Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? Page 15

  And, for every hundred yards we drove, there were bouquets of flowers on the roadside, withered and dry, tied to the road barriers.

  “You see those bouquets?” Anna said, and for once Ennen slowed down to give me a better view of what Anna was talking about. Three bouquets, two almost side by side, the third fifty or sixty yards farther down the road. “One bouquet for every person that’s died driving along here,” she said. “Every July, families that have lost somebody on the roads put a bouquet where the person died.” Ennen accelerated again, these half-rotten bouquets popped up in the most incredible places.

  “But that many people can’t have died this year, surely,” I objected.

  “There aren’t just bouquets for people that have died this year. Lots of the flowers are put there for people who died ten, fifteen years ago.”

  Overtaking. Icy roads. Mountains.

  I thought about the night I’d spent lying in the bus shelter, in the pouring rain, the night Havstein had appeared out of the gray, came for me. I’d lain in the middle of that road for ages, face down, dark clothes, almost impossible to see. I hadn’t known where I was, I’d scarcely been in a state to move, and I thought how flowers weren’t like people at all.

  Havstein was the first person to introduce himself properly, and he did it that day, as we sat in the car, racing along the road, in and out through tunnels and along one fjord after the other. Havstein was the grand old man of the Factory, almost seventeen years older than me, and close on fifty. He was a genuine Tórshavnite, born and bred in the capital, he’d moved to Denmark at eighteen, an uncle and aunt lived in Århus and his original plan had been to move there, but he’d ended up in Copenhagen instead, studying medicine and eventually getting a job in the Rigshospitalet. He’d worked shifts there while continuing with his studies, taking psychiatry and finally getting himself a permanent position in the psychiatric department. He had sporadic relationships with girls, among them a Danish girl who talked the whole time about him moving to Texas with her, not that he ever understood why. Later he moved in with a girl from Sweden, thought they’d marry, settle down, family, car, house, furniture catalogs in the mail, but nothing came of it. He continued living in Copenhagen until the beginning of the eighties, when one day he suddenly decided to go back to the Faroe Islands, and in the summer of 1981 he was, to the delight of his parents, back in Tórshavn, and by the spring of 1982 he already had plans in motion for the first long-term psychiatric halfway house in the country, started looking for suitable locations, and finally found a factory in Gjógv that had been empty for two years, that offered almost 2,000 square feet. With the help of state money and a substantial contribution from his father, who’d done pretty well as a fisherman, Havstein began to convert the Factory. He hired workmen. Electricians, carpenters, welders, and plumbers moved through the Factory, and with paperhangers, floor layers, and removal men, they built seven bedrooms on the second floor, as well as a bedroom and office for Havstein. On the ground floor, where the ceiling was twelve feet high throughout, he put in a big, oblong kitchen that led into the three hundred square foot living room. When the money for construction began to dwindle, he was left with a massive entrance hall he didn’t quite know what to do with, two old workers’ locker rooms on the ground floor that he left more or less as they were, and at the back of the building, the largest room, the factory floor itself. He removed the old machinery, painted the walls, and installed big workbenches and better lighting, since the thought had already come to him, it should be possible to do something here, he didn’t want residents sitting and staring at the walls, he wanted them to produce something, anything really, it didn’t much matter what. (And it was here we occupied ourselves with the laughable production of model animals, peat baskets and other items that we presumed visiting tourists might think of buying. I never asked who’d come up with the idea first. But I guessed it must either have been Ennen or Havstein, whatever the case, they were the only ones with any real enthusiasm for the work. In fact, Ennen applied herself to the task so diligently that over time a huge number of wooden sheep stood grazing on the shelves along the walls.) Anyway: During the autumn of 1982 the first residents arrived, people that had been discharged for years without feeling they’d made any progress, and people coming straight out of treatment. There’d been a full house that first year, Havstein had had to take on extra help, but things soon flattened out, many people came and went before it began to stabilize, and towards the end of the eighties they’d tumbled in, one by one, Palli, Anna, Ennen.

  We sped along in the car down toward Tórshavn, the sun growing warmer and warmer with each minute, that was how it should be, how it never was. Nobody was used to this kind of weather, the closer we came into town, the more people were out on the pavement, T-shirts parading up and down the streets in August, on this island in the middle of the sea, and they hoped they wouldn’t have to put clothes back on until long into September.

