The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Authors: Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Tags: Fantasy, Contemporary
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her thirties. She would have put it on her passport if she could. But then the gynaecologisthad shown her, with the help of mirrors, that she was not the person she had imagined.
Once, at a lecture on aesthetics, she had admired a stranger, a man sitting to her right. She had watched him for half an hour, fantasized about him, and even decided to try to get to know him. Then he had turned, and from this new angle, he was unattractive to her.
It wasn’t possible to see an image of the whole person at once, because your point of observation was at one point on the axis of time, and the thing observed was shot through with innumerable points of observation. Every day would present a new side to view, and a being that you thought beautiful might suddenly prove unbearably ugly to you.
Falling in love with a person’s momentary being was as irrational as falling in love with the left side of his face, or the back of his head, or some other individual part of him. That was why Ella couldn’t really blame her former boyfriend for not knowing how to love her once her childless future was made visible.
In the midst of developing this complicated theory, Ella heard a noise. This time she was awake enough to see that there really was someone peeking in at her window.
There was a dark figure standing on the fire ladder knocking on the glass.
Ella didn’t move. She carefully tugged the covers up over her face until only her eyes showed. Then the moon flashed momentarily over the face of the knocker.
Unlike in her dream, it wasn’t Laura White’s body. It was the round, easily recognized hamster face of Arne C. Ahlqvist, alias Aura Jokinen, whom Ella had met at Laura White’s party.
The woman pressed her face against the window and left a blind spot with her breath. Ella had read the rules of The Game. She knew what this was about.
The sci-fi writer had come to challenge her.
The rules of The Game stated how the challenge should be made:
Every member of the Society has an unlimited right to challenge any other member to a Game. The challenge must be performed between the hours of 10 PM and 6 AM, and The Game itself, with both players taking their turn, must be played immediately upon making the challenge. The challenger has a right to make every attempt to challenge, using any means available, provided that delivering the challenge doesn’t cause unreasonable harm. The challenge shall be considered delivered when the one challenged perceives the presence of the challenger and the challenger perceives that he or she has been perceived. Once a challenge has been delivered, the one challenged cannot refuse The Game without forfeiting membership in the Society
.
Ella closed her eyes tightly and pretended to be in a deep sleep, trusting that a middle-aged woman with a family wouldn’t stay hanging from a ladder in the freezing cold for very long. She hoped with all her might that her mother, asleep across the hall, wouldn’t be awakened by the knocking and come rushing in to confuse the situation.
The figure finally disappeared, and Ella was calm again.
11
T HE CHANGE to her personal future was a deep disappointment to Ella, and she was also upset by many everyday worries. The bills had to be paid and the groceries bought. There wouldn’t be any open substitute positions until next fall, and her stipend had disappeared with the snowstorm. She made a long and thorough examination of her personal future and realized that she had to earn some money somehow.
One thing she didn’t want her future to include was unemployment , which for her had always meant a descent into dispirited listlessness.
Eventually it sank in that she couldn’t change the cards she’d been dealt. She just had to play them.
When Professor Eljas Korpimäki heard a few days before Laura White’s party that his favourite former student was going to be a member of the Rabbit Back Literature Society, he was thrilled.
“That’s incredible news.
Once, at a lecture on aesthetics, she had admired a stranger, a man sitting to her right. She had watched him for half an hour, fantasized about him, and even decided to try to get to know him. Then he had turned, and from this new angle, he was unattractive to her.
It wasn’t possible to see an image of the whole person at once, because your point of observation was at one point on the axis of time, and the thing observed was shot through with innumerable points of observation. Every day would present a new side to view, and a being that you thought beautiful might suddenly prove unbearably ugly to you.
Falling in love with a person’s momentary being was as irrational as falling in love with the left side of his face, or the back of his head, or some other individual part of him. That was why Ella couldn’t really blame her former boyfriend for not knowing how to love her once her childless future was made visible.
In the midst of developing this complicated theory, Ella heard a noise. This time she was awake enough to see that there really was someone peeking in at her window.
There was a dark figure standing on the fire ladder knocking on the glass.
Ella didn’t move. She carefully tugged the covers up over her face until only her eyes showed. Then the moon flashed momentarily over the face of the knocker.
Unlike in her dream, it wasn’t Laura White’s body. It was the round, easily recognized hamster face of Arne C. Ahlqvist, alias Aura Jokinen, whom Ella had met at Laura White’s party.
The woman pressed her face against the window and left a blind spot with her breath. Ella had read the rules of The Game. She knew what this was about.
The sci-fi writer had come to challenge her.
The rules of The Game stated how the challenge should be made:
Every member of the Society has an unlimited right to challenge any other member to a Game. The challenge must be performed between the hours of 10 PM and 6 AM, and The Game itself, with both players taking their turn, must be played immediately upon making the challenge. The challenger has a right to make every attempt to challenge, using any means available, provided that delivering the challenge doesn’t cause unreasonable harm. The challenge shall be considered delivered when the one challenged perceives the presence of the challenger and the challenger perceives that he or she has been perceived. Once a challenge has been delivered, the one challenged cannot refuse The Game without forfeiting membership in the Society
.
Ella closed her eyes tightly and pretended to be in a deep sleep, trusting that a middle-aged woman with a family wouldn’t stay hanging from a ladder in the freezing cold for very long. She hoped with all her might that her mother, asleep across the hall, wouldn’t be awakened by the knocking and come rushing in to confuse the situation.
The figure finally disappeared, and Ella was calm again.
11
T HE CHANGE to her personal future was a deep disappointment to Ella, and she was also upset by many everyday worries. The bills had to be paid and the groceries bought. There wouldn’t be any open substitute positions until next fall, and her stipend had disappeared with the snowstorm. She made a long and thorough examination of her personal future and realized that she had to earn some money somehow.
One thing she didn’t want her future to include was unemployment , which for her had always meant a descent into dispirited listlessness.
Eventually it sank in that she couldn’t change the cards she’d been dealt. She just had to play them.
When Professor Eljas Korpimäki heard a few days before Laura White’s party that his favourite former student was going to be a member of the Rabbit Back Literature Society, he was thrilled.
“That’s incredible news.
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