AND FAINTLY, PHANTOSMIA

It was a pleasant autumn evening when something spooked the cats.
We had left the French doors open, and my brother and I were in the sunroom engaged in different activities at the long table. He was avidly replaying the moves of famous chess masters, I was reading and getting whacked on jasmine tea. The smell of fermenting apples on the breeze fought and lost against the reek of my pipe-tobacco.
Dark foetid odeurs, fertile perfumes.

I rather like the stink of overripe fall fruit, and our parents had not requested yet that the mushy blobs be swept up to give the wasps no magnet. So they lay there underneath the massive tree that demarcated the paved area, far enough away that whatever flying insects were hypnotized by sugary smells would not come into the house.
Where my potent smoke would chase them out.
Bugs do not like Latakia.


Suddenly, one by one, the cats came in. Nearly a dozen of them. Not only the original mommma-slut, but also her daughters and her various grand children. Normally some of them were too shy to congregate with us bipeds. There was a sound of happy grunting from the far end of the courtyard where the apple tree stood.
I could not see the source.

Something dark and low to the ground moved around in the shadows.
I swear there were also smacking sounds. Whatever it was, it was eating the apples.
The light from the house did not illuminate that area well. Just beyond the edge of the brickwork it was dark underneath the trees and shrubs in the garden, quite pitch black at the back.

Our house was barely five minutes from the open country side at the south end of town, so it could have been almost anything wild.

But I chose to assume it was a troll.



The idea of an imaginary hominid gorging on apples slightly beyond their prime appealed to me. Not the denatured inventions of writers such as C.S. Lewis or Tolkien, but a short hairy transformed rock or tree stump, come to life because of the heady reeks; a primordial phantasm now wandering around underneath the apple tree and seeking the fruit with the yeastiest and most syrupy taste.



I was reading Simenon at the time; Simenon does not, ever, mention trolls.
It's a flaw in his character, and in his characters' characters.

But if there were trolls, and if they could read, they would undoubtedly like that author. Why not? It's good moody stuff.

The chess games of the long deceased greats perhaps not so much.

I was sixteen at the time, my brother was eighteen.

Life seemed rather golden in those years.

In autumn I still smell apples.

Sweet decay.




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