By the time we sail past the silvery glacier, there are few passengers left up on deck. The sea churns with small whales, spouting fountain upon fountain into the sky. The surge swells, the open ocean lies ahead and the island fades in the distance; soon it will be a faint black mass under a tangle of clouds.
At night when my cabin mates are asleep, I go up on deck and lie down and look at the sky.
I’m alive.
I’m free.
I’m alone.
When I wake up, they are setting up the lunch buffet. The sea is calm with gently rippling waves, and the Faroe Islands line the horizon.
I take the parcel the poet gave me from my case, unwrap and open it. It’s a fountain pen.
He’s had it engraved in golden letters: Hekla, our national poetess.
The city of glowing copper rooftops
It’s calm and raining when we pull into the port early in the morning after five days of sailing. There’s no blustery surf here, no foam crashing against the rocks, just a slight nudge on the side of the ship and a glistening silvery surface.
I immediately spot D.J. Johnsson standing on the quay, waving at me in a small cluster of people. I edge my way down the gangway with my typewriter and case and he elbows his way through the crowd to welcome me. He embraces and holds me tight for a long moment and then lets go to look at me. He’s wearing a brown ruffled corduroy suit and a purple shirt. His hair has grown.
“Let’s go,” he says, as he takes the case from me, opens an umbrella and holds it over me. “It’s not far. They use umbrellas abroad,” he adds with a smile.
People are on their way to work, most of them on bikes. More cyclists than I had imagined.
We wander down paved streets along the canals, passing warehouses and apartment blocks, and cross over a bridge. Although I feel like a stranger in this city, the street names are familiar: Sturlasgade, Löngubrú and H.C. Andersen Boulevard. I notice a man on a bike holding a violin case.
“You’ve got to watch out for the trams, they’re silent. So you don’t end up like the poet Jón Thoroddsen who got run over by one when he was only twenty-six years old.”
On our way my friend tells me that he first got a job washing dishes and cleaning, then at a pig farm on the outskirts and had to take a train. Now he does shift work at a men’s bar, not far from St Peter’s church, but he is still hoping to get a job in the costume department of a theatre. He says he’s got a friend who knows someone who works in theatre and thinks he might be able to get him into a tailor’s firm.
“I saw Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night this winter,” he says. “I wish I had made the costumes.”
I read the Danish signs and names of shops and try to memorize the landmarks: Politiken, udsalg, lædervarer, cigaretter og tobak, gummistøvler.
As we approach the central train station, the Tivoli towers become visible.
“We’re almost there,” D.J. Johnsson says, turning into Istedgade.
“This is where we live,” he says, stopping in front of a red-brick building. “On the fourth floor, round the back. The entrance from the yard.”
Two women stand down a cobbled alleyway, with cigarettes in the corners of their mouths.
Ivy creeps up the wall beside them.
“They’re friends of mine,” says D.J. Johnsson.
He follows me up the peeling lino-covered stairs, close on my heels, and says he’s counted the steps: there are eighty-four. I hear a child cry and an exclamation from a neighbouring apartment, but can’t make out the words being said.
“One more floor,” he says.
On the penultimate landing, he stops and inserts a key into a lock. The linoleum is swollen.
The flat consists of two rooms and the front room has to be crossed to get to the inner one. The inner room contains a single bed, the other a sofa. He puts the case down on the bed and opens the window. A pigeon coos.
“You take the bed and I’ll have the sofa,” he says, and adds that he also works night shifts and isn’t always at home.
I nod. I’m still experiencing some dock rock.
The window overlooks a back garden with a drooping broad-leafed tree.
The Danes call it a bøgetræ, he says, pointing at the tree.
Furniture is being dragged along the floor in the apartment above.
“This is what it’s like abroad, Hekla,” he says.
I’m shivery after the crossing, so D.J. Johnsson says he’s going to turn on the radiator.
He has bought rye bread and salami and says he’s going to put on some coffee. I follow him into the kitchen, which is shared with three other flats, as is the bathroom, and he teaches me how to use the gas stove. There’s a cold water tap in the kitchen.
D.J. Johnsson briefs me while the water is boiling.
“There are a number of things you have to get used to,” he says. “They eat pork and the rind as well and make meatballs out of it too. They also eat chicken. And they drink ale in the middle of a working day. Pubs are always open. And another thing, Hekla, it gets dark at night, even in the spring.”
All windows open out
onto an imaginary world
In the evening D.J. Johnsson goes to work the night shift at the bar. The child
