The Wild Beasts of Wuhan

by Ian Hamilton

  Uninvited, Ava sat in a chair across from the desk. “What are those fish anyway?” she asked.

  “Sand sharks, dogfish, rock salmon, whatever you want to call them. Every market puts its own name on them.”

  “And that stench?”

  “Uric acid. It is natural to the fish — nothing to do about it. If you want to process dogfish, you have to learn to cope with it. Me, I don’t notice it anymore. The men, the same, though it’s hard on us when we leave here. The smell gets into your clothes, which is why the men work in as little as they can. Still, my wife swears it gets into your skin. Nothing to do about that either. It puts money in the bank, and in this town we’re about the last fish plant still in full production.”

  Ava wondered if her nylon Adidas jacket would absorb the urine smell, and was thankful she hadn’t worn her good clothes.

  “Where do the fins go?”

  “New York, to a Chinaman, and from there God knows. Probably China. The meat goes to the U.K., to the fish-and-chippers. They don’t have much cod anymore so they use the dogfish. They call it rock salmon. Sounds better, I guess.”

  “Yes, it does,” Ava said. “Mr. Sørensen, I was asking about your brother.”

  “Haven’t seen him in years.”

  “But do you know where he is?”

  “Why?” he repeated.

  “I have a client who bought several of his paintings. They’re in the market for more but haven’t been able to locate him.”

  “Jan’s paintings were never in any great demand.”

  “Times change; things get trendy.”

  “Jan is trendy?”

  “He has a growing following.”

  “Son of a bitch! I’m surprised.”

  “So, Mr. Sørensen, do you know where I can find him?”

  “He’s in the Faeroe Islands.”

  She had heard the name but just couldn’t place it. A vision of travelling to some South Pacific atoll surfaced in her head. “Where are the Faeroe Islands?”

  “In the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere,” Sørensen said.

  “That’s helpful.”

  He laughed. “It’s true — the middle of nowhere. They’re about 800 kilometres southeast of Iceland, 650 kilometres north of here, and 800 kilometres northeast of Scotland, in the North Atlantic. The Faeroes are the kind of place you don’t arrive at by accident, unless of course you’re some stupid Viking who got shipwrecked there two thousand years ago.”

  “Why did Jan go there?”

  “Helga.”

  “His wife?”

  “The fat cow is from there, never wanted to leave, and she nagged him all the time about going back. He finally gave in to her.”

  “How can I contact him?”

  “You can write him a letter.”

  “Do you have a phone number for him, a house number or a mobile?”

  “He doesn’t have a phone.”

  “Email?”

  “Don’t be stupid. This is my brother we’re talking about, a man who doesn’t have much use for the outside world. He’s living in a fishing village about half an hour from Tórshavn, the capital. It isn’t enough that he wants to live in one of the most isolated countries in the world; when he gets there, he has to isolate himself even more.”

  “Do you have an address for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I get it?”

  “I’m not sure he would appreciate that.”

  “Mr. Sørensen, all artists like to know their work is appreciated. I’m not trying to sell him a magazine subscription or a mobile phone plan; I want to buy some of his work.”

  He searched her face for a lie. Ava tried to smile, but it was difficult to make it natural when she was still breathing through her mouth.

  “Okay, I guess it can’t hurt,” he said. He wrote the number on a yellow Post-it pad, tore off the sheet, and passed it to her.

  She read, “Jan Sørensen, Tjorn, Faeroe Islands.”

  “The village has fewer than a thousand people. You can’t fart without everyone knowing. I write to him, I send him things, and I know the letters always get through because he always replies.”

  “He still has a bank account in Skagen,” she said.

  “How would you know that?”

  “When we were trying to trace him, my client still had that information from their last transaction.”

  “The statements come here. I bundle them and send them every six months or so.”

  Ava saw a tiny opening. “I may actually go to the Faeroes to see him. Would you like me to deliver his mail for you?”

  “No,” he said.

  So much for that, Ava thought. “If I were going to the Faeroes, Mr. Sørensen, what would be the best way to do it?”

  “There is a ferry from Hanstholm.”

  “And how long a journey is that?”

  “Close to two days.”

  “Ah, how about flying?”

  “You can fly.”

  “From?”

  “I’m not a travel agent,” he said.

  “That’s true,” Ava said, standing up.

  “Tell me,” he said, looking up at her. “Those shark fins, what do they do with them?”

  “They make soup.”

  “I know that, but what kind of soup?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I hear that it is a special kind.”

  “Well, it’s traditionally served on special occasions: weddings, birthdays, honouring someone.”

  “So it’s expensive, huh?”

  She wondered what he was selling the fins for — maybe a couple of dollars a kilo. How would he react if he knew that a bowl of shark fin soup with only a few shreds of meat in it could cost anywhere from ten to fifty dollars? “I don’t know. I’m not in the fish business.”

