Troll: A Love Story (7 page)

I remember how, when we were alone together, I sometimes noticed you looking at me closely, so closely I began to get breathless, and our glances lingered a little too long, making my voice go husky as I explained something. And I read your eyes, Martes, there was no lie in them. There was no pretense in them.

I remember you asking me to come to the office, though things could have been fixed over the phone. I remember your asking me now and then to have a drink with you after work. We spoke about everything under the sun, and we respected each other and admired each other and liked each other and laughed at the same things, and—oh, we were on the same wavelength, to the millihertz! And maybe we drank a glass or two more than we should.

I remember feeling your chest in my arms, feeling your erection through your trousers as we leaned against the Tammerkoski River railings that dark night. I can still feel your mouth on mine, Martes, tasting of cigarettes and Guinness, your mustache scratching my upper lip, and it makes me feel faint.

Martes, I remember, and I know still that it wasn’t my imagination.

PALOMITA

In the little well there’s a reward.

First I hear footsteps, and I hope and hope and hope until the sides of my neck hurt. He’s climbing the steps in the peephole. He’s a little doll walking across the surface of my eye. He has a big shopping bag on his shoulder. I slither off like a lizard into the bathroom. There’s a can of cat food in the hamper. Pentti’s snores come through the bedroom wall, as if someone were scratching a sack with their broken nails. I’ve unplugged the telephone and put the cell under a pile of pillows on the sofa so he won’t wake. The third time it was difficult for him to get a hard-on, and I was afraid he’d notice I was purposely trying to tire him out. Sometimes he’s given me a beating, because it’s obviously my fault if he can’t get a hard-on, but this time fortunately he just growled and told me to suck him off, and I drained him so thoroughly I knew he’d sleep like the dead for the next two hours.

My hands have to be feathers so the door won’t click when I shut it. I fly up the stairs without a sound. His door’s just about to swallow him up when I whisper his name.

ANGEL

“Mikael.”

I hear someone breathing my name on the stairs behind, and I turn in surprise. It’s the mail-order bride from downstairs. She’s waving something cylindrical, and she’s in the doorway before I can react properly. My mind races for a moment but then calms down. It’s daytime, Pessi’s sleeping, and besides he’s becoming so feeble it makes me weep. Some days he’ll only lap up a little water, even if I’ve bought him a gerbil or hamster, and the sparkle has gone out of his eyes. The living room door’s closed, so I let the woman into the hall, because clearly she doesn’t want to stand on the stairway: she almost pushes in past me.

The woman—Palomita, she says—explains something in poor English. It takes a moment before I can make any sense of it. She wants to thank me for the magazine I gave her, and this is a gift in return, something for my cat.

For my cat? Quite.

I thank her, smiling more from a wretched sense of the ridiculous than pleasure in the gift, and she stares movingly up at me with her big brown roe deer’s eyes. Then she suddenly gives a start, and her eyes widen.

There are footsteps on the stairway.

They’re obviously coming up. My apartment’s the only one on the top floor. The original two-room unit next door is now my studio, so that someone, whoever it may be, is on their way here—nowhere else.

PALOMITA

The footsteps come up the stairs like blows. They strike through the door into my ears and face. The worst moment is when they reach Mikael’s door. The pain when it actually hits you isn’t nearly so bad as dreading it coming.

I’m a lizard seeking a hole behind Mikael and then behind a coat. The footsteps stop, and the no-sound now is a lot more frightening than the sound was.

I don’t want to breathe. Soon there’ll be the buzz of the doorbell. Soon Pentti will be hammering on the door with his fists. He’ll shout and swear—words with sharp corners—and his face’ll go from red to blue. My legs throw me out of the coat—somewhere else, to a door, I’m hanging on its handle, I’m deep in another room that’s flooded in light.

