Far Afield (39 page)

“You can put everything you have in there,” Jens Símun assured him.

That was just the trouble. Jonathan broke out in a
light sweat that made his back clammy and his head hollow. Looking around the room to avoid the box, he noticed the radio: it would never fit; he was reprieved from leaving—for as long as it took to build a bigger box. Wordlessly, he pointed at it.

Jens Símun scowled. He seized the radio, wrapped it in a dish towel, and jammed it sideways into the bottom. “Hah! Perfect.” He could not resist congratulating himself on his craftsmanship. “That’s a fine box you’ve got there.”

“I reckon so,” said Jonathan.

Jonathan and the box had different itineraries. It was to be sent by mail boat to Tórshavn, but there their paths diverged. Petur had a cousin-in-law who knew a man who worked on an Icelandic boat that fished off Newfoundland and delivered its haul to Gloucester, thirty miles north of Boston. For two bottles of aquavit, this boat would carry Jonathan’s box across the ocean. The bottles had already been sent over to Tórshavn. Now it was the box’s turn—for the boat was due to leave the Faroes in three days. Not so Jonathan, who planned a week beyond that to wind up his affairs and had yet to book his plane.

He’d laid in a first-class
temun
for Jens Símun: cake, cheese, jam, and the white loaf known locally as Vienna bread, which was used only for company. Jens Símun was pleased but didn’t hesitate to charge Jonathan a good many kroner for his work. The wood alone cost as much as a handmade sweater. Jonathan wondered what Jens Símun would have charged to build him a new bed, for instance. Far less, he imagined. It was because the box was for export. Whatever stayed in the village was community property, even if it lived in a specific house. Jonathan was sending a portion of Skopun’s capital—labor and wood—to another world. Such profligacy had its price.

His own capital—five notebooks filled with kinship charts, village anecdotes, recipes for killing and cooking whale, puffin, guillemot, directions to the best egg-gathering
sites—was not going to be entrusted to the hold of an Icelandic trawler. The small bag he’d bought the week he’d arrived held, barely, two changes of clothing and all the notebooks. With a toothbrush and comb in the pocket of his old tweed jacket, he’d be all set to travel—to Tórshavn, to Reykjavik, to Logan Airport.

Jonathan spent an evening packing his things and enlisted Heðin’s help carrying the box down to the dock in the morning. Jens Símun had painted what he thought was a sufficient address on the lid:
JONATHAN BRAND
,
AMERICA
. Jonathan wished it were so easy. He borrowed a black crayon from the foreman of the fish factory and added:
HOLD FOR PICKUP IN
GLOUCESTER
. Then he had to give elaborate instructions to the ticket taker on the
Másin:
This box is going onto the trawler
Sagafjord
, which should be in the harbor tomorrow, and then it will go with them to America—here Heðin interrupted.

“Vestmanna Jákup, you know with the black hat; he’ll get it.”

“So I’ll just leave it up by the harbormaster’s?”

Jonathan began to protest, but Heðin nodded to the ticket taker.

“What do you think will happen to it?” Heðin asked Jonathan. “Everybody will know it’s going onto the
Sagafjord
, because of the address, you see.” He grinned. “You worry too much.”

“Some things never change,” said Jonathan, grinning back.

He was lonely in his house without the radio and his own bedding. The ancient eiderdown from the other bed was just a sack of feathers with no quilting to organize their distribution; he spent much of his first night under it in battle. No matter how vigorously he kicked the bottom to move the stuffing up toward his chest, within half an hour it had all sunk down to his feet again. He gave up trying to sleep and pulled the chair over to the window.

The evening star had set hours before, and the partial moon was faint against the never-dark, now-brightening sky. Great schools of mackerel clouds tinted pink on their bellies arched over the water. A rooster warned of sunrise.

He was looking at light he would never see again. The ocean that was a dark reflecting pool, the earth polished by new grass to a silver surface, the latitude, all bent light and beamed it sideways, condensed it into a new substance in which every house, electrical pole, and rock on the streets of Skopun seemed the essence of house, pole, and rock, absolutes planted in more than three dimensions. Jonathan had seen this happen before and he knew it was a trick, an effect of northern dawn; he could even tell himself it was done with mirrors, since it was a consequence of reflection. At the same time he was convinced: here at the top of the world reality was visible, and he was looking at it.

