Viator

One

Wilander had grown accustomed to his cabin aboard Viator. Small and unadorned, it suited him, partly because his aspirations were equally small and unadorned, but also because it resonated with dreams of a romantic destiny, of extraordinary adventures in distant lands, that had died in him years before, yet seemed to have been technically fulfilled now he was quartered aboard a freighter whose captain had steered her into the shore at so great a speed, she had ridden up onto the land, almost her entire length embedded among firs and laurel and such, so that when you rounded the headland (as Wilander himself had done the previous month, standing at the bow of a tug that brought mail and supplies to that section of the Alaskan coast, big-knuckled hands gripping the rail and long legs braced, the wind whipping his pale blond hair back from his bony, lugubrious face, the pose of an explorer peering anxiously toward a mysterious smudge on the horizon), all you saw of Viator was the black speck of her stern, circular at that distance, like a period set between beautiful dark-green sentences.

The cabin was situated above decks. By day, natural light of an extraordinary clarity was filtered through the ports by sprays of broad palmate leaves, those of a linden whose crown had been compressed against the outer wall; and by night, illumined by a sixty-watt bulb above the sink and a bedside lamp with an antique tortoiseshell shade that Wilander had purchased from Arlene Dauphinée, the red-headed woman who managed the trading post in the town of Kaliaska, the cream-colored interior walls burned gold and the space shrank around him, conforming precisely to the sphere of his desires, secure and warm and secret, and he would have a sense of the cabin’s light filtering outward through caliginous tangles of fern and vine and root, lending a teleological significance to the riotous growth, as if the forest would have no meaning, or rather would have the random, disorderly, terrifying causality of a nightmare were it not for this glowing cell encysted at its heart, occupied by its serene monastic dreamer.

At night the four men who had taken up residence aboard Viator prior to Wilander’s arrival would visit him in his cabin, though this was by no means a frequent occurrence. Indeed, nearly a week elapsed before he spoke with any of them, having until then only caught glimpses of the others as they wandered the gutted bowels of the ship, and when they responded to his hailings diffidently or not at all, he had gone about his business, assuming they resented his authority because he was a latecomer, and that he would have to win them over with patience, by accommodating their eccentricities—yet on the sixth night, when Peter Halmus burst through the door, short and stocky, his muscles run to flab, his scalp shaved, his fleshy features framed to some self-perceived advantage by a carefully razored beard, a strip of dark brown hair approximately a quarter-inch wide outlining the jaw, with a thinner vertical line connecting the point of the chin to the lower lip, a conceit more appropriate to a nobleman of ancient Persia, the conversation did not proceed as Wilander had expected; which is to say, tentatively, pleasantly, building the foundation of a relationship…No, Halmus spoke in a gruff voice, a voice atremble with anger, saying he had observed Wilander knocking out glass from a broken port and cautioning him never to do so again. Viator’s glass, he said, was his purview. He alone was responsible for completing a study of the glass and estimating its worth. He would tolerate no interference. And when Wilander, choosing not to confront the irrationality implicit in these statements, suggested that he had been trying to avoid an injury, nothing more, Halmus began to talk madly, mad with regard to his lack of coherence and also from the standpoint of a mad aesthetic, describing how twenty-two years of weathering unattended by any maintenance had produced discolorations that lent every crumb of glass a mineral value and refined mirrors into works of art; pacing between the doorway and the sink as he delivered this preachment, this rant, two quick steps, then a turn, punctuating disconnected phrases with a shaken fist, a slap against the thigh, his fulminant energy unnerving Wilander, who felt penned in his bunk, sitting with the top of his head just touching the underside of a shelf that held a few books, a wallet, keys, trinkets, coins, all he carried of the past.

—Very well, he said. I won’t remove any more glass. But the glass, you understand…It’s not the important thing. We’re to determine the salvage value of the metal. Isn’t that what Lunde told you?

—Arnsparger is in charge of metals. This was said flatly, as if Halmus were stating an irrefutable law, an essential condition of the universe.

—Arnsparger, said Wilander.

—Yes. The metal of the hull and superstructure. The rest, the fixtures, the galley, the engine…what’s left of it. All that’s Nygaard’s responsibility.

—And Mortensen?

