13 Little Blue Envelopes (22 page)

So, your next instruction is to take a plane to Copenhagen, immediately. It’s a short trip. Send an e-mail to [email protected] with flight information.

Someone will meet you at the airport.

Love,

YRA

The Viking Ship

She was standing in the airport in Copenhagen, staring at a doorway, trying to figure out if it was (a) a bathroom and (b) what kind of bathroom it was. The door merely said
H
.

Was she an
H
?

Was
H
“hers”? It could just as easily be “his.” Or “Helicopter Room: Not a Bathroom at All.”

She turned around in despair, her pack almost causing her to lose her balance and tumble over.

The Copenhagen airport was sleek and well organized, with shiny metal plates on the walls, metal strips along the floors, and big metal columns. All airports were kind of sterile places, but the Copenhagen airport was like an operating table.

Looking through the massive glass panels that lined the building, Ginny could see that the sky outside was also a steely gray.

She was waiting for someone she didn’t know and who didn’t know her. She only knew that he or she wrote English in 233

all caps and told her to WAIT BY THE MERMAIDS. After a lot of walking around in semicircles (the whole place was one big curve) and asking a lot of people, she found statues of two mermaids looking over from one of the second-floor rails. She had been standing next to them for over forty-five minutes, she badly needed to pee, and she was seriously wondering whether this was some kind of test.

Just as she was about to make a run for the
H
room, she noticed a tall man with long brown hair approaching her. She could see that he wasn’t very old, but his big brown beard gave him a mature, imposing air. His outfit—a pair of jeans, a Nirvana T-shirt, and a leather jacket—was normal, except for the belt of chain-link metal that hung from his waist, with various objects hanging off it like charms, like a large animal tooth and something that looked like a massive whistle. And he was making a beeline for her. She looked around, but she had a pretty strong feeling that he wasn’t charging toward the group of Japanese tourists who were converging next to her under a small blue flag.

“You!” he called out. “Virginia! Right!”

“Right,” Ginny said.

“I knew it! I am Knud! Welcome to Denmark!”

“You speak English?”

“Of course I speak English! All Danes speak English! Of course we do! And pretty good English!”

“Pretty good,” Ginny agreed. There was an exclamation point after everything Knud said. He spoke English
loudly
.

“Yes! I know! Come on!”

Knud had a very modern, very expensive-looking blue BMW

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motorcycle with a sidecar waiting for them in the parking lot.

The sidecar, he explained, was what he used to transport all of his tools and materials (what they were, he didn’t say). He was absolutely certain her massive backpack would fit in there as well, and he was right. A moment later, she was in the sidecar, low to the ground, tearing down the street of yet another European city that looked (she was ashamed to admit it—it seemed like such a cop-out) very much like the one she had just left.

He parked his bike on a street full of colorful houses, all linked together, that sat along a wide canal. Ginny had to wait until she was unpacked and then stepped uncertainly out of the sidecar. She took a step in the direction of the buildings, but Knud called her back.

“This way, Virginia! Down here!”

He was carrying her pack down a set of concrete steps that led down to the water. He continued down the sidewalk that was along the very edge of the canal, past several carefully marked out “parking spots” where large houseboats were docked. He stopped at one of these. His was a complete little house that looked like a small wooden cabin. There were flower boxes full of red flowers at the windows and a massive wooden dragon head coming from the front. Knud opened the door and beckoned Ginny inside.

Knud’s house was all one large room, made entirely of red, fresh-smelling wood, every inch of which was intricately carved with small dragon heads, spirals, gargoyles. At one end of the room, there was a large futon bed with a frame made of thick, unfinished branches. The majority of the space was taken up by a wooden worktable with carving tools and bits of ironwork. A 235

small space was devoted to a kitchen. This was where Knud headed, removing several plastic containers from the tiny refrigerator.

“You are hungry!” he said. “I’ll make you some good Danish food. You’ll see. Sit down.”

Ginny took a seat at the table. He began opening the containers, which were filled with a dozen or more kinds of fish.

