Far Afield

by Susanna Kaysen

  A pen improvised from a circle of trucks and some tired-looking lumber was teeming with sheep when they arrived. Small, collielike dogs and boys ran around the outside, barking and yelling. Inside, two men were wading among the sheep, one brandishing shears, the other a paintbrush. In their distress at being penned up, the sheep were shitting and bleating and kicking each other. Jonathan felt a surge of sympathy. They were a far cry from the noble, disdainful creatures he’d eaten lunch with, and he pitied them for their captivity.

  Petur added his truck to the circle and everybody piled out. Little Jens Símun immediately joined the ring of barkers and yellers, where his cousin, Petur, yelled loudest and ran fastest. Their fathers stood next to the truck, dividing up the territory: they would go north, Heðin would take Jonathan south and show him what to do, then continue west.

  “And east?” asked Jonathan.

  “East is home. The village,” said Petur. “No sheep there.”

  Heðin and Jonathan set off, walking shoulder to shoulder on the turfy road. After ten minutes’ walk Heðin halted, sat down on a boulder, and rolled a cigarette. “Want one?” He offered his tobacco pouch. Jonathan took it and rolled a misshapen, nearly triangular object. Heðin shook his head. “That’s terrible.” He unrolled it and dumped the tobacco into a fresh paper, which he rolled slowly, explaining what he was doing. “You must roll evenly, roll all your fingers at once, and push from the middle, otherwise you make that messy thing you made. Here.”

  Jonathan was an infrequent smoker, and he felt a bit dizzy from tobacco so early in the day. But sitting in the speckled silence with Heðin was pleasant; they seemed like friends.

  “Oh, I hate to drive sheep,” Heðin said. “You know, it’s very hard work. They can run fast and they never want to go where you want them to go.”

  Jonathan said nothing; he was content. The sun was warming him, and the air was clearing his head of all the vapors of the day before.

  “Well, time to go.” Heðin sighed. “Off into the hagi. Do you know what that is?”

  “It’s the outfield, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. The bøur is the infield, where we are now, just on the edge of it.” He paused. “In the winter, the sheep come into the infield. But in the summer, they live in the outfield.”

  “I know,” said Jonathan. If Heðin had decided to set himself up as an instructor, he was certainly starting at a first-grade level; these were facts Jonathan had learned from his Danish guidebook.

  “Do you know who else is in the hagi?”

  “No.”

  “The huldufólk. Do you know who they are?”

  “No.”

  “They are the gray people who live in the hagi.”

  Jonathan cocked his head. “Elves?”

  “No. They are people, except they are all gray. They have gray clothes and gray boats.”

  “Have they got a village out here?” Jonathan couldn’t tell if these people existed or what.

  “No. They live in rocks.” Heðin nodded several times.

  “Oh. Then they are a sort of elf.”

  “No. Elves are smaller. Also, elves live in town, mostly. But the huldufólk live here—there.” He gestured into the green beyond. “You have to be careful.”

  “Why?”

  “This is their land. Sometimes they don’t like us coming out here. Sometimes they get angry when we come out to get the sheep.”

  “Then what happens?” Jonathan felt a faint stir of unease.

  “They can do surprising things. You’ll be walking along and all of a sudden there’s a huldumaður—a gray man—walking beside you. Or sometimes you’re catching hold of a sheep, and somebody else is pulling it away from you—because it’s a sheep that belongs to the huldufólk.”

  “What do you do then?”

  Heðin laughed. “You let go.”

  Jonathan hesitated for a moment, then couldn’t forbear asking, “Do you really believe all this?”

  “Jonathan, I am telling you this so you know what to do if it happens. And so you won’t be scared if a huldumaður appears. They don’t hurt us. They live here and we live in the village. It’s just sometimes they don’t like visitors. So you must be polite and remember that you are on somebody else’s land.” He stood up. “Come on,” he said.

