Far Afield (15 page)

The lamb ran him in circles out into the landscape, bobbing up and down, pausing long enough for Jonathan to approach and try, and fail, to catch it. Winded and irritated after three tries, he lay down for a rest. The ewe ambled up to him and sniffed his shoes. He wasn’t worried about her; he was sure that if he captured the lamb, the ewe would follow. If he had to, he would carry the damned animal back in his arms, five miles through the country, till he reached the safety of the
bøur
. The lamb had begun to graze again, with its mother nearby.

Jonathan turned onto his belly and started moving across the grass like a snake, slowly, wiggling, breathing steadily. He would come at the lamb from behind and grab
it. He inched along, willing the sheep to keep their heads down in the grass. They obeyed. When he was two feet behind his prey he rose, gently, to his knees and then thrust himself forward onto the lamb’s back.

It was warm, much warmer than he’d expected—but how long since he’d held a living creature in his arms! And it wriggled and kicked and cried so piteously that Jonathan was almost moved to let it go. Almost, but he pulled it closer to prevent himself; he had succeeded, and he intended to bring his booty home.

He rose to his knees with the lamb clasped to his chest. Once stable in this position he tried to stand up; but that was hard to do holding a squirming twenty-pound bundle of wool and meat, and his first attempt ended with both parties on the ground again, though still attached. Adjusting the lamb in his arms, Jonathan achieved a semi-upright position once more and rested on his haunches, considering how best to get vertical. Suddenly the lamb jerked in his grasp, rising up a few inches.

“Hey,” said Jonathan. He tucked it down with a pressure on its head from his chin. “Stay put, buddy.”

But the lamb wouldn’t stay put. Another jerk, this time releasing both forelegs from Jonathan’s hands. Then a slow but insistent movement out of Jonathan’s arms, as if somebody were pulling … Jonathan’s blood froze.

The
huldumaður
.

Gray ewe, gray lamb, just the two creatures alone by the cliff, this nowhere, nobody, nothing part of the island: all of it made sense.

Jonathan let go of the lamb and tore off for home.

By the time he reached the herd he’d gathered with Heðin, Jonathan wasn’t sure what had happened. Maybe he’d just spooked himself. He felt a mixture of pride and embarrassment: proud to have had, so early in his stay, an encounter
with the supernatural; embarrassed to have been so easily convinced of its existence. He couldn’t decide whether to tell anybody about it or not. But the opportunity, which came immediately, was too tempting to resist. Heðin was standing on the far side of the herd, rolling himself a cigarette; Jonathan jogged over to him.

“I met a
huldumaður
,” he announced.

“Oh,” said Heðin.

“He took a lamb away from me.”

“Mmm,” said Heðin, putting his cigarette in his mouth. “Didn’t you get any more sheep?”

“I only found these
huldufólk
sheep. They were gray, they were all by themselves, and when I tried to catch the lamb, the
huldumaður
took it away.”

“Oh, well,” said Heðin. “Let’s get some lunch.” He kicked a stone into the herd and got them moving in the direction of the pen. He walked off at their rear, urging them on with an occasional toss.

Jonathan stood dumbfounded for a minute, then ran after Heðin. “I met a
huldumaður
,” he said.

“So you said.” Heðin offered the tobacco pouch.

“Don’t you believe me?” By repeating the incident, Jonathan had completely converted himself, he realized, and now took anything less than enthusiasm as scorn.

“You like
skerpikjøt
?”

This word rang a bell: it was that dried meat he’d had at Eyvindur’s. “
Kjøt
—yes, I love that.”

“We eat that when we work hard, because it’s very good food.” He grinned at Jonathan. “Makes you fart.”

When they got to the pen, men and sheep were converging on it from several directions, Petur and Jens Símun driving the foremost herd. There was a noisy and terrified traffic jam at the entrance, some sheep swarming over the backs of others in the effort to get away. A second pen had been set up, where sheared sheep, looking like huge rats,
were being daubed red by the man with the paintbrush and squirted with white liquid by a man with a bucket and a hose. The smell of fresh dung was overpowering.

“What are they doing to the sheep?” Jonathan asked.

“Delousing them. And we mark them too, to show they belong to Skopun. Sometimes sheep will wander into the
hagi
that belongs to Sandur or Húsavík. Every village has a mark.”

