Penguin

Everyone has noticed that over the previous few days the behaviour of the penguin has rapidly deteriorated.

"Where did you get it?" Torn asks Reyka one evening over our dinner of cod and herring.

"It is not an 'it' it is a 'he'," says Reyka and promptly stands up from the table.

"How do you tell the sex of a penguin?" asks Torn but if Reyka has heard she does not answer. Under our gaze she ascends the staircase that leads to either her room or the toilet.

Later we find Reyka in her room. She is wrapped tightly in a pink eiderdown and she has a Gideon bible in one hand and a glass containing a small amount of green liquid in the other.

"I have to tell you," she says, "I have been offered a commission on a whaler. We sail from Akureyri at first light."

"Then you must pack," says Torn.

Reyka raises the glass to her mouth and drains the liquid. The bible she lets fall to the quilt.

"Sometimes the hardest thing about leaving is leaving."

"And the hardest thing about staying is staying," says Torn. He pauses and adds. "Please, tell us about this penguin."

"I never touched a hair on his head," says Reyka. "He was disabled when I purchased him. Both his wings had been hewed clean off."

"I meant from where did he come," says Torn.

Reyka pauses momentarily and then, as if retrieving the information from an exceptionally large dictionary, she replies. "I got him from Ivor Magnusson at the Swinging Anchor Hotel."

"Thank you," says Torn and we leave the room.

Torn prods me awake before dawn and we accompany Reyka to the bus terminal. It is cold out and Torn scolds me ruthlessly for losing my willie warmer.

"I had it," I say, "and now it is gone."

"Just don't blame me for the consequences," says Torn.

We watch silently as Reyka steps up onto the step of the bus. She is wearing a fake sable coat and a pointed green hat. She turns at the last moment and her lips move as if to say something. They say nothing that is audible and the bus door hisses close.

"She is my sister," says Torn and nods once.

We make our way back through the still dark streets on foot. As we step back inside the house on the edge of the ice field the first thing I see is the penguin. By its feet is my willie warmer. It is in tatters.

"It could have been worse," says Torn. "You could have been wearing it."

Somehow his words are of no comfort.

After lunch Torn takes an empty crisp box and makes four holes in the side with the wrong end of an ice-cream scoop. He then chases the penguin around the table until the penguin stops, heaving for breath. With a look of triumph Torn lifts up the penguin and places it in the crisp box.

"Come," he says to me.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"To Ivor Magnusson at the Swinging Anchor Hotel," says Torn as he places the crisp box containing penguin under the crook of his arm.

There are only two other people on the bus. One is a Japanese airplane spare parts salesman and the other a teenage Icelandic boy clutching a bag of ring doughnuts. Both are interested in our penguin or at least the noises coming from within the crisp box.

"We are taking him home," says Torn and Torn being one always to divert attention away from himself asks the other passengers about themselves.

The Japanese airplane spare parts salesman tells us in stilted English that he is delivering an exhaust valve push-rod to an Icelandic venture capitalist who is rebuilding a Bleriot XI bi-plane in his garage. The teenage boy's story is more simple. He has a crush on a beautiful girl he met the previous market day and he is taking the bag of ring doughnuts as a token of his love.

Outside the windows of the bus all is white. The white seems to be endless.

It is night when we arrive at The Swinging Anchor Hotel. We make our lone way up the path under the pinpoints of stars.

The hotel stands at the pinnacle of a tall cliff. The drop down to the raging sea one hundred feet below would be certain death, the climb up the sheer rock face impossible.

At a curved reception desk a skinhead giant looks us up and down and replies obliquely to our request.

"It's a bit out of the ordinary two men asking to share a room, isn't it?" he says.

"We also have a penguin," intones Torn pumping himself up to a full two thirds of the giant's height.

"Everyone has a penguin," comes the instant reply and it is then, as the giant turns, that I notice two things: a) a poster on the back wall of the reception, b) the view through an open door to the hotel bar.

On the poster is the simulacrum of a penguin. Below it, the words, 'Penguin. Reward 20 krona. Please contact Ivor Magnusson room 21B'. Through the door of the bar I see penguin after penguin after penguin.

"Room eight six two," says the receptionist. "You're right at the top." He brings his hand down sharply on a silver bell. It rings sonorously but nobody comes.

I take this as a sign.

Torn and I are in bed. The penguin is in the bathtub in the ensuite bathroom. Perhaps sensing that it is closer to home it has desisted from squawking.

"I don't like this," says Torn. "If our penguin is the one Ivor Magnusson is looking for then I won't hand him over. Nothing good ever comes from the exchange of money."

I look over to where my false leg is leaning against the window ledge. We purchased it on the black market for what Torn referred to as a tidy sum. I hesitate about saying anything as deep down I agree with Torn. I don't want to sell the penguin. After all, we are here to set it free.

"What shall we do?" I say.

"We must tread carefully," says Torn.

In the morning we leave our penguin in the bathtub and go down to the bar. We are on a fact finding mission.

In front of a roaring fire is an old woman in a silk gown and an ivory hat. At her feet is a penguin.

"Have you come for the reward?" asks Torn.

The old woman nods slightly. "But I don't think my penguin is the one." The woman places a wrinkled hand on the hubcap of the penguin's head and spins it around. "Look at its back," she says. "No map."

"I see," says Torn. "No map." And we stand up to leave.

