Daniel Katz. - Photo: Veikko Somerpuro.

What do Jesus, Aesop and the writer Daniel Katz all have in common? The key to the mystery lies in the second of the three names: fables are a part of all their works. Jesus spoke famously in (animal) metaphors, and the Greek writer Aesop is regarded as the father of the genre.

Daniel Katz’s 13th book, Berberileijonan rakkaus (‘The love of the Berber lion’, WSOY, 2008), is playfully aware of its ancient roots. In fact, his (post)modern collection of stories is, on every level, a conscious non-Finnish meta-fiction depicting the very process of writing.

Let me explain: the collection consists of twenty-four stories, each involving animals in one way or another. They were all sketched by a writer named Attila Kuf, whose funeral is depicted at the beginning of the book. In addition to Kuf’s writing, the collection includes a foreword and a postscript by Kuf’s friend, Mr Ypsilon, who is asked to complete his friend’s stories by Kuf’s widow. Kuf did not complete a single story, so the endings are all the work of another writer.

In one of the stories, the indecisiveness of Kuf’s narrator is brought to the fore: a publisher fittingly compares the incompleteness of the twenty-four stories to infidelity the size of a horse. It is fitting because, at least on an allegorical level, most of the stories in this collection deal with the woes of relationships.

The incompleteness of the stories also fulfils a philosophical function. After all, the fables originally provided readers with maxims, while the moral of the story was at the end. In the book, Kuf does not view life so simply: perhaps this is the book’s overall ‘moral’. In its wittiness and lightheartedness, Berberileijonan rakkaus certainly lives up to the other function of the fable. It’s hard not to laugh out loud at the trials and tribulations of the neurotic Kuf. In underlining his Jewish roots, Kuf’s self-flagellation (kuf is the Hebrew letter K) is something akin to that found in the novels of Philip Roth and his protagonist Nathan Zuckerman.

Like Roth, Katz (born 1938) also refers to his own authorial personality right from the outset with the letter-surname of Attila Kuf. The title story, ‘The love of the Berber lion’, is also linked to the author, if in a somewhat roundabout way. The lion is an animal common to many fables, but it also appears in the Bible, not least in connection with Daniel.

The subject of animals gives Katz many opportunities for the dark humour and gentle irony common throughout his work. The stories always highlight a sense of humanity towards the animals, even the insects. In the tragicomic story ‘Lord and Lady of the Flies’ Kuf gets a fly drunk, reads him the poem ‘A drunken fly’s buzzing’ by his late friend Karppinen, then inadvertently squashes the fly to death with a book while asking it its opinion of the poem.

This sympathetic humour, wild imagination and profound worldview have been elements of Katz’ work since his first novel Kun isoisä Suomeen hiihti (‘When Grandfather skied to Finland’, 1969). The book has been translated into nine languages, while his novel Saksalainen sikakoira (‘Schweinehund’, 1992), offering an insight into the causes of the Holocaust and the rebirth of fascism, is available in six languages. Katz has not yet been awarded the Finlandia Prize, although his love story Laituri matkalla mereen (‘A jetty to the sea’, 2001; see Books from Finland 1/2002) was shortlisted.

(First published in Books from Finland 4/2008.)

A story from the children’s book Sorsa norsun räätälinä (‘The mallard as tailor to the elephant’, Otava, 2008; illustrated by Christel Rönns)

Back in the days when mallard still had horns, earthworms, claws, and the bear had a long tail, a bear was trudging dejectedly along the road. Up drove a fox in his van, studded tires crunching, for it was winter and freezing cold. The fox was coming from fishing and his van was bursting with fresh fish. When he saw the bear, the fox stopped, rolled down the window and called, ‘Why hi there, old honey snout! Where’re you coming from?’ ‘I was playing cards at Badger’s. I lost all my money and now I’m starving,’ the bear replied. ‘Jump in. No need to suffer in the grip of this cold,’ the fox said.  The fox and the bear were good friends. However, the fox envied the bear, because Mr Honeypaws had a much longer, more handsome tail than the fox did. The bear clambered into the fox’s car and saw the enormous catch of fish. ‘Wherever did you get such an incredible amount of fish?’ the bear marvelled. ‘The lake. That’s where you get fish,’ the fox replied. ‘Last week I caught such a big pike that I made snow shovels out of its scales.’

