Victor LaValle (1972– ) is an American writer of novels, stories, and comic books. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shirley Jackson Award, an American Book Award, and the key to Southeast Queens. His first book was a collection of realistic stories, Slapboxing with Jesus (1999), and his first novel, The Ecstatic (2002), continued in a similar vein. LaValle’s widely acclaimed second novel, Big Machine (2009), added elements of fantasy and won him a Shirley Jackson Award. His novella The Ballad of Black Tom (2016) also won a Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Bram Stoker Awards. His novel The Changeling (2017) won the World Fantasy Award. “I Left My Heart in Skaftafell” appeared in an earlier version in Daedalus in 2004, then was revised for the anthology Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (2013). The story draws on Scandinavian folklore, and LaValle has said he wrote it “because I’d broken up with a woman and was feeling adrift, so I decided to go on as foreign a journey as I could afford. That took me from New York to Iceland. (Which isn’t actually that far away.) That’s where the story was inspired.”
I LEFT MY HEART IN SKAFTAFELL
Victor LaValle
HE WAS MEEK, homicidal, wore a long scarf tied once around his neck as must have been the style for trolls that year. I never saw him board the bus, but it may have been in Varmahlid, though I can’t be sure since I slept so much as I traveled through Iceland.
I was there at the end of summer, August. Most folks in their twenties had already scamped cross-country in July so I found myself with the elderly wanderers. August was for the old-heads, and me. On wilderness trails I passed couples catching their breath and rubbing each other’s knees through their waterproof pants. The Germans regarded me with tacky detachment, snubbing me while wearing bright red boots and brighter orange parkas. They seemed ridiculous and yet they looked down on me. I tried not to feel hurt by their disdain, told myself being excluded by them was like being kicked out of clown college, but you can guess how much it really bothered me.
Also, I had the amazing misfortune of sitting behind French people on every plane and bus. Minutes into a ride a woman or man brazenly checked that yes there was, undeniably, someone back there then slid the chair so far back I had a headrest against my gullet. Even when I asked, slapped, tapped, or pushed the seat these folks only gave that stare the French invented to paralyze the dumb.
Luckily, the Icelanders liked me, even though I was an American. Because I was shy. Firm, polite, and quiet, a perfect personality for these reserved Northern Europeans. Many times I was told so. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” one woman in a candy shop said to me, “but I explained to my coworker that here, finally, is an American who isn’t boring. Being loud and asking so many boring questions!”
Most Icelanders used English skillfully, but it was a quirk of speech that they said “boring” when they meant “frustrating.” Like “this knot in my shoe is so boring!” Or, “I can’t reach my girlfriend, this connection is boring!”
So this was me: an American, not boring, black, and alone in Iceland.
* * *
—
Being both a troll and a smoker he had little lousy teeth. When his mouth opened it was hard to distinguish them from his lips. Everything fed into a general maw. Once, he lit up right on the bus as we left Akureyri so the driver stopped, walked down the aisle, and explained that those were the old ways and he could no longer smoke everywhere he pleased. I sat farther back, but we all heard the warning. There were thirty-one of us riding the bus, mostly couples. No one else was going alone but me and the monster.
By the way, this whole time let’s not talk about the Africans. They had no allegiance to me of course. Why should they? The white folks weren’t hugging each other in Caucasian familyhood—still fuck those Africans, and I mean that from the bottom of my soul. In Reykjavik I went bonkers trying to get a little love from any one of them. Nothing. Not even the faintest soul-brother nod. May they all enjoy another hundred years of despotic rule.
When I say “troll” it probably implies a certain size. We hear troll and think dwarf, but out here trolls were enormous according to reports. In a town called Vik there are three spires said to be trolls who were caught in sunlight and transformed to stone as they tried to drag a ship ashore. They’re six stories high.
My troll was man-sized. He wore one beige sweater the whole time though he paid his bills from a fold of green and purple bills kept tied in a big red handkerchief. Whenever I got off the bus, he got off the bus. It didn’t take long to notice the pattern. I’d see him walking around towns at night, moving with a predatory hunch, hands in his pockets and holding out the sides of his jacket as he moved so that when the wind got in there the fabric expanded and he seemed to grow wings.
* * *
—
I didn’t come to Iceland to fuck Icelandic women nor to spin in the flash clubs of Reykjavik. Iceland was my destination because for me there was nowhere else to go. The rest of the world was only getting hotter and, much to the shame of my sub-Saharan ancestors I was a black man who hated warm weather. So I came to Iceland for the cold, but that wasn’t the only thing that brought me.
Once there I paid a little over two hundred dollars for a one-way bus ticket around the island. Get off in any town you want, explore, be both gawked at and ignored, then get on the next bus the next day to the next place.
