An alternate 5th chapter to the novel I am intermittently working on...
'It felt so damn good to work; hard, physical work melted away all other concerns, he mused with delicious fatigue, and decided in the light evening breeze he would hoist all the sails by hand, his veins pulsing with life. The Stranger breathed with collective relief as she moved easily out of the claustrophobic little cove and into the opalescent black ocean, letting the little dull amber spots on the distant shore guide him north to Nice and the mainland. The wind kicked up into a healthy southwesterly as he moved out of the wind shadow of the little island, and Isle Jacques de Marquee became a murky shadow, a reflection both warm and sad. The void of the Mediterranean swallowed him up as quickly as he'd expected, and the trip regained its forward momentum, it seemed at last. He felt like the warm black water was the only thing he could stare at with singular intensity, or even just full awareness, and not feel uncomfortable. Alone on a boat there was no self-consciousness, no doubt, only action and consequence it seemed. He was tired and a bit sore from the vigor with which he'd attacked the rigging, and it reminded him of the playful competition of skiing or rock climbing, the weariness that only caught him when the intensity of the experience wavered.
The best, the absolute best, he thought, was the full body contentment, surreal and immediate, that came from total physical exhaustion. Everyone ought to work hard, to be tired, to be content. People were like those little black dots he'd seen in the north Atlantic on flights to Stockholm as a child; they seemed strange and fascinating from 30,000 feet up, but closer they were just boxes upon boxes, stacked compartments motoring along from point A to B. He wanted his path, the path of The Stranger to be circuitous, strange and unpredictable, and he willed it to be so, setting a steady course in light wind and quickly falling asleep below deck.
In the cabin, things were quiet and contemplative as they ought to be, he thought, and the wind ran steady from the southwest at ten knots, propelling the Stranger north towards the dull amber haze of the mainland. He wanted another altercation, even in sleep, a chance to taunt the feebly grasp it seemed most people had on reality, but in the meantime the loneliness of the boat and the black salty ocean sufficed. Without pretense or expectation, a loud glancing blow deflected his shallow sleep and he woke with a deep shudder, expecting to simply be wretched from nightmare to calmness. Instead the thud became many rhythmic, tapping steps, quick, assertive feet on the deck above and whisper's of bold provincial southern French.
A flashlight beam pierced the stale, warm air of the cabin and Clark smiled and held up his hands instinctively, as authority always chagrined him, mischievous and arcane. A rapid exchange of broken English and confused accusation followed, and Clark learned that a mid-sized, recreational sailboat much like the Stranger was rumored to be at large in the Mediterranean near Nice, carrying a hundred kilos of cocaine and a dozen illegal immigrants from Algiers.
The French naval police were easily satisfied by Clark's profession of innocence, and the conversation soon turned to friendly banter over the weather and the superiority of French to American girls. He relished at first the warmth and simplicity of interaction with others, the isolation of the boat and Julian's hold on him melting under hot sun and recognition. Soon though he wished he was asleep again and blissfully unaware of the aloof pirates nearby, as the police clearly had fulfilled the day's agenda and now were content to bullshit and linger on the boat. They had tied up their little escort motorboat next to the stranger and thrown a hasty anchor down into the shallow azure water, so Clark, relieved of setting a new course in morning grogginess, thought he ought to at least pour some drink for his new friends. He measured even portions of sweet vermouth, cheap gin, and a half-empty bottle of Campari into a large pitcher and stirred mildly till the liquid shone brilliant orange-red in the sun, and passed around Negroni's for all, which prompted their leader, a man called Benoit, to compliment his good taste 'for such a young man.'
He wanted to tell them he was an old spirit, a person half-realized and translucent, but thought better is inflicting his bizarre idiosyncrasies on them, even as the alcohol dulled his senses. Benoit, as his arrogant little metal nametag announced, turned out to be a fine fellow, from a poor farming family in the Champagne Valley to the north, and not much older than himself.
His aesthetics pleased Clark, his smart, angular jawline ever so slightly forward, his eyes set beneath deep sun creases and filled with kindness. He pictured them sweaty and fatigued, picking grapes on his family's farm in Champagne, the relentless sun driving them towards love or attachment. Clark always projected, always anticipated, always theorized... his life was like a child's Christmas Eve restlessness, drawn out 23 years. Benoit, he couldn't have been older than 30 or so, he was now reading from his lengthy mental archive of past sexploits amongst the university girls in Marseilles and Nice, his tales carefully crafted to hide the obvious lies, not quite well enough. Clark yawned; his vivid style and sharp inflection betrayed him and he knew Benoit was like him; open, confused yet certain, seeking love from everyone. His little group seemed to know this as well, yet they followed politely and egged on his masculine folly, mentally comparing their own record to his bragging. A few hours passed languidly, and as the ball of yellow fire eyed them obliquely from above, the critical time for departure and travel seemed to have arrived. Clark informed them of his plans to take leave of the Stranger for some time, to explore terra firma and the culture he admired and they seemed to deride.
Benoit told him to follow them into Cannes, some 20 kilometers distant, where he could tie up for free for a few weeks at him friends marina. He agreed gratefully, following the fast little police boat at a bounding clip across the now growing whitecaps and foaming sea, the storm clouds to the west looming and ominous. Clark deftly reefed the mainsail and brought it in on a close haul, the keel leaning hard to starboard and shooting out over the static plane like a greyhound after a rabbit, it's eagerness sincere and singular. Propelled by nothing but thermal gradients and ambition, he thought of himself as a modern Huck Finn, the naivete of childhood at ease with the physical constraints of adult life. He pulled into a sheltered cove and the marina just as the sun violently extinguished to the west over broken chalk cliffs and half-silhouetted palms, and Benoit suggested he hop into the police boat for the ride across the bay to Cannes. Clark felt the sharp pinprick of anticipation, the reluctant exhilaration of a 16 year old, out for a drive with the cool seniors. Benoit was a cool 27 and apparently knew all the best discotheque's in Cannes, and made promises of things that seemed absurd and perfect.
They left the little grey boat at the police station docks and walked briskly along the faded cobblestone quay of downtown Cannes, and the rest of the party, apparently married and settled, declined the invitation politely, heading up Rue St. Catherine home. Walking along beneath the busy, neon signage and humming nightscape of the waterfront with Benoit, Clark felt painfully self-aware and transparent, his dull, torn levi's and striped navy shirt actually a new direction in style, unbeknownst to him. In reality he was watched and admired, envied, or otherwise noted, an aesthetic transient blending in with the cool kids and washed up old folks alike; everyone wanted the same things in life, the expressions were just different.
His liquid confidence, his cool, placeless aura, it all distracted them. He felt aloof and without worry, and the evening spun involuntarily into sharp corners and narrow buildings as they took turns from the gin bottle, encased in cheap, dirty conversation and delicious silence. Benoit was a neon prophet surrounded by uptight Lacoste polo's and tweed jackets, having made it a priority to stop at home and change into his 'disco clothes' before they went any further. Night's out with strangers were unidirectional and spontaneous, he thought, like a rocked kicked down a cliff over the sea, the course was random but the destination certain.
As the night seemed resigned to pointless distraction and wandering, Benoit arranged a last minute rendezvous with his friends from the University in Marseilles, the wealthy young white kids at their family beach homes for the summer holiday. Clark was uncertain of himself for once, unaware of the environment around him, and content enough to be static and watchful around these new, bright faces. The Cote D'Azure was a white stucco and red brick jungle of ancient fortresses of privilege and inequality looking out across the ocean to Africa. Clark thought of Africa, the real jungle lush and impenetrable, filled with dark shadows and violence. The subtle neo-violence of these social classes and parties, the houses where the cool kids slept bored and fitful; it was all insignificant to the 3rd world, the real world, the world of exotic spices and smells and colors.
As it was, the smell's and color's and young people of Cannes was enough to distort the surroundings, and he walked briskly next to Benoit, like a young boy determined to keep up with his mother but look casually separate from her watch. A group of 4 university girls, their breasts rounded and taunt beneath rakish stripes and revealing lace, joined them in a fit of giggles and cigarette smoke, and suddenly Clark snapped out the social apathy he had felt. He played his card's smoothly, making conversation in casual, broken French and instigating more nervous eyes and laughter, and soon they had decided, or Benoit had decided that they would start at LaRoy, a trendy, vaguely new restaurant and bar a block east.
Laroy was packed with people young and old, Parisian's, Berliners, Londonites, all ecstatic and irreverent on the humid stench of summer freedom, vacationland replacing their programmed, work-oriented daily lives. The respite from routine Cannes afforded meant people were open, spontaneous, waiting for the fantasies they played in their heads alone in bed at night or on the 6AM train to work, the hedonistic apathy and people-watching of the coast. The reality of course was a compromise, a night out on the town ending in bed with a usual lover, a husband, a wife tolerated for 20 years too long, instead of that local who made brief, delicious eyes with you earlier.
