“Let me get my hotel sorted first. Would you mind waiting?”
The woman at the booth seemed startled when Ava approached her, and even more so when Ava asked about the hotel in Tjorn. “Are you sure you want to stay there?” she asked.
“Is it clean?”
“Of course.”
“Are there rooms available?”
“I’ll call,” the woman said.
The conversation was entirely in what Ava assumed was Faeroese. When it was done, the woman gave her a little smile and said, “Yes, there is a room, and it’s one with a bathroom.”
“I’ll take it.”
“They’re holding it.”
“They don’t even have my name.”
“They don’t need it. I told them who you are.”
“But you don’t — ” Ava began, before realizing what the woman meant. “Thank you.”
She went back to Lars. “I’m staying in Tjorn.”
“Then you should catch your own taxi. It will cost you about 180 krona.”
“What is that in U.S. dollars?”
“About forty, but most of the drivers won’t take U.S. dollars. There’s a bank machine over there if you need it.”
“Thanks for all the help.”
“If you’re in Torshavn for dinner or something, give me a call. I’m staying at the Town House Hotel and I’m always glad to have company.”
She waved goodbye and wandered over to the gift shop. When Lars mentioned sweaters, she had imagined bulky knits in greys, blacks, and browns. But in the far corner she saw an explosion of colour and the name steinum above a rack that held some of the most exquisite knitwear Ava had ever seen. The sweaters were a riot of blues, reds, and yellows, with strange geometric shapes running around the edges. They were like pieces of art, no two the same. She checked the labeclass="underline" handknit, faeroe islands.
She had a hard time deciding which one to buy, so she bought two.
“These are beautiful,” she said to the cashier.
“Johanna av Steinum — she is Faeroese.”
Ava pulled on the most colourful one, the fit tight, slimming. I’m like a Fauvist painting come alive, she thought.
(16)
The hotel was a long, low building of only two storeys that sat at the base of a mountain, looking out directly onto the harbour. Tjorn was small. The main street, or what Ava assumed was the main street, ran for only about two hundred metres, separating the harbour from the town. The majority of the residents seemed to live above the harbour, their house lights beaming from the mountain side. She saw a number of fishing boats tied up at the wharf, and at least one of them was Russian, judging by its Cyrillic name.
She was met at the hotel door by a woman in denim shirt and jeans who looked like a slightly older version of Mimi. “I have been waiting for you. My name is Nina,” the woman said in English.
“I’m Ava.”
She led Ava to the lobby desk. She passed her a registry form and a key attached to a wooden stick. “I held the room with the bathroom for you.”
“ The room?”
“Yes, only one room has its own bathroom; the others share. The Russians landed half an hour ago and the captain wanted your room, but I held it for you.”
“Thank you,” Ava said. She was beginning to think that Torshavn might have been the better option. “Will my cellphone work here?”
“If you have Bluetooth it should.”
“How about the Internet?”
“Not from your room, but you can always use my desktop if you need it.”
“How about food?”
“The restaurant is still open. We serve for another hour.”
Ava filled in the form and gave the woman her passport and credit card. “What kind of food do you have?” she asked.
“Sheep,” the woman said.
“Lamb?”
“No, sheep.”
“That’s all you have?”
“We have run out of everything else.”
Ava had eaten on the plane, not much, but enough to keep her going until morning. “I’m not really hungry, thank you anyway.”
“If you do not mind me asking, what brings you here? We don’t get many visitors who are not fishermen. We certainly do not get attractive young women, and Asian at that,” the woman said with a quick smile.
Is she flirting with me? Ava thought. “I’m here to see an artist.”
“Jan Sorensen?”
“Why, yes.”
“That was an easy guess. He is the only artist we have,” the woman said. “Does he know you are coming?”
“No.”
The woman looked pained.
“Is that a problem?”
“He is a funny kind of man. Keeps to himself, doesn’t mingle, doesn’t even hardly talk. Some of us think it is because he is a Dane and thinks he is too good for us. Others think he is just a bit mad.”
“What do you think?”
“I lean towards mad.”
“He’s married, right?”
“Helga, a down-to-earth Faeroese girl. They have seven kids. She runs the house, runs the kids, and runs him, I think.”
“Where do they live?”
She jerked her head to the right. “Up the hill, on the street that runs along the right side of the hotel.”
“Does it have a number?”
“It has a purple door.”
Ava checked her watch; it was almost ten o’clock.
“They will still be up, if that is what you are thinking. People here eat late and sleep late.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Her room was on the main floor, just three doors away from the lobby. She unpacked her carry-on, shoving the laundry bag into the closet. She thought about having her clothes washed but didn’t think she’d be in Tjorn long enough to get them back in time.
She walked back into the lobby and peered into the restaurant. There were three clusters of men eating what she assumed was sheep and drinking from bottles of what looked like vodka. She imagined they had brought the liquor from the boat. They looked at her with more interest than she liked, and she quickly backed away from the door and headed outside.
It was still drizzling, enough to dampen her hair but not enough to make her really wet. What the hell, she thought, and started up the street.
Sorensen’s house was the fourth on the left. It was a two-storey brick structure, square, solid, with a window on either side of the purple door and three windows in a row above it. The downstairs windows were lit, the occupants shielded by the same type of lace curtains she had seen in Denmark.
The door had a large brass knocker. Ava swung it three times and then waited. The door opened a crack. A pair of bright blue eyes stared at her. A woman’s eyes.
“Hello, my name is Ava Lee. I apologize for dropping in on you like this, but I’m here to speak to Mr. Sorensen about his work. I was given this address by his brother, Ronny, who said it would be all right for me to come.”
The door opened enough for Ava to see who was behind it. This had to be Helga. About five feet tall and almost as broad. She was wearing a floral-patterned muumuu over bare legs and feet that were in sheepskin slippers. Her face was framed by a mass of frizzy light brown hair and her skin was pale and fleshy, with deep wrinkles etched at the corners of eyes that were alert, watchful. “We weren’t expecting anyone.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I would have written but I didn’t have that much time, and I didn’t know how else to contact you.”
“What do you want?”
“As I said, I want to chat with Mr. Sorensen about his work, perhaps buy some pieces. I have a client who has several of his paintings and he’s expressed an interest in buying more.”
“What work?”
“The beach scenes.”
“He doesn’t do those anymore.”
“Then maybe I could see what he has been working on.”
Helga turned her head to look back into the house but didn’t speak.
“We’d pay cash,” Ava said.
“Come in,” Helga said.
From the entrance Ava could see a dining room on the left, its long, empty table surrounded by twelve chairs, the walls covered in paintings. On the right was the living room, which had a wood-slat couch, two chairs, and a coffee table that was as bare as the one in the dining room. Everything was in perfect order, made all the more perfect by the aroma of fresh baking.