Lance Olsen - Calendar of Regrets

Sami lets his left foot thrill.

Approaching the very edge of not thinking, hands in pockets, wooden bowl of fish soup hovering in the middle of his consciousness, Jarmo happens to glance up and see her lying in the meadow thirty or forty meters away. Initially, he believes he is looking at the remnants of a thawing snowdrift. But the shape is completely wrong for that. Nor are there any other swaths of snow in view. So he convinces himself that he must be looking at an enormous bird. Yes. A swan, perhaps, shot recently by a hunter. Yet the truth is he has never seen a bird this big, he has heard no gunfire this afternoon, there exist no hunters in the vicinity. No. That can't be it. That can't be it at all. Hence, still walking, although not quite as quickly as before, Jarmo squints. He tugs back the corner of his right eyelid to press his cornea into obedience. He ducks and bobs his head, trying to pull the object of his sudden interest into focus.

The manner in which she curls into herself makes her wings arch up behind her like gigantic feathery parentheses separating her from the surrounding text of the world.

Her hair is the color of butter.

Her long diaphanous gown, the kerchief tied around her head like a bandage, are flawless white in spite of the patch of marshy ground on which she lies.

She is, Jarmo sees, barefoot.

She is barefoot, and, unthinking, Jarmo reaches for and tugs on his brother's baggy black sleeve. Sami raises his head. Half thinking about the nature and attributes of excess, he peers out from beneath the brim of his black hat and jolts at what he sees. Both boys come up short, as if the skeleton of their grandfather — the scrawny mirthless man with hands as large as boat paddles — had just appeared before them on the deserted road, reached into their chest cavities, placed five massive bony fingers around each of their young hearts, and squeezed as if he were squeezing out a pair of saturated washrags after a particularly long, luxurious sauna.

When they reach her, they are surprised to discover she is still breathing. Her weak exhalations smell redbrownish like cinnamon at Christmas.

Jarmo makes out the small triangular wedge missing from the lower portion of her left wing, and, near the top, a watery pink smudge of blood.

He circles the wounded angel slowly, appraising. Sami hesitates, falls back. Jarmo kneels. Reaching out to touch her shoulder, shake her gently to see what will happen next, how the plot of their day will advance itself, it strikes him that angels with their four appendages and tremendous wings are closer in essential physiognomy to butterflies, beetles, and bees than to mortals.

The attributes of angels, Sami thinks at almost the same moment, are insectile rather than humanoid in nature. How odd.

Withdrawing his hand, speaking as he thinks, thinking as he speaks, Jarmo asks his brother to help him find two long sturdy branches and a shorter third one with which to construct a makeshift stretcher. Before he has risen to his feet, however, the afternoon somehow lurches ahead of itself, becomes later than it should, the light more rundown. Jarmo feels time speeding up around him. It reminds him of riding on the Helsinki tram last summer with his mother and father, only much faster, the world slurring by outside. Blinking, he tries to shake it off as he might a horsefly's bite, but it isn't until he backs several paces away from the angel that the strange sensation abates. And then, as unexpectedly as it sped up, time slows down again. Jarmo decides not to mention this episode to his brother. Rather, he leads Sami in the direction of a single dead willow standing in the middle of the meadow. Here they will break up branches and tie them together with long fibrous strands of grass like their father taught them.

Her chest was flat, Jarmo considers as he works. He stands, light deteriorating around him, and shrugs off his jacket. Her chest was completely flat. Just like a boy's.

And you could see through her gown.

You could see through her gown and even if you tried not to you couldn't help yourself because there it was and you had to look and when you did you could see her what do they call it her pubic mound and it was smooth and blank and unblemished as a doll's.

An hour later, when the brothers return with the litter, they discover the angel sitting up. She is examining a bouquet of limp white bell-shaped flowers in her fist. She looks drunk, drunk or dazed, as if she can no longer remember the names of certain articles she knew the names of ten minutes ago. She does not glance at the brothers as they approach. Sami has the impression her eyes may actually be closed. It is even possible she is blind, she perceives through some faculty other than sight, like a bat or a wasp, although it is difficult to say with any certainty because the thick white kerchief she wears as a bandage impedes Sami's view. Jarmo signals him to lower the stretcher. Then he walks over to the angel, squats, reaches out his hand again to touch her shoulder in order to let her know they are ready to go. Time jerks forward. His hand is by his side. It is resting on her gown. There has been no inbetweenness. The angel does not turn her attention away from her flowers.

It feels to Jarmo as if he is living in a film with several frames missing every three heartbeats. The afternoon light weakens further, stars phosphoresce in the sky, they whirl through the night, the sky blanches into gossamer morning haze, the orange sun is rising, the red sun is setting, then it is evening, then it is night, then it is evening then it is night then it is morning. The angel is speaking to him without moving her lips, explaining, perhaps, explaining or describing, traveling with him without stirring, her voice in his mind reminiscent of the electric version of the color blue.

In heaven I will tell you. I will tell you in heaven . I not being who I am . Is not being how it is. This much is clear. One could even hazard that this much goes without comment. The same note, held forever. Let us call it middle C, for argument's sake. Middle C or B-flat. It doesn't honestly matter which, because this is simply one way of putting it. There are others. Or perhaps the same photograph, you call them photographs, every time you open your eyes. Now. Now. Now. This is perpetuity. My name, by the way, is… something. Although, perhaps, it almost goes without saying, it may be something else. In heaven, that is, I will tell you. My name is— Goodbye. It was so nice meeting you. Yes. We must promise to do it again sometime. The same photograph, you call them photographs… and so forth, or, perhaps, let us say swallows frozen in mid-flight for millennia on end, beyond the range of human invention. Moving by not moving. In heaven, in summation, the boom-boom. This much we can assert with some confidence. In heaven, the boom-boom, you call it God, you call it a black cube, the terrible weightless weight, for argument's sake, in heaven the boom-boom, holding all thoughts in His boom-boom, and therefore also holding none. In summation, in conclusion, to be brief, in a word, as a consequence of what has been heretofore asserted — Hello. What a lovely surprise. I simply reached down one day. Day not being quite how it… I simply reached down, in a manner of speaking, in a metaphorical sense, and my wing tore. I tore my wing, but… and this bears repeating… this possibly bears repeating… stranger things having happened… at least such an assertion remains open to speculation… it didn't hurt. No. Not at all. Nothing, I suppose, hurts in photographs. I simply reached down one day, to get at the crux of the matter, a wonderful phrase , crux, and tore my wing, my wing tore, here, you see, because of the boom-boom, then I wiped my hand on my feathers, here. Because, in heaven, not to put too fine a point on it, every verb is a noun. Pass the tea. Smell the flowers. Help yourself. The clouds above the lake, unmoving, painted upon an unchanging sky. No other parts of speech subsist. This is my point… so to speak. In the horror of the black cube, you call it perfection, one can only say what a fine day it is, again and again, admiring the clouds, pretending to admire the unmoving clouds in the unchanging sky, so perfect as to send a spike through the heart, prevent your breath from arriving, a wonderful turn of phrase, one can almost feel it, but all you do is wait in the train station, to put it plainly, where nothing will arrive, always. I reached down, this surely being my point, unless something else turns out to… stranger things have happened… I reached down and tore my wing, here, my wing tore, and then I wiped my hand on my feathers, here, and everything became a verb, everything became a curio, a curiosity, a carnival.