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

  “What do you mean?”

  “Okay. Listen. There are basically two kinds of psychiatric suffering.”

  “And they are?”

  “The right and the wrong. Now don’t interrupt me, please.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Anyway. I renewed contact with some old colleagues of mine at the hospital in Tórshavn that autumn, and rang some psychiatrists at the Rikshospitalet in Copenhagen, I explained what I wanted to do, talked them into it, bit by bit, until they eventually let themselves be persuaded and began the painstaking work of copying the long term psychiatric files from the hospital archives. We invested money and time on it, a pristine job, nobody would ever be able tell that the documents held down there in the cellar under tight security were copies, the handwriting, the notes were all replicated precisely, and the originals were sent up here, to me, put in the cabinets that were continually filling up and added to. A complete collection of psychiatric notes from Denmark and the Faroe Islands, 1900–2000, was there, you and Carl being the latest additions.”

  “So you’d collected them all?”

  “Far from it.” He smiled as he completed the next sentence, grandly and emphasizing each word, as though he’d finally fulfilled his life’s work: “Only the right kind.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So I said:

  “So … did you discover anything?”

  It was quiet for a moment, Havstein thought, for a long time, as though evaluating whether he should say more or whether he should just walk away. But then it came, a broad smile that I’ll never forget, and he leaned carefully toward me, and whispered some words into my ear, things I understood, things I’d somehow known all along. I listened, with big ears that turned the world upside down, and when he was finished, I went back to Carl who was waiting impatiently in the office.

  “We’re taking the filing cabinets,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “If you really think it’s best, then fine. Can I ask why?”

  “This is strictly on a need to know basis.”

  “And I don’t need to know, right?”

  “Right.”

  The archives were stored in the warehouse down by the harbor with everything else we were taking, and I told nobody that in this colossal pile of papers one particular file was missing, a file that dealt with an anonymous patient with a passion for buses who had eventually written herself out for good. We used that last month to finish the work on the boat, most of the fittings that Anna, Palli, and Ey∂is had dutifully ordered from Norway, and had adjusted and installed in the cabin, had to be taken down again to save weight, we removed everything superfluous to make space for the files, weighing and adding up the pounds until we were sure we’d float, we left only the toilet and galley. The filing cabinets were emptied and left on land, the papers packed in plastic and laid in the bottom as a sort of floor covering, we took one of the old sofas from the Factory and bolted it fast to the floor between piles of files, it looked absurd, but suited our needs, additionally we laid three thin mattresses on the journals to protect them from water and so that anybody that wasn’t on duty up on deck had somewhere to sleep, and so we could sit in relative comfort when we all needed to be below deck at once. Originally we’d been disappointed that our money didn’t stretch to equipping an entire engine room, but even this turned out for the best now, leaving the space available for water and food storage, and we got hold of a used outboard motor as a substitute from a guy in Klaksvík so we’d have motor power for when the wind dropped, and to get safely in and out of harbor. Adjustments and more layers of paint and coatings were done in shifts, we worked around the clock, I took the night shift with Carl, we’d given up our jobs, slept through the day, and at about ten in the evening we’d wander down to the harbor with Ey∂is and relieve Havstein and Óli. But it was on the night we brought in outside help, and the hull was lifted from its crib and out of the warehouse, and the rig was mounted to the foot of the mast—it was on that night that it hit me how serious this was, that it sank in for me that we were about to leave the Faroes for good, and that there was no plan for our return. That was when I started sleeping badly again. I’d lie in bed, wide awake, then get up, sit in the living room downstairs, listen to the others snoring and turning in their sleep above. I got through the nights on auto-pilot, my brain unplugged, by day I struggled to get the enormous sails in place with all their weight and all their wires and ropes, a tangle, I got caught and lost my temper, I screamed and shouted and Carl came to my rescue, I gave up several times only to try again half an hour later, Ey∂is did everything she could to make things better for me, but it was no good, it wasn’t her fault, and gradually she kept her distance as we worked, I hardly saw her before we wandered back home at about six in the morning, and I didn’t talk to her about it, I couldn’t blame her or say it would pass soon, because I wasn’t sure it would, I didn’t understand it myself, I thought perhaps I was nervous we wouldn’t be ready on time, so I started working a double shift, I went at ten in the evening and staggered home at two in the afternoon, creeping up to the bedroom to lie down. Havstein wore the same worried expression I remembered from nearly two years earlier when he talked to me, but he was tired too and didn’t really know what to do, nobody ever said it directly, but he was the one with the overall responsibility for making sure everything was ready on time, and at the end of the day, it was his Caribbean we were going to, he’d get the blame if it didn’t live up to our expectations and if life didn’t improve, get easier.

