brigits_flame = Wild, Beguile
A Skål for Cats
He showed up on my doorstep a few hours ago, cheerfully in the middle of a song in his native Norwegian. When I moved aside to let him in, he waltzed his way down the hall, singing all the while. There was a bottle in his hand--one that, surprisingly looked very full. (And considering he looked stable enough on his feet to cheerfully waltz down the hall…) When he stopped his singing and dancing, I became privy to his source of joy.
Akevitt.
Not that he’d had any. Not yet.
“I’d been in talks--negotiations with a man in Oslo.” He sits across from me at the dining room table now, working through a couple slices of the pizza my family ordered earlier. “Two crates--two crates of akevitt a month, I wanted. The man wanted two thousand kroner a month! All at once! Do you know what that is in American dollars? Close to three hundred dollars!
“I don’t have it in my budget. I try to negotiate the price down to one thousand kroner, citing favors owed and discounts promised. The man makes lots of money from his business; a discount wouldn’t hurt him. What does he say? No! No to your old friend Conradas. Can you believe it, Little Red?”
I’m not sure whether to nod or shake my head, largely because I’m not sure whether to believe him or not. But the look on his face is one of such clear disappointment…
“Well, that certainly sucks,” I say.
“It would, if I had just gone straight home,” Conradas answers before taking in a mouthful of pizza.
I raise my eyebrow. “What happened?”
By chance, as these things are wont to happen, the man was robbed overnight. Several precious crates of liquor, gone in the shadow of the moon and stars. Conradas had nothing to do with it--years of working in organized crime and a desire to keep a good reputation for his precious Kjellar have left him weary of such tactics--but the man thought so all the same.
“And so he gives me discount. He says, ‘Take an extra crate! Take two extra crates! Just pay me the thousand kroner up front!’”
“I hope you didn’t take too much advantage of his shellshock.”
“Nei! I only took one extra crate.” Conradas grins, blue-gray eyes lighting with personal amusement.
“So what brings you here?”
“Ah! I came to celebrate, and I can’t celebrate alone, can I? Plus, I wanted to thank you for taking care of me after Bast…well…”
“Don’t you mean after your fight with that guy in the bar?” I ask, smiling.
“Ah. Ah-ha, yes. How could I forget?” Conradas smiles back. “Do you have any small glasses?”
“Check the upper cabinets by the fridge.”
It isn’t long before he finds what he’s looking for; two small glasses I’ve seen my dad normally use for shots of rum or brandy. Shot glasses, I suppose, but these look like miniature wine glasses, with their stems tightly twisted. He sets them down on the table before wandering back into the kitchen, talking about teaching me the art of skål.
“This is how you begin to do it,” Conradas says, setting two small glasses down on the table. “You take your akevitt, and you pour enough for everybody.”
“In these small glasses?”
“It isn’t for getting drunk,” he says, going to the freezer. He stops about halfway, as if realizing what he’s just said, and turns around. “Well, not on purpose, eh? When you have a good time, you get carried away. You indulge a bit too much. You wake up with a headache the next morning, cry, ‘Fy faen! Never again!’ Then, the next time…”
“The next time, you indulge a bit too much again, getting another headache for your troubles.”
Conradas merely laughs as he opens the freezer. From him comes a sound of triumph or surprise; it’s hard to tell which, even when no one else in the house would think of touching the aquavit he brought with him--if only because he hid it far too well in there. He returns to the table swiftly, the bottle he brought with him earlier frosted over from its time surrounded by half-empty boxes of ice cream and dinner meats.
“Expensive, expensive akevitt! But worth every drop,” Conradas says, putting it on the table. “This kind, it’s called linje. It’s carried on a ship, in an oak barrel; the ship crosses the equator twice before they even think to sell it.”
“Why do they do that?”
“Because it tastes better!” Conradas says this so very matter-of-factly, as though he’s reminding me of common knowledge.
“Of course…”
Even as he’s halfway to searching the drawers for it, he asks for a bottle opener. Some people might consider this rude, that he doesn’t ask before searching, but Conradas--like most of the Dead who show up on my doorstep--has spent enough time here to know where most of the stuff is. He asks because he knows the meaning of the word “courtesy”, but he also knows my policy. My house is his, as long as he respects it.
“Are you sure your darling Matthew won’t mind it, you sharing a drink with me, Little Red?”
