Far Afield

by Susanna Kaysen

  They slowly swiveled their heads to look at him.

  “That’s the idea,” said Heðin. He poured aquavit for everyone, concentrating hard. Then he stuck his face up to Jonathan’s and pointed the bottle at his glass, which was still three quarters full of brandy. “You’re not drinking,” he said.

  “I can’t drink like this.”

  “Jonathan.” Heðin dropped his head onto Jonathan’s shoulder and talked sweetly into his neck. “You must drink. Drink. We have to dance.”

  “Can’t I dance without drinking?”

  “You wouldn’t want to,” Heðin said. “Drink,” he whispered, then jerked himself off Jonathan into a semi-upright position.

  Jonathan steeled himself and drank his brandy, which wasn’t very good and left a hot line from his throat to his stomach. His next assignment, the aquavit, appeared in his glass courtesy of Heðin. Jonathan decided he couldn’t continue without a breather. He stood up, holding onto the table for balance. “Toilet,” he said.

  Kristina pointed upstairs without turning around.

  “Stairs in the hall,” mumbled Petur.

  The toilet was much better equipped than his own: hot water. Jonathan found a pink nailbrush in the shape of an elephant and scrubbed his hands with it until all the mire and blood was off. Then he washed his face. Then he thought he might as well do something about his hair, so he took the yellow toothbrushes out of the yellow plastic cup and used it to pour hot water all over his head. Drying off with a pink towel, he considered taking a bath. The idea was seductive but seemed like trespassing. He looked at himself in the mirror: improved, though his eyes were red. They would be redder before this day was over, he figured. Thinking of his glass full of aquavit made him queasy. He simply would not drink it—they couldn’t force him to. A brandy burp rose out of him and cleared his head a little.

  Things had changed when he returned to the kitchen. Jón Hendrik was asleep. Heðin was back on the prowl by the stove, and Kristina had thawed a bit; they were smiling at each other. Petur and Sigurd were having a hard time sitting up and kept tipping right and left. Only Jens Símun maintained equanimity, though his brown eye was shut and his blue eye rolled around in its socket. Still, he sat straight in his chair with his head high. He was drinking something new: a bottle of near-beer.

  “You’re drinking beer?” Jonathan asked.

  Jens Símun nodded gravely. He lifted the beer bottle and set it down again with care. Making an obvious effort to organize his tongue, he said, “If you have it with an aspirin, you can get drunk.” He looked at Jonathan and added, “You can get more drunk.”

  Jonathan took an experimental sip of aquavit. It wasn’t too bad. Aquavit was easier, somehow, than brandy. He took another sip, but this was a mistake. Immediately he was jolted by a loud ringing in his ears and the sensation of his head being split apart, perhaps by a knife. He put his head into his hands: another error. He understood why everybody was taking pains to stay upright. How long, he wondered, were they going to sit in the kitchen getting drunk? He sat absolutely still and tried to guess the time. Six o’clock, he decided, after rejecting four o’clock and midnight.

  “What time is it?” he asked. When nobody answered, he leaned across the table to Petur and repeated the question.

  “I don’t care,” said Petur slowly.

  “I care,” Jonathan said. “Heðin, what time is it?”

  Heðin wasn’t there. Neither was Kristina. Jonathan took another sip of aquavit.

  If it had been in fact six o’clock when Jonathan asked, it was at least eight and possibly ten by the time they were all trying to put their boots on again. On the other hand, he thought, as he intently worked his right foot into Sigurd’s left boot, probably it had been only four o’clock, so now it was maybe nine? Jonathan was convinced he would feel better if he knew the time. He’d made another trip to the toilet that was actually a search for a clock, and a search for Heðin and Kristina. He’d found a closed door, evidence of them, but no clock. And now everybody was back in the kitchen surveying the pile of boots, which Petur had dragged in and which looked like a nest of snakes. Kristina was washing glasses, finally empty, and wearing a pretty red kerchief on her fair head. Heðin was making up for lost time by swigging down the dregs in the aquavit and beer bottles.

  “Goddamned boot,” snarled Sigurd, waving his foot aloft.

  “I think that might be my boot,” Jonathan said. They traded; things went better after that.

