Far Afield

by Susanna Kaysen

  Petur put a stop to this huffy line of reasoning by coming over and clapping Jonathan on the shoulder. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  “He runs fast,” said Heðin, but begrudgingly, Jonathan thought.

  “So. Hard work, eh? Now we’ll eat.” Petur steered Jonathan over to their truck with his big hand.

  “I met a huldumaður,” Jonathan said. Clearly, Heðin wasn’t going to mention it.

  Petur stopped short. “Where?”

  “By a cliff. He took a lamb away from me.” Jonathan didn’t feel as sure of this as he had when he described it to Heðin. “I think,” he added, lamely.

  “Did you see him?” Petur was stern.

  “No. I just felt him pulling.”

  “Hah,” said Petur. Jonathan couldn’t tell if this was surprise or doubt. “But you didn’t see him?” Petur repeated.

  “No.” Jonathan waited for Petur to tell him that there weren’t any huldufólk, or that he must never go back to the huldumaður’s cliff, but he just said “hah” again.

  Lunch was hunks of lamb, hunks of bread, and hunks of raisin cake. A thermos of tepid tea was passed around after the cake. Then everyone rolled a cigarette, including Jonathan, who did better this time. Petur and Jens Símun chatted in low voices, leaning against the side of the truck; Heðin leaned on the hood, keeping his distance from Jonathan, who perched on the open tailgate watching little Jens Símun and little Petur making scary faces at the sheep in their pen.

  Jonathan was tired, sleepy from lunch, and depressed in some way that he couldn’t pinpoint. The whole lamb episode had affected him oddly. He’d scoffed—gently—at their beliefs, and then been scoffed at—possibly—for becoming a believer. And the question of whether there were or weren’t gray people living on the outer reaches of the island had now taken on a jumpy, bifocal quality: there couldn’t be such people; he’d encountered one of these people; he must have made it up, it was autohypnosis; but the lamb had been lifted right out of his arms; he had probably just let go of it from fear and it had jumped out; and so forth.

  All afternoon he pondered, strolling out to find sheep, racing them back to the pen. From the details he moved to the wider concerns, which were with faith. Did he believe in huldufólk? More pertinent, did the Faroese? If they did, why? If he did, then what? Belief opened a door Jonathan had been trained to keep shut: the door to mystery. His parents’ rationality had easily revealed to him its opposite, irrationality, and this, in his sulks and self-absorptions, he knew well. But mystery was something other. Its opposite, Jonathan now saw, was despair—just the sort of despair that plagued him and wreathed his parents in an ineffable, omnipresent sadness that the world could not cure because the world had generated it. Marriages would fall apart, nuclear weapons would be built, tyrants would seize power in hot countries, warranties would expire a week before the toaster broke: life was like that. But there were explanations; everything had an explanation. Male psychology, scientific curiosity, greed, capitalism—all this could explain why life was like that. Knowledge was his parents’ god and his own. But knowledge brought sadness.

  Riding back to town on a heap of wool, Jonathan looked hard at Jens Símun: Was he sad? Tired; his two-tone eyes were half shut, his workman hands hung loose between his knees. Jonathan couldn’t determine anything about Jens Símun’s mood. His own mood, though, was improving. He’d run fast, he’d found more sheep, he was going back to Petur’s for dinner, he was looking forward to Eyvindur and Tórshavn. And the huldumaður, along with the thoughts he had provoked, had lifted the edge of Jonathan’s veil in some way. The Unknowable beckoned, glimmering with the promise of a respite from explanation. His mind fixed on that small beam of light, Jonathan fell asleep as the truck bumped home.

  A Girl

  The shifting clouds of the latter part of the week had turned to a gusting, driving rain by Saturday, when Jonathan stood on the dock waiting for the afternoon boat to Tórshavn. People in city clothes moved from foot to foot, trying to preserve their shoes from the wet. Jonathan’s American sneakers—-his sole concession to Eyvindur’s instructions—were soaking up rain like sponges. He was looking forward to luxury, though. He’d booked a room in the Hotel Hafnia, Tórshavn’s best, with a private bath. There he intended to take a two-hour shower.

  The boat was late. People were saying it was because of the weather. “Bad tides,” he heard. One woman whispered to another, “I’m going to be sick, oh, my God, I know I’m going to be sick.”