  Ava left the plant as quickly as she could, breathing through her nose every ten paces or so to test the air, but this time the odour didn’t abate even when she had reached her car. She climbed inside and the smell came with her. She had no doubt that it had penetrated her hair. It was starting to rain again, a cool, steady drizzle. She rolled down the driver’s-side window and drove away.

  It was eleven thirty, still early morning in Toronto, and her travel agent wouldn’t be up yet. She found an Internet café on the outskirts of the town. The place was empty. She went online to search for flights to the Faeroe Islands. There was a direct flight from a place called Billund at two thirty. She checked a map; it looked like a two-hour drive. She couldn’t make it. The only other option was to fly from Aalborg to Copenhagen and catch an evening flight from there.

  Ava drove from Hirtshals to Aalborg with the window still down. She was getting wet, but it was preferable to the stench. The flight from Aalborg left at three, and that gave her just over two hours to kill. She checked back in to the Hvide Hus, only too happy to pay the full day’s rate for a chance to shower.

  The first thing she did in the room was strip off all her clothes. She found two plastic laundry bags in the closet, packed her clothing and running shoes into one, and then double wrapped it in the second bag.

  Then she stepped into the shower and scrubbed and rescrubbed every pore of her body. She washed her hair three times. She stepped out of the shower and towelled herself off, then put on her blue-and-white pinstriped shirt and her cotton Brooks Brothers slacks. She finished off the look with her new cufflinks and her gold crucifix and applied a generous spray of Annick Goutal perfume. The laundry bag sat on the bed. She sniffed. No urine smell. She packed it into her carry-on.

  The same woman who had rented her the car that morning was at the booth when Ava took it back. She took the keys, noted the mileage, and passed Ava her credit card slip to
sign, all without saying a word.

  The flight from Aalborg was supposed to take just less than an hour, but it left late and she had to run to catch the Atlantic Airways flight in Copenhagen. That flight was scheduled to last two and a half hours, and because the fare difference between business class and economy was so large, Ava had booked economy. About ten minutes after takeoff she realized she had made a mistake. For the next two hours the liquor trolley made steady trips up and down the aisle. Passengers were buying doubles of everything. Ava had never seen anything like it.

  “This is their last chance,” the man in the seat next to her said. “The islands are dry. Liquor can’t be bought anywhere there, not even in hotels. And Customs is very strict about people bringing in alcohol. So this is their last chance to load up.”

  “Thank God it isn’t a longer flight,” Ava said.

  “Oh, it could be.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Vagar Airport gets a lot of mist and quite often the plane can’t land. They usually divert us to Reykjavik.”

  “Iceland?”

  “It isn’t so bad, though the people there are more depressed than ever since the country went bankrupt.”

  “How are the Faeroe Islands?”

  “People there are always depressed, or maybe I should say morose, regardless of what’s going on. It’s definitely a place where the glass is permanently half empty.”

  “You are Faeroese?”

  “No,” he said, extending a hand. “My name is Lars. I work for the Danish government. We still heavily subsidize the islands, and I fly there every month or so to make sure the money is being spent as it should be.”

  “I’m Ava.”

  “What on earth is taking you there?”

  “A painter, an artist.”

  “In the past you would see the occasional Japanese person there; they came to buy fish. There isn’t much fish left, so no more Japanese. You will be an exotic sight. You can expect to be stared at.”

  “I’m Chinese, not Japanese.”

  “Still, a very unusual sight in the Faeroes. The population is about ninety-four percent Faeroese — old Viking — and the rest a mixture of Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders. There are only about forty thousand people. They’re outnumbered by sheep more than two to one.”

  “I don’t have a hotel yet. Will that be a problem?”

  “It shouldn’t be. Tórshavn has lots of them, and at this time of year there aren’t many tourists.”

  “The artist lives in a village near there, Tjorn.”

  “I know the place. Quite picturesque. The Russian trawlers use it as a base. There’s a hotel there, actually, sort of a fisherman’s hotel. It’s not bad.”

  “How about the weather? I didn’t bring a jacket — none that I can wear anyway.”

  “It will be cool and most probably wet. It rains about 260 days a year. You can buy a locally handmade sweater at the airport; that should do you.”

  “No snow?”

  “Surprisingly, very rarely. The North Atlantic Current flows right around the Faeroes and gives it moderate temperatures. Nothing warm, mind you, but you know, ten degrees in the summer, two degrees in the winter, that type of thing.”

  It was pitch black outside as they banked and started their descent into Vagar Airport. When Ava finally saw lights, they shone through a window that was streaked with rain.

  For an airport so small there was a large contingent of customs officers standing behind a long wooden table. She soon saw why. They went through nearly every carry-on bag and patted down many of the passengers. Bottles of alcohol of all sizes began to cover the table. By the time she got to an officer there was enough to start a small liquor store.

  Behind her was a row of wheelchairs occupied solely by men who looked too drunk to walk. As the chair behind her rolled, she could hear the clinking of bottles.