He liked the style and ease of movement the Europeans seemed to have, the acceptance of fate paired with sharp, stinging humor, the distaste for mediocrity and dull moments. The girls had obviously done this before, and he got the impression Benoit may not have been bluffing when he claimed to have slept with all of them at various times. The boldest and most aesthetic, Marie, was 22 and hated everyone and everything except the beach and her car, a lime green 63' Mercedes with meticulously detailed, angular pieces of chrome and steel stitched into a luxury bubble. Much like her, Clark thought ironically, the nosebleed's and week-old bruises couldn't hide the past and the present, a monster of her own making that threatened to consume the details of her smiling face.
Her smile was smug, knowing, radiant, he wanted to see it in his head when slept at night, and he playfully tugged at the mauve edges of her skirt when the drinks arrived. She responded with subtle creases of her lips, smoldering ideas of the evening that lay hidden to Clark and Benoit, men caught in the conquest of the moment. Her accomplices, 19 year old Natalie, shy and out to prove herself amongst these alpha females, sat on a narrow stool beside Julie and Carine, each an indestructible 21 and overflowing with flesh and ideas.
Youth was so tame, a sheltered harbor in the storm of career and identity that would inevitably follow, yet Clark also saw the limitless austerity of it, the horizon line unbroken and forward. The undertow of doubt and consequences taunted him even at his most radiant moments, times like this suddenly pleasing evening with five beautiful partners in the August humidity, the air sweating like sex and 5th floor walk-ups with no air conditioning. Marie was about to enter her last year of university, studying archeology and anthropology with a minor in pornography and cocaine, and seemed to exist of the delicious fringes of Marseilles bourgeoisie society, a transient by choice and popularity. Vaguely inebriated from a third vodka tonic, she told Clark about her recent trip this past Christmas to Papua New Guinea, where she spent 3 weeks living in Asmat with one of the world's most 'primitive' tribes, who form the sound of it had a better handle on reality than anything produced in the post-happiness first world.
The Asmat made love to whom they wanted and possessed none of the sexual taboos of western culture, it was common for a young man to have several male lover's as well as a wife with whom he had born a child. The justification for their anti-societal hedonism was simply that no justification was needed, if it was in the spirit of love and partnership, connection to the natural world of waving Sago palms and tannin-infused rivers, then all was blessed. They believed we all share a common, interconnected spirit, that the jungle breeds wild animals and violence just as it breeds compassion and virtue, and all living things ought to be worshipped for their own identity. Marie's eyes dilated and her pupil's fixed absently on a distant barstool as she explained this to Clark; it was clear the experience was still very much a living, breathing entity within her, and even here surrounded by the familiar luxuries, she longed for the jungle again. Clark was entranced, lost in the poorly-lit haze of greater-than-this-moment bar bullshit, except this wasn't just bullshit, it was real because it had touched Marie; she flushed the coke down the toilet and told her heavy-handed boyfriend to fuck off and get a job, and she was here now, for the better it seemed.
Marie had this singular fascination with the foreign, incomprehensible edges of society, that which eluded her sheltered childhood, and Clark thought himself much the same, resigned to exploring the safe and familiar. The other two girls had gone home with boy's they met that evening, their expression's during sex glazed and disappointed, as if there was something more to being young and easy and bored. When everyone bores you, Clark thought irritably, then life is reduced to quiet madness, steady compromise and tedium. He thought of his early childhood in suburban New York, the circuitous chains of commuters snaking towards the city, content to let their soul's wither in aluminum and steel boxes for a few bucks each day. Money was obscure and hypocritical; easy to judge and abstract when it was of no immediate concern to him, yet it was the bane of most people's existence, the reason and the reward for discontent.
Marie was distracted and distant, her eyes playing out future scene's of love making or drug taking, and Benoit had apparently left without plan or warning; his drunk restlessness pushing him to roam the streets a bit. Clark kind of wanted to roam the nightscape a bit too; the dirty black walls and seedy corners of the bar had compressed inward with sweat and stereo bass, and the cool, dark evening was enviable. He hated the awkward expectation's of departure, so he summoned his best indifferent smirk and politely asked Marie if she wanted to go back to her place and fuck, and she replied with a single, exhaling note, "oui". It was fun enough, Clark rationalized; she was another wild child of the modern jungle, she fussed under the covers and kicked and bit like an untrained puppy, and he wished they had all been this fun.
He woke early, with the dull neon edges of the sun barely waking shadow's across Marie's 5th floor townhouse on the quay. He could never sleep naturally in another's bed, as if trust existed only between inanimate things and nature. He liked the consequences of bet's against the wind, the sea or a mountain, and people, even perfect, shining Marie, had somehow become repetitive and indistinguishable. He wondered where he would be in 20 years, still wandering the street's at night or escaping reality on some mountain, while his colleagues and family dug roots into the comfortable confines of midlife society, jobs and children and mortgages taking the edge off reality. He could never settle though, never buy into the system of trading adventure for security; they had to be mutually exclusive in a way. He thought perhaps he'd run up to a storefront and lick the glass in a mock embrace with commercial barriers, the exchange of paper shit for plastic shit, to become lewd and ridiculous as a way to love himself. Marie suggested espresso and a croissant at a little patisserie down the block, and he agreed easily; what else were they going to do? Lie in bed and discuss politics or sex or relationships? Certainly not, Clark didn't open up to people like that, or in that kind of timeframe, rather.
Maybe someday he'd live in Connecticut or Los Angeles and drive a Range Rover and have two medicated, crazy little children whose lives were full of surrogate activity for simple love and running around outside, and a wife marginalized ten slow, painful years too long, but wasn't it the American Dream? He didn't know what he was mad about, why he couldn't just hug himself and not want to let go or distract other's into false security, and Marie sensed this distraction and bought him a triple shot espresso and a huge croissant with lox and greens and moutarde, which at his surprise she said was to "stop your ribs from showing!" It was true he thought sheepishly, his ribs did show a bit, he couldn't gain weight despite the ungodly caloric intake and junk he consumed, his metabolic rate must be tied to the business upstairs, he figured.
Suddenly, the quiet hum of the cafe was interrupted by loud, mournful wailing, ragged breathes and shallow gasps emanating from a young woman who had the classic look of someone who woke up in an unfamiliar location and stumbled there in last night disheveled clothes, her dress rumbled and stained. "Julie!" Marie cried, and Clark realized it was the girl from last night, the one who had eyed him suspiciously and inquisitively as Marie put the moves on him across the bar. She was completely beside herself and now whispering rapid, slurred French in the embrace of Marie, whose face had turned white and ashen, her eyes vacant and locked on a distant horizon line outside. Benoit had committed suicide last night, a group of boys out fishing along the beach below the big steel suspension bridge that crosses over the canyon on the edge of town had found him mangled and still warm at seven that morning, a note clutched is his left hand reading only "happiness is only real when shared.'
Clark felt ill and dizzy; he fell forward a few feet and caught himself on a table, and slowly, deliberately staggered outside, vomiting cheap gin and bits of breakfast on the cobblestone patio. "Jesus fucking Christ, that could be me that could be me that could be me", he thought of the miasma of drunken, hopeless, lonely nights that filled his memory bank, the times things seemed beyond repair. Benoit seemed so confident, so easy around these sly panther's of the bourgeoisie social scene, his body language even projected austere resolve against the loser's and the washed up, the boring people and little kids, everyone not worthy of his obsession. He needed to leave, this place was toxic, the grand white villa's and their ornate stucco details and brick roofs suddenly melted and coalesced into a foul current of inequality, and he vowed never to return to Cannes; this place was dead, Benoit was dead, hope had left and gone out to sea. He stifled tears and fought back deep, choking sobs as he hugged Marie, who was still in shock and static in her chair at the cafe, and ran down the steep, narrow street to the docks, the Stranger waiting there, humble and beautiful in the morning fog, she was all he needed.
He boarded hastily and began to ready the rigging to set sail, and instantly he calmed and swallowed the acrid bile that had begun to build in his throat, the boat was always there, always the same, ready to love and expect nothing in return, and he turned the heavy wooden wheel with tender affection as she slid deftly out of the little marina under power at 5 knots south by southwest. He wanted music, he wanted art, but really he wanted aural, visual, peripheral stimulation without loss, and the warm, teal ocean swallowed him up once again and shut out all the other bullshit. Now 10 kilometers out to sea and set on a broad reach towards Corsica, he filled leaky plastic bucket's with briny water and scrubbed the wooden slats and fiberglass hatches along the deck with vigor and determination, his forearms bulged with exertion and the little marlin twine bracelet he wore on his left wrist tightened deliciously. Blood flow was adrenaline realized; a steady respite from weariness or too much thought. He wished for the classic, visceral redemption of the hero, the part of the film where the audience had seen enough injustice and rallied for a happy ending. This was the experience though, that goddamn spontaneous, evolving situation that could never be too easy, otherwise it wouldn't be real.
