“The Wallpaper” by Anu Kaaja, translated from Finnish by Darcy Hurford

If you asked me what my work was like, my answer would be that painting just means looking carefully, and that you see more clearly and lucidly than normal when you have a brush in your hand. You’re not asking me that though, as you want to hear a story, so I’ll tell you mine.

I don’t have the imagination to come up with anything new, but I’ll tell you what I’ve seen and reproduce my memories on paper as best as I can. It just so happens that I’m excellent at reproducing things. It was a skill I acquired at a young age when I funded my studies by restoring old portraits and making reproductions of paintings for aristocratic families.

Although I ended up dropping out of my course, I immediately received an excellent job offer from a certain lord, probably due to my surname and some favourable remarks about my discretion.

The assignment was to paint a reproduction of a late-eighteenth century wallpaper which, unusually enough, had been hand-painted directly onto the paper. The wallpaper was located on a country estate that doubled up as a museum, and I was to live there while I was painting the copy. All my expenses would be taken care of and the remuneration was ample. Without hesitation I accepted the job, packed my bags and headed north, and at this point my story can begin.

The estate steward, an elderly man, gave my suitcase to a servant to carry and said that surely I would like to get settled in and maybe get changed, but I replied that I was impatient and would really like to see the wallpaper straight away.

The steward nodded and led me up the stairs, along a long corridor and straight into the room where the wallpaper was. Then he asked me to wait and said he was fetching the boy. The boy? But the caretaker didn’t say any more; he merely left through a door on the opposite side of the room, closing it behind him.

The entire back wall of the room was dominated by the wallpaper with its yellow background. The other walls were adorned by leaf-print paper that was in the same tone but clearly came from a later period when printing technology had developed. The picture on the actual wallpaper bore traces of Chinese style but the final result of the European painter’s work looked almost medieval. The picture simultaneously depicted a garden and a forest, as if the painter hadn’t been able to decide between the two subjects.

The wallpaper had game birds and fruits, berry bushes, ponds full of reeds and hunters on horseback, but the perspective was extremely odd for the period in which it was painted; in fact, you could say there was a complete lack of perspective; the raspberries bulged the size of hazel grouse, the carp and hunting dogs were next to each other and in the same order of size; the branches where the birds were supposed to be sitting appeared to be level with them. The concepts of foreground and background were evidently unknown to the painter; the reddish white-eyed birds, completely flat as if dead, impaled by the chubby branches, the yellow-tinged birds on the blossoming fruit trees that looked as though enormous flowers had been pushed through them by the stems.

Besides the wallpaper, the room held a large dining table, laid as if for a special dinner, with artificial food and an arrangement of fruits. The room had originally been a bedroom or dressing room, however, as beside the doorway was an almost imperceptible door leading into a small, closet-like recess that had once been used for powdering wigs. Next to the door stood a modest empire dresser, on top of which there was an old Victorian plaything. A horse.

“So, there you are.”

I turned. The speaker was a tall and slender young man, barely twenty, and he had entered the room through the door behind my back almost inaudibly. This then, must be the boy the steward was talking about.

“Here’s your wallpaper, esteemed artist. What do you say to it?”

“It’s extremely well preserved and restored.”

“Certainly, and you must be wondering why a copy needs to be made?”

“I never speculate, I just do my work.”

“Ha ha ha. Good. That’s what we want as well, what he wants, the lord. Tell me though, would it bother you if I watched you while you work?”

The boy surveyed me from head to toe, as if he intended to make a copy of me.

“No, not at all.”

“Not at all?”

The boy’s expression was intrusive, the kind that makes some people feel uncomfortable. I’ve always lacked the ability to get flustered though. I think it’s because I’m not really interested in other people’s opinions, especially not when they’re imagining to themselves.

“Not at all.”

“Good. We get quite a lot of visitors, and it would be a pity to close off the room while you’re working here, particularly as a lot of them want to see this wallpaper. And it is, as you can see, very special. We’ve got postcards of it on sale in the shop.”

“I understand.”

“So it won’t disturb you if there are guided tours?”

“No.”

