By George Chase
The first coherent thought Hank has, upon coming to, is How am I standing? He peeks down, not entirely sure what to expect, but there they are, his stubby legs, stretched out to their fullest and offering their service as supports. His blue chinos show the dark butter stain he hasn’t the ability to vanquish, and the wingtips are scuffed at the toes, proving they are his. There’s no evidence of foul play, so he assumes that he is to blame for his body being upright. He gives this fact some deserved brow-furrowing, since, last he knew, he was sitting and falling asleep. He tries to blink his way back into alertness--it works in the movies--but despite his firing synapses his eyelids feel like oversized wings, a body part that he struggles to control.
When Hank gathers himself enough to peek at his knock-off Rolex, he sees one hand pointing NNW and the other SSE. It takes him a while to work out that his watch is trying to tell him it’s 11:25, and that brings up the question which 11:25 it is and what this number means in relation to the possible times and possible parts of the day--dinner? morning?--but he soon becomes sidetracked by yet another mystery: Where am I?
He turns as swiftly as he can and looks out at the earth below, but the land out to the horizon, to his horror, is a flat expanse the color of rusted metal. It appears that he’s surrounded by miles of red dirt. He wonders if something catastrophic has happened to disintegrate all the grass and soil and layers of fossilized bones and limestone, leaving him in a field of ore unfamiliarly close to the earth’s center. I’ve got it, he thinks, collecting his thoughts--we’ve mistakenly landed on Mars. Then with a shock, with the same sort of gradual realization as resting your hand on a hot radiator for a second before feeling pain, it hits him that it’s daylight. He looks through the maddeningly small windows for the undebatable sun, yearning for more proof than his currently untrustworthy sensory perception that day is here, but he cannot find it. Still, the light tells him that it’s 11:25 in the morning, even though it makes no sense that it’s 11:25 in the morning.
Someone bumps him, suggesting that it’s time to move, so he hoists his carry-on bag onto his shoulder and drags his obstinate feet forward. The effect of whatever has happened has left him somewhere far shy of his best. Bodies trudge along, faceless forms with heads bowed to the ground, and he wonders if they are as scared and disoriented as he is, but with a topic of discussion as difficult to broach as this one--that fact that he can’t imagine where he is or what’s going on--he thinks it wise to keep quiet. The purring of a female voice fills the air and whispers into his ear, her lilting accent placing in his head the image of a Swedish divorcée lying in bed clad only in a frilled, short, powder-blue nightie. But despite his great interest in what this angel has to say, her words don’t make any sense to him. He can see her mouthing the letters, her lips rippling, but instead of words forming in his head he sees only jumbles. Th-ef-vil. He pinches himself in the arm to make sure and winces, opening up the flood gates of anxiety. Sko-ga-foss. With panic he wonders if it’s possible to lose the knowledge of a mother tongue while asleep. Esk-en-thlee. He yawns wide, making his ears pop, grimaces in deep concentration, and then realizes that she is not speaking English.
Bit by bit recollections take shape in his head. He sees himself opening up a foil packet of sleeping pills, and perhaps more than a couple airplane-issue mini-bottles of Scotch, but he can’t be sure if that was last night or some other indistinguishable night in the past. Oh, and he is nearly positive his wife just left him after 18 years. "It’s getting serious with Louie the electrician," she said. "At least he gives a damn." He opts to let that thought pass, realizing that it’s more important to concentrate on placing one foot ahead of the other.
At the end of the corridor a sprawling room opens before him, with banks of 10-foot-high windows that start from the floor, walls and ceilings of honey-colored wood, all held up by stark metal beams. It looks just like a modern ski lodge, but Hank is starting to come around, and he thinks he knows he is not in a ski lodge. Miles of dirt that look more like toxic fallout still stare at him from outside the windows. He stops walking, unsure of the point of continuing, unsure of how moving forward will improve his situation any more than merely standing and watching. Like a bullfighter does. Letting things come to him. A few bags hit him in the back of the legs, but no one says anything and the bags’ owners make their way around him. He spots a digital clock on the far wall that reads 3:32 a.m. in bright red numbers, even though the clock is hung right above one of the huge windows in which, for all to see, is the damn sun. Its resemblance to the real thing is uncanny, a pomegranate that has been thrown high up in the air and at its apex has stopped frozen in the sky. Sunlight pours in through the glass, flooding the room with hazy orange-ish air. As if a gas has been released. His watch says 11:32, and he stares at it until he sees the second hand move five seconds’ worth, to be sure. The saliva around his tongue is viscous, and causes his lips to stick together.
