The locals are in fear
Riikka Vesaisto, a Joensuu farmer’s wife, totally disagrees with Professor Pulliainen. In her view, large wild beasts are a concrete threat, not only to her sheep but to her family.
“Two weeks ago my son was off to school—he’s in the first grade—and he said he’d seen an ‘old black man’ staring at him from behind a fir tree. The boy ran for it and managed to get to the school playground without being hurt. Together we checked an animal book and found out what he’d seen: it was a troll. How long will it have to be before we wake up and realize a full-grown troll is a wild beast two meters tall and that a little child’s just a snack for it?”
Riikka Vesaisto’s husband, Antti, shares her view.
“They ought to bring the bounty money back. Of course they’re all going on about conservation now, but I’d like to see that tree hugger’s face if some wolf or bugaboo snapped up his brat on the way to school.”
ANGEL
Monday. Tomorrow’s Monday.
He could have been calling others. I’ve no idea how much I can hope for any more. Myself, I daren’t make a move; but call he damn well did.
Pessi’s learned to be wary of newspapers. I’ve never actually hit him, only gestured that I’d slap him, but he clearly knows that a rolled-up newspaper symbolizes the authority of the alpha. Now that he’s quietly begun to grasp that I don’t like trollshit under the doormat, he’s been resorting to the box in the corner of the bathroom, where I’ve been putting cut-up flyers and other junk mail. I’ve got to change the contents every day, otherwise he won’t use it again. I tried scented cat litter, but that, for some reason, he absolutely detests.
As carrots to the rolled-up newspaper I’ve been manipulating Pessi with gerbils and white mice. I’ve been giving him snacks like these when he’s been a well-behaved little trollboy—and gerbils are not nearly as expensive or poo-generating as guinea pigs or hamsters.
Though he eats now and then, and can even be bothered to play at hunting the animals, he’s not in good health. I’ve wondered whether those budding juvenile offenders hurt him in some way. Has he got fractures somewhere or even internal bleeding? But I’d have noticed something in the way he moves if he had muscle or leg pains. Yet he’s languid and subdued most of the time, like a fluttering candle flame.
When he does make one of his rare moves, he’s supple, like quicksilver. He seems to be reversing gravity. His total muscular capacity is enormous, considering his size. He moves about like oil, as if made of silk.
His eyes are full of nocturnal wildfire.
PART II
There Flared a Wondrous Glow of Light
MARTES
“Calvin Klein?” I ask and lean towards Mikael, my nose almost touching his hair. His pale cheeks flush. He’s not been sleeping.
“What?”
“Aftershave. You’ve changed your brand.”
Mikael smells a little of Klein One—spruce, lemon, spices—and something inside me stirs. But when he gives me that puppy-dog look, searching my eyes for something that’s not there, he gets on my nerves. I thought I’d made it clear after those two nights out drinking that he was barking up the wrong tree. But now I need Mikael, and so I bend toward him and sniff as softly as a horse sensing a shy filly. He’s got to remember how much he wants to please me.
“Yes, it’s a brand new thing—they were handing out samples at Stockmann’s. Whatever. A test run I believe—not sure whether it’ll ever come on to the market properly . . .”
He’s so on edge it makes me sick.
“Hey, I didn’t ask you here to find out what aftershave you’re using. I’ve got a job for you.”
I make it short. It’s a jeans designer. We’re competing against three other advertising agencies for a new campaign. The name of their line is Stalker, and they of course want to be an instant fashion icon. It’s got to brand itself into the consciousness of the fashionistas in one single lightning flash. The firm’s looking for something about as original and urgent as Diesel and yet socking the unconscious as subliminally as the old MicMac campaigns. But dead new. Of course.
“You’ve always been one of our best photographers. And recently you’ve shown what you can do with computerized graphics. Find us an idea.”
“Idea?”
“Naturally I and a couple of other art directors and copy-writers are putting our noses to the grindstone, and smoke’s rising from our cerebral lobes. But right now we need every single right and left hemisphere going. Okay, among other things, ‘Stalker’ is about stalking celebrities, but we’re not after any stupid Madonna theme; we want a brand-new perspective. We want you to come up with some image, something fucking lurid. Along the lines of pouring gasoline over the Stalkers in the Jan Palach square in Prague, setting light to them and making the smoke form a slogan like ‘C’mon, baby, light my fire’—you know the sort of thing. No limit.”
ANGEL
“I want something strong,” Martes says, and I can’t take my eyes off his hands: they’re clenching sexily, as if grasping two iron bars. “Something never seen before. Violent.”
When I look up he’s noticed I’ve been staring at his hands, and his eyes narrow as he smiles.
“You’ve got the sickest imagination I’ve ever come across. Let loose. Free your mind and send it flying.”
MARTES
Mikael nods slowly, and I grab a large gym bag out of the corner.
“Eight pairs of Stalkers here for you, all possible sizes, and you can have more if you need them. There’s loads of time. A couple of months. The deadline’s the end of March. And if the idea sees the light of day, it’ll mean loads of cash for you. We’re talking thousands.”
And if the idea sees the light of day, and if we get the campaign, it’ll mean at least a quarter of a million euros for us. But that I don’t say. I toss the bag to Mikael, he almost collapses under its weight, but with a couple of steps backward he remains standing. “Our rock and standby. Suppose you know your nickname here?”
Mikael’s hanging on to the bag with both hands. He looks up inquiringly.
I lower my voice almost to a whisper: “Michelangelo.”
ANGEL
Michelangelo.
I wasn’t Michelangelo when we first met, I was Studio Hartikainen.
And I still am Studio Hartikainen, the advertising photographer, graphic designer and computer artist. And he’s Martti, Martes, the hardest art director in the city’s toughest advertising office.
I remember.
I come into the office and introduce myself. I show my portfolio and worm my way into the talk about diffusers and image data banks. Immediately an easy, streamlined trust springs up between Martes and me.
Trust, yes, and of course mutual admiration: the way a competent professional can admire another whose field is close enough for him to have the requisite understanding for admiration but distant enough to eliminate competition for the same clients.
I remember, Martes.
I remember how, during a presentation, our eyes met behind our shared client’s back and you made a face in just the way we both understand, and I nearly burst out laughing.
I remember that once, planning a photo shoot together, it was breathtaking how we saw totally eye to eye, how one of us had only to say half a word and the other’s face lit up, and he said, “Yes!— I was just about to say that myself!” And we high five’d each other, and I remember your face and your look and your denim shirt’s top button undone.
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 ev
erything 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: Mika
el’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.