SWITZERLAND, 2024:
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H.R. Giger & Sandra Beretta, early 90's.
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One of my favorite parts of the trip was meeting Sandra Berretta. Sandra was Giger's life partner for over ten years, starting in her late twenties, though she refused to marry him. "I had to leave the darkness," she said, telling us how Giger painted the windows black and refused to allow even a single ray of sunlight into his house. She made Dark Star with filmmaker Belinda Sallin, which focuses on the last years of his life. She designed all his art books. She's also the director of the Giger Museum, a huge repository of his work. I had e-mailed Sandra in advance, letting her know I was bringing students to Gruyeres to see the museum and the bar and spend the week in the town writing stories ostensibly inspired by it.
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Sandra's tongue.
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She met us at the door and gave us an in depth, personal tour, four floors chock-a-block with Birth Machines and bullet babies and all things Alien. She pointed out every time her name appeared in one of his paintings. She was very proud that the nipple tongues on one of the statues were molded after her own. She stuck it out and pinched it with her finger. "Thee?" she said, lisping. "Say apple," I said.
Afterwards, she hung out with us in the bar, ribbed like the belly of a whale, the ceilings vaulted with vertebrae, sharing stories about Debbie Harry and the Dead Kennedys, how he made Blondie dye her hair black, how Jello Biafra was arrested for obscenity because he put his poster in Frankenchrist, how Gwar made a surprise appearance at one of his art shows. She showed us where "idiots" tore at the black foam cushions of the swivel Harkonnen chairs, originally designed for Dune, so they could take home souvenirs. She drank Rivella, a Swiss soda made from milk whey and ginger, from a plastic liter bottle. She said it was Giger's favorite drink. She showed me photos on her phone. Her and Giger in New York. CBGBs and Hurrah. I showed her pictures of Alien at Pino's. Danielle as Ripley. Mike as Ash, spitting up half-and-half. A man came up to our table and showed her a photo of his friend, a man named Sam. He pointed to a portrait of Giger behind the bar, an altar of sorts, flanked by candles. "Don't they look alike?" he asked. She hesitated. Sam looked stiff compared to Giger. Suit, necktie. Like an accountant. "Giger is far sexier than Sam," I offered. "Yes," she said, emphatically. The guy returned to his seat, defeated.
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The Cowboy and a wall of dead babies, Giger Bar.
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She asked me and The Cowboy if we wanted to see her apartment. It was full of Giger's art. "Don't you get tired of it?" I asked. "Never," she said. She had a snow leopard on her bed. Big, stuffed. Like something you win at a carnival. Stark against the shiny, blood red sheets. Its face made me think of Giger. Especially the later portraits, with his gleaming white helmet of hair. She told us how Giger slept in the bathtub with the lights on. How he had a toilet with arms. "Well," she said, finally, "it's time to call my boyfriend." I gave her a hug. The Cowboy did, too. Then we went back to the bar. We drank wheat beer and Space Jockey shots and tried not to pick at the seats.
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Sandra today.
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*
ICELAND, 2022
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| "Evil is evil… lesser, greater, middling. It's all the same." |
You don't go to Iceland in January to relax. The weather is hostile. Cold. Snow. Rain. 50 mph winds. And, trust me, adventure is easily had. But I loved the downtime, too. Watching Witcher on a flat-screen that shared the wall with a massive bear skin. Listening to Cash crepitate about the night Hank Williams came to town under the bleached out gaze of an Arctic fox. Coming back to the Hotel Budir, an elegant hotel at the foot of the Snaefellsnes glacier, nothing for miles but the lunar-esque lava fields, the crashing Atlantic, and the Black Church, the oldest wooden chapel in Iceland. The nearest town, Ólafsvík, 12 miles away. This is a proper hotel. Old school fancy. The sort of spot Agatha Christie might set a murder. Gold key tabs. Four poster beds and lion pawed tubs. Its own bar and restaurant. And we had the place to ourselves. I loved coming "home" after a day of caving in lava tubes, of hiking almost horizontal, our bodies leaning into the wind like smooth criminals, just in time for drinks before dinner, pints of Einstök and shots of Björk and Birkir, a local liqueur infused with birch sap. Then beef cheeks and Arctic char and the best bread I ever had. While the rain beat the window and the ocean reared and crumbled maybe fifteen yards from the glass.
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Lounge, Hrifunes.
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*
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Reykjavík is known as the "Town of Cats" because hundreds roam the streets.
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*
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Julian hoists the propellor high.