“I’m twenty-three,” I answer, “and…‘my darling Matthew’ is staying with his brother overnight.”
“Hm? Ah--!” Conradas wanders back over to the table, bottle opener in hand. “And why is that, if you don’t mind me asking? Lover’s quarrel, perhaps?”
I snicker. “No. He went on one of his wanderings and wandered a bit too far north. I told him to stay up there with Sally and Past until morning, and then he could come home.”
“Ah.” He gets the bottle open with only a little effort. “He’s a wanderer, is he?”
“Mm-hm. Sometimes, he used to leave and not come back for days. Now he usually just leaves for a few hours before he comes home.”
“And he never tells you where he goes?”
I can’t help shaking my head a little. “Y’know, if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me about this, I’d probably have enough to buy two crates of akevitt a month. Everybody seems so shocked when I tell them that he likes to wander, or that I don’t ever ask about where he goes or what he does.”
“Well, he just seems so…attached to you. It seems very strange that he would ever leave your side without some pressing reason,” Conradas points out.
“I suppose…? But I don’t like to ask.” I watch Conradas pour a little akevitt in each glass. In the light above the table, it looks like liquid amber. “I figure, if he comes home safely, clean and sober, why should I press? It’s his business if he wants to share, and more often than not, when he comes home…”
Conradas nods slowly. “Some women would suspect affairs.”
“He never comes home smelling of other women, so either there’s something he’s not telling me about his sexuality or he’s just really good at hiding it.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“Of course not. I mean--” I let out a short breath. “I know he’s no saint. He’s had his years of partying and promiscuity, but he’s up front about that. He’s grown out of it.”
“Now, he just wanders.”
“Precisely. He’s like a cat. Have you ever tried to tame a cat? To…to--to fence it in?”
Conradas chuckles. “Is that a serious question or are you trying to tell a joke?”
“Exactly,” I answer. “It shouldn’t be attempted because it’s impossible. You don’t tame a cat. You offer a cat food, shelter, and love. The cat decides whether to stay or go; whether to curl up with you at night or claim the couch for its own little kingdom. You don’t fence it in; it will find a way out eventually, or it’ll lie there, lost and depressed.”
“But you got very lucky there, nei? He’s a very loyal cat, especially for one that walks on two legs.”
“Which is something of a miracle, given his history.” I sigh. “But Bast is very loyal to you, too--and he’s a real cat! He doesn’t…well, I take that back. He likely understands loyalty and compassion; I’ve seen the way he is with you. That cat loves you very much.”
“True. As does yours.”
“Where is he, anyway?” I ask.
“Bast? He disappeared yesterday; probably wandering, looking for mice or rats…” Conradas shrugs, looking as though this happens often. “Maybe mine and yours have met up on their wanderings.”
“It’s possible. They do seem to get along very well together.”
“Very true… Ah! Look--before they get too warm… Take up your glass.” I do, and he takes up the one that remains. It smells…like alcohol, but there’s something under it. A richness I can’t quite pin down. “Now, the proper way to do this; eyes on those you’re sharing the drink with, nei? Locking eyes, I mean. Then, when the moment is right, everyone says ‘skål’ and drinks.”
“Okay.”
“One more thing,” says Conradas. “Don’t put your glass down until after you meet eyes again.”
“Why not?”
“Tradition.”
“Okay. So it’s like a toast, then.” He nods and it gets me thinking. “Then…shouldn’t we have something to toast? Health? Long life--”
“For you, maybe.” Conradas smiles a little, his face turning thoughtful. Finally, he says, “For our cats then, nei? We’ll skål for our cats.”
“Perfect.”
“Perfect.”
The air has a way of changing when you settle into doing something like locking eyes with another person. Sometimes it just leads to several minutes’ worth of giggling, but other times, you slip into it so easily that it’s almost… It’s hard to explain. It’s as if some force is holding or binding you the other person. I see things I never quite noticed before. He seems to carry a storm of northern seas in his eyes, not just in their color but also in their depth. Decades upon decades of experience and knowledge, hide in that gaze, knowledge sometimes brought forth by way of his fanciful stories--if one knows how to listen properly.
And what else? What causes the storm to still exist, when the man I know is warm and inviting? Is it the memories of his hardships? His regrets? Or is it a warning to others not to test him, lest he let slip the mask of good cheer to reveal something much darker?
“Skål.”
“S-skål.”
