“You’re all nuts, that’s why I have my own island. But I don’t want to get into this now, and I don’t want to have to get upset later.” Mineola got up from the patio where we’d had supper and went in to join her sister and niece inside.
I thought briefly about how often I’d explained myself to upset women. My mother was probably the first; Mineola would be the next. Actually she didn’t seem too upset. Just ready to be, if necessary. People who could plan their own moods frightened me. Mine just dragged me around on a leash, whether I could get my feet under me or not. Curiosity took me back inside. The sauna was ready.
“Orange, you’ll be joining us, of course?” said Mineola.
“Do I have to?” asked Moira.
“Come on, it will be good for you; you haven’t had a good sweat in weeks,” said Angie.
“I don’t want to with him,” Moira said, meaning me. “I just want to watch TV.”
“OK, but we’ll miss you, and Uncle Snorri doesn’t get to see you that often.”
“I want to watch TV.”
I suppose the ability to walk naked across your own island and be scrupulously unscrutinized by your staff and bodyguards is the ultimate act of privacy. You don’t have to be modest because everyone is in on the act and bound by ferocious non-disclosure statements. The Bombardier sisters and I walked starkers along a footpath down to her sauna house on a tiny inlet just around the corner from her docks. To be with two naked sisters who fully intended to drape themselves on a bunk and work themselves up into a languorous but sweaty froth should have been more pleasurable. I, disappointingly, found myself stuck right between fight or flight, even though neither was appropriate nor desirable. I longed for some kind of displacement behavior; this would have been a great time to adjust my cuffs or re-knot my tie, or even just clean out my ears, but the same social conditioning that was nearly paralyzing me kept my fingers out of my orifices.
Mineola and Angie preceded me into the sauna house. They had similar butts, I was pleased to see. I was looking forward to harboring secret thoughts about the sisters until I felt the heat, then I was fully occupied with thoughts about my own safety. To say I felt the heat is insufficient. I felt the heat in the same way I felt Waldena’s pistol butt concussing my skull. I felt it in the same way I felt influenza. I had baked roasts at lower temperatures. This wasn’t the right crowd for a suicide pact, but there was little in this setting that suggested survivability to me. Snorri yelled something in Finlindian that I presumed meant “Close the door you stupid North American,” and jarred me out of my spell. There were three tiers of shelves upon which to cook oneself; Snorri was on the top shelf in the corner—the hottest place in the room. It smelled like wood smoke and herbs—good for roasts—and, unfortunately, a bit like Snorri’s old milk.
“Cleans out the toxins,” he shouted, sensing our olfaction.
I was placed in the middle of the lowest shelf—“For beginners,” Angie told me.
I tried to take shelter against a wall but found it was too hot to touch. Like a cat looking for the ideal spot in a room, I sensed that close to the ground, surrounded by as much air as possible, was the least stultifying place to try and continue my existence. For the next several minutes, I struggled to adjust to the swelter. I probably had more toxins within me to leech out than most people who had baked themselves in this oven. But some of my toxins were hard-won and I didn’t necessarily want to give them up. I had barely moved a muscle, for fear of spontaneous combustion, yet my body experienced throes of febricity that I’d never felt before.
The women had taken their stations above me on the second rack. I was having too much trouble using my senses to understand what they were saying, though I could tell they were murmuring approval, giving voice to the easeful slackening they felt.
Snorri jumped down from his perch and took up the ladle. “Well, ladies and gentleman, I think we’ve taken it easy long enough. Let’s get Finlindian.” He dipped the ladle in to a wooden bucket made from a birch burl and splashed some of the sauna tea on the rocks. There was a crack like an explosion and a shockwave of botanically scented heat buffeted me. “Ahh, wonderful!” he declared and then did it again. This time he scampered up to the top shelf to experience the heat wave more fully. I, perhaps like the Buddha, considered the nature of mercy. There was none.
