Drew Gummerson

Penguin Ending

It is the last day of the holiday and I wake with a start. Above my head the roof slopes, next to me Torn snores, outside the window the snow snows. The flakes are like an overdose of confetti at a Mormon mass wedding. I am not sure if this is a comfort or a sign.

I pull back the covers and gaze down at Torn’s naked body. I remember the first time we met. Torn was playing the cadaver in my amateur dramatics group’s rendition of the second Kay Scarpetta mystery, ‘Body of Evidence’.

After the rehearsal, still naked, and strutting about the changing room like a tornado in a desert, Torn asked me how long I had been acting. I told him I didn’t act, for me, this was as real as anything, and then he said, ‘How did you lose your leg?’ His directness was a bolt out of the blue. Most people hover around the absence of my leg like close relatives at the funeral of a young child.

I nudge Torn awake and tell him we have to pack. Torn laughs at this and leaps out of bed. He spins his arms in front of him and hops quickly from foot to foot. He calls this his ‘available dance’.

“We have plenty of time yet,” he says and then he notices the time.

It is dark out and we are out. The taxi appears on the cusp of the ice-field, a single horseman of the Apocalypse galloping before dawn. We watch its approach like two cut-outs in the snow, and as it draws nearer I remember two things.

“We didn’t say goodbye to your parents,” I say. “And what about the penguin?”

“I wrote my parents a note,” says Torn. “The penguin is in my hand luggage.”

Across the ice I hear a seal barking and I narrow my eyes towards the sound. Something hits me.

“Your parents are blind. What use is a note?”

Torn, as ever, has the answer for everything. “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” He puts a massive hand on my shoulder. “If customs ask about the penguin, I’ll tell them it’s a statuette. Will you back me up?”

I am still nodding my head as the taxi pulls to a halt.

The taxi driver looks like a walrus and has a walrus moustache. When he talks either his lips don’t move or the moustache hairs hide their movement.

“The radio is not working,” he says. “Or perhaps it is part of a bigger problem.” He points mysteriously up into the air.

I wonder what this bigger problem could be and yet all I can think of is Ronald Reagan talking about star wars. In my head I can see a grave newsreader and computer graphics of laser beams hitting the peacock wings off viciously rotating satellites.

I am glad of this distraction. I have been happy in the house on the edge of the ice-field and all my dreams of leaving have been bitter ones.

“We can come back again?” I say to Torn hopefully, as the street lights on the perimeter of the airport silently squeal through the windows of the car.

“We will come again,” says Torn, “but the way will always be forward, not back.”

The taxi stops outside a tall glass building that wouldn’t look out of place in a low budget Spielberg movie.

“That’s ninety-five krona,” says the taxi driver putting a fat arm on the back of the front seat. “We’ll call it a hundred, shall we?”

Inside the airport soldiers are blocking the entrance to the departure lounge. Behind the line of desks harassed looking staff speak swiftly into walkie-talkies while potential flyers sit on cases with their heads in their hands. Above our head the board tells a simple story. Every flight is cancelled.

“Something’s up,” says Torn.

Everyone is too busy to talk and the other travellers are as clueless as ourselves. Torn lets the penguin out to stretch its legs and it sets off across the floor like the Japanese shinkansen.

We eventually catch it up at a small door with ‘Staff Toilet’ emblazoned across it in spectacular letters. Coming out of the door is a man dressed as a pilot. I scoop the penguin into my arms and risk a question.

“Do you know what’s going on?”

Torn looms twice the size of the pilot. I see fear in the pilot’s eyes although no fear has been threatened. The pilot casts a glance to the nearest soldier. I guess he is judging relative shooting distances, parabolas of flying bullets, the intensity of Icelandic army training.

“Just tell us,” I say.

A bead of sweat falls from above his right eyebrow. His jaw quivers like an arrow. He takes a deep breath.

“It’s Europe,” he says. “It’s gone.”

I squeeze my eyes together and open them again. My analyst told me to do this in moments of extreme stress.

“Gone?”

The pilot holds his arms up so they make two sides of an equilateral triangle.

“Earthquake,” he says and then he jitters across the floor like a robot who is on the edge of redundancy.

The same taxi is waiting outside and we get in. The driver flicks on the metre and runs two fingers through his moustache.

“How was your trip?”

“A short one,” says Torn. “Take us to Keflavik.”

I am surprised at this change of direction. “Aren’t we going back to your parents’ house?”

Torn pushes out his lips. “They are disabled, we can’t stay with them forever. Perhaps it is time for us to start a new life; out of anything bad, good can come. My brother he lives in Keflavik. There was a feud. It is time to make amends.”

This is the longest speech that Torn has ever made. It is almost as surprising as the existence of a brother. Behind us the airport gets smaller and smaller, not literally, but as a matter of perception.

I put my hand on my false leg. There are some tragedies in life and there are others. It is our capacity as human beings that we deal with what we say we can never deal with.

