Andrew Ervin - Burning Down George Orwell's House

“Definitely.”

They walked for another hour, long enough for the rain to stop and the sun to dry their hair and clothes. Wet blades of grass stuck to his soggy boots. Back at the house, they stood on the stoop. The stain of animal fluids hadn’t washed away in the rain. Molly took off her wellies and socks, but didn’t stop there. Just as Ray had done on several occasions, she unbuttoned her pants and climbed out of them. Her legs were pale but looked exercised and uncorrupted by age or high-fructose corn syrup. She removed her shirt and then her undershirt and bra. Ray stood transfixed. Although he did his damnedest not to notice, she had a beautiful body.

Molly raised her arms and stretched with a loud groan in the breeze, soaking the atmospheric conditions into her skin. Her white underpants were the only thing standing between this girl and the full frontal nudity of the painting upstairs. She was so comfortable, so at ease with herself: a living, breathing sheela na-gig. Her nakedness had nothing to do with him. It was like he wasn’t there, or like she didn’t care that he was. The self-assurance was wondrous. “I’m going to take a long bath,” she said, “then I’ll see about something to eat. I’m famished.”

The water started running upstairs. She was singing a song Ray recognized, but couldn’t make out. He poured a large dram — he didn’t notice the age — and drank it in one long go. As far as Molly was concerned, he was so old, or now so familiar, so beyond the realm of sexual desirability, that in her mind there was nothing unusual about stripping naked in his presence or sunbathing topless outside his window.

In the weeks that followed, they fell into the habit of picnicking at a different spot every day. He would bounce ideas about Orwell off Molly, and she would fill him in about the history of the island. They visited the sites of Jura’s Iron Age settlements and ancient battles. She taught him about the Viking blood feuds that spanned generations, pitted neighbor against neighbor, and still got voiced in the sternly worded letters to the editor of a newsletter over on Islay.

The more he heard about Jura’s history — true or not — and the more he saw of its natural splendor, the better he came to appreciate the hardships Orwell had experienced. Molly also got him up to speed on the marital, legal, and pharmaceutical problems besetting the entire population. They found traces of old footpaths on which their stravaigs, as Molly called their walks, grew longer and her stories wilder. One afternoon, they followed a deer trail off into the wild. “I had an interesting conversation with Farkas not too long ago,” Ray told her. “He wants me to believe that he’s a werewolf.”

“Are you suggesting he isn’t?” Molly asked.

“So everyone on Jura just plays along, is that it?”

“You still don’t understand the ways things are here, do you?”

“I like Farkas, don’t get me wrong, but he needs a good psychiatrist.”

“As opposed to a bad psychiatrist?”

“As opposed to being surrounded by people willing to play along with his delusions.”

“Now I understand that you’re the sophisticated advertising executive and we’re all a lot of backwards Diurachs, but can’t you even consider the possibility that he’s not delusional?”

“You want me to believe that Farkas is a werewolf?”

“No, but I do want you to believe that it might be possible.”

“Do you think I’d be allowed to join the next hunt?”

“So you can shoot Farkas?”

“It sounds too strange and wonderful to pass up.”

“It’s also barbaric. Did you know that the preparations begin months in advance? Everyone on the island is supposed to contribute to the feast, but the women aren’t even allowed to attend. I sneaked out there once to watch them. Luckily they didn’t shoot me.”

“What goes on? Is there really a wolf?”

“Mostly the men just let off a little steam. They build a bonfire and go off in small groups to follow each other around in the dark and piss in the bushes. It’s not as interesting as you’ve been led to believe.”

“What is interesting is that you think Farkas might really be a werewolf.”

“Well he’s very hairy.”

“I’ll grant you that. It’s hardly conclusive evidence, however. Do you think he gets hairier when he transforms? Is that even possible?”

“Aye, I see your point,” Molly said, “but it is true that when he was a wee baby he was left here by Gypsies.”

“Gypsies. Of course.”

“It’s true. Forty or fifty years ago, however old Farkas is, Mrs. Campbell found him on the front porch of the hotel. There was no note or any indication of where he came from, but back then there used to be a pack of Gypsies that came over from the Continent every seven years and camped out on the western side, where the caves are. I’ll take you there sometime. They would catch a ton of fish and lobster, kill some deer, poach a few sheep, then move on.”

She spoke with such conviction that Ray wanted to believe her. “You can’t be serious,” he said. They continued walking.

“They had been migrating back and forth across the Continent since World War II, until one year when Baby Farkas appeared at the hotel. After that, much to the collective relief of our more or less racist and intolerant population, they never returned. Mrs. Campbell says that he was covered in hair even as a wee baby. He looked like a teddy bear. That’s how we ended up with a lycanthropic distiller.”

“And Mrs. Campbell adopted him?”

“The whole island adopted him. As my da puts it, he was more like a pet than another child. We’re not exactly wealthy on Jura, at least no one was back then, so people shared the responsibility of raising him. He lived here and there. The story gets funny peculiar. It was around the time Farkas turned thirteen that sheep and cattle on the island started turning up slaughtered every so often.”

That did it. Ray couldn’t hide his disbelief any longer. “Now I know you’re messing with me.”

“It’s true, I swear to you. Even now when he drinks too much, which is, oh, every bloody day by my calculation — and you might know something about that yourself — whenever he has too much to drink he boasts that he’s responsible for killing all these animals. It’s like he’s proud of it. He gets quite wound up. That’s why he doesn’t join the hunting parties. Don’t laugh, Ray — I’m absolutely serious.”

“You’re as crazy as he is.”

“I know for a fact that he has been researching laser hair removal systems online.”

“How do you know that?”

“There are no secrets on Jura. That’s a big reason I can’t wait to leave.”

They reached the cylindrical tower where he had once stopped to attend to his blisters. It turned out to be a trig point, which, before the advent of global positioning satellites, was used for accurate surveying of the land. It felt reassuring that people had gotten along very well for thousands of years without electronic technology; the earth would continue to spin long after the digital revolution ended and civilization crumbled. They stopped for a bite to eat before turning around.

Molly had so many stories of hidden pirate treasure, arsonist rock stars, visiting authors staying in Craighouse on the government’s dime and causing veterinarian-summoning scandals with sheep. It was in those days of long walks out on the heather moors that the morass of his thinking showed the first clear signs of disentangling; those deep, mental knots started to unravel and Ray began to feel like his old, pre-Logos self again. He was able to concentrate on his reading for longer periods of time and some days Molly would have to physically drag him from his chair in order to point out another trail or beachhead or standing stone.