by Zena Shapter
After an hour we turn east, away from the coast. Manmade rock-pillars appear amid the volcanic deluge.
“Farmers made them, a long time ago,” Ari explains, “to help them home in fog. You can see each pillar from the one before, if you are on a horse.”
“You wouldn’t want to be short-sighted, would you?”
“In the most remote areas we have emergency huts. They have food, water, blankets and geothermic generators. You sign the guest book, write what you use, and someone restocks them regularly. If you need one they are easy to see, being bright orange.”
It’s good to know. Still, if Ari has been going to Jötunnsjökull since he was a kid, I doubt I’ll need one. The thought comes to me so naturally I consider saying it aloud. But Ari’s already smiling at me, and I realise I didn’t just think the words, they’ve already left my mouth. Embarrassed, I concentrate on the view.
Soon the road veers northeast and the rock pillars disappear. Boulders as big as tanks make the land seem wild and untouched. Smaller rocks, lodged in the crevices and gullies between these monsters, make the ground appear so uneven I don’t believe anyone could navigate it successfully, even on horseback. Ari tells me this is why farmers prefer to stay close to the coast. But I think it’s also because these plains are bleak and desolate, black and dangerous as far as the eye can see.
“Of course it is not like this all the way,” Ari adds. “You will see. It gets better.”
I already know he’s right.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
“Um.” I shrug, unsure how to answer. Hunger and I exist together on an entirely different level than most people.
“I am,” he smiles. “Look in my bag.” Inside are two baguettes. “Do you prefer chicken or tuna? I like both.”
“So do I.” Though I pass him the one that smells like tuna. Tuna sandwiches usually have more calories than chicken because of the mayonnaise. “Thanks. I wouldn’t have thought to bring food.” I truly wouldn’t.
He smiles and we munch in silence for a while. Still digesting my breakfast I really don’t want these extra calories. I also don’t want to be rude.
Instead I take tiny bites and watch for when he’s not looking. Then I pull bits of bread off and stuff them inside the wrappings. The fact that the chicken is delicious only makes me feel guiltier. If I can avoid the bread, I’ll at least save on consuming empty calories. Still, looking at how much baguette I’ve already eaten, I need to calculate how much one of these things costs, calorie-wise. It’s been such a long time since I’ve let myself eat anything like this. I’m pretty sure the bread alone would be four hundred calories. A slice of bread with butter is a hundred calories and there’s far more bread in this.
I lift up a corner and examine the chicken. Chicken breast is a hundred and seventy calories for 100g if it’s roasted, which this chicken is, but how much chicken is here? I look over the length of the baguette and decide to add a hundred calories to my count for good measure. If I were to eat the whole thing, it would surely add at least five hundred calories to my daily total. Most adults eat around two thousand calories a day, but I’m trying to lose weight so keep my count to less than a thousand. Six hundred if I can. Still, I wish I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I should have known Ari would want to eat. I should have waited to eat with him instead. Now the bread I can’t avoid will bloat me, making my tummy swell even more than it did after breakfast.
I pretend to get more comfortable in my seat, but really readjust my waistband to make sure it’s pulling in the swelling. After this, I’m definitely not eating again until tomorrow.
“Wow, this is filling,” I say, pushing against the bloating. “I’m stuffed.” Aching too. My body always does this when I eat a lot of food back-to-back. It’s straining to have a period, I can feel it twisting and pulling at me from the inside, and the consumption of vast quantities of food never helps. I guess a full stomach presses on all the wrong places. Once I’ve got my shape back, though, I’ll concentrate on finding out what’s really wrong with me. Most likely, my body’s simply being slow to adapt to its new energy levels. I used to eat a lot more than I do now and it probably doesn’t realise it has more than enough energy to menstruate. The doctor I saw last month is most definitely wrong about that.
“If you keep going the way you are,” he told me, making me look in a mirror and turn so a shoulder blade bone pinched at the inside of my skin, “you’ll make yourself infertile. Do you want children one day?”
What nonsense. It was just the way I was standing. He never saw the layer of fat around my stomach; he only saw what he wanted to see. There are plenty of other reasons I might not have had a period in so long—stress or hormone levels? I should have insisted he took blood for testing, rather than rely on his height and weight chart. Those charts are averages after all.
I scrunch up the rest of my baguette inside its wrapper and search for somewhere to put it.
“There is okay,” Ari points to the empty drink holders under the dashboard. “I’ll throw it out later.”
“Thanks so much, it was yummy.” It truly was.
I hold my hand out for his wrappings too, so he doesn’t have to take his eyes off the road. When he passes them, our hands touch. The brevity of the contact disappoints me and, again, I wish I’d come to Iceland when Mark first asked me.
I don’t realise until I’ve done it, but I sigh.
“What’s up?” Ari glances at me. “Thinking about your brother?”
“I should have come to visit when he first asked me.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Four months.”