He chastised himself for how easily he'd been lured towards affection, human after all he mused, to cling to strangers like the family he'd forsaken at home, whose lives kept going forward without him, now a memory distant and abstract. The land to the south of sad, dead Cannes, that was what he needed now, and the long white beaches and high limestone cliffs of the islands, ancient myth's of Atlantis and the underworld wound into the landscape, made human tragedy seem small. He wanted to tell Marie he was sorry, sorry he was an asshole and didn't always love himself, sorry he couldn't stay even another minute, or the shiny chrome railing of the suspension bridge might taunt him as well, might beckon him to inspect the void between it and the sea.
The easy, tranquil life of the Mediterranean had lured him in it seemed, and to break free for the uncertainties and memories of Northern Europe seemed almost foolish. Clark knew though that men like Guillaume and Benoit were nothing more than transient images across his mind, memories already faded and stale, his future a ‘Fata morgana’ city appearing somewhere on the horizon. He thought abstractly of his early childhood in Sweden, the cold, windy winter afternoons playing on the modern-ish plastic playground outside his parents home in the Stockholm suburbs, the smart functionality of Nordic socialism reduced to apartment blocks and drab gray sky. He missed routine, the ordinary, and the predictable, the daily details like stopping for a cup of coffee at the Brown library, his lips ever so smug as he stood in line behind the counter and watched the girls stare and admire silently.
The air was now tinged with a distinctive chill, and he thought of the first frost, soon to come in New England, his friends and classmates given him up for lost or dead as they trod through piling auburn maple leaves on the Brown campus. His exterior was now rough and salt crusted in places, freckled and mottled by the sun in others, and though he made no conscious effort to lift weight or exercise, his muscles bulged with imperceptible vitality, youthful ignorance of ever becoming aged. It was with this newfound resolve that he set off to the north to discover and find, rather than prove, which proved to be the key difference in the coming months.
3 weeks at sea passed with imperceptible speed, they blurred and sublimated into the finite haze of time, and before he knew it, Clark stood on the windy, chilly docks beside the fishing boats and half-finished oil rigs in Bergen, Norwegian aesthetics already winning him over as he scanned the waterside promenade. It was a busy Saturday morning, and for October 1st, the air was surprisingly mild, ‘it must be the marine temperance’, he thought firmly, recalling how moist and warm Seattle and even Anchorage was, buffered from the Arctic air. The chill was ever present though, the insistent reminder that one was entering fall at 60-something degrees north, and he liked the building contrast with the Mediterranean he had been experiencing at sea the past few weeks. The trip from France had been gray, looming, at times quite terrifying and immediate, but more often a more subtle, vaguely malevolent threat that hovered over the edge of the glassy green swells like fog in the morning.
Bergen was functional, gaudy only to please tourists and seabirds, he thought, the bright shingled houses a study in square-ness and pastels, perched on slick, shiny rocks. They sat mostly in the shadows of giant, menacing oil rigs, hundred meter tall steel spiders in various states of assembly or disassembly, and Clark marveled with sudden unease the roughly 400 meters of water that lay a scarce kilometer out from the docks, the deep water fjord that allowed the booming manufacturing industry to exist in such an otherwise improbably location. Bergen was more of a square-jawed fisherman or sturdy steelworker than the delicate artist or dilettante that Paris and Cannes were, he thought. He recalled a childhood trip to Spokane, Washington, the whole place somehow sad and run-down, an unlikely Detroit of the northwest, caught between America’s modern tech obsession and old school industry sense. Suddenly Clark hated Spokane, hated Bergen too perhaps, the stale fixation with money and stubborn refusal to see beyond grimy, cracked pavement and practical matters. Nevertheless, he wanted to give it a fair chance, the extremity of isolation over the past few weeks wearing on his better [or shall we say more pretentious] judgment. So, he docked somewhat illegitimately along an aging fishing boat, quayside and center, and disembarked for terra firma's mystery. The girls were a strange melange of style and practicality, he saw the occasional misfit or artist-impersonator, but most of them looked like they had seen more than their share of life, here in this isolated, green valley, and the bright lights of Oslo or Stockholm seemed no more tangible than a free trip to the Caribbean or a husband who didn't drink. Swedes loved to lump Norwegians as drunks and trouble makers, which they probably reciprocated in return, but Clark sensed no abuse or malice, rather they seemed jovial and harmless, curious about his Nordic features and American mannerisms, where he might be from and if he’d really sailed all the way from America. That they would doubt this last point seemed slightly ludicrous to Clark, but, he mused, this was the height of a rather ludicrous era, where someone might actually attempt something as silly and wasteful as staging a trans-Atlantic runaway.
He needed coffee, like a seabird needs to see land or a zebra needs to be part of the herd, and he followed the faint, acrid aroma across the quay and up a steep, narrow cobblestone avenue towards the neighborhood coffee joint. It was hip and spartan, the aging yellow walls a study in minimalism and thoughtlessness. Bergen seemed to industrial for this sort of unexpected bohemia, but he embraced it warmly and soon was chatting with Norwegian college students in excited, broken tones, the polyester and nylon edges of their apparel ironically crisp and colorful. The future always loomed in the distance though, even in such pleasant and benign situations, where he felt the atmosphere was so dense with expectation that the only way to lift the weight was to dissappear to the bottom of the ocean. School. He was done, essentially, done with the educating part at least, that which molded in damp New England halls and ivy-covered recesses, content to swallow whatever the professor felt like spouting today. Yet the burden of expectation still weighed heavy on him, pinned him down with fear and resentment until sometimes he awoke in the middle of the night short of breath and sweaty, a million starry eyes fixed over his bed, judging, questioning, staring. He felt less conspicuous here in Europe, where late 20th-century mania had set in slower and more begrudgingly, where even the young punks in the garbage-strewn ally's knew not to talk back to their elders.
As Clark stood lost in thought in the tidy line snaking towards the coffee shop door, a girl caught his eye ahead of him, brief eye contact like bright sparks of gnashing steel colliding obliquely to his left, she pretended for a moment not to see him, then smiled politely at the floor, pale Nordic cheeks a lovely shade of crimson, from him more than the budding autumn nip outside, Clark hoped. He felt like this girl was purposeful, sent from a past dream or maybe a future apparition, that their paths had come close to crossing in the past, spurned by geography or bad luck. She was forceful, present, physical. The type of girl whose immediacy was a little disarming, who could never hide behind passive feminine curves, and carried a slight aura of aloofness he found sexy. This was not to say she was unattractive, rather, she was bolder, sharper than the average American it seemed, bored to pieces in this post-modern utopia under the almost-midnight sun, angular Viking jawline still distinctly that of a girl. Girls intimidated him, they felt more complex and somehow arcane than men, who generally were upfront and driven by lust and impatience, it seemed.
She was carrying a rather dog-eared copy of William S. Burrough's 'The Naked Lunch', and wore a few of the requisite post-beatnik accoutrements, but he could tell she was no slave to trends. She was very self-conscious, probably carrying a slightly elevated sense of self-worth, he guessed, and as Clark himself was guilty of these sins, he liked her that much more. She had ordered, a double cappuccino if he was not mistaken, and stood impatiently, an idling motor at this little serving table while a languid barrista toiled behind the counter. This was his moment, Clark thought decisively, and he soon fumbled an already off-script introduction, devolving into mingled English apologies and Norwegian compliments. She didn't skip a beat, however, and countered his insistent flubbing with a hollow smile and more blushing. 'Great, I blew it', Clark thought dejectedly, his strong, rough hands squeezing the little yellow earthen coffee mug to death. In the next instant, though, she turned back around to face him and slowly, forcefully took his hand in hers and led him out of the shop and into and into a small stone alcove facing the icy fjord on one side and a dejected dumpster belonging to the coffee shop and a couple adjoining restaurants on the other side. The obscene duality of the setting never dawned on him though, because the next thing he knew, she was kissing him so forcefully that he thought he accidentally inhaled her soul just to get a damn breath in, whoa, what the hell was going on!? This chick didn't fuck around, that's for sure, Clark thought abstractly between shallow breaths and now rather heavy petting. She freed herself of him just as fast as she'd locked lips, and stood smiling in no particular direction, more towards the sad amber light filtering over the distant reaches of the fjord than at him, it seemed.
Why couldn't things be a little more linear? Clark thought, as the girl, whose name was Annika, he had learned, and whose English wasn't very good [Naked Lunch translated to Norwegian? Ah, Globalism, he mused] sat smoking cheap chinese cigarettes and leafing through the book to find a piece of choice prose she 'just had to show him' because only other writers understand each other, she thought. He had glimpsed several largish, plastic cylinders in the recesses of her vintage 20's handbag, and thought he saw the beginning syllables of several strong anti-psychotics before she brought the faux-pearl clasps to a sharp close, the hunt for the 'Naked Lunch' phrase done for the moment, it seemed. She was 24, on 'indefinite leave' from University, had just completed a prestigious 6-month internship with an ad agency in Oslo, and must have some sort of record, at least an honorable mention, for carrying 6 feet of young woman so casually and attractively. Even with strong features and towering height, she managed to avoid looking tomboyish or adolescent, instead, her aesthetic was unconventional, sexy but implacable, resistant of the 10-second assessment college boys seemed so fond of.
