Andrew Ervin: Burning Down George Orwell's House

Even standing still, finally, Ray Welter’s body remained in motion and subject to inner tidal forces beyond his control. The rain felt more like the idea of wetness than anything resembling drops and it made its way inside his coat and new boots. Everything ached. He struggled to recall with any certainty what the word dry referred to. The rain fell upward. He wanted to cry.

The journey had been a thirty-six-hour nightmare spent suffocating in an airplane seat, riding in a bus on the wrong side of the road, sailing, and hitchhiking — and he still had to wait for what looked like a five-minute ride over to the Isle of Jura. A talkative, red-faced woman had dropped him off at the ferry terminal. “You might as well give me that fancy wristwatch of yours,” she had said. “You certainly won’t be needing it out here.” At least that was what he thought she said. The accent would take some getting used to. “And you just wait till you get ahold of these paps.”

Ray could discern two of Jura’s three mountains through the fog and rain and from the eastern side of Islay, the Paps of Jura looked exactly like a woman’s breasts. There was no mistaking it. The entire island resembled a naked girl lying on her back.

He stood at the very precipice of the wired world. The air tasted fresher than anything he had ever sucked into his Chicago-polluted lungs. His pores worked to rid themselves of the poisons of his previous life and he shivered from the sweaty underclothes, yet some source of heat rose to his face. Across the sound, a ferryman attended to his duties on the deck of a blue-green boat big enough to tote maybe a dozen cars. Jura was so close. Overheated and shivering at the same time, Ray now understood why that island was among the least populated of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. No direct, public connection existed from the mainland. He carried with him only an elaborate backpack and a suitcase that contained the sum of his worldly possessions.

He wandered along the waterfront and awaited the next-to-last leg of the journey. One of Islay’s six whisky distilleries loomed over the ferry port, but he couldn’t discern the presence inside of bodies or spirits. It looked deserted, without as much as a gift shop where he could buy a carryout bottle. A sip of scotch would have tasted so fucking perfect. Over on the inert boat, the ferryman moved slowly and without demonstrable purpose or motivation, oblivious to the weather.

A row of squat houses boasted the greenest lawns on the gods’ green earth. Swing sets and seesaws of molded plastic punctuated the grass with happy colors. All of Scotland was green, even greener than the springtime prairie back home. Back at his former home. Out here, Ray discovered a new shade of green. Not quite celadon or vert or even snotgreen, it was the color to which he would forever compare every other green. He already thought of it as Jura green. The acrid smell of burning peat from the chimneys taunted him with the promise of warmth. The hardened mud substitute they used for heat on the islands gave off a strange scent, almost like wood smoke, but more earthy and bitter.

He sat against the empty whisky casks stacked on the stone embankment. The seat of his jeans was already soaked through. He unpeeled the last of his bananas and found it impossible to believe that he had purchased the bunch just that morning. The fluorescence of the supermarket in Oban and the colors of the brightly packaged goods in endless rows glowed in his memory as if from a distant universe.

Ray dropped the peel into the outer pocket of his pack and took a long drink of mineral water that tasted like sidewalk chalk. A blue van approached, its windows clouded inside, and pulled to a stop a few yards from where he sat. The driver flashed his high beams and in reply the ferryman brought the motor to life. A sad-looking girl emerged from the van. She opened an umbrella and buried her face in a paperback, the title of which he couldn’t make out. The vehicle reversed course and retreated toward Bowmore. The rear lights glistened red in the wet pavement and only then, and with some regret, did Ray realize how quiet it had been.

Other than the wind and rain, he hadn’t heard a sound. No cars, no airplanes, no loud cell phone conversations. It had never before occurred to him that real silence might be possible. He hadn’t even recognized it until it disappeared, the victim of the ferry’s mechanical roar ricocheting between those Paps. They really did look like breasts. His mind wasn’t right.

Man-made noise was one of many new absences that he hoped would define his stay out here. There would be no more bullshit, no more alienation from his own thought processes. He was now officially in absentia from his previous life and ready to begin a new one. The freedom was daunting, but he was up to it. He had to be.

He stood and the ground rolled beneath him like a choppy, concrete sea. Exhaustion had crept into his thighs and lower back. His throat remained parched from the dry airplane and the miles of hiking. That first whisky was going to taste so goddamn good. The girl hiding inside the hood of her raincoat didn’t hear him approach, so when he asked, “What are you reading?” she flinched and her book landed in a puddle.

“Don’t fucking do that,” she said. It was difficult to get a look at her through the layers of rain gear and wool, but she had round cheeks that accentuated her frown. She might have been fifteen or sixteen. “It’s none of your business, is it?” She held the book by the spine and shook the water from its pages, then wiped the cover on her skirt, smearing it with dirt.

“I’m so sorry — I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Then perhaps stalking up on people isn’t your best plan of action.”

“I said I was sorry. I’ll be happy to buy you a new copy.”

“Where do you plan to do that, then?”

“I don’t know. How about in Bowmore?”

She mocked his American accent: “How about you leave me alone?”

“Fine, sure. Sorry.”

What a hideous child. The ferry pulled to a stop long enough for Ray to follow her aboard. Up close, the ferryman looked older than time itself. “How was school today?” he yelled over the motor.

“Great,” she whined.

“I should make you swim home. That’d get you some exercise. You must be our Mr. Welter. Right on time too, I’d say.” He pointed to the back of his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch.

The girl looked up from her book — it was Freud on the cover — long enough to flash Ray the evil eye.

He gave the ferryman the fare and regretted that he had not brought an obol to pay him with. “Call me Ray,” he said and shook the man’s hand. No cars or other passengers climbed aboard.

“The name’s Singer. We get a lot of people out here looking for Orwell. Sounds like you’re serious though.”

“I don’t know about that. I hope so.”

“I understand you’re staying at the hotel this evening.”

“In Craigshouse?”

“Craighouse. No s in there. It’s the only hotel we have, so I suppose that would be the one. Let me take care of business here if you’re going to make it in time for supper.”

The boat coughed black smoke into the mist. The motors surged and the ferry — powered by some combination of crowbars, buzz saws, and garbage can lids — backed away from Islay. The motion mimicked Ray’s vertiginous balance and the volume of the engines dislodged some bile from the back of his throat. A slave driver down in the galley kept time with a pair of monkey wrenches he banged on a kettledrum full of rusty screws. The vibration found its way to Ray’s backbone. The stink of diesel fuel filled his sinus cavity. He would never be still, or dry, ever again. Only motion existed now.