‘I wish I knew how to fish,’ the bear sighed, his stomach growling with hunger. Right then the fox’s van blew a tire and the fan belt snapped.

‘If you get this thing fixed, I’ll teach you to fish,’ the fox promised.

The bear, who happened to be a car mechanic, fixed the problems in no time. ‘Come to our place at six tomorrow morning and we’ll go fishing together,’ the fox thanked him, and drove the bear right up to his door.

The next morning the bear clattered up the fox’s steps at five already. The fox peeked out the window of his bedroom, his eyes squinting.

‘You’ve got to be kidding. It’s just five in the morning and you’re waking me in the middle of my dreams,’ the fox yawned.

‘I thought I’d come early so as not to be late,’ the bear explained.

‘All right. Wait there. I’ll brush my teeth,’ the fox said, rubbing his bleary eyes. A moment later the fox strode into the yard. He had with him a shiny new ice fishing rod, an ice auger and a fishing stool.

‘How will I fish, since I have no rod and line?’ the bear asked with concern.

‘You don’t need a line. You have your own fishing gear on you,’ the fox answered.

‘That was a little over my head,’ the bear said, puzzled. ‘Where is it you think I have fishing gear?’

‘Peek behind you. There swings your fishing line,’ the fox enlightened him. The bear glanced at his long tail.

‘You want me to fish with my tail?’ the bear asked.

‘The tail’s the thing,’ the fox replied, smiling to himself.

They arrived at the lake. The air was bitter cold, and stars twinkled in the sky.

‘Looks like a great day for fishing,’ the fox remarked, stopping the van beside the dock.

‘How can you tell it’ll be a great day for fishing?’ the bear asked.

‘From the angle of your tail,’ grinned the fox.

‘But how will I fare without even any bait? You have the very latest and best gear,’ grumbled the bear.

‘You ask too many questions,’ growled the fox. ‘Real fishermen don’t ask, they act.’

The bear and the fox walked across the ice to the edge of the rushes. The fox took the auger and drilled a hole in the ice.

‘Stick your tail through the hole. The fish always bite here next to the rushes,’ the fox said.

The bear stuffed his tail through the hole and sat waiting for whatever would come next.

‘What should I do next?’ the bear inquired.

‘Nothing at all. Just sit and wait for fish to start coming,’ the fox replied from a short distance away where he was drilling a hole in the ice for himself.

The fox fed his fine ice fishing line into the hole, let out the line and began fishing.

‘We’ll see what Old Bruin has to say when his tail freezes tight to the ice hole,’ the fox snickered softly to himself.

‘Any bites?’ the fox called to the bear.

‘Not yet – but here comes one!’ the bear yelled. He pulled out his tail. From it dangled an enormous perch.

‘Got a perch!’ the bear announced. He detached the perch from his tail and put his tail back into the hole in the ice.

It wasn’t long before the bear jumped up again with a metre-long whopper clamped to his tail.

‘Got a pike, now!’ the bear chuckled. ‘Do you have many fish yet?’

‘Not a single one,’ the fox replied, and had barely got the words out before the bear was already whipping his tail out of the ice hole. This time a handsome pikeperch was fastened to it.

‘Got a pike-perch!’ the bear exulted.

The fox began to feel cross. He tossed away his fishing pole. He was fuming.

‘Don’t worry, dear brother. You have a tail, too. Try the same trick,’ the bear advised.

The fox threaded his tail into the hole in the ice and waited. The bear kept whisking forth fish, but the fox did not catch even a minnow.

‘I’m sitting here till I catch a fish!’ the fox snorted to himself.

A half hour passed. The bear had heaps of fish, the fox had not a one.