ANGEL

There’s a cough and an almost inaudible bump of a plastic bucket, showing that it’s the old woman from the ground floor, cleaning the stairs. But the sound of her steps has turned Palomita into a hyperactive whirlwind. First she jumps behind me to hide, then she conceals herself among the coats hanging in the hall, and then she takes a hopeless dive toward the living room door, and “Hey, don’t go in there” is the only thing I can get out, before she’s opened the door and come to a stop on the threshold, her mouth open.

PALOMITA

It’s very quiet. My own breathing’s like a breeze going through my head. Then I hear footsteps starting again and fading away. It can’t have been Pentti. Pentti would have come right in through Mikael’s door.

Mikael’s standing in his hall, holding the cat food. His face seems to be saying I’ve done something that’s not right. Or he has. Now that I know the steps can’t have been Pentti’s I can take in what I saw before. I go closer to the white leather sofa, which is like a pale smooth-skinned mushroom that has bulged up out of the floor. The cat’s really big and pitch-black all over. It’s bigger than most dogs. It’s not asleep, its eyes are open and its ears are moving, but it doesn’t even raise its head.

I go closer still.

“It’s sick, real sick,” I say.

At home in Malayali there were a lot of dogs and cats and other animals wandering around our house. When an animal looks like that it’ll die soon.

I touch it. It feels bony and hot and its fur is full of little tangles and knots. Its nostrils spread and tremble, my smell’s new to it. Its face isn’t catlike, more like an ape’s. Or a person’s.

Mikael asks me, in a tense whisper, to be careful.

“It’s not a cat; it’s a troll,” he says. I don’t know the word
troll, but I realize he’s telling me it’s actually a wild animal, a cub he’s found.

“And he hasn’t eaten anything for two days.” Mikael’s voice can hardly be heard.

“He’s really sick,” I say again.

I remember what I did when I found the dog’s den under the house. I don’t know how it finally turned out with the puppies, as the letter from Manila had come already, and my father and brother were taking me the next morning to Zamboanga and putting me on the ship from Cotabato. They told me I was going to be a nurse. I was delighted, because I thought I’d do well as that. After all, I’d just been caring for a litter of small still-blind puppies whose mother had been run over by a jeep.

I take hold of the cat food and gesture with it, until Mikael goes into the kitchen, and I hear the sound of a can opener. He comes back with it open. I push my finger in and curl it. The cat food’s like thick coarse mud. I hold my finger out carefully in front of the troll’s mouth, and he pulls his head weakly back, frightened, his round head trembling like a cat’s. I breathe on my finger, warming the food and putting my own smell on it. I hold my finger out again, and now the troll sniffs it, suspiciously. But then a small pink tongue comes out of its lips, and he gives a lick. Once. Twice.

I burst out laughing with triumph, and because the tongue’s tickling my finger. I meet Mikael’s astonished look.

“He’s never eaten cat food before.”

“Perhaps we must give it like this. He thinks I’m his mamá.”

I don’t know if Mikael understands, but his eyes are unbelieving, delighted, covering the wild distress beneath.

Mikael watches while the troll eats a few pats of the brown paste. Then the troll shuts his eyes, leaving just a shining line between the lids. He hasn’t felt well enough to clean his eyes; there
are little yellow specks in the corners. I get up, hand the can to Mikael and go off to wash my hand in the kitchen sink. Mikael follows me.

“Thanks a million,” he says. I shrug and raise my eyebrows: no big deal. But I’m prouder and happier than ever before in this country.

Mikael puts the can on the countertop and, to my surprise, takes my hands in his, squeezing them and raising them to his chest. “Thank you,” he says again. And, scared, I swing around, resisting, and disappear into the hall, quick as a shadow. But before I can squeeze the door soundlessly shut behind me, I can’t help glancing back at the kitchen door: Mikael’s standing there with an expression I can’t understand, and my heart thumps, thumps, faster than it has for a long, long time.

ANGEL

No, Pessi’s not well. He eats and drinks and empties his bowels, but he’s not well. His coat doesn’t shine, there’s no fire in his eyes, he plays without enthusiasm. He sleeps day and night—as if in a fever.

