The Troll Garden and Selected Stories Read online

  The Troll Garden

  and

  Selected Stories

  by Willa Cather

  Introduction by Rita Mae Brown

  BANTAM BOOKS

  NEW YORK - TORONTO - LONDON - SYDNEY - AUCKLAND

  THE TROLL GARDEN AND SELECTED STORIES

  A Bantam Classic Book / November 1990

  Cover art "Stone City, Iowa" by Grant Wood;

  courtesy of Joselyn Art Museum

  All rights reserved.

  Introduction copyright (c) 1990 by Rita Mae Brown.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording, or by any information

  storage and retrieval system, without permission in

  writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  ISBN 0-553-21385-7

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam

  Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of

  the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is

  Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other

  countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New

  York, New York 10103.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  OPM 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Introduction by Rita Mae Brown vii

  Selected Stories

  On the Divide 1

  Eric Hermannson's Soul 15

  The Enchanted Bluff 40

  The Bohemian Girl 51

  The Troll Garden

  Flavia and Her Artists 99

  The Sculptor's Funeral 128

  "A Death in the Desert" 144

  The Garden Lodge 167

  The Marriage of Phaedra 180

  A Wagner Matinee 199

  Paul's Case 208

  Selected Stories

  On the Divide

  Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw stood

  Canute's shanty. North, east, south, stretched the level

  Nebraska plain of long rust-red grass that undulated constantly

  in the wind. To the west the ground was broken and rough, and a

  narrow strip of timber wound along the turbid, muddy little

  stream that had scarcely ambition enough to crawl over its black

  bottom. If it had not been for the few stunted cottonwoods and

  elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot himself

  years ago. The Norwegians are a timber-loving people, and if

  there is even a turtle pond with a few plum bushes around it they

  seem irresistibly drawn toward it.

  As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of

  any kind, for when he first squatted along the banks of

  Rattlesnake Creek there was not a human being within twenty

  miles. It was built of logs split in halves, the chinks stopped

  with mud and plaster. The roof was covered with earth and was

  supported by one gigantic beam curved in the shape of a round

  arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever grown in

  that shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute had taken the

  log across his knee and bent it into the shape he wished. There

  were two rooms, or rather there was one room with a partition

  made of ash saplings interwoven and bound together like big straw

  basket work. In one corner there was a cook stove, rusted and

  broken. In the other a bed made of unplaned planks and poles. it

  was fully eight feet long, and upon it was a heap of dark bed

  clothing. There was a chair and a bench of colossal proportions.

  There was an ordinary kitchen cupboard with a few cracked dirty

  dishes in it, and beside it on a tall box a tin washbasin. Under

  the bed was a pile of pint flasks, some broken, some whole,

  all empty. On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of almost

  incredible dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and

  some ragged clothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark

  cloth, apparently new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped in a

  red silk handkerchief and pinned to the sleeve. Over the door hung

  a wolf and a badger skin, and on the door itself a brace of thirty

  or forty snake skins whose noisy tails rattled ominously every time

  it opened. The strangest things in the shanty were the wide

  windowsills. At first glance they looked as though they had been

  ruthlessly hacked and mutilated with a hatchet, but on closer

  inspection all the notches and holes in the wood took form and

  shape. There seemed to be a series of pictures. They were, in a

  rough way, artistic, but the figures were heavy and labored, as

  though they had been cut very slowly and with very awkward

  instruments. There were men plowing with little horned imps

  sitting on their shoulders and on their horses' heads. There were

  men praying with a skull hanging over their heads and little demons

  behind them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting with

  big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these

  pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew in this

  world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was always

  the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was a

  serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had

  felt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of

  them was cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very

  rude and careless, and looked as though the hand of the workman had

  trembled. It would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men

  from their evil geniuses but for one fact, the men were always

  grave and were either toiling or praying, while the devils were

  always smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been split

  for kindling and it was evident that the artist did not value his

  work highly.

  It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled

  into his shanty carrying a basket of. cobs, and after filling the

  stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over

  the fire, staring drearily out of the window at the wide gray

  sky. He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the

  miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He

  knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of
its early summer, in all

  the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all

  the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and

  sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the

  grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones

  that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it

  stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of

  hell.

  He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet

  heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the

  window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in

  the straw before the shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning

  to spill themselves, and the snow flakes were settling down over

  the white leprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed

  even the sod away. He shuddered and began to walk, trampling

  heavily with his ungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on

  the Divide and he knew what that meant. Men fear the winters of

  the Divide as a child fears night or as men in the North Seas fear

  the still dark cold of the polar twilight. His eyes fell upon his

  gun, and he took it down from the wall and looked it over. He sat

  down on the edge of his bed and held the barrel towards his face,

  letting his forehead rest upon it, and laid his finger on the

  trigger. He was perfectly calm, there was neither passion nor

  despair in his face, but the thoughtful look of a man who is

  considering. Presently he laid down the gun, and reaching into the

  cupboard, drew out a pint bottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it

  to his lips, he drank greedily. He washed his face in the tin

  basin and combed his rough hair and shaggy blond beard. Then he

  stood in uncertainty before the suit of dark clothes that hung on

  the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in his hands and

  tried to summon courage to put them on. He took the paper collar

  that was pinned to the sleeve of the coat and cautiously slipped it

  under his rough beard, looking with timid expectancy into the

  cracked, splashed glass that hung over the bench. With a short

  laugh he threw it down on the bed, and pulling on his old

  black hat, he went out, striking off across the level.