‘This is ridiculous. I’m going home to make some pea soup,’ the fox hissed.

He tried to pull his tail out of the ice hole, but it would not budge. His tail had frozen fast to the edge of the ice hole. The fox was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

‘Stop fishing and get over here on the double!’ the fox yelled to the bear.

The bear trudged over to the fox and saw that he was indeed in a predicament.

‘Now you are in a tight spot,’ the bear said, scratching his head.

‘I guess I know that much!’ the fox shrieked. ‘Don’t stand there gawking, do something! Call the fire brigade!’

The bear ran like lightning to the nearest house and called the fire brigade. It was not long before firemen raced to the beach in their red engine.

‘What’s the matter?’ the fire chief asked.

‘The tail,’ the bear answered. ‘The fox’s tail. It’s frozen fast.’

The firemen sprayed the ice hole with hot water and the fox was freed from his predicament.

The bear scooped all his fish into his enormous arms and trundled after the fox to the van.

‘Thank you, Fox, for teaching me how to fish. My heartfelt thanks,’ the bear smiled.

The fox said not a word. He was sulking. But the bear was in such grand spirits that as he clambered onto the van seat, he closed the door on his tail, still swinging on the outside. The tail snapped in two.

‘There went a good fishing line,’ said the bear.

And ever since that day, bears have had short stubby tails, and foxes are no longer envious of bears. On that same day, wild ducks lost their horns, earthworms their claws, and in Hungary a chicken emerged from an ostrich egg sporting a baseball cap and a tie.

Translated by Jill G. Timbers
(First published in Books from Finland 4/2008.)

The lion’s name was Muthul. He was an old Berber lion from the Atlas Mountains. He had a black mane, a black tail with a bushy tip and the scars of many battles on his hide.

He had grown up as a lion cub in the royal palace at Carthage at the time when the Romans, led by Scipio the younger, destroyed the city with fire and sword. The palace was set ablaze, a bloody battle ensued in the gardens, Romans impaled on arrows lay strewn in the rose bushes, Carthaginian blood dyed the water in the fountains. Someone had let all the palace animals, wild and tame alike, out of their cages; they were running around wildly, killing each other in the grip of panic, then disappeared inexplicably.

As the battle continued, an exhausted Ligurian mountain soldier leaned against a statue of Astarte, and he saw a lion cub hiding its head behind its paws between the goddess’ legs. The mountain soldier stroked the cub’s back and placed it in his cowhide pouch so he could sell it to the Roman circus. A moment later the crown of a cedar tree crushed the Ligurian’s head as he tried to ransack the burning palace.

The cub was rescued from the flames by a Numidian fighting for the Romans. He threw the Ligurian’s pouch over his shoulder and retreated spluttering through the smoke and out into the courtyard. Once outside, the pouch began to growl. The Numidian dropped it on the ground and kicked it. The pouch then began to whimper pitifully. The soldier opened the pouch and saw the furry muzzle and pair of slanted eyes inside.

Have I saved the devil from the lick of the flames, wondered the Numidian and prepared to stab the beast to death. The lion cub then crawled out of the pouch and began to lick itself. The Numidian remembered the kitten he’d had as a child and decided to spare the cub. ‘Let your name be Muthul,’ said the Numidian. ‘It means “little devil”.’

The Numidian sold the cub to his chief. The chief then bequeathed it to the court of King Masinissa. Masinissa trained lions for his own sporting events in the gardens of his palace in the city of Thirmida. There Muthul grew into a powerful lion with a long, black mane and whiskers the length of a cubit. At the age of five Muthul tired of practicing exhausting, meaningless tricks. He knocked his tamer unconscious with a skilful blow of his paw, jumped over the ten-foot fence and sprinted roaring along the city alleyways, dashed through the city gates into freedom and did not stop running until he reached the Tell Atlas mountains.

Once in the mountains he joined a small pride of Atlas lions. By roaring and fighting and scheming he rose up the pride’s hierarchy. By using all the devious tricks his trainers had taught him, he eventually reached the position of chief lion. As leader of the pack he could keep all the females for himself. He didn’t allow the other males a single female.

