttocks were wholly without props. They stood alone in pink marble, the rounded fruits of the artist’s love and insight.
    The sculpture stood on a black pedestal maybe one metre high, in a room with grey walls and northernlight, a tiny room between two doors. The wall opposite the window, the only one that offered enough space for a painting, was occupied by a work in scorched brown plastic. The sculpture was, in other words, completely undisturbed. Surrounded by dark colours, lit by cool daylight, it was like a lustrous pink pearl. The light embraced the marble and filled it with translucence. The painter thought this beautiful backside was the most sensual and respectful symbol of woman he had ever seen. People walked through the room from time to time but hardly paused. They walked on, while the painter lingered deep in thought, lost at last in the adoration of a work of art. He had always wondered what it would feel like.
    These buttocks had almost sumptuous contours, which were at once restrained and austere. The two halves rested together like a peach around its groove, the one slightly raised towards the curve of the hips. The