“Excellent. As far as the practical matters are concerned, ordering equipment and so on, you can give the steward a list and he’ll arrange it for you. For any other matters you can rely on me.”

The boy said, smiling.

I managed to start work straight away the following morning and soon learnt the route: the bedroom – the visitor’s café – the wallpaper room. That was all I needed to know. My working rhythm was punctuated by the guided tours, which were held in turn by the boy I’d met and the other guides, three in total.

As well as other duties, the boy was taking care of my lunch, which he brought in on a large tray and we ate together on a card table inside the wig room, sitting on folding chairs.

The boy always spoke in a pleasant voice, walked in a feminine way and smiled more than necessary. To start with I thought he was the lord’s son, but later I found out  that the lord was unmarried. The boy also appeared to be living on the estate, along with me and the steward; he never took the car home at the end of the day, but would appear in the kitchen of the visitors’ café to set out breakfast before opening time, always just after I’d finished my own breakfast. I never met the lord himself as he ate and lived entirely within his own quarters.

At lunch time, the boy took care of the talking. One of his talents appeared to be the ability to talk animatedly about anything at all. Sometimes the subject of conversation was the history of various food types, local specialities, or the development of table settings up until the present day. Generally though his talk consisted of mundane observations and questions. Did I like blue cheese? What about salami? “Some people can’t stand the idea of eating horses, but you clearly aren’t sensitive like that. Ha ha ha”. The boy never laughed properly, he just smiled and fidgeted persistently and said “ha ha ha”, just as if he were reading straight out of a textbook where someone was laughing.

“I like my work, I love talking to groups of people, don’t you? Not really? I could never do such a solitary job, I just couldn’t! I’ve always wanted to be an actor. I need an audience!”

“And now you’re here.”

“That’s right! Ha ha ha!”

Strangely enough the boy’s blather didn’t bore me. There was something reassuring about it. He clearly didn’t have any company during the day, as the other staff tended to avoid him. One time he leapt up during lunch and performed part of a minuet that he’d learnt for a history day held at the manor.

“We wore wigs and knee breeches! Ha ha ha. Someone suggested they should be our normal working uniform, but he didn’t think that was funny.”

The boy became serious for a moment as he always did when speaking of the lord.

“He hates everything historical.”

“So why did you organise the event?”

“For the public, of course. Can you imagine, his bedroom quarters are completely modern, no antiques at all, the walls all painted white. He’d do the same in here too if the heritage agency let him. No wallpaper. Ha ha ha. But now I’m boring you.”

“Not at all.”

I said, and meant it. But the boy was embarrassed and awkward as he always was when he’d spoken out of turn. He swept up the plate in front of him, even though it was still half-full, and disappeared with the tray.

Later from the window I saw the boy accompanying an older man, to all appearances the lord, who was off riding. The lord flung himself into the saddle and the boy handed him his riding crop, and then horse and rider tore off. The boy turned back, and as he walked to the main entrance he seemed to be deliberately keeping his eyes on the ground, as if he were aware of me watching.

On the public holiday the manor was closed and the staff had the day off. I had decided to make a working day of it though. Although I was of course dimly aware of the enormous manor and estate surrounding me, waiting to be explored, my work didn’t leave me scope for anything else. It was the two of us, me and the wallpaper. The images I’d painted, the images I was yet to paint, every raspberry, grape, plum, goldfish, carp, deer, and hazel grouse, a bird pierced by branches, the hunter on his horse. All the elements in disorder, without perspective, on an oxide yellow background.

I mixed the colours with a horse brush, the ochre tone of which had become too bluish, when the door opened and the boy stepped in carrying the tray.

“Aren’t you taking the day off either?”

“Day off? Ha ha ha.”

The ha ha ha was almost a whisper. He put the tray down on the big table and sneaked behind me to watch as I finished off a pear-sized horse and rider. By then things were already companionable between us, the boy’s interest and intentions, although unspoken, were so obvious that he could just as well have offered himself up on the table instead of lunch. However, I never responded to him with words or gestures as somehow I saw him as the property of my employer.

“Did you always want to be a restorer?”