  This region was one Jonathan had not explored on his walks, but it looked familiar: green, lumpy, flowery. Soon, however, the terrain became more hilly; stony outcroppings shaped like miniature mountains made a hike of their progress, leaving Jonathan out of breath and trailing behind Heðin. His wind was not good; sitting around in hotels and kitchens sulking and brooding had not kept him in condition. He hoped his running was up to scratch.

  On the crest of the next ridge Heðin was waiting for him. “There,” he said, as Jonathan wheezed up beside him. A herd of sheep grazed in the valley below. “We’ll get behind them,” Heðin said, “and I’ll scare them. Then we’ll chase.”

  Scaring meant throwing stones into the middle of the herd and yelling “Oopla!” Jonathan joined in. The sheep paid no attention. “We’ll have to push them,” Heðin said. He walked right up to a fat ewe and pressed his knees into her rump. She baaed and moved away, sending Heðin into a lurch. “Stupid sheep,” he muttered. He leaned down and put both hands on her back, propelling her forward in the direction of the ridge. This worked. The ewe took off, spraying chunks of turf as her hooves dug in for the sprint.

  “Push another!” yelled Heðin.

  Jonathan put his hands tentatively atop a white ewe, who promptly shot a burst of pellets on his feet. “Dammit,” he said; he kicked her gently in the backside, mostly to repay the favor. But it had the right effect, and this ewe too ran toward the ridge.

  “Two more,” called Heðin, “then they’ll all go.”

  In unison, Jonathan and Heðin each pushed a sheep. And the entire herd, stirred by some critical amount of movement, followed in the wake of the last two. “Run!” Heðin yelled. He circled around to the back of the herd and pointed Jonathan down toward the opposite side. “Get over there and run!”

  And so they retraced their leisurely journey, both of them panting now, Heðin directing Jonathan’s movements and position like a football coach: “East! Down! Harder! Watch that black lamb!” When they reached the rock where they’d had the cigarettes, Heðin stopped and flopped onto the ground.

  “Leave them here,” he said between gasps.

  Jonathan thought he might faint. He stood still while the world spun around him in black and green flashes. When his blood had slowed to a steady thumping, he too dropped onto the grass.

  “Why don’t you use dogs?” he asked.

  “Sometimes we do.”

  “Why not today?”

  Heðin laughed. “I told you it was hard work.”

  The sheep were a ways in front of them, grazing again. “Should we take them to the pen?” Jonathan asked.

  “No, they’ll stay here. They’re in the bøur now. Somebody will get them, or we’ll get them later. So. Do you think you can do it?”

  “Sure,” said Jonathan. This was pure bravado. He doubted he could ever run again. And he doubted he could agitate enough sheep to set a whole herd running. “I just have to rest another minute.”

  But Heðin stood up. “We’ll walk back out,” he said. “It’s farther.”

  It was much farther. They walked for half an hour before reaching the next group of sheep. Jonathan was worried. “I don’t think I can run all this distance,” he said softly.

  “When you stop, they stop,” said Heðin, “so you can rest. Then you have to get them going again, but sometimes it’s better that way. This is too far to run, so you’ll have to stop. But watch out that one doesn’t get away. Sometimes one keeps running.” He nodded. “That can happen.”

  Jonathan could only hope it wouldn’t. Heðin had lighted another cigarette and was picking up rocks. “Here.” He offered Jonathan a fistful. “If you run at them while you throw the rocks i
t works better.” He walked away.

  “Are you leaving?” Jonathan heard a note of distress in his own voice.

  “I’ve got to get the ones to the west,” said Heðin, waving his arm toward America. He threw a rock into the herd, stirring up a little movement. “I got them started for you,” he called over his shoulder.

  Alone with his charges, Jonathan had a rush of worries: the sheep would trample him, the sheep would refuse to move and he’d be out all day and night trying to budge them, he’d pass out from overexertion on some hill, where he wouldn’t be found till morning. Lurking behind all this was the specter of the huldumaður, that otherwordly shepherd in gray who might at any moment appear to reclaim his stock. A thrill of fear shot up his spine; wasn’t that a movement over there, just beyond the herd? Jonathan stood very still and stared at the spot where he thought he’d seen something: nothing. Of course, he told himself. He was being ridiculous. With the energy anxiety brings, he threw several rocks at the sheep and ran at them, yelling “Git!” as he went. They got; in seconds most of them were charging over the hill.