  Jonathan had never been anywhere near as drunk as he currently was. He was beyond drunk—he felt he’d been put into a bottle of liquor and was marinating in it. His limbs were squishy and his insides seemed to have evaporated. It was rather nice. But it was confusing. For instance, he was out on the street walking next to Petur, and not doing too bad a job of walking, he was pleased to see, but he didn’t remember leaving the house.

  “Did we leave the house?” he asked Petur.

  “I think so,” Petur looked around. “Yes. Here’s the street.”

  Sigurd and Jens Símun were walking arm in arm ahead, singing about birds.

  The next thing he knew he was in a big room with wooden rafters and a lot of other people, most of whom were yelling. The room was hot, and the change in temperature made him dizzy. Jonathan sat down on a bench.

  Now he did not feel good. He was cold and hot. His stomach was jumpy. His hands hurt, and when he held them up to his face to wonder why they hurt, he saw cuts in his palm and a gash along his wrist. His knees were not working; when he tried to keep them together they flew apart, so that he sprawled on the bench and started falling backward. Then an earthquake began, rattling the floor and making it nearly impossible to stay on the bench. Jonathan was surprised by the earthquake. He didn’t remember the Danish guidebook talking about seismic instability. Luckily, Heðin was on the bench too.

  “It’s an earthquake,” Jonathan said. He didn’t know how to say earthquake in Faroese, so he said it in English.

  “Now we dance,” announced Heðin, standing up and dragging Jonathan to his feet.

  “I think we have to get into a hole,” Jonathan protested.

  Heðin wasn’t listening. He pulled Jonathan into a line of people who were stamping their feet and yelling. “Right foot over left foot,” he said, demonstrating.

  Jonathan moved to the left in order to avoid being knocked over by Heðin.

  “Good, good,” said Heðin, “again.”

  “Oh,” said Jonathan, “we’re dancing.” He took two more steps left.

  “No!” Heðin tugged on his hand. “Two left, one right.”

  Soon Jonathan was dancing: two to the left, one to the right, then a stomp. It was the stomps that accounted for the earthquake. He was pleased to have figured this out. And he liked dancing. It was a stylized version of a drunken lurch and therefore came naturally to him and all the other drunks in the room. Singing was harder. The tune—it was more of a drone—wasn’t too difficult to learn, but the words were beyond him. He had a vague memory of Heðin singing some of them years ago, this morning: Norsemen, dance well. But that was only the refrain. The rest of it, and there were several hundred verses, concerned two chieftains, Tróndur and Sigmundur, and some sort of fight.

  “What’s this kvœði about?” he asked Heðin.

  “They’re fighting over whether to become Christian.”

  “This is a very old one, then?”

  Heðin whispered, “The Icelanders wrote it.”

  “But it’s in Faroese.”

  “We stole it.” Heðin resumed yelling out the kvœði.

  Moving, yelling, and stomping were sobering Jonathan up, and he was able to take in the scene around him. They were in some sort of meeting hall: benches all around the walls, a raised platform at one end, high, small-paned windows. The room contained an extraordinary amount of wood for a Faroese building—not only the rafters he’d noticed earlier, but framing around the windows and tongue-in-groove wainscoting. Most Faroes
e windows were simply cut into the plaster, as wood was too precious to use for decoration.

  “Where’d all this wood come from?” he asked Heðin.

  “What wood?”

  “Here.” Jonathan tipped his head toward the walls, creating a bout of dizziness.

  “It’s an old building,” Heðin said.

  This wasn’t an explanation. “Yes?”

  “Just dance, will you?” snapped Heðin. “Questions all the time,” he mumbled.

  It was true; questions all the time. Jonathan sighed. Well, he would save up his questions. Maybe somebody would answer them another day. He was sober enough now to remember his notebook resting idle on his kitchen table, and this provoked a second sigh. Then, conjuring the image of his worries bobbing offshore in the gray sea, he tossed the desire for his notebook onto the waves and resumed looking around.