“Four months.” He sounds impressed. “Why was he here so long?”
“Studying. Writing his thesis.”
“What was he studying?”
I hesitate, unsure how much Ari will understand. His English is better than most Londoners, but Mark used a lot of long words to describe his thesis. “He was studying the world’s approach to the post-mortem survival of the human conscience—culturally, religiously, and scientifically. In other words, what everyone in the world thinks about life after death.”
“Oh, okay. Go on.”
“Before he came here, he travelled all over the world looking for the one thing everyone could agree on, no matter what their belief. He,” I swallow to keep my voice steady, “he wanted his thesis to make the world a better place.”
“Did he find something?”
I nod. “The numinous experience.”
“The what?”
“The numinous experience.” I clear my throat and change my tone to mimic the university lecturer Mark often pretended to be, the one he always wanted to become. “From the Latin numen, numinous refers to the power or presence of a divinity, god, or spirit. The word was popularised by the imminent German theologian Rudolf Otto, in his influential book Das Heilige, translated into English in 1923 as The Idea of the Holy.”
“You know a lot about your brother’s thesis.”
“What can I say?” I shrug. “I loved my brother. He was a pioneer in his field. I read everything he wrote. Want to know more?”
“It is a long drive.”
I resume my lecturer’s voice. “Rudolf Otto said there are two essential elements to experiencing a numinous encounter. The first, mysterium tremendum, is the sensation of being invoked with fear and trembling.”
“So…being afraid?”
“Correct. The second, mysterium fascinas, is the sensation of being attracted, fascinated and compelled. Awe, I suppose. Or, um…admiration. Anyway,” I slip back into my normal voice, “the result of a numinous experience is that a person is left with the distinct feeling they’ve been united with a hallowed other—be it a deity, transcendent, supernatural, sacred, or holy.”
“You fear and admire, and you feel connected with something. Okay, got
it.”
“Good. Travelling everywhere made Mark realise that numinous experiences can more or less be encountered anywhere—of course in churches, temples, synagogues and other places of worship; but also while watching the sunset from a beautiful beach, listening to Debussy, cradling a newborn child, witnessing an aurora dance over a cooled lava plain…” I gesture out the window, thinking of Anna.
“Ah, now I understand. This numinous, it is like…wonder?”
“Yes. But of course humanity has never been able to simply enjoy its experiences, we’ve needed explanation or reason for them too. Which is why many religious figures over time—prophets, saviours, wise men—have come up with theories to best explain the numinous experience.”
“Of course.”
“It was okay for a while because, according to Mark’s thesis, that probably helped countless communities—” I want to say homogenise, “—er, find peace, and evolve into countries, nations…multi-nations even. The only problem Mark found with it is fanaticism.”
“Fanaticism? What is that?”
“It’s what you and Director Úlfar were both saying yesterday, about people being too passionate about their newfound beliefs.”
“Ah, okay. Go on.”
“Well, the problem with fanaticism is that theories can be proved wrong.”
“Unless it is from science.”
“Yes and no. Science doesn’t know everything. Yes, with every explanation science offers we grow to understand our place in the world with greater ease. But, what about the numinous experience? Can science actually explain something so spiritual? Mark,” I swallow, my throat sticking with all this talk of him, “thought it could, to begin with, which is why he came here.”
“To study how our science explains the numinous experience?”
I nod. “The numinous experience is very important for mankind. Mark said he put a whole section in his thesis about its influence over the centuries.” I remember him telling me. “Life is hard and most people don’t like to think of existence as years of hardship followed by infinite nothingness—they need to know there’ll be some reward for being nice to each other, rather than protecting only themselves. And the numinous experience must come from somewhere. So, for most people, it feels right to connect the two together.”
“And now science can connect them.”
“Well, when Mark first came here, he wanted to use his thesis to persuade people to understand the numinous experience in scientific terms. He hoped for the ultimate demise of organised religion as we know it. In that he claimed to be a secular humanist.”
“A what?”
I chuckle. “Sorry. Let’s just say Mark believed—wrongly or rightly, I don’t know myself—that most of our remaining wars seem to be incited by religious differences, or at least between people claiming so, and he wanted to do something about that. He figured if people based their beliefs on scientific fact it would pacify fanaticism and the world would be a better place. But then…after he came here, I think he changed his mind.”
Secularity doesn’t matter, he said in his notes last night.
“He was writing a new, separate postscript to his thesis,” I continue, “about something he’d realised was more important than the thesis itself. A couple of weeks ago, I’m sure he said something about mankind needing its spirituality more, about needing a sense of wonderment. I think he even started agreeing with me about human nature.”
“What about it?”
“That it cannot be tamed.” Yes, that’s what Mark was referring to in his notes. Now that I’m talking about it, I recall having a whole discussion with him about it on the phone. “Or overcome.”
“You really think so?”
