Troll: A Love Story (19 page)

Not yet at home, but he’ll be home soon.

He’s never stayed away for long.

Today I waited so long on the stairs with my shopping bag that the staircase woman came out and saw me, pretending it was by chance. She saw some strawberry wine and chocolate on top of my bag and started being sugary and nosy. I could hardly breathe, and I whispered to her as if she were my friend that I was expecting a visitor today. A wonderful, important friend.

I saw her eyes flashing.

ANGEL

As soon as I’m through the outside door I start digging in my pocket for the keys. I try again. I stop and try all my pockets.

They’re not there.

I have to get to Pessi. I have to get to him right away.

I’ve never in my life bothered that caretaker woman about anything, but now I rush up to the first floor like a panicking hare and ring her doorbell, trembling: be at home, be at home, be at home.

PALOMITA

More steps—hurried—and now it’s him, now he’s filling up the peephole’s little round world.

Before I can get down from my stool I see he’s not going further up but ringing the hair-curler woman’s bell. He rings and rings—he’s all nerves—and then the door opens, and I see his knees are almost giving way under him as the woman stands in the doorway smoking a cigarette. Mikael’s explaining something. He leans on the door frame with one hand, tapping nervously while he speaks. The woman disappears inside and then she’s back in a moment, holding a bunch of keys, which she gives to Mikael, stressing something, smiling knowingly, and Mikael keeps nodding as if his head might come off.

I hop off the stool—now, now, now, just now—and open the door, and Mikael’s had no time to take even two quick steps towards the top floor when I’ve invited him in and said I’ve got something very, very, very important to say, and Mikael stops and wrinkles his brows but then he comes over and says “Well?,” and I take him by the arm and pull him inside.

And I know the staircase woman has seen it all.

ECKE

Angel can’t have got hold of another key, because his doorbell rings faintly for the fourth time behind his door. Maybe he’s not even managed to get home yet or even checked his keys. All the more delightful for the keys to be already waiting here and, on top of that, an excellent bonus. I make up my mind to go in: I’ll be all set when I hear the footsteps. I’ll fling the door open and shout “Surprise!” to a bemused and overjoyed Angel.

Besides, it’s high time. For some mysterious reason he’s never invited me into his home. He’ll not fly insanely off the handle—will he?—if I turn up inside without being asked? Intruding into the abode of the angels?

And of course, now I remember: there’s something else. Gustaf Eurén and
The Wild Beasts of Finland, Illustrated in Color.
I’ve a hell of a good reason for going in and getting the book. Angel hasn’t returned it, though I’ve asked him for it several times.

It’s a fucking valuable book.

I pull Angel’s keys out of my pocket and weigh them in my hand.

I have the right. Don’t I?

PALOMITA

He looks worried and a little far away, but he’s here after all—his golden hair, his eyes—the only ones that can turn a blind eye to my breasts, my black hair.

He asks what’s upsetting me. I look him in the eye and smile: he’s got to read from my face how much I like him. Because this is the last moment to let him see. Because there’s no going back now.

And just as I’d thought, just at the right moment, it happens, what had to happen, the solution.

The key turns in the lock.

ECKE

The key turns in the lock.

ANGEL

I turn and, bloody hell, there’s Koistinen, Palomita’s very own commercial traveler.

Koistinen’s shortish, pot-bellyish, reddish, and baldish, a little bit of everything but nothing right. The creeks on his temples are glistening with a few sweat-drops.

“So this is what’s going on.”

His voice is quite calm and rather insolent. As if he’d been expecting something like this all along and now his suppositions have been confirmed.

“A whore is a whore.” He gives Palomita a shove, making her stagger against the wall, and she lets out a swift flood of speech, a mixture of English, Finnish, and some language I don’t know.

“Cut it out, slut. Let this Casanova do the explaining.”

I try to salvage the remnants of my dignity. “Mikael Hartikainen, from the floor above, good morning.” I offer my hand, but Koistinen evidently sees it as a leg of boiled fowl fresh from three weeks in the fridge.

“Just turn your back here, it seems, and the shagging starts.”

“Wait, there’s some complete misunderstanding. I left my keys somewhere—I was just over there, getting the master key, when your wife wanted to ask me something. And since we know each other slightly from before—”

Koistinen’s face shows me that this is the last straw.

“From before is right. But I’ve laid it on the line to her: no dealings with strangers.”

“Dealings? There’ve been no . . . dealings here. A couple of times we’ve said hello on the stairs and thus become acquainted and—”

I was about to say “paid a call,” but I realize straight away how this pink Neanderthal would read it.

“So how acquainted did you become?”

Koistinen’s proceeding like some Finnish film: he’s the country parson booming questions at some milkmaid suspected of intercourse with a farm hand. And the whole situation’s so bizarre I’d be bursting into hysterical laughter did I not see in Palomita’s eyes the glow of a feeling—fear, and something else, something unidentified and daunting.

Just then I hear, directly from above, a noise—seems like something heavy falling—a piece of furniture or something. It’s from the floor above. From my flat.

Pessi’s doing something he shouldn’t.

I’ve got to get back up there, stop this farce as quickly as possible. Koistinen’s jaw is jutting out like a bulldog’s. He’s decided to turn the hall into a courtroom and thrash things out with delectable long-windedness. He’s the judge. He’s the jury. In my hurry, I decide to be the surprise key witness.

I spread my arms, jut out my hip, shrug my shoulders, sweep my hair back and purse my lips, camping up a nasal whine:

“Goodness me,” I crow. “There can have been no hanky-panky here! Koistinen, haven’t you realized: I’m . . . hmm! Good grief!” I swing my hips. “Well, one of those!”

Koistinen gives me a short look and, to put the cherry on my performance, I throw him a wink.