Snorri had evidently transcended into a meditative state himself. He chanted something that seemed like a litany at first but then became a dirge. The Bombardiers contrapointed his baritone drone with high-pitched yelps, in what I assumed was a traditional sauna yoik. Then Snorri went silent. For how long, I don’t know, since time and sensibility were lost to me. He began a moan that rose to a wail and sank down to a keen punctuated by sobs.
As my own consciousness was eased of sight and a sense of the present, a vision of Snorri, or maybe, perhaps, of myself, bear-paddling under the glowing Arctic ice swam into my imagination. From what seemed like an abyss below, I heard the raga of whalesong. From the luminous yet ponderously vaulted ice above, I heard the cracks and groans that the old ice speaks with. Things of menace and things of beatification swam beyond the reach of my ken. Snorri brought me back either to the surface world or the inferno within when he un-beached himself off of his shelf. This time he drooped down off the upper bleacher and squatted on the floor in front of the rocks. He stood slowly and told Mineola something in Finlindian that I didn’t understand, and then looked to me and said, “I cannot be the saunahost; I must go now.” The waft of cool air from the door made my skin sizzle.
After a time, I struggled to my feet and looked at the recumbent sisters. Mineola said: “He’s been that way since he got here.”
“What happened?” asked her sister.
“His bear left him.”
“That again?” said Angie. I looked to her for an explanation. “More heat, Orange,” she said. “Pour some more tea on the rocks.”
I did and was forced back to my bench. I hung my head well down between my knees and tried to breathe the air from just above the floor. I could no longer feel time pass. I watched the sweat drip from my nose and chin and form a black puddle that seemed somehow familiar. Angie and Mineola talked languorously, but I couldn’t join them. One of them got down and ladled more tea onto the rocks. I heard the crack again, but it was all over for me; I was utterly wilted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Up Late with Mineola
Below me, prickles of ice. Within me, a sense of cloudy disturbance, like squid ink dispersed by the distant stroke of a massive tailfin. Upon me, sleet and raking hail. I tried my eyeballs. Only one worked. Two polar bears stood above me, grunting lasciviously. I had been waiting below the ice for as long as I could hold my breath. When I put my snout just inches up into the air, I was snatched out of the water and dragged onto the ice. The bears were tenderly, expertly flaying me.
“He looks awake.”
“Move over, I’ll get his legs.”
I closed the eye. A skeletal raven lit on my back. Its wing bones scraped between my ribs. I felt something I just could not identify—a sense of sickness and pain that was at the very same time relief and stimulation. Reason stormed back into my skull, and I realized I had just died. I opened the eye again. In the afterlife, I discovered that one lays unclad upon one’s belly on the sand and grass. Two naked battle maidens kneel beside one. They, for eternity, one assumes, beat one’s back, ass, legs with branches.
“I don’t want to use up all these switches on him,” said Mineola.
“He needs it. See, he’s come to,” said Angie, continuing to birch me.
To use words in the afterlife turned out to be very difficult. A groan was as close as I could come.
“He’s definitely awake. He needs to be rehydrated and needs some carbs. I’ll get him a beer,” said Mineola.
Angie said “Welcome back, Orange,” and flipped me over. She drew the branches up and down my chest and legs, as if stroking me gently with claws.
/> I was not dead. As it turns out, in real life—in my very own life, even—naked sisters beat you with birch switches and then get you a beer. It was the first time I’d ever been beaten back to consciousness. I think I would have enjoyed it if I hadn’t had to die first. I thought of stalwart well-dressed men in black and white movies lightly tapping the wrists of just-fainted young women. I thought of W. C. Fields in The Fatal Glass of Beer, in which he wore mittens while playing a zither.
Angie had got me back up on my feet and we walked back up to the house. I don’t know how, but I was feeling chilly. I drank half of my beer at once and told them, “T’is a fit night out for neither man nor beast.”
“You liked it,” said Angie. Her sister smiled.
“What kind of beer is this?”