Halmus appeared to consider the question. Lately, he said, he’s been preoccupied with the hold.

—Preoccupied, you say. Wilander swung his legs off the edge of the bunk and sat up. It seems you need little direction from me, but I should remind you this is a job, not a preoccupation. Lunde is depending on us.

—Lunde has no interest in what we do.

—On the contrary. He stated his interest quite clearly to me. We’re to provide him with an estimate so he can decide what to do with this old wreck.

Halmus’ face tightened in a scowl, as if he were displeased by the term old wreck. Shall I tell you about your relationship with our Mister Lunde?

—If you think it’s relevant.

Halmus glared at Wilander and said, Relevant? What would you know of relevance? You’ve been here a week!

—I know I want to keep this job. Steady work, unchallenging work, with virtually no expenses. That’s what’s relevant to me.

Halmus lifted his right hand to his ear, palm outward, fingers curved, as if intending to hurl an invisible stone, and for a time he was incapable of coherent speech. Why should I talk to you? he said with disdain, letting his had fall. You’re the husband of the linden tree. You have no speciality.

Several evenings later, Arden Nygaard knocked politely and inquired of Wilander whether he might be able to obtain a tool for the purpose of stripping chrome. He was slight and clean shaven, with limp gray hair and stooped shoulders, schoolteacherish in his wire-rimmed glasses, and yet he was possessed of a gaze so mild and unvarying, it gave the impression that he was simple-minded, dredging up Wilander’s memories of dwellers in street missions and homeless shelters, men whose intellects, brutalized by poverty and alcohol, had been pared down to childlike proportions and who would happily stare for hours at a shoe or a stain on the wall, seeing there some delightful shape or a fantasy incited by that shape, and this impression of impairment, of gentle madness, was furthered by his response to the question, Why don’t you walk into Kaliaska and order the tool?, which was, I don’t like going there, followed by a prolonged nodding, as if he were serially reaffirming the statement, testing its validity by examining it from various angles, satis fying himself that its application to the matter was appropriate in every respect. Wilander thought to ask why he didn’t like going to the village, but, suspecting that Nygaard would be no more incisive in his response and distressed by the presence of this sad little fellow who reminded him of a day not long removed when he had lived among such men and might himself have been seen as impaired by the casual eye, he sought to cut short the visit and promised that he would order the stripping tool the next time he went for supplies. Nygaard shuffled over to the sink and touched one of the faucets, petting the chrome, then smiled weakly at Wilander and went on his way.

Having had this much experience of Halmus and Nygaard, Wilander speculated that the other two members of the crew might also be mentally deficient, but Henrik Arnsparger, red-cheeked, round-faced, fortyish and plump, his belly overlapping the waist of grease-stained chinos, with thinning blond hair and an affable, garrulous disposition that seemed to fit within the parameters of normal behavior, eased Wilander’s concerns; and when Arnsparger flopped into the swivel chair beside the tiny writing desk affixed to the cabin wall and let his burlap sack drop with a clank onto the floor and started in talking as if they were great friends who hadn’t seen one another for a while, Wilander thought that here was an ally, someone in whom he could confide, someone who would give straight answers to his questions and not carry tales, and thus he asked Arnsparger to explain a few things: Why had Halmus called him the husband of the linden tree; what had he meant by saying that Lunde had no interest in the crew’s performance; and why was Nygaard reticent about going into Kaliaska?

—You can never be sure what’s going on in Nygaard’s head, Arnsparger said. That guy’s got no roof on his attic. Things fly in and fly right out again. But none of us like spending time in town. You’ve seen it. It’s a horrible place. Drunks and snarling dogs and hostile stares. As for Halmus, I suppose he was talking about this linden tree. The one outside your port.

—I can’t think what else he could have meant.

Arnsparger leaned back and blew out air through his lips as if snuffing a candle. Mortensen said something when I first arrived. We were the only two here, then, and he took me under his wing. He was a real talker in those days. Not so much now.

—How long has he been here?

—I’m not sure. He said he came when the snow was still deep. He’s the one who set up the generators, you know. And he got the plumbing going, too. Anyway, he told me Viator had penetrated the forest and consummated a marriage between the organic and the inorganic. His words, not mine. I still don’t know what the hell he was talking about. He said we were all part of the marriage. I was wedded to iron, he said. And he told Halmus he was beloved by glass. He’s always going on like that. Spouting philosophy.