Pink fish. White fish. Fish with little green herbal specs on it.

He took out some dark bread and piled these things onto a slice.

“Good stuff!” he said. “All organic, of course! All fresh! We take care of the earth here! You like smoked herring? You will.

Of course you will!”

He set the heavy, fishy sandwich down in front of Ginny.

“I work in iron,” Knud said. “Though I have also done some of these wood carvings. All of my work is based on traditional Danish art. I am a Viking! Eat!”

She tried to pick up the overloaded piece of bread.

“Now,” he said, “you are probably wondering how I know your aunt. Yes, Peg was here, three years ago now, I think. At the arts festival. I liked her very much. She had a great spirit.

One day she said to me . . . What time is it? Five o’clock?”

Somehow, Ginny didn’t think that was Aunt Peg’s big proclamation in Denmark.

Knud gestured for her to continue eating and then stepped out of a small doorway by his two-burner stove. Ginny ate her sandwich and looked across the canal at the row of stores on the other side. Then she turned her attention to a metal plate that sat on the table. Knud was etching it with a complicated pattern.

It was amazing that such a big guy could do such delicate work.

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When she looked up again, the stores she had been looking at a moment before were gone and had been replaced by a church, and even that was drifting away. The floor rocked gently underneath her, and her brain managed to put together the fact that the entire house was moving. She went to the window and saw that they had left their place at the boat sidewalk and were quickly moving through the canal.

Knud swung open the little door at the front. She could see that he was standing in a tiny booth where the boat’s controls were.

“How do you like the fish?” he yelled in.

“It’s . . . good! Where are we going?”

“North! You should relax! We will be some time!”

He shut the door.

Ginny opened the door that had just led from a sidewalk and found only a foot of deck and a calf-high rail separating her from the churning water. Water splashed her legs. Knud was driving his house quickly now, as they’d made it to a wider body of water. They passed under a massive bridge. At the front of the boat, Ginny looked out at the silvery channel of water that separated Denmark from Sweden.

So, she was going north. In a house.

“I live alone,” Knud said, “and I work alone, but I am never truly alone. I do my ancestors’ work. I live the entire history of my country and people.”

They’d been sailing for at least two hours, maybe more.

Knud had finally docked his house at a utilitarian pier along a road, next to a field of skinny high-tech windmills. He was a 237

folk artist, Ginny had learned. He studied and revived crafts that were over a thousand years old, using only authentic materials and processes and sometimes getting authentically ancient injuries in the process.

What he had not explained was why he had just driven her so far north in his houseboat so that they could park along a highway. In lieu of an explanation, he made some more sandwiches, once again impressing on her the quality and freshness of all the ingredients. They sat next to the houseboat, eating these.

“Peg,” he said, “I heard she died.”

Ginny nodded and watched the windmills furiously spin-ning. They looked like mad, overgrown metal daisies. A bright orange sun gleamed behind them, shooting sharp and silvery beams off the blades.

“I am sorry to hear this,” he said, landing a heavy hand on her shoulder. “She was very special. And this is why you are here, am I right?”

“She asked me to come and visit you.”

“I am glad. And I think I know why. Yes. I think I do.”

He pointed at the windmills.

“You see this? This is art! Beautiful. Also useful. Art can be useful. This harnesses the air and makes beautiful clean power.”

They both watched the windmills spin for a few moments.

“You’ve come at a special time, Virginia. This is no accident.

It is almost midsummer eve. Look. Look at my watch.”

He held his wrist in front of her, revealing what most people would have considered to be a wall clock on a strap.

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“Do you see? It is almost eleven o’clock at night. And look. Look at the sun. Peg came here for the sun. She told me this.”

“How did you know her?” Ginny asked.

“She was staying with a friend of mine in a place called Christiana. Christiana is an art colony in Copenhagen.”

“Was she here long?”

“No so long, I don’t think,” he said. “She had come to see the midnight sun. She had come to see what an extreme place this is. You see, we spend much of the year in darkness, Virginia. And then we are bathed in light, constant light. The sun bounces in the sky but never goes down. She wanted very, very much to see this. So I took her here.”