We talked lightly about our invigorated pores and our spent toxins and, after another round of beer, broke into Snorri’s stash of pickled herring. I did feel a more pleasant afterglow than I would have expected from heatstroke and a beating. Moira came downstairs, looked at us and said, “Ew, gross.” Geezers in towels eating cold vinegary fish. She had something there.
I was game to stay over and looked forward to crashing in the cushy guest room. I helped myself to the phone, just in case anyone decided to call me instead of kidnapping me. “Mitchell, what are you doing there at one AM?”
“I wanted to watch Nova, then I fell asleep. You have a better TV. What are you doing in Mali? Where’s Mali?”
“What?”
“Your phone says ‘Unknown Caller: Mali.’”
“It’s in Africa. It’s snowing. They have winter this time of year.”
“You’re not in Africa.”
“I don’t know. I might be. This is a strange phone.”
“Why are you hanging around with my daughter?”
“Moira? What?”
“I heard you were all bedraggled and walking with Moira in town.”
“I wasn’t hanging around with her; I was just walking her back to her boat.”
“Rover’s been very snuggly tonight.”
“Careful, she scratches.”
“Not me.”
“Well, good. Um, don’t forget to change her water.”
“Oh,” said Mitchell, “I’ll take care of your cat,” and then he hung up on me.
Mitchell wasn’t famous for his insight, but I was wearing what may well have been his pajamas and lying in a bed he’d no doubt slept in himself. A man can sense some things, I guessed.
I was still sleepless later that night but not too upset about it. I snuck a beer from the fridge and went back outside to watch the moon and ocean from the high ground of patio. Something big seemed to be lurking out there. I could see the moonlight frosting on its wake. Too bad the whole island was a non-smoking section. I heard a glass slider open and a “Hi,” from behind me.
“Hey,” I said, trying to make the one syllable sound inviting and adult.
“Wrong Bombardier,” said Mineola.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep. I figured I’d keep an eye on the moon for us.”
“Thanks for your vigilance.”
“Those guys on watch all night?” I asked, pointing down to the silhouettes of the guards on the docks.
“They sure are. Don’t worry. They’re discreet and well paid. As are my lawyers.” Mineola wrapped her robe a bit tighter and sat down at the patio table with me. “I need to ask you a few questions, Orange.”
“I. . . .”
“Not about Angie.”
“Uh.”
“My package. I don’t want to have to ask you for it.”
“Your package?” The Jesus fuckity package again. Recent negatively reinforced conditioning had made me a little fussy about packages.
“I know the Koreans gave it to you directly. Mr. Lucy says you never gave it to him.”
“What do you know about Mr. Lucy and the Koreans?”
“I know what I want to know. And now I want to know about the package. Did you give it to Waldena?”
“Mineola, I don’t have it. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what it is.”
“You know something? I might just believe you.”
“Why?”
“Moira told me to.”
I considered my unlikely alibi. A popsicle well bought, I decided. “Listen, I know you’ve got a lot going on, but underneath it all, you’re an Islander too. I love to stay out of peoples’ business Mini. I love staying out of businesses so much, I’m a socialist. But this package—your package, you say—suddenly I’m the expert. If you know what you want to know and you know less than I do, I don’t see how you stay in business, because I don’t know shit. Why don’t you tell me something so the next time someone tries to feed me to the fish, I’ll at least know why.”
“Feed you to the fish?”
Mini always seemed mildly amused by my suffering and her whole tone tonight suggested she had more in store for me. “Waldena, lampreys, long story I’m not telling tonight.”
“I”ll tell you. The package, it’s not mine, it’s Snorri’s.”
“Snorri’s?”
“It’s meant to be a gift for him—a sort of hospitality gift or maybe something diplomatic. I think Waldena meant to steal it.”
“Why?”
“Her business,” said Mini. “If I had to guess, I’d say she was counting coup on Snorri. Or maybe she just feels left out.”
“Out of what?”