  He and Heðin were at the outer arc of a line of dancers that spiraled in to a knot in the middle of the room. Parts of the line were straight and well formed, but most of it was pretty ragged, because so many of the dancers were drunk beyond standing. At least two hundred people were dancing, and more than half of them were completely looped. The women scattered here and there propped up the men on either side of them. Some of the village elders looked sober too, holding their white heads high and chanting every word to every verse. Klæmint the sheriff looked particularly dignified, dancing next to Jón Hendrik, who looked particularly blotto. Jonathan couldn’t find the others from Skopun. And Kristina, where was she? He peered around Heðin and found her, cheeks flushed, red kerchief awry, holding tight to Heðin’s hand. He leaned toward Heðin.

  “Mokka,” he said, and winked.

  Heðin punched Jonathan in the stomach.

  “Hey!” Jonathan yelped, and fell to the floor. He bent over his knees and gasped. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Fuck you,” he went on, in English. “I don’t know how to get along with you people.”

  A thin young man from Húsavík who’d been dancing a few feet down the line from Heðin and Jonathan darted up to Heðin, took a swipe at his head, and missed. Heðin swiped back and connected on his shoulder. Jens Símun and Petur appeared, waving their hands. Kristina, cause of all this, had meanwhile danced out of sight, swallowed by the line that continued to take two steps left, one step right, swerving around Jonathan on the floor and the clutch of men standing near him, all with their arms raised.

  “So, so, so,” said Petur.

  “Goddamned American,” said Heðin.

  Jonathan retched.

  Petur took two steps toward Heðin and pushed him hard on the chest. “Crazy kid!” he yelled. He pointed at Jonathan, curled up on the floor. “That’s your friend.”

  The thin guy from Húsavík had been joined by another with straw-colored hair and bad skin. “These assholes from Skopun,” said the new arrival, “they’re always fighting in that village.”

  “Is that so?” Heðin delivered another shoulder punch to the thin one. “Hicks,” he said, and punched Bad Skin too for good measure.

  Jonathan looked up just in time to see both Húsavík boys draw their grind knives from their belts.

  Petur grabbed Heðin before he could get his own knife out and pushed him toward a bench on the wall. Heðin let himself be pushed for a few feet, then pushed back. “Come on, come on,” said Petur, but Heðin pushed him aside. Now, however, Jens Símun was standing in front of the two from Húsavík, blocking Heðin’s access.

  “Goddamn you, get out of my way!” Heðin charged Jens Símun. Jens Símun, who was considerably bigger than Heðin, stayed put. Heðin ran into his chest and rebounded. Then he drew his knife.

  “I swear I’m going to kill you,” he said.

  Jonathan scuttled back toward the wall, where Petur was sitting on a bench not doing anything. “Can’t you stop them?” Jonathan asked him.

  “Nothing will happen,” Petur said.

  Jonathan didn’t believe that. And now Jens Símun did something dangerous: he laughed at Heðin and his upraised knife. Jonathan shut his eyes.

  “You want to have a fight?” Jens Símun said. “Okay.”

  Jonathan couldn’t resist opening his eyes. He saw Jens Símun move away, so that Heðin was face to face with the guys from Húsavík. But they had dropped their hands. The one with bad skin had even put his knife back in his belt.

  “These people are crazy,” he said to his friend, and they both slipped into the line of dancers.

  Jonathan hoisted himself up onto the bench beside Petur, which made him retch again; nothing was coming up except bile. Petur took a pint bottle of aquavit out of his pants and offered it. Jonathan took a swig. What the hell, he thought. Maybe it would help. Petur took a swig too, then waved it at Heðin. Jonathan thought this unwise. Heðin was standing on flexed, taut legs, his knife still threatening someone—anyone. Jens Símun had melted into the crowd.

  “Eh, Heðin.” Petur waved the bottle again.

  Jonathan hoped he wouldn’t come over. But he did, and he flopped down right next to Jonathan and draped a strong, knife-wielding arm over his neck.

  “Going after my girlfriend, hah,” he said. Then he laughed. “Tricky. Tricky American.”

  “I wasn’t.” Jonathan spoke softly. The knife was near his ear.

  “Have a drink,” said Petur. He sounded bored. “When’s the wedding?”

  Heðin took a pull from the bottle. “Summer. A summer wedding is nice, don’t you think?” He beamed his best smile at Jonathan.

  “Okay,” said Petur. He got up and began dancing again.

  Jonathan felt vulnerable sitting by himself with Heðin and his knife. “Want to dance?” he asked.