  It was one of the last days of March. I woke Ey∂is up when I came home at around two, she rolled out of the duvet looking disheveled.

  “We need to go to Saksun today,” I said.

  She yawned and looked at the clock.

  “Have you just gotten home?”

  I nodded.

  “You must get some sleep, Mattias. You’ll wear yourself out like this. You’re wearing me out, you do realize that?”

  “The boat will be ready soon. By tomorrow perhaps.”

  “What do we have to do in Saksun?”

  “I want to deliver a present.”

  “Do you even know anybody there?”

  “Kind of.”

  She sighed, rubbed her face, gave me a hug.

  “Okay, Mattias, okay. Give me half an hour, and I’ll come with you.”

  “I’ll wait downstairs.”

  I closed the door behind me and met Havstein on the stairs on his way up to bed, utter jetlag in this house now.

  “I’ve left the package on the telephone table. It’s kind of you to do this, Mattias.”

  “Thanks.”

  I walked past him, put on my coat in the hallway, took the package and went to the car, waited for half an hour.

  Thirty three minutes later Ey∂is woke me up behind the wheel, she wanted to drive, fine by me, I walked around the car and got into the passenger seat, shut my eyes, the car started up and we swung out into the narrow streets and up toward Hoyvíksvegur, heading North.

  I was woken up by the sun in my eyes halfway between Hvalvík and Saksun, Ey∂is was driving at seventy miles per hour along this narrow road, no doubt bored.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “We’re going fast enough, aren’t we?” I mumbled, checking that my safety belt was fastened.

  “So, when do you intend to tell me why it was so crucial for us to come out here today?”

  “I’m delivering a book.”

  “A book?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  I asked Ey∂is to park in front of the small white church with grass growing on its roof. A day for romantic idylls. As it should be for one of our last days in the country. Like the last week of your summer vacation when you were a kid, you remember? The clarity of the air that week. How it was hardly ever cloudy. I took out the package and asked Ey∂is to hold it as I opened the trunk and took out a shovel, opene
d the gate and walked into the graveyard behind the church, Ey∂is following close behind.

  “Are you going to dig some bodies up too now? Is that it?”

  “No, I’m not going to dig anything up. I’m going to bury something.”

  We went up to the stone wall, and stood before Sofia’s gravestone. “I don’t like this, Mattias. I don’t like it at all.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Yes, I knew her. But only a little, as it turned out.”

  Ey∂is bent down and read the inscription.

  “She wasn’t old. What happened?”

  “She was hit by a bus.”

  “I’m sorry, Mattias.”

  “Don’t be. She was very fond of buses. It could have been worse.”

  I put the shovel in the ground, lifted the earth and left it to the side, and peered over my shoulder on the lookout for residents who might think I was desecrating graves or worse.

  “Have you got the package?” I asked quickly.

  Ey∂is handed the parcel to me, and I lifted Fielding’s Guide to the Caribbean plus the Bahamas out of its paper. It had been Havstein’s idea to leave the book here, so we’d feel we were taking Sofia with us, in some way or other. I lay the beat-up book in the earth, with all its scribblings, its underlinings, all its additional sheets tucked inside and years of research still intact, I felt a little uneasy, even though deep down I thought it was good, that it drew a line under things, somehow. I returned the dirt to the earth, patted it carefully down with the back of the shovel.

  “Is it kind of to give her a map of where we’re going?”

  “Havstein asked me to do it.”