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It was a difficult decision. Whether or not to bring home a whale bone, specifically a huge thoracic vertebra, three feet easy, bladed like a plane propellor, spinious process intact. A beautiful specimen.Even removing it from the beach seemed ill-mannered. Ben was Googling it. "It needs to be clean," he said, "if there's any meat, you can't take it." It was dry and bald, baked and bleached by the sun. But it still smelled like fish. Ben read from his phone, "You may collect and keep any bones, teeth, or ivory from a non-ESA listed marine mammal found on a beach or land within ¼ of a mile of an ocean, bay, or estuary. You may not collect parts from a carcass or parts with soft tissues attached." ESA stands for Endangered Species Act. But it was impossible, standing there, scrolling through pictures of vertebrae, to tell what species of whale this bone belonged to. "I'll ask Hauk," I said. We left it in the black sand. The parking lot was a fair piece. It took almost ten minutes to walk back.
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Diamond Beach, Iceland.
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"This is a national park," said Hauk, "the beach is owned by the government. Which means the bone is owned by the government. So, technically, it's illegal to remove it. Just like it's illegal to remove a rock, a handful of black sand. But it's up to you. No one's gonna stop you." "Is it disrespectful?" I said, "I mean, to the land." He shook his head. Hauk was a hunter, and Hrifunes was filled with taxidermy, bear furs and elk racks. He was like Gaston, he used antlers in all his decorating. "I have one," he said. "The Cowboy does, too." There were thirteen of us, requiring two vehicles. The Cowboy was what he called the second driver, a friend from one farm over. I showed Hauk a picture of the one we'd found. "Damn," he said. "That's a beauty." I had seen Hauk's. Two of the blades were broken; it looked more like a stump than a propeller. "Either way," he said, "make up your mind." The sun was setting and Hauk took off the aviators he'd been wearing most of the day. "Because it's time to head out."
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Hauk and the Cowboy's A-Team van.
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Half the kids were with Hauk, a super jeep with 46 inch tires and air suspension. Me, Julian and Ben rode with the Cowboy. An old '83 cargo van with carpet on the walls and an orange A-team stripe down the side. A rougher ride. "In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit." I said, quoting the theme song. "Fuck," Julian said, "We should have taken it." "It's not too late," I said. The Cowboy was on the exit road, the van shuddering as it picked up speed, and he was almost even with where the whale bone was. "It's right there," I said. It was big enough to see, even in the dimming light, rising from the black sand like the remnants of a plane crash. "How would we get it home?" Julian asked. "Bubble wrap and brown paper," I said, "we'll tell them it's a ceiling fan." "That's smuggling," said Ben, still Googling. He'd found a story about a man who got five years for sneaking in some baleen teeth. "In 2022," he said, adapting the A-team intro, "three American boys are sent to prison by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a crime they DID commit."
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| Hauk and the Cowboy. However cool you are, you'll never be as cool as these two. |
"But it would look so good in the book truck," I said. The belly of the whale, in traditional storytelling, is a place of divine transformation, a cave filled with dark magic. I liked thinking of the truck like that. "Definitely" said Julian. "Wait," said Ben, "this one says it's okay, as long as you register it, and it's for personal use and not to trade or sell." "Fuck it," I said, as The Cowboy sped off. It felt ugly. It made me think of ivory poaching. Of eco-villains like Hoggish Greedily a big game hunter on Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Of Donald Trump Jr. striking a Captain Morgan pose with a dead Cape Buffalo, his foot on its humped carcass. Of Pele's curse, a belief that anything natively Hawaiian will bring bad luck on whoever takes it away from Hawaii. Julian smelled his hands, almost gagging because of how they still reeked of fish. Ben was down a rabbit hole of research, clicking headlines. "Last November on Norton Point, an Edgartown man tossed a length of Atlantic right whale jawbone into the back of his pickup like a big surfboard and drove off. He was photographed doing so. After examining a partial image of the license plate, Massachusetts Environmental Police officers tracked the man to his house, where they found the jawbone leaning against an outdoor shower. He was arrested."
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A beautifully blade whalebone on a beach of black sand.