  It was hot in the car. Anna wound the window down on her side allowing the soft air in.

  “It is okay to open the window,” she asked me, “isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “ ’Cause I can just wind it up again if you’re cold.”

  “No, honestly. It’s fine.”

  “You’re not freezing?”

  “No, really.”

  “But you’d say if you were. Freezing, I mean.”

  Ennen turned toward her.

  “I think it’s fine with him that you have the window open.”

  “I just want him to know that he can say if he’s cold.”

  “He’s not cold. Are you?” Ennen looked round at me.

  “No, I’m not cold.”

  “You see? He’s not cold.”

  “But I don’t want him to get cold either, I’m just trying to be nice to him, poor thing,” said Anna.

  “I’m beginning to get pretty warm,” I said.

  “I’ll put the air conditioning on instead,” said Havstein, “then there won’t be such a draft.”

  A cell phone peeped.

  “Is that yours, Anna? asked Havstein.

  “Wait, I’ll see. Yes.”

  “Is it Palli?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we go and pick him up?”

  “He finishes at three.”

  Havstein looked at his watch.

  “Okay. We’ll drive down to Kollafjør∂ur and fetch him first, then we’ll go over to Tórshavn afterward, okay?”

  “It’s getting a little windy now, isn’t it,” said Anna, “with the window open and the air conditioning on?”

  “Should I turn it off?” asked Havstein.

  “Yes, could you? So nobody gets cold.”

  “Christ,” said Ennen and turned around to me again, rolling her eyes, I smiled back, shrugged my shoulders.

  Palli was at work, he worked loading and unloading the Russian ships that came into the fjord a few times every month. On the whole they were ex-Soviet hulks that barely held together, ships you’d never believe could float, and which you’d never believe would be allowed to go on sailing. Rust ate its way over their bows, along their sides, over their decks and into the wheel houses, threatening to plant itself in their captains’ faces, to corrode their crews, and there seemed to be something sad about working on these ships, since each time you boarded them could prove the last. When they left in the morning, there was a fair chance they’d never come into harbor again, that they’d sink somewhere out there, noiselessly and undramatically, like a cat hiding away to die, and little notices would appear in the Russian papers in the weeks that followed, sole proof that they’d ever existed.

  We drove along the east side of Streymoy, along the sound that divides the Faroe Islands more or less into two, listened to the radio, Ras 2, a channel Anna and Havstein both liked, not that I ever understood why. A girl hosted the program, sounded friendly enough, swe
et, pigtailed, you could imagine her in the studio somewhere or other in Tórshavn, coming in every morning, apart from Fridays, taking her seat, slightly disheveled, making herself comfortable in the little studio, putting the large earphones on, talking into the microphone, playing her records, the most impossible blend she could come up with, something by Wham! one minute, then straight over to Pearl Jam or similar, our Madonna of the Airwaves, she steered the tempo of the traffic with the songs she played, and we passed Kollafjør∂ur Center, swung down toward the quay, toward the giant Russian vessels where Palli stood waiting at the entrance to one of the warehouses, he waved when he spotted the car, Ennen honked a couple of times as she drove toward him and braked as she came up alongside him.

  Palli was from Kollafjør∂ur, a small village just far enough away from Tórshavn for the people there not to be regarded as townsfolk, but still close enough for them to be subjected to a number of directives that the capital threw in their direction. This was where he’d been born, and where he’d spent his whole life, apart from the few times when he’d taken off to the harbor. (It took time before I worked it out, but the harbor was another name for Tórshavn. Local slang, you might say. When you went to the harbor, you went to the capital.) Other than this, Palli was the person it took longest to get to know, not until weeks later did he open up just a chink, and talk in more than monosyllabic words. But the first memory I have of him is of his hands. Palli had powerful fists. Welder’s hands. And as soon as he opened the car door, flashed me a glance and mumbled a moody hello in my direction before dumping himself down in the seat without a word, I thought he must be a good guy, even if one of few words. Felt as though he was anyway. And he went on that way, didn’t say a lot, unless he was asked something directly or if something really engaged him. I think that was one of the reasons I liked him right away. Felt he was somehow on my team. He was more talkative with Anna though, she had a way of getting him going, he seemed more comfortable talking to her, she could get him to tell her much more than we ever could. Never really understood how she managed it, what she did, what she said. Anna was thirty-four when I met her, she was from Mi∂vágur, one of the best harbors for pilot whale, she said. She was short, almost stocky, dark, with long hair, big, soft eyes, and a miniscule nose. She could have been a kids’ TV presenter with a face like that. But the stuff I heard about her later would have been more appropriate for News Night. She was the only one who’d been to Norway, she’d worked in fish farming, and she was doing that now as well, she worked full time and came back to Gjógv with Palli in the evenings.

