Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? Read online

  And then I remember a Saturday afternoon, it’s the end of October, Carl is sitting in Palli’s grandma’s sofa staring straight ahead, seeing nothing, and the telephone rings. Carl gets up carefully, goes out into the hall, to the telephone table, I hear him talking in a quiet voice, Right, he says really, are you sure? And then okay. Then he comes back in and says just one thing: Pilot whales.

  I’m instantly out of my chair. I look at him, straight.

  “Where?”

  Carl blinks.

  “Sandáger∂isvík,” he says.

  I’m confused. I don’t understand.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Ten minutes from here. By foot.”

  And I remember we’re running. Running as hard as we can along Niels Finsensgøta and out toward Sandáger∂i, running until we have the heavy taste of blood in our mouths and yet that’s nothing compared to the blood that will already be flowing down there in the bay, we run as hard as we can, yelling at each other, but neither can hear the other, but that’s unimportant, makes no odds and it’s the sound of our shoes over the asphalt I remember, the people we pass on the road and the crowd assembled on the hills above the beach, Carl and I crash through almost tumbling over the edge, onto the beach, out into the water, where hundreds of pilot whales are killed by precise Faroe Islanders in minutes, hours before cell phones and landlines have been ringing around the villages, men have dropped what they were doing because of the rumor that there might be up to a thousand whales in the fjord, five schools, all that’s needed is to decide how many schools to take and where they should be driven in, and people at work are given time off, allowed to drop their tasks and throw themselves into their cars with the radio on, down to the harbor, out to the fjord, the whales are coming in, the men have placed the boats in a semicircle around the small whales, sixty or seventy boats, maybe more, impossible to count, they coax the whales into shallower waters, some men leave their boats, jumping out into the icy sea and are met by others who wade out from the beach, equipment in hand, hooks tied to thick rope, they move in and grab the closest whales, drive their hooks down their breathing holes, it makes it quicker they say, and the blood flows, the blood drenches the beach and our shoes in red, an entire bay colored red, and hundreds of pilot whales are killed with practiced efficiency, a grotesque vision to the untutored eye, to me it all looks chaotic, unplanned, but Havstein has explained what happens and I try to concentrate on that, there’s no danger, he’s told us, they know what they’re doing, it’s been done for centuries, there are nearly a million pilot whales out there and they only take what they need, there are rules, systems, old equipment was shelved long ago, only the select few are permitted to participate in the kill itself, and it’s over in seconds, think of them as big fish, he said, there’s more blood, that’s all, it’s no worse, this isn’t commercial fishing, this is food for survival, barely nothing is wasted, the children eat the dried meat as a treat and I hold onto that thought as I drag Carl with me through the crowded beach and we stand there bewildered for some minutes as the six- to nine-foot-long whales drift in toward the beach, tails thrashing in the water, knocking anyone over who tries to grab their back fins or anything else, hundreds of pounds of whale against these small human beings, and I stand watching the men out there in the ice-cold water, and wonder how they can stay out there so long without going completely stiff, without losing the feeling in their fingers before I see them thrust their fists down into the whales’ guts after killing them, warming their hands in the heat of the animals and it strikes me how much quieter everything is than I’d expected, I’d imagined screaming, hollering, a din, but everything happens in silence, as though somebody had turned the sound off and was only showing the pictures, apart from the commands and advice yelled back and forth, and the kids stand along the shoreline, with their mothers, and they follow events, watching their fathers at work, and the situation is robed in a deep solemnity, nobody laughs, nobody cheers, and I search for some dignity in all this, search for the respect and think I find it somewhere, but I’m uncertain, these are beautiful animals dying, maybe I’m just overwhelmed, and I see men in blue boilersuits noting down the names of everyone involved, who’s doing what, and these notes will form the basis for how the meat is divided when the whales are eventually brought to the butchers, all according to rules that scarcely anybody remembers the origins of, those who spotted the schools will get a whole whale and then going down the list people will get so much for this work or that, those who went in the water, those who hauled the whales into land, Havstein has explained it all, but I remember only fragments, the whales are numbered and divided into skinns, the men meet and give their names and are allocated meat by the skinn, a unit I don’t understand, and the meat is sliced up accordingly, an abundance, enough for everyone, and what is left will be sent to the hospitals and the needy, to stores where those who weren’t present will be able to buy it, and I drag Carl with me down to the water’s edge to get a better view and somebody yells at us, tells us to grab a wet rope lying on the beach, it stretches out into the water where a Faroe Islander has hooked a whale and we grab it hard with both hands, dig our feet firmly in the wet sand, and when the signal is given, we pull, there are eight of us and we pull all we can and the whale is hauled to land, then we move on to the next rope and pull again, one after the other the whales are brought in to land, and I’m not sure if I’m happy about it or not, but I do it, do what I’m asked because I’m a polite person, and one of the men dressed in blue walks over to us, takes our names, writes them in his book, and tells us to come to the butcher tomorrow, early, before seven, we’re entitled, he says, to enough pilot whale to last us well into the New Year, bewildered, I only just manage to thank him before he slaps me on the back and walks off, I look over at Carl who’s holding another rope, he’s gone pale, and he looks at me, straight at me, and says:

