When the Roses Return
There are, in every century, two minor officials in the bureaucracy of human depletion: the bozo and the troll.
The first is merely a weather event. He enters the room with the confidence of a man who has mistaken volume for authority and appetite for discernment. He does not particularly wish you harm. That would require an attention of which he is not capable. He ruins the afternoon as a cow ruins a garden: with neither malice nor apology, and a touching incapacity to understand why the roses have become emotional.
The bozo is not your enemy. This is what makes him so expensive.
An enemy at least grants you the dignity of being seen. He studies the fortress, measures the windows, wonders where the gates are weak. The bozo sees neither fortress nor gate. He sees only a place to lean his bicycle. He asks whether your work is “still going,” whether your complicated life might not be improved by a job in “something more stable,” whether the thing you have spent ten years building could not perhaps be explained in one sentence to his cousin.
He is innocent in the way a falling wardrobe is innocent.
One must not hate him. Hatred is too much of an investment. To hate a bozo is to embroider a velvet coat for a scarecrow. Better to regard him as one regards a leaking tap in a rented villa: mildly inconvenient, not metaphysically interesting, and best dealt with before it becomes the subject of the evening.
The troll is another creature entirely.
He is not oblivious. On the contrary, he is often rather intelligent in the narrow and ruinous way of a man who has spent too long looking through keyholes. He notices the weak stitch in the cuff, the momentary uncertainty in the voice, the old bruise beneath the glove. He asks questions with the soft, polished manners of a collector examining porcelain.
The troll is not confused by your predicament. He is fascinated by it. He has studied it with the grave concentration of a taxidermist. He will ask precisely the question no one else had the vulgarity or intelligence to ask, not because he desires the answer, but because he wishes to observe the faint change in your face when the answer is impossible.
The troll may be charming company for an hour. This is part of the camouflage. He can quote obscure films, remember the name of a vanished restaurant, make a fine joke about the vanity of politicians and the hopelessness of civilization. He may possess an admirable eye for wine and the exact point at which other people become too pleased with themselves.
But one notices, with time, that his admiration is always borrowed, his laughter always slightly angled, his sympathy somehow furnished with a hidden latch. The man has no joy of his own; he must rent it from the distress of others.
And this is why he resents the sovereign person.
A person who has made a kingdom of his own days—however modest the acreage—offends him deeply. They are evidence against him. Nothing irritates a small man like a life that refuses to become small in his presence.
He will not always attack directly. Direct attack is for men with armies. The troll prefers inquiry. He inquires into your motives, your finances, your timing, your old decisions, your credibility, your supposed contradiction. He approaches your table as though he has come to admire the silver, and leaves having pocketed the spoons.
The bozo wastes your time through clumsiness.
The troll wastes your time through design.
The distinction matters because it determines the cure. The bozo may be managed with geography. Sit farther away. Answer less. Allow his remarks to fall to the floor with the soft indifference accorded to a dropped napkin. He is a cloud of gnats, not a philosophical problem. One need not write manifestos against mosquitoes. One closes the window.
The troll, however, requires a more ceremonial treatment.
One does not debate him. Debate assumes that words are being used to discover something. The troll uses words as burglars use skeleton keys. One does not explain oneself to him, because explanation is merely raw material in a better suit. One does not offer the grand defense, the beautiful confession, the final clarifying speech that will make him understand the nobility of one’s intentions.
He understands enough already.
That is the trouble.
To block a troll is not cowardice. A man does not invite a rat into the pantry because the rat displays an unusual curiosity about cheese.
Life is so absurdly brief that it is almost comic to spend it answering provocations from men who have mistaken irritation for intimacy.
Why surrender any of this to the bozo’s unconscious trampling or the troll’s deliberate little excavations?
The bozo, one forgives from a distance.
The troll, one dismisses with elegance.
No announcements. No tribunals. No final aria of righteous explanation. Merely the door closing with the discreet, expensive sound of a well-made latch.
And then—how extraordinary—the roses return.