—It sounds more like fantasy.

—Is there a difference? Arnsparger nudged the burlap sack with his foot. What I’m saying, maybe he expanded the metaphor and told Halmus you were the husband of the linden tree. Halmus isn’t smart enough to make something like that up. The guy went to college, but he don’t have a clue. You should ask Mortensen. If you can persuade him to talk, I bet he’ll have a hell of an explanation.

Wilander unscrewed the cap on a bottle of water, but did not drink, puzzling over what had been said.

—It’s an odd situation, Arnsparger went on. All of us have wondered about it. Doesn’t it seem odd to you? Four guys…five, now. Five men of Scandinavian heritage down on their luck. They all seek employment at a temp agency run by another Scandinavian guy. They get to be friends with him and then he sends them to live on Viator. That how it happened for you, right?

—You were friends with Lunde? All of you?

—You thought it was just you, eh? That you were a special case? Me, too. I figured we’d be pals for life, me and Lunde. He bought me lunches, took me to movies, we talked about Sweden…Not that I know shit about it. My family emigrated when I was three. For a while I thought he was an old fag, but eventually I decided he was just lonely, he wanted to reminisce.

—It was the same for the others?

—Yeah, but once we got here, Lunde wasn’t so eager to talk to us. He keeps things businesslike on the phone. Anything to report? he’ll ask. And you say, no…or maybe you tell him some bullshit. Then he’ll ask if you’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary. Nope, not a thing. Okay, he’ll say. Keep up the good work. God knows what work he expects we’re doing. There’s not a damn thing to do.

Wind stirred the branches of the linden, its leaves splayed across the port like simple green hands lovingly massaging the glass, and Arnsparger held forth on the folly of Lunde’s plan, how ridiculous it was, the idea of bringing in forty or fifty men to break the vessel into scrap—you’d be deep in the red after paying for labor, living expenses, all the rest. Now if Viator had reached her destination…Had Lunde mentioned to Wilander that she’d been headed for South America to be scrapped? That’s right. One of those places where shipbreaking is the main occupation. It must be a hellhole, wherever it was. And they must not care about cancer. These old ships, they were full of asbestos, every sort of poison. He’d done a computer search before leaving Fairbanks, at the public library, and the places where they broke ships apart, they were wastelands, long beaches with dozens of hulks listing along the shore, some reduced to skeletons, and hundreds of workers filing inside them, like prisoners marching into death chambers. In a place like that, breaking Viator wouldn’t make extra overhead, and nobody cared how many people sickened and died as a result, not so long as they made themselves a few pesos. Here you’d have start-up costs. Nothing but overhead. You’d have unions looking at you. Labor do-gooders. All that for one ship? It made no sense.

Arnsparger pushed up to his feet, shouldered his sack, and shook Wilander’s hand. Well, Tom, see you around. It’s okay I call you Tom, is it? Thomas seems too formal under the circumstances.

—Tom is fine.

Arnsparger smacked himself lightly on the forehead. I almost forgot. He fished a cell phone from a trouser pocket and passed it to Wilander. Your turn, he said.

Wilander looked at him quizzically.

—We all took our turn, except for Nygaard, Arnsparger said. Making reports and all.

—Oh, right.

—I hate to put you to work right away, but can you order me some jewel boxes? Those plastic cases you keep CDs in? I could use a couple of gross. They’re dirt cheap when you buy them in bulk.

—Why do you need them?

—For my samples. Come over to my place some night and I’ll show you.

—I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying about Lunde, Wilander said. It’s your opinion that he sent us here for no real purpose?

—What can I tell you? When I call him, I always throw in some figures, some revised estimates. To keep him happy, you know. I like this job. But if I try to draw him out, if I ask about the project, when will the rest of the men arrive, or even just say, What’s up? he either says he’s got another call or that someone in the office needs his help. I used to think he was doing his pals a favor, giving us this easy job, but he doesn’t act friendly anymore. Maybe he’ll explain it to you. After all, you’ll be making the calls now. You’re the man in charge. Arnsparger grinned and threw Wilander a snappy salute. You’re the husband of the linden tree.