  “We’ve got to go now.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got to go. Now!”

  It was dark when we got home, wet, frozen. We were subdued, changed into dry clothes and went out to the car. Carl sat behind the wheel and looked blankly out the windshield, I sat beside him, put the heating on.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “The tunnel to Kollafjør∂ur is closed,” was all he said. “Road work until eleven. We’ll have to take Oyggjarvegur.”

  “Over the mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  The dark on the Faroes. Have I mentioned that? No? That nothing’s darker? No streetlights once you’re out of town. Hardly any traffic in the evening. When you turn off your headlights you can’t even see your hand, even if you hold it close to your face, even if you can feel it against your skin. You see nothing. And nothing is darker than Oyggjarvegur on a Saturday night in October, rain, fog three feet thick, dew on the road, a half-hour’s drive, steep drops and no guard rails, the middle of nowhere. That was the road we took. The very longest route.

  We drove down the Nor∂ari ring road and turned in toward Oyggjarvegur, Carl tailed a car going in the same direction, following its lights for some minutes before it picked up speed and vanished over the horizon in front of us. Carl said nothing, just brought his speed down, leaned across the wheel and stared out between the window wipers, scanning for asphalt twelve feet ahead. Before the early nineties when the tunnel between Kaldbaksbotnur and Kollafjør∂ur was opened, Oyggjarvegur had been the only road into Tórshavn. These days people didn’t use it much. Not at night, anyway. On a cloudless, postcard-perfect summer’s day it was probably the finest route you could take, driving across wide plateaus on good asphalt roads, and farther in along winding stretches of road on the edges of slopes that overlooked Kollafjør∂ur and Kaldbak, but in the autumn it was like driving blindfold in a trash bag. The headlamps hit small cats’ eyes at the edge of the road, and the best you could do was aim to stay in the middle of the road, hope for no oncoming traffic.

  We’d driven almost
all the way down to the quarry when the rain got so heavy Carl had to pull to the side to wait for the worst of it to pass. He parked at the side of the road next to one of the big stone breakers and turned off the ignition, we sat in total darkness as enormous raindrops hammered on the roof, trying their best to come through the metal. I couldn’t see him, and could barely hear him through the deafening rain, but I sensed it nonetheless. That there was something seriously wrong. That he was sitting there crying.

  “Carl?” I asked, in his direction. “Are you okay?”

  The rain just fell harder and harder.

  It was raining cats and dogs.

  “I can’t take anymore,” he said. “I just can’t take it any longer.”

  And the sea goes on rising.

  And everything will flood.