The backs of the trucks had been piled with wool; detached from the sheep, it looked unappealing—dirty, matted, lifeless. “And you slaughter some of them?”

“In October,” said Heðin. “We slaughter the lambs. Where do you think we get the
kjøt
?”

Jonathan sensed Heðin’s patience was thinning. The role of instructor could be a tiresome one. Jonathan recalled his own impatience with the freshmen in his Introduction to Anthropology sections the year before. But was he such an unrewarding student? His students had known nothing—in Jonathan’s terms. One had insisted that Homer had written the
Aeneid
, causing Jonathan to omit the classical references that he’d thought would humanize anthropology. They had never read
Anna Karenina
or
Huckleberry Finn
. They lived in a cultural void. He supposed, though, that not knowing why sheep were sprayed various colors or when they were slaughtered put him into a similar cultural void, from Heðin’s point of view.

But he wanted to learn. Didn’t that count for something? And didn’t the fact that he was willing to rush around after sheep indicate his good intentions? And what about the
huldumaður?
Didn’t his appearance mean that the supernatural residents at least had found Jonathan acceptable?

Petur put a stop to this huffy line of reasoning by coming over and clapping Jonathan on the shoulder. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“He runs fast,” said Heðin, but begrudgingly, Jonathan thought.

“So. Hard work, eh? Now we’ll eat.” Petur steered Jonathan over to their truck with his big hand.

“I met a
huldumaður
,” Jonathan said. Clearly, Heðin wasn’t going to mention it.

Petur stopped short. “Where?”

“By a cliff. He took a lamb away from me.” Jonathan didn’t feel as sure of this as he had when he described it to Heðin. “I think,” he added, lamely.

“Did you see him?” Petur was stern.

“No. I just felt him pulling.”

“Hah,” said Petur. Jonathan couldn’t tell if this was surprise or doubt. “But you didn’t see him?” Petur repeated.

“No.” Jonathan waited for Petur to tell him that there weren’t any
huldufólk
, or that he must never go back to the
huldumaður’
s cliff, but he just said “hah” again.

Lunch was hunks of lamb, hunks of bread, and hunks of raisin cake. A thermos of tepid tea was passed around after the cake. Then everyone rolled a cigarette, including Jonathan, who did better this time. Petur and Jens Símun chatted in low voices, leaning against the side of the truck; Heðin leaned on the hood, keeping his distance from Jonathan, who perched on the open tailgate watching little Jens Símun and little Petur making scary faces at the sheep in their pen.

Jonathan was tired, sleepy from lunch, and depressed in some way that he couldn’t pinpoint. The whole lamb episode had affected him oddly. He’d scoffed—gently—at their beliefs, and then been scoffed at—possibly—for becoming a believer. And the question of whether there were or weren’t gray people living on the outer reaches of the island had now taken on a jumpy, bifocal quality: there couldn’t be such people; he’d encountered one of these people; he must have made it up, it was autohypnosis; but the lamb had been lifted right out of his arms; he had probably just let go of it from fear and it had jumped out; and so forth.

All afternoon he pondered, strolling out to find sheep,
racing them back to the pen. From the details he moved to the wider concerns, which were with faith. Did he believe in
huldufólk
? More pertinent, did the Faroese? If they did, why? If he did, then what? Belief opened a door Jonathan had been trained to keep shut: the door to mystery. His parents’ rationality had easily revealed to him its opposite, irrationality, and this, in his sulks and self-absorptions, he knew well. But mystery was something other. Its opposite, Jonathan now saw, was despair—just the sort of despair that plagued him and wreathed his parents in an ineffable, omnipresent sadness that the world could not cure because the world had generated it. Marriages would fall apart, nuclear weapons would be built, tyrants would seize power in hot countries, warranties would expire a week before the toaster broke: life was like that. But there were explanations; everything had an explanation. Male psychology, scientific curiosity, greed, capitalism—all this could explain why life was like that. Knowledge was his parents’ god and his own. But knowledge brought sadness.