“Absolutely!”
Ari shifts in his seat. “What about Höfkállur? What about how safe it is, how good everyone is to each other?”
“Er, apart from the threats I’ve been receiving.”
“That is one person.”
“Are you sure? We don’t know anything yet.”
Ari doesn’t reply.
I don’t know what else to say either. I’d love to believe people can change after learning a new theory. But I can’t.
So a silence falls between us. It’s not an awkward one though, more of a repose than a discomfort.
In it, I wish more than ever I knew exactly what Mark had decided about science’s ability to explain the numinous experience. What was he so excited to tell me? What was in his postscript?
Energy. The numinous. It’s both, together. He said in his thesis notes, and on the phone last weekend. We need both. We need to be various.
I remember, too, a discussion we had a few weeks ago, about human nature and spirituality. Bits come to me, so I attempt an imagined conversation to remember more.
“Without spirituality, science has no boundaries.” Mark says in my memory; so he now also says in my imagination. “Nature may very well turn out to be a simple sequence of scientific equations and explanations. But, without the idea that there’s more to life than the material, and without organised groups supporting that idea, science would have no limits.”
“I thought you were all for science. Why give it limits?” I ask him.
“To protect nature.”
“Why protect nature?”
“To protect ourselves. Nature has spent thousands of years perfecting mankind—physically and psychologically. We can hunt on land, create flight in the sky, dive under the sea…” I remember his dive comment in particular, “…navigate the solar system. Because of nature we now have a wide enough range of attributes to face any danger as a species. If we were all the same, we would not survive as successfully as we do.”
“And what’s that got to do with the numinous experience?”
In my imagined conversation, he doesn’t answer.
I wait but nothing more comes and my attention is drawn to a bridge on the road ahead. We cross a small river and a mountain range appears on the horizon. As we trundle towards it, the angular harshness of the plains is tamed by a soft green prettiness. The lava boulders shrink in size and a moist glaze hangs in the air. Moss clumps cover the rocks, more and more until occasional riots of green become so seditious in their rampage whole rocks disappear beneath the insurrection of colour. The emerging emerald mounds, so triumphant amid the dark plain, remind me of the swathes of spiky lime spinifex that spot the blackened bushwalks of home.
Home. I think of bushwalking with Mark, chatting as we ramble. Still nothing more comes of our conversation about spirituality.
“Water comes down from the glacier,” Ari explains, noticing my gaze.
“All the way down here?” I ask, cheerfully enough.
“Já.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Closer to the mountain range on the horizon, stalks of hard rubbery grasses appear, hugging the moss beds and sticking upright between the verdant rocks, whipping through the wind whistling between them .
We drive towards the mountains and I try to stop myself from flinching when the wind becomes ferocious, shaking the Eroder. Instead I hide my unease by commenting on how flat the land is, how tiny the black pebbles are, and how pretty the bedless brooks are trickling over them, soaking each pebble until their surfaces glisten. Ari beams as if pleased I see the land the way he does.
Slowly we cross this wet plain to arrive at a gap in the mountainside, where the road narrows before opening up into a valley. There I behold the source of each glistening rivulet. Each tiny stream is born of a river, each river is born of a bigger river, and each bigger river is in turn born from the torrent before me, the same torrent whose fast churning once sliced through the mountainside.
“The Skepnasá?” I guess as the watery monster sprints along the left side of the opening, forcing small branches, silt, and ice along its course at a tremen
dous pace.
“The Skepnasá.” Ari sweeps a hand wide in welcome. “Most people stay on this side of the Skepnasá and hike in the valley. But I found Mark on the other side. If you want to see where I found him, exactly where I found him, we will have to cross the river. There is no bridge.”
I look past the raging waters to scan the far side of the valley. A slim strip of land sits between the river and a sheer cliff face. “Okay.”
“Are you sure? Remember, people can die trying to cross the Skepnasá. See that sign?” A huge aluminium ‘welcome’ sign dominates the roadside ahead. There is no other opening into the valley. “When you pass that sign, you agree to do what the government says and keep two metres between you and the river, always.”
“And there’s no other government presence here? No research facility or survey area?”
“It’s a national park. Protected.”
I study the sign. Its safety guidelines are printed in English as well as Icelandic. “So that’s all the warning there is?”
“Remember what you were saying before about the power of human nature, how it cannot be tamed. This,” he points, “is also nature. You cannot signpost a thunderstorm. You cannot flag a tsunami. Everyone knows an active volcano is dangerous, especially in Iceland. This river has its own mind. If you want the government to be responsible for your safety, do what they ask and stay away from the river.”
“Director Úlfar was right then, about not being liable.” This sign is one big official exclusion clause. “It’s a wonder people do it,” I say, fumbling in my bag for my phone. “It’s a wonder Mark did. He wasn’t adverse to taking risks, but never like this.” Never with nature.