Free The Listener by Tove Jansson Page A

someone ask for his glasses when he doesn’t ask for any books? But maybe it was his distance glasses. He read the spines. Book Circle books and gift books. Inherited books. Famous books. He took out one of them and saw that the pages hadn’t been cut. He took out several more; almost none had been cut. Behind them, against the wall, was another layer of books – of an entirely different sort. Orchid cultivation, how to lay a patio, how to build a ship in a bottle. Bookbinding, fine carpentry, graphology, outer space. They were hidden because no one had ever read them.
    He replaced the books. The room was too hot. The sun shone directly in, and not a grain of dust moved in the shaft of light above the carpet. He felt very tired andthought that after all it might not be such a bad idea to get himself looked at, just to be on the safe side. He sat down on the sofa. Another four years, maybe five or six. Orchid cultivation seemed far-fetched. But trees, he could plant trees. Of course, that meant owning land, acquiring some acreage, buying a plot – a craving for land. Grafting, that meant breeding fruit or flowers, experimenting, getting involved in the work. Do I crave land? he thought. I don’t know what I crave.
    The room was far too hot. He tried to open the window but couldn’t figure out how it worked and gave up.
    What if I got myself a book about trees in plenty of time and tried to work up some craving? Or something else, there’s so many possibilities. But maybe trees were best. And maybe he ought to know something about chemistry, as well, soil composition and the right time to plant. He was upset and he walked about the room the way a person walks about a room – over to the window, around the table, to the bedroom door, pause, back again, stopping in the middle where the sun lay on the carpet, then back to window. Finally he called a taxi. He took the valise, tossed the keys through the caretaker’s letterbox on his way out. In the car he thought, I want to see how he looks. There’s no need to feel sorry for him, I don’t feel sorry for him, and it will be difficult to talk. But I want to see him.
    There was a big tree growing on the hospital grounds, either a maple or an ash or possibly an elm. Suddenly relieved, he realised that it didn’t matter in the least. If he cared about anything at all, then it was probably fruit trees.

The Storm
    S HE WAS AWAKENED by a banging ventilator and lay still and listened, noticing how the storm altered the light patterns on the ceiling. The shadow of the water pipes was an unchanging cross above the head of the bed, but again and again new reflections of swaying streetlights swept across the ceiling, and sometimes the lights of cars, though there weren’t many of those at this time of night. The skylight had been covered with snow for several weeks, and for several weeks he hadn’t called. That meant he would never call again. Now the door to the bathroom started to bang, and she got up to close it. Without turning on the light, she walked into the front room facing the street.
    The wind came in gusts and swept snow across the windows in hard, hissing blows, but it wasn’t snowing. Above and beyond the storm she heard a heavy, hammering noise that she couldn’t figure out. Occasionally it stopped and then resumed. Maybe roof tiles, maybe something else. The night was restless andstrange, and so was the room where she listened and waited, all of it submerged in the dark, greenish radiance that surrounds a diver in the ocean. She watched as the wind-sculpted drifts on the rooftops swirled upwards like smoke. The snow and the sky above the city shared the same dark light. Something is going to happen, she thought, they’ve been talking about it on the radio all day. Let it come. I’m so sick and tired of being sick and tired and just waiting, and most of all I’m sick and tired of myself.
    There was a light in the same two windows at the hospital, the ones