A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall (40 page)

The captain announced that they were making their final descent. His final descent. The newspaper the stewardesses dealt out upon boarding had stories about the Icelanders competing in Athens, but nothing about Burr's riot. He scanned the paper a third time to make sure there was no mention of the Acropolis on fire.

The A300 canted into the runway as if it were dodging an attack. Despite the pilot's warning that the air was turbulent, everyone was surprised at how unsteady the plane was and applauded the double-skid contact of tire on land. Burr looked for police on the tarmac and found none.

His first thought, looking at the pockmarked moonscape near Keflavik, was that someone could become lost to the world with two steps and a will to crouch.

The autumn ice came late to the eastern coast of Greenland in 2003. By November the sound had frozen solid, bridging the wild horn of the south with the robin's-egg-blue, barn-red, and ochre homes scattered along the rocky settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit.

By December an elastic skin of ice reached out hundreds of miles into the sea, rolling with every wave. Seals either broke through the glaze or hauled out on the rolling ice sheet to dig lairs in the hummocks, rising and falling when the larger waves passed.

The bears' only advantages were on the ice. For their five terrestrial months they were scavengers, picking at the bones of a washed-up whale or, more often, pawing the remnants of fledgling birds and other trash. When the ice came, however, they became predators. They ranged hundreds of miles from their dens on the east coast of Greenland in search of the blubber-rich ringed seals that would sustain them for the coming year.

By spring of 2004 the thinning ice sheet, stretched by wind and currents and waves, began to crack. By April, fissures sheared the platform in two and separated the bears from the fast-receding shore. They could swim across the channels, they could even swim hundreds of miles to land, but they needed to stay on the drifting floes to snare the last meal until the sea ice froze again. Most of the ranging males were able to kill enough and store enough fat. A few were not and remained on the pack ice deep into the summer of 2004.

The blue and green anvil ice, sculpted by deformations of pressure and melting and freezing, remained closer to the shelf and proved a poorer stage for hunting than the pancake ice. One young male bear hunted from a thin ice raft throughout the bright summer night, remaining hunched with his muzzle inches above the arctic water long past the sweep south on the East Island current, all the while trading fat for desperate lunges and dives for the swifter seal pups and beluga whales. Then his raft met the warmer Irminger Current in the middle of the Denmark Strait.

As the pack ice melted, the bear's ribs became a greater portion of the bear. When balance on the flooded raft became impractical, the bear swam past the fractal coast of Iceland's Westfjords until he was caught by the downward water mass that would bring him four hundred miles from his native habitat and ten miles from the Sigurðsson homestead.

B
ased on the description Paul the concierge had given him on their ride from Nijmegen to the Rotterdam shipping yard, Owen assumed he would be sleeping in an actual shipping container and not in a private berth.

Everything was bolted to the ceiling, floor, or walls. A black-iron rod secured the Holophane light to the ceiling, flutes on the clear shade bending light to form a white asterisk on the flat red ceiling, rays widening to the corners like a Japanese war flag. Four hex bolts anchored each foot of his trundle bed, built for shorter times, into the floor of his hold. The flip-down chrome sink, his thin mattress, and his pillow were the only objects that he could move.

Owen read volume 2 on the squeaking bed and was quite sure he would never be Odysseus, the man of many turns. Faced with a Penelope, he'd chosen to run away instead of fighting to get home. He was also coming to terms with the reality that he would never be a poet—a consolation version of Artist he had been kicking around for the past week. The same inclination that had driven him to this cloister of the world was crippling him. It was a nasty paradox: he had developed an aesthetic that drew him to significant art, but that same sensibility made him realize he could never do anything remotely significant. He would have to float on the periphery of those doing truly great things. He would float. He would disappear. Stevie offered harbor, and he had chosen drift. And now he was floating farther from her every day, with no plan for making himself good, let alone good enough for her.

