At the end of the bed stands his suitcase. His uniform cap lies on the bed, protected by a plastic bag, as is his captain’s uniform, though its plastic is from the cleaners, while his spit-and-polished shoes are in their own bag by the suitcase. Hrafnhildur has done his packing all these years. She packed for his first tour as captain of a freighter and now she’s packed for his final tour. But she doesn’t know that this is the final tour. He hasn’t the courage to tell her; he’s too superstitious for that. He has never promised that he would come home. A sailor can’t make such promises. A sailor says his final goodbyes to his nearest and dearest every time he sails. After that he trusts God and luck, and celebrates each homecoming as though it were the final homecoming.
Sailing is dancing with death. And whoever dances with death makes himself no promises about another dance. You simply do not defy death or tempt fate.
Guðmundur puts the heavy bag down by the front door, lays the plastic-packed uniform over the suitcase, the shoes on the uniform and the cap on top of it all. Now there is nothing left but to say goodbye to his wife, who is lying under a blanket on the living-room couch, watching television.
‘Hrafnhildur, love.’
She stiffens and gasps when he addresses her, as if his voice were locking itself around her throat like an icy hand.
‘Yes,’ she says without taking her eyes off the television, where desperate actresses are playing desperate housewives.
He places his right hand very carefully on her shoulder. She softens and breathes more calmly, because his hand is alive and warm. Guðmundur Berndsen’s hands are always warm. They are big paws that swallow the hands of women and children like the epitome of security.
Hrafnhildur looks briefly into her husband’s eyes and a feeling awakens in him that he has not experienced for a long time. Suddenly he wants to make love to his wife, merge his flesh and hers, fall with her into love’s hot ecstasy.
And he knows she wants it too. He can feel it. All he need do is bend down and kiss her on the mouth, hold her hand, whisper words of love in her ear and lead her into the bedroom.
It’s been such a long time, though. An ocean of oblivion separates them, a deep void of silence, chill and inertia.
A void that could be dispelled with one word, one touch, one kiss.
If not now, then when?
A car honks in the driveway in front of the house. Guðmundur hesitates and Hrafnhildur turns her eyes back to the television.
Is he here? Damn him, Guðmundur thinks and looks at his watch. He could ask him to come back in an hour. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. What could they do? Fire him?
‘I could ask him to…’ Guðmundur starts, but he’s not able to complete the sentence.
‘Shouldn’t you just get going?’ says Hrafnhildur, clearing her throat. She’s troubled by these goodbyes. Not that he enjoys them himself.
‘I, umm…’ mumbles Guðmundur, turning the envelope in his beefy fingers. ‘I’m going to leave this… with you.’
Hrafnhildur sits up and looks at the envelope in Guðmundur’s hand with intense fear. What is it? Divorce papers? A diagnosis of illness? A will?
‘This is a plane ticket,’ says Guðmundur, staring at the carpet.
‘Plane ticket?’ Hrafnhildur’s voice is low.
‘I want you to meet me in a fortnight,’ says Guðmundur, then he takes a deep breath. ‘Someone’s coming to relieve me. The company has agreed to it. You can fly down south together, you and Captain Trausti. If you’d like. He’s going to sail home. You remember Trausti?’
‘And…?’
‘Just think about it, Hrafnhildur, love,’ says Guðmundur, handing her the envelope. ‘We could do something together – go somewhere – anything. You and me. If you want. It’s just…’
The car honks again.
‘You’ll phone me, won’t you?’ asks Hrafnhildur. She lies back down, turning her attention to the television.
‘I’ll phone.’ Guðmundur stands stock still for a few seconds, then he bends down and gives his wife a clumsy kiss on the cheek.
‘Have a good trip,’ Hrafnhildur says without looking up. She widens her eyes and stares at the screen, which turns into a hot mist and fills with salt water, which is the great ocean – the void that draws Guðmundur to it and separates the two of them.
The emptiness grows larger with each unspoken word, with each touch that isn’t touched, each kiss that isn’t kissed.
The darkness is like a wall, the car heater blows hot and raindrops slam cold against the windscreen.
Guðmundur sits in the back seat and watches out the side window as lights and shadows race past. The lights become fewer and fewer, the shadows become longer and eventually there’s unbroken dark.
‘It’s getting a bit windy,’ says the driver when they come up out of the tunnel under Hvalfjörður. The headlights shine on the rain that pelts the car; the drops burst in time to the neurotic sound of the wipers.
‘Yes,’ says Guðmundur. He can’t wait to be aboard the ship, to cast off and sail away from the house, the lovelessness and the silent pain. But where the pain ends, anxiety takes over.
Will she come and join him or not?
Doesn’t matter, maybe, when it comes down to it. This marriage can hardly be saved any more. It would take a miracle to breathe life into something that has been in a coma for so long. Resolve, at the very least. The resolve of both of them to step outside the vicious circle and begin anew.
But she hadn’t even been able to say goodbye properly. She pretended not to hear him, see him or be aware of him at all. It was almost as if she had already disappeared from his life.
Left him.
‘Have a good trip,’ says the driver cheerfully as he hands Guðmundur a folder containing the cargo papers, work orders, inspection certificates and other documents for the tour.
‘Yeah,’ says Guðmundur. He gets out of the car, a black Mercedes-Benz, takes a deep breath of the cool sea air and partially closes his eyes against the cold rain.
He watches the Mercedes creep away along the wet quay, looking no bigger than a rat alongside the freighter that rises and falls by the quay.
Lamps light up the front of the wheelhouse, the gangway and the weather deck; the generators are going full blast down in the engine room and grey-blue diesel smoke snakes up from the funnel.
‘Hi there, Ási!’ Guðmundur calls through to the galley, where the cook, Ási, is listening to the radio as he fills a big plate with cakes and doughnuts. ‘Could you ask John to knock on my door in about an hour?’
‘Yes, sir!’ answers Ási, without removing the inevitable match from between his teeth. He clicks his heels, puts two fingers to his forehead and winks at the captain, who shakes his rain-drenched head and sets off up the steep staircase with his suitcase and folder in one hand, his uniform, shoes and cap in the other.
Behind the captain trots the ship’s dog, a medium-sized black animal of uncertain parentage that answers to the name of Skuggi. Skuggi usually stays near the captain, but nobody knows where he spends the nights, because nobody has ever thought about it.
The captain’s cabin is to starboard on F-deck, called the captain’s deck. On the port side is the cabin of the chief engineer, the second in command. F-deck is on the fifth floor of the wheelhouse, counting B-deck as the ground, or first, floor. At the very top is the bridge or G-deck, where the view is like that from a high-rise balcony, while the A-deck – the so-called main deck – is actually below deck.
The captain’s cabin isn’t locked. Guðmundur enters and turns on the overhead light by pushing his left elbow against the switch by the door, which closes itself behind him. He puts the suitcase down beside a two-seater sofa, puts the folder on the coffee table, his cap straight onto a wardrobe shelf, the uniform on the rod under the shelf and the shoes on the wardrobe floor. Guðmundur doesn’t wear his uniform unless he has official business ashore in a foreign port.