  And I contemplated how everything had happened so fast. I’d lived through nearly thirty years with barely a couple of friends, I’d avoided other people, I’d snuck away from them or they’d passed me by in silence. And now it seemed new friends were tumbling in, in the space of just a few hours, two women, and two men, and my unwillingness to talk, my unwillingness to accept them, was ebbing away, I was becoming two open arms.

  With Palli now with us, we drove some hundred yards up to the Statoil station higher on the slope, found ourselves a parking space and went into the gas station. A little group of men were standing there, truck drivers mainly who crowded around the slot machine against one wall, tripped around in wooden clogs that clacked, waited their turn, cheered when one of them won and the coins clanked down into the bowl. There was a strong smell in here, hot dogs and coffee, and it seemed the woman behind the counter had been put into a kind of optimistic stupor by the stench, she stood rocking backward and forward behind the register, wearing a permanent smile and listening to the radio. To Ras 2. I was thirsty, I crossed over to the fridge to get a soda, studied the various brands, the unfamiliar names, picked a Jolly Cola. Large advertisements for it hung all around the shop. Föroya Bjór’s proud drink, with its cheery name. I felt jolly. Hadn’t felt that way for a while.

  Anna stood at the counter and ordered five French hot dogs, and the smile behind the counter squirted mustard into the bread holsters, the gas station’s own spaghetti western. Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Filled them to the top with mustard and drove the sausages in, still with the same fixed smile. Havstein paid, while Ennen and Palli stood by the newspaper racks, investigating the day’s headlines. In the past, I might have kept my distance, gone to the counter, paid, and gone outside, drunk my soda by the car and waited for the others to come out. But I went over to the newspapers now, joined them, picked up a paper and started reading. That is, I didn’t read, couldn’t understand a bit, but I stared at the words, tried to make them my own, and Ennen laughed at me: “Bet it’ll take awhile before you get the pronunciation,” she said, after I’d read a passage aloud which I thought had something to do with possible oil finds off the coast. Palli looked over my shoulder, read the same extract in his soft voice, a confusion of sounds, like Danish with an American accent, and then Anna shouted over from the counter that there were hot dogs for everybody, and we went up together, I put ten kroner on the counter for my cola.

  “Djolli,” said the assistant.

  “Djolli,” I answered and taking the bottle I went out, swinging the door wide so as to let a little fresh air into the room where she stood waiting to make more French hot dogs, waiting for better days or more of the good ones she’d already had.

  We sat in the car and ate our hot dogs, kids on a day trip, and Palli talked about his work on the boats, answering Anna’s questions. We’d rolled down the windows, the hottest day in man’s memory, twenty degrees at least, and it wasn’t often that happened. It was usually overcast and damp, and we generally had to drive with the windows half open to reduce the steam that covered the windows with a film in just minutes, and fog often settled over the countryside too, mingling with the low clouds, and we rarely needed to drive more than sixty feet up into the mountains before we disappeared into white nothingness, we couldn’t see the road barriers let alone our hands on the wheel. And maybe that’s the thing I remember best from this time: the long drives through thick fog, sitting in the car and seeing nothing, listening to the sound of tires on asphalt for proof we were moving, getting somewhere. But now, now it was sunny, and I’d gotten up from my bed, I’d begun to walk, I tried not to think about Helle, that I had a flat in Stavanger with no furniture, that I had a parked car, that there was nobody waiting for me. I’d tried to dismiss the thought that I wouldn’t have the money to keep it, that when I returned some day I’d no longer drive down to work, arrive early, sit out in the garden and wait for the others. I did my best to stop thinking about things, and on the whole I succeeded. Once in awhile I felt a stabbing pain, from nowhere, a knife that drove into my spine, as if to remind me that nothing at all had been resolved for real, and that sooner or later I’d notice it. Really notice it.