To the left are more windows and a stretch of diligently polished floors, and to the right lies a desk, behind which sit two round-faced blonde women. Their twinkling eyes and exuberant chipperness are palpable from across the room. Above them he sees a sign, which he regards with the anticipation of a penniless drunk looking up at a TV at the OTB. It reads “Information: Reykjavik.” His mind races. Reykjavik. Reykjavik. Reykjavik. Is that Iceland? What the hell am I doing in Iceland? he wonders aloud. Hank’s breathing stops in mid-exhale, a feeble whimper sneaks out unattended, and his sphincter tightens. With trepidation he reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out his ticket, the fibers on the paper thick and teeming, spider-like. He glances down slowly, almost not wanting to know, but it’s as he expected: Rome.
A jumbo jet’s worth of passengers is standing around looking lost and confused, waiting for something to happen. It doesn’t appear as if they really know what to make of being in Iceland either. It’s unsettling to land in an airport but have no smothering moms or condom-packing boyfriends to greet at the gate. Only uninterested airport employees mill about. Passengers cluster together in small tense groups, rub their eyes with their palms, and blink with confusion out the bright windows. Even though the angelic women at the help desk hold the answers, everyone is afraid to approach them, realizing that it's impossible for a disheveled, weary traveler to stand in the glow of these Nordic goddesses, have to face their perfect skin and their nonchalant upbeatness, and look anything but haggard and worn. The light above their desk is soft and seems designed especially for them; it glances off their hair and creates an aura that is usually seen in frescos in Italian churches. Every feature of their faces is the exact right size and shape. Grown adults out and out gawk at their beauty, too dazed from the circumstances to remember anything about proper decorum. Small children grab their mom’s fingers and point.
Finally, sneering at opprobrium, two ample corn-fed moms in '60s print dresses approach the information desk. They walk with wide shoulders that have had to support families through tornados, drunken husbands, and factory layoffs; they should be able to handle the Venuses. They approach the desk with shoulders touching, relying on bulk to defeat beauty.
Just then one of the stewardesses marches past Hank, with her off-to-one-side stewardess-issue hat and slimming royal blue skirt as if she has walked out of 1956. Her rolling bag is wheeling its way behind her as would an obedient pet, and he takes off after her. He grabs her elbow--he heard somewhere that it’s the least threatening and least sexual spot to touch a person--and as she turns he is jolted by her thick mascara and plentiful rouge, and he recalls this very woman handing him mini-bottles of Scotch to wash down the sleeping pills--but he can’t shake the nonsensical feeling that this was only a few hours ago.
"I … I’m sorry to bother you," he stammers. "Can you tell me what’s going on. Where are we?"
"We’re in Iceland, honey," she says. "You nod off?"
"Iceland! Will we be back in the air soon?" he pleads.
"I’d get comfortable. We have to fly in Italian union mechanics, then they have to fix the plane. And they haven’t even gotten up for their espressos yet," she continues with an insouciance that he quickly finds irritating. "I bet we’ll be back in the air tomorrow."
"But why?" he continues, disbelieving.
She scowls. "Where have you been? We just had an emergency landing!"
He finds his way to the head of the information line and there before him are the two stunning blond women. They both have skin the color of Cream of Wheat, with raspberries for lips, and eyes the color of perfectly faded denim. Their hair is pulled back and put up in a bun, as if it’s a treat only to be taken out for special occasions. Or if gentlemen ask very, very nicely. On top of the counter is a brochure showing a woman perched on a recently conquered mountain top, flashing a perfect smile, but what gets him is that this woman is the spitting image of the woman sitting in front of him. He finds it disconcerting.
"May I help you?" he hears, and looks up from the brochure to see both ladies smiling genuinely at him, looking unlike anyone in the service industry he has ever seen. He doesn't know who spoke, and he was looking forward to being irritated at someone, but the fact that these women are chipper at 3:45 in the morning disarms him. They both carry expressions that say "there is nothing at all to worry about," which, understandably, makes him worry.