  “You’re afraid of me.” Heðin tightened his grip on Jonathan’s neck. “Don’t be afraid of me. I’m just drunk.”

  “I know,” said Jonathan. He felt nervous.

  “Don’t you get drunk in America?”

  “Not this drunk,” said Jonathan.

  “Drunk!” Heðin yelled. “This is drunk. Either you’re drunk or you’re not drunk.”

  “Okay.” Jonathan looked around for Petur.

  Heðin dropped his knife all of a sudden, and it clattered on the floor. “My head,” he said. He put it on Jonathan’s chest. “I’m so goddamned tired,” he said.

  Jonathan patted Heðin’s head tentatively. He moved his foot as quietly as he could until he had the blade of the knife under his heel. Then he said, “Maybe we should go home.”

  Heðin banged his head against Jonathan’s chest, indicating no. Doing this got him off-balance, and he began sliding down, until he came to rest with his head in Jonathan’s lap and his knees on the floor. “Jonathan,” he mumbled, into Jonathan’s thighs.

  “What?” Jonathan checked that the knife was still safe.

  “You are my friend.” Heðin looked up and widened his big, red-streaked green eyes. “My friend.”

  “Yes,” said Jonathan. And they drank to their friendship with the aquavit that Petur had kindly left behind.

  More dancing; standing outside in a windy drizzle with Jón Hendrik, who’d got hold of some vodka; sitting on a bench with Sigurd not listening to him explain how to cure whale meat in salt: the night seemed to Jonathan to have been going on for weeks and to have no end in sight. The noisy room and his aching head were eternal conditions, a benign but boring Faroese hell to which he’d been condemned. He wasn’t too drunk, though, to realize that everybody else was in heaven. They loved dancing around yelling with bottles sloshing in their pockets and picking fights and collapsing onto benches for restorative snoozes that enabled them to keep it up for another two hours.

  His obsession with time had recurred, and Jonathan whiled away part of the night by trying to catch a glimpse of a watch on some passing wrist. Though the crowd had thinned a little, there were still at least a hundred people whirling by him; not one of them had a watch. He tried to tell himself that his interest was anthropological, that the accuracy of his report
on the grind would be compromised if he couldn’t supply a schedule of activities. But this attempt to diminish the space between Jonathan tipsy on a bench and Jonathan maintaining the perfect observational distance failed: he’d left that position behind hours ago—how many hours ago, he had no idea—when he’d killed the first whale. He knew that, and he knew as well that the only reason he wanted to find out the time was to estimate when he’d be back in Skopun, sleeping off the effects of this interminable experience.

  So he sat against the wall, head cocked slightly, on the lookout for timepieces, lapsing now and then into a sort of sleep during which he dreamed passionately of his pillow and his eiderdown. He was in a stupor when he was roused by Petur patting his hand, saying his name softly over and over.

  They were all standing in front of him, Sigurd and Jens Símun, Heðin, Jón Hendrik, all looking gray and gaunt and in need of a shave. Jonathan touched his own cheek: a slow-moving timepiece, but it told him that at least twenty-four hours had passed.

  “Hoopla,” said Petur, as if talking to a child. “Off we go. Let’s go.”

  Jonathan stood on tired, spongy feet. “Where now?”

  “Time to divide the whales,” said Petur.

  They straggled through the dim wet streets, sliding on muddy stones down to the harbor. The sun was just coming up as they arrived, a red smear at the juncture of sea and sky.

  “Storms are coming,” muttered Heðin.

  “Good thing we have all this grind,” said Petur briskly. He alone had survived the night intact; his brothers were slipping and stumbling, Jón Hendrik looked near death, Heðin kept stopping in his tracks and closing his eyes. “We won’t be out fishing for a while,” Petur went on.

  “Papa, don’t talk so loud,” said Heðin, shutting his eyes.

  Jón Hendrik wove his way over to Jonathan. “So, so, so,” he said. “Now you are a Faroese man.” Jonathan looked at him blankly. “Now you are a Faroese man,” said Jón Hendrik again. He teetered and lost his footing in the sand, then fell against Jonathan. He was all bones, rattly, sharp, gnarled bones, and Jonathan gripping him around the shoulders felt he was holding a bird of prey, light yet intense with the desire to sink his talons into something.