“No, when I was younger I wanted to be an architect.”

“Why did you change your mind?”

“The reproductions were better than my imagination.”

I waited for the boy to say “ha ha ha” but he was silent. I mixed Prussian blue into the rider’s jacket. When I looked up I realised the boy had moved and was leaning against the wallpaper, just the part I was copying. There was crack in the pond and the rider’s foot was just stepping into the boy’s side. I bit the brush. The boy stared out the window. Then, maybe for the first time, I saw him completely still and silent. Maybe it was the first time I saw him at all, as it’s easier to see things when they’re still, in pictures.

Then I noticed how the wallpaper seemed to come to life now there was a bigger element leaning against it. All the distorted animals, people and fruit in the wallpaper world I’d been staring at for weeks, all on the same scale, all with the same value, were suddenly of lesser value, and they emphasised the boy, who was bigger than all of them. For a moment I almost understood the wallpaper and the artist who painted it, how the picture was intended to interact with its surroundings and the people standing in front of it. Then I realised the boy was now looking at me. We stared at each other, until the boy pretended to understand the situation and winced.

“Oh sorry, I didn’t even notice.”

The boy said, moving from the wall to the window, his features receding in the backlight.

“Do you want some tea? I’m afraid it’s a little cold.”

He didn’t bother waiting for my reply but swiftly moved the objects on the presentation table to one side and laid the tea things for us in the middle of the room. I wiped the paint stains from my hands and sat down opposite him.

“Don’t you worry about disturbing the arrangement?”

“What arrangement?”

The boy snapped.

“This table. The table arrangement…”

“Everything can be put back in its place.”

“But will it be exactly the same?”

“Don’t you worry about that. Have you noticed this, by the way?”

The boy pointed at the horse on the empire dresser.

“An excellently preserved Victorian plaything.”

Quoting the guided tour text. The boy smiles.

“But have you noticed that something’s missing?”

“Missing?”

“Look at it from another angle.”

I stand up and go to the other side of the table, and see that the horse only has one hind leg; the other one is a broken-off stump.

“Special.”

“Isn’t it? I always tell groups to stand on this side so it looks intact.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever noticed anything?”

“No”

The boy glanced at the horse:

“But I do sometimes wonder; in what outburst of fury did it get broken? At that time, children were whipped regularly, but did it help? Even a little angel in a sailor suit wouldn’t have been all that serene. Ha ha ha.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, as I didn’t know what he was getting at. He started to collect the tea things. I went back to my work and looked at the wallpaper, but now it looked as though something was missing. In my mind I could see the boy standing still in front of the wallpaper, and I couldn’t unsee him from the painting however hard I tried. And all the while I could hear the clattering of crockery by the table as if the boy were simultaneously both in front of me and behind me. Then he appeared beside me holding the tray and the picture went flat.

“He hates that wallpaper, the lord does. Apparently he’s hated it ever since he was a child.”

“What about you? Do you hate it as well?”

“Hate it? Ha ha ha. Why would I hate it? When a good guide is telling a story, he can choose the right perspective, select suitable truths and make everything appear beautiful and exciting. And I want to be a good guide, it’s my dearest wish – if not my only one.”

The boy said and disappeared with the tray into the corridor, into those parts of the manor I’d never seen beyond a glimpse of the floor through an open door and for a moment I felt like following after him.

A week before the wallpaper was just about finished I sent the lord a message through the steward. The same evening I found an envelope on the table in my room containing a first-class train ticket and a wad of notes, a bonus payment.

I completed the work a day before the date marked on the train ticket. The finished wallpaper stood still in its frame, waiting. I was packing up the last of my tools when the boy entered with the tray. He set out lunch in the wig room again; the public holiday was an exception, this time the artificial food on the table could rest peacefully on the plates.

The boy was unusually quiet. I realised that this was the last time we would eat together and that he might be sad about me leaving. In a way, I was too, but it’s best not to display excess emotion, that’s never wise.

“Listen, I have something particular to ask you”

The boy said as we were finishing.

“Yes?”

“Come to this room this evening.”