"Yes, I uh, I think I need a room for the night."
"Of course, sir," she says in an English accent that would impress the Queen. "It has already been taken care of by the airline. You may pick up your van ticket two booths down and it will take you right to your room. Please enjoy your stay here in lovely Iceland." Her wrap-up smile is an example for beauty-queen contestants worldwide.
He staggers off from Miss Iceland’s eyes in a daze. "How great, a room!" he thinks. He walks away overheated and lightheaded, pleased that he lost his paunch in the stress of divorce, trying to recall the last time he had a conversation with a woman that fetching. Still, as he picks up the van ticket, he’s not in the mood to be marooned on a rock in the Arctic Circle. Being back on the plane and knocked out from the liquor and the sleeping pills, tucked underneath a thin airline blanket, heading invisibly toward the baptismal streets of Roma, that’s what he wants. Meanwhile, he's beginning to wake up enough to understand how difficult it is to function under the constraints of this debilitating mix. He has noticed that once words leave his mouth they seem to change shape in midair, possibly affected by the lag between his mouthing the words and the words existing. It’s all somewhat confusing, and it's hard for him to tell if he actually has been speaking very slowly, or if his perception is off and he just thinks that he has been speaking very slowly. No one else seems to be speaking at a sluggish pace. Or are they?
His headache has won more territory, staking its flag on the entire right side of his head. The rays of the sun are becoming stronger; he can feel their warmth on his hands, even though it's only 4:00 in the morning. He plants his weary backside on the ergonomically perfected Scandinavian-designed airport seats, but its wonders are lost on him. He wishes for a companion, not to share the experience with, but to complain to. Neither staying in the airport, exhausted, nor getting into a van to be taken to some strange locale sound appealing to him--he had to have his therapist talk him into this very controlled tour-package trip to Italy to begin with--so he defers to fate to decide things for him. He glances up to see the duty free store and its armies of liquor bottles standing facing him, scotches and vodkas and wines, taunting. His head begins to spin and his stomach threatens action. It is decided: The exit and the great unknown beckon.
The air outside is startlingly fresh and crisp, as if the place was just given an enormous mint. The van he’s supposed to be taking is there on the curb, and Hank is somewhat shocked that it has four wheels and is van-shaped, and that, well, it’s a Ford Aerostar and vans are the same here. Out of nowhere an Icelandic version of Eddie Munster takes Hank’s bags out of his hands and wordlessly tosses them in the back. The man is nothing but right angles, a body of building blocks, squares and rectangles. Hank shrugs mentally and heads to the side door, but the van is teeming with silhouetted heads, so he walks up to the empty front seat. He opens the door to see, sitting in the passenger seat, a midget. He has a substantial head of curly hair, looks to be in his 40s, and his feet dangle off the edge of the seat. He glares up at Hank, scowling as if to guard his territory, but through the front seat Hank sees Eddie wave him into the van before lugging his enormous square shoulders into the driver's seat. The van, as anyone can see, is full. "Thanks, I'll just catch the next one," Hank says, and starts to close the door. "There is no next one," Eddie monotones to the steering wheel, and then slowly nods his brick jaw in the direction of the passenger seat, or at least to the tiny portion not being used. The midget plays possum for a second, staring straight ahead as if there isn’t a person standing next to him, but as Hank grabs the door frame and begins pulling himself in, the fellow grunts and noisily shifts himself over.
Any fledgling urban qualities evaporate as soon as they drive away from the airport. In fact, the only other visible structures are two sheds, both shabby white huts made of corrugated metal that serve to mark the end of paved roads. The van is in a barren wasteland in mere seconds, engulfed by reddish oxidized dirt and an endless sky full of clouds the color of dirty bath water. Hank shudders and grips the door handle.
They settle on a course straight for the sun. Hank’s lids become powerless at the hands of the resurgent efforts of the sleeping pills and the lulling of the van, and he nods off for a bit, but the sun’s intrusive rays pierce his closed eyelids. Defeated, he forces himself awake and stares through bloodshot eyes at the road ahead. He notes that the sun looks bigger here, though maybe it’s because it has only dirt and sky to compete with for attention, and he tries to work out if Iceland is closer to the sun in June, but he doesn't have any round items handy to use as props.