I knock it back, the whole thing, the same as he does. Even with its time in the freezer, the akevitt has a bit of kick to it. I try not to cough and sputter. Last thing I need is to ruin this by looking like I have no idea how to drink a shot. Still, I feel it as it goes down, a dart of hot and cold with the kind of sting only strong liquor has.
“Ah.”
“Hm? Oh!” I put my glass down on the table. I stare into it, feeling sheepish. “Sorry. I-I forgot.”
“Nei. Don’t worry about it.” Conradas waves it off, smiling, resting his chin on his hand. He looks a little nostalgic, certainly happy. “A little practice and you’ll be fine, Little Red. What do you think?”
“Of?”
“The akevitt.”
“It tasted…” I frown. “Actually, I’m not sure I got to taste it.”
His forehead has a way of wrinkling like a puppy’s when he raises his eyebrows. “What? How did you not taste it?”
“I kind of knocked it back in one go. I was focused more on doing the toast properly…”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
Silence. Our gazes drift to the bottle sitting in the middle of the table. They drift to the empty glasses. Finally, our gazes meet. Conradas sits up straighter. I roll the stem of my glass between my fingers.
“One more…wouldn’t hurt, would it?” I ask.
More silence. He glances at the bottle, his eyes suggesting that he’s weighing the pros and cons. I have half a mind of finding a decent way of talking about my belly full of pizzas when he eliminates the need by taking up the bottle.
“Well,” he says, refilling the glasses, “you do need the practice…”
- - -
Author's Note: I came across either this article goodness knows how long ago. When I went to write this story, I couldn't remember and stumbled across this other one that was just as interesting. Both deal with aquavit (or, as I've come to understand it as well as possible, akevitt in Norway) and mention a type of toast called the skål. (Interestingly, both also look at it from a Danish/Danish heritage point of view. Yay, coincidences!)
The point is, the description of the Scandinavian toast in the first article has stuck with me. (The description of it in the second article is also good, but not quite as impacting as the first.) It seems as though it could be something really rather... Well, to admit it makes me sort of blush. Not in that dirty way; it just seems like it could be really... I dunno, romantic, for serious lack of a better word. (It's 3:30am as I write this. Sorry.) It just seems deeply fascinating to me.
He showed up on my doorstep a few hours ago, cheerfully in the middle of a song in his native Norwegian. When I moved aside to let him in, he waltzed his way down the hall, singing all the while. There was a bottle in his hand--one that, surprisingly looked very full. (And considering he looked stable enough on his feet to cheerfully waltz down the hall…) When he stopped his singing and dancing, I became privy to his source of joy.
Akevitt.
Not that he’d had any. Not yet.
“I’d been in talks--negotiations with a man in Oslo.” He sits across from me at the dining room table now, working through a couple slices of the pizza my family ordered earlier. “Two crates--two crates of akevitt a month, I wanted. The man wanted two thousand kroner a month! All at once! Do you know what that is in American dollars? Close to three hundred dollars!
“I don’t have it in my budget. I try to negotiate the price down to one thousand kroner, citing favors owed and discounts promised. The man makes lots of money from his business; a discount wouldn’t hurt him. What does he say? No! No to your old friend Conradas. Can you believe it, Little Red?”
I’m not sure whether to nod or shake my head, largely because I’m not sure whether to believe him or not. But the look on his face is one of such clear disappointment…
“Well, that certainly sucks,” I say.
“It would, if I had just gone straight home,” Conradas answers before taking in a mouthful of pizza.
I raise my eyebrow. “What happened?”
By chance, as these things are wont to happen, the man was robbed overnight. Several precious crates of liquor, gone in the shadow of the moon and stars. Conradas had nothing to do with it--years of working in organized crime and a desire to keep a good reputation for his precious Kjellar have left him weary of such tactics--but the man thought so all the same.
“And so he gives me discount. He says, ‘Take an extra crate! Take two extra crates! Just pay me the thousand kroner up front!’”
“I hope you didn’t take too much advantage of his shellshock.”
“Nei! I only took one extra crate.” Conradas grins, blue-gray eyes lighting with personal amusement.
“So what brings you here?”
“Ah! I came to celebrate, and I can’t celebrate alone, can I? Plus, I wanted to thank you for taking care of me after Bast…well…”
“Don’t you mean after your fight with that guy in the bar?” I ask, smiling.