  “Maybe it won’t get here,” said her friend. This worried Jonathan. But the woman who feared she’d get sick was sure the boat would come.

  It did, though not before everyone was sodden and chilled. It was chock-full of sacks of flour, mail, boxes of canned goods, used tires, relatives from Tórshavn over to visit for the weekend. In a burst of confusion, all the boarding passengers attempted to get on as soon as the boat was docked; those who were on the boat looked pale and more than eager to get off it, which they were prevented from doing by the onslaught of embarkers. Many wet feet were stepped on, and a few were rolled over by a dockhand with a dolly who attacked the cargo with vigor.

  When Jonathan got on board he saw why there had been such a rush. The small cabin had seats for about twenty; another ten were perched on laps and knees. He’d last taken this boat on a balmy day. He’d stood in the bow and watched the birds, and when he’d tired of that view, he’d sat on a piece of heavy machinery in the front cargo area. It had been a beautiful trip, and in his enthusiasm he’d imagined himself standing at this prow in later months, the Anthropologist Who Is Accepted, riding the waves back to “his” village. He had disregarded the fact that the weather would change.

  Seatless, Jonathan stood near the door of the cabin in his squelchy shoes. The engine roared beneath his feet, and the smell of fuel seeped up through the floor, hinting at a terrible, close atmosphere to come once the door had been shut. As they got under way, the ticket taker latched the door and turned on a heater that blew foul air onto Jonathan’s head. Within ten minutes the cabin was dense with breath, wet clothing, and diesel fumes. Jonathan leaned against the door, where sea air occasionally burst through the crack. But it wasn’t enough. His head was clouding up. He went out and stood on deck, gulping in the freshness.

  They were riding into the wind, so Jonathan made his way to the back of the boat, where, he reasoned, he would be somewhat protected from the elements. He was glad he hadn’t listened to Eyvindur about the Faroese sweater; he would have been freezing without it. He took a position under a small overhang and stared back at Skopun in the mist; the boat’s wake was wide, and its course was a straight one, giving Jonathan the illusion that they were towing the village along with them.

  He was beginning to enjoy himself when the boat changed direction and started riding over the sea at a new angle. The waves that had bobbed them up and down gently, predictably, now hit them broadside and made a dizzying zigzag of their course. There was no rhythm to the boat’s rise and fall; it would skid sideways as if planing on the surface, then sink deep into a swell that, as the boat rose again, washed half over one side or another. An especially large wave dumped water at Jonathan’s still-wet feet. He pressed against the cabin housing and wondered if he was safe.

  “Hey,” somebody said. Jonathan jumped. It was the ticket taker, all dressed up in yellow rain gear. “Get inside.”

  “Me?” asked Jonathan.

  The ticket taker came closer to see who was such a fool. He peered at Jonathan from under his rubber hat. “Oh. You. You go inside. It is dangerous out here. You understand?” Then he took Jonathan’s arm and pointed at the cabin, against whose outer wall they both sheltered. “In. In. No good here,” he said, his faith in Jonathan’s Faroese waning by the moment.

  “I understand,” Jonathan said stiffly. “I’m going.”

  “You could fall right in and die. You could get taken away by a wave.” Assured of comprehension, the ticket taker went on a tear. “Nobod
y would ever know. Do you know this happened only last year? A little boy, it was Páll bjá Jørgen’s youngest, he was washed overboard—we think. It was a July storm just like this. Nobody saw because nobody with more than a herring’s brain would be out here.” He shook his head. “Go.”

  Jonathan scrambled back to the cabin with the ticket taker on his heels. Drawing in his last real breath, he opened the door.

  It was worse than he remembered it, or perhaps it had worsened in his absence. Something sweet yet horrible had been added to the brew. Within moments, a sound identified it for him: vomit.

  The woman who had insisted she would be sick was being sick, profusely, into a paper cone. And she was not the only one. Mothers were holding cones for children, husbands for wives, sons for fathers who looked like fishermen impervious to seasickness. Full cones were held at arm’s length, carried to a window, and thrown into the sea. But the pitching of the boat and the juiciness of the cones’ contents made this a hazardous operation. Mishaps dotted the floor.