Crazy or not, he needed company like the Arctic tern yearns for land after 10,000 miles at sea, and she didn't seem to have any plans for the evening or a lifetime. Her hair was the perfect shade of sunflower, neither bright nor dull, trapped in it's own effervescent sheen, and it sat in thick tangled slabs atop her head, oblivious to it's own charm. He hadn't lusted after a girl like this since, well, ever was a strong word, but it had to work until he found a better substitute. They were both young and immortal and vaguely hedonistic, but he felt that the trip had finally transcended his narcissism and he was experiencing things objectively for perhaps the first time. She was from Tromso, far to the north, a bleak and windswept place where the sun fucked mercilessly with one's perception of time and space, whose only charm perhaps lay in the sleek Nordic beings who managed to survive this Arctic moonscape, their breath the exhalation perseverance.
She had been attending University in Stockholm, on full scholarship for creative writing, but soon dropped her novelist ambitions to pursue the more hip and lucrative fields of design and advertising. In the uncertain fall of sophomore year, she had met a young man 3 years her senior in a graduate-level design seminar, and he waxed and waned against her better judgement for the next 2 years, her following his material arrogance across Scandinavia and back into Norway, where he was forced to shack up with his parents after his start-up ad agency tanked due to too many party's and too few billboards. She immediately fell in love with Bergen's no-bullshit industrial sensibility, ditched him in her ongoing effort to disconnect from the 'Stureplan set', the spoiled, scarcely 1-dimensional offspring of Stockholm's ultra-rich she had fell in with over the past few years. her ex, Bjorn, Stureplan, and dying were all off-limit topics, she had informed Clark curtly, after which she began a somewhat tangental monologue in Norwegian about the fucked modern Scandinavia where young people slavishly complied to the latest trend with no thoughts of consequence or identity, a place mythical in the unknowing eyes of American and ever other European hipsters. She abandoned her urban style sensibilities too it seemed, and now wore a strange melange of faux-bohemian and crazy bag lady, minus the dumpy looks and haggard stoop, of course.
She saw Bjorn occasionally around town, he now delivered pizzas and worked the night shift at the gas spot a few days a week, though his mob-connected uncle was supposed to be getting him a union steelworker gig at the yards, she informed Clark sullenly. Tired of all this past-tense introspection, he invited her for a walk down to the narrow, almost fallow little strip of parkland that ran along the giant gray steelyards and out towards the sea. She laughed heartily and informed him this park was the sole territory of druggies, bums, and mischievous adolescents, but he countered with the fact that they might as well be included in the last category, so it was ok. They crossed the disorganized edge of downtown and soon were in pleasant stride in the fading afternoon light along a little asphalt path that split the park in two. Clark felt warm and content seeing the old people lift their heads and nod appreciatively from their benches at Annika and his well-matched vitality, his love-to-be classic and unobtrusive. Annika took his hand and then promptly scolded herself out loud for trusting strange men, Americans nonetheless, but Clark just chuckled and squeezed her hand a little harder, the blood thick and viscous, coursing silently between them. She told him she was uncertain, money was low, the awful 'Stureplan Set' and their doughy, slick-haired boys in pressed-polo's wanted her to come back to Stockholm, they could support her, they claimed, but she didn't need supporting, oh no, she informed Clark proudly, she had come of age here amongst the somber steel oil rigs, spiders breaking through the mushy gray clouds and into the blue yonder.
He told her he was uncertain of many things, but his affection for her would remain steadfast and sincere is she let it be, to which she smiled and pulled his left hand snug against her warm, smooth abdomen, causing him to shiver slightly with arousal. Where they would be the next day, the next week, the next decade remained blissfully irrelevant, indeed almost irreverent to the expectations of parents and peers, and he smiled shyly at first, then broad and toothy, at the realization freedom only was realized when you had someone to share it with. Silently, mutually, they turned their stride around and back towards town, uphill along a narrow, cobbled avenue towards a glowing little red-roofed cottage, whose bright, modern colors saved it from dinginess, and he followed Annika in as she deftly slid a key into the old brass lock and led him into a low, almost claustrophobic kitchen, awash in books, books piled on the fridge, reclining casually over the edges of the sink, forming little paper waves along the floor, with not a morsel of food in sight. She made no attempt to apologize, and instead, reached in the little economy fridge and offered him a beer, which, to his delight, was not Carlsberg. While Clark marveled at the strange Norwegian ale, she quickly opened several of the polyethylene cylinders and dispensed 3 pills down her throat, one sip of beer, and slid them back into the handbag. The smiled weakly, self-consciously, baring her insecurities a bit for the first time, and Clark decided not to inquire, taking a seat on a fuzzy brown couch that looked like it had survived several curbside stints. She proceeded to weep, slowly, self-consciously, and Clark felt the pinprick of nervous anticipation as her sniffles built into a curling, cavernous crescendo of low wails, which forced her surprisingly slender 6 feet into shudders and intermittent chills. She abandoned preparing 'Fika', traditional Scandinavian mid-afternoon coffee and cakes, as it was already 6 and emotions prevailed. Instead, she sat beside Clark on the shabby couch, and curled against his sea-weathered frame like a child would take shelter against war, huddled in a quiet recess, whilst all hell broke loose outside. Her sobs soon subsided though, and a bright, almost eerie smile crossed her lips, as Clark tried to remember the few notes he took in Psych-101 on 'Bipolar mood disorders' and other archaic psychiatric diagnosis of the late 70's.
'I don't even know you' she whispered in a trance-like fixation, eyes on a point along the dull yellow walls that must have seemed like the vanishing point of our civilization to her, both opaque and transparent. Clark responded my kissing her neck subtly, meekly, like a dog who licks its owner in love expecting to be slapped. Instead, she pulled him closer, until he felt like the surface area of their physical expression intertwined like layers of an onion. Whether she was the outer and he was the inner was insignificant, when they retreated to her bedroom, stumbling, tripping, giggling, insistent like the incoming tide. The next morning, he awoke dazed and slightly panicked at the thought of the Stranger alone at her mooring in Bergen, probably pirated away by blond hooligans by now, he thought, a party boat set for Oslo. She was fine though, both the boat and Annika, asleep under prismatic blue skies, bathed in cool liquid. He left her pulling at the covers half-awake, and set off for his morning run, his legs still uncertain and shy, like a newborn calf, after so many days at sea. That land would ever seem hostile compared to the fierce blue depths seemed unfathomable, but he was now truly aqueous, or at least amphibian, compelled to wander like Annika's mind. When he returned to her after 45 breathlessly short minutes, she was busy fixing breakfast, industrious and pleasantly gregarious, laughing about how she could at least rationalize her trust of strangers with that they were generally attractive and interesting.
They ate unhealthy and delicious Norwegian traditions, swallowed with the now universal coffee and orange juice, benchmarks of globalization, he thought smugly. Afterwords, he invited her out for a walk, which seemed rather arrogant, as this was her town [of the moment at least] and here he was playing bastard tour guide. She quickly offered a compromise, however, since she had to keep her appointments, which today included the shelter for abused women ['Norwegian men are alcoholic pigs'] and weekly reading club ['their all fucking crazy']. However, seeing as Clark was the latest guest of honor, she would gladly entertain him when not otherwise occupied. They visited her favorite 'art gallery', which was actually a semi-abandoned warehouse where young people in various states of Bohemian trance squatted amidst partially-fabricated oil derricks and black, snake-like lengths of pneumatic hose, awaiting their gruesome rigor mortis atop some North Sea rig. Clark envied the fatalistic beauty of the Norwegians, their crude bargain with elements of nature both inhospitable and uncaring, the way they carried their aesthetic isolation like a great silent burden, insecurities oblivious to the rest of the world.
After some poorly-communicated smalltalk with the warehouse denizens, they walked away from the water and the manicured brick and stone buildings of Bergens Universitet and into the sort of gray, geometric ghetto that validated every Nixon-worshipping, socialist-fearing American NeoCon, where drab apartment blocks sat festooned in graffiti and their own humble immigrant woes, blue eyes burning into the brown dirts paths from hillsides beyond. She needed to show him this, she said, to prove that we were all the same, that immigrants, the 'Stureplan Set', the Americans, the crazy's, were all entrenched in the latest enunciation of bullshit, of fallow dreams and mindless perseverance.
