Far Afield Read Online Free Page A

windows shuttered against the cold. Bleak. Dreary. He thought of a sentence he’d read in a Danish guidebook tothe Faroes: “The Faroese flora consist of approximately 300 varieties, many of which are moss.” They were—he was—above the timberline. Not the timberline as Jonathan knew it, that point on a mountain marking the end of pine and the start of rock and scrub, but some larger, in fact, global, timberline. The Faroes did not support vegetable growth. Things grew down to some extent: potatoes, carrots, turnips. But things did not grow up. A sparse sort of privet struggled in front of a few houses, and outside of town he’d seen fields of angelica and Queen Anne’s lace, but there wasn’t a tree on the islands.
    What a place! Jonathan sighed at the wonder and gloominess of it all. And it had begun to rain again. It was time for dinner.
    Eyvindur had a brown goatee and was under forty. He was wearing an apron and holding a five- or six-year-old girl by the hand. “Jonathan,” he crowed. “You are here. Vœlkomin .” He made a path through toys on the floor to the kitchen. “Here is Jonathan,” he said to a woman who was feeding a smaller girl pieces of meat. “Anna,” he said. “Anna and Jonathan.”
    Anna and Jonathan smiled wanly at each other. Jonathan could tell she didn’t speak English; he was developing a sixth sense for that. Something about people’s posture gave it away—a hunch, an apologetic slouch, a self-deprecatory, I-can’t-communicate expression. In a fit of generosity Jonathan said, “Pleased to meet you,” in Faroese. At this Eyvindur slapped the kitchen table.
    “He speaks!”
    “A little. Professor Olsen taught me what he knows.”
    “He knows nothing,” said Eyvindur. “He is living in the tenth century. Anyhow, he is not Faroese.” He waved his hand to brush Olsen away. “Marta”—pointing to the meat eater—“and little Anna.” He lifted Little Anna’s hand like a coach lifts a champion’s. “You are married?”
    “Uh …”
    “Your wife, she didn’t want to live up here in the middle of nowhere?”
    “No, actually, I’m not.”
    “Good. You can marry a nice Faroese girl.” Jonathan’s face clouded. Eyvindur hit the table again. “You must forgive me. In reality, I am Italian. Anna is so disgusted with me because I do not behave. But tonight, for you, I will be very Faroese. We are eating spik . You know what’s that?”
    Anna reached into a cupboard and brought out a platter of gray slabs about three inches square. “Whale fat,” she said in English, proud of her vocabulary. “With bread,” she added.
    “It’s a joke,” Eyvindur said. “We’ll have a nice little smorgasbord. Traditional Danish evening meal. Traditionally, Faroese can’t afford to eat in the evening. It’s a joke.”
    Jonathan was befuddled. He had not expected wit, sophistication, jokes in near-perfect English. As he followed Eyvindur into the living room (“We’ll leave Anna to her duties”), he wondered what exactly he had expected. According to Olsen, Eyvindur was a devoted Independence Party leader, ultranationalist, from whom Jonathan could learn everything about native culture and history. “Dedicated,” Olsen had said, “to the preservation of the language and customs.” And so Eyvindur had been cast in Jonathan’s imagination as past fifty, pale, intent, consumed with his country’s promise.
    The living room walls were densely hung with large, dark, van Gogh-like paintings of houses and shorelines, all unframed. Jonathan did not like them, but he suspected that Eyvindur, or his wife, or his cousin had painted them and he felt under pressure to comment. “These pictures …” he offered.
    “Yes. yes. You want to buy one?” Jonathan’s money loomed in his conscience. “No. You cannot afford them. Now I am getting to be almost as famous as Ruth Smith.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Ruth Smith . She was our”—Eyvindur was stymied here, but not for