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That night, watching Witcher, and drinking birch snaps, we were still torn. Even though, there was no going back. Diamond Beach, where'd we'd found it, was two hours away. "Three men face charges and fines of more than $27,000," read Ben, "after collecting bones from a dead whale on a Mornington Peninsula." Days later, as we walked around Reykjavik, buying coffee mugs and magnets, a pen shaped like a puffin, a t-shirt that said "Vikings Eat Pirates & Shit Ninjas," we were still discussing it. We knew if we had that whale bone, we wouldn't need anything else. There was no better souvenir. "A Viking would have taken it," I said. But maybe that wasn't such a good barometer; they were, by definition, raiders. We passed a store using whale bones to display jewelry, watches and pendants. "While a bone may seem to have outlived its usefulness," read Ben, "it's part of the ecological system, providing protection and habitat for small marine organisms, just like fallen tree in a forest.” "Leave the land as you found it," I said. "Yeah," said Julian, "but, damn, that shit was cool." He bought a wooden barrel beer mug with "Floki" scratched into the side. I held up a hoodie that read THE WHALES OF WESTFJORDS, which made me think of Warren Zevon. Waaaooooo. Whale song in place of wolf howl. "My next story," I said, "The Were-Whales of Westfjords." "I'd like to meet his tailor," said Ben, and then, "draw blood."*
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The Trouble Club
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Before the participants arrive and the workshop properly begins, I always head over with Julian to have a mini, pre-retreat adventure. More often than not, Ben Ram joins, sometimes Ben Riv, once Dave met us for a night in Galway. We always pull a name for this pre-retreat crew from a beer ad, a local band sticker, or a throw-up of graffiti. The first time it was the Dead Pony Society, then the Trouble Club; this time it was the Ugly Boys, a tag we saw throughout Reykjavik, including in big block caps on the building directly across from our hostel's fourth floor terrace. So, then, the Ugly Boys rented a Rav4 with 4WD and a manual transmission option, and set out for the peninsula, billed as "Iceland in miniature," in 45mph winds, when the country warned even natives not to drive.
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Driving across Iceland in a rented Rav 4 during a storm w. 45 mph winds.
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I had gotten full coverage, all the insurance the car company offered, including something called SAAP, or sand and ash protection. But one thing that wasn't covered was the wind quite literally blowing the doors off the vehicle. They handed us a pamphlet with rental info and a key tab for gas discounts at Olís. "Remember two things," they said, "It takes diesel. And hold your doors." The first third of the drive was pretty hairy, heavy snow, the car pulling to the left and right, the tires grabbing only just. But on the other side of Hvalfjörður Tunnel, which goes under a body of water known as Whale Fjord, the snow had stopped and the roads were clear. We made it to Hotel Budir, an old school inn that stands alone in a lava field, like a painting by Andrew Wyeth, without any issues.
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Hotel Budir (and the Black Church).
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Fast forward one day. We got up at 7:30 AM, and had breakfast. Daybreak is just after ten, and it was still dark as night. We wanted to catch the sunrise at Kirkjufell, so we headed into the ink to drive thirty minutes, through rangy, rugged terrain, to the base of what the Hound calls Arrowhead Mountain, where Jon Snow and the Suicide Squad head to fight the White Walkers. The winds hadn't let up. In fact, they were worse. It was a struggle to keep the car on the road. We tried to lighten the mood, making up a song about the folly of driving in the wind and the dark, batting lines back and forth. I kicked it of: "Three ugly boys, on Highway 54, gonna die on the mountain tonight. Three ugly boys, told to hold their door, gonna die on the mountain tonight." Ben knocked it over to Julian with, "Three ugly boys, full of cheek and of char, gonna die on the mountain tonight." Which was what we had for dinner, beef cheek and Arctic char, except Julian, who had nut steak. Julian hit it back to me, "Three ugly boys, in a rented blue car, gonna die on the mountain tonight."
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| Julian and Ben Ram staring up at the majesty of Kirkjufell. |
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The road was empty, and I straddled the yellow line, which was dusted with snow and barely visible. There was no shoulder, just black to my left and right, the black not just of night, but of abyss, and I pictured sheer drops on either side. Every so often, my headlights would catch a guardrail, and that flash of silver would give me comfort. But there were far too few. From the backseat, Ben kept a running tab of where we would die, should our car be pushed off the edge by the wind. "Here," he said. "And here. Definitely here." "Shit," I said. "Shit, shit, shit. We need to pull over." There was a gravel verge up ahead, and I eased our car onto it. As we sat there, the windows shuddered, and wind buffeted the doors. I thought I could hear the tinny sound of the metal denting and ballooning. "Let me Google this," I said. Iceland has a website - Safetravel.is ("the official source for safe adventure") - that details travel conditions for whatever route you key in, and I wanted to see what they said about the road to Kirkjufell. I could hear locals clucking fatefully at our foolishness, "No one drives the highlands in weather like this." There's something about dying stupid that's twice as bad as just dying. But the site seemed to think the route was safe. No ice. The winds would abate, the site suggested, as soon as we started our descent. Heartened by the fact that if we died, we weren't dying dumb, I got back on the road.
