Troll: A Love Story (5 page)

A.W. CHALMERS,
THE HIDDEN TRAILS OF MANKIND
, 1985

At the close of the Miocene period salt began to be concentrated in salt basins, and there was a global decrease in oceanic salinity. In consequence, the Antarctic seas began to ice over, doubling the size of the ice cap, and lowering sea levels worldwide. The trees began to diminish in size and the African rain forest shrank in extent, leaving only smaller areas where the arboreal apes are still to be found. The eastern side of the continent became a savannah of grass country, dotted with woodland. This savannah experienced alternating wet and dry seasons, times of abundance and times of dearth, seasons of flood and seasons of cracked mud. The upright two-limb carriage of the hominid Australopithecus allowed its adaptation to this new environment. No longer confined to trees, the hominid was no longer dependent on them.

A similar convergent-evolutionary adaptation occurred in another mammal, the “cat-ape” Felipithecus, bred in the Southeast Asian jungle. The broad shoulders, long arms and partly prehensile toes of both Australopithecus and Felipithecus suggest that both animals still resorted on occasion, perhaps for refuge, to trees. But with the declining availability of trees Felipithecus had to adapt to a new and variable terrain. In search of food, it sought a new home in the East Asian plains and finally the Siberian forests.

PALOMITA

The stairwell’s a big, listening ear, with the bell echoing ring-ring-ring, fainter and fainter, until it disappears. I’m at Mikael’s door, but Mikael’s not at home. I’ve checked the time: it’s the same as when I last met him, but anyway he’s not here. I couldn’t check through the peephole in the door to see if he was coming, as I’d had to clean the flat and do a lot of washing, and the noise of the washing machine drowns the footsteps from the stairwell.

But now there’s a sound below, and I turn, and my heart starts racing—and I can’t tell if it’s fear or a vain hope. That friendly fast-talking woman who lives opposite us is coming up the stairs, though she doesn’t live on this floor. I could easily fit into one of her pant-legs. Pentti got her to open the door of our apartment one day when he’d lost his jacket with the keys in the pocket. She always wears the same pantsuit with thick checks sewn on, and she has large dangling earrings. She asks me what I want Mikael for, smiling with her head on one side as if she really wanted to be friendly, while her question sounds rather cross.

Mikael’s been around to our apartment and put a brand-new, expensive Spanish-language glossy magazine through the mail slot. It was a good thing Pentti wasn’t at home when he brought it. Mikael had stuck a little card on the cover with a paper clip, saying “Thanks for the help” in English and some rather funny-looking
Spanish, and he’d signed it Mikael. Mikael, not Miguel. Mikael obviously thought I knew Spanish well, though I can’t read more than a few words. Very few Filipinos still speak Spanish. Actually, I can’t read very much English either. But the magazine’s pictures are beautiful.

I don’t, of course, tell her all this but point to the can of cat food and the door. It won’t fit through the mail slot; it’s too fat. I’ve wrapped a piece of paper around it, fastened with a rubber band. It says, “For your cat. Thanks for the magazine, Palomita.” The woman bows low like a checked mountain. She speaks a very slow Finnish, carefully twisting her mouth on each word. I realize she’s saying I must come again some other time, or would I like her to deliver the package instead. She holds out her hand, with its tight rings. I shake my head. I don’t want to give the can away. Getting the money together has taken me a long time. I’ve hidden the magazine in the hamper. Pentti never touches the laundry.

The woman goes, winking sympathetically. I hurry into the apartment. I’ll have to hide the cat food as well, until another time.

ANGEL

I don’t know what I expected to find in the library. A beautiful shiny-backed reference book, perhaps, called
The Domestic Feeding of Wild Beasts
? And all I’d have to do would be look down the index alphabetically: ape, bear, lynx, pine marten—ah, there it is—troll. And then off to the market.

I go back to the library’s computer to see if I’ve missed anything. One reference is curious—to the Children’s Music Department? I sigh and type away looking for more precise information. And there it is, the silly song, and the words.