Beyond this though, there were playgrounds, functional state-sponsored affairs with bright, blocky colors and cheap wood chip floors, where children played because they knew nothing else, because they didn't know yet that they were brown or yellow or black or inferior, just excited and restless. They sat on 2 unoccupied swings beside a little girl in a burka and a boy with a yarmulke, 5 at the most and oblivious to the precocious insecurity of their 20-something neighbors. They took shallow, thoughtful swings and spoke of their childhoods, his in the ancient hardwood forests of blueblood New England, hers in a cheap tenement flat outside Tromso, smart but vaguely abusive and unabashedly alcoholic parents, who routinely slept until noon, called in sick for likely the last time at their state temp job placement, fought, fucked in a cursory make-up manner, and released a traumatized but resilient Annika into the wild arctic tundra, where she built forts and hunted grouse and hares with outcast Saami children, the long-marginalized Scandinavian Inuit. It was here that she learned tolerance, acceptance of a childhood largely unchangeable, but a future indelible and infinitely possible.
She used to hit her mother, she admitted sadly, not forcefully, not with the intent to harm, but to make amends, to equalize the hurt, so show her she could be strong like her father, a giant, bronze-cast viking of a steelworker turned work-seeker, furious blue eyes set under tangles of wiry blond curls, tinged with angry gray. Her parents still loved her, and she loved them, she informed Clark matter-of-factly, but things were irrevocably 'different', as she so simply put it, they were cordial now, business-casual almost, the pains of estranged love best put aside for politeness. He was tired of trying to understand family estrangement, and putting all this surprisingly personal dialogue aside, invited her out for a day sail on the Stranger, as thoughts of teenage punks vandalizing his prize girl down there by the steelyards still left him uneasy. They set out from the decaying wharf around 10 am, a lazy, almost coincidental start, framed by slivers of steely gray light filtering down the green valley walls. He decided to motor out of the inner harbor, as fjord winds in the morning were arcane and difficult as it was, tempermental such that he wouldn't risk embarrassing himself in front of her, making 20 short tacks to gain a kilometer upwind. The fact that she was something as unusual as a wholly terrestrial Norwegian never dawned on him, she seemed so adept and lithe in any environment, adaptive to strange circumstances like himself.
She was easily impressed by his nautical finesse, yet her insistent skepticism of all things pried difficult questions from Clark. 'Don't you get scared, out so far from land or anyone else?', she asked boldly, and Clark honestly replied, 'Of course, goose [she probably didn't know this term of endearment, but that was irrelevant], it's actually quite terrifying, sometimes, I feel like I should just give up and let the sea swallow me up, but the boat won't allow it, nor will the wind.' She seemed satisfied, and sat against the salt-crusted seat cushions on the aft cockpit, wrapped in an old wool blanket against the wind, while Clark managed to finesse the fickle winds into something resembling a broad reach W40N, the scraggly land falling away in dull green sheets, a landscape only recently exposed from miles of silent blue ice. She liked corners, he observed, in her little house, she had quickly taken up residency in the shabby corner formed by mustard yellow walls and dumpster dive-esque couch, relaxing only when 2 sides of the world were closed, and she could scan her surroundings in a single gesture. For someone who spent so much of their life trapped my folly and circumstance, this was understandable, but she didn't get it, Clark thought frustratedly, didn't even begin to understand her own perfection, too self-aware to ever bask in her own light.
He seemed to attract these personalities, fragile yet resilient, framed by a world too fast and manic to just let people be. His own life, what it had become, was both empowering and appalling, at least to his family back home, who must be in the end stages of grief and the beginning of acceptance. He would never forgive himself for this, he knew, this trespass against trust so basic and selfish even youth couldn't excuse it, but he vowed to make it up to them one day, to return with a boat his own, a savings account, a family perhaps, things he wanted partly because his mother wanted them for him, and partly because, goddammit, they were worthwhile goals and youthful narccicism couldn't cover that up. His sister was now 22, probably just figuring out what do do after college, basking briefly in the vague light of freedom that comes after school and before career. She would probably go to grad school though, Clark though with some jealousy, she was such an academic, so damn smart but lacking in the creative wanderlust he seemed afflicted with, too disciplined to let go. He always felt hidden partly in her shadow, too different for direct comparison, her quiet, subtle confidence and endless loyalty to friends and school, likable in a way he never managed to cultivate. They had been close, in a way that sometimes felt perfunctory and not forthcoming, but he knew his love was true and their differences hindered only expression. Last he heard, she had been busy moving into her senior year room in Kirkland House, her nerdy and likable boyfriend trailing his feet lazily in the crisp red leaves the swirled through Cambridge that time of year, early fall harkening a return to academia and the warm insulation of college.
He hated himself suddenly, as the winds finally stabilized to a solid 12 or 13 knots from the southeast, the outer islands of the fjord appearing like green buttons floating in liquid mercury. Hated his incessant inferiority, his escapism, his fatal strength that never quite measured up to the stick he held over his head. Annika meanwhile had taken the helm, and was smiling and laughing warmly, the feeling of piloting a large boat in open water probably as intoxicating as it had been for him. He shook himself from this untimely introspection and slowly guided her hands on the wheel a few degrees to starboard, sheeting in the main deftly, vaguely aroused by the sound of the sharp metal cogs ratcheting in the sheets.
She asked shyly where they were going, her tone curious more than apprehensive, and he realized their little sail had no real course or destination, like most of his sail's, he mused. He asked her which islands out here were her favorite, and she replied she had never ventured this far out in the fjord, only once had she been out of Bergen harbor, with some pimply, impish fisherman's son who thought he could charm her by driving his little wooden skiff way too fast, almost flipping in the process on wake from an outgoing tugboat. The landscape reminded him on the Labrador coast, a study in muted grays and green, stubbly stone and grass islands awash with loudmouthed, excessive wildlife, seabirds and seals, imported sheep and goats, everyone eating and fighting and squaking. A larger island framed by somber granite cliffs appeared on the horizon, perhaps 5 kilometers to the east, and he saw as they approached that a little pocket beach lay hidden between the rocks, a hundred meter wide swath of pale gold sand almost tropical in the building afternoon light.
This seemed like a good destination, and he explained to her the sometimes complex logistics of anchoring in a narrow cove, without a chart nonetheless, foolhardy perhaps, but now necessary as the course of the day had been cemented in her approval. He instructed her briskly to go sit up on the varnished maple bowsprit, and she obeyed excitedly, grabbing the steel shroud cables for balance as she manned the important 'rock watch' position. He thought of dropping sail now and motoring safely into the little cove, but this seemed like cheating now that he had prepared her for a display of nautical showmanship, so they carried on. She was a quick learner, observant and practical, and easily understood Clark's english instructions as to bringing down the sails and throwing the anchor. The entrance to the little cove was marked by an ugly black ledge, 5 meters wide perhaps, covered in pale brown seaweed and gnarled barnacles, on which several large seals basked lazily, their dog-like eyes following him as he tacked deftly around the rocks.
The next maneuver required considerable precision, and his veins dilated deliciously with adrenaline as he jibed quite smoothly and Annika screamed from the bow, 'Rock Clark, Rock'! Followed by several muffled Norwegian curses. Almost instinctively, he cranked the wheel hart to port, and the boat slid smoothly by a bulging apparition of murky granite in light green water, centimeters to spare by the looks of it. The sea now had an almost equatorial transparency here, the sandy bottom and stone cascades hiding nothing. At the end of the perhaps 10 meter long sunken ledge, a broken jumble of white fiberglass splinters lay eerily still along the sandy bottom, a relatively recent wreck by the look if it, a Rhodes-19 style day craft, probably an unlucky family or a pair of drunken students, he thought with a chill. No swimming here, he decided quickly, he had always carried a deep paranoia of swimming near shipwrecks or piers, and obstruction of the water seemed sinister and unsafe. With Annika's now expert assistance, they anchored safely in a benign 10 meters of turquoise water perhaps 50 meters from the beach, the afternoon sun hitting an indian summer crescendo, perhaps 22 or 23 celcius here is the Scandinavian tropics, he thought contently. They embarked for shore in the trusty little wooden skiff, its gaudy pastel paint now chipped and salted, reminiscent of the battered fishing boats that were so ubiquitous along the Spanish Meditteranean.
The boat rocked clumsily as he let Annika row ashore, she was inexperienced but strong, determined to wrest control on the sea through the battered wooden oars. They landed with that wonderful grainy 'whoooosh' of boat ascending sand, and Clark tied the bow painter line to some pinkish granite knobs adorning a nearby boulder, vestiges of an ancient magma cooling miles under what would one day become Norway. They unpacked their hastily-assembled picnic, comically incomplete, a half-empty bottle of wine, 1 apple, 3 pears, a block of cheese that had seen better days, and some indeterminate Nordic bread, white and dense like the people. She, like him, feared waking up mediocre one day, answerable to no one but herself, trapped in a cycle of false reconciliation with god. Her eyes spoke volumes of self-deprecation and distrust, yet she managed to sparkle, radiate a subtle sheen that was equal parts vintage Nuetrogena commercial and sincere brightness. She ate like a bird, haphazardly, in fleeting, apprehensive bites, sampling everything but committing to nothing, except the wine of course, which she seemed to down in a single gesture, leaving Clark with the rest of the alcohol, a lukewarm can of Carlberg Hof, pillaged from her mostly empty fridge that morning. Not that the situation needed chemical enhancement anyways, he thought happily, here on some sort of Arctic riviera, watched only by seabirds and seals, who seemed bored by their presence, these transient humans searching for something other than shelter and sustenance.