The little man, meanwhile, has been subtly nudging Hank off the seat while he dozed, taking advantage of the bumps to move him and then stay there. The result is that Hank has found himself with not quite one butt cheek on the seat. Hank starts wiggling himself back onto the seat, but the midget capitulates no ground. They both eye the highway looking for potential bumps, and then at the slightest imperfection in the road push themselves into each other trying to gain terrain. Hank is even pushing off from the door. A harmony of guttural noises is issued forth, a series of grunts, huffs, and sighs that, in the end, do nothing to make either of them more comfortable.
Hank can’t even guess how long they’ve been battling when Icelandic Eddie, for reasons unclear to his passengers, slows down and pulls over to the side of the two-lane highway. The little man and Hank halt their skirmish and peer over at the driver to try to gauge what is going on, but Eddie is focusing on the road and not giving away any secrets.
The driver shifts into park. His face is as blank as the sea. He leans forward into the dashboard with his hand reaching out for something, looks to Hank, and says, "You can get out here," before flipping a switch. At once the passenger-side door--on which Hank is leaning--opens, spilling him and his shoulder bag out of the van. He tumbles out of the vehicle and lands on his side, his fall cushioned by his bag. Above him is stifled laughter.
He gets up off the tar listening to the back doors of the van creak wide open, and assumes that Eddie’s fishing for his bags. His heart speeds up when he fails to recall seeing a house or structure of any kind since the airport. He takes a quick view to his left and behind him and realizes that this land they've been driving through, to which he hasn’t been paying any attention, is an enormous lava field. The area is void of flora; no trees, no shrubs, no grass. Green is not on the color wheel. The land looks as if, somehow, it is unfinished. Black rocks the size of bathtubs cover the earth as far as he can see, boulders piled to his thigh and higher all the way up and down the highway. A fierce wind, its speed quickened by its unimpeded path, hits him across the face.
The van doors close and Hank looks back to see the driver staring at him with his snowy eyes, a bag hanging from each balled fist. Eddie turns away, revealing behind him a car parked on the shoulder, a black VW Jetta--born from the lava, for all Hank knows. There’s a poof of white hair on the woman at the wheel. Eddie walks to the trunk of the Jetta and sticks the bags in, and Hank understands that he is supposed to get in the car with the strange woman. Eddie nods to him, bends down to say something to the driver, and walks back to the van. Hank is paralyzed. After Eddie ducks his square head in, the van pulls out into the highway. Hank reaches a hand out for it, involuntarily.
The van shrinks until it is a speck half in the rich blue of the sky and half in the relentless black of the lava, with the sun hung above it like a ripe orange on the branch. The highway is otherwise abandoned, the only thing breaking up the incessant wind being an idling German motor. It seems he’s on a rock that has somehow separated from earth and has been sent hurtling through space. Another frigid gust hits his back, bringing a sensation he wasn’t expecting on his trip to Rome, and prods him into the car. The old lady barely acknowledges him as he settles in, and with the door still in transition she steps on the gas and takes off. His head bounces off the headrest. "Damn," he mutters. The tachometer needle threatens to hit red before she changes gears, and she throws the stick into fourth as if she has spent a season on the Grand Prix circuit, her surprisingly powerful legs working the pedals like pistons.
She reaches 120 kph in no time at all, and he asks her what the rush is all about, but she keeps silent. He gets the feeling that he has been keeping her waiting, and opts not to tell her that her speed is frightening him. He finds himself focusing on the hills that form and recede out his window—they pop up over the crests, then retreat. No tree, shrub, or blade of grass has made itself present yet. Or anything living, for that matter. Off to the left, past his chauffer, lies the ocean, a dark blue of the night sky in the city. Asphalt and lava blend together in the distance, and with the highway sunken in the fields of rocks, he wonders for a minute if someone just came through with a steamroller and flattened out the lava. He becomes convinced that the natural substances that make up Iceland only consist of the colors rust, brown, and black. Straight out the windshield is a squintlingly bright blue sky, to his right are foreboding charcoal clouds, and to the left the sky teems with puffy cotton shapes of irate Vikings and bleating sheep. There is so much horizon here that he can actually see the earth bend at the edges. He absentmindedly grabs the radio dial and clicks it on, but instantly feels a sharp pain in his hand. He looks down to see his driver’s fingers turn the radio back to the off setting and then she gently places her hand--exquisite he realizes, aged and knotty, yet not wrinkled or spotted, like smooth stones at the bottom of a stream--back onto the 2:00 position of the wheel. It wasn’t even on long enough to receive a signal.
