Troll: A Love Story (15 page)

What flashes before my eyes is the catch of the month I met in the pub—that patently self-deceiving, laurel-crowned latent. And when Angel draws me toward him, groaning, I try with all my power to be Martti, I’ll be for him whoever he wants me to be.

ANGEL

Pessi keeps growling, letting out little strangled throaty sounds, as he dances an angry little ballet around me, his tail horizontal and stiff.

His nostrils widen and twitch. I try to touch him, but he bounces back like a sprung spring.

“Pessi.” My voice is coaxing and soothing, even a little apologetic. What on earth’s the matter with him? I’ve been away as long as this before, haven’t I?

His nostrils: his nostrils are twitching, his ears are flattened against his skull. The smell.

Ecke’s smell is on me.

The smell of a strange male.

Still steaming from the shower, I sit down on the sofa, smelling of pine soap, and my heart spreads a sweet warmth throughout my whole being when Pessi finally comes over to me and pushes his dark muzzle against my shoulder.

MARTES

Three pints of Guinness are making the roots of my hair tickle, but I have to go back from the pub to switch off the computers. Here we are again, one of those afternoon-drinking sessions that stretch until the end of office hours. But who cares if there are no meetings for a change, no deadlines to meet?

Viivian and I drew straws for which of us would leave the pub, crawl up to our offices, switch off the computers, and make sure the burglar alarm’s on. Now everything’s okay, and I’m wondering, shall I go back to the pub, where Viivian may still be sitting, sipping her pear cider, when I see a CD on the table. It’s Mikael’s CD-ROM, the one with the Stalker campaign pictures on it, and I shove it into my shoulder bag. It has to be returned, of course.

ANCIENT POEMS OF THE FINNISH PEOPLE

VII: 3. 1237, 1933, Suistamo

Brothers three be we,

Three brother boys we be;

One went after elk,

The other for a hare,

The third bid fair

To snare a troll.

Back there came one brother,

Hare’s paw in his palm;

Back there came another,

Fur of fox was on his arm.

Back there never came the other.

MARTES

I ring the doorbell, and Michelangelo opens the door, wearing his bathrobe.

He’s so astonished to see me, he doesn’t budge, doesn’t let me in—just stands swaying in the doorway, keeping the door half-closed, as if I were some door-to-door salesman.

I dig my cover out of my shoulder bag, the CD, and brandish it between my thumb and forefinger.

“Just popped along to give you this back.”

Mikael’s expression shows he’s used to getting his stuff back by mail. “Ah! Thanks.”

He’s just about to close the door on me, with a strange look on his face—evasive, anxious—mumbling something about my putting myself out unnecessarily . . . could have picked it up at the office any time himself. I see him glancing back out of the corner of his eye, again and again.

“Got visitors, have you?”

“No, no . . . no one.”

“Just beginning to be afraid I was bursting in on something . . . some social gathering.” My eye wanders over Angel’s bathrobe.

“No, no.”

“Er . . . mind if I use your toilet?” I’d been expecting a look of delight. I’d been expecting to be lured in. I’d geared myself up to be
a bit formal and then perhaps agree to a coffee or bottle of beer, just passing the time of day. But this is something quite new to me. I’m supposed to be the evasive one, I’m the one who sets the pace and decides what happens and, above all, what doesn’t happen.

Mikael’s glancing back into the flat again, as if listening—maybe he’s got something boiling on the stove. I take advantage of his preoccupation to push the door open and step inside, gently but purposefully.

Mikael jumps. I don’t know what’s on his mind, what he imagines my intentions are, and his eyes have no trace of that moist adoration I’ve become accustomed to and even enjoy in small doses, like an exotic but slightly outlandish spice. Mikael’s eyes are darting left and right, he’s mumbling, muttering . . . It’s not a good time, some other time, he’s just on the way out, in a terrible hurry.

He’d push me out of the door if it hadn’t already formed a wooden wall between me and the stairwell—with me as a wall of flesh between him and the door.