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Dawn at Arrowhead Mountain.
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It was dawn now, ten minutes into morning twilight. The dark had paled, and light had started to rise from the valleys. I could see now that the ground sloped down from the road, instead of plunging as I had thought, and the fact that we'd tumble, not plummet, somehow put me at ease. By the time we got to Kirkjufell the sky was pink, and the snow had stopped. Pictures don't do it justice.
*
IRELAND, 2020:
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| The Serpent's Lair on Inis Mór. |
Poll Séideáin. Or "puffing holes." The islands are full of them. Labelled such, because water erupts during stormy weather, rising tides, like the blowhole of a whale. The puffing can be seen by boat and you can understand how early sailors thought the islands, bulging blackly from the gray Atlantic, were really the humpbacks of enormous sea creatures.One hole on Inis Mór is much larger and more imposing than the rest.
Poll na bPeist. Bpeist for serpent. The Serpent's Lair. Known locally as the Wormhole. Mythic. Or megalithic. Carved by ancients. Or the ocean. A portal. A poll. In pictures it's hard to judge the size. It looks no larger than a coffin. In reality, it's as big as a swimming pool. The water beyond it, black and gray, still as pavement, the dull sheen of a wet road running the horizon. But inside the Lair, it's white, crashing, and three kinds of green. Filling and draining and filling again. Some said the serpent swam in to be fed, churning the water with its spooling, all pickle and pine, standing out from the dark green only when the sun hit its scales and turned it mint. Appeased only when the island pushed in its man.
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Perilously perched on a sheer sea-cliff, Dún Aonghasa defiantly faces the Atlantic Ocean. We do, too.
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The Serpent's Lair is a singular experience, to be sure. Rewarding. But notoriously hard to find. There are a handful of inelegant arrows, red paint slopped onto the occasional boulder, squiggles for worms, but they're few and far between. And they don't seem to amount to anything, to make any cumulative sense, like a connect-the dots that doesn't culminate in any kind of recognizable shape. If you're lucky, you'll have a big, black island dog leading you there. We did. But in the longer spans, between the arrows, we doubted him. The trail was precarious, limestone terraces slick and slimy, and we wondered if this dog was instead leading us to our doom. If the ground would suddenly disappear beneath us, and we would be the men given up by the island, sacrificed to the serpent. Ireland is full of black dog stories. Huge hounds with ragged fur, paws as wide as a man's hands, living in the clefts of rocks, lingering around ring forts. Ours had bounded over the bricks of Dun Aonghasa earlier in the day. So enormous, I mistook it for a large black calf. It seemed sweet. But I couldn't shake the stories. Black Shuck and Hairy Jack. Muckle Black Tyke and Moddey Dhoo. Hound as harbringer of death. A splashing sound when they walked, like "old shoes in soft mud."  |
Wormhole signs are few and far between.
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Before the rest of the students arrived, Julian and I went to Galway, then on to Doolin, with a daylong detour to the Aran Islands. To get to the biggest of the islands, Inis Mór, you take a bus from Galway, then a ferry from Rossaveal. In the winter, the ferry runs twice, departing mid-morning, returning early evening.There's a lot of chop this time of year, and though the ride is only forty minutes, it's rough. Julian, prone to motion sickness, disembarked wobbly and depleted, despite acupressure bands on each wrist. There are four ways to explore the island: foot, bike, minibus, or pony trap. Julian's queasiness notwithstanding, we decided on bikes. We stopped at a Spar on the hill for some cheese and apples, a loaf of brown bread, before heading out in a light drizzle. We took the coast road to Dun Aonghasa.
At the base of the fort, there's a little village with a knit shop, cheaper, we were told, than the one at the ferry port in Kilronan. Julian wanted to get a sweater for his Dad. We'd been to the fort and still had two hours before dusk, two and a half before the ferry departed at 5. "See the wormhole," the woman at the counter said, burying her face, then, into the sweater Julian had just bought, dark green, speckled with colored slubs. "I love the way they smell," she said. We had wanted to see the Lair since watching the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series on YouTube. Divers from all over the world, piking and somersaulting into the void, from a precipice three times the height of an Olympic board. "Think we have time?" I asked. "Absolutely," she said. "Just don't lollygag." She turned to Julian. "You wearing this now? I'll cut off the tags."
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Julian meets the love of his life.