Not long before coming to Iceland I’d stopped wanting marriage. Not only with the woman I lived with, the woman I loved, but with the rest of them, too. I saw marriage in my lane and I swerved. While it’s true each family is unhappy in its own way it seems like every married person’s complaints are the god damn same. I had married friends, read novels and articles about the subject, and from what I could tell that wedding band made you a member of one great, dull secret society. I also hated the men my friends turned into once they married. Relentlessly horny for any woman besides their wives, seeming angry at their wives for having just one pussy that they’d be stuck fucking for the rest of their lives. I decided I’d rather be alone than so unhappy. Despite that change of mind, and all my bluster, it was me feeling sad and longing in Iceland. How many times had I called my ex before taking this trip? Too many to count. But she never picked up.
* * *
—
I felt so sexy over there. I felt sexy everywhere, actually. My signature had carnal appeal. Also the way I wore my wool hat, with the earflaps tied under my chin? Sexy. I’m not being self-deprecating in the slightest. Despite this feeling I hadn’t been to bed with a woman since my breakup, so I felt like a light socket hidden behind the bookshelf.
That was probably best though. Nothing worse than meeting a new woman and you’re still nurturing your heartache about the last one. What I hate are those people who can’t stand to be alone. They seem so weak. But of course that’s exactly the kind of guy I turned out to be so the only way to get isolated was to run far, far away. Like Iceland.
The problem with a trip like mine, and the reason I didn’t full-nelson the troll on the first day he started following me, is that I kept seeing the same people in different towns. There was a stumpy Italian couple that I must have greeted eighteen times in four days. There was a woman from who-can-say-where who became as uncomfortable around me as I eventually did around the troll. She and I just kept picking the same lifeless churches to visit, the same damn coffeehouses, until I must have seemed to own a map of her future engagements. I was constantly, accidentally, trailing her. Having gone through that made me sympathetic, so the troll got an untold number of rides sitting in a seat near me because I wanted to be fair, to be fair.
* * *
—
At Lake Myvatn I camped in a long cooled lava pool under a constant drizzle and, occasionally, downpours. Inside my tent I read
the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Egil’s Saga, an ancient Icelandic tale. To me both seemed like the myths of long-lost civilizations. I forgot the troll while I was there. Four days at Lake Myvatn and I never saw him.
On a day when it was only lightly drizzling I rented a bike to get around the lake and, at one point, found a field of lava that had cooled into grotesque stacks. Enormous columns of petrified ash two stories high. There were little holes dug into them up near the top that resembled shelves. That’s where goblins slept, according to the old stories. When I walked into these endless fields they seemed to twist behind me. I imagined wandering forward until I found the Liege of the Goblins reclining on a throne made of sheep skulls. Would I run from him? I didn’t know, but part of me wanted to find out.
I liked Iceland because they still had myths on their minds. Not that you’d find any younger people who’d admit to believing in goblins or dwarves or little people of any kind. They were too cosmopolitan, too modern, for that. And yet even the most skeptical refused to state their disbelief too loudly in a public place.
After the camping trip was over and I climbed on the next bus to the next town, yeah, the troll was there. It was like he’d been sleeping in the hood of my jacket this whole time. I boarded the bus and he was already in a seat.
When I passed him I tried to remember that woman I kept seeing from town to town. The troll was probably only doing his own gamboling through the country. Why be paranoid? It had nothing to do with me. But then he turned in his seat, looked directly at me, and didn’t turn away. It was me who flinched. I looked out my window, watched the bus driver tossing all our bags into the luggage bay.
I wrote a postcard to the woman I’d almost married. The woman I hurt so much when I pulled away. In my note I described the guy who was following me, but then I decided I couldn’t mail the card. I’d been so sure I wanted to be alone hadn’t I? Well here I was, alone, and immediately I reached for her.
Since the troll sat ahead of me the driver reached him first to check tickets and ask for a destination so he could punch the card.
“Breiddalsvik,” the troll croaked.
His voice was even sleazier than his appearance. The way he whispered the name it sounded like he was about to crawl up the inside of the driver’s leg and bite him in the thigh. Ravenous and repellent, the rattling hiss of a crocodile. Good enough though. The troll had a destination and it wasn’t mine. I was headed to Djupivogur and told the driver happily.
But when we reached Breiddalsvik and the driver pulled over the troll leaned his head into the aisle and said, “No, not here. Not yet.”
The driver looked harassed but then kept on driving, both of us still on board.
Our bus wove through sharp mountains. Big basalt cliffs with little plant life on them because winds eroded them too quickly to grow much. Sheep and cows grazed in meager fields.
Finally we reached Djupivigor. Fishing village of four hundred. Four hundred and thirty-one once the bus parked.
Couples disembarked. I took my pack from below the bus. The troll took his single hefty black bag. It was a good size but not enough to carry camping gear, sleeping bag, change of clothes, toiletries. Like mine. His was big enough to hold a human head, I thought. By now my thoughts were getting macabre.
The only hotel in town was beside a tiny harbor. A small modern fleet of boats was moored in tidy rows at the other end of the harbor. Of the twelve vessels there, ten wouldn’t have fit more than four people. The last two were big, for tours to the island of Papey, famous for its puffins. The clumsy little birds with adorable faces and multicolored bills were the reason I’d stopped here. Wanted to eat one. Cooked, of course.
