“?‘Now I have you!’ the troll called. He raised his ax to fell the last tree, but his chopping had taken all night, and now it was morning. As the troll raised the ax, the sun finally rose, and that troll was turned to stone by the daylight.
“Askeladden climbed down. He tried to push the stone troll over because he wanted his father’s ax. But eventually he gave up. It was too big and heavy to budge. But what did it matter? The boy realized that with all the wood the troll had chopped, his father would be a rich man and more than able to afford a new one. And they lived happily ever after.”
The old man cleared his throat. He waggled the knife so the tip of the blade seemed to be sniffing the air.
“Why did I tell you that story?” the old man asked. “What did I want you to hear?” He paused here a moment and watched Apollo.
“I have no fucking idea,” Apollo said eventually.
“My father told it to me. And his father told him. On and on like that. We’re from Norway originally, and we brought the tale with us. There are a lot of stories about that boy, Askeladden. He always beats the monsters and comes away with some treasure. It’s nice stuff to hear when you’re a pup.”
The old man waved to take in the run-down living room, worn carpet, frayed curtains, and cluttered dining table with room enough for only one.
“But now I think I hate those fairy tales.” He raised his hands in a gesture of peace, as if used to being argued with. “Not really the tales, but how they end. Three words that ruin everything. ‘Happily ever after.’?” He stuck his tongue out as if tasting something bitter as bile.
“?‘Happily ever after,’?” he repeated. “Even when they don’t say it in the story, those three words are there. Take my story, just as an example. Will Askeladden’s father become truly wealthy and have enough money to send all three sons to university or only one or two? How does he decide? The youngest beat the troll, but the oldest boy is still firstborn and deserves the spoils, no? What about when father dies? Did he leave a will? Will there be an equitable distribution of his assets? If not, will the sons all retain legal counsel and spend the next twenty years in court haggling over the estate?” The old man laughed bitterly. “?‘Happily ever after’ won’t prepare you for that!
“Personally,” he continued, “I always thought it was there to shut the child up. It’s bedtime, and you’ve just told this incredible story, and a child, as children do, wants to know more. Did they throw a party for Askeladden when he came home? Did the brothers and the father go out to the woods to see where the troll had turned to stone? Did Askeladden ever marry? If so, what was she like? And did they have children of their own? What were they called, all of them?
“This is what the children would be saying, should be saying, after a tale like that, but by then it’s already late and you’ve been up all day working, and now you just want to go to sleep, and in fact this child is starting to really get on your nerves with all these questions. Always more questions! So you lean close and say, ‘What happened next? They lived happily.’ ‘For how long?’ your beautiful babies ask. ‘Forever,’ you say. ‘Now go to sleep!’?”
The old man sighed.
“And your lovely, stupid child believes you. Then he grows up and tells the same lie to his daughters. And she tells them to her sons. Then, finally, it has to be true, because why else would my good, caring family have passed it on for so very long? Do you know how much harm ‘happily ever after’ has done to mankind? I wish they said something else at the end of those stories instead. ‘They tried to be happy.’ Or ‘Eternal happiness is a fruitless pursuit.’ What do you think?”
“You’re definitely Norwegian,” Apollo said.
He lowered the knife. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen?” he said. “The water is probably boiling, and I’m making a meal for her.”
“No more Starbucks?” Apollo asked.
The old man dropped his head. “Normally I cook her food myself, but yesterday morning she told me exactly where to go and when to go there. Isn’t that funny? Never once has that happened before, but then snap, just like that, she sends me there.”
“I know,” Apollo said. “I saw you.”
“Wouldn’t it be funny if—” he began. “I mean, if she’d known that you’d be there.”
The old man, Jorgen Knudsen, swept his free hand over his wild, white hair.
“Forgive me, I’ve been drinking,” he said.
“Today?”
“Every day.” His eyes fluttered with weariness.
Apollo looked toward the kitchen, where he could hear the water roiling. “What are you making?” he asked.
“Smalahove,” he said. “It’s Norwegian. Just like my story. Let me show you.” He gestured toward the kitchen with the blade.
Apollo waved the newspaper. “You go first.”
THE WATER HAD indeed come to a boil. The old man set the boning knife on the counter and turned to the plastic bags on the small kitchen table. He reached into one but kept his gaze on Apollo. He pulled something large out of the bag. It was wrapped in wax paper. He set it on the counter. It was as big as a bowling ball but oval shaped. The old man folded the empty plastic bag neatly and opened a cupboard under the sink where he had a stack of the exact same plastic bags, also folded. He added the new one, then shut the door and returned to the kitchen table. He unfolded the wax paper, that snapping sound as it came flat.
A sheep’s head lay on the table.
Apollo audibly gagged.
The old man laughed quietly and wagged a finger at Apollo. “You can’t be disgusted,” he said. “This is a tradition from my home country, and we must never judge anyone’s traditions! Be politically correct, or I will protest you. No judging. Just acceptance. Well, here it is. Accept it.”
Now he slapped a hand on the side of the sheep’s head. It made a wet squelch and spun a few degrees so that its mouth pointed directly at Apollo. Its lower teeth, a row of small, discolored pegs, jutted out past the slightly open lips. The skin and fleece had been removed, so the head shone a reddish-pink under the kitchen lights. It still had its eyes. Each looked like a globe of black jelly set into the puttied red flesh.
The old man grabbed it by the snout and in one motion lifted it, brought it to the pot of boiling water, and dropped it in. Small amounts of scalding water flew out of the pot, some of it landing on the old man’s forearm, but if it hurt he showed no sign. He simply turned back to Apollo and clapped, a proud chef. He scanned the countertop and grabbed a novelty kitchen timer that was made to look like a fluffy white sheep.
“If I don’t use the timer, I’ll forget the head is boiling,” the old man said. He held up the display screen, which was set in the center of the sheep’s belly. “I let it go three and a half hours so the meat isn’t too tough or too soft.”