It’s infuriating.

A stifling miasma of Mikael’s aftershave is lingering in the air, the whole apartment reeks of some aroma which, at that strength, is the whiff of lust itself and jerks me humiliatingly into a half-erection.

And Mikael grabs my arm—hangs on me as if I were the rail of a storm-tossed ocean liner.

“Go now. I really mean it.”

“Two seconds in the toilet, and then I’m off—not bothering you any more.” I try to sound like a martyr, but Mikael’s rejection of me is like being stabbed with an icicle.

He places himself in front of me, and I try to worm around him playfully, and we perform a ridiculous minuet: we dance the two-step. And then he gets hold of me, starts shoving me towards the door, and I flare up. The stout seethes in my head, and, more
violently than intended or actually needed, I grab hold of Mikael’s shoulders and thump him against the wall.

“Get going now, Martes,” he says quietly. “For Christ’s sake, just go.”

And then.

In a falling shaft of light.

Nightmare.

PART IV
Darkness Takes My Soul Away

LAURENTIUS PETRI, RECTOR OF TAMMELA, “AN EXTRACT FROM HIS SERMON AT THE ECCLESIASTICAL ASSEMBLY IN TURKU CATHEDRAL,” 1666

The ancient Finns have also named the Evil Angels: Demons/
Gnomes/Forest Sprites; the Sons of Kaleva/
Timesprites/Blackmen/Hillmen/Trolls/Werewolves/
Ogres/Goblins/Watersprites/Mermaids . . .

MARTES

It stands on two legs. It’s a snarling demon.

It’s a sci-fi movie monster.

This steep-angled spotlight’s sharpening its bony body, its long claws, its nervously twitching limbs. It walks with a spooky softness, sways closer to me, raises its forelimbs—it’s raising them threateningly high. Into the attack.

Its claws are aimed at me.

Its grotesque face splits in a hideous snarl as it lets out a hissing growl from its throat.

I feel the hot urine flowing down my thighs.

“No!” I hear Mikael shout.

And the monster’s going for me.

ANGEL

No. Not this.

Anything, but not this.

MARTES

An umbrella’s leaning against Mikael’s wall—it’s been in reach all the time—a pure reflex makes me grab it and wield it across the front of me. But I’m dead slow compared to this ghoulish beast. Its fearful scalpels are flashing at my eyes, faster than light—the umbrella’s just enough to fend off everything but a ferocious slash I feel on my cheek and temple. My vision narrows to a spotted fluorescent yellow. It glows for a second, and everything around me sways sickeningly.

Somewhere, terrifyingly deep inside me, something wakes—a reflex.

Quicker than thought, in a single coordinating storm of my synapses, they all fuse: my endless karate sessions, the frustrated youth seeking his manhood—kung fu, Bruce Lee, a teenage mutant ninja—and I squeeze my eyes tight shut, swing around in a crouch, and the umbrella chops the air like a samurai sword.

It hits something that makes me expect a twang like a taut bow, but instead I hear a high squawk—a screech like the cry of some large bird unknown to science. I open my eyes.

Something warm, sticky and dark is streaming down my neck onto my shoulder. I fly off the handle, and Mikael’s hall turns into a thin funnel, bright yet clouded with a snowstorm, and I see on the floor somewhere at the end of the tube a bloodstained black umbrella,
its spokes mangled on one side, and I can make out, somewhere under the hanging coats, the monster—it’s shot off there to hide—a motionless monster after my blow, a horned, black, sharply defined, toothed-and-nailed statue. And Angel’s on his knees before it, spitting out words.

“Get the hell out of here, Martes. Do you hear me? Go to hell, and get there fast!” No trace of warning in his voice, no concern for my escape or me—just pure hatred.

I put my hand on my cheek and my temple, and I realize the skin’s ripped open on both my face and my scalp. The blood’s flowing, it’s forming puddles on the floor, and the front of my jeans are wet with cold piss. And in all this surrealistic show Mikael’s staring at me, half kneeling under the coats, hugging a devil.