  Vomiting, like yawning, is contagious—nearly irresistible. Jonathan felt that strange dissociation of head from stomach that is the harbinger of nausea. A gulf several miles wide seemed to have opened between his throat and his belly. And yet they were connected—too connected, in fact—by what felt like a thick rubber band that stretched and contracted with the movement of the boat. He clamped his teeth together and defied fate. Gushes of bile flooded his mouth, black dots danced before his eyes, he swayed against the door and then, unable to stop himself, puked all over his sneakers.

  Tears of embarrassment and pain (his vomit had been acrid and harsh, probably because he’d eaten leftover fried fish for lunch) sprang to his eyes. What was he to do now? He looked disconsolately at his shoes. What a foreigner! He couldn’t even vomit into a cone. What must they be thinking, these green-faced, sober people who sat quietly chucking up their lunches without any fuss.

  One of them, less green than most, a fisherman, Jonathan figured by his slicker and his vacant expression, lurched off the bench and approached him with a handful of paper towels. He thrust these into Jonathan’s hand and was replaced on the bench by a sudden heave of the sea. “Bad storm,” he said to Jonathan; he imitated the motion of the boat in the waves with his arm and then mimed throwing up. He pointed to Jonathan’s spattered shoes. “Clean, clean,” he said, wiping the air in front of him with another pile of paper towels, which were stacked on the ledge behind him.

  Jonathan was touched by this interest. “Thank you,” he said, smiling as best he could. The fisherman repeated “Clean, clean,” in a commanding tone, so Jonathan bent over and got to work. The paper towel reminded him of toilet paper in France: shiny, brown, slippery, unsuited to its task. The whole handful wasn’t enough to clean half of one sneaker. “Can I have more of those?” he asked.

  The fisherman was impressed. “You speak very well,” he said. He turned to a retching fellow beside him and said, “You know, that’s an American man. He lives in Skopun. But listen to him speak!” The retcher filled his cone, made his way to the window, disposed of it, sat down, and looked at Jonathan, who was still waiting for more paper towels. “Fucking asshole,” he said, in English. He smiled broadly. Jonathan bristled. “Fuck, shit, stick it in your ear,” he continued. He was showing off, Jonathan realized.

  “You worked in America?” he asked, in Faroese.

  The curser nodded. “Shit, damn,” he said, grinning. “New Bedford. Goddamn son of a bitch,” he concluded.

  The first fisherman handed Jonathan another pile of towels. “He speaks your language well, no?” Jonathan, busy with his shoes, only nodded. What his sneakers required was a bath; perhaps he would wear them into the shower. If they ever reached Tórshavn.

  They spent another half hour on the choppy sea before the boat again changed direction and rode with rather than against the waves. The ticket taker signaled their imminent arrival by opening the door to let in some fresh air. The passengers started straightening themselves—combing hair, wiping pale, sweaty faces with handkerchiefs, adjusting clothing rucked up during vomiting. Jonathan made a few more passes at his sneakers. He looked at his watch: only four o’clock. If he hurried, he might be able to buy a non-Faroese sweater.

  In his palatial room at the Hafnia—two beds, view of Tórshavn’s main street, wall-to-wall carpeting, a heartening list of breakfast choices laid on his down pillow—Jonathan unwrapped his packages: a Shetland sweater, navy blue; four new murder mysteries; a pair of Nikes, black and white; a package of airmail envelopes; a small watercolor set; the Herald-Tribune, six days old; two long-sleeved T-shirts; an overpriced and weighty picture book about the Faroes; a second Faroese sweater, light brown with dark brown designs; a pot of geraniums, pink.

  He had spent a fortune. He didn’t care. He piled his purchases on one of the beds and looked at them from the other bed. The watercolor set made him especially happy. Jonathan couldn’t remember painting since he was in grade school, but the moment he’d seen the little red box in the stationery store, he’d coveted it. He would go off walking with his paintbox in his knapsack, out to the bird cliffs, and sit there, in the mild sun, painting the sea and the sky. He got up and moved next to his piles of stuff, fingering his sweaters, his T-shirts, his crisp, thin, blue envelopes. The second Faroese sweater had been a wild extravagance, but it was much more beautifully made than his first one, and he knew he’d be happy to have it in the future, when Faroese sweaters would be unavailable. Other anthropologists came back with spears and shields, drums made of human skin, wooden statues that required elaborate crating; he would return with sweaters.