  The rest period and the reanimation of the herd went off without incident, and within an hour Jonathan was walking back out to the hagi, with a doubled number of sheep munching in the bøur, his dutiful children waiting for his return.

  Finding sheep on his own, though, was hard. Heðin must have known where they were; Jonathan walked for what seemed miles without running into anything alive. The reliable guidebook had mentioned the lack of animals: no snakes, no squirrels, no badgers, no owls, no deer, no mountain lion to live among the trees that weren’t there; no hedgehog, no elk, no arctic fox to burst into his path with its shining tail. Like the absence of trees, this vacuum was one thing when described and quite another when experienced. A pre-Edenic silence and stillness reigned here, in this vegetable and mineral universe. Time was fixed at the fourth day of creation: water, earth, grass, and herb yielding seed, and lights in the firmament, but the fowls and great whales of the fifth day were not in evidence, though in other parts of the island time had progressed that much.

  Jonathan was not sure he liked this version of the world. God had been right to put man into a place already populated by moving creatures. Even two days as the only form of animal life would be enough to cause permanent loneliness—and, Jonathan guessed, a permanent delusion of grandeur.

  So it was with relief that he heard, faint and far away, the bleat of a ewe calling her lamb to her side.

  He followed the trail of the sound, which led him suddenly to the brink of a cliff. The sight of the sea crashing and seething below was as heartening as the noise of the sheep: Jonathan knew there were fish in the water. And a clutch of guillemot took flight at his step, spinning black and white in the pale air. He realized he’d been holding his breath as he walked, taking in small gasps when necessary. He let his chest relax. The ewe was perched on the edge of the cliff, tearing at a tasty clump; her lamb was right beside her. They were both gray.

  “Git!” he yelled. The animals lifted their heads and stared at him. “Uh, go home,” he tried, as if to a dog, waving his arms in the direction he hoped they would go. The ewe backed away, looking at him as she placed her feet gingerly on the fine grass at the cliff’s rim. She stepped on the lamb’s leg; it bleated and started to totter. Still staring at Jonathan, she pushed the lamb to higher ground with her hindquarters, flicking her stubby tail on its back to get it moving. With the lamb positioned away from the cliff, Jonathan felt safe making his move. He ran a few steps and then lunged after it, hoping to catch hold of its fleece with his outstretched hands. But the lamb bounced away, bounding off in its rocking-horse motion across the tundra. It was quite young and small, and like all young and small beings it looked like something good to hug. Jonathan was determined to get his arms around it—as much for the pleasure as for the fulfillment of his duty.

  The lamb ran him in circles out into the landscape, bobbing up and down, pausing long enough for Jonathan to approach and try, and fail, to catch it. Winded and irritated after three tries, he lay down for a rest. The ewe ambled up to him and sniffed his shoes. He wasn’t worried about her; he was sure that if he captured the lamb, the ewe would follow. If he had to, he would carry the damned animal back in his arms, five miles through the country, till he reached the safety of the bøur. The lamb had begun to graze again, with its mother nearby.

  Jonathan turned onto his belly and started moving across the grass like a snake, slowly, wiggling, breathing steadily. He would come at the lamb from behind and grab it. He inched along, willing the sheep to keep their heads down in the grass. They obeyed. When he was two feet behind his prey he rose, gently, to his knees and then thrust himself forward onto the lamb’s back.

  It was warm, much warmer than he’d expected—but how long since he’d held a living creature in his arms! And it wriggled and kicked and cried so piteously that Jonathan was almost moved to let it go. Almost, but he pulled it closer to prevent himself; he had succeeded, and he intended to bring his booty home.

  He rose to his knees with the lamb clasped to his chest. Once stable in this position he tried to stand up; but that was hard to do holding a squirming twenty-pound bundle of wool and meat, and his first attempt ended with both parties on the ground again, though still attached. Adjusting the lamb in his arms, Jonathan achieved a semi-upright position once more and rested on his haunches, considering how best to get vertical. Suddenly the lamb jerked in his grasp, rising up a few inches.