His fist flashes out like lightning, bashes me on the cheekbone, and the other thumps into my belly. He’s cursing and blinding, and I fall through the open door on to the stairway, flat on my buttocks. The door slams shut behind me. When I get up I hear a faint shriek, which suddenly breaks off.

ECKE

Light’s seeping into the hall from deeper in the flat. My God, the first thing I set eye on, through the sitting-room door, is the end of a white-leather sofa. Everything in sight cries out style. Glass and chrome, natural wood, white, grey and black. Lithographs on the wall.

I’m floored. I’m altogether too vulgar, altogether too tasteless for a hotshot with a home like this. I’m an animal.

Shoes at least I must take off.

When I bend down to slip them off, I realize the flat’s permeated with a strong spicy forest smell, the same heady smell that sometimes wafts around Angel. Angel’s aftershave? I instinctively sniff my body. Oh, bloody hell, my man-made fiber college shirt’s been on for a week already, and it tells.

I put my shoes neatly side by side under the hooks, peek in the hall mirror, pull my comb out of my hip pocket and try to get some sort of order into my mop of uncut hair.

I hear signs of life on the stairs—but they’re coming from lower down—it’s not Angel yet.

I go into the sitting room, the kingdom of light tones, the wonderland of careful consideration. Straight into an interior-design magazine.

Just then behind me on the left there’s a scratching.

Something black darts against the white.

And then everything goes red.

ANGEL

My cheek’s hurting as I climb up the stairs. There won’t be much more than a bruise there, though, and that can be covered up with makeup.

I’ve been gripping the master key all the time. It’s sweaty and hot. I open the door, and I smell something.

Metallic it is, and pungent—mixed with a smell of fresh excrement.

I go through the hall into the living-room. And then—I want to throw up. But I can’t. Every muscle’s totally paralyzed.

Ecke.

Ecke. Near his hand, on the floor, there’s my bunch of keys.

Ecke’s laid out on the floor, and just about everything’s covered in blood. The white leather sofa’s a lurid death cap toadstool, spattered with red. Another large—and oh how red—mouth has opened in Ecke’s throat. Ecke’s bowels have emptied themselves into his jeans.

When I am able to throw up it’s some sort of relief.

I crouch down, vomiting on the parquet.

Ecke, Ecke, Ecke—oh, Ecke, what have you done?

Why did you come here—you, so clever, so sharp-tongued, more than a little blasé and yet the bashfully laughing little boy, slightly at sea in life.

So inventive in bed, ready for anything, frisky as a fish.

You, whose sweat-and-sperm male smell has sometimes flickered around me—and wafted to those black, sensitive nostrils, as a blow, a threat, a signal from a foreign troop.

Pessi’s bouncing about restlessly but a little stiffly, as if his legs were on springs. He looks at the body and me, over and over again. He’s proud as hell but at the same time slightly worried. He doesn’t know what he should do, eat or give the prey over to me—to me, the only troop he’s got left now.

DR. SPIDERMAN

They stand in my waiting room, dark blue, slightly uncomfortable, exuding their authority.

“And the situation requires us to have a veterinary surgeon at hand to supervise any anesthetization.”

“A large predator? In someone’s home?” I ask, raising my eyebrows to convey the greatest possible surprise, playing for time, though as yet I’ve not the faintest idea what to use the time for, and my heart’s pounding. O Angel, how art thou fallen from heaven, son of the morning!

“Neither did we, sir, at first take the report altogether seriously. But after seeing several extremely compelling photographs, and certain bodily injuries, we found that the allegation was worth looking into. It seems, on the face of it, very unlikely—a wild animal of this caliber harbored in an apartment building. But to ensure security and fulfill the legal requirements, we require a veterinary surgeon on the premises. If anything untoward happens, then the animal can be—”

They maintain a half-second’s pause, and I know precisely what’s in question.

“Put down.”

“Yes.”

“If it’s not . . . put down, then what happens to it?”

The police look at each other; this question they hadn’t anticipated.

“Be sent for biological research, I presume. It’s such a rare animal.”

My consulting hours are ending, the evening light’s gilding the window. Angel.

The policeman fidgets nervously.

“Presumably, sir, you have all that’s necessary here on the premises . . . we heard from your receptionist you’d performed such duties before.”

Put down sick dogs, yes. Big dogs, too.

“I’ll be ready immediately. Just a couple of minutes, please.”

The policeman nods.

“May I ask you to wait over in the waiting room for a moment?”—and relief flows through me when they turn with a nod, exiting just as I’d hoped. Luckily doctors—even animal doctors—are obeyed instinctively, without question. Even the police don’t stop to wonder why, just now, they have to wait outside.

I lift the receiver and my hands are sweating. While the ringing tone buzzes and buzzes and buzzes, I rehearse stammering sentences in my mind: go, go, go at once, take Pessi somewhere far away, go before they get to you . . . And the phone buzzes and buzzes and finally—as an immense surge of relief floods over me—Angel finally replies.

ANGEL

My cell phone at my ear, I stare at Ecke’s body.

“Actually,” I say equably to Dr. Spiderman, “I’ve already been thinking it might be time to go.”

DR. SPIDERMAN

And so I, Jori Hämäläinen, doctor of veterinary surgery soon to lose my license, walk toward the police car, where Special Branch officers are waiting.

ANGEL

Blood’s roaring in my ears, and some wordless, defiant march is ringing through my head, keeping time to my panic and banging away as hollowly, heavily and fatefully as my heartbeats, when I switch off my cell and toss it down the toilet. I put on my forest-green Gore-tex, the light and durable waterproof outfit I bought for Lapland when I spent a week there with Pauli but haven’t worn since. I lace up my thick-soled, waterproof, ankle-supporting hiking boots, the ones I bought to impress Jens and wore them in well enough doing it.