Ian Hamilton - The wild beast of Wuhan

Then she stepped into the shower and scrubbed and rescrubbed every pore of her body. She washed her hair three times. She stepped out of the shower and towelled herself off, then put on her blue-and-white pinstriped shirt and her cotton Brooks Brothers slacks. She finished off the look with her new cufflinks and her gold crucifix and applied a generous spray of Annick Goutal perfume. The laundry bag sat on the bed. She sniffed. No urine smell. She packed it into her carry-on.

The same woman who had rented her the car that morning was at the booth when Ava took it back. She took the keys, noted the mileage, and passed Ava her credit card slip to sign, all without saying a word.

The flight from Aalborg was supposed to take just less than an hour, but it left late and she had to run to catch the Atlantic Airways flight in Copenhagen. That flight was scheduled to last two and a half hours, and because the fare difference between business class and economy was so large, Ava had booked economy. About ten minutes after takeoff she realized she had made a mistake. For the next two hours the liquor trolley made steady trips up and down the aisle. Passengers were buying doubles of everything. Ava had never seen anything like it.

“This is their last chance,” the man in the seat next to her said. “The islands are dry. Liquor can’t be bought anywhere there, not even in hotels. And Customs is very strict about people bringing in alcohol. So this is their last chance to load up.”

“Thank God it isn’t a longer flight,” Ava said.

“Oh, it could be.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Vagar Airport gets a lot of mist and quite often the plane can’t land. They usually divert us to Reykjavik.”

“Iceland?”

“It isn’t so bad, though the people there are more depressed than ever since the country went bankrupt.”

“How are the Faeroe Islands?”

“People there are always depressed, or maybe I should say morose, regardless of what’s going on. It’s definitely a place where the glass is permanently half empty.”

“You are Faeroese?”

“No,” he said, extending a hand. “My name is Lars. I work for the Danish government. We still heavily subsidize the islands, and I fly there every month or so to make sure the money is being spent as it should be.”

“I’m Ava.”

“What on earth is taking you there?”

“A painter, an artist.”

“In the past you would see the occasional Japanese person there; they came to buy fish. There isn’t much fish left, so no more Japanese. You will be an exotic sight. You can expect to be stared at.”

“I’m Chinese, not Japanese.”

“Still, a very unusual sight in the Faeroes. The population is about ninety-four percent Faeroese — old Viking — and the rest a mixture of Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders. There are only about forty thousand people. They’re outnumbered by sheep more than two to one.”

“I don’t have a hotel yet. Will that be a problem?”

“It shouldn’t be. Torshavn has lots of them, and at this time of year there aren’t many tourists.”

“The artist lives in a village near there, Tjorn.”

“I know the place. Quite picturesque. The Russian trawlers use it as a base. There’s a hotel there, actually, sort of a fisherman’s hotel. It’s not bad.”

“How about the weather? I didn’t bring a jacket — none that I can wear anyway.”

“It will be cool and most probably wet. It rains about 260 days a year. You can buy a locally handmade sweater at the airport; that should do you.”

“No snow?”

“Surprisingly, very rarely. The North Atlantic Current flows right around the Faeroes and gives it moderate temperatures. Nothing warm, mind you, but you know, ten degrees in the summer, two degrees in the winter, that type of thing.”

It was pitch black outside as they banked and started their descent into Vagar Airport. When Ava finally saw lights, they shone through a window that was streaked with rain.

For an airport so small there was a large contingent of customs officers standing behind a long wooden table. She soon saw why. They went through nearly every carry-on bag and patted down many of the passengers. Bottles of alcohol of all sizes began to cover the table. By the time she got to an officer there was enough to start a small liquor store.

Behind her was a row of wheelchairs occupied solely by men who looked too drunk to walk. As the chair behind her rolled, she could hear the clinking of bottles.

Lars walked with her into the terminal. He pointed out the sweater shop and a tourist information booth. “It’s about a one-hour ride by car into Torshavn since they built the tunnel under the sea from Vagar to Streymoy. Before that it was a couple of hours by ferry. We can share a cab if you want,” he said.

“Let me get my hotel sorted first. Would you mind waiting?”

The woman at the booth seemed startled when Ava approached her, and even more so when Ava asked about the hotel in Tjorn. “Are you sure you want to stay there?” she asked.

“Is it clean?”

“Of course.”

“Are there rooms available?”

“I’ll call,” the woman said.

The conversation was entirely in what Ava assumed was Faeroese. When it was done, the woman gave her a little smile and said, “Yes, there is a room, and it’s one with a bathroom.”

“I’ll take it.”

“They’re holding it.”

“They don’t even have my name.”

“They don’t need it. I told them who you are.”

“But you don’t — ” Ava began, before realizing what the woman meant. “Thank you.”

She went back to Lars. “I’m staying in Tjorn.”

“Then you should catch your own taxi. It will cost you about 180 krona.”

“What is that in U.S. dollars?”

“About forty, but most of the drivers won’t take U.S. dollars. There’s a bank machine over there if you need it.”

“Thanks for all the help.”

“If you’re in Torshavn for dinner or something, give me a call. I’m staying at the Town House Hotel and I’m always glad to have company.”

She waved goodbye and wandered over to the gift shop. When Lars mentioned sweaters, she had imagined bulky knits in greys, blacks, and browns. But in the far corner she saw an explosion of colour and the name steinum above a rack that held some of the most exquisite knitwear Ava had ever seen. The sweaters were a riot of blues, reds, and yellows, with strange geometric shapes running around the edges. They were like pieces of art, no two the same. She checked the label: handknit, faeroe islands.

She had a hard time deciding which one to buy, so she bought two.

“These are beautiful,” she said to the cashier.

“Johanna av Steinum — she is Faeroese.”

Ava pulled on the most colourful one, the fit tight, slimming. I’m like a Fauvist painting come alive, she thought.

The hotel was a long, low building of only two storeys that sat at the base of a mountain, looking out directly onto the harbour. Tjorn was small. The main street, or what Ava assumed was the main street, ran for only about two hundred metres, separating the harbour from the town. The majority of the residents seemed to live above the harbour, their house lights beaming from the mountain side. She saw a number of fishing boats tied up at the wharf, and at least one of them was Russian, judging by its Cyrillic name.

She was met at the hotel door by a woman in denim shirt and jeans who looked like a slightly older version of Mimi. “I have been waiting for you. My name is Nina,” the woman said in English.

“I’m Ava.”

She led Ava to the lobby desk. She passed her a registry form and a key attached to a wooden stick. “I held the room with the bathroom for you.”