  And before I could say more, he exploded in the dark, he screamed as loud as he could and I heard him beating the car roof with all his strength, his fists going through softness before they met metal that bent with the force, his feet thrashed the pedals wildly, I stretched my arms out and caught him for a moment, but he pushed me off and bellowed at me to fucking leave him alone, and I retreated to my side of the car, making myself small as he smashed into the wheel, into the dashboard, I heard the sound of the transparent plastic cover on the speedometer break and a second later everything fell silent, perfectly silent. That was when I grew seriously afraid. That was when panic really set in again, and in that moment I realized neither of us was in control, and we had no Havstein here to take care of us. Perhaps we’d never get in control, because we weren’t right, had somehow fallen apart, and there was something wrong with Carl, but none of us knew what, even though we’d discussed it, Sofia, Anna, Palli, and I, countless times. We had so many theories, all more or less built on fantasy, symptoms we thought we’d observed. Havstein had eventually mentioned PTSD to us. Post traumatic stress disorder. That was just about all we knew. But we had no idea what the cause was, what we should do to hold him in check, what situations Carl should avoid or the consequences of his having a relapse. We weren’t allowed to read books on psychiatry. That was the rule, and it was non-negotiable. So I sat there, waiting, even though I had no idea what I was waiting for. Maybe just better weather. And cautiously I lifted a hand and switched the roof light on. Carl looked straight at me, and in his eyes I saw pure, white fear, he was breathing quickly, mumbling things nobody could understand, not even with all the world’s dictionaries.

  “Carl?” I said, stretching a hand cautiously out to him.

  “Don’t fucking touch me!” he shouted.

  “No, of course.” I pulled my hand back quickly. Rolled the window down to let in some fresh air. Cold rain came in through the window, our breath turned to frosty clouds. So we sat there, in silence and darkness, until Carl was calmer and began to relax.

  “I shouldn’t have gone down to Sandáger∂isvík today,” he said finally. “I should have stayed at home.”

  I nodded.

  I sat in silence.

  For a long time.

  Two cars passed us, their lights cut into the landscape, sliced into the cold, damp car before it returned to darkness.

  So we sat there.

  And then I decided.

  It was now or never.

  I took the chance and asked:

  “Carl?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you actually end up in that life boat?’

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Would it help if you told someone?”

  “No.”

  “I know almost nothing. What actually happened to you. I only want to help.”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Come on—please.”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes, I really do.”

  At first he looked at me as though he didn’t understand what I was talking about. Then he turned to the back seat and grabbed a bottle of water, he took a sip and laid the bottle in his lap, looked at me again, a different look this time, lighter, unfocused, and then it began to roll, picture after picture, the entire story he’d never told any of us, not even Havstein perhaps.

  “All right.” Pause. “I’ll ask you two questions, Mattias. And I know you’ll answer no to both. Have you heard of Bill Haglund?”

  “No.”

  “Have you heard of Pilica?”

  I considered.

  “No,” I answered.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And?”