In the morning, reality took the form of worry about his plane ticket. He’d delayed making reservations not only to postpone leaving but to avoid Daniela. With one part-time assistant, she constituted the Icelandair office; he couldn’t get around talking to her and, eventually, seeing her. Though he’d chafed under her prohibitions the first week after she’d left, he’d come to find them comforting. She was right: he wasn’t disappointed, because the time they’d spent together had been sweet and they had no opportunity to make things go wrong. He wasn’t sure things would go wrong, but he preferred idealizing the past to pursuing the future. He knew he was doing this. Knowing made him only more uneasy about seeing her.

Daniela, though, sounded delighted to hear his voice.

“How
are
you?” she asked. “It’s been such a long time.”

Jonathan shut the door of Sigurd and Jón Hendrik’s parlor for some privacy. “Well, fine, I guess. I’m leaving.”

“I’ve been thinking of you.”

“I’ve been thinking of you too.” This wasn’t exactly
true. He’d been rerunning erotic scenes at night and otherwise stifling the whole experience.

“You should have called.”

Jonathan made a face at the phone. “I thought we’d agreed not to.”

Daniela giggled. “I suppose you’re right. But a phone call would have been nice.”

Maybe he wasn’t meant to take her rules seriously, but at this moment he was glad he had.

“So,” said Daniela. “Do you want to make your reservations?”

“Yes.”

“The same as before, through Reykjavik?” She was all business now.

“Is there an alternative?”

“You could go to Bergen and then to Copenhagen and back to America from there. There’s no direct flight from Norway.” She was rustling paper. “Icelandair is cheaper.”

“Copenhagen,” said Jonathan. The imperial capital, fabled for sandwiches and pornography. “No.” He had an urge to see something other than Scandinavia. “How about Scotland? I heard there was a boat.”

More rustling. “I think it’s been discontinued. I can’t find the schedule. Nobody ever used it.” Jonathan said nothing. “So, I’ll book you through Iceland?”

“Okay.” His heart was beginning to sink.

“What day do you want to go?”

“Next week.” He had to clear his throat. “Sometime next week. You pick a day.”

“Let’s see, it would have to be Tuesday or Thursday.”

“Thursday.” Jonathan had to stop talking about it. “Thursday’s fine. I’ll see you.”

“Jonathan!”

“What?”

“You have to pick up the ticket at least a day before.”

“I know,” he said, and hung up.

Nothing left now but to pray for bad weather. And what a splendid spring they were having! Jón Hendrik, fumbling around in the kitchen reheating a horrible fish-and-potato stew for Sigurd’s lunch, couldn’t stop talking about how fine the weather was—and would continue, from all signs.

“The fulmar babies are so fat,” he crowed. “That means a calm spring.”

“Terrific,” Jonathan mumbled under his breath in English.

“Stay for lunch?” Jón Hendrik flapped his wooden spoon at the table.

“I have too much to do.”

“I reckon so.” Jón Hendrik chewed on his teeth. “I reckon you are happy to be going back to your homeland.”

Jonathan said the obligatory “I reckon so” and hightailed it out of the kitchen before Jón Hendrik could depress him further.

In truth, he had absolutely nothing to do: nothing to pack, nothing to send, nothing to arrange. The Dahls were fishing and would be out overnight. Little Jens Símun had been over to invite him for dinner tomorrow. Until then Jonathan was on his own, with no radio, no book, and no desire to see anybody.

Not quite. There was somebody he wanted to see, though he embarrassed himself just thinking of it: the
huldumaður
, the ghost shepherd of the outfields. If he existed. Jonathan would have to keep a balance between disbelief, which would surely prevent sighting him, and eagerness, which might scare him off. So he told himself that his mission was a fact-finding one, simply to determine the
huldumaður
’s habits and habitat.

With bread and cheese in one pocket of his jacket and an old pickle bottle full of water in the other, he set out. He stopped at Sigurd’s for a chocolate bar, just like the old
days. Since he’d sent off the box, everything was like the old days, he realized, when he’d been shipwrecked on this island with no possessions or attachments. Jonathan liked the way this thought made him feel, which was sad and also impressed him with how life was as artful as a novel in its circularity and patterns. As he dreamily handled the chocolate bars stacked on the counter and gave himself up to a wave of premature nostalgia for the entire year, Sigurd ruined his mood by snapping, “Which one are you going to buy? Or are you buying all of them?”

“Oh.” Jonathan picked a dark chocolate with hazelnuts and tried to put the others back in a stack.