  And now, the shower. Jonathan regretted he hadn’t bought new pants as well. All his clothes had an aura of vomit. He opened the window and hung his old Faroese sweater and his blue jeans over a chair to air. Then, sneakers in hand, he went into the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, faint from too much steam and heat, he reeled out and flopped onto the bed. Naked and with hot moist vapors rising from his body, he read the Herald-Tribune. The crackle of the pages recalled Paris and made him wish for the croissant and café au lait that had been his daily accompaniment to the news. Perhaps he would go to Paris. It wasn’t that far: a boat to Copenhagen, then a plane. He could be there in three days. He could be there in one day if he took a plane to Bergen, in Norway, but he feared it would be the same sort of plane—and the same sort of trip—as the one that had brought him to the Faroes. The boat would be nice; he would take the boat. Perhaps spend a few days in Copenhagen, where the food was rumored to be good. No, better go straight to Paris, where he knew the food was good. He could buy an old map on the bank of the Seine. He could have a Pernod, he could have steak au poivre, he could go to an American movie on the Champs-Élysées.

  A cool wind blowing the smell of fish in the open window brought him back to reality: he was in the Faroe Islands doing fieldwork; he was chilly; he was not going anywhere.

  Maybe he’d be better off never going out of Skopun. Jonathan remembered dreaming of leaving the country the last time he’d been in Tórshavn. Something about the place provoked the urge to get out. In Skopun, the rest of the world seemed to fall away; he was stranded there, but the exigencies of living so occupied him that he didn’t have time to think about being stuck. Or perhaps it was merely that nothing in Skopun reminded him that he was, technically, in Europe, whereas here everything was a sad, bedraggled version of life in a European city. Like Rome or Paris, Tórshavn had too much traffic, but a hundred cars were enough to qualify as too much; as in Marseilles, sailors on shore leave roved the streets looking for excitement, but here they found none and were sober while looking; the weather patterns that made London a mystery of mists and fogs made Tórshavn a muddy, soggy hole: all Ireland might be washed in the Gulf Stream, but Tórshavn was drowning in it.

  Jonathan folded the pernicious Tribune with its memories and its advertisements for villas on the Riviera and Swiss watches. He told himself
he was lucky not to be in Sarawak with malaria and a shortwave radio and nothing else, but this had never been a convincing argument for happiness in the past and it failed to raise his spirits now. Every anthropologist gets the culture he deserves, had been the wisdom in Cambridge. To the pacifist, the warlike tribe; to the squeamish, the aboriginal bug- and snake-eaters; and to the sophisticate, evidently, the fourth-rate, hopelessly provincial, downright grubby Faroes.

  Only half an hour earlier he’d found his room charming. Looking around it now, Jonathan failed to see what had appealed to him. The prospect of a shower, doubtless, but now that he’d had one, there seemed nothing in the world to look forward to or enjoy. He picked up the breakfast menu. It was a list of cereals and methods of egg preparation; no grapefruit, pancakes, blueberry muffins, or anything else Jonathan craved. And he noted that it did not proclaim the availability of room service. He would have to go to the dining room to get his morning coffee. Jonathan loathed drinking his coffee in company and was always willing to pay the surcharge for room service in the morning. Not only in the morning; he would happily pay it at this moment to avoid seeing and sitting with the people who were destined to be his dinner companions.

  If this were Italy, he could bribe a maid or bellboy to bring him a plate of food. If this were France, room service would be available. But in the obedient, unhedonistic north, his only choice was to go downstairs or to go hungry.

  He put on some of his new clothes and went downstairs.

  Dinner was a smorgasbord, a fairly extensive and appetizing one, laid out on a long table near the windows. Jonathan helped himself and indulged in the luxury of an orange soda, which for once he would drink during dinner. He couldn’t accustom himself to the Faroese practice of not drinking until after the meal. As he ate his herring and his Havarti, he sized up his fellow diners. There were a couple of families with young children, out to dinner on a Saturday night; the inevitable sprinkling of middle-aged men who every night eat dinner alone in hotel dining rooms throughout the world; three Danish Navy recruits (from the early warning station, perhaps); and a slight, pale man with a large head, who looked about Jonathan’s age and was reading a book while he ate. Jonathan always wanted to know what other people were reading, so he made a detour past the pale man’s table on the way back from refilling his plate. The book was T. E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.