LIISA-MARJA IIVO,
THE SATAN SECTS OF THE TORNIONJOKI RIVER VALLEY AND KITTILÄ IN THE 1910s

The classification of the troll as an animal species in 1907 was an undeniable sensation in biological circles. It was indeed a rare event—though by no means unique—for so large a mammal to be revealed to science in this century. Reported sightings of the
Felipithecus trollius
were, of course, relatively abundant, especially in the north, where the so-called “white nights” facilitated animal sightings; but these reports were not considered reliable in scientific circles, certainly not probative. Several finds of animal hair, bone splinters, and claws were considered hoaxes, and serious study of these finds was not even set in motion.

Though the troll does indeed prefer inaccessible areas, hibernates, and buries its droppings, thus leaving no observable traces on the terrain, it is nevertheless anomalous for no single troll carcass to have been found in the wilds until 1907. This anomaly has clearly given impetus to a belief that has made its appearance in more recent folklore: that the trolls bury their dead.

The troll’s demonic attributes naturally left their mark on the zoological discovery of the species. The incontrovertibly
prodigious scientific importance of the discovery was almost paralleled in historical impact by the collapse of the mythological paradigm, whereby a centuries-old folk tradition was set in quite a new light. Consequently, it is not beyond comprehension that there were also reverberations outside scientific circles. What causes some surprise, however, is the magnitude of the reaction in certain contexts, the most notorious being the formation of the Satan Sects of the Tornionjoki River Valley and the town of Kittilä.

It is of the greatest theological interest that the same event—in this case a widely publicized discovery in the biological field—caused the manifestation of almost diametrically opposed socio-religious phenomena in districts so close geographically.

The movement in the Tornionjoki River Valley congregated around Eerikki Nesselius (born: Niemi), who ministered in Ylitornio but originally came from Pello (1879). Nesselius was a novice preacher whose religious orientation was firmly rooted in the Laestadian religious movement. Nevertheless, he was by no means a prominent figure in the public life of the area until he became acquainted with the newspaper reports about the discovery of a troll carcass. Post-haste, Nesselius journeyed to Helsinki and demanded to study the conserved troll, but he obtained access to no more than the photographs available. According to the diaries that survived his decease, Nesselius was particularly impressed by the troll’s tufted tail.

He returned to Ylitornio and without delay began his proclamation that the Devil had returned to the surface of the earth. He produced an amalgam of the recent troll discovery with the so-called Earth Sprite Sermons that Lars
Levi Laestadius preached in the 1840s and 1850s, in which Laestadius attempted to persuade the Lapps to renounce their demonic beliefs (cf. e.g. “Nilla Outakoski: The Image of the Earth Sprite in the Sermons of Lars Levi Laestadius,”
Scripta Historica XVII,
Publication of the Oulu Historical Society, 1991). The following extract from Nesselius’ book of homilies,
The Living Satan
(Kemijärvi, 1911), condenses his views:

So all here can picture for themselves how every single sin performed is as a seed that falls on the ground, which, sucking black power from the earth, grows in might and flourishes, until it blossoms forth as a full-grown living Satan. A true and living forest demon has been delivered into our midst to remind us of our misdeeds and warn us never to sow further sins as long as we live. The Lord God Almighty has placed a living Satan among us, and why? Because its task is, when thy evil has ripened, to manifest itself as an incarnation of that evil, to bring a vision of Hell from the wilderness, to figure each sin thou hast performed on the way.

Because our race of men is stiff-necked, and has rejected the Lord’s commandments, the Lord God has raised these fearful sons of Lucifer from the ground as a warning of dread to us all. Thou, meditator of guile in thy heart, take care and look behind thee on the pathway. For is it not already there, flitting behind thee? The figure of a living Satan, sent to torment thee, which at God’s command has loomed from the earth and waits only for his best occasion to snatch the wrongdoer in his fearful claws. Thus are we all placed on dreadful trial . . .