As soon as I see the piece the music begins to pound in my head. I know it by heart, like every other Finn, even though I’ve never actually listened to it carefully. Not until now, when I let the corny tune and words grind around my head as if it were a jukebox.

Would you keep a bandersnatch

if only you could catch it?

Put it in a basket

and dare to fetch it home?

My heart’s pounding away to the beat of the ghastly diddy-dah refrain, when the piece hops cheerfully on to this:

But where’s the mum who’ll let you take

a troll back home to sleep?

Might as well ask Mum to keep

a sewer rat or a snake.

Dah dah diddy dah, diddy diddy day.

The music in my head suddenly switches off. I realize I’ve been thinking a sewer rat or a snake, a sewer rat or a snake . . . And those words, pointing to something well known, about two things that belong together, and in a certain way . . . provide the solution.

SELMA LAGERLÖF, “THE CHANGELING,” FROM
TROLLS AND HUMANS
, 1915

“I’ve no idea what kind of food to give a changeling,” she told her husband. “It won’t eat anything I put in front of it.”

“Well, that’s no surprise, is it?” he said. “Haven’t you heard? Trolls don’t eat anything but frogs and mice.”

“But surely you’re not going to ask me to go fishing in the pond for frogs?”

“Of course not. Best let it die of hunger.”

ANGEL

I open the shop door. A tiny bell tinkles. The door closes.

I greet the shopkeeper. I point one out. The shopkeeper asks me questions I don’t hear properly. I shake my head. It doesn’t matter, it’s all the same. His eyebrows go up. It doesn’t matter?

He gathers up a pile of supplementary products—I’ll need this, all the same, I’ll need that, and this. My denials are in vain. I pick up the box and push a note into his hand, get my change and a receipt.

The little bell tinkles.

C.B. GAUNITZ AND BO ROSEN,“VERTEBRATES,”
THE ANIMAL BOOK
, 1962

Animals that prey on one another have to be able to bite and use their claws. They also have to be swift, cunning and extremely patient.

The fox is known to be a crafty hunter, the wolf a persevering pursuer—it may follow its prey for miles on end. The lynx lurks in ambush with unbelievable persistence, the troll moves more quietly than a shadow, and the otter is a swift and skillful swimmer.

The more exclusively an animal feeds on meat the sharper its front molars are and the more persevering it is by nature. The weasel is amusingly inquisitive, but at the same time so indomitable it will attack a much larger animal than itself, and it does not fear man if its nest is disturbed.

The badger and the bob-tailed bear are choosy: they will settle only for the choicest delicacies of the flora and fauna. Like true gourmets they particularly relish strong-flavored food, even rotting meat. Also, the furtive troll can occasionally be sidetracked by a carcass, but in general it is more selective about its food.

ANGEL

I open the box and let the guinea pig out on to the floor.

I shut my eyes because I can’t believe I’m really doing this. The guinea pig is soft and smooth-haired and warm; its pink nose trembles and its whiskers quiver. It’s white with brown patches. In fact it’s quite horribly cute.

Cute enough to eat.

MARTES

The telephone rings a fair few times before Mikael replies. When he finally picks up the receiver, he’s out of breath, gulping and coughing.

“Been throwing up?” I ask teasingly.

“Who’s that?” His voice is agitated.

“Martti.”

“Martes.” He breathes the name. He didn’t believe I’d ever phone. He doesn’t thank me for the last time we met, and he doesn’t apologize for his behavior. A good sign; he doesn’t want to remember all that. I’ve been racking my brains to think of someone else I could call about this but couldn’t come up with anyone.

I hate needing anyone.

Above all, I hate needing a person I wasn’t expecting ever to speak to again. Actually, though, the fact that he needs me too, that what I have to say matters to him, eases the awful dread that he might take my call the wrong way. Instinctively I distance myself, draw the bait further off.

“You in a hurry? You sound it. I can call later.”

“No, no. I’m not busy. Let rip.”