Muthul reigned over his harem until the age of sixteen. Then a younger male appeared, an ugly, one-eared giant from far away, perhaps from as far away as Mauretania. The ugly lion challenged Muthul to a fight. Muthul responded by roaring and his opponent attacked him furiously. Muthul’s old tricks were of no use; as the autocratic leader of the pack he had become proud and lazy. The Mauretanian almost tore him to shreds.

Muthul fled in disgrace. After that he hunted by himself, ate by himself and slept by himself. He became a hermit.

At that time, Jugurtha, the new king of Numidia, was beginning to wage war against the Romans. In the lowlands an army was on the move again, Numidian mounted cavalry, Roman legions and their Moorish allies on camelback.

Muthul remembered the fire of Carthage, his time in prison and his narrow escape. Soon fires would be lit, the din of weapons and terrible war cries would fill his ears, great war-elephants would hurtle towards him and the ground would shudder. Neither would Muthul be safe in the mountains; the soldiers would come up there too with their whistling arrows and torches and battle cries.

Muthul decided to travel as far as he could. He had heard that beyond the great desert lay green land and forest with plenty of grass and lots of animals of different sizes eating the trees’ leaves, animals he had never seen or tasted before. Muthul set off across the Libyan Desert towards a brave new world.

After he had walked for three days and was dying of thirst, he heard a soft rhythmic patter in the sand and saw a handsome camel wobbling past, so close that only a narrow sand dune separated them. The camel was travelling south; it was carrying a small load and there was no rider on its back, all that covered its saddle was a blanket. Muthul gathered all his power and rage, ran up to the camel, jumped on its back and dug his teeth into the animal’s neck, but didn’t snap it. The camel stopped, trembling, and stood perfectly still listening to an immemorial proverb that kept beating at the back of his small mind: don’t try to shake a lion from your back, it will bite your neck in two. It will do this anyway, but not always.

‘Where are you travelling, humpback?’ asked Muthul.

‘To the Jarman Oasis,’ replied the camel, his yellow teeth chattering.

The camel had been born at the oasis. Now that his rider, a young Moor, had been killed by a Numidian arrow, he was a free camel once again and was returning to the place of his birth.

‘What a coincidence. That’s where I’m going too,’ said Muthul. ‘Unfortunately I’m going to have to kill you and drink every drop of your blood to quench my thirst.’

‘That would be very short-sighted,’ said the camel. ‘And it would be the end of both of us. Beneath my blanket you’ll find flasks of water which my Moor filled before his death.’

Muthul found the flasks, bit a hole in the side of one with his fangs and sucked out the water, emptied the second, and allowed the camel to drink from the third.

‘March, long-legs,’ commanded Muthul and made himself comfortable lying against the came’s hump.

After a day’s trek, the camel dropped to his knees to rest. Muthul jumped from his back, ran around the camel a few times to stretch his limbs, then lay down to rest next to the camel, right up against his side to make sure he didn’t run off in the middle of the night.

When the camel stood up the next morning, Muthul jumped on his back, ready to continue their journey. The camel, however, refused to move. That night he had thought things through.

‘What will be a camel’s reward for carrying a lion on his back?’ he asked.

‘You have my word that I will not eat you,’ said Muthul.

‘That’s easy for you to promise, but still you’ll bite my neck in two before we get to our destination,’ said the camel.

‘Why would I do that?’ asked Muthul. ‘If I did that, I’d die out here in the desert.’

‘You can’t do anything about your nature,’ said the camel, who had heard the story of the frog and the scorpion.

‘What do you know about my nature?’ said Muthul. ‘I am in control of my fearsome nature, I can control my wild instincts whenever it is necessary. I’ve had a royal upbringing.’

The camel was unconvinced by Muthul’s words and stood stubbornly on the spot. At this, Muthul promised, in return for his troubles, to protect the camel from any dangers, such as lions, wolves, hyenas and leopards.

