Far Afield Read Online Free

inoculations and the backwaters of Malaya. They did not believe in studying cultures that had newspapers, and the Faroes boasted seven newspapers, each the mouthpiece of a separate political party, one of which was edited by Professor Olsen’s friend, Jonathan’s contact, Eyvindur Poulsen.
    But perhaps today he had other things to do? Jonathanwashed three of his four pairs of socks at his sink and hung them over the end of the bed. He didn’t want to make contact. With all his money, he could disappear into the countryside, take a boat to the outermost island and hide, take a boat to the Hebrides and—how similar all these options were to each other and to the only choice he actually had. He was in the north, bounded by sea on all sides, pressed in by cloud cover, and here he would stay. He went downstairs to make contact by telephone.
    Unlike telephones on the mainland of Europe, Faroese telephone was effective and prompt—rather American. Jonathan was talking to someone— not talking, that is—before he had time to prepare a speech. A woman was saying, “Hey, hey, hey?” Jonathan, befuddled, was thinking in French. “Je cherche Eyvindur,” he snapped into the line. Then he blushed. Silence on the other end; he didn’t blame her. His only concern was whether he had the courage to call back and attempt Faroese.
    “Is it Jonathan?” a mighty voice boomed into his ear.
    “Oui, c’est moi.” He realized that the only foreign language he had ever spoken over the phone was French. But that was no excuse. “Eyvindur—”
    “You are coming for dinner?” This was in English.
    “I couldn’t—”
    “You are coming for dinner. You like spik ? You like it. Up the hill, number eight. You ask them. Congratulations on your departure.”
    “What time?”
    “Number eight.”
    The phone was a sleek Danish model, streamlined to a lightweight black arc. Jonathan moved it from one ear to the other, but Eyvindur had gone. The desk clerk, who had listened to this multilingual exchange wide-eyed, said, in Faroese, “You are visiting Mr. Poulsen tonight? He lives on top of the hill above the sweater store. Number eight.His house is the one with a sod roof. You are a reporter for the New York Times? ”
    “Something like that,” said Jonathan wearily. He went back to his room to rehearse such phrases as “This is an excellent dinner” and “I would be grateful for your help in finding a house to live in.”
    Shortly before seven o’clock (the time Jonathan had decided he was expected), without flowers, a bottle of wine, or a letter of recommendation (first two unavailable in Tórshavn; third lost in his luggage), Jonathan set off into the evening to climb the hill to Eyvindur’s house. The day’s rain had given way to nearly warm sun that fell in long slats between the roofs and filled the bowl of the harbor with molten yellow foam. As he climbed upward, Jonathan’s view of the town improved; from the crest of the hill Tórshavn achieved an almost Italian beauty, distance obscuring the messy winches of the fishing boats and revising to elegance the gnarled geometry of the streets. Could he come to love this view? He paused by a rock to consider. On closer investigation it relapsed to ugliness: an almost determined ugliness whose components were monotony of color (black, gray, dark green) and not enough monotony of form. Big new buildings loomed over small old buildings; shops with Danish Modern fronts of pale ash and plate glass stood next to black-painted stone houses. The twentieth century seemed to have squatted and left its spoor in an almost malevolently arbitrary path.
    Jonathan knew he was a conservative in aesthetic matters, so he tried to reserve judgment on ugly, ill-planned Tórshavn. He was probably suffering some version of the anthropology department’s reverence for “authenticity.” Eighteenth-century Tórshavn would have found favor in his eyes: a string of low dark houses facing the harbor with