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Inis Mór is run through with dry stone walls. Mortarless and endless. 8,000 miles worth of walls. "Long enough to reach to New York and back," said the guy at Aran Bike Hire, handing us a map, "if put end to end." Over centuries, islanders have created grazing land, a few square feet at a time, turning the island into a labyrinth, with the walls often enclosing only a single horse or cow. We soon found ourselves lost. Trapped by the walls. We climbed one, then another. Carefully at first. Then, as panic set in, roughly, tumbling the stones that had been so elegantly piled. It was getting late. We were high up now, and we could see the sun starting to set, could see the scope of the island, the ceaseless tessellation of gray and green before us. Everything looked the same. Nothing looked familiar. We needed to find our bikes in the next ten minutes or we'd never make our ferry.
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An old woman with a purple hat.
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An old woman in a purple wool hat, buckets - one plastic, one metal - heaped with coal, hanging from her hands, looked up. Her expression was flinty, no nonsense. And we two, muddy and descending from the reed roof of her hay shed, were exactly the sort of nonsense she had no patience for. "What are you lads up to then?" She set down one of the buckets. "We're lost," I said. "Lost," Julian agreed. "Where you trying to get?" she asked. 'We went to see the wormhole. Rode our bikes as far as we could. We had to leave them and walk the rest of the way. But we don't know where that was." She set down the other bucket. "Having a strop today." She wiped her hands on her pants. "The wormhole," she said, by way of explanation. I didn't know what "strop" meant, so I just said, "Yes, ma'am." We googled it on the ferry. It means temper tantrum; it's often used to describe stormy water. "Follow this road round," she said, pointing to a lane dented with the tread of a tractor. "Should take you where you need to go."
We did as she said. "This looks right," Julian said. "I don't remember any of this," I said. We walked further. No bikes. Up on the hill, silhouetted against a gray sky, the color of thunder and trout, a minibus. Still a ways away, small enough to hold between the thumb and finger of an outstretched hand. We yelled and waved. "If we don't make this, we're sleeping here," I said. We started running. "What about the bikes," he said. "Fuck the bikes," I said. "There's only five hundred people on this island." The bikes had the web site right on the down tube. "Someone will turn them in." The bus hadn't seen us, but several of its passengers were down on the beach photographing a seal. "We need to get to the ferry by five," I huffed. "Get in," said the driver, "I'll have you back with time for two pints of Gat and a bottle of Bulmer's." We got on. "Though," he said, cranking shut the bifold, "there are certainly worse adventures to be had than spending the night on Inis Mór." The driver was right. About the Gat and cider. Time enough to let it settle after the surge. The gulp, not to hurry, but to push through the pillow and get at the black stuff. About spending the night, I have no doubt he was right there, too. But we made our ferry, Julian and I, luckily or unluckily, missing out, maybe, on an even more memorable adventure.
*
SCOTLAND 2019:
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Royal Mile, Edinburgh.
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Two years back, in early Jan, Julian and I spent a few days in Edinburgh before taking the Highland train up to Findhorn. One night we popped into a pub by the castle. The Ensign Enwart. The place was packed. We found a spot at a tall whiskey barrel, where we stood with our pints, our footed tumblers of scotch. I've always been a bourbon man, but it seemed ugly to insist on something fat and sweet in a town called Old Smokey. The scotch tasted like peat and pepper, like my dad's pipe smelled, when he was still smoking his meerschaum, which was not at all unpleasant. A band was playing at the end of long table under a saltier of crossed swords. Folk punk. The Pogues, if Shane looked more like a Starz channel pirate and less like a Nick channel Chihuahua. They sang Bonnie Banks and Dirty Old Town and Seven Drunken Nights. The singer had a beard and dreads. He told stories in between the songs. Jokes. "What do you call a woman on a bagpiper's arm? A tattoo." He sipped something short and brown. "God awful instrument," he said, "drives the ladies away." He was playing a Celtic drum, which he called a Bodhran. "It's made from goatskin," he said. Each of them had hair grown or styled in a particular way. Styled is the wrong word. They looked scruffy. Last night's clothes. Cleanest dirty shirt. A Mohawk played the flute. A lavish mustache played the fiddle. I felt both cooler and less cool in their presence. Cooler because they seemed underground as hell. I felt like we had stumbled upon something essential. Musically important. The Nips at the Roxy. Pogue Mahone at Gossips. And less cool, because however cool I thought I was, this dude on the drum was twice that. I'm straight, but there's def a look I like. Tom Hardy in Peaky Blinders. Tormund Giantsbane. Maximus Meridius and Captain Flint. Battered a bit. The beard doesn't hurt. I can't speak for J, but I was mancrushing pretty hard.
