Once I’d danced enough in The Hague and Antwerp, I returned for my last night in the hotel. I stepped back in to my hotel room at around three. I heard a strange sound that appeared to be coming from the minibar. That poor little freeze hastily trying to cool itself down, but feverishly sweating like helpless child. The Sprite was warm and the Mars bar looked like someone had left it out in the sun.

I panicked and tried to cool down the minibar by opening the door. I thought I should breath new life into it, just like a country’s overheated economy. Or perhaps I should put wet little cloths on top of it or just completely switch it off. When it still didn’t want to cool down, I started to worry about a fire. Short circuits often start in broken fridges. A fire resulting from a short circuit is quick and hot and everything is over in the blink of an eye. I already saw the news headlines in front of me: “Much lauded author dies in a tragic minibar fire”. Naturally, I thought. Only rock stars die from drug overdoses in their hotel rooms. Neurotic comedy writers die in unforeseen minibar fires.

It would have been a dramatic end to the author’s brief showing, on behalf of her book, at the Crossing Border festival: going up in flames. Scant evidence – a few photos taken on the dancefloor and a minibar bill of 2.20 euro for an uneaten chocolate bar – would be all that remained to prove that the writer, Pulkkinen, was ever in Belgium and Holland.

Nonetheless, the minibar kept it together until the following morning. I didn’t die. Crossing Border wrapped up and I flew back to Helsinki. At home, both tired and deliriously happy, I listened to Patrick Watson, one of my discoveries at Crossing Border and I imagined that in a certain way I had actually stayed behind in The Hague and Antwerp.

As a writer at home, I’m really a little different. I dance just as much, I laugh, but I write in a different way.

I believe that writing is about taking on different roles. As far as I’m concerned you can call writers schizophrenics or empathic ethicists. Either way, they continuously act like other people with the aim of conjuring up differing experiences. After which they quietly slip away – or they perish in a minibar fire – and leave behind some words. The reader becomes engrossed in these words and then finds themselves. That’s how it should be.

The best thing about Crossing Border – apart from the music – was exactly that: pretending I was someone else. I was suddenly writing in a completely different way than before. I was surprised at myself; was there something in the water? Was that the reason for my change in style? Maybe. Or maybe it was the unique atmosphere at the festival and the exceptional nature of the Chronicles project. Never before have I written a small novella so easily. Never before have I had the opportunity – thanks to daily musical experiences – to build a live soundtrack into my words.

And so I wrote bizarre, short novellas about headless women and imaginary border posts. I have no idea where they came from. They came from the music or from me or from the writer who perished in an imaginary minibar fire at a hotel in Antwerp.

I hope the reader sees themselves in these short novellas and that they find me, the writer that I was when I visited Crossing Border for five days in November 2009. And we’ll greet each other and maybe dance a polka.

In the beginning

It is said

We were with God

Nonetheless

We are now

On everyone’s lips

And wherever

There’s chatter, discussion, they roar, wail, whisper

With lips dry, full

And at the speed of sound

We fly

Bumping into

Furnishings, walls

Pushing us up

Against bellies, hands, bosoms, necks

Rubbing the lobule

Near the entrance

To the shell

Through the dark passage, where we beat the drum, tinkle on the anvil

Helter skelter! Whoosh! Sliding through the labyrinth

Into the brain

Laughing, crying, raising heads, answering and so much more

Think about it

There’d be nothing without us

Words

Stand with us momentarily

Quiet

The bus, jam-packed with artists, speeds off from The Hague to Antwerp, literally crossing borders. Windmills always amaze those who’ve never been in Holland. Nobody’s ever amazed by an IKEA store standing in the middle of a field and making a show of itself.

“When will we be crossing the border?” somebody asks.

“Is there actually a border?” asks somebody else.

“The Schengen agreement,” a third says, “there are no more borders.”

The bus suddenly slows and comes to a standstill. A customs officer gets on. He looks a little bit like George W. Bush.

“What do we have here now?” the bus driver asks. “I’ve never seen customs here before.”

“Now you have,” Bush says. “This is a new directive. It concerns a new programme for European ideas on integration. We hold groups of artists at the border and ask them a series of questions, the first of which is about crossing borders. We may also ask questions about what Europe means. Are there any volunteers? Forms will need to be completed.

The artists hide behind their scarves, fur hats and guitars. They’ve come here to perform, not to talk about borders.