The sun had reached its apex and was now fading sublimely into a distant green hillside, diving headlong into the cold black expanse of water that lead out into the North Sea. A few rectangular, geometric dots framed the western horizon, outgoing container ships bound for Rio or New York. He liked their crisp disturbance of the vanishing point, the way they made no apologies rising from an unperturbed plane in piles of green and blue squares, steel cradles carrying the ingredients of modern civilization. Somehow Annika's womanly curves bothered her, the fact that she was round and organic and of this earth, he missed the arrogant, defiant jawlines of Benoit or Guillaume, their masculine folly. Girls were scary in that they camouflaged so well into nature, content largely with the ways things were and would always be, rather then forever upending the world. Clark was an upender, that bit was self-evident he figured, but to what degree was the reward worth the self-inflicted harm?
She seemed to sense his distraction and pulled him into a slow, lazy kiss, the kind where you have a moment to worry whether your doing a good job, tonguing too deep, too shallow, too slow. He was doing a goods job though, he told himself firmly, and he pulled her into the warm sand, muffled giggles both protesting and encouraging. She was too sublime to realize the fallacy of her own existence, he thought, that she might awake one day and find herself old, dull, worn. This would never happen, he told himself, he wouldn't allow it. They lay on their backs side by side, blocking the sun ineffectively with freckled hands, allowing silvery slivers to pass between greasy, crumb-covered fingers, burrowing their backs into the sand like desert beetles.
He felt like sinking slowly into the rounded quartz particles, cushioned by increasing pressure until he himself was crushed into little rounded particles, sieved though sand and finally descended like a meteor into the earth's fiery interior, recycled into rock on some distant volcano. Who knew the rock cycle could be so prophetic?, he mused silently, his childhood love of geology coming to light again. She spoke of recent novels, that she was done with dense behemoth's like War & Peace and Atlas Shrugged, instead fascinated by novellas and short stories, which were the 'media pop tarts of thinking people', she informed him. 'God, she is too much', Clark thought undeserving, he felt slight when standing in the full light of her manic intellect. He hands shook slightly when she became excited, resonated with an internal frequency that might be equal parts anti-psychotic side effect and genuine buzz, he guessed.
The tide was retreating rapidly, and he knew if they missed their window back through the rather narrow passage inland between the island and the mainland, it would be a battle back to Bergen, even motoring. He hated to break the calm of the moment, but felt compelled to act, if for no other reason than that the sand was cooling rapidly, and the thought of a chilly evening on the beach waiting out the tide sounded more unpleasant than adventurous. He guided her back towards the little skiff, he balance now visibly irregular, and she did not protest in the slightest, rather, her lips formed a shallow, self-conscious grin that seemed to understand the nautical and emotional aspects of the situation. As they motored across the little cove to the waiting Stranger, she drew close to him and whispered in hushed urgency, 'I don't want to go back'. As much as he had been expecting a similarly grandiose and urgent statement from her, it still caught him largely off guard, and he drew silently inward for a few minutes trying to formulate a response that was both compassionate and firm. Obviously her response was meant to insinuate that if they just turned the boat 180 degrees and headed out to sea and south to the tropic she would be a hardly protesting kidnapped passenger , but Clark refused to give in to this logic and instead offered a compromise. 'Look, I like you a lot too. I woulds use the word love, except I feel as if I've known you for so long that that's implied. Even though I've only known you for 24, maybe 30? hours, which brings me to my next point, which is that I have hurt people before, and probably will again, even when I love them, so I don't want to hurt you.' She looked at him softly, silently, from a humble, acute angle as if for the first time, the tears welling slowly as she made no attempt to wipe them away. 'Your an asshole' she mouthed in half-whispered Norwegian, he knew enough to understand this, but not enough to admit his folly and embrace her once and forever, so they rode silently home on favorable northwestern winds while the stars massed overhead like some kind of vast cosmic conspiracy, she in her usual post on the aft cockpit seat cushions, back pressed into that wool blanket like it was the only solid thing left in the world. A large oil tanker appeared quite suddenly from behind a passing island, likely set on autopilot down the center of the fjord's 400 meter deep main channel, the captain already thinking of his family in Athens or Dubai. Clark knew the ship had the right of way and he should alter his course to avoid passing too close, but in his distraction over Annika, he failed to tack in time and passed dangerously close to the hulking black mass of the tanker, it's rigid steel deck sailing through the sky fifty meters away like a floating factory. Annika screamed for him to pay more attention, but he ignored her and dug deeper into his own churning thoughts, letting the building chill of the night insulate him from her. He wanted to make amends, but not really, she scared him, foiled his plans at independence from all others except the Stranger, who was beautiful in that she provided and asked for nothing in return. He was too selfish, too weird to expect unequivocal love, he thought sadly, at least not right now, that meant relinquishing the lavish attention he always imagined strangers were heaping on him in foreign ports, coffee shops, sidewalks; exchanging it for the attention of just one person.
They made an unremarkable return to Bergen, save the tanker encounter and the continual massing and effervescence of the stars overhead, and he smiled slightly at finding his previous mooring still unoccupied on their return. They rode across the choppy water of the harbor to the docks silently as well, save the catcalls and adolescent laughter slowly building into a typical Saturday night in Bergen on the waterfront. She smiled now slightly too, though he couldn't tell if this was a vestige of her own insanity, recognizing friends among the laughter onshore, or preparation for apologizing/accusing him of something else. He hoped for the latter. They tied up the skiff along the docks, and he took her hand helping her onto the quay. She stood aside him on the weathered cobblestones facing the busy downtown, not in front of him, not behind him, but precisely aside, as if singling herself out for some task that did not involve him. They waited a minute perhaps, then both started into apologies at the same time, fumbling new apologies and then self-conscious laughter, as if aware for the first time of the story book absurdity of their situation, their transnational conflagration here on the docks of Bergen, Norway.
He told her he would stay at the youth hostel and probably set off down the coast to Oslo the next morning if the weather was good, she embraced him unashamedly and told him that was probably a good idea, and fished a scrap of "Atlas Shrugged' which curiously clung to several other pages looking freshly ripped [Clark didn't care for Rand's compassion-less capitalism either, but damn!] which she proceeded to write her full name [Lindquist was a beautiful last name, he thought], phone number, and address. He thought of doing the same but realized it meant nothing given the circumstances, and instead clung to her so strongly and singularly she had to push away slightly to breathe, exhaling with the pain of pending separation. They exchanged a single, warm but polite kiss, and parted ways as the moon finally appeared over the alpine slopes to the east, sheepish and waning, a yellow sickle that seemed to pantomime his disappointment.
He considered roaming the night for an hour or two, risk getting caught up in yet another chance encounter, yet mental more than physical weariness pulled him back down the steep wooden steps into the skiff and out across the little marina, pulling excessively with each oar stroke such that little rebellious ripples formed around the edges of the salty wood, urging him to slow his pace and his thoughts before he did something rash. 'That went about as poorly as I thought it could have', he thought dejectedly, yet in another way, the mere fact that it had gone was worthwhile enough, that he had enjoyed the surreal moment of the past 2 days enough to realize its fleetingness, this was enough. Like the reformed druggie who opposes legalization or the 2nd generation immigrant turned border vigilante, he told himself it wouldn't have worked anyways, since he had a policy of not dating crazies, himself notwithstanding, of course. She, meanwhile, had gone directly home, finished a bottle of wine perhaps only a third empty to begin with, tried to call her friend Clara, and, fed up with the busy signal and her series of one-life stands, collapsed on that shabby brown couch into fitful sleep.
Clark had followed a similar path, minus the alcohol and attempted phone call, and he wondered as he lay pushed as far against the bunk walls as his body would allow, if all people who slept in fitful uneasiness were somehow joined telepathically at the moment of their unrest, the singularity of sleep uniting us all. He decided then that he was completely resolute about leaving for Oslo in the morning. The night passed in deep tranquility, not serene by any means, but providing much needed respite from thinking. The next morning dawned blue and calm, the little nautical flags that would wave wildly in even the slightest breeze frozen like statues on the mastpoles. 'So much for not using a lot of fuel', he thought with a slight hint of annoyance, and he motored over to the little dingy petrol station that sat in the hulking shadow of the steelyards, proceeding to barter in poor Norwegian with a similarly dingy old man over the price of 60 gallons of fuel. They reached a reasonable compromise, and Clark went ashore to buy a cup of coffee while the pump struggled to remove the fuel from the tank and into the Stranger's engine berth.
