Bread in the Ground

The whole valley smells of boiled eggs, and Mal Kearney, who has cooked on ships for twenty-six years and thought he had smelled everything, takes it personally.

“It is sulphur,” says the man holding his bag. “From the hot water. After three days you will not notice.”

“After three days I’ll be a hard-boiled egg.”

The man does not laugh. He puts the bag in the back of a pickup the colour of old porridge and holds the passenger door, and Mal climbs in, looking him over sideways as the engine starts. Sixty or near it, he fills his side of the cab, shoulders against the door and silver beard resting on a hand-knitted grey-and-white jumper. His name, the agency email said, is Bjarni Kolbeinsson. He met Mal off the Reykjavik bus at the end of a gravel road with the words “You are the cook” and nothing else.

It is four in the afternoon in November and already nearly dark. Steam rises from the ground all along the road, from vents and ditches and the roofs of long glass greenhouses glowing yellow. There is snow on the lava fields. Mal presses his forehead against the cold window and decides that if he has come to the end of the world he might as well have a look at it.

“Gunnhildur cooked here twenty-two years,” Bjarni says, after ten minutes. “She retired in October. She has gone to her sister in Akureyri. The agency tells me you are very good.”

“The agency tells everyone that, boss.”

“Yes.” Bjarni changes gear. “I thought so.”

The guesthouse is a long white building with a red roof at the end of the track, ten rooms and a dining room and a kitchen the size of a small ship’s galley, which makes Mal feel better at once. Out the back door, past a low wooden shed, a round tub of hot water sends up a plume of steam among the rocks and snow. Bjarni takes him through every room in short complete sentences and shows him the stove and the walk-in and the long table where the guests eat. He opens a cupboard on a bag of rye flour.

“Tomorrow morning at seven you will dig out the bread,” he says. “I put the pot in the ground yesterday at seven. It bakes twenty-four hours in the hot earth. Everyone who comes here wants the bread, and Gunnhildur’s was good. I tell you this so you know what you are replacing.”

“No pressure, then.”

“No.” Bjarni looks at him. “Pressure is unavoidable. Come. You will want to wash. The pot is open tonight and the sky is clear.”

---

Dinner is the first thing Mal does properly. He finds a box of haddock in the walk-in, potatoes, onions, a bottle of cream, and a bag of dried dill, and he makes a fish stew in the big pot with his sleeves rolled to the elbow. Bjarni sits at the end of the long table and watches him work, saying nothing. When the bowl comes he eats it with the concentration of a man defusing something. Then he holds out the bowl for another.

“It is good,” he says.

“It’s fish and spuds, boss.”

“It is good fish and spuds.” He wipes the bowl with a crust. “Now. The pot.”

---

The rule, Bjarni explains at the changing room, is that everyone showers naked before going into the water. All Icelanders know it. Visitors learn it, sometimes, on a sign in four languages.

“Naked,” says Mal. “In front of you.”

“There is no one else here. And I have seen a naked man before, Mal. I own a hot pot.”

Mal showers with his back turned and his jaw set, feeling like a man at the public baths. He is forty-eight, round in the middle from twenty-six years of tasting his own sauces, and he has the sudden uncomfortable sense of being measured; he rubs shampoo through the ginger beard that is going white and scrubs at the thick grey on his chest as if it might come off. When he looks over his shoulder, Bjarni is washing too, eyes on the wall, soaping a silver-haired chest and a heavy belly with the unhurried hands of a man who worked outdoors all his life and then stopped. His cock hangs thick and quiet in its nest of grey.

Mal looks away fast, and then back. It is very hard not to.

Outside the cold hits like a slap. They cross the yard in towels and flip-flops, the snow squeaking, and Mal drops his towel on the bench and lowers himself into the pot with a groan he does not intend. The water is almost too hot. It comes up to his chest, smelling of eggs, and the steam folds round him, and overhead the sky is black and fierce with stars.

“Christ on a bike,” he says. “It’s like being born.”

“Yes. Everyone says something like that.” Bjarni lowers himself in opposite, with a grunt, and passes him a bottle of beer from the rim. “Takk.”

They drink. The water laps at their chests. Mal’s shoulders let go, one at a time, until there are no more left to let go of. Somewhere in the blackness a long pale band of light has begun to stretch itself across the north, green and faintly moving.

“That’s never,” Mal says.

“Aurora. It is a good one tonight. It will fade by midnight.” Bjarni’s voice is quiet. “Mal. I am going to say something and I would like you to listen to all of it before you answer.”

Here it comes, Mal thinks. The speech about the fridge rota.

“The work is yours until March,” Bjarni says. “I have signed it. It stays yours whatever you say to me now. If you say nothing at all, it is yours. Is that understood?”

“It’s understood.”

“Good. Now.” The steam parts and closes across the big face, and the eyes are very steady in it. “I would like to touch you. I have wanted to since the bus, when you looked at the greenhouses as if you had never seen anything so good, and I would rather ask than guess. You may say no. I will not be offended, and I will bring you your breakfast in the morning like a gentleman.”