The longer they drive through the soulless lava the more his mind closes in on him. He begins to fear that he won’t make it to Rome at all, a trip on which he has placed so much importance for his future well-being that he can barely remember why he wanted to go in the first place: so that he could ask out his café waitress Francesca, a goal he has thought about so many times that if he doesn't go through with it his trip will have been a disaster. It will be back to the alternate self-pitying and self-loathing. Why can’t I take life by the horns, he’ll ask himself, sweating in the sun-drenched courtyard café and watching Francesca's hips sway, with her mountain of black ringlets gilding her face like a frame. She’ll approach the table where the recently divorced, nothing-to-lose, Italian-tutored gentleman sits. She’ll set down the second cappuccino, maybe even hoping that this bright-eyed American traveler who has been shooting her glances all afternoon will ask her what time she gets off work. And even though he’ll have spent an inordinate amount of time looking into his bathroom mirror and repeating the phrase "A che ora smetti di lavorare?" he’ll open his mouth to speak, then spot a woman at a nearby table looking at him and stifling a laugh, then looking back at her companion as if she could see the whole thing coming, had already seen this man ask out the waitress and have her turn him down, had already seen him stammer dejectedly and flounder to cover up his gaffe. But instead of all this happening he will have decided not to tempt fate and will merely look into the froth and mumble for the check.
Suddenly his neck strains as his driver takes an unannounced left turn. Why now suddenly the regret that he couldn't be bothered to join his wife in marriage counseling when they both knew the marriage was on the rocks? If she were here now he might even tell her he was sorry.
They are still surrounded by nothingness and there isn't a single person within miles of him except an old lady who doesn't speak English. He finds himself overcome, a year of anguish bubbling to the surface, and he begins speaking. "Maybe it's not what I do but what I don't do that's the problem. What on earth am I afraid of?"
Without a word or glance from her they take another quick turn. There, he sees farmhouses and silos. Then houses constructed of corrugated metal, surrounded by fields of short, wispy grass blown supine. In the distance he can see what looks like a town, the sun glowing off the white buildings, their rooftops primary colored as if by children with crayons, deep reds and blues and yellows. A farmer on a tractor. Fat-cheeked kids on bikes. He lets out a deep breath.
Before long they pull into the driveway of a two-story stone structure with Guest House Leifer Eriksson carved on a large piece of driftwood and hung on a spike in the wall. "Thank you," he says to the old woman as the car stops, and she smiles at him and nods. She grabs his hand and squeezes gently, startling him a bit, but he squeezes back. He clasps her hand with both of his now, and suddenly it's like two doomed lovers being torn apart.
The scene inside the Leifer Eriksson is celebratory. A spread of assorted cereals and a full set of dairy containers all different shapes and sizes are laid out buffet style, and a dozen people are sitting around a large table drinking coffee and eating shining hardboiled eggs. A ruddy-faced man slaps Hank on the back, hard. "Welcome to Iceland, land of the midnight sun!" he says to him happily, before taking his bags from him and carting them down the hall. His back muscles stretch his shirt. A mid-30's couple in fleece smile at him and raise their cups of coffee in welcome. They look American, and he can only guess that he does too. He returns a wan grin.
He wants to ask what everyone is doing up at this hour, but it's so bright outside that it doesn't seem all that weird. They all seem thrilled that they are about to be kayaking down rapids or climbing up vertical sheets of ice by 6 a.m. He sits on a couch, the leather cushion slowly wheezing under his weight. A coffee table in front of him is covered with brochures of all sorts: SUV trips into the wilderness, afternoons at hot springs, excursions to Viking restaurants. But one in particular catches his attention, a hiking trip across a glacier. He marvels at the idea and its wonderful hideousness. The photo on the front shows the guide, standing on an enormous piece of ice in hiking boots and shorts, with his wispy gray hair aloft. He has wisdom in his eyes.
"Ah sir," the ruddy-faced man calls to him, "will you be here just one night?"
Hank scratches his head, looks up, and smiles. "Longer, I think."
George Chase lives in New York City.