“For what reason?”

“Just come. At a quarter to nine. And please be on time.”

Then the boy got up, lightly touched my shoulder and clattered off with the tray. I thought about what course the evening might take, eventually arriving at two alternatives: either this was the lord’s formal thank-you visit, or the boy had decided to seduce me. As yet I took no decision on whether to consent in the latter scenario. I didn’t think it would be wise until the whole fee had been paid into my account.

Evening arrived and I entered the room. The boy was waiting at the door and there was no sign of the lord. Some candles had been lit; I’d never seen the room in such dim lighting before. The wallpaper reproduction was now standing, framed, in front of the original wallpaper, making the room appear somehow truncated. I didn’t question the aim of this arrangement;  if I did need to know, no doubt it would be explained to me, and if not, I had no business asking. I waited for the boy to make the first move. I decided to give him a kiss, once, twice would be fine, maybe we could take things a bit further as it was a kind of farewell, but after that, I decided, I’ll definitely tell him no.

After a moment’s silence the boy touched my hand and led me into the empty wig room.

“Stay here and watch; don’t make a sound.”

I sat down on the wooden floor. He left the door ajar so that I could see almost the whole room along the wall in front of which the wallpaper was placed.

He paced back and forth across the floor like an actor getting into his role. At that same moment, the door opposite, the one I’d never used, opened and the lord entered in a smooth white collared shirt and impeccably pressed white trousers. He stood with his back to me, looked at the wallpaper, and walked from one end of it to the other. When he disappeared from my field of vision, I knew exactly what he was looking at. I remembered each bird, branch, bush, pond and horse by heart.

Having examined the wallpaper, the lord turned to the boy. Seeing them together I couldn’t tell at that moment whether I was looking at lovers, a master and servant, or both.

“It’s exactly the same.”

The lord said.

“Isn’t it just? A very talented painter, I’ve followed the work closely. Ha ha ha.”

Then the lord pulled a long wooden object out of his pocket with which he poked the boy in the side.

“Begin.”

The lord said to the boy, who stepped to where he knew I could see him. He looked straight at the crack of the door, and I looked back. Now, with one of us officially invisible we could look freely at one another and for as long as we wanted. Then he cleared his throat and began to recite the familiar text of the guide book:

“We have now reached the dining room. The wallpaper you can see over there dates back to the eighteenth century and was put in place before the manor passed into the hands of the current owner’s family, which means we know neither the exact date of its commissioning nor the artist. The wallpaper was later covered over with ordinary wallpaper, but it was rediscovered during repair works carried out at the end of the nineteenth century. It was restored and has been on display ever since.”

As the boy spoke, the lord walked around the room brandishing the wooden stick. The boy continued speaking, but now the text was no longer the official version:

“Or should the wallpaper have remained concealed? Should one generation after another have to endure the painter’s poorly developed sense of perspective? It’s a question we might well ask, as today there is someone among us who has always had an exceptionally well-developed imagination.”

The boy pointed at the lord:

“He studied architecture because he wanted to create a clear world, one in which there were depths and planes, not one where the birds are impaled, carp grow to be the size of dogs and the ponds look like upright puddles. For years though, he witnessed how these birds and animals continued their two-dimensional existence, had to watch how their fellow creatures, mastering three-dimensionality and correct perspective, could live and then be eaten at this table, forming part of the natural life cycle, while these non-birds, these horses have been gone through life crippled, incomplete and eternally flat. And eventually the bodies of the real birds were replaced by plastic, as you can see.”

The boy spun around, gesturing with his arm towards the table and its artificial food in a very melodramatic way, but the lord nodded his approval of each word and gesture. The boy continued:

“Now though, the time has come. The time has come to curse you, unknown artist! We curse you, heritage board staff! And all you other authors of his misfortune! Because this evening, you prisoners of the wallpaper, you wallpaper game birds, horses and riders, we will liberate you!”

The boy retreated towards the crack in the door where I was; he was so near that I could have touched his leg had I wanted to, but my attention was captured by the red flushed face of the lord, standing in the middle of the room and biting the wooden stick, which at that moment I identified as the toy horse’s missing leg.