Mal studies him for a long moment. Then, to his own astonishment, he starts to laugh, a wet helpless laugh that he has to turn away to finish.

“What?”

“You’ve been sitting on this since the bus?” He wipes his eyes. “I’ve been propositioned in Singapore and in a lift in Tenerife. I’ve never been asked a proper question in a hot tub by a bloke who sounds like he’s reading me my insurance.”

“I am sorry. My English—”

“Your English is lovely. It’s dead sound.” Mal draws a breath. “Go on, then.”

“That is not a yes in any language,” says Bjarni.

“Yes.” He says it clearly. “Yes. I want you to. I’d have said it on the bus if I’d had the nerve.”

Bjarni crosses the pot in two strides, and the water swirls and slops and Mal’s heart jumps. A big wet hand comes up to cup his jaw, slow and almost shy, and then the beard is against his mouth, rough and warm, and the kiss is slow and thorough, with a taste of beer and iron. Mal groans into it. His arms go round those broad shoulders under the water, and he feels Bjarni’s cock stir and thicken against his hip.

He reaches down. He cannot help it. He finds it under the water, heavy and hot and still growing in his fist, and he says into the kiss, “Jesus, Mary. You’ve been hiding that in your trousers all day.”

“It is dressed for the weather.” Bjarni’s breath catches as Mal strokes him. A big hand finds Mal’s own cock in turn, and closes, and Mal swears and has to hold the rim with his free hand. “You are hard already.”

“I’ve been hard since the vents.”

“The vents.”

“Steam coming out of the ground. Very suggestive. Don’t stop that.”

Bjarni does not stop. They kiss and stroke each other in the steaming water, slow, clumsy, laughing a little, until Mal’s thighs begin to shake and he has to say, “If you want me to last till the bed, you’d better stop,” and Bjarni, chuckling, lets go.

“Jæja,” Bjarni murmurs. “Come inside. It is too cold for the rest.”

---

The floor in Bjarni’s room is warm. That is the first thing Mal notices, going barefoot across it after the cold of the yard, and then the bed, which is wide and low and covered in a sheepskin and a heavy dark red wool blanket. A single lamp burns by the window. It smells of wood smoke and, very faintly, of eggs.

“The heat comes from the ground,” Bjarni says, noticing his face. “All the floors. In winter I never wear shoes.”

“I could live in this floor.”

“You may sleep in this room, if you like. The room next to the kitchen is yours either way.” He sits Mal down on the edge of the bed, kneels in front of him on the sheepskin, and puts his large hands on Mal’s knees. “Tell me what you like.”

“I like being told what to do, I think.” It comes out thick. “I’ve been doing it all my working life on ships. I’m good at it. I like it when it’s you.”

“Then I will tell you.” Bjarni’s thumbs move on the insides of his thighs. “Lie on your stomach. Put the pillow under your hips.”

“Say if I am wrong,” Bjarni adds.

“You’re not wrong.”

Mal does it. The sheepskin is soft under his chest and belly, and the pillow lifts him so that he is raised and open, and his face turned on his folded arms. He feels exposed and hard together. The mattress dips as Bjarni kneels behind him.

A large hand spreads flat between his shoulder blades and begins to move. It goes down his spine in long strokes, over the round of his arse, down the length of his thighs, and back up again, heavy and warm and unhurried.

“You are very beautiful from this side,” Bjarni says. “I would like to say so.”

“Say what you like.” Mal’s voice is muffled. “I’ve a face like a smacked arse, but it’s the arse you’re after.”

“I have no objection to your face.” There is a pause, and a breath, and then something warm and wet touches him low on the spine. Bjarni’s mouth moves down, kissing, biting gently, until his beard scrapes the cleft of Mal’s arse and his tongue finds him.

“Oh, fuck,” Mal says. “Oh, fuck.”

The tongue is slow and sure, round and round, then pressing in, and Mal’s hips jerk. He grips the edge of the sheepskin. His cock is pinned between his belly and the pillow, and every time Bjarni’s mouth moves, he rubs against it and his vision stutters. He hears himself saying things, a long chain of them, mostly swearing, and Bjarni answers with a low pleased hum that vibrates right through him.

There is the click of a cap. Something cool and slick and then a thick finger, and the finger is slow, unhurried, gently stretching, and when it finds the spot that makes Mal’s whole body jerk, it stays and presses.

“There?”

“There. Yes. God. Don’t stop.”

“I will not stop.” A second finger. “You tell me when.”

“Now. Bjarni. Now, please, I want you in me.”

“I am going to go slowly.” The mattress shifts and settles. “If you want more, you will say so. If you want less, you say ‘stop’ and I stop.”

“Yes. Yes. I’ve got it.”

The blunt head of him presses at Mal’s hole, thick and hot, and then pushes. It is slow, as promised, so slow that Mal pants through it with his mouth open against the sheepskin, feeling himself stretched and stretched again, a deep burning fullness that keeps coming.