The atmosphere in the cab grows hot. I think, ‘you could grow things in here’ and I remember as a child putting cress seeds in the airing-cupboard. A few days later I went to fetch a towel and opening the door I was confronted by a tiny forest.

“It’s a miracle,” I said and I blew on the leaves, watching them bow and sway and then later I ate them in a sandwich.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know Torn is shaking me awake and the taxi driver is leaning over the front seat.

“That’s ninety-four krona,” he says. “Let’s call it a hundred, shall we?”

There is a large rusting warehouse in front of us. Past the warehouse is the sea and on the sea bobs a two-engine plane. On the side of the plane in spread-eagled lettering are the words, ‘Travis’s Triple-Engine Trolleybus’.

I follow Torn to a rusting door in the side of the warehouse and we push our way in.

The warehouse contains everything that you would expect to find in a house but does so with an absence of rooms. An area with a sofa and tv indicates a living-room, a bed and a wardrobe indicates a bedroom. And so on.

Sitting at a desk is a man. He has a long pipe hanging from his lips which billows smoke into the air. Behind him is a large poster. It has a whale on it.

As the man sees us he removes the pipe from his lips.

“Torn,” he says, “I thought the world would end before I would see you again.”

After some careful consideration Torn says, “You should be careful what you wish for Travis.”

The man throws his head back and laughs at this. “Well, now you are here, you are here. You look like you could use a bath.”

I feel somewhat self-conscious taking a bath in the centre of the floor but Travis is exactly right, a bath is what I need. I remove my outer clothes, my underpants and my leg and slip gladly into the steaming waters.

Over by the table Torn and Travis are deep in conversation. They have a map between them and they have managed to tune a radio into a Rhodesian channel. It appears that Travis understands the language having worked there for a number of years as a big game hunter.

“Europe is almost completely gone,” he says. “Certain parts of the Pyrenees remain, as does Andorra, but the rest…” He holds up his hands. “The African countries are convening to talk about aid. The meeting will be a difficult one, after all, Europe and Africa have a certain history.” Travis turns to me. “Don’t empty out the water. Torn can go in after you. Then me. I live on something of a knife edge here.”

Later in bed I listen to the wind against the side of the warehouse. Behind this I can hear the sea plane rocking in its moorings. I cannot sleep and sensing the same insomnia in Torn I risk a question.

“What happened between you and Travis? He seems ok.”

Torn turns and turns again. Bed springs howl.

“Guilt happened,” he says and he tells me a story in whispers, his lips almost touching my ear.

“I was thirteen and Travis was fourteen, my parents both had eyes. It was a time of exploration. Oil had been found in Iceland and it was believed there was more. Our nation would be transformed, we would be wealthy.

“Travis was in love with a girl. Every night in our bed at the top of the house he would say her name over and over while touching himself. Only this girl would never love him. Her parents were wealthy iron mongers and we were no match for them.

“As love can do, it drove Travis crazy. He came up with a plan. He started a rumour that we had oil on our land. He sold his body to the sailors at Grindavik and bought a sharp suit in the colour of blue. He stood outside this girl’s bedroom and threw up the names of precious stones like incantations. He mesmerised not only himself but others too.

“One night bandits broke into our house. They strapped up my parents like turkeys and demanded to know where this oil was. My parents didn’t know. They couldn’t say. As greed can do, it drove the bandits crazy. One by one they popped out the eyes of my parents until they didn’t have a single one between them. That was the start of the darkness.”

I look over to where Travis is sleeping. By the side of his bed rests the pipe that never seems to leave his side. In the starlight from the window I notice for the first time the pipe is in the shape of a lady. I wonder if this is a comfort or not. I fall asleep.

I wake up and the bed is empty except for me. I eventually find Torn and Travis standing at the place where the ocean meets the land. They are both staring at the sea plane.

“It is decided,” says Torn. “We will all work together.”

The ocean stretches as far as the eye can see. In some ways it is like the ice-field except the ocean is water.

“We will offer tours,” says Travis. “I will fly the plane and you and Torn will give the commentary.”

“On what?” I say.

“On the whales,” says Torn.

“Do you think they will come?”

Torn casts his hands out to sea. “The ocean is full of whales. Iceland is famous for them.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him that I meant the tourists and not the whales. But I am captivated by Torn’s optimism. It seems like a new beginning.

In fact there are a multiplicity of new beginnings; my life in Iceland, Torn and Travis becoming brothers again, setting up a business, waiting for our first customer, living in the warehouse together, taking care of the penguin in a new environment, the reconstruction of Europe.

“I have one condition,” I say. “The warehouse it needs walls, interior ones.”

Torn gives a whoop of delight. He makes his hands into fists and spins them in front of him while hopping from foot to foot. This is his available dance again.

Actually, as a dance, it is fairly adaptable.