“Ah. Ah-ha, yes. How could I forget?” Conradas smiles back. “Do you have any small glasses?”
“Check the upper cabinets by the fridge.”
It isn’t long before he finds what he’s looking for; two small glasses I’ve seen my dad normally use for shots of rum or brandy. Shot glasses, I suppose, but these look like miniature wine glasses, with their stems tightly twisted. He sets them down on the table before wandering back into the kitchen, talking about teaching me the art of skål.
“This is how you begin to do it,” Conradas says, setting two small glasses down on the table. “You take your akevitt, and you pour enough for everybody.”
“In these small glasses?”
“It isn’t for getting drunk,” he says, going to the freezer. He stops about halfway, as if realizing what he’s just said, and turns around. “Well, not on purpose, eh? When you have a good time, you get carried away. You indulge a bit too much. You wake up with a headache the next morning, cry, ‘Fy faen! Never again!’ Then, the next time…”
“The next time, you indulge a bit too much again, getting another headache for your troubles.”
Conradas merely laughs as he opens the freezer. From him comes a sound of triumph or surprise; it’s hard to tell which, even when no one else in the house would think of touching the aquavit he brought with him--if only because he hid it far too well in there. He returns to the table swiftly, the bottle he brought with him earlier frosted over from its time surrounded by half-empty boxes of ice cream and dinner meats.
“Expensive, expensive akevitt! But worth every drop,” Conradas says, putting it on the table. “This kind, it’s called linje. It’s carried on a ship, in an oak barrel; the ship crosses the equator twice before they even think to sell it.”
“Why do they do that?”
“Because it tastes better!” Conradas says this so very matter-of-factly, as though he’s reminding me of common knowledge.
“Of course…”
Even as he’s halfway to searching the drawers for it, he asks for a bottle opener. Some people might consider this rude, that he doesn’t ask before searching, but Conradas--like most of the Dead who show up on my doorstep--has spent enough time here to know where most of the stuff is. He asks because he knows the meaning of the word “courtesy”, but he also knows my policy. My house is his, as long as he respects it.
“Are you sure your darling Matthew won’t mind it, you sharing a drink with me, Little Red?”
“I’m twenty-three,” I answer, “and…‘my darling Matthew’ is staying with his brother overnight.”
“Hm? Ah--!” Conradas wanders back over to the table, bottle opener in hand. “And why is that, if you don’t mind me asking? Lover’s quarrel, perhaps?”
I snicker. “No. He went on one of his wanderings and wandered a bit too far north. I told him to stay up there with Sally and Past until morning, and then he could come home.”
“Ah.” He gets the bottle open with only a little effort. “He’s a wanderer, is he?”
“Mm-hm. Sometimes, he used to leave and not come back for days. Now he usually just leaves for a few hours before he comes home.”
“And he never tells you where he goes?”
I can’t help shaking my head a little. “Y’know, if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me about this, I’d probably have enough to buy two crates of akevitt a month. Everybody seems so shocked when I tell them that he likes to wander, or that I don’t ever ask about where he goes or what he does.”
“Well, he just seems so…attached to you. It seems very strange that he would ever leave your side without some pressing reason,” Conradas points out.
“I suppose…? But I don’t like to ask.” I watch Conradas pour a little akevitt in each glass. In the light above the table, it looks like liquid amber. “I figure, if he comes home safely, clean and sober, why should I press? It’s his business if he wants to share, and more often than not, when he comes home…”
Conradas nods slowly. “Some women would suspect affairs.”
“He never comes home smelling of other women, so either there’s something he’s not telling me about his sexuality or he’s just really good at hiding it.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“Of course not. I mean--” I let out a short breath. “I know he’s no saint. He’s had his years of partying and promiscuity, but he’s up front about that. He’s grown out of it.”
“Now, he just wanders.”
“Precisely. He’s like a cat. Have you ever tried to tame a cat? To…to--to fence it in?”
Conradas chuckles. “Is that a serious question or are you trying to tell a joke?”
“Exactly,” I answer. “It shouldn’t be attempted because it’s impossible. You don’t tame a cat. You offer a cat food, shelter, and love. The cat decides whether to stay or go; whether to curl up with you at night or claim the couch for its own little kingdom. You don’t fence it in; it will find a way out eventually, or it’ll lie there, lost and depressed.”
“But you got very lucky there, nei? He’s a very loyal cat, especially for one that walks on two legs.”