I myself hardly eat or sleep, my hold on work’s gone. I can manage the routine stuff but haven’t produced anything particularly creative. The Stalkers that Martes gave me lie in a corner. That damned jeans deadline seems far off, but in reality it’s only a few weeks away.

Palomita realized as soon as she saw Pessi.

Something has to be done. Soon.

ECKE

I’ve got a box seat; the only thing that’s missing is a pair of opera glasses, and the drama’s first-class reality TV. Angel and Dr. Spiderman are sitting in the Café Bongo’s back room. Together. I’m not the only one following the action. It’s the most interesting thing that’s happened in this mangy dump for a long time.

Angel’s eagerly telling the tale to Spiderman, gesticulating, going on about something of the utmost importance and occasionally letting his hand rest casually on Spider’s arm. Spider’s narrow hound-dog face is wearing a disbelieving expression that repeatedly veers toward the euphoric. He’s been thinking that this Angel was as far out of his reach as one dancing on a pinhead.

In the days when Angel and Spider were breaking up, someone saw Angel in some bar or other with a peculiar bearded weirdo, goggled and hairy, not one of us. A nasty rumor had it that Angel was making an all-out pass at a hetero. But here he is, rubbing up the Doctor as if nothing happened.

Angel Hartikainen. His real first name I’m sure I’ve never even heard. A man of thirty, he still has a seventeen-year-old cherub’s face, crowned with a golden cloud of curls, and not a tiny hint of receding temples.

It’s a knife-thrust in my belly. Ever since I first saw Angel I’ve known I want him.

DR. SPIDERMAN

His golden head bends closer to me, so I catch the scent of his aftershave. It’s a new one on me, woodlandish and metallic, strangely arousing.

Angel’s telling a long, meandering tale, the purpose of which is beyond me. He seasons his story with lively details and finally arrives, with conspicuous casualness, at the main point: that his uncle has somewhere found a wolverine’s cub—or was it a lynx’s kitten?—and brought it home and fed it, and it’s pissed in a corner, ha ha, and then they’ve got it to eat something, but it’s nevertheless rather listless, apathetic, weary, dull-coated. For ages apparently they’ve been wondering what on earth’s bothering the creature. And Angel’s leaning toward me as if expecting me to join in on the idiotic affair.

“My Angel, since when have you supposed that a veterinary surgeon’s idea of fun and relaxation consists in listening to guff about some sick specimen of nature?” I ask. Angel doesn’t relent.

“Well, he can’t contact the zoo. He might not be given permission to keep a wild animal, so . . . They’re just . . . thinking . . . about . . . what might be up with it.”

“No wonder they haven’t sorted that out, since they haven’t even found out whether it’s a wolverine or a lynx.”

“Well, that’s my fault—not remembering! It’s some predatory
animal, a large one—what sorts are there? Or does that make a big difference in deciding what’s up with it?”

I bang my beer mug on the table. Clearly Angel’s determined to go on about his uncle’s wolverine the whole evening, unless I produce a diagnosis.

“Not necessarily. Generally speaking, every wild animal carries some sort of internal parasite. A full-grown animal hardly notices it, but it may well weaken a cub.”

Angel’s eyes light up. He pulls his chair still closer to me, as if I’d begun talking about some exotic and slightly perverse sexual technique. The guy gets a real kick out of internal parasites, I reflect, taken aback.

“In all probability it’s roundworm,” I go on, and Angel drinks in every word from my lips. And in the midst of my astonishment I begin to be very amused. “The whipworm and hookworm are possible but rare. It could be a beef tapeworm, but the roundworm is the most common. It’s found regularly in all the large predators.”

“So where would it have picked it up?”

“From its mother. A parasite in an inactive state passes into the young through the blood circulation in the placenta, and hormonal activity then wakes it up, as it were. In other words, the disease can’t be prevented. A cub in poor condition can grow tired and become ill, even die.”

“I suppose it can be treated?”