“A loop,” she said.
“A loop?”
“A certain loop.”
A certain loop. It sounded like an obscure film festival.
“Waldena says I stole it.”
“She’s not the only one.”
“So why do I supposedly have this package? I can’t Christly imagine what any of this has to do with me.” It took some maturity to not whine it’s not fair to her.
“Because the Koreans gave it to you because it was meant for Mr. Lucy.”
“And he says he doesn’t have it?”
“He says you never gave it to him.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“Ill John is very concerned.”
“How do you even know Ill John? So this package, it’s supposed to go from the Koreans to Snorri? What’s Mr. Lucy got to do with this?”
“He was the courier. He was supposed to give it to me, and I’d give it to Snorri.”
“Why?”
“That’s none of your business,” said Mini.
“I wish. Why didn’t the Koreans just give it to Snorri?”
“They. . . they’re very thorough tourists. They’re here. .. to be in the certain loop, and they want to show their appreciation and demonstrate their cultural acumen with this package. Sometimes they act like a pair of anthropologists and it can get annoying. You know the Sampo?” asked Mini.
“Sampo? No.”
“Nor do I. The Sampo was known only to the wisest of the ancient proto-Finlindians.”
“Mineola.…” I hoped she wasn’t under the bardic influence of Snorri.
“No, it’s supposed to be an enigma,” she said. “One is not supposed to know, just to treat it with reverence. It’s said to be many different things. All we know today is that it was very potent and worth stealing. Their stories are full of Sampo thievery and the trouble it caused. Astrolabes, orreries, whale jism, stills, perpetual motion machines, the goose that laid the golden egg. All Sampo.”
“So the Koreans had the Sampo? That doesn’t sound too likely.”
“No, I don’t think anyone has the Sampo. Sampo has changed. Now things have ‘sampo.’ It’s as essential a concept as whale-herding to the Finlindians. To understand something’s sampo is to see something in the same way as a Finlindian.”
“Is this like having a fashion sense?” I asked.
“Snorri says that just as in the Finlindian alphabet there are letters and sounds that cannot be expressed with the English alphabet, there are plenty of concep
ts that only a Finlindian can comprehend.”
“So Snorri knows what it is?”
“I doubt it. Maybe. He’ll never tell,” she said, with resignation.
“I’m not sure I’m any closer to understanding anything.”
“You’re probably better off that way.”
I rubbed my face with my hands and held the beer bottle to my forehead.
“Look,” said Mineola, “the Koreans want to give a package to Snorri for him to bring back to his whale council, right? Whatever’s in that package probably has sampo. I think the Koreans want to give Snorri’s council a gift that shows they understand sampo. It would be a dramatic cultural connection if they could communicate via sampo, despite the fact that they live in different hemispheres, don’t understand a word of each other’s language, and don’t have any mutual interests or even any rivalries.”
“What’s this got to do with tiger testes?”
“You mean, like, ‘What’s a piecost?’”
I knew that one. The same as a henway. “No, the seagum.”
“That’s how Ill John and Chosen get their trip to pay for itself. There’s bigger things afloat than cock starch.” Mini smiled to herself, savoring her coinage. “They and Snorri have bigger whales to milk, so to speak. Waldena, too. Snorri’s got an idea for perfectly marbled miniature Kobe beef-style whales to sell to the Koreans. Waldena’s obsessed with the Estonindian free-range whales and their noble pedigrees. I don’t give a shit and only serve whale at supper to be polite. One thing the Northern Indians and the Koreans do have in common is that their societies are so old, they forget sometimes that there are easier ways to make money than hunting, herding, and trading, and that’s why they need a North American like me around. If we can cooperate and play to our strengths, there’s some serious money to be made, the twenty-first century way. Do something to bring people together and improve the world while we cash in. But we need that package first.”
“Why?”
“‘Why’ is my question,” she said, lowering the boom, “and I sort of hoped you have an inkling.”
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