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CHAPTER 1
I arrived at Hrothgar's Mead Hall well before eight o'clock, weary of waiting around at home after a day of achieving nothing. I wanted to get a few drinks down before anyone else showed up. Outside, the snowfall had finally ceased.
Hrothgar's was huge, as was everything in it. A central pillar carved from a single massive trunk of ash, banquet tables running the length of the floor. The bar itself was about twelve yards long, polished rosewood, and there was a tap for each foot of it. Despite such length, every stool was filled; the locals made a point of arriving early on Bean Day to assert their proprietary claim.
The high wooden walls of the place were hung with chalk drawings that depicted the logos of the various available beers. This month's guest brew was St. George's Winter Ale, and its logo showed the eponymous saint lounging beneath an apple tree while some sort of dew — presumably Winter Ale — dripped from the fruit and into his yawning mouth. In the background, a white-clad damsel was battling a dragon; she used a hairbrush instead of a sword.
I found myself a place at the bar-end of one of the banquet tables, next to the stage, and draped my jacket around the ladderbacked chair. Despite how busy it was in here, a waitress appeared at my side almost immediately. Though she was tall, skinny, and blond — and therefore difficult to distinguish from any other waitress who had ever worked at Hrothgar's — I thought that she might be new. She patted all of her pockets before locating the pencil behind her ear.
"Hi, are you ready to order?"
"I'll wait, thanks," I said. "I'm meeting someone." I removed my gloves and stuffed them into a pocket of my coat behind me.
She whizzed away, then, and after I saw that she was safely in the backroom I got up and ordered myself a pitcher of Heidrun directly from the bartender. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but it was better than being unprepared. I returned to my seat before I poured the first honey-blond pint.
The bustle here tonight pleased me. The mass of people would make it harder for anyone to try anything, if my paranoia proved well-founded. Students and townies alike crowded in for food, fire, and alcohol to ward away the cold; chatter in the background instead of music; waitresses billowing out of swinging doors, bearing with them whiffs of the fries and shepherd's pies that they carried upon their platters ... Not quite authentic Nordic cuisine, but the aroma blended well with the general smell of spilt beer.
I was watching two blond busboys on the stage next to me setting up the microphone, video monitor, and song-machine — their musculature was of the wrong tone for Refurserkir — when the waitress returned and eyed my pitcher with a look of slight puzzlement.
"Still waiting?" she asked.
"Indeed," I said.
As she rushed away again, I took a little sip of my beer. It tasted normal enough. So a long swallow, then. Inoculation against the cold, and when I set the glass back down I'd drained a full third of it. I had to pour myself another only a few moments later.
I focused on the crispness of the beer's flavor, the bubbles rising up in it and the way that they caught the light and carried it to the snowy head.
I was dribbling the last suds out of the pitcher when Angus O'Malvins was just there, suddenly. Standing across the table and grinning down at me, one hand gripping the top rung of his chair while the other slipped his trademark Meerschaum pipe into an interior coat pocket.
"Hullo! An ah wis surtain ah'd be the first ane here," he said, his burr sounding thicker than ever.
"And I thought I'd have the place to myself for a while longer. But sit down, Mr. O'Malvins ... I was just about to order another round."
"Ach, ye knae better than thah, poppet; yir ainly tae caw me Angus." He pulled the chair out and fussed his way down into it.
A few years had passed, now, since I'd seen any more of him than a picture on a Christmas card, but he looked almost exactly the same as when I'd first met him. A bushy white beard covered most of his face, and the rest was red, his cheeks pushing up to force his eyes into a permanent squint.
"You made it here rather quickly," I said. "Quite a trip from the Orkneys, isn't it?"
"Aye, well, luckily ah wis in London when ah heard, sae ah wis able tae get a quick flight."
"I see. So, who else did you say was coming?" I asked, trying not to meet his eye.
"Ach, whae isnae coming? E'en auld Magnus promised thah he'd pop in, though he somehoo seemed a bit reluctant."
"Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I don't think he's ever been here, even though he lives just around the block. Too popular for his taste, I'd imagine."
"Hmm, aye, he can act the part of the elitist, noo ... But sae, then, there's alsae 'Mutt' Sanders, whae ah dinnae believe ye knae ... an Philip Leshio, the auld bore, whae, ah believe, ye unfortunately dae knae. Dr. Albertine, alsae, an ... Ach, Michael Lorenz, whae — as ye can or cannae know — is a visiting professor this semester at yir ain university."
"Actually, I met him earlier today. He seemed ... interesting. But I didn't know that he knew you or Shirley."
"Michael? Well, we've a few acquaintances in common, but —" The waitress finally returned.
"Ready for a refill?" she asked, picking up the empty pitcher.
"Please. And a glass for my friend."
"On its way." And off she went again.
"But jist whit sort ay shenanigans have ye been up tae yirself thir past few years?" Angus asked. "Done any scribbling tae mention?"