“I’ve heard there’s a writer here who has written book called ‘Border’. She can come up and fill in this form.”

“It’s the woman with the black hair who’s looking around shyly in her tight dress. That anxiety and euphoria appear bearable. Go on up and question her.”

The woman is led up to the customs building. A number of forms lie inside. The European Dream is written on one of them.

‘We’re trying to remain competitive,” Bush explains, caressing the dream form with pride. The woman shrugs her shoulders. She thinks: maybe every continent needs its own dreams.

“So,” Bush says. ‘It’s very simple. I’ll ask the questions and you’ll answer. We’ll complete this form together and after that you can continue on your journey to Antwerp. All the details will be collated and on the basis of the information gathered we will propose a new philosophy about European communality. You can certainly imagine the number of artists that have crossed this border. Bono, Lars von Trier… But back to business. Question number one.”

He begins speaking a little more quietly and theatrically raises the form in the air.

‘What do you think about borders?”

‘’Well,” she starts, “in my novel ‘Border’ I try to discuss the borders of human identity, and how these borders are unavoidably crossed. An appeal and the response to an appeal are in themselves a sort of border crossing. And then of course, there’s love. In my novel love, the power of love, overcomes the law…”

“I’m not interested in love,” Bush interrupts her. “I’m interested in Europe. Could you tell me what you think about the borders of Europe? Is Europe united and homogenous or is it a continent that is cut up by borders?”

She thinks for moment.

‘’Europe is like Monsters of Folk. I saw them performing at the Crossing Border festival in The Hague yesterday. There were a lot of interesting metaphors about crossing borders in their performance. Monsters of Folk is made up of musicians from three different bands. Each one has their own place, but none are tied to a particular role. They can also sing each other’s songs. Like Schengen, sort of.”

Bush makes a note on his form.

“Monsters of Folk,” he mumbles in a bored tone.

Then he comes to life. Hesitantly, he arches his eyebrow and sticks his index finger in the air.

‘Is that an American band?”

“Yes.”

“Aha!! So you’re defining Europe with the aid of an American rock band! How, in your opinion, can that be reconciled with European thought?”

“A folk group”, she corrects. “It’s about a folk group.”

“Even better. So you’re now defining European thought on the basis of American folk music.”

“Fine then,” she says. “It wasn’t really a good comparison. I’ll try something else. It’s also about language barriers in Europe and getting past these language barriers. Yesterday I heard a Belgian poet reading his poetry aloud. I didn’t understand a word of it. However, in another way because of how he talked, I did understand what he was talking about. I crossed that language barrier – or perhaps I should say the language border. I left something known behind for something unknown and to my surprise I found something trusted on the other side of the border. Maybe that’s what crossing a border is about. That’s what Crossing Border is about.”

“And he was Belgian, this writer?”

“That’s right.”

Relieved, Bush places a small cross on one of his papers.

“Good. And finally a multiple-choice question. In your opinion is Europe a) complete, b) incomplete or c) neither, but something else?”

“Neither.”

The customs office looks exhausted. Considering the pressures of his work, he probably would have hoped that she would answer with ‘complete’.

“So what is it then?”

“Open, completely open.”

Bush thinks about this answer for a moment. Then he stamps the form

“Fine then,” he says. ” You can go. The border has been opened for you.”

It’s hard to see in the dark church. She’d wanted to take the quickest route to the theatre, but when she heard that her childhood hero, Spinoza the philosopher, was buried near the hotel, she had to go and have a look.

She put on her best clothes, because she’s planning to ask Conor Oberst to marry her after the Monsters of Folk performance in the Royal. She hasn’t thought about what kind of life they’ll have together. Perhaps she could sell her stories to accidental passersby, while Conor makes music. It’s easy to tell the stories of others.

But now she’s standing in the roaring silence of the church.

It’s a simple gravestone: Baruch Spinoza, 1632-1677.

“Why did you come?” Spinoza asks from his grave. “I’m tired. Sleeping for eternity is such a chore.”

His voice is a little hoarse, which is always the case when you’ve spent centuries in a grave.

“I’ve come to ask for advice,” she says. “I want to ask a man to marry me tonight.”

“Really. Do you love him?”

“Yes. From a distance maybe, but I do love him.”

“Why?”

“His songs make my uterus dance.”

“Sounds like an obsession,” Spinoza replies. “I suggest you court him while dancing. That way you can disguise it just as movement if necessary, and you can back off if it all goes to pot. Leave your head behind as security for my counsel.”