Fast forward to the following year. Again, Julian and I spend a few days in Edinburgh before heading up to Findhorn. This time with two other friends: Brew Dog & the Dragon King. We're eager to show them around. We take them to Ensign Enwart. Our favorite pub in Edinburgh because of how we remember this band. It's two in the afternoon and the place is dead. "Sit anywhere," the bartender says. Even it's empty, we stand at the same barrel. I go up to the bar and order a round of Rebels. "Good choice," says the barman. "Last time we were here, we saw this band," I say. "Sort of folk punk, I guess. The singer had dreads." "That'd be the Gorms," he says, cutting the foam with a comb. "They play here every Friday." It's Tuesday. "You staying the week? "No," I say, "we're headed North on Thursday." "Too bad," he says, he sets the pints on coasters, red, rearing lions, the Royal Standard of Scotland, "actually..." He calls into the back. "Jaimie, aren't the Gorms playing tonight?" It's New Year's Eve. "Yeah," says Jamie, appearing with two bottles of whiskey, a wolf on the label, "Whistle Binkies. 9 PM." The bartender gives us directions.
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Avoiding crowds by watching the fireworks from the top of an extinct volcano outside of town.
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New Year's Eve is big in Edinburgh, and we're planning to avoid the crowds by watching the fireworks from Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano on the outside of town. It's a half hour walk down the Royal Mile to Hollyhood Palace, then another half hour to Arthur's Seat. But we have plenty of time to catch a chunk of the show before heading out. We have a few more drinks at a few more pubs. Dinner somewhere. Another drink or two. Come 8:30, we can't remember the directions or the exact name. We stop a man in a tartan flat cap to ask the way to "wee willie winkie's." "Whistle Binkies," he says, "it's just around the corner."
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The Gorms, named for Gorm the Old, a Viking king, at Whistle Binkies, New Year's Eve.
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We get there around 8:45. Another band is playing. They go overtime. Half past 9, the Gorms come in. Our guy is wearing a long coat with a popped collar. Like the one Benedict Cumberbatch wears in Sherlock. It's cold outside, but his legs are bare. The sides of his head are shaved and his dreads are pulled back like Ragnar on Vikings. He shucks his coat and takes the stage. He's wearing a kilt and a t-shirt that says Bawbag, written in marker, which is apparently the Scots word for scrotum. Brew Dog and Dragon King drink the Kool Aid. They fall hard, too. We stay as late as we can, then head down the hill and up the mountain.
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| Arthur's Seat with a bottle of Aberfeldy. |
Fast forward again. Maybe two weeks. On the flip side of Findhorn. It's our last day in Edinburgh. We're trying to decide how to spend it. We're thinking about the Vaults. Hidden beneath the city is a tangle of tunnels. These were the original streets of Edinburgh before structures were built on top, turning the once vibrant vaults into a ghost town (literally). The vaults became a hotbed of criminal activity: gambling dens, illegal distilleries, murder. Burke and Hare farmed the vaults for bodies, living and dead, selling them for anatomical dissection. The only way to see them is to sign up for a ghost tour. There are three or four main companies and a range of guides. Most of the reviews say it's a rip off. "Overpriced." "Not enough time in the vaults." "The guide was awkward. Charmless." Except two. Two get praise. Dr. Knox and, to a lesser degree, a dude known only as the Aristocrat. One review just says, "Good God, Dr. Knox!" The word "swoon" bookended by asterisks. Historically, Dr. Knox was the surgeon who paid Burke and Ware for the bodies. We're torn. Funds are low, and we can't decide whether or not it's a waste of money.
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In a gray, sooty part of the city.