The lord raised the stick and struck the wallpaper copy with it, shouting with rage. The sound of ripping alternated with the sound of brutal perforation as the lord systematically proceeded to rip the reproduction from end to end, using the horse’s leg to puncture the paper. Finally the lord threw the leg at the boy, who ducked at the last minute. For a long time the lord continued tearing at the wallpaper with his bare hands until nothing was left of the copy I’d made except the frame and the shreds on the floor. Then the lord slumped onto his knees, panting with his mouth wide open. The boy returned to the stage, swiped the horse whip from behind the empire dresser, and pointed it at the lord kneeling on the floor.

“Now!”

The boy shouted.

“No, I can’t, have mercy!”

The lord panted, but the boy struck him on the cheek with the whip and shouted:

“Yes you can! You have to, so that these birds, these raspberries, these riders, ponds, reeds, everything, can enjoy a new life inside you, inside of the man who can see them at the correct distance, in the correct position. Eat it!”

The boy struck the lord with the whip again. The man started picking up shreds of wallpaper and putting them in his mouth, and then he started to chew. The boy pushed more shreds towards the lord with the tip of the whip. The lord moaned while eating, his mouth full of fibre.

“I’ll geh conshtipation!”

“It’s just a temporary reshuffle. Swallow it!”

The boy said and the lord carried on eating, forcing dry pieces of wallpaper into his mouth. Now and then the chewing was broken off by a fit of coughing, which was followed by the crack of the whip. At times I struggled to keep looking at the old man crawling on all fours, forced to swallow and struggling against the nausea.

There was a queasy expression on the boy’s face and his forehead glistened with beads of sweat, but he kept to the script:

“Finally! Those reeds that were thicker than a goose’s neck have been dredged! And finally, the birds tortured by perspective have found peace, and so have the riders!”

“Howshatposhible?”

The lord asked, his mouth full of wallpaper.

“They’ll rearrange your insides! Your insides will be papered with liberated animals and plants, they’ll reach the right size and position, and your outsides and the walls will be white and clean!”

Finally the lord slumped on the floor, exhausted. The boy helped him up and led him from the room. Behind the frame of the wallpaper copy the original wallpaper was visible, still just as firmly fixed in place, the images just as the same as I remembered them.

I  stayed in the cupboard for a long time in case they were coming back. An image of out-of-perspective horses chewed to a pulp in the old man’s mouth flashed before my eyes. And the boy’s flushed face.

Suddenly from the crack around the door I could see light spilling into the room, into the middle of the shredded wallpaper. I pushed the door open and stepped out into the room. Then I saw that there was no one else there; no one living. From somewhere on the walls though, the shadows of animals had appeared. I searched for the source, but the only thing in the room was the wallpaper, and it had come alive. Slowly, with a squelch, each of the images  – the fruit, the birds, the horses – was emerging from the yellow paper, and on separating they became three-dimensional.

Then.

The garden and the forest rushed over me, the flowers and the fruit burst out into the room and the air was filled with startled hazel grouse, pheasants and snipe. Everything was moving – the arch doors, the butterflies the size of birds, the trees the size of butterflies – everything flowed, flew – the pears – seeped, grew and shrank at the same time – the carp, the reeds. The table, artificial food and crockery fell and smashed to pieces at the feet of the running images, the images whirled from one wall to another, spinning in a circle. The room was full of moving landscapes and colours, too-vivid colours, breakage and thundering steps. Horses the size of dogs galloped above my head and ran over the dresser, toppling the three-legged horse as they went, and I reeled in a vortex until, finally, I covered my head and silence broke out among the chaos.

I awoke when the sun began to gleam through the windows, reflecting on the white walls. The boy was sitting beside me, stroking my hair. There was a modern dining table in the room with chairs, a dresser in the corner, and neither of them had any objects on top. I brushed the boy’s hand, got up and went to the window, I saw the garden, the fruit trees, the pond, and the birds flying above them. The hills loomed in the distance behind the trees. On the green slope was a receding black spot, reminiscent of a runaway horse.