Unlike the river barge, every inch of this was sea-primed brine-battling ship. Owen's great hope was to stow away, to be left alone in a box, to sleep the entirety of his eight-week passage to Iceland. Instead, the sun was up twenty-plus hours per day. He played chess over Wu-Tang records with Isaak, the first mate, and picked up a smoking habit.

The team was in Athens now. They had a good shot at a medal. He wondered if he was still officially on the roster, and then he laughed at himself. That was a sport, and this was a life—albeit an extremely fucked-up one. But sure, who doesn't want a medal?

On Sunday, August 29, 2004, after a week of river cruising, a week in port at Rotterdam, two months of skips at Cuxhaven, Germany, Aarhus, Denmark, Varberg, Sweden, and the Faroe Islands, Owen finally made landfall in Iceland and breathed the free blue air. The only lines were horizontal, stretching the sky until it whitened like bent plastic or pulled taffy. Isaak closed his eyes, threw back his head, and took a deep breath.

—It's like having a third lung, right?

—It's almost prehistorically clean.

—They're about to fuck the whole thing up with smelters.

Isaak pointed to a mountain fifty miles away. Owen didn't process the words. He was too astonished that in this country he could see to the horizon.

The port security in Reyðarfjörður was as informal as Isaak had promised. Owen walked the aluminum track while Isaak described the previous customs officer.

—A real asshole. First time I came here he took me to his portable office, made me strip down so he could photograph all my tattoos. Said they were worried about a gang problem. And then, as if that's not humiliating enough, he does these third-grade sketches of every single one of my tats. Why? “Because you're black, and they might not show up that well against your skin.” Fucking asshole. They transferred him, or who knows. New man's all right.

The clipboard-holding guy had been in earshot the entire time, but pretended not to hear Isaak's grievance. They shook hands heartily.

—Hey, Tómas, good to see you again. We're gonna stretch our legs and bend our elbows. Want to join? New guy here needs to get a stamp.

Tómas declined to shake Owen's hand.

—What's in the bag?

—Few clothes.

—You have money? You're not going to be begging on the streets a week from now?

—My father's arranging for my return ticket.

The officer pointed at Owen's bag.

—You're American? Headed back to America from here?

—Aye.

—Aye?

—Yes sir. I'll just be here for a few days, then to Reykjavik, then back to California.

—How old are you?

Owen realized he had missed a birthday.

—Twenty-two.

—Let me see your passport.

Owen handed him the edge-worn broken thing.

The officer grabbed a stamp from a holster, thumbed the dial, and asked Owen to turn around. Owen reluctantly spun, thinking he might have mistaken a stamp for a Taser, and slowly brought both hands back, just past his hips. He was envisioning how he and Isaak would respond when he felt a punch in his shoulder and heard the smack of the stamp wheel spinning.

—Have fun, Hollywood. Watch out for this guy.

—I'll keep my eye on him.

Tómas found the bad joke inordinately funny.

Isaak knew a plank-floored bar that became a country-western dance hall after dark. Owen bought the first round as thanks and the second round as “No really, thanks.” They shared strong beer and watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics.

—About five minutes' walk in any direction, and nobody's ever going to see you again—if that's what you want. Stay in the north. The north is warmer than the south.

—Why?

—Gulf Stream. You can get all your camping shit in Egilsstadir. It's twenty miles up that road.

—How big is it?

—It's the biggest city in the eastern half of the country, and there are only like two thousand people. Every Icelander would fit in that Olympic stadium. And once you packed them in, everybody with a seat would live in Reykjavik.

—Been there?

—It's like you'd picture the capital of Greenland or something. It's amazing, but feels small, which you'll need when winter hits. I'm telling you. If you want to get lost forever, just walk. The whole country's like an upside-down bowl. The people who aren't in Reykjavik are in Akureyri. The rest, all twenty thousand of them, speckle the lip of the bowl with these little farms and only want to be left the fuck alone.

Isaak saw Owen smile and positioned his chair away from the fireworks and dancing on the television feed.