“Which is something of a miracle, given his history.” I sigh. “But Bast is very loyal to you, too--and he’s a real cat! He doesn’t…well, I take that back. He likely understands loyalty and compassion; I’ve seen the way he is with you. That cat loves you very much.”
“True. As does yours.”
“Where is he, anyway?” I ask.
“Bast? He disappeared yesterday; probably wandering, looking for mice or rats…” Conradas shrugs, looking as though this happens often. “Maybe mine and yours have met up on their wanderings.”
“It’s possible. They do seem to get along very well together.”
“Very true… Ah! Look--before they get too warm… Take up your glass.” I do, and he takes up the one that remains. It smells…like alcohol, but there’s something under it. A richness I can’t quite pin down. “Now, the proper way to do this; eyes on those you’re sharing the drink with, nei? Locking eyes, I mean. Then, when the moment is right, everyone says ‘skål’ and drinks.”
“Okay.”
“One more thing,” says Conradas. “Don’t put your glass down until after you meet eyes again.”
“Why not?”
“Tradition.”
“Okay. So it’s like a toast, then.” He nods and it gets me thinking. “Then…shouldn’t we have something to toast? Health? Long life--”
“For you, maybe.” Conradas smiles a little, his face turning thoughtful. Finally, he says, “For our cats then, nei? We’ll skål for our cats.”
“Perfect.”
“Perfect.”
The air has a way of changing when you settle into doing something like locking eyes with another person. Sometimes it just leads to several minutes’ worth of giggling, but other times, you slip into it so easily that it’s almost… It’s hard to explain. It’s as if some force is holding or binding you the other person. I see things I never quite noticed before. He seems to carry a storm of northern seas in his eyes, not just in their color but also in their depth. Decades upon decades of experience and knowledge, hide in that gaze, knowledge sometimes brought forth by way of his fanciful stories--if one knows how to listen properly.
And what else? What causes the storm to still exist, when the man I know is warm and inviting? Is it the memories of his hardships? His regrets? Or is it a warning to others not to test him, lest he let slip the mask of good cheer to reveal something much darker?
“Skål.”
“S-skål.”
I knock it back, the whole thing, the same as he does. Even with its time in the freezer, the akevitt has a bit of kick to it. I try not to cough and sputter. Last thing I need is to ruin this by looking like I have no idea how to drink a shot. Still, I feel it as it goes down, a dart of hot and cold with the kind of sting only strong liquor has.
“Ah.”
“Hm? Oh!” I put my glass down on the table. I stare into it, feeling sheepish. “Sorry. I-I forgot.”
“Nei. Don’t worry about it.” Conradas waves it off, smiling, resting his chin on his hand. He looks a little nostalgic, certainly happy. “A little practice and you’ll be fine, Little Red. What do you think?”
“Of?”
“The akevitt.”
“It tasted…” I frown. “Actually, I’m not sure I got to taste it.”
His forehead has a way of wrinkling like a puppy’s when he raises his eyebrows. “What? How did you not taste it?”
“I kind of knocked it back in one go. I was focused more on doing the toast properly…”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
Silence. Our gazes drift to the bottle sitting in the middle of the table. They drift to the empty glasses. Finally, our gazes meet. Conradas sits up straighter. I roll the stem of my glass between my fingers.
“One more…wouldn’t hurt, would it?” I ask.
More silence. He glances at the bottle, his eyes suggesting that he’s weighing the pros and cons. I have half a mind of finding a decent way of talking about my belly full of pizzas when he eliminates the need by taking up the bottle.
“Well,” he says, refilling the glasses, “you do need the practice…”
- - -
Author's Note: I came across either this article goodness knows how long ago. When I went to write this story, I couldn't remember and stumbled across this other one that was just as interesting. Both deal with aquavit (or, as I've come to understand it as well as possible, akevitt in Norway) and mention a type of toast called the skål. (Interestingly, both also look at it from a Danish/Danish heritage point of view. Yay, coincidences!)
The point is, the description of the Scandinavian toast in the first article has stuck with me. (The description of it in the second article is also good, but not quite as impacting as the first.) It seems as though it could be something really rather... Well, to admit it makes me sort of blush. Not in that dirty way; it just seems like it could be really... I dunno, romantic, for serious lack of a better word. (It's 3:30am as I write this. Sorry.) It just seems deeply fascinating to me.