“Why here?” Ginny asked.

“To see where we grow our windmills, of course!” He laughed. “She of course loved them. She saw in all of this a fantastic landscape. You come here, you understand that the world is not such a bad place. In this, we try for a better future where we do not pollute. We bathe in light. We make the fields beautiful.”

They sat there for quite a while, looking at the sun that refused to go down. Finally, Knud suggested that Ginny go back into the boat and rest. She thought the light and the strangeness of the place would keep her awake, but soon the boat’s gentle rocking had gotten to her. The next thing she knew, a huge hand was shaking her shoulder.

“Virginia,” Knud was saying. “I am sorry. But I must go soon.”

Ginny sat bolt upright. It was morning, and they were 239

docked back in Copenhagen, right where they had started. A few minutes after that, she was watching Knud get onto his motorcycle.

“You’ll get there, Virginia,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “And now, I must go. Good luck.”

With that, she was on the streets of Copenhagen, once again on her own.

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Hippo’s

At least she was prepared this time.

In case she was faced with another Amsterdam, Ginny had looked up some places online. The number-one recommended hostel on all the websites was a place called Hippo’s Beach. It got five backpacks, five bathtubs, five party hats, and two thumbs up from the most thorough of the sites, which pretty much qualified it as the Ritz of youth accommodations.

Hippo’s didn’t look that large—just a pale gray, unassuming building with a few umbrella-shaded tables out front. The only thing unusual about it was the large model pink hippo head rearing out from above the doorway, mouth wide open. People had filled the mouth with all kinds of objects—empty beer bottles, a mostly deflated beach ball, a Canadian flag, a baseball cap, a small plastic shark.

The lobby was decorated in paper palm trees and silk garlands of flowers. There was a fake tiki bar covering wrapped 241

around the front desk. All of the furniture was very eighties, brightly colored with geometrical patterns. There were strings of Chinese paper lanterns strung around the room.

The man behind the desk had a thick white beard and wore a bright orange Hawaiian shirt.

“Do you have any beds available?” she asked.

“Ah!” he said. “Pretty girl with pretzel hair. Welcome to the best hostel in all of Denmark. Everyone loves it here. You will love it here. Isn’t that right?”

He addressed his last words to a group of four people who had just walked in with grocery bags. There were two blond guys, a girl with short brown hair, and an Indian guy. They nodded and smiled as they threw bags of hard rolls and packages of sliced meats and cheeses onto one of the tables.

“This one is a firecracker,” he said. “I can see that. Look at the braids. I’ll put her with you. You can keep watch for me.

But here. One bunk for one week is nine hundred and twenty-four kroner.”

Ginny froze. She had no idea what a kroner was or how she was going to get nine hundred and twenty-four of them.

“I only have euros,” she said.

“This is Denmark!” he bellowed. “We use kroner here. But I will take euros if I must. One hundred sixty, please.”

Ginny guiltily handed over the wrong currency. While she did this, Hippo reached under the bar and opened up a small refrigerator. He produced a bottle of Budweiser, which he presented to Ginny in exchange for the money.

“At Hippo’s, everyone gets a cold beer. Here is yours. Sit down and drink it.”

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It was friendly enough, but Hippo didn’t seem to expect anything but total compliance with his hospitality. Ginny took the beer uncertainly (even though she was beginning to understand that sharing alcohol was the universal way of saying

“hello” in Europe). The bottle was very wet, and the label disin-tegrated at her touch and stuck to her palm. The people at the table, her new roommates, waved her over and offered to share their purchases.

“I just came from Amsterdam,” she said, digging into her bag to try to make some kind of offering. “I have all these cookies, if you want some.”

The girl’s eyes lit up.

“Stroopwaffle?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Ginny said. “Stroopwaffle. Eat them all. I’ve had too many.”

She set the package on the table. Four pairs of eyes gazed at it reverently.