"Oh ... I haven't been up to much. All I've written recently are academic articles. Shirley was working on a few things, though. In fact, I thought she might actually get something published soon."
I watched his face for a reaction, but he remained squinteyed and smiling.
"Truly?" he asked. "Ah hadnae any idea."
"Yeah, well, it's interesting, actually —"
"And here you go." The waitress poured a glass for Angus and then set the second pitcher on the table. "Are you still waiting for more people before you order?"
"We are, thank ye," Angus replied.
When she walked away again, he lifted the pitcher to freshen my glass.
"Sae, Shirley's impending publication," he said, pouring directly into the glass's bottom, and half the beer bubbled into head. "Ah suppose thah yir referring tae thah faux-Shakespearean idea she had, then?"
I didn't immediately respond. Stageward motion had caught my eye as he spoke, and I turned to watch; the busboys were finished setting up, and Roger Harrod — the owner of Hrothgar's — was getting ready to speak.
"Have you ever been here for a karaoke night before?" I asked, turning back to Angus. "Looks like it's about to start. I think you'll like it."
"Karaoke? It isnae really ma —"
"Hrothgar's puts a unique spin on things," I said, cutting him off. "They call it skaldic karaoke."
"An whit the divil is thah?"
"Well, basically it means that all of the songs are heroic ballads, as opposed to your usual pop hits. It's almost eight o'clock, though. Where's everybody else? They'll miss all the fun."
"Ach, dinnae worry. Ah'm sure they'll be here shortly."
"Okay, everybody ... Here we go," Roger said from the stage, swirling pieces of paper around in a bowl with his fingertips before closing his eyes and drawing one out. "It looks like the first skald of this evening, folks ... is going to be ... Mr. Jim Bliss! And he'll be singing the ballad of Liutbold the Kind. Come on up here, Jim, and show us what you're made of!"
A lanky, bespectacled fellow in a brown suit and matching bow tie stood measuredly from his seat across the room and proceeded to bump and pardon his way stageward.
"Sorry," he said as he passed our table, though he didn't seem to touch either one of us. Ignoring the stairs at either stage-end, he clambered directly up the front, his brown trousers gaining gray swathes of dirt across the knees as he did so.
Roger patted him on the back and whispered something in his ear before taking a quick bow and hopping from the stage.
"Hello," the man mumbled in a strange accent; his voice was hardly audible though he bobbed his head toward the microphone as he spoke. "Er ... Well, I suppose you can start the music now."
After a moment of quiet static crackle, a 2/4 drumbeat began to pulse from hidden speakers while the synthetic approximation of a plucked string instrument arpeggiated over it, back and forth between the dominant and tonic of some minor key. A faint trace of bass lingered thumping in the background, too, and — following a few introductory bars — the man joined his voice to it all in a startlingly strong tenor. Thus was Liutbold the Kind launched on his long journey through a day of strange synchronicities and personal revelations. Not the standard set of heroic deeds, but eccentricity was probably the ballad's greatest strength. Angus sat listening with cocked head and hanging jaw.
"It's wonderful," he whispered after a few reverent seconds.
"See, I thought you'd like it."
"Ah truly dae," he replied, reaching over the table as if to clap me on the shoulder, though I shied away enough that he couldn't quite reach me — I didn't feel like a shoulder clap just then. My unexpected movement threw him a bit off balance, and he almost knocked my beer over as his hand came down on the table. "Ah'm sorry ah doubted ye even fir an instant."
I saw that my glass was cold, still full, and wet with condensation, so I grabbed a handkerchief from my jacket behind me to wipe it down before I took a long draught.
"Back tae the subject ay Shirley's Hamlet, though," Angus said suddenly, though his eyes were still upon the stage. "Ah interrupted ye earlier; ye were saying aboot hoo she wis nearly done with it ... Trying tae get it published, ah believe ye mentioned. But tell me everything. Did she ivir show ye her drafts? An were they actually any guid?"
He wasn't going to let this go, I realized, and it was then that I began to believe my paranoid suspicions must indeed be correct. After a pause I answered him.
"All right, then," I said. "If you want to get right into it ..." I suddenly noticed that I was really starting to feel a bit drunk, even though I'd only had four beers, which normally wouldn't have been nearly enough to buzz me.
"Is this a sore subject fir some reason? We are here tae discuss Shirley, are we nae?"
I sighed. He looked exactly the same as when I'd first seen him.
"All right," I answered, finally resigning myself. "I see you're ready, so let's just do this." I wanted to get this over with while I was still a little sober. "I never saw Shirley's version of Kyd's Hamlet," I told him.
The only complete piece of Shirley's work that I'd ever read, in fact, was an epic poem that she'd written in miniscule longhand across the sides of the stalls in the Hrothgar's ladies' room. It was called "The Hysteriad: A poem written by a woman, about women, and in a womanly space," and — according to Shirley — it was a reaction to the "oppressively masculine space" of Hrothgar's main dining hall, dominated as it was by the phallic central pillar and where not a single heroine could be found among the myriad heroes of the karaoke song-list.