At the door to the bar we literally bump into a barrel-chested man with a sinuous red beard.

"Hello Ivor," says Torn.

"Hello Torn," says the man. He pauses. "Your sister, the whaler. Is she free?"

"She sailed this morning at first light from Akureyri."

"Pity," says Ivor, "I am about to embark on a journey that will bring untold wealth to all involved. Only as soon as I find this damned map."

Up in our room we check the penguin and find no map.

"I thought as much," says Torn. "This penguin has already been through Ivor's hands. I wouldn't like to think what he would do if he saw him again."

"Then what shall we do with him?" I ask as I hear the sound of webbed feet slapping the parquet floor behind me.

"There is a place," says Torn, "but it is dangerous."

From outside comes the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks a distance below. A lone seagull calls.

"If you only live half a life," I say, "you will only have half a life."

Torn nods. "Come then. I brought us fresh willie warmers in anticipation of such a course of action.

Torn knows of a path down the cliff face and leads the way. He has the crisp box containing the penguin clutched tightly beneath an arm.

The wind is howls around us like the hands of angry children and what with only one real leg and one false one I struggle somewhat. As I reach the bottom Torn is already there, the penguin standing aloof next to him gazing out to sea.

"I haven't been here for years," says Torn.

"Where?" I say.

And Torn points.

In the area between the base of the cliff and the end of the shore is a small wooden hut. Clumps of dried seaweed hang from its sloping roof.

"Follow me," says Torn.

He sets off up the sloping shingle closely followed by the penguin.

"Can I borrow your boat?" says Torn.

The old man in the hut takes the pipe from his mouth and then puts it back in again.

"There's no whales about," he says, "if that's what you're after."

"It's not for the whales," says Torn and he points pointedly at the penguin.

"Caractacus!" says the old man and he hoots repeatedly with laughter. Each hoot sends a cloud of smoke shooting from the end of the pipe. "You believe in Caractacus?"

"A society that loses its belief in stories," says Torn, "is on a rocky road to ruin."

The old man shakes his head. He removes the pipe from his mouth like he is uncorking a bottle of vintage Champagne and he says, "You may borrow the boat under one condition."

"What's that?" says Torn.

"You bring it back."

The boat is more of a coracle than a canoe but rests somewhere uncomfortably between the two.

Torn and I sit upright side by side on a hoary plank in the centre of the vessel and each grip tightly onto a rugged oar. The penguin rests at the back watching us through beady eyes.

The land takes an infinity to disappear and then as if in a flash it is gone over the edge of the sea. Torn has told me to keep count of the strokes and it isn't until I'm on 357 and pain is screaming down my back that I risk a question.

"Do you know the way?" I ask.

"No rests," shouts Torn into the buffeting wind.

"I'm not resting," I say as the oar scoops the water for the 358^th time.

"We are nearer just by not keeping still," says Torn.

This, I know from the past, is one of Torn's favourite expressions. He used it once on a day out walking in the Apennines. That same night, I recall, we spent sleeping in a tree, the ground below patrolled by a hungry brown bear.

However, I wonder if Torn is right. In all my time with Torn I have always felt I am heading towards something marvellous.

Night comes and with it violent swells. It is like being a pea flicked between the thumbs of a giant.

"Torn," I scream, "we are going to die."

"We won't die," says Torn, "or, at least, we will die trying not to."

"Torn!" I scream again and it is then that I see it; a single fir tree silhouetted by a circular moon.

Land is like a blessing, each particle of sand a sacrament.

"We made it," I say.

"Not yet," says Torn and he sets off walking.

We walk throughout the night and arrive at dawn in a small clearing. In the centre of the clearing is a large tin structure that could only resemble a rocket.

"He bought it from the Chinese," said Torn.

"Who did?" I ask.

"Caractacus."

I think Torn is talking to me until I notice the man striding towards us with his hand outstretched in greeting.

"Caractacus," says Torn again and the man smiles and they shake hands silently.

We drink Earl Grey tea from a table in the centre of the rocket.

"I am primarily an astronomer," says Caractacus. He reaches behind him and pulls an ancient-looking book from a shelf. "This book is the original one Flamsteed recorded the stars in on the express orders of Charles II. Flamsteed never finished his work. I intend to do it for him. The view of the stars from this island at night is quite spectacular."

"What are we doing here?" I say to Torn as Caractacus stands from the table to refresh the teapot.

"You'll see," says Torn.

We have a light dinner and then Caractacus shows us around his compound. There is the rocket, a separate toilet block, and through a short walkway under arching trees what Caractacus calls his private zoo.

"It is not really a zoo," says Caractacus, "it is more of sanctuary for disabled animals."

And it is then that I understand.

"We must stop here," says Caractacus.

We are at the end of the walkway. There is a gate. Beyond the gate I see an earless rabbit, a three legged donkey, a giraffe with no tail. And before the gate, of course, is our penguin.

"No humans allowed in the zoo I'm afraid," says Caractacus. "Only animals. This is where you must say goodbye."

Torn and I kneel together and each put an arm around the body of the penguin. We pull him in to us and he comes willingly and places his beak in the join of our shoulders. We remain like that for minutes almost as if we are praying.

After we stand Caractacus opens the gate and with a gentle push the penguin waddles through. He turns to look at us momentarily and then with a squawk disappears into the abundant ferns.

"Goodbye," I say.

"He is a penguin," says Torn. "He is a penguin."