Riding back to town on a heap of wool, Jonathan looked hard at Jens Símun: Was he sad? Tired; his two-tone eyes were half shut, his workman hands hung loose between his knees. Jonathan couldn’t determine anything about Jens Símun’s mood. His own mood, though, was improving. He’d run fast, he’d found more sheep, he was going back to Petur’s for dinner, he was looking forward to Eyvindur and Tórshavn. And the
huldumaður
, along with the thoughts he had provoked, had lifted the edge of Jonathan’s veil in some way. The Unknowable beckoned, glimmering with the promise of a respite from explanation. His mind fixed on that small beam of light, Jonathan fell asleep as the truck bumped home.

A Girl

The shifting clouds of the latter part of the week had turned to a gusting, driving rain by Saturday, when Jonathan stood on the dock waiting for the afternoon boat to Tórshavn. People in city clothes moved from foot to foot, trying to preserve their shoes from the wet. Jonathan’s American
sneakers—-his sole concession to Eyvindur’s instructions—were soaking up rain like sponges. He was looking forward to luxury, though. He’d booked a room in the Hotel Hafnia, Tórshavn’s best, with a private bath. There he intended to take a two-hour shower.

The boat was late. People were saying it was because of the weather. “Bad tides,” he heard. One woman whispered to another, “I’m going to be sick, oh, my God, I know I’m going to be sick.”

“Maybe it won’t get here,” said her friend. This worried Jonathan. But the woman who feared she’d get sick was sure the boat would come.

It did, though not before everyone was sodden and chilled. It was chock-full of sacks of flour, mail, boxes of canned goods, used tires, relatives from Tórshavn over to visit for the weekend. In a burst of confusion, all the boarding passengers attempted to get on as soon as the boat was docked; those who were on the boat looked pale and more than eager to get off it, which they were prevented from doing by the onslaught of embarkers. Many wet feet were stepped on, and a few were rolled over by a dockhand with a dolly who attacked the cargo with vigor.

When Jonathan got on board he saw why there had been such a rush. The small cabin had seats for about twenty; another ten were perched on laps and knees. He’d last taken this boat on a balmy day. He’d stood in the bow and watched the birds, and when he’d tired of that view, he’d sat on a piece of heavy machinery in the front cargo area. It had been a beautiful trip, and in his enthusiasm he’d imagined himself standing at this prow in later months, the Anthropologist Who Is Accepted, riding the waves back to “his” village. He had disregarded the fact that the weather would change.

Seatless, Jonathan stood near the door of the cabin in his squelchy shoes. The engine roared beneath his feet, and the smell of fuel seeped up through the floor, hinting at a
terrible, close atmosphere to come once the door had been shut. As they got under way, the ticket taker latched the door and turned on a heater that blew foul air onto Jonathan’s head. Within ten minutes the cabin was dense with breath, wet clothing, and diesel fumes. Jonathan leaned against the door, where sea air occasionally burst through the crack. But it wasn’t enough. His head was clouding up. He went out and stood on deck, gulping in the freshness.

They were riding into the wind, so Jonathan made his way to the back of the boat, where, he reasoned, he would be somewhat protected from the elements. He was glad he hadn’t listened to Eyvindur about the Faroese sweater; he would have been freezing without it. He took a position under a small overhang and stared back at Skopun in the mist; the boat’s wake was wide, and its course was a straight one, giving Jonathan the illusion that they were towing the village along with them.

He was beginning to enjoy himself when the boat changed direction and started riding over the sea at a new angle. The waves that had bobbed them up and down gently, predictably, now hit them broadside and made a dizzying zigzag of their course. There was no rhythm to the boat’s rise and fall; it would skid sideways as if planing on the surface, then sink deep into a swell that, as the boat rose again, washed half over one side or another. An especially large wave dumped water at Jonathan’s still-wet feet. He pressed against the cabin housing and wondered if he was safe.

“Hey,” somebody said. Jonathan jumped. It was the ticket taker, all dressed up in yellow rain gear. “Get inside.”

“Me?” asked Jonathan.

The ticket taker came closer to see who was such a fool. He peered at Jonathan from under his rubber hat. “Oh. You. You go inside. It is dangerous out here. You understand?” Then he took Jonathan’s arm and pointed at
the cabin, against whose outer wall they both sheltered. “In. In. No good here,” he said, his faith in Jonathan’s Faroese waning by the moment.

“I understand,” Jonathan said stiffly. “I’m going.”