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Later that day, we're down some alley. It's a gray, sooty part of the city. The shadows are long. Half the stones are black. We're at a pub nestled in the arch of a bridge. Despite the low clouds, we come out blinking like moles. Along the far curve of a cul-de-sac, a man is talking to a tour group. His face is white. Black circles around the eyes. Black, too, on the cheekbones. A kabuki zombie. He has a gold-headed cane. We recognize the voice. The dramatic jacket, collar popped. The dreads, gathered, again, in a bun. It's our guy. The lead singer of the Gorms. We listen for a bit. Pretending to read a plaque about the fire that burned the city down. "Dickens invented Scrooge when he misread the tombstone of Edinburgh merchant Ebenezer Scroggie in the Canongate Kirkyard." His voice is different. Sober. "He was horrified by the hard-hearted inscription ‘Meanman’ – but the stone actually read ‘Mealman’ in recognition of Scroggie’s successful career as a corn trader." He knows his shit. Or maybe he's making it up.We google Gorms and ghost tour. Trying to figure out what company he works for. Nothing comes up. We wander around. Hit the Writer's Museum. Scott's inkwell and Stevenson’s wardrobe, made by the infamous Deacon Brodie, whose double life inspired Jekyll and Hyde. The Oxford Bar. Where Rankin's Rebus likes to drink. Dragon King wants to buy miniatures at the Warhammer store. Brew Dog spends too much on a hand-knitted Harry Potter scarf. The day drifts away. We need to eat. I look at my watch. The last tour, the after hours tour, which is supposed to be the scariest, starts in 20 minutes. We sit down for dinner and resign ourselves to missing it. "That's cool," says Dragon King, he has the miniatures out on the table, a poxwalker, a space marine, "money's tight."
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The name is Knox. Dr. Knox.
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Our food comes out fast. We eat fast, too. We still have five minutes before the tour begins. "Let's just go to the kiosk," I say. "Feel it out." We get there on the nose. But it's running late because they're a guide short. Lady Glamis is sick. A guy in a top hat and a red cravat is holding court. The Aristocrat. "How long in the vaults," I ask. "Half hour at least" he says. He flares his black beard, fanning it into a spade blade. Then strokes it to a point, a boot toe. Then fans it again. "But if you're going, hurry up. We're almost sold out." We get in line. "Last four tickets," the cashier says. "We'll take them," I say. The crowd is big and a little loud. "Double the size I normally do," the Aristocrat confides. The guy in the booth is on his phone. "He's coming," he tells the Aristocrat. He says He like it's religious. Five minutes later a man struts up, his long coat turning his swagger into a swoop. He raps his gold-capped cane, cleated, too, on the stones. Heads turn. "I'm Knox," he says, "Dr. Knox." He parcels and pairs the words like James Bond. "Who's with me?" We raise our hands like schoolboys, then, embarrassed, pull them down. The big group drifts into two halves. The four of us shoulder our way to the front of the new line that forms in front of him. The tour lasted almost three hours. Down in the Vaults, we hear the heavy steps of something with thick soles. "Mr. Boots," says Knox. "Stomped a little girl to death." It makes me think of Hyde, when Enfield tells Utterson how he watched him trample a girl underfoot. We hear a voice, too. "Some people think its the pub overhead, that the sound drifts down." We listen. The voice is high and young. "But why just one voice?" he says, "and what little girl is in a pub after midnight."
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| "Mr. Boots," says Knox, "Stomped a little girl to death." |
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Later, walking back to the Mile, I match his stride, big and full of bluster. "We saw your band New Year's Eve," I say. "Band?" he says. "You must be thinking of my twin brother. He's the the talented one." We walk for a minute in silence. "How he'd sound?" Knox asks. "Great," I say. "Good to know," he says, "Because he came home bladdered. You know what I'm saying? Totally ratassed." He bounces the cane, the gold ferrule, on the cobbles as he walks. "But," he says, winking his raccooned eye, "I'll tell him you liked it." |
Kabuki Viking Zombie King.
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SCOTLAND 2019: The Burning of the Clavie
The Burning of the Clavie is an ancient pagan fire festival celebrating New Year's Eve. Once labeled "abominable and heathenish" by the church, the practice has survived two world wars and clerical condemnation. It was canceled last year for obvious reasons. For the first time since the Second World War. I've gone twice. X desperately wants to go, primarily because of his Atlas Obscura Explorer's Guide, which features it between the Keshwa Chaca Rope Bridge in Peru and the Bamboo Trains in Cambodia as one of the top places for an adventurous kid, which, if nothing else, he certainly is. Plus he has a little pewter ring box I bought at a rummage shop in Northern Scotland. He keeps it on his nightstand next to his Stormtrooper clock. It's filled with chunks of charcoal, which we use sparingly, putting a bit in an envelope marked Clavie every New Year's day, and dropping it into the backyard firepit.
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The "king" lights the Clavie.