“Fucking hell,” he whispers. “How much more?”

“Not yet all.” Bjarni’s voice is strained. “Breathe.”

“I’m breathing.”

“A little more.”

It goes on. And then there is a soft shocked silence in which Mal feels all of him, the weight of Bjarni’s belly against his back and the coarse hair of his thighs, and understands that every bit of Bjarni is inside him.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Is it good?” A thick, shaking breath. “Say it in your words.”

“It’s fucking glorious, you great Viking. Hold still a minute.” Mal laughs, and the laugh makes him clench, and Bjarni groans. “Go on. Now you can move.”

He does. He draws back and pushes in again, and the pleasure is so sharp that Mal cries out. Then again, deeper, the rhythm building. Bjarni’s weight comes down on him, all of it, the big chest against his back and a forearm braced beside his head, and the wool blanket slides off the bed. He feels the slow powerful roll of those hips, in and out and in, every stroke dragging along the place inside him, and the pillow is hot and rough under his cock, and every thrust grinds him into it.

“You are burning inside,” Bjarni says, close to his ear. “So tight. I have wanted you like this since the bus. Do you know how I have been thinking of this?”

“Tell me.”

“I thought of your back, and then of putting my cock in you and hearing you say these things.” He thrusts, deep. “Say them.”

“Fuck. Fuck, you’re a horse. Fuck me. Fuck me, Bjarni, don’t be careful, I want it. I want every bit. Fill me, you big bastard, I want to feel it for a week.”

“You will,” Bjarni says, and drives in hard enough to shift the whole bed. “Every time you bend over a stove.”

“Then do it properly. Spread me, Bjarni. I want your hands on my arse while you fuck me.”

“Like this?” He takes a cheek in each big hand and opens him, and pushes deeper, and Mal’s voice breaks. “You are taking me so well, Mal. Tell me what you feel.”

“Full. Hot. Like you’re going to split me, and I want it.”

Bjarni gives a deep, rough, wordless grunt, and his hips snap forward. The bed hits the wall. Mal bites the sheepskin and howls into it. He is being fucked into the mattress now, steady and ruthless, with the pillow rubbing his cock raw with every stroke, and he cannot hold on, he does not want to hold on, the heat low in his belly is winding tighter.

“Bjarni,” he sobs. “I’m going to come. I’m going to come on your bloody pillow.”

“Yes.” The breath is hot in his ear. “Yes. Let me feel it.”

Mal comes with his face pressed into the wool and his hips grinding wildly against the pillow, a long, shuddering, silent shout that will not stop, and the room flares red behind his eyes. He tightens round Bjarni, and Bjarni curses in Icelandic, a low, broken, unmistakable word, and slams in three more times and goes rigid, a great weight shuddering against his back. Mal feels the heat of him pulse deep inside.

“Elskan,” Bjarni says, into his shoulder. “Elskan, elskan.”

They lie there a long while, on the wrecked sheepskin with the lamp burning and the floor warm under the bed, Bjarni’s heavy arm across his ribs. Outside the northern lights fade slowly over the greenhouses, and Mal does not see them go.

“What does that mean?” Mal says at last, into the wool. “Elskan.”

“It means my dear. Or darling. It depends on who is using it.” A kiss lands, a little clumsily, on his ear. “I am sorry. I did not mean to say it.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Mal turns his head. His face is flushed and wet with sweat, and he is grinning like a lunatic. “I made up a few words myself, in my head. Don’t tell the agency.”

---

At seven the next morning it is black outside and freezing, and Mal follows Bjarni across the yard in borrowed boots with a shovel on his shoulder and every muscle in his body complaining.

The bread pit lies behind the shed, at the foot of a steaming bank where the ground is warm to the touch. Bjarni lifts the turf, kneels in the dark, digs, and hauls out a heavy lidded pot wrapped in a cloth, steaming in the cold, and sets it on the snow between them.

“Open it,” he says.

Mal lifts the lid and burns his fingers at once. Hot sweet steam pours out, rich and dark, a smell of molasses and malt and warm earth. Inside is a dark loaf as dense as a brick, still tight with the shape of the pot. He tears off a piece. It is soft and sticky, almost like cake, sweet as treacle, and so good that he has to shut his eyes.

“Well?” says Bjarni.

“It’s brilliant.”

“Gunnhildur’s recipe.” He wipes his hands. “Now you put in the next one. Out at seven, in again by eight. I will show you where.”

“How deep?”

“Sixty centimetres.” Bjarni looks at him severely. “Do not make a joke.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were.”

“I was,” Mal admits, and tucks the hot loaf under his arm, and breaks into a grin that he can feel reach his ears. He is still grinning when the first guest comes down to breakfast, a sleepy German in a bath robe, who asks what that wonderful smell is, and he cuts him a thick warm slice with his burnt hand and says, with great ceremony, that it is the local speciality.