‘Those animals don’t live out in the desert,’ said the camel.

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ said Muthul. ‘And I, a Berber lion, promise to protect you against the Tuaregs, so that they won’t capture and enslave you again.’

This promise the camel took seriously and began walking. At resting places he ate leaves and shoots, even filling his hungry mouth with the thorny branches of the acacia bush. Muthul hunted small animals. He ate ferrets, land crocodiles, several lizards and a small hoomet which tasted like a lizard.

Some people considered them to be unclean animals, but Muthul didn’t care. He probably didn’t even know this.

Thus Muthul’s journey with the camel across the Libyan Desert continued, towards the Sudan and Darfur. He dreamed about the savannahs, even further off, where the grass was high and green and the flesh of the animals was juicy.

Finally they arrived at the Jarman Oasis. There didn’t seem to be a single Tuareg caravan in sight. There were plenty of animals by the water’s edge, in the shadow of the palm trees, in amongst the bushes, and further off in the shelter of the dunes; all kinds of animals, familiar and strange.

Muthul bid the camel farewell and thanked him for the ride and the water. The camel was moved to tears and decided not to believe in fables in the future. Greatly relieved, he left the lion and walked towards a group of three camels and a female zebra, lying close together, half-asleep, chewing lazily in the shade of a date palm.

‘Brothers, sisters! You won’t believe all that has happened to me in the last few days…’ began the camel.

The female zebra listened to the camel’s story, glancing every now and then at Muthul, who had lain down and rested his weary head on his paws, shaded by the bush some way away from the others.

‘He could have bitten my neck in two in an instant, but he didn’t,’ the camel continued fervently.

‘He made a promise and stood by his word. I had no need to fear that he might still have… But this lion has complete control over his wild nature, this noble and stately animal, brought up in a royal court, thoroughly trustworthy…’

The female zebra’s name was Punda Milia. She lived alone and wasn’t part of a herd. She was the only zebra at the oasis. In fact, she was probably the only zebra ever to have found her way to the oasis, thought the camels, who had all wandered far and wide across the world. Someone had heard that Punda Milia had become withdrawn at a young age, as she had been bullied in the herd. Her mother was a quagga, half zebra and half wild horse, with only partial stripes that looked unfinished, while her father was half plains zebra, half Grévy’s zebra, and that is why her head looked more like that of a donkey than a zebra and her ears were large, dark-brown, round and conical. When she was born, she only had stripes on her head, neck and chest. Her legs, hind body and stomach were still stripeless when, as a foal, she first stood up and waddled behind her mother. Her lack of stripes meant that the others began to shun her, particularly the younger members of the herd. Only her mother stood up for her. As she grew older, to everyone’s surprise and against her nature, she began to develop stripes on the grey-andwhite areas of her body. Even her large ears had two stripes each: one in the middle and another at the tapering tip.

Punda was unaware that her late development of stripes was unnatural. She was completely unaware of the changes in her hide, as the behaviour of the rest of the herd remained unchanged; the discrimination continued as usual, only now it was out of envy.

One day she had finally had enough of it and decided to leave the herd and go off by herself. She wandered across the mountains of Ethiopia and from there down into the Sudan and the steppes of Kurdufan. From there she was chased on her way by jackals and nasty servals. After wandering for six months she finally arrived at the Jarma Oasis, barely alive, nothing but skin and bones.

By the time she met Muthul, she had regained the soft curves of her figure. Her eyes were filled with the glow of life once again, and with those eyes she looked at Muthul.

Before night fell, as the sun sunk behind the Atlas Mountains and the animals retreated to their burrows or climbed into the protection of trees or huddled close together, Punda Milia moved away from the camels and closer to the resting lion lying beneath the Carob tree.

Muthul watched the zebra through half-closed eyes, and his mouth watered and his tail quivered; hunger wrenched at his stomach. He crept closer to the animal that resembled a horse, and in a flash his sensory memory brought the strong, sweet taste of horsemeat to his tongue. When he was close enough, he knelt down low, raised his head so that he could see the creature properly, her stripes, her powerful head, her funny fringe, her white teeth munching the grass, her tail as it skilfully flicked flies from the moist areas around her buttocks. But Muthul didn’t attack her.

