Far Afield

by Susanna Kaysen

  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.

  Soon enough he crossed that invisible yet palpable border between unknown and known. Puffins croaked in welcome, and some sheep looked up from grazing and nodded to themselves, or him, as if to say, He’s back. Jonathan slowed down a little, then came to a halt. And without exactly deciding to, he turned around and faced into the other world.

  It didn’t look different from where he stood. Maybe the sky was more mottled and changeable over there, maybe the rocks were larger and more jagged, but then again, maybe not. Whatever it was, the animals were aware of it: the sheep simply didn’t cross over, as if acknowledging a fence. But the very air must be fenced as well, otherwise how explain the murres, terns, herring gulls who could go anywhere, and didn’t go there?

  He couldn’t explain it. He took a few steps forward, inserting himself momentarily back into mystery. Was it a hum? What was it? What made him sure that he was not supposed to be there, and yet lured him in?

  As he stood alert and watchful, he felt the atmosphere retreating like a tide ebbing at his feet, beckoning and teasing him: Here, here, just another step, come closer. But he knew that was a false promise. He would drown in it; he’d been gasping for breath in it not ten minutes before. It was neither livable nor comprehensible, and it was right there in front of him, defying him to make sense of it.

  Jonathan stepped back. “Okay,” he said, to the empty grass rolling away from him. This was an admission of defeat and at the same time a salute to whatever was lurking out there. Something was out there, whether it was a huldumaður or an eerie miasma engendered by wilderness or a potpourri of his own anxieties strewn over the landscape. It didn’t matter which, Jonathan thought as he walked the familiar path home. Its identity was nothing, its existence everything, a proof that anything was possible, that even he could be saved.

  Surfeited with goodbyes, Jonathan stood on the deck of the Másin with his little bag slung over his shoulder, wishing the boat would leave. His last days had been a whirl of temuns and dinners. People he’d never visited, or even talked to, had snagged him on the street or burst into his kitchen with invitations. He’d seen more of private life in this one week than in a year, and he’d more than once considered staying on—just till September, well, maybe six weeks—to take advantage of his improved position. Musing himself through yet another long and brilliant summer was one way of easing the pangs of departure; even while doing it he felt himself detaching.

  The night before he left was reserved for the Dahl family, including Sigurd, Jón Hendrik, and Jens Símun and his children. By then Jonathan was stunned with the amount of food and talk he’d ingested, and he sensed that his emotions weren’t up to the occasion. Their genuine sorrow at losing him didn’t quite penetrate, nor did it stir his also genuine gratitude and affection. Everything had already begun to look microscopic, telescoped, sealed in the past. And though Petur and Sigurd did their best to make Jonathan the centerpiece of the evening and turn the conversation to his future, his ignorance on the subject equaled theirs, and soon they were discussing how many lambs they expected to slaughter come fall.

  Harvests of lambs, of cod and halibut, would there be grind, would there be storms, would the Løgting finally outlaw Danish in the schools, how about Lisabet hjá Jens Símun, absent and pregnant yet again, would she ever settle on a husband? The talk was familiar and at the same time fantastical, and Jonathan went home early, pleading exhaustion and his by-now well-worn “things to do.”

  It was Heðin who managed, momentarily, to break through. He was drinking coffee in the kitchen when Jonathan came downstairs in the morning.

  “I didn’t want to miss you. If you’re leaving on the morning boat.”

  “I am,” Jonathan mumbled. “Well, maybe not.” Then he imagined a whole afternoon spent on a new round of goodbyes. “I am.”

  “Have some coffee.”

  Jonathan drank and began to wake up.

  “So, so, so,” Heðin said. “Jonathan. You will come back for my wedding next year. Okay?”

  “I’ll try,” said Jonathan.

  Heðin cocked his head. “You won’t come.” He sounded more surprised than hurt.

  “Probably not.” Jonathan’s eyes filled up as soon as he’d said this. He bent his head so Heðin wouldn’t see, but a tear plopped into his coffee.

  Heðin put his hand on Jonathan’s arm. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll think of you.”

  At this Jonathan’s control slipped, and he put his hands over his face.

  Heðin stood up. “Come on. You’d better go now.” He rinsed the coffee cups. Then he pulled Jonathan out of his chair. “We had a good time, eh?” he said.

  Jonathan wiped his face with his shirt sleeve and nodded.

  Heðin was tactful enough to pretend he was busy and bustled off, leaving Jonathan to go down to the dock alone.

  Now the engines were revving and heaving below his feet. In a matter of minutes he would be gone. He gripped the railing with both hands until his knuckles whitened and watched life in Skopun go on without him, boats unloading, old codgers gossiping, the fish factory foreman directing the stacking of crates of cod, the clouds dancing above the village in the blue untroubled sky of June, and saw all this shrink behind him as he put the first five miles of ocean between himself and the past.

  The ticket taker, who was not from Skopun, said, “Going over to Tórshavn for a few days?”

  Jonathan decided to nod.

  “Good weather.” Then peering at him, “You’re the American, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” This was not the ticket taker who’d been in charge of the box but the other one, who’d yelled at Jonathan for standing on deck in a storm.

  “So how do you like the Faroes?” He smiled in anticipation of Jonathan’s praise.

  How many times had he heard this question, accompanied by the same smug smile? Realizing he would never hear it again, Jonathan gave the best answer he could. “This is a beautiful country.”

  The ticket taker raised his bushy eyebrows. “Beautiful! This is the most beautiful country in t
he world!” He stepped over to the railing and swept his hand across the view, offering it to Jonathan. “We have everything,” he said. “Am I right?”

  “Absolutely right,” said Jonathan.

  At the Hotel Hafnia he hung his change of clothes in the closet and took a shower, washing off months of Skopun. Now to get the plane ticket and call Eyvindur. But first he had to debate whether to give Daniela the present he had for her. It was the watercolor set, never used, uncovered in his bureau drawer when he was packing. Would she find it insulting? She probably painted in oil, when she painted. It was such a nice little set, though; he wondered why he’d never used it, then why he’d thought he would. An escape from anthropology, bought back when it seemed he’d never penetrate village life. He would give it to her, he decided.

  The phone on his bedside table rang and Jonathan jumped. He stared at it; he hadn’t answered a ringing phone for a year. He grabbed it before it could ring again.

  “Hah. Aha. What do you say to sheep’s head? I bet you haven’t had that. It’s Eyvindur,” he added, quite unnecessarily.

  “I was about to call you. How did you know I was here?”

  “In a town the size of a thimble? In a country as big as a teacup? How could I not know you are here?”

  “I’m leaving on Thursday.”

  “I know that too,” Eyvindur yelped. “I know everything about you. I know you are coming to dinner tomorrow night to eat sheep’s head.” He paused. “I think you won’t like it. But Anna will make some fish too.”

  “I’d love to come.”

  “Bring your fiancée.”

  “Eyvindur, I don’t think—”

  He was off the line already, as usual.

  At the Icelandair office Daniela was efficient and distant in her ugly uniform. Jonathan could hardly believe that they’d ever romped around together. He didn’t feel able to give her the present.