  So we drove to Tórshavn from Kollafjør∂ur, taking the main road toward the tunnel, and Havstein leaned forward to whisper something in Ennen’s ear, and as she came out of a turn she reduced her speed, Havstein turned to me, and without a word he motioned for me to look out of the window, I turned to look. I didn’t know what he was trying to say at first, so I scanned the landscape searching for something worth seeing. Saw nothing. Just mountains. The fjord …

  “Do you recognize that?” he asked, pointing to a turning place on the right of the road.

  “What?” I answered.

  Ennen slowed the car even more, but I still couldn’t see what Havstein wanted me to look at.

  “You’ve been here before.”

  “Have I?”

  “This is where I found you, that night.”

  And I then recognized it. The bus shelter with its long bench. The road. The road barrier. It looked like a beautiful place now. Undistinguished, perhaps, but lovely. A place like any other. This was where I’d lain with my face to the wall. This was where I’d been, without knowing where I was. This was where I’d wanted to vanish completely, and never be found. I’d almost drowned here. Turned into a bouquet. Ennen picked up speed agai
n, and I sat twisted in my seat until the bus shelter was totally out of view and we swung in toward town, past Kaldbaksbotnur and Kaldbaksfjø∂ur that lay below us to the left as we came out on the other side of the tunnel, windows wide and air streaming into the car, blowing away the cigarette smoke from Palli who sat jammed between Havstein and me in the back seat, and the roads here seemed familiar, despite most of the similarity of the landscape everywhere, monotone green, and wet, I had the urge to go and lie on the nearest slope, I thought how moist the grass must be, how I could drink it, suck it into me without fear of it being polluted, spoiled, contaminated by heavy industry or mercury. Just lie there and wait for the rain that would come, sooner or later.

  We drove into the center of town, through shopping streets, past the police station on Jonas Broncksgøta, and I couldn’t place it, but I knew I’d been here before, in these streets, with Jørn, with Roar, and with the other band I’d come over with. I’d walked down these streets with them, on that first day, but I was erased from my own story, couldn’t remember what we’d done, what we’d been up to. We drove on up R.C. Effersøesgøta to the SMS shopping center, where we parked, Havstein needed to go in the Miklagar∂ur grocery store to buy more cigarettes and I used the opportunity to go into the bank. I still had fifteen thousand Norwegian krone in my wallet, without having the least idea why. And the cashier didn’t ask either. She changed the money dutifully, efficiently, handed me the Faroese notes, and I thanked her, stuffed the new cash into my wallet and went out to the others.

  Then we drove to Café Natúr.

  Café Natúr was at Áarvegur 7, not far from the sea, a cozy café with its share of drunken old seadogs who seemed almost to hang over the tables, listing to the side, providing natural buffers between the café’s young regulars. In the evening, by contrast, Café Natúr would transform into the hippest bar in Tórshavn, where you might ramble in to hear the year’s hottest band play on the miniscule stage in the center of the floor. Café Natúr was in an old wooden house, painted dark brown on the outside, and sort of brown inside too. Or greenish. All according to how you looked at it. And the roof was covered in grass, in a kind of attempt at hiding what was really inside. The fixtures in Natúr had that peculiar quality of refusing to reveal if they were genuine or just plastic or fiberglass imitations, the solid beams and wall paneling all gave off a suspiciously artificial sound when you knocked into them, which was known to happen on occasion. Although it certainly didn’t seem to bother anyone. So long as the house stayed upright. And it did. The first floor was generally less crowded, it was filled with an assortment of tables all screwed to the floor, and some seating booths too, and railings to prevent the Islanders from falling down to the floor below through the large opening, through which it was possible to communicate with people at tables below, if you yelled loudly enough at least, or waved in the air with brightly colored clothes and large gestures.