He opens his eyes.
The buoy rocks back and forth and the bed rotates gently. He can hear the squeak and rattle of rusty chains. The buoy is a goddess of destiny in the form of a handless skeleton with a black scarf over its head.
‘Five dead men…’ she says without opening her mouth. ‘Four of them on a ship.’
Then she changes back to an ordinary buoy that gets smaller and smaller until it disappears, because Jón Karl’s ship is sailing further and further out on the endless sea.
The waves grow higher and the boat grows smaller; he hears voices but doesn’t understand what they say. Then a fog arrives like a grey facecloth, the sun disappears and it gets cold, so cold. The bathtub overturns and Jón Karl falls backwards into the sea and sinks down into the dark blue silence. Someone grabs his feet, someone else grabs his hands and a third pushes as hard as he can on his chest. Hands of sand, men of stone, and the buoy watches. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, he is pushed down on something hard and dry. His mouth and eyes fill with dust, the pressure is so great that the flesh is torn from his bones, and his bones break and crumble like biscuits; gears turn at terrific speed and sparks fly in every direction like daggers of light.
Jón Karl screams with all his might, kicks out, tears himself away from these deadly clutches and slams his right fist into the wall above his bed.
He comes round, gasping, sits up in the sweat-soaked, bloody bed and stares at his trembling hand. The pain is nearly unbearable. The skin is torn off his knuckles and blood trickles down between his broken fingers. Or are they only cracked? He shuffles, naked, from his bed and staggers like a drunk man across the cabin and into the bathroom. He has a high fever, aching bones and a savage headache.
Jón Karl runs water over his deathly white hand, rinsing away the black blood and flexing his stiff fingers under the cold stream until the pain is bearable. Then he tries to pee standing up but loses his balance and is knocked out when his head hits the bulkhead behind him.
The ship rises and falls, the wave breaks and the blow pulses back along the ship.
Boom, boom, boom…
Again and again, and forever again.
Jón Karl sits naked on the couch in his cabin, staring at the cigarette he holds in his right hand. He is pale and bleary-eyed, his hair a sweaty clump, his muscles twitching and his shrunken stomach a cavity.
Through the window come a greyish glimmer of light, the noise of the blowers on the boat deck and a cool breeze tasting of salt.
Jón Karl has laid out the contents of his duffel bag on the coffee table: three pairs of socks, three pairs of underpants, two T-shirts, a hunting knife in its sheath, ten shells, useless passports, share certificates, bank books and ten packs of Prince cigarettes. He has 200 cigarettes but not a single match.
The clothes he was wearing are in a pile on the floor. He steps with his bare feet onto the pile and feels the shape of the holstered handgun under one foot. Everything in its place.
The only thing he’s lacking is a light. And maybe something to eat. The water in the sink in the bathroom is drinkable, but Jón Karl hasn’t had anything to eat for… a long time.
His stomach contracts into a tight knot, sweat breaks out on his chest and back, and his heart pumps nutrient-low blood up into his dizzy head.
How long might he have been asleep? A day and a night? Longer? And what kind of doomsday trip is he on?
People had come into his cabin because he could hardly have added that extra safety rail himself. Maybe it was the guy who gave him a lift and brought him aboard the ship. Or the guy who brought him to this cabin. But they weren’t looking for anything – the gun and everything else are in their place. Which means that either they trust him or they are afraid of him, or they have no idea who he is. None of them has had any objection to him being aboard this ship. In fact, it was as if the ship and the crew had been waiting all evening and half the night for him to arrive. As if this whole shipping company outfit was all about Jón Karl, nothing and nobody else; about getting him on board and sailing with him to somewhere… somewhere.
What should he do? Just act normal? Just go along with things and hope for the best? Or should he ask what the hell is going on? What he’s doing here, whether they know who he is and where this fucking ship is going?
No, it’s probably best to feel around a bit before…
A light!
‘I need a light!’ Jón Karl says to himself hoarsely and stares with red-rimmed eyes at the cigarette which is quivering like the needle on a seismograph between the swollen fingers of his right hand.
No sooner has he spoken than there is a knock on the door.
The ship rises and falls, the wave breaks and the blow pulses back along the ship.
Boom, boom, boom…
Another knock.
Jón Karl blinks, straightens his back and tries to think clearly.
Slowly his features harden; his eyes become focused and reclaim their usual, ice-cold expression; the cigarette stops quivering in his right hand and his left hand stealthily slips the hunting knife out from under the duffel bag before he invites the guest into the dimly lit room.
‘Come in!’
IX
Thursday, 13 September 2001
In the seamen’s mess Rúnar, Sæli and Stoker sit at a square table with a high brim, covered with a green foam-plastic net, drinking coffee from white mugs labelled ‘Polar Ships’. In an old tape recorder is the same Doors cassette that has been circling there, round and round, since the oldest crew member can recall. It has long been a tradition that the seamen forget to bring replacement cassettes after shore time; ages ago they came to a silent agreement to forget that they were sick of it, and just let it go on turning for as long as it continued to do so. Not that they have stopped being sick of these songs they’ve heard again and again, tour after tour – rather, these fine song writers have become an unconscious part of their surroundings, just like the beating of the main engine; the rattle of the generators; the keening of the air-conditioning; the rolling, the rocking and the blows that come from the heavy kiss of the waves and pulse back along the ship like ripples.
‘Could you check whether Jónas is on the other side?’ says Rúnar, stirring sugar into his black coffee as Jim