She'd written the poem about four years earlier, which was impressive if only for the fact that Roger remained ignorant of its existence. Because he most definitely would have had it painted over if he'd heard even vague rumors of what it contained. But apparently no one had blabbed, since the poem was still there. It had grown, even, as four years worth of women had added their commentary between Shirley's widely spaced lines. Some of the comments were complimentary and others were critical, but I suspect that Shirley had been happy just to have started a dialogue.
It would be a betrayal of the poem to summarize its content outside of its context, but to say the least I was amazed. I hadn't expected to like it, but I did. I marveled at the musicality of it, as well as its humor and the depth of thought that it displayed. Somehow, before reading it, I'd always written Shirley off as untalented, solely on the basis of her self-admitted pretension. But the poem was actually good. The pretense was justified.
I, however, had come to the point where I couldn't justify my own pretense any longer.
"I never saw Shirley's version of Kyd's Hamlet," I told him. "She did, however, tell me a fair amount about the other one ..."
"Other ane? Other whit? Other Hamlet?" he asked. "Ah cannae say ah'm at aw certain whit ye mean."
"You know exactly what I mean." Onstage, the singer had slipped out of his jacket and draped it over the song machine. He was just coming to the funeral sequence. "I really thought you were dead, you know, and so I figured that it couldn't be you. That you couldn't be him, and that it was safe to like you again ... But what should I call you, now, anyway? I'm definitely not going to keep calling you Angus."
His face was contorted in an admirable display of confusion.
"Jist whit are ye driving at, poppet?" He said it softly, through the corner of his mouth. "Mist ye ay speak in riddles? But we'll have nae more ay this 'Mr. O'Malvins' malarkey, if thah's whit yir suggesting; ah tellt ye earlier thah yir tae caw me Angus an nowt besides."
"No. I'm not going to give you the honor of that name anymore. I'm sorry, but I just never wanted to believe it was you."
"Ye nivir —" he began, turning his eyes to the stage.
"I mean, I guess some part of me has always known, sort of," I interrupted. "But I've always liked you when you called yourself Angus ... What happened between you and Shirley in Denmark, though ... I guess that's what finally made me —" I broke off midsentence and tried to focus on him through my bleary eyes. "I can't believe you could be so hideous!" I spat. "I can't believe that you could do that to her and then be so vain as to —"
His eyes remained on the stage.
"So I'm not going to call you Angus," I said, decisive. "The person I called Angus would never have done that. And he wouldn't have killed her just because ... Why, because she confronted you about it and shattered your illusions that it was anything other than what it was?"
My eyes were already bleary from drunkenness, but now I was beginning to cry.
"You've given me a wide array of other names to choose from, though, haven't you?" I said. "Leshio and Lorenz, those were both you ... And oh yeah — just who's this 'Mutt' Sanders, anyway?"
"You're starting to slur, my dear. Perhaps you had best —"
"Fine," I interrupted. "I suppose Surt will have to do, then."
He sighed. "Do you even appreciate the fact that I did this all for you?" he muttered, not looking at me. "Admittedly, I also benefited; I haven't had a worthy adversary since your mother died. But you've been floundering, my dear. And I have given you meaning."
He watched the stage in silence for a few seconds longer, his jaw slack in the semblance of awe; when he turned to me, though, it was with his most malicious grin. His teeth were as white as snow, and he was just staring at me; it seemed like forever.
For a second, then, in his silence and the strangeness of everything, I forgot what we'd just been talking about. The singer had come to the tavern scene, now, and in order to describe the burly bartender he dipped into an implausibly resonant baritone. I was astounded at the transformation, and I turned to him, my blunted senses focused almost exclusively on the pleasurable vibration of my eardrums for the rest of that second. For the first time, I was really beginning to understand the appeal of this song. And then, in the next second, I was somewhere else entirely.
CHAPTER 2
I thought that I might be unconscious but for the fact that I was thinking. Possibly just in darkness, then, and thinking unclearly. And silence, too. My senses were returning, but with no recollection of where they'd been. Between beer and here, Hrothgar's and now: only an instant.
A stench.
Not like rotten eggs or even sulphur. But methane, maybe. And the ammoniac tang of piss.
It was warm, as well, and I had a headache. In fact, it was hot.
Darkness, silence, odor, heat ... The sewers, then? But my feet weren't wet. I noticed, then, that I was standing. I was still most likely underground, though, so probably the steam tunnels. My own bladder was quite full, but maybe bums pissing down here, methane leaking out of pipes, could account for ... A working hypothesis, at least. But why no lights?
In the distance, maybe. I squinted. No lights apparent, but there was texture. There was distance. Must have been some light, then, somewhere. Something. And I could almost see it.
Shape and movement on the edge of sight ...
Or just phosphene in my eyeballs?
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Icelander"
by .
Copyright © 2006 Dustin Long.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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