He loved the subtle nuances of young body language, the way young people carried their insecurities, so versed in the eccentricities of style, yet devoid of the confidence so many dull, old people seem to have. 20th Century life was such a race, space, computers, people were talking about a future where people would communicate on some sort of mobile telephone and between computers, it all seemed so obvious and utilitarian, Clark thought cooly. He ended up in the same shop he had met Annika in, and, finding it temporarily free of attractive girls to make him self-conscious, he breathed in deep relief and ordered an Americano [they had some special called the 'Norge-iano', but he could only imagine the black, acrid brew his grandmother still drank in Sweden every day], hiding none of his ticks and oddities, which at present included a seemingly never ending throat-tickle and an unstoppable desire to rub his front teeth at nervous moments. 'Look at how non-chalant and casual I am over this moment', he was of course trying to insinuate, but to the average onlooker, this probably translated to 'look at the kind of slob who would probably eat a booger in front of the Queen.'
No matter, he figured, the real gems, or inclusion-filled diamonds rather, he liked to think of them as, well, they seemed to notice him regardless, he couldn't escape their notice and approval or disapproval. He got his coffee, sipped fervent, deep slurps, and walked with surprising lightness given the weight of upcoming travels back down the winding cobblestone street to the fuel station, where the old man had finished topping off the Stranger and sat smoking cheap cigarettes at an alarmingly close distance to the giant fuel tank. They exchanged pleasantries, and he cast off the little slip, the oil-slicked and candy wrapper strewn water replaced by cool, swift currents and a surprisingly good wind that revealed itself once out of the wind shadow of the big mountains. The glaciers shone high on distant peaks, winding down ancient valleys on their circuitous, laborious route to the sea, carving homes for trolls and wild blonde wolf children, no doubt.
The wind was not ideal, coming at a strange angle that seemed to rush down both sides of the fjord, converging in great unpredictable gusts and conflicting swells, and he struggled to keep the boat on a steady heady out to the open sea, looking forward to rounding the last of the endless, even green slopes, their scraggly edges humbly descending into the sea, unaware of their own imperfection. The land was beautiful though, in a spartan, Nordic way, functional and surreal at the same time, framed in strange muted colors and a seeming lack of any civilization, until a little red roofed cottage or fenced-in pasture materialized in the most inhospitable location. You had to hand it to these people, Clark thought, they were tough fuckers, descendants of a land on snow, ice and rain, the sea and land intertwined inexorably; it was difficult to distinguish nature and urbanscape here.
At the eastern edge of the fjord, which should have been west, but was fouled in some sort of strange downeast meets arctic labyrinth geometry, Clark was met with his first unobstructed view of the sea since sailing into Bergen a week earlier, and the sight of the open ocean resonated with him in deep magnetic chills, like a wave breaking on a hidden reef, he felt the weight of his recent encounter lifted slightly. The emotional aspect still resonated deeply, his myriad ticks and eccentricities magnified into painful caricatures, it seemed, yet the wind was pleasant, favorable, tinged with cold northern elements, and it propelled him onward. The gusts built into a steady breeze, not quite a gale but approaching it, and he put a reef in the main, relishing the awkward tightening and knotting of the difficult sail, bent on its own obedience to the wind. The wind seemed aromatic almost, scented perhaps with coal and salt cod from the Faroe islands, Norway's mythic outpost in the arctic, where a few thousand Nordic souls perservered and perhaps prospered.
Annika had successfully dredged up the last of his stoic hopelessness, his self confidence that seemed to have withered under the hot sun on the Frenh Riviera in the preceeding months, only to be stirred inexorably here in the frozen north. The true frozen season was approaching, and he knew that successfully keeping this illusion of a trip going hinged on going south, south to whence he had just come from, it seemed, but perhaps in a new, more favourable light. He rode the now strong northwesterly all the way south into Korfjorden, to the little fishing village of Kleppevik, which sat tired and shabby, long suffering it' subprime location on the outer highlands, the looming, grayish mass of coastal rock and grass that was perched between Bergen and Oslo, where the more benign southern fjords eventually curved eastward and gave way to the sandy beaches of Swedish vacationland. He had passed Hakansund, but, the memory of his Swedish father Hakan too sharp and inflective, he decided to carry on to the next harbor where a suitable anchorage might be found. He found what appeared to be a public mooring easily, and, seeing no local presence or objections, dropped sail and approached the little convex cove at a slow, unobtrusive pace, the massive inboard engines humming in low complacence. The village seemed almost deserted, the humble fishing boats asleep in steely gray water, little round waves lapping the pebble beach a hundred meters away. The whole place had an air of decided dormancy, almost hibernation, as if he would awake in the morning and curious, miniature people in little wooden clogs and pointed hats would emerge from their red-roofed stuga's to greet him. As silly as the thought was, coupled with the alarming silence of the place left him feeling vaguely uneasy, and he busied himself with domestic tasks below deck to distract his mind from such nonsense.
At around 10 PM, shortly before he was planning on snuffing the last little antique kerosene lantern and submitting to another night of fitful sleep, a dull amber light shone from one of the nearer cottages. A young man likely only a few years younger than himself stepped out into the inky night, at first hesitant, looking suspiciously to both sides, then walked down to the beach with the easy familiarity of someone who practically owns the rights to the small town they live in and have always lived in. Clark had misplaced his old rayban glasses somewhere in the forward stowage the other day, and fished out his favorite pair of brass plated, WWII binoculars, which he promptly and unashamedly pressed to the dirty, salt-crusted glass of the starboard porthole, following the young man as he turned away from the beach and continued his even, confident stride across the uneven, slatted wooden boardwalks that seemed to pass for streets in this village. His gait had now become uneven and questionable, either lost in thought or uncaring; his face did not suggest any of the typical small town substance abuse [wasn't everything a substance!?]. Instead his eyes remained sharp and inquisitive, fixed on some distant vanishing point, locked in a sort of anticipatory gaze, it seemed. Clark's attention was now full and undivided, this beat evening television or radio any night, and he wondered what sort of small town scenario was about to unfold.
The man had now stopped, standing in what appeared to be the village center, still looking forward, like a driver approaching a stoplight at an uncertain speed. While lost in deciphering the mans facial nuances, an older woman, 65 or 70 perhaps, approached the young man at a slow, steady pace from a neighboring house. She was small in stature, but he could tell she was strong, probably permanently wizened in some unfortunate way from years of packing salted fish into boxes. She smiled vaguely, distractedly, letting her eyes wander over the distant green hillsides, sublime almost in the inky black moonlight, scanning the landscape as if to make sure certain familiar scenes were still there. Given the otherwise deathly calm that presided over the village, it was certainly more than coincidence that they were both out on this late weeknight, and Clark relished the happenstance voyeurism courtesy of international travels and some decent on-board optics. He was expecting some sort of grandmotherly exchange of a fish or some rice pudding for young Lar's down on their luck family back up the hill, but instead when the two convened, gestures and conduct were largely impersonal and business-like, they stood a meter apart perhaps, speaking in what appeared to be casual tones, and Clark could almost pick up across the hundred or so meters of water the insipid excitement of their exchange. The young man, who Clark was mentally profiling as a Lars, 21, father of one, out-of-work fisherman, suddenly pulled a large wad of cash out of his overcoat pocket, and handed it obediently to the old woman for inspection. Her vague, possibly senile smile was now broad and knowlegable as she deftly counted crisp crown bills, glancing over her shoulder reflexively when a sleeping raven alighted from atop a nearby telephone pole.
She brought a small bag out of her own overcoat, an old faux-cashmere number with oversize buttons and unneccesary embellishments that spoke of second-hand stores and thwarted style. The bag itself was beautiful, deep purple velvet that looked like a cross between a cheap Crown Royal bag and some obscure lord's satchel. She emptied the contents into the young man's awaiting hands, and Clark could see his grip loosen unconsciously for a moment, feeling the density of the bag's contents. small, rectangular bars of metal, perhaps a dozen of them, filled his cupped hands, about half of them appeared to be gold, and the rest something brighter and seemingly heavier than silver, platinum perhaps?
That this possibly criminal exchange should be occurring on a small, isolated village on the Norwegian coast in this unseasonably warm fall of 1978 did not occur to Clark; the past 5 months had blurred what was acceptable and the transgressions against normality that used to terrify him were now amusing and sometimes enjoyable. He did, however, duck his head back under the window when the money appeared, it was an almost instinctive act, the privileged, sheltered white boy who, caught in the face of crime, protects himself from the experience more than possible harm. The experience seemed pretty benign right now though, he had to admit, the bars had gone back into the little satchel, and the two shook hands amicably, then parted ways, leaving the air still with the impossibility of the night. Clark shook the rather odd exchange from his mind, which was now fixated on the consequences of being the only witness to the exchange, and looked forward to reading about "Grandma's bullion-laundering circuit' in the Oslo press in what would hopefully be a few more uneventful days sailing south.