  “Do you think she’ll find the way? With the help of the book, I mean.”

  I smiled, though I’m not sure it had the intended effect.

  “Maybe she’ll take a wrong turn and end up in the Bahamas. She could be a bit scatterbrained.” We laughed, a laughter that was out of place, that didn’t contain what the advert promised.

  We put the shovel in the car and wandered over the slopes towards Pollur, the little lake below. It was low tide and the lake was reduced to an enormous sandy beach, we walked over toward Vestmannhavn and I gave Ey∂is the long version, about Fielding’s Caribbean and about Sofia who I’d started to adore without really knowing it.

  I sleep in the car on the way back too, only notice Ey∂is patting me on the head as though I’m a little boy going home long past bedtime, and I don’t remember getting back, I don’t remember going in, or talking to anybody or doing anything at all, and when I wake up again it’s the last night, Palli is standing in my doorway, almost jumping up and down with excitement, talking about the boat and Havstein, and Havstein has said that the boat’s ready and that the boat is finished and that we must pack and that we’re leaving early tomorrow morning and he says we’ve got to get up and that we’re going to meet at Café Natúr in a couple of hours and that the boat is finished and isn’t it fantastic and we’re going to the Caribbean and they’re about to launch her, Anna’s tying a bottle of champagne to the rope that’ll smash against the side of the boat and christen her in half an hour, and I have to get up and get dressed and come and then he’s gone and I’m left standing alone in my bedroom and the floor is cold, I’m already packed, have been for days, it’s the last evening of March and by this time tomorrow we’ll be gone, we’ll have evacuated this country.