—What exactly did you do?

—I murdered a guy.

—Only one?

—I'm serious.

—The fuck you did. I'm 5th Ward, motherfucker!

He showed Owen his forearm tattoo of a 5 with “T-H” spelled out in twisted blunts. He explained it was a Houston thing.

—I've heard that line before, and you can bet your ass none of the guys who said it were J.Crew–wearing motherfuckers. You fucking up is a D in History or some shit. Get serious, man.

—I should have been up there.

Owen showed his tattoo.

—Instead this happened. And I murdered a handicapped artist at an art fair in Basel.

—Oh, you're
that
Owen.

Owen couldn't tell if Isaak was kidding.

Isaak slapped him in the arm, spilling Owen's glass of beer on the wooden floor.

—Fucking History. I hated that shit. And look at me now: international maritime engineer.

They let History be the final word on Owen's plight. They traded sports stories, played one last game of chess, and parted the best of friends.

S
ecurity met Burr as soon as the plane landed. He had taken hundreds of international flights and never disembarked to a security screen. The X-ray machine couldn't have been brought here specifically for him. Two automated doors stood between him and the freedom of the baggage claim. Six men in hats, all communicating through lapel radios, earpieces, and walkie-talkies, looked directly at him. He had carried on nothing but a leather portfolio and put it in a grey plastic bin that passed from the brushed metal rods to the conveyer belt. He waited in line for his turn to walk through the metal detector. He beeped. A guard pantomimed for him to remove his belt and pass through again. He passed.

He joined the very short line of non-EU passport holders. When his turn came, the guard asked him why he was in Iceland. He panicked and explained that he was a visiting professor lecturing with John Hollander on scansion of rune poems vis-à-vis Ionic meter. The officer didn't seem to care. He told him to get some sleep.

Burr assumed customs would be a formality, given that he had no possessions he could possibly declare. He pressed the Immigration button with brio and was stunned to see that rather than a green light, his hand had created a dreadful red X.

A guard stepped from the one-way-mirrored booth and led him to an office very clearly on the wrong side of freedom. The man waiting in the office didn't shift in his scoop-backed upholstered chair. The escorting guard had seized Burr's passport and now handed it to his supervisor. The tired, massive man was looking at the screen of his off-white monitor, which was nothing but bad. Before making eye contact, he spoke.

—Your itinerary and return ticket, please.

—Well, you see, I'm not sure how long I'm going to be in Iceland, exactly. There are several contingencies that have not yet . . .

Now the supervisor made eye contact.

—What is the purpose of your visit?

—I'm lecturing, or rather I hope to lecture, with John Hollander.

—Who?

—Professor John Hollander of Yale. I'm Professor Joseph Burr, of Mission University.

—And I'm Professor Admiral Haldor Grimsson. What's in the folder?

—Just documents.

—May I see? And do you object to a witness?

He spoke into his intercom in Icelandic. A new guard, with the thickest neck Burr had ever seen, entered the room, gasping the blinds to a tremble and then slamming the door behind him so they jumped in panic and settled misaligned.

Burr opened the portfolio. The yellow legal pad on the verso had a numbered list of shamefully opportunistic projects:

          
1. The Liminalist Cookbook

          
2. The Science of Liminalism: We are all Gauge Bosons (
look up what those actually are
)

          
3. Liminalism and Seinfeld

The recto held his crossed-out itinerary for Athens, his fantasy itinerary for talks in Madrid, London, Dubai, Tokyo, and Kyoto, a single-sided twenty-page printout of an entry on Jean Baudrillard, several torn-out reviews of Art 35 Basel with fierce highlighting and numerous exclamations in the margins, and the
Vice
magazine cover story on Kurt Wagener.

—Are you an artist?

—No. I'm a professor of classics.

—Are you a troublemaker?

—I came here to hike.

—You don't look like you're in shape for hiking.

—I'm hiking to get in shape.

—Where's all your equipment?

—I hoped to buy it here.