The morning arrived with the the distinctive chill of fall decided; no more of this bipolar arctic temperature swing, the brief, bitter fall had arrived for good, to be followed shortly by winter, white and austere in these parts, the type of winter that muffled ambition into warm content, only to let it thaw out again in the spring. The wind was weak, such that he motored out of the little cove, glancing back at the little red roof cottage where the young man lived before he lost sight of it around the point, only to find the dull amber light still glowing feebly, never turned off. The next bit of sailing intimidated him somewhat, as it had a rather notorious reputation in both ancient and modern Norse maritime lore, and his charts were rudimentary, ripped yellow copies of some twice-outdated series. They showed the big rocks though, he thought cynically, the little ones were the dangerous ones, but these would have to be put out of mind, knowing that the seafloor gradient in these parts was a veritable marine Himalaya, peaks shooting up out of a thousand feet of clean, icy water to not quite pierce the surface, the type of unseen malice that made crusty old fisherman shake in their boots. The weather was quite lovely on the surface, however, wispy little strings of cirrus clouds streaking across a porcelain sky, racing towards Sweden and the Baltic's on a bold polar jetstream. An SAS jet passed overhead at a surprisingly low altitude, bound for Oslo or Goteborg from NY, judging by the angle of approach, he ventured to guess, and his concentration drifted for a moment as he recalled the dream-like overnight flights to Stockholm from NY as a small child, cushioned by his lack of knowledge of the emotional and financial burden these cross-Atlantic trips put on his parents. He was a product of the 'American Dream' in a way, he mused absentmindedly, but not in the conventional way, his parents didn't 'escape' Sweden, where presently things looked more favorable on the whole than the war-and-spending crazed U.S, rather, they chose to come to the states, voluntary immigration such a rare luxury he didn't even recognize the significance of it until now. He relished the idea of being able to immigrate unrestricted, to start a new future in Vancouver or Buenos Aires, to escape pending criminal charges in the states per his theft of a million dollar yacht. [his parents had great lawyers and could probably get him off on a misdemeanor pending proof of his drug-induced psychosis] He decided though, from the luxury of an autonomous existence in a foreign land, this is true, but he decided that he wanted to face the full consequences of what he had done when he returned to the States, jail time, humiliation, acceptance, all the incongruous aspects of legal persecution, without any entitlement or 'family connections' to bail him out.
The thought terrified him significantly more than the possibility of sinking in icy water alone on the Norwegian coast, yet he knew that consequences were as necessary as they were unavoidable, then he would have to face part of the fairy-tale farce he'd been living 'on the lam' from loved ones, diligence to others than himself, both amongst the brick and ivy corridors of Brown and here. A few turquoise halo's of shallow water passed him as he motored the Stranger out into the open water of Lysefjorden, stretching 15 or 20 bold, broad kilometers across, open to the south and conflicted into a maze of secret channels and rocky islands from whence he had come, an analogue to his present situation, it seemed, seemingly free but in fact tightly wound around directions and wind, rocks and obstacles. The rest of the day passed in blissful uneventfulness; once clear of the ship graveyard in the north end of the passage, the channel widened a looming, seemingly stationary ferries and oil tankers passed him at odd parallel intervals, their navigation tightly dictated by the large red and green buoys marking the deepwater channel. He beat upwind into the more narrow passage of Langnuen, anchoring off the swampy, dark looking forests of Flatraker, a sleepy hamlet at the southern end of the channel. Venturing into the town in search of some produce, eggs, and milk, he was pleased to find the young clerk at the village market spoke excellent English, and was apparently fresh from an exchange year at Wesleyan, having returned to Flateraker to care for her ailing grandparents as her parents moved to Oslo a few year earlier. She was kind and receptive, her features broad and rounded, not aesthetic in the traditional sense, but endearing and trustworthy, hiding no suspicion or ill will. Her name was Margaret, and as the store did not have eggs or milk, she offered to walk him the half kilometer of so inland to the local dairy farm, where he might obtain some. As they walked, he began to tell her the story of the previous nights episode in Kleppevik, but she stopped him, her face arrested suddenly in a pale fear. 'Do not make up stories, Clark, it is not wise as a foreigner, especially.'
Seeing as she was so suddenly affected by his description, he pried a bit and found than a notorious con-man and thief, one Maxwell Lundgren, 23, Oslo Technical University dropout and brilliant personality artiste, has been on the run from Norwegian authorities for some 3 months now, and was rumored to have been last seen in the rugged hills south of Bergen. He was reportedly on foot and attempting to smuggle a large quantity of crown bullion and stolen Norse artifacts from the Bergen Museum out of the country. She said his usual act was to pose as a young PhD student in archeology, representing the royal institute for Norse Culture, and bribe small-town museum curators or amateur artifact-diggers out of their wares. This fit the description of the exchange Clark had witnessed so succinctly that he shivered slightly, and Margaret, now understanding that this was not some American hooligan but a genuine witness, put her arm around him gently and offered part of her flowing gray wool shawl to him, which he gladly wrapped round his inadequate windbreaker. 'We must go to the authorities first thing tomorrow morning', she told him urgently, and he sensed she had some personal connection to this Lundgren character, more than just the typical citizen's goodwill. He agreed without thinking, then chastised himself for being bent into some interpersonal conflict; why had he felt the need to divulge his bizarre experience with her in the first place? He imagined the police arresting him on some sort of international stolen-boat/missing-person warrant, but then dismissed the possibility as unlikely, and focused on getting food and making dinner, more immediate and gratifying tasks. As he predicted, the farmer spoke almost no English, and rather than stumble over poor syntax and garbled request for 2 dozen eggs and a gallon of milk, he let Margaret translate, and handed the smiling older man 20 Kronor in brassy coins.
As they returned to the waterfront, he worked up the nerve to pry a little deeper into her connection with the bullion thief, and found out that her own grandmother, the kindly matriarch of the village, had recently been duped into selling some old Norse family artifacts to the young man at a fraction of their value. This angered Clark, but at the same time, he marveled at Lundgren's unusual and on the whole fairly harmless brand of crime... if and when he was prosecuted, some sympathy should be given to the fact that he hadn't physically harmed anyone, and, if his encounter last night should speak to Lundgren's character at all, his 'customers' might have even like him. He wondered what his story was, this smart and criminally-bent 23 year old dropout, was he obsessed with wealth? with power? The victim of a bad domestic situation as a child? Or maybe just lonely... where was all that gold and platinum going? Cashing in something that conspicuous and traceable must be difficult, Clark thought, remembering the strange bank insignia on the little metal bars. She sensed Margaret's betrayal, though, and decided to cooperate and refrain from further analyzing the criminal's motives or connections with her.
He bid her farewell for the evening and returned to the Stranger on the little gray skiff, which he hadn't even bothered to tie up, sitting on the beach alone and thoughtful, hardly any other boats in sight. Flatraker felt almost like a piece of the Scandinavian midwest transplanted to the coast, the people all seemed vaguely wary of the sea and terrestrially-bound, probably relicts of an earlier age where sea serpents and whirlpools swallowed viking longboats and the ocean was a place one went to escape or disappear. He cooked 4 or the new eggs with potatoes and onions, the warm, healthy aromas filling the cabin and clashing deliciously with the cold evening air. He had forgotten to buy beer, but an old red wine bottle provided 8 or 10 ounces of cheap compliment to his meal. Lost in his own thoughts, he recalled his last real adventure before the 'escape', and the details rushed back into his mind like the release of a dam in the desert, flooding his parched consciousness.
It was early June, the first real turning of summer, that unseasonably wet and dreary spring of 1975. He was 18, and contentment was the murder of the possible, he thought quite suddenly, and it was in this newfound, firm resolve that he decided to leave the Tri-State area for good. The staleness of a place half-realized, strung out like a bad coke binge of shopping centers and neat suburban driveways had unwound the methodical gearing of his mind to where everything threatened to come down. He needed to escape all this sewage spilling over from the excess of New York City, and the logical progression moved westward with the big diesel locomotives and shiny chrome tanker trucks. The shallow strip of dull black asphalt shot west like a laser, parting from it's earnest singularity not even for mountains or rivers, choosing instead to pierce the organic geometry of nature with man's insistent will. He had been accepted to Brown that fall, to his parents surprise and seemingly unending pride, given his grades and penchant for telling authority to fuck off, his mother had secretly hoped for the state college, or even a 'work-study' experience as a runner-up. His essay, as arrogant and presumptuous as it was, must have hit some note of either frustration or brilliance with the admissions counselor, because when the oily white envelope arrived in the mailbox and was in fact not a single sheet of deferment, he rode his bike all the way to the park to tell his burnout friends, shouting to the birds and squirrels and splitting the dull suburban traffic down the middle, no handlebars and all.