“But how can I ask him to marry me without my head?”

“I already told you – dance!”

“My head is a rather big price to pay for your advice.”

“What were you thinking? That you could ask a philosopher for his counsel for nothing?”

“Fine. You can have my head.”

She takes off her head and puts it on the grave. She feels a little bit sad because she always thought her eyes were her most prized assets.

It’s a clear evening and she feels the freshening air tighten the veins in her neck. It seems surprisingly easy to get around without your head. And she still has her legs to walk about with and her hands to write. And her liver.

But of course, she thinks: she has a liver. Perhaps she can muster some Dutch courage with whisky. She walks into a cafe and orders a Glenfiddich. She pours the drink down the hole in her neck. Suddenly she realises that her credit card isn’t working. What now? How will she be able to pay for her whisky now?

“No need to panic,” the barman says. “You can pay with your liver. We always need spare livers that we can lend out under the counter to punters.”

“But then I won’t be able to drink anything else this evening,” she says, panicking.

“You could knock a few back now,” he suggests. “But that’ll cost you more of course.”

“Fine then,” she says. “Another triple whisky and you can have my liver and my hands. I’m not at all sure how I’ll be able to write. I have to write a lot at this festival. I’m part of a project called The Chronicles you know.”

“You still have your heart,” the barman says.

That’s on hold for a marriage proposal,” she says, without going in to details.

She goes outside. She feels incomplete. Maybe that’s also the lack of sleep, because the night before she danced until three in the morning. She heard St. Vincent singing for the first time and was carried away by her voice. She heard Laura Marling and Grizzly Bear and quickly became giddy with happiness. From time to time, joy causes an unexpected lightness, a floating feeling.

All of a sudden she realises that she left her backstage wristband on the hand she used to pay for her whiskies. What now? How will she be able to get to the stage?

She asks the doorman at the theatre.

“We also take legs as payment,” he says.

“But I have to perform here,” she tries.

“Without your head, it’ll be impossible for us to identify you; you could be anybody.”

“Fine then,” she says and takes her legs off. “I’m not at all sure how I’ll be able to dance without my legs.”

“You dance with your heart,” the doorman says.

In the theatre entrance she meets her fellow writers.

“You seem to be all over the place today,” one of them says.

“Yeah,” she admits, “this festival takes it out of you.”

Downstairs her little behind gets caught up in the crowd. She falls. The cool kids trample over her. Her pancreas and kidneys fall apart. Her breasts are flattened. Her nipples are like two stunned, wide eyes.

She decides to leave her useless little bum behind. She still has her heart. That’ll keep her going. With some difficulty, she begins hopping over towards the Royal stage.

Monsters of Folk have already started. She finally manages to get to the stage. She pulsates to the rhythm of the music. You couldn’t really call it dancing. The left chamber of her heart is thumping and the valve of her aorta starts proposing; marry me, marry me.

Oberst doesn’t see her. She’s lying at his feet. “Marry me,” she says, full of burgeoning hope.

When his foot touches her, she is just overwhelmed by an intoxicating feeling of happiness. Conor gave me a kick!  She goes flying over the audience. They think that the airborne heart is part of the performance.

Before she hits the wall and turns to mush, she hears someone in the audience whispering: “A human heart is actually quite light – 300 grams.”

It’s a handsome building; looks a little bit like a castle. I’ve heard that justice, peace and freedom of speech all live together here, in this city whose name I can’t pronounce without spitting, and in this building, with the cockerel resplendent on top of its highest tower.

A girl is sitting on the bench. She’s blonde and eating marshmallows. She looks like she’s decided to add a new section on trust to international legislation. She has eyes telling you you don’t need to be afraid of anything. That’s the girl to share climbing roofs of tall buildings with, spitting down below, smiling into the camera, taking a picture and sticking your tongue out at the sloping sky.

I actually know her; she’s Laura Marling. She sings breezily about big issues, as if she’s talking about having an ice-cream in a fairground on a summer’s evening

I feel like I want to talk to Laura about something weighty. And so I start with original sin.

“Do you also feel a strange sense of guilt in places like these?” I ask. “That happens to me sometimes when I’m standing in front of such important buildings. Suddenly I get the feeling that I’ve done something wrong. Just like when I was a kid and was scared that I’d unknowingly stolen a bar of chocolate in a shop and I’d hidden under my bed from the authorities.”