“Never mind.” Sigurd pushed his hands out of the way and began to stack the bars himself. “You don’t know how to do it,” he grumbled.

Hoping to make amends, Jonathan said, “I’m going out for a walk.”

Sigurd snorted, as if to say, Who cares?, and put the finishing touches on his tower of chocolate.

“Just like I used to do,” Jonathan went on, enchanted again by the spell of regret he’d woven around himself. We come into this world with nothing, and we leave it the same way, he was repeating in his head, building to a crescendo of self-pity.

“Pah,” said Sigurd. “Haven’t you got better things to do?”

“I’m leaving in less than a week.”

“So.” Sigurd crossed his arms on his chest. “And the house. Is that going to clean itself?” He shook his head. “And your friends. Are you going to bother saying goodbye?”

“I haven’t left yet,” Jonathan said.

“You could have eaten lunch with us.” Sigurd turned away from the counter and rummaged in a box.

Jonathan blushed. “I’m sorry. You and Jón Hendrik must come to eat dinner with me tonight.”

Sigurd shook his head again. “You come for lunch with us,” he insisted, “tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Jonathan said. “I will.” He headed out the door.

“That’s one kroner fifty for the chocolate,” Sigurd called.

The fields were in full glory, dense grass teeming with blossoms, fat sheep strolling everywhere, a handsome cow or two guarding a calf, birds thick as rain in the sky. All the animals were bleating and lowing and screeching to each other for the sheer pleasure of it. Jonathan wondered why he’d ever thought this landscape was stark and empty. He must have been depressed or blind. It was junglelike in its profusion. Right here—he kneeled to examine the ground—were three kinds of orchid, a miniature clover, a fern that grew below the grass, something that trailed purple flowers like tiny sweetpea, the track of a sheep, and a puffin feather, white tipped with black.

But it was a little too busy for the
huldumaður
. People still came here to tend a patch of potatoes or catch birds or check on the growth of lambs. His haunts were farther out, where the cliffs were steeper and fewer humans ventured.

Jonathan stood on a big rock and surveyed the landscape, which repeated itself in water-rimmed fingers of green and gray in all directions. The big rookeries were to the northwest; he decided to walk southeast. He sat down on the rock long enough to eat half his lunch, then set out.

After an hour or so he had a sense of crossing a border: rougher, longer grass grew here, unclipped by sheep; the smaller birds—puffins and guillemots—had been supplanted by skuas, whose tawny, flecked bodies hovered above him, casting shadows bigger than his own. Like eagles, they rode updrafts effortlessly, just lying on the air waiting for something to happen on the ground. As Jonathan was the only thing happening, he felt edgy. He would
have found these birds menacing even if he’d never been attacked by one, and the memory of those clammy feet on his shoulder made it hard for him to relax. Each time a skua’s wings hissed above him, he ducked, though he soon realized that this movement only piqued their curiosity and provoked them to swoop closer for a better look.

The ground ended abruptly at the top of a rise, dropping straight down hundreds of feet to gnashing gnarled waves. It was a heart-stopping cliff face, and he had to sit down and hold on to a tuft of grass to regain his equilibrium. Twenty feet away, a skua standing on a rock eyed him. Jonathan ignored it and took his chocolate out of his pocket. The foil flashed in the sun as he unwrapped it, and before he finished opening it, the skua skittered over and snatched it right out of his hands.

“Hey!” Jonathan yelled.

It took off for some secret place where it could eat undisturbed, gliding above the tundra with the chocolate clenched in its tough, mean beak.

“Goddamn it,” said Jonathan. “Goddamn it.”

But there was really nothing he could do about it. He finished his bread and cheese, thinking all the while of the hazelnuts in the chocolate and how he’d rather be eating them. He drank his water, and on an impulse threw the bottle over the cliff. It plummeted in silence for a good three seconds, then exploded on the rocks below. He moved back from the edge, unnerved again.

Everything was inauspicious. He felt chilly and tense, and had the urge to go home immediately. The
huldumaður
wasn’t going to turn up. The truth was, Jonathan didn’t want him to turn up. As he set his course back for the village, he wondered if perhaps fear wasn’t the emotion most likely to conjure the
huldumaður
. This gave him the shivers, and he started to move at a good clip over the tussocks and stones. The clouds skidding across the sky made patches of light and dark on the land, which out of the corner of his eye
looked to Jonathan like ghost armies perched waiting for him on every hill.