I let the troll register first because I kept making this mistake of thinking that if I caught him in a lie it would be enough to stop his plans. I’d confront him, yell, You said you were getting off in Breiddalsvik, but you got off in Djupivigor! And he’d buckle under the weight of my keen observation. He’d screech then disappear back into the realm of haints and phantoms.
“For one night,” he said to the young girl behind the desk. “Sleeping bag accommodations will do.”
I was on the same plan. Iceland was expensive at this time, even here in the outer reaches. A single room was sixty dollars and wouldn’t be much better than a homeless shelter. Sleeping bag accommodations, a tiny cubicle with a cot and a shared bathroom, cost only twenty.
* * *
—
My room was 8 and the troll’s was 9. When I went back later to try and switch to another, farther, room the clerk told me the rest had been reserved by a team of Norsemen off hulking around some unpronounceable mountain. Climbing it with their bare hands probably. I was relieved. A hall of Vikings was enough company for me to feel safe, even if I was directly next door to the fiend. I waited all evening for them to come, as if they’d already agreed to have my back in case things went badly with the troll.
But they never came. The next morning I asked the teenager at the desk, the same clerk as the night before, where the Norsemen had gone. She told my they’d slipped away. A towrope gave out in their climb and they cascaded into a pyre of bones, flares, and ice axes. For a moment I imagined my troll scaling the heights of the mountain and snapping their secure lines just so no one would get between him and me.
I went back to my room feeling rattled. Afraid is more honest. I tried to sleep away the rest of the morning but really I just lay there listening for the sounds of the troll. From his room I heard throat clearing and much coughing. He’d hack so hard I swear I heard the wet tear of his trachea. Rolling around in his cubicle he bumped the wall more than once and it felt like a taunt. I didn’t go out to the communal toilet, just peed in my room’s small sink. At some point I fell asleep.
When I woke again I heard the troll in that communal bathroom. He was shaving at the sink. I was actually feeling terrible right then. Too lonely even for fear. I got out of my sleeping bag and soldiered into the bathroom, stood three feet away from the troll and threw some bass into my voice.
“Hey look,” I began. “Are you following me?”
“Yes.”
What kind of boar’s hair was this guy growing? I heard the scratch of his razor running across his throat. It wasn’t some disposable either. An enormous contraption, it wasn’t electric. It looked like a settler-era plow. As it pulled across his pinkish skin the sound was a crackling fire.
“Why are you following me?” This time when I spoke my voice had all the man knocked out of it. I almost whispered.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said. There was still shaving cream on the right side of his face. “Then I’m going to eat your flesh and put your bones in my soup. I’ve done it to others and I’m going to do it to you.”
“You really are?”
“I am.”
He stopped shaving but hadn’t turned to me this whole time. He only looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I stumbled into the toilet. It was where my feet directed me. My room would’ve been more sensible, but it’s hard to be sensible when you hear a threat like that so I went to the shitter instead. It had a full door so that I was on the inside and, at least nominally, safe from him.
He went on shaving that prickly neck for fifteen minutes longer. Out of fright I had to pee, but was too scared to pull down my pants. The sound of metal on skin went on for so long that I thought he must be regrowing the hair he’d just cut.
My hirsute pursuer eventually ran water in the sink and after that he came to the toilet door. He knocked as if I was going to open up for him.
“Hello,” he said. “Hello?”
I pressed my hands against the cool, blue concrete walls on either side of me. If he bashed through the door I was going to press myself up and kick him straight in the teeth and then do a backflip out the tiny window behind me. Sure I was.
<
br /> “Why be so afraid?” he whispered. “I could tear down this door right now, but I don’t want to be boorish. My name is Gorroon. When I come for you, you will know it. But, oh my, I can smell your blood from here.”
* * *
—
Because of Gorroon I never saw the puffins. He left the bathroom, chuckling to himself, and eventually I stepped out of the stall. I rolled up my sleeping bag and supplies then went to the front desk to turn in my key. The teenage girl at the desk, the same one who’d checked me in, the one who’d told me about the Norsemen—was sad when I told her I was leaving without hitting Papey.
“Have you been?” I asked her.
“I haven’t,” she admitted. “But I’ve seen many puffins.”
She had a dimpled, wide face and couldn’t have been more than seventeen. As she talked I leaned with my back against the front desk just to be sure Gorroon wouldn’t rush the lobby with a hatchet and surprise me.
The girl’s work schedule was seven days a week, eight hours each day. When I commiserated, assuming she must be working that much because she was broke, she laughed and corrected me. “I like to be here,” she said. “What else would I do today? My husband is at home without a job.”
“You’re married?”
There was gold on the ring finger of her right hand, but you’d be excused for missing it. The metal was whiter than her skin, thin as thread. She was already married at seventeen and at thirty I was still as single as a child.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 147