  “Hey,” said Jonathan. He tucked it down with a pressure on its head from his chin. “Stay put, buddy.”

  But the lamb wouldn’t stay put. Another jerk, this time releasing both forelegs from Jonathan’s hands. Then a slow but insistent movement out of Jonathan’s arms, as if somebody were pulling … Jonathan’s blood froze.

  The huldumaður.

  Gray ewe, gray lamb, just the two creatures alone by the cliff, this nowhere, nobody, nothing part of the island: all of it made sense.

  Jonathan let go of the lamb and tore off for home.

  By the time he reached the herd he’d gathered with Heðin, Jonathan wasn’t sure what had happened. Maybe he’d just spooked himself. He felt a mixture of pride and embarrassment: proud to have had, so early in his stay, an encounter with the supernatural; embarrassed to have been so easily convinced of its existence. He couldn’t decide whether to tell anybody about it or not. But the opportunity, which came immediately, was too tempting to resist. Heðin was standing on the far side of the herd, rolling himself a cigarette; Jonathan jogged over to him.

  “I met a huldumaður,” he announced.

  “Oh,” said Heðin.

  “He took a lamb away from me.”

  “Mmm,” said Heðin, putting his cigarette in his mouth. “Didn’t you get any more sheep?”

  “I only found these huldufólk sheep. They were gray, they were all by themselves, and when I tried to catch the lamb, the huldumaður took it away.”

  “Oh, well,” said Heðin. “Let’s get some lunch.” He kicked a stone into the herd and got them moving in the direction of the pen. He walked off at their rear, urging them on with an occasional toss.

  Jonathan stood dumbfounded for a minute, then ran after Heðin. “I met a huldumaður,” he said.

  “So you said.” Heðin offered the tobacco pouch.

  “Don’t you believe me?” By repeating the incident, Jonathan had completely converted himself, he realized, and now took anything less than enthusiasm as scorn.

  “You like skerpikjøt?”

  This word rang a bell: it was that dried meat he’d had at Eyvindur’s. “Kjøt—yes, I love that.”

  “We eat that when we work hard, because it’s very good food.” He grinned at Jonathan. “Makes you fart.”

  When they got to the pen, men and sheep were converging on it from several directions, Petur and Jens Símun driving the foremost herd. There was a noisy and terrified traffic jam at the entrance, some sheep sw
arming over the backs of others in the effort to get away. A second pen had been set up, where sheared sheep, looking like huge rats, were being daubed red by the man with the paintbrush and squirted with white liquid by a man with a bucket and a hose. The smell of fresh dung was overpowering.

  “What are they doing to the sheep?” Jonathan asked.

  “Delousing them. And we mark them too, to show they belong to Skopun. Sometimes sheep will wander into the hagi that belongs to Sandur or Húsavík. Every village has a mark.”

  The backs of the trucks had been piled with wool; detached from the sheep, it looked unappealing—dirty, matted, lifeless. “And you slaughter some of them?”

  “In October,” said Heðin. “We slaughter the lambs. Where do you think we get the kjøt?”

  Jonathan sensed Heðin’s patience was thinning. The role of instructor could be a tiresome one. Jonathan recalled his own impatience with the freshmen in his Introduction to Anthropology sections the year before. But was he such an unrewarding student? His students had known nothing—in Jonathan’s terms. One had insisted that Homer had written the Aeneid, causing Jonathan to omit the classical references that he’d thought would humanize anthropology. They had never read Anna Karenina or Huckleberry Finn. They lived in a cultural void. He supposed, though, that not knowing why sheep were sprayed various colors or when they were slaughtered put him into a similar cultural void, from Heðin’s point of view.

  But he wanted to learn. Didn’t that count for something? And didn’t the fact that he was willing to rush around after sheep indicate his good intentions? And what about the huldumaður? Didn’t his appearance mean that the supernatural residents at least had found Jonathan acceptable?