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.
ANGEL
This biologist I’m consulting over the phone has swallowed my story, that I’m a journalist working on a story about trained animals. He supposes my topic touches on circus ethics—a brilliant notion I’d never have hit on as a cover myself—and he’s already been through elephants, bears, and sea-lions.
“You often see trained lions and tigers,” I say, leading him on. “What about the indigenous animals of Finland? Do you consider one could systematically train a bear, for instance, or even . . . a troll?” I ask lightly, in passing.
The Prof. delivers a long lecture, from which I gather chiefly that wolves, for instance, are extremely trainable, because they’re pack animals, a subject on which the cursed Grzimek, whose name the old fart spells out for me with excruciating care, letter by letter, has carried out extensive research. Wolves obey the individual who has authority, even if it’s a man. Feline animals, such as lions and tigers, are different: cats are usually extremely independent and won’t do anything without immediate reward. The bottom line is that everything depends on the animals’ social norms.
“Social norms?” My tone of voice is emphatically enquiring, like a second-rate actor’s.
“Well, we do have very little information on the subject of trolls. One theory suggests that they possibly live in a sort of micro-troop, like a pride of lions, and in such troops a certain hierarchical behavior pattern operates. On the other hand, the tiger, for example, is a territorial animal: it hunts alone and is intolerant of other individuals in its territory. There remains, of course, a possibility, too, that trolls maintain an alpha-male order, like that of chimpanzees, making for a comparatively disorganized-seeming troop dominated by a large male. This means the alpha has primary sexual rights over the troop’s females, and so on. At present, the entire basis for this hypothesis rests on the speculation that the convergence of the trolls’ evolution with that of the primates may have operated on other dimensions besides outward appearance . . .”
I’m not much the wiser, but then the old boy’s voice seems to perk up.
“But the best results are always achieved when the animal’s trained at the cub stage. Rewards and punishments in suitable proportions . . . I remember talk of a trained troll that was sometimes seen in the market, a little before the war, obviously the same one that’s now stuffed in the Tampere Biological Museum . . .”
I shiver as I remember the faded animal in the glass display-cabinet and its total degradation. A trained troll.
“Large predators are currently an unusually popular subject, in the wake of the happenings in Joensuu and Kuopio . . .”
Joensuu and Kuopio? I ask myself, without knowing what he’s talking about.
“Which journal are you writing for?” he asks, but I’m already putting the phone down.
“WILD BEASTS HAUNT OUR CITIES,”
Finnish Evening News (November 30, 1999)
The people of Kuopio and Joensuu have become anxious about large predators being seen near the towns, and they are not alone. In recent weeks there have even been sightings outside certain central and southern Finnish towns. Following many sightings of bears and wolves, urban areas are now being approached by trolls.
Trolls are rarely spotted in Finland, but recently, over a short period, half-a-dozen very reliable sightings have occurred near the eastern border, some very close to houses.
The troll, usually an extremely shy animal, has been extending its habitat from the uninhabited forests and fields and moving closer to towns. Some attribute this to food shortages. People living near large forests have been advised to keep their garbage cans tightly closed and their small pets indoors. Trolls rarely attack human beings, so there is no cause for alarm; and, being night creatures, they are likely to be encountered only very late at night or in the early hours of the morning.
Pets are disturbed
“My Alsatian started a terrible howling,” says Risto Huttula of Kuopio. “I’ve never heard it howl before. I went out into the yard and tried to calm the dog down, but it wouldn’t be calmed.” Then Huttula noticed two coal-black, two-legged creatures running along the edge of a field. Obviously the dog had caught the scent on the wind before the creatures were visible. Foresters went to investigate the traces, but on the almost snowless ground they found no hard evidence. Were the figures trolls that had postponed their hibernation or clandestine intruders in the forest?
The neighbor’s Bernese mountain dog had whined and padded restlessly back and forth throughout the previous night. In t
he morning the dog refused to follow the tracks, rejecting all incentives.
Pulliainen’s yes to “urban animals”
Biologist Professor Erkki Pulliainen considers the situation transitory and no cause for alarm.
“The situation does occur sporadically with the first snows and the onset of the hibernation season for bears and trolls. The only disturbances for city-dwellers at such times,” Pulliainen emphasizes, “are likely to be from wolves, wolverines, and lynxes, and these haunt the neighboring terrain only in search of food, with no intention of deliberately intruding on people.” The food-shortage theory is not accepted by Pulliainen personally.
“On the contrary, the reason for the animals’ resort to city outskirts is clearly that certain small parasitical animals are likely to be plentiful in precisely these areas. And the lynx, for example, has shown itself over the course of time to be, as a species, highly culturally adaptable.” Lynxes have long been present on the outskirts of Helsinki, Turku, and Tampere, Pulliainen reports, where plentiful food is available, such as hares and white-tailed reindeer, and the terrain is suitable: marshland coppices, dense mixed woodland, and coniferous forest.