September 19, 2019
FORTY OR FIFTY BIPEDS EXCLAIM, “Whale!” and “Look!” and “Where?” and “Over there!” in five, six, seven languages, hurry to the port bow and hold up devices at the knobbled oval rising from the cobalt sea. A locomotive huff of steam shoots from the blowhole, which the breeze combs over the shrieking, laughing passengers. An American boy about Ana?s’s age grimaces: “Mommy, I’m dripping in whale boogers!” The parents look so glad. Decades from now they’ll say, “Do you remember that time we went whale watching in Iceland?”
From my vantage point above the bridge I can see the whale’s whole outline—not a lot shorter than our sixty-foot boat. “This is good, our patience is rewarded at the last minute,” says the grizzled guide in his carefully trodden English. “The whale is a humpback—identifiable by the humps on its back. We saw a number of so-called friendlies in this location on this morning’s tour, so I am happy that one is still hanging out here today …” My mind swims off to questions about how whales choose names for one another; whether flying feels like swimming; if they suffer from unrequited love too; and if they scream when explosive harpoons sink in and go off. Of course they must. The flippers are paler than the rest of its upper body, and as they flap I remember Juno and Ana?s floating on their backs in the swimming pool. “Don’t let go, Daddy!” Standing waist-deep in the shallow end I’d assure them I’d never let them go, not until they asked me to, and their eyes were wide and true with trust.
Phone, I think at them, in Montreal. Phone Dad. Now.
I wait. I count from one to ten. Make it twenty. Make it fifty …
… it’s sodding ringing! My daughters heard me.
No, actually. The screen reads Hyena Hal. Don’t answer.
But I have to; it’s about money. “Hal! Crispin here.”
“Afternoon, Crispin. This signal’s weird; are you on a train?”
“On a boat, actually. In the mouth of Húsavík Bay.”
“Húsavík Bay … Which is—let me guess. Alaska?”
“North coast of Iceland. I’m doing the Reykjavik Festival.”
“So you are, so you are. Top result regarding Richard Cheeseman, by the way. I heard on Monday morning.”
“Really? But the government only found out on Tuesday.”
His moniker notwithstanding, Hal’s laugh isn’t like a hyena’s; it’s a sequence of glottal stops, like the noise a body might make as it falls down wooden stairs into a basement. “Are Juno and Ana?s with you? Iceland’s kid heaven, I’m told.”
“No. Carmen was supposed to be joining me, but …”
“Ah, yes, yes. Well, fish in the sea, c’est la vie and pass the ammo—bringing us seamlessly to today’s conference call with Erebus and Bleecker Yard. A frank discussion, resulting in an Action List.”
Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, or even Dr. Aphra Booth would at this juncture toss the phone high into this clear air, and watch it plop into the depths. “Right … Are my advances on the Action List?”
“Moot Point Numero Uno. They were advances, when you signed the current deal, back in 2004. Fifteen years ago. Erebus and Bleecker Yard’s view is that the new book’s now so overdue, you’re in breach of contract. What were advances are now debts repayable.”
“Well, that’s just sodding ridiculous. Isn’t it. Isn’t it, Hal?”
“Legally, I’m afraid, they’re on tried and tested ground.”
“But they own exclusive rights to the new Crispin Hershey.”
“Moot Point Numero Dos—and there’s no sugarcoating this one, I’m afraid. Desiccated Embryos sold a cool half-million, yes, but from Red Monkey onwards, your sales have resembled a one-winged Cessna. Your name is still known, but your sales are midlist. Once upon a time, the Kingdom of Midlist wasn’t a bad place to earn a living: middling sales, middling advances, puttering along. Alas, the kingdom is no more. Erebus and Bleecker Yard want their money back more than they want the new novel by Crispin Hershey.”
“But I can’t pay it back, Hal …” Here comes the harpoon, eviscerating my bankability, my self-esteem, my sodding pension. “I—I—I spent it. Years ago. Or Zo? spent it. Or Zo?’s lawyers spent it.”
“Yes, but they know you own property in Hampstead.”
“No sodding way! They can’t touch my house!” Disapproving faces look up from the deck—did I shout? “Can they? Hal?”
“Their lawyers are displaying worrying levels of confidence.”
“What if I handed in a new novel in … say, ten weeks?”
“They’re not bluffing, Crispin. They truly aren’t interested.”
“Then what the sodding hell do we do? Fake my suicide?”
I meant it as gallows humor, but Hal doesn’t dismiss the option: “First they’d sue your estate, via us; then your insurers would track you down, so unless you sought political asylum in Pyongyang, you’d get three years for fraud. No, your best hope lies in selling the Australian lighthouse novel at Frankfurt for a fat enough sum to pacify Erebus and Bleecker Yard. Nobody’ll pay you a bean up front now, alas. Can you send me the first three chapters?”
“Right. Well. The new novel has … evolved.”
Hal, I imagine, mouths a silent profanity. He asks, “Evolved?”
“For one thing, the story’s now set in Shanghai.”
“Shanghai around the 1840s? Opium Wars?”
“More Shanghai in the present day, actually.”
“Right … I didn’t know you were a Sinologist as well.”
“World’s oldest culture. Workshop of the World. The Chinese Century. China’s very … now.” Listen to me, Crispin Hershey pitching a book like a kid fresh off a creative-writing course.
“Where does the Australian lighthouse fit in?”
I take a deep breath. And another. “It doesn’t.”
Hal, I am fairly sure, is miming shooting himself.
“But this one’s got legs, Hal. A jet-lagged businessman has the mother of all breakdowns in a labyrinthine hotel in Shanghai, encounters a minister, a CEO, a cleaner, a psychic woman who hears voices”—gabbling garbling—“think Solaris meets Noam Chomsky via The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Add a dash of Twin Peaks …”
Hal is pouring himself a whisky and soda: Hear it fizz? His voice is flat and accusative: “Crispin. Are you trying to tell me that you’re writing a fantasy novel?”
“Me? Never! Or it’s only one-third fantasy. Half, at most.”
“A book can’t be a half fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant. How many pages have you got?”
“Oh, it’s humming along really well. About a hundred.”
“Crispin. This is me. How many pages have you got?”
How does he always know? “Thirty—but the rest is all mapped out, I swear.”
Hal the Hyena exhales a sawtoothed groan. “Shitting Nora.”
THE WHALE’S TAIL lifts. Water streams off the striated flukes. “All tail flukes are unique,” the guide is saying, “and researchers can recognize individuals from their patterns. Now we watch the whale dive …” The flukes slice into the water, and the visitor from another realm is gone. The passengers stare as if a friend’s gone for good. I stare as if I squandered my one and only close encounter with a cetacean on a shitty business call. The American family pass round a box of cupcakes, and the caring way they make sure they’ve all had one injects me with fifty milliliters of distilled envy. Why didn’t I invite Juno and Ana?s along on this trip, so my kids would have lifelong memories of being with their dad in Iceland, too? The boat’s engines growl into life, and the vessel turns back towards Húsavík. The town’s a mile away beneath a brooding fell. Harbor buildings, a fish-processing plant, a few restaurants and hotels, a wedding-cake church, one department store, steeply gabled houses painted all the shades of the color chart, WiFi masts, and whatever else 2,376 Icelanders need to get from one year to the next. One last time I look north between the muscled walls of the bay, towards the Arctic Ocean, where somewhere the whale is circling in its dark skies.