Punda Milia was the most beautiful female creature Muthul had ever seen. Punda turned slowly, a brown Carob pod in her mouth, and looked at Muthul softly, then turned away again, briskly shook her neck and continued ruminating. The muscles in her hips quivered wildly beneath her tight skin.

Muthul and Punda Milia began a passionate love affair. This was the first erotic encounter for the zebra, made all the more wonderful as the pleasure was mixed with moments of fear and terror. For the old lion, it was as though he were reliving his youth.

On the third night, Punda Milia signalled to Muthul that she would not mind if he made violent love to her. She had never considered herself particularly attractive. Now she wanted to feel dominated, possessed and forced.

Once, just once, Muthul’s lovemaking became too violent. He pulled hard at Punda Milia’s neck, his teeth sunk deep into her skin, blood spattered into his mouth, the taste of blood forced his jaw to clamp shut and snap the Atlas vertebra in his striped beloved’s neck just as she cried out with pleasure.

Punda Milia’s heart burst with overwhelming joy. It beat for a moment, warm with love, then broke of sheer happiness.

Muthul was inconsolable. He wept for his dead, striped love for two days. On the third day, he ate her.

Translated by David Hackston

(First published in Books from Finland 4/2008.)

Jukka Itkonen. Photo: Irmeli Jung.

Päivi Heikkilä-Halttunen on Jukka Itkonen’s quirky fables

In Jukka Itkonen’s collection of fables for children, Sorsa norsun räätälinä (‘The mallard as tailor to the elephant’, Otava, 2008) the plots and heroes of traditional fairy tales are turned on their heads. This kind of parody drawing on old-time folktales has been introduced to Finnish readers by translations of the British author Babette Cole and her feminist-flavoured picture books.

‘The fox and the bear’ reinterprets the folktale of the same name. For generations of children it has explained why the king of the forest today has only a stub of a tail left: the cunning fox tricks the trusting bear to fish in a hole in the ice, using his handsome tail as bait, and the tail of course freezes to the ice, with fateful results. Jukka Itkonen’s version leads to the same tail docking, but the story also plays with Finnish men’s experiences of cosmic solitude, including details from the particulars of ice fishing to today’s world of cars and fire engines.

With their piquant and sometimes wildly inventive details, Itkonen’s tales also allude to media phenomena of present-day Finland and to certain public figures loved by the tabloids. The characters favour karaoke and Eurovision songs along with the music of Jean Sibelius and, in ‘Maiden in the tower’, the heroes Pekka and Paavo even meet the composer himself. For her illustrations Christel Rönns selects duly crazy details from the stories.

In the traditional Finnish folktale, a mouse serves as tailor to a cat who places an order for a coat, but the mouse uses up all the material, finally producing just a small purse – and so the annoyed cat devours his good-for-nothing tailor. In Itkonen’s version, an elephant wishes to remember his dear late wife by having a purse made out of her hide but, incapable of producing this item, the mallard tailor finally pulls off a hot air balloon, and the elephant, soaring up in the sky, is more than delighted.

Jukka Itkonen (born 1951) is best known for his children’s poetry. Itkonen has written the lyrics for more than 700 songs for entertainment artists and many of his children’s poems have been set to music. The name of his band, Z. Z. Topelius, pays homage to Zacharias Topelius, the 19th-century father of Finnish children’s literature. Itkonen also translates children’s literature into Finnish.

Jukka Itkonen reinvents the fable tradition, at times writing fairy tales and poems set in the animals’ natural habitats with factually correct material and, at other times, human character studies reminiscent of Aesop’s fables. Readers find a carefully thought out philosophy of life within and between Itkonen’s lines. He approaches matters with a naïve sense of wonder, like a child. To him, nothing is too trivial to merit thorough marvelling.

(First published in Books from Finland 4/2008.)