  It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his cabin

  once in a while. He had been there for ten years, digging and

  plowing and sowing, and reaping what little the hail and the hot

  winds and the frosts left him to reap. Insanity and suicide are

  very common things on the Divide. They come on like an epidemic in

  the hot wind season. Those scorching dusty winds that blow up over

  the bluffs from Kansas seem to dry up the blood in men's veins as

  they do the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever the yellow scorch

  creeps down over the tender inside leaves about the ear, then the

  coroners prepare for active duty; for the oil of the country is

  burned out and it does not take long for the flame to eat up the

  wick. It causes no great sensation there when a Dane is found

  swinging to his own windmill tower, and most of the Poles after

  they have become too careless and discouraged to shave themselves

  keep their razors to cut their throats with.

  It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be very

  happy, but the present one came too late in life. It is useless

  for men that have cut hemlocks among the mountains of Sweden for

  forty years to try to be happy in a country as flat and gray and

  naked as the sea. It is not easy for men that have spent their

  youth fishing in the Northern seas to be content with following a

  plow, and men that have served in the Austrian army hate hard work

  and coarse clothing on the loneliness of the plains, and long for

  marches and excitement and tavern company and pretty barmaids.

  After a man has passed his fortieth birthday it is not easy for him

  to change the habits and conditions of his life. Most men bring

  with them to the Divide only the dregs of the lives that they have

  squandered in other lands and among other peoples.

  Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his madness

  did not take the form of suicide or religion but of alcohol. He

  had always taken liquor when he wanted it, as all Norwegians do,

  but after his first year of solitary life he settled down to it

  steadily. He exhausted whisky after a while, and went to alcohol,

  because its effects were speedier and surer. He was a big man and

  with a terrible amount of resistant force, and it took a great

  deal of alcohol even to move him. After nine years of drinking,

  the quantities he could take would seem fabulous to an ordinary

  drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, he

  generally drank at night and on Sundays. Every night, as soon as

  his chores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit

  up he would play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills

  with his jackknife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie

  down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep.

  He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but

  to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton

  made a sad blunder when he put mountains in hell. Mountains

  postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain peoples are

  religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their

  utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of their vice, were

  cursed of God.

  Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man.

  Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes

  maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was

  none of these, but he was morose and gloomy, and liquor took him

  through all the hells of Dante. As he lay on his giant's bed all

  the horrors of this world and every other were laid bare to his

  chilled senses. He was a man who knew no joy, a man who toiled in

  silence and bitterness. The skull and the serpent were always

  before him, the symbols of eternal futileness and of eternal hate.

  When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors

  came, Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape from his bosom vice.

  But he was not a social man by nature and had not the power of

  drawing out the social side of other people. His new neighbors

  rather feared him because of his great strength and size, his

  silence and his lowering brows. Perhaps, too, they knew that he

  was mad, mad from the eternal treachery of the plains, which every

  spring stretch green and rustle with the promises of Eden, showing

  long grassy lagoons full of clear water and cattle whose hoofs are

  stained with wild roses. Before autumn the lagoons are dried up,

  and the ground is burnt dry and hard until it blisters and cracks

  open.

  So instead of becoming a friend and neighbor to the men that

  settled about him, Canute became a mystery and a terror. They told

  awful stories of his size and strength and of the alcohol he drank.

  They said that one ni
ght, when he went out to see to his horses

  just before he went to bed, his steps were unsteady and the rotten

  planks of the floor gave way and threw him behind the feet of a

  fiery young stallion. His foot was caught fast in the floor, and

  the nervous horse began kicking frantically. When Canute felt the

  blood trickling down into his eyes from a scalp wound in his head,

  he roused himself from his kingly indifference, and with the quiet

  stoical courage of a drunken man leaned forward and wound his arms

  about the horse's hind legs and held them against his breast with

  crushing embrace. All through the darkness and cold of the night

  he lay there, matching strength against strength. When little Jim

  Peterson went over the next morning at four o'clock to go with him

  to the Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was on its

  fore knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story

  the Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no wonder that

  they feared and hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses.

  One spring there moved to the next "eighty" a family that made

  a great change in Canute's life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of

  the time to be afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too

  garrulous to be afraid of any one who listened to her talk, and

  Lena, their pretty daughter, was not afraid of man nor devil. So

  it came about that Canute went over to take his alcohol with Ole

  oftener than he took it alone, After a while the report spread that

  he was going to marry Yensen's daughter, and the Norwegian girls

  began to tease Lena about the great bear she was going to keep

  house for. No one could quite see how the affair had come about,

  for Canute's tactics of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He

  apparently never spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with

  Mary chattering on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other

  and watch Lena at her work. She teased him, and threw flour in his

  face and put vinegar in his coffee, but he took her rough jokes

  with silent wonder, never even smiling. He took her to church

  occasionally, but the most watchful and curious people never

  saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at her while she

  giggled and flirted with the other men.

  Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry.

  She came home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to

  startle Lena with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances,

  and all the other esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few

  weeks Lena's head was completely turned, and she gave her father no

  rest until he let her go to town to seek her fortune at the ironing

  board. From the time she came home on her first visit she began to

  treat Canute with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kid

  gloves, had her clothes made by the dress maker, and assumed airs

  and graces that made the other women of the neighborhood cordially

  detest her. She generally brought with her a young man from town

  who waxed his mustache and wore a red necktie, and she did not even

  introduce him to Canute.

  The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he knocked one

  of them down. He gave no sign of suffering from her neglect except

  that he drank more and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully

  than ever, He lay around in his den and no one knew what he felt or

  thought, but little Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at

  Lena in church one Sunday when she was there with the town man,

  said that he would not give an acre of his wheat for Lena's life or

  the town chap's either; and Jim's wheat was so wondrously worthless

  that the statement was an exceedingly strong one.

  Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly

  like the town man I s as possible. They had cost him half a millet

  crop; for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they