Laura looks at me like I’m a doughnut that’s been swallowed whole. She casts her eyes over the building, the cockerel, the towers.

“I think that fucking building looks like a comic book castle”, she says bluntly.

She stands up and kicks a stone against the side of the building. I imagine her as the Laura in her songs – rebellious, carefree. Maybe she also has her own private concerns, but she sings from the rooftops like life was a game.

“And anyway, ” she then says, “I’m not in the habit of feeling guilty. I blame my mother for everything mostly; it’s such a relief. You should try it too.”

All of a sudden she looks like a naughty child. She says:

“I’m actually in the mood to start a little riot; maybe that’ll breathe a little life back into the whole system”.

She’s already standing in front of the door, trying to get through into the courtyard. I hesitate, but then decide to still follow her. A security man stops us and demands to see our passes.

“We’re artists,” I try. “We don’t need passes. Besides, we have something to say. My friend the philosopher said that over the last few years international law has suffered a crisis. Just think about it for a moment. Since the terrorist attacks in 2001, law doesn’t have the same meaning as before. I think that’s got something to do with the economic crisis as well. The problem with state sovereignty, and such. So can we go on in now to share our opinion?”

I support my words by waving my arms around in the air.

“That’s what I call freedom of speech, ” I add, proud that I’ve been able to use that expression.

“Just go somewhere else to do something about freedom of speech. As far as I’m concerned, just go to a fairground. You’ve already got marshmallows.”

Laura thinks the security man is an idiot. And that I’m stupid too.

“If you want to talk about freedom of speech and the law, then you can’t say that. That ruins everything,” she says.

“What should I say then?” I ask, a little hurt.

She shrugs her shoulders.

“How should I know? Talk about doughnuts.”

“But I want to talk about important things,” I say. “I want to talk about freedom.”

“Well on you go then,” Laura says. She sounds impatient. “Say something then. You’re free to say anything you like. I’m listening.”

I deliberate, briefly. Now I have to say something important. Tensions rise and Laura looks impatient.

“Well?”

I can’t think of anything. Doughnut is the only word that comes to me.

Then these Greek concepts come me.

“Did you know that freedom of speech originally came from the Greek word parrhesia? And isegoria means the same thing. My friend the philosopher said that … ”

Laura interrupts me.

“What!? Now that you’ve finally got the opportunity to say what you want and you start talking about old, dead words! And she dares to call herself a writer. You’re so unoriginal, it makes me sick!”

“You think of something original then,” I say.

Hurt, I keep quiet. I don’t intend to say another word. I’m as silent as Karadzic in court.

She shrugs her shoulders. Then smiles and says:

‘”Cross your fingers, hold your toes, we’re all gonna die when the building blows.”

I dreamt that I had a new computer with the latest functionality; just like an airplane you could set it to autopilot. I tried it out and stuck in the search terms ‘The Hague’ and ‘column’. The computer proposed a column about Derrida’s analysis of Kafka entitled Before the Law. “You are going to The Hague, aren’t you?” it asked in a voice, which, incidentally, sounded like Woody Allen. “It’s quite pertinent to talk about Kafka, the law and Derrida in The Hague.” When I awoke, Woody Allen’s autopilot suggestions didn’t seem so good anymore. When you get right down to it, the trip is about my book.

The law – and how judicial understanding of the law loses its significance when faced with an appeal – is, coincidentally, one of the most important themes in my debut novel Border. I was 20 years old when I began writing Border. I had read Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics on appeals. I wanted to write a novel where people make an appeal, an appeal that violates the law. This is how the story of Mari and Julian, Anja and Anni came about. A story where people are dying, where they ask to die and, finally, they do; but nonetheless a story where most people live to tell the tale of the power of an appeal.

Since then my book has been translated into two languages; namely, Dutch and Estonian. When your book is translated and begins to take on another life in a different country, it’s almost like having a child grow into a teenager. Your daughter goes away on a trip. You give her money, try to dress her in suitably decent clothing, convince her to stay away from unsavoury little men. However, despite all the warnings, she puts on a mini-dress and arms herself with bolshy opinions. She’s not embarrassed about anything. She’s convinced that all her ideas are unique, that no one has ever thought something so profound before. In her mind a novel’s thesis and antithesis are equals and they live in the tension between the characters in the novel. That’s why the art of writing novels is primarily about ethics.