  So we christened the boat. We got her out to sea, and she floated. Then we moored her securely in the harbor and went to Café Natúr. We were in good spirits, but I was so tired, had problems holding myself upright, and reality and fiction began slowly to slide into each other, turning into a mess, and the harder I tried to pull myself together, the further I floated out, and this is how I remember things, I’m sitting at one of the tables in the middle of the venue, it’s Saturday and there’s barely space to move, I clutch onto my beer and the mood’s pretty good, it seems, spirits high, because in a few hours we’ll board the boat, Ey∂is wanders around the café saying goodbye to friends, she’s told them we’re going, has talked to her parents and everybody knows now that we’re off, and Havstein, Anna, and Palli have told their families that they’re leaving, I’ve lied and told everybody I’ve called home, but haven’t, I can do it when I arrive, I think, just as good, I think, and in the confusion, hidden behind dozens of heads and backs, there’s a band playing, and they’re playing loud, it’s barely possible to keep a conversation going, so we mainly smile at each other, that is, I think I’m smiling, but can’t say for sure, it might be that my mouth’s just open and I lift my glass, I drink, I think I’m drunk, I look around and see Carl light a cigarette and give me a thumbs up as our eyes meet, he arches one eyebrow and takes a deep drag on his cigarette, and I think how sitting there, right there, is one of the best friends you could have and I hope things will improve for him, and I look at Havstein who can’t help me, but has nonetheless, I look at Anna who hasn’t been herself since Sofia went, but who’s worked day and night all these months so we could get away, she’s ready to leave, and I look at Palli who already misses the Faroes, just as I do, he’s gazing around the café, and I can see what he’s up to, he’s trying to take a snapshot of the whole room, this place, so he can remember every detail, like a mental snapshot, and I’d have done the same, but I ran out of film long ago, and the film got overexposed, the light got in and it all went white, and now I see myself getting up, I bang into the table and stand there swaying, prop myself up on Havstein’s hands, he’s saying something, but I can’t hear what and I answer with a snort before I cast off my moorings and sail out into the café, point myself in the direction of where the crowd is thickest and disappear into it, hey presto, I’m gone, and I pop up on the other side and from here I can’t see my friends, can’t hear them, but I certainly know they’re there, and I stand face to face with the vocalist of a band I don’t recognize, stand right in front of one of the loudspeakers and can’t even hear my own thoughts if I’m thinking at all and between two songs I lean over the vocalist, lose my footing, lunge toward him and land in front of the drums, there are shoes around me on all sides and the floor is dirty, sticky, the vocalist has dropped his microphone and it’s just inches from me, so I grab hold of it and shout into it, can barely hear my voice as it reverberates through the room and for a moment I can hear my thoughts again, and then I close my eyes, and then I start to sing, sing whatever comes into my head, don’t know where it comes from, at first it’s just words, the band seems to be waiting, waiting for me to shove off or for me to hit a note, and the vocalist stares glumly at me, or maybe he’s just confused, probably the latter, and I ask if he’s going to drop the bomb or not, but he doesn’t know himself, and I start for some reason on “Forever Young,” the Alphaville song, don’t know why, but I do, even though I don’t want to live forever, in no way, I shout, who wants to live forever, and so I’m there, singing on my own, and remembering the words, I haven’t heard this song for nearly twenty years and that’s probably why I sing it rather than any other, and behind me, far behind me, I hear the band finding my key and following me, they know the song, I lie on the floor like a drunk teenager singing Alphaville songs and I don’t want to stay forever young, but if I could stay here, on the Faroes, then I could, then I’d be forever young, stumbling between two stars in Smurfland where the rain just keeps hailing down and the mountains get greener by the day, meanwhile I pretend and am believed, they believe me, all of them, and bet their money on it, and now the whole café is silent, only the song can be heard, it rises from the floor, pushes its way past elbows and bodies and heads and beer glasses, my voice holds as never before and I notice the customers stop what they’re doing, frozen to the spot, the bartender leaves the taps open and the beer runs over, down over the counter, onto the floor and it washes over me, I am under water or beer, not easy to tell, and somebody pulls at me, but I don’t want to budge, don’t want to move a
n inch, and the band stops playing, but I don’t shift, I lie there, the vocalist tears the microphone from my hand and they start playing “My Favorite Game,” but it’s a bad choice, since I know my Cardigans, I know them to my fingertips and they don’t know that, and I grab the vocalist’s legs, pull as hard as I can so he falls, landing like a sack at my side and he’s not angry anymore, just surprised, I yell at him, but I’m not certain what I say, he says something about karaoke though I realize it’s not meant as an invitation when he shoves the microphone in my face, and I mumble the lyrics to “My Favorite Game” before I find my foothold, steady myself and belt the lyrics out, the band doing everything they can to keep up, I sing as hard as I can and the applause hits the roof, a roaring wall comes toward me and I can’t even hear myself, but I know where I am, I know this song backward and forward, I sing louder and louder and I think of the book I buried with Sofia yesterday or one day recently and I should have buried her CDs too, but it’s too late now, impossible, because we’re leaving soon and we’ll never be back and a part of me or all of me no longer wants to go and I think that the Faroes are the best thing that ever happened to me and I think of the beach in Gjógv, of the house in Tórsgøta and of the mountains, I mustn’t forget the mountains and all the people I’ve met here that I didn’t believe existed, I don’t want to go, I’m a pilot whale caught in Hvalvík or Mivagur out of season, I don’t want to go now, I want to keep on driving my car along these roads, over the mountains through the darkness of the night, through the dense, low fog of the morning, I can almost speak the language now and I want to stay here with the people I’ve found, but this is not where the future is, because in a few hours I’ll carry the final boxes on board, and I think to myself I’ll never forget all this, never forget all of you even though we’re already forgotten, and I motion to the band to take it one more time and they’ll do anything I want now, and the vocalist has come to sit next to me on the floor and I take the verse one more time, draw on all I have and a bit more besides, this is the last time I’ll sing and it’s not over until the fat lady sings and she hasn’t arrived yet at Café Natúr, and so I go on, and on, faster and faster, a tinkling of windowpanes and the glass shatters from the pressure, chairs crack under their own weight and I finish the song, let the guitarist play the theme one last time, but almost nobody is listening to him, because the applause has already exploded and I just have enough time to see Havstein standing on a table with Carl, they’re not looking pleased, they’re not laughing, have worried faces or at least it seems that way before I tumble out of the window, land on the asphalt below, and there’s total silence.