  Lars walked with her into the terminal. He pointed out the sweater shop and a tourist information booth. “It’s about a one-hour ride by car into Tórshavn since they built the tunnel under the sea from Vagar to Streymoy. Before that it was a couple of hours by ferry. We can share a cab if you want,” he said.

  “Let me get my hotel sorted first. Would you mind waiting?”

  The woman at the booth seemed startled when Ava approached her, and even more so when Ava asked about the hotel in Tjorn. “Are you sure you want to stay there?” she asked.

  “Is it clean?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are there rooms available?”

  “I’ll call,” the woman said.

  The conversation was entirely in what Ava assumed was Faeroese. When it was done, the woman gave her a little smile and said, “Yes, there is a room, and it’s one with a bathroom.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “They’re holding it.”

  “They don’t even have my name.”

  “They don’t need it. I told them who you are.”

  “But you don’t —” Ava began, before realizing what the woman meant. “Thank you.”

  She went back to Lars. “I’m staying in Tjorn.”

  “Then you should catch your own taxi. It will cost you about 180 króna.”

  “What is that in U.S. dollars?”

  “About forty, but most of the drivers won’t take U.S. dollars. There’s a bank machine over there if you need it.”

  “Thanks for all the help.”

  “If you’re in Tórshavn for dinner or something, give me a call. I’m staying at the Town House Hotel and I’m always glad to have company.”

  She waved goodbye and wandered over to the gift shop. When Lars mentioned sweaters, she had imagined bulky knits in greys, blacks, and browns. But in the far corner she saw an explosion of colour and the name steinum above a rack that held some of the most exquisite knitwear Ava had ever seen. The sweaters were a riot of blues, reds, and yellows, with strange geometric shapes running around the edges. They were like pieces of art, no two the same. She checked the label: handknit, faeroe islands.

  She had a hard time deciding which one to buy, so she bought two.

  “These are beautiful,” she said to the cashier.

  “Jóhanna av Steinum — she is Faeroese.”

  Ava pulled on the most colourful one, the fit tight, slimming. I’m like a Fauvist painting come alive, she thought.

  ( 16 )

  The hotel was a long, low building of only two storeys that sat at the base of a mountain, looking out directly onto the harbour. Tjorn was small. The main street, or what Ava assumed was the main street, ran for only about two hundred metres, separating the harbour from the town. The majority of the residents seemed to live above the harbour, their house lights beaming from the mountain side. She saw a number of fishing boats tied up at the wharf, and at least one of them was Russian, judging by its Cyrillic name.

  She was met at the hotel door by a woman in denim shirt and jeans who looked like a slightly older version of Mimi. “I have been waiting for you. My name is Nina,” the woman said in English.

  “I’m Ava.”

  She led Ava to the lobby desk. She passed her a registry form and a key attached to a wooden stick. “I held the room with the bathroom for you.”

  “The room?”

  “Yes, only one room has its own bathroom; the others share. The Russians landed half an hour ago and the captain wanted your room, but I held it for you.”

  “Thank you,” Ava said. She was beginning to think that Tórshavn might have been the better option. “Will my cellphone work here?”

  “If you have Bluetooth it should.”

  “How about the Internet?”

  “Not from your room, but you can always use my desktop if you need it.”

  “How about food
?”

  “The restaurant is still open. We serve for another hour.”

  Ava filled in the form and gave the woman her passport and credit card. “What kind of food do you have?” she asked.

  “Sheep,” the woman said.

  “Lamb?”

  “No, sheep.”

  “That’s all you have?”

  “We have run out of everything else.”

  Ava had eaten on the plane, not much, but enough to keep her going until morning. “I’m not really hungry, thank you anyway.”

  “If you do not mind me asking, what brings you here? We don’t get many visitors who are not fishermen. We certainly do not get attractive young women, and Asian at that,” the woman said with a quick smile.

  Is she flirting with me? Ava thought. “I’m here to see an artist.”

  “Jan Sørensen?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “That was an easy guess. He is the only artist we have,” the woman said. “Does he know you are coming?”

  “No.”

  The woman looked pained.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “He is a funny kind of man. Keeps to himself, doesn’t mingle, doesn’t even hardly talk. Some of us think it is because he is a Dane and thinks he is too good for us. Others think he is just a bit mad.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I lean towards mad.”

  “He’s married, right?”

  “Helga, a down-to-earth Faeroese girl. They have seven kids. She runs the house, runs the kids, and runs him, I think.”

  “Where do they live?”

  She jerked her head to the right. “Up the hill, on the street that runs along the right side of the hotel.”

  “Does it have a number?”

  “It has a purple door.”

  Ava checked her watch; it was almost ten o’clock.

  “They will still be up, if that is what you are thinking. People here eat late and sleep late.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Her room was on the main floor, just three doors away from the lobby. She unpacked her carry-on, shoving the laundry bag into the closet. She thought about having her clothes washed but didn’t think she’d be in Tjorn long enough to get them back in time.