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It starts when the King of the Clavie, a title that's passed along for generations, brings out a live coal from his own firebox, holding it with welding gloves, red and flared at his elbow, like something a superhero might wear. The Clavie Crew, membership to which is also passed along from father to son, waits with a wooden barrel which is filled with tar and staves (the titular “clavie”) and set ablaze by the King's ember. The flaming barrel is mounted on a pole and then marched through the streets. There's something primal about the procession. The fire, the yelling, but it's also extremely congenial. A crush of people, yes, all shouting. But kids on shoulders, too. No pushing. Lots of smiling. It's somehow both feral and familial. The procession eventually makes its way to an ancient altar, the ruin of an old fort high on a hill, where the Crew continues to add tar, inciting volcanic eruptions that make the audience cheer. Eventually the whole hill catches fire, and the barrel burns itself out, collapsing in a pile of ash and cinder. Onlookers rush in, ascending the hill to collect the good luck embers, live coals with which to light their first fire of the year.
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The march to Doorie Hill begins.
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Folks take this seriously. I remember climbing the wet, grassy hill my first time there, still slick and soft, despite a third of it being blackened by the fire. A young woman was climbing alongside me, bundled in her coat. She almost slipped several times. "At least it's soft," I said of the grass, bunched and tussocked where it hadn't burned. "I can't fall," she said, "I'm eight months pregnant." The first time we went, I hoisted Julian on my shoulders, and we watched from a ridge across the street. The second time, he and John Linn muscled through the crowd, standing so close to the altar their jackets were splattered with tar. I joined just after. John wore the hardened drops like the buttons of his favorite band. Like the best sort of souvenir. A badge of honor. He thumbed them proudly. After the ceremony, John headed off, beckoned by the rest of the group who stood in the street below. We had made arrangements to all meet at a specific pub when it was done, but I nodded to Julian. And he knew what I meant. We had talked the first time about the other side of the hill. Where the men in sooty, retardant coveralls descended toward music and laughter. The after party.
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Julian taps his inner barbarian to cheer on the Clavie.
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Bolstered by the moxie that comes with your second time, we trundled down. "Confidence," I said to J, "That's key." We grabbed a couple beers and stood by the far fence. The hosts, an older couple, had set out tumblers of scotch. A dozen glasses grouped in front of their respective bottles: Benromach, Cragganmore, Knockando. "Dare we?" asked Julian. "We dare," I said. I walked up to the table, reaching in gingerly. This felt ballsy. Even for me, the man without the plan, just balls and beard for most of my adult life. Everyone seemed to know everyone. For generations. We stuck out. We were strangers. Even with our mouths shut, our twang unheard. Even if we weren't immediately identified as foreigners, we were certainly outsiders, interlopers. The woman of the house, maybe seventy, maybe older, turned as I held two cups of Ben 10. Not plastic party cups. Real weighted glass. I could feel the heavy feet in my hands. The jig is up, I thought. She was a tiny thing. Her stooped shoulders making her smaller still. Like an animal curled in on itself, playing dead. "Oh, my," she said, burr thick, bobbing in place like a Muppet. Her house was still decorated for Christmas, and her face had a greenish tint under the colored lights. Yoda-like. She surprised me by straightening up, though it didn't add much to her height. Ricking her head back as if on a hinge, she said, "you're a big fella aren't you?" "Yes," I said, "yes, I am." She felt my arm, maybe figuring she knew me, or my father or my father's father. It would have maybe been flirtatious if she'd been thirty years younger. "Keep it up," she said. I don't know if she meant the drinking or whatever it was that made me big. There were haggis balls on the table. Skewered with knotted picks. "Pig pluck," she said, "The trick is Drambuie." I thought of a magnet or maybe a mug I'd seen in the airport gift shop: "Haggis. It's Offal Good." She put a finger alongside her nose, tapped it twice, and walked away.
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The Clavie is wedged into a stone plinth, the remnants of a Pictish fort.
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The windows were open and folk music floated out. Bonnie Banks. Donald's Trousers. A young woman went in and the music changed. Franz Ferdinand. Somebody yelled for Hue and Cry. Then the Proclaimers came on and everyone sang along. People started dancing. I got three more scotches. Carrying them in a row. The third one pinned between the other two, its heavy heel threatening to send it crashing to the bluestone below. "Take the middle one," I told J. Then I walked up to a fireman I'd seen holding the barrel. "Nice job out there," I said. "Thank you," he said. Or maybe "Thenk ye." I handed him a drink, as if I were standing him a round, even though it was free. He told me about his father, his grandfather, how they had held the barrel, too. "Every year except forty-five," he said, "because of the black out." When the town feared the flames would be spotted by German pilots.
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Doorie Hill ablaze.
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J & I had another beer, another scotch, a haggis bauble, then headed up over the hill and down the street. We joined the others at a pub. The Harbor Inn. Crowded. Not sardines. We were in Scotland. Kippers. The men in flat caps, playing darts, forced so close to the cork, they could have reached out and placed them where they wanted.
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