I can hear background noises, sudden odd rustlings and snappings, randomly rhythmical.

“Could be I’ve got a project for you. How’re you fixed for work?”

There’s a loud scraping, as if someone’s dragging a metal fork over the floor or the bathroom tiles. A thump. Another thump.

“Couple of small jobs this week, then I’m free. Okay?”

Two lightning scraping noises.

“You’re free at the beginning of next week?”

“First thing Monday morning, if you like. So what time?”

A scraping, a thump, a shrill squeak, and Mikael breaks off, drawing in a quick startled breath.

“What on earth’s going on there?”

Mikael breathes deeply twice. “I’m, ah, watching . . . this video . . . kind of experimental effort. Rather lurid effects right now.”

“Oh? What genre?”

“Well, let’s say . . . horror.”

ANGEL

When I get back home with a fresh pile of books, euphoric about my coming meeting with Martes—now so soon, so soon—the first thing that happens is that I step on a troll turd. Anyone who would complain about miserable homecomings—the kids have been making taffy and not cleaned up, their husband’s flat on the sofa, drunk out of his mind—well, none of them has to step on trollshit in their own hallway. Naturally, the shit’s been neatly pushed under the doormat so my weight squashes it out on to both the underside of the mat and the parquet.

Just for a change, the troll’s not lying on the bed but on the floor, idly giving the odd shake to the rubber mouse I’ve bought it—of which there’s precious little left, just a grayish torso. It’s in a languid mood, with lackluster eyes, though presumably no longer hungry. Of course I know it’s a passive creature in the daytime, but it rarely moves now, even at night.

Did you have to give it solid food? a mean little voice in my head asks when I grab a dustpan and some kitchen towels, trying not to breathe through my nose as I scrape the shit into the garbage. I try not to look at it, for I know what it’s made of. I don’t want to see any little bones or brown-white tufts of hair.

Back in the living room my voice is genuinely angry: “Who’s been doing a poo on the floor?”

The troll glances at me and unconcernedly turns its head away. The toy mouse interests it much more. I’ve bought some cat litter and put it in a box in a corner of the bathroom, but the troll doesn’t show any interest. Peeing it does, for some reason, on the bathroom floor, perhaps because it did it there in the first place and has somehow marked it out territorially—and anyway the puddles are easy to mop up. But with this demonshit dilemma I’m truly stuck.

“What are we going to do with you, Pessi?” I sigh, and several seconds pass before I realize I’ve given him a name.

“A TALE OF A BEAR AND A TROLL,” INARI-LAPP FOLKLORE,

collected and published by A.V. Koskimies and T. Itkonen,
Proceedings of the Finno-Ugrian Society, Xl
, 1917

Walking in the forest one day, a troll came across a bear, who was digging a winter den for himself. The troll asked the bear, “What are you doing?” The bear said, “Escaping from man.” The troll replied, “I don’t expect to find any man I need be afraid of.” The bear said, “You have to fear man because he has weapons. Take a walk down the main road and you’ll find a man to fear.” The troll set off walking down the road. He met a young boy. He asked him, “Are you a man?” The boy replied, “I’m not a man, just the start of one.” The troll passed the boy by and continued down the road. Now an old man came along and the troll asked him, “So you’re a man, aren’t you?” The old man replied, “I’m not a man. I’ve been a man, but I’m not one any more.” The troll passed him by, too, set off down the road again, walked and walked, until he met a soldier, riding on a horse. The troll asked him, “So you are a man, aren’t you?” The soldier replied, “A man you called me, and a man I am.” Then the troll curled his claws and started to go for him. The soldier
grabbed his gun and shot the troll’s tail, blowing the hairs off, leaving a mere tuft at the end. The troll swung his head around, intending to bite the soldier, but the soldier pulled out his sword and scratched an upright scratch on each of the troll’s eyes. The troll had to take to his heels, and he went back the way he came until he met the bear again. The bear said, “Now do you believe that men are to be feared?” The troll did believe, and he built himself a winter den, too, as he’s done every winter ever since.