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    Walker on Water
    Walker on Water
    Walker on Water
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    Walker on Water

    By Kristiina Ehin

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    About this ebook

    A woman cultivates a knack for walking on water, but is undermined by her husband's brain, which he removes each night when he returns home from work; a couple overcomes the irksome mischief of the gods; a skeptical dragon wonders what sex is all about: this is the world of Kristiina Ehin. From the 2007 British Poetry Society Popescu prize winner for European poetry in translation: a series of comic, surreal adventures. Kristiina Ehin's quirky voice takes each story directly from the dream state, at times stubborn and resistant, at other times masochistically compliant. Ehin offers up modern folktales in which the very nature of our human identity is at stake-rampant with images and archetypes both new and old, and mediated by the abrupt changes we can only experience in dreams. KRISTIINA EHIN is a highly acclaimed performer of her poetry, prose and drama in Estonian as well as English. This is her first book of stories to be published in the U.S. In her native Estonia, she has published six volumes of poetry, three books of short stories and a retelling of South-Estonian folk tales. She has written plays, as well as poetic radio broadcasts. She has won Estonia's most prestigious poetry prize for Kaitseala-a book of poems and journal entries written during a year spent living as a nature reserve warden on an otherwise uninhabited island off Estonia's north coast. In the UK, she has published six translated books of poetry and three of prose.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Unnamed Press
    Release dateAug 18, 2014
    ISBN9781939419408
    Walker on Water

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      Book preview

      Walker on Water - Kristiina Ehin

      WALKER ON WATER

      Kristiina Ehin

      Translated by Ilmar Lehtpere

      Unnamed Press

      Los Angeles, CA

      Unnamed Press

      Los Angeles

      www.unnamedpress.com

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Copyright 2014 © Kristiina Ehin

      Translation Copyright 2014 © Ilmar Lehtpere

      The stories Lena of the Drifting Isle, Walker on Water, Patterns, The Dried Apricots of My Six former Husbands and Cushions, each originally appeared in English translation in The Bitter Oleander.

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

      International Standard Book Number: 978-1-939419-22-4

      Acknowledgments

      These translations are published with the support of a Traducta grant from the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

      Some of these translations first appeared in Best European Fiction 2013 (Dalkey Archive Press), The Bitter Oleander, Molossus, ELM, A Priceless Nest (Oleander Press) by Kristiina Ehin and In a Single Breath (Cross Cultural Communications) by Kristiina Ehin

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Walker on Water

      Patterns

      The Last of the Monogamicans*

      In Athens upon Emajõgi*

      The Love Organizer

      Teacher of Joy

      The Surrealist’s Daughter

      The Off-Roader’s Daughter

      Partly Good

      The Beekeeper’s Stepdaughter

      Full Circle

      The Princely Paintbrush and the Princess

      The Dried Apricots of My Six Former Husbands

      Stranger

      Lena of the Drifting Isle

      Gold Key

      Four Skaters

      Cushions

      Dragon’s Diary

      Stone Chunk and Beautiful Question

      So It’s Finally Happened

      Diary of Fear

      Wedded to Myself

      Evening Rendezvous

      About the Author

      About the Translator

      Walker on Water

      1

      The man who later became my husband had many female admirers. They all desired him just as much as I did. There’s nothing more exciting than desiring a man who doesn’t even notice you.

      Jaan is a highly educated man. He works as the director of the Climate Change Monitoring Department at the Academy of Sciences. All of his female admirers have tried to make an impression on him on an intellectual plane, as Jaan’s brains are so exceptional.

      But I won his heart in a very simple and altogether primitive way. One night I ran to his door stark naked. I said someone had made off with my clothes while I’d gone swimming in the night. Everything went as it went.

      So now I’d got in through his door. But my competition still hung about in reading rooms, at round tables and all sorts of seminars.

      I glowed with happiness. We went to live at Jaan’s ancestral farm. This was Mardi-Jaani farm located at a rather narrow cove between two headlands on the Baltic Sea.

      But Jaan’s female admirers didn’t go anywhere. Even so my belief in Jaan and our love was exceptionally tenacious.

      At Mardi-Jaani coastal farm I began again to indulge in my favourite pursuit – walking on water. This demanded the same blind faith and supple strength as loving Jaan did. When Jaan went to work early mornings, I started stepping along the still surface of the sea on the shallow water. I was already managing this quite well. But further from shore I was gripped by fear. And then I sank to the bottom like a stone. I understood that the whole art lay in your ability to completely switch off your brain. You can work wonders with the lightness that then comes. I splashed my way to shore and started again with downy-light liftings of my feet. Without thinking about anything I touched the silver reflection of morning light with the ball of my foot. I was calm, light, sure and focused. I reached the middle of the cove. The tips of the headlands stretched out on either side. I’d reached further than ever before.

      That’s enough for today. I turn around slowly and walk back to shore.

      My marriage is like walking on water too. It’s easy if my feet can reach the bottom. It’s a game with little danger when everything is just starting out and the little waves lick your shoreline with pleasure.

      2

      Lately I’ve discovered that my husband’s head opens at the back. I hadn’t noticed that before. There’s a hatch there. When Jaan comes home after a tiring day at work, he opens the hatch and takes his brains out. They steam on the table, but Jaan stretches his legs out on the sofa and looks at me with his happy, drowsy eyes.

      3

      I wanted an intelligent and educated man, but what I got was a brainless oaf.

      One day a jealous urge awoke in me. I thought that if I can’t share in Jaan’s brains then they might as well not exist. I suddenly grabbed his brains into my arms and took off running towards the shore in spite of the darkness and the biting wind.

      I stepped onto the high crests of the waves. I put all my willpower to work to

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