When I try to call her, she sends me a picture by mobile that she took of herself standing in front of the Rembrandtshuis. In reply I send her a message: “Just don’t curse!” But I don’t get an answer. I get messages about her from other people – the readers: ” It’s fucking fantastic here! Last week I hung out with a couple of cool guys. I’m never going home!”

Now Border is in The Hague. I’m scared she’ll be loud and unreserved in her opinion, just like youngsters always are. I’m scared she’ll make me a laughing stock by demonstrating in the hall of the International Criminal Court. And that she’ll stubbornly misquote Kafka: “It’s not only a watchman that stands before the law, it’s an appeal as well”. I’m scared that my teenager will start talking about Greek tragedy at inappropriate moments, that she’ll be both pompous and provincial at the same time and that she’ll use fucking as an expletive.

I follow her. I put on red high-heeled shoes. I bring my most important thoughts and a little bit of patience with me. I don’t intend to go to The Hague to silence my first-born. She can certainly say whatever she wants. I can’t explain what she means or help people to understand her. That’s just how it is with books and with human beings; in the end they lead their own lives. But the author, who gave birth to her, isn’t dying. She’s full of beans. There she is, in her high heels. Just look, she’s wearing a bit of lipstick. Pathetic, how obviously coquettish she’s trying to be. She taps her teen on the shoulder. The narked answer: “Fucking hell mum, I could’ve managed here without you.”

And in the end the author and her book make a party of it. In the evenings they go dancing. They’re no longer mother and insolent daughter. From a distance they look like sisters. As they turn back to their table, they talk to each other. That’s contemporary literature. A novel contains arguments and counter-arguments and an author gets the conversation going.

1
What happened so far
Version 1: God created the heaven and the earth and filled it with animals and two people. Adam and Eve. According to this theory, all of humanity must have descended from the original couple: Cain, Abel, Seth, David, Jesus, Beethoven, Hitler, Queen Beatrix and Barack Obama. Version 2: The universe has already reached approximately two-thirds of its life span, when in space an imploding solar nebula spawns a relatively small number of planets – still negligible in size compared to all the celestial bodies – one of which is filed under the S class. S for small, that is. The Earth. After millions of years of being constantly bombarded by asteroids, water begins to collect on its hardened surface. A similar time span elapses before an atmosphere forms. Another million years later the water retreats. Generations of unicellular organisms perish while attempting to leave their home, the primordial ocean, by crawling onto land across the withered, once brilliantly coloured, but now grey coral. A few billion of them suffocate; a few billion more are dashed ashore and destroyed. Over the course of time, the very few which manage to escape the water by a paltry few centimetres, dry out in the sun. Rather late on in the history of the universe, some ex-unicellular organisms, i.e. sea dwellers with lungs for breathing and feet for scratching with, begin to explore the dense foliage now covering the Earth’s surface. What follows is actually a footnote or epilogue. Dinosaurs eat each other until they choke on the rubble in the wake of a meter collision, and from the few survivors – mammals no bigger than mice – apes evolve, and within a relatively short time slot, so does man.
2
Here and now
The young man wonders whether he should pack his red suitcase or his blue bag for his trip to The Hague. The advantage of the suitcase is that it has wheels to roll it along effortlessly. The disadvantage is that you have to heave it up stairs with one hand. You can carry the blue bag over your shoulder. Although you’ll be able to climb stairs more easily, in the long run, you could develop a hernia from the shoulder strain. And who really wants that, thinks the young man. It’s not easy to predict what the weather will be like up North in the middle of November, i.e. in three weeks time, i.e. an eternity from now. As such, this calls for last-minute packing, meaning that the choice between a red suitcase and a blue bag will be postponed until just before leaving. My deliberations about this were actually a waste of time, the young man thinks. I have squandered two minutes of my life thinking about unnecessary things, things which in three weeks I’ll have to revisit when I have to make my final decision. This entire stream of thought is actually entirely superfluous, it’s premature, and because of unpredictable weather, it’s pointless. The young man briefly gets annoyed with himself.
3
And in the next episode
The young man must decide. What choices will he make? What do you think? Viewing Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring will awaken strange memories in the young man – Panic! Fear! Feelings of confusion! Then an unexpected change at a Yo La Tengo concert – Joy! Relief! A fleeting sense of elation! Was Spinoza right? Is the world made up of one thing called God? The young man will seek out the answer to this question. And besides – Passion! Disillusionment! Oblivion! And: Escher.