  “Bill Haglund had the most onerous and difficult job you can imagine, and he had inadequate time and equipment to do it. Yet he managed to carry out his work, and managed it with pride and enormous skill. But I’ll come to that later. I have to begin at the other end, or it won’t make sense. I have to begin in Ohio. I come from Columbus, Ohio. I trained as a photographer, and worked for a handful of newspapers, big and small, in the US, before working for five years as a freelance photographer in Chechnya, Rwanda, and above all in Bosnia-Herzogovena. I took about twelve thousand photographs in that time. Only a tiny number were ever printed, few papers would take them. A lot of them were used instead as visual evidence in court and as documentation for the UN. Anyway, I won’t go into all that. So I arrived in Bosnia-Herzogovena in the fall of 1992 as an official US photographer, and in 1993 I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo, from September to February, most of the journalists did, they kept close together, practical reasons, exchanging information, because so much was happening at that time in Bosnia that one always felt one was in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seemed almost like part of their tactics, to create such mayhem that we ended up walking around in aimless circles missing it all. That was my impression at least, until I finally took the decision to leave Sarajevo, to give it up as my base, and so stop my day to day dependence on getting rides from the UN or Red Cross to the places I wanted to visit. So I went to Srebrenica, have you heard of it?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “It was a Bosnian enclave, a Muslim city locked in and isolated on Serbian territory. I got there at the end of February, 1993, by which time there’d already been rumors for several weeks about what was happening there, and the rumors weren’t good. Srebrenica was blanketed in deep snow, and they were short of absolutely everything, medicines, equipment, many houses were already destroyed, people were living on the streets in the snow. I remember a doctor I met from the World Health Organization estimating that between twenty and thirty people were dying every day and that thousands of women and children were in need of immediate evacuation. And in April, as repayment for empty promises, the Security Council declared Srebrenica, along with Tuzla, Gorazde, and Sarajevo, one of six so-called “Safe Areas.” That was stupid too, of course. The UN dispatched a hundred and seventy Canadian soldiers without any mandate to shoot unless they were fired on directly, all they managed to do was prolong the time before the town went to hell some years later. I stayed in Srebrenica a few months before leaving Bosnia for long periods and going to Rwanda and Chechnya, Grozny, but I don’t want to talk about that. You’ll have to read about that yourself. If you want to. Anyway, the truth was I hadn’t planned to return to Bosnia at all, I thought I had enough photographs nobody wanted, but then I got a call, from a BBC friend, he rang me one afternoon in March 1995, and read the orders Radovan Karadzic had made concerning Srebrenica’s fate: Create an intolerable situation of complete insecurity without any hope of survival or life in Srebrenica. So here was the Serbian plan. The bombing started on the night of July 6, 1995. I’d been there for over a month, living in an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. The Canadian UN soldiers were replaced with Dutch soldiers, and Serbian tanks and artillery fired directly on the observation posts in the Potocari quarter and on the center of Srebrenica, the entire city. The noise, Mattias! The noise was the worst. Mortar grenades raining down on the city hitting people at random. Did you know they whine really loudly before hitting the grou
nd? Well, they do. A hellish noise. And I saw so many dead. I ran down one street with a family, I don’t know where we were running, I just followed them, I didn’t hear the sound of shots, I just saw she was hit in the back of the head by two bullets that blew off her face, obliterated, in a split second, and then I stumbled and ended up lying next to her, her husband just went on running, the kids ahead of him, I tried to pull her out of the road, I don’t know why, she was already dead, maybe I wanted to help, but they just shot her to bits in my arms, and I had to let go and run onward, run toward the UN base, in the middle of town, there must have been desperate people in the thousands there, the Dutch had no choice in the end but to cut holes in the defenses, let us into the camp.”

  “Did they get everybody in?”

  “No. The pressure was too great, way too great. An endless stream, and I think in just a couple of days over twenty thousand people were gathered around the camp. Srebrenica was about to fall, and the Serbian infantry had advanced into the city. The Dutch pleaded with NATO for an air attack, but didn’t get it, I don’t know, maybe it was Clinton that refused, or Chirac maybe, or somebody else, I have no idea. And when the bombing was finally agreed on, it was too late, they barely hit anything, and it was after that the evacuation began. The Serbs intensified their attacks and forced the UN into an agreement they couldn’t refuse, the Serbs sent in every bus they could find, the women and children were put on them, and any men between fifteen and seventy were separated off with the assistance of helpless UN personnel, according to General Mladic all Bosnian Muslim men were potential war criminals, so they needed to be interrogated before being released. They left backpacks, suitcases, identity papers in piles behind them, and the buses carrying the women streamed into Tuzla. But four thousand men from the Srebrenican enclave never arrived in Bratunac for the planned hearings. They’d gone. Disappeared into thin air. But nobody just disappears. The mass murder of men from the Srebrenican enclave began on July 13, and when it went quiet again six days later, over seven thousand Bosnian Muslims had apparently vanished off the face of the earth. It was ‘evil written on the darkest pages of history,’ as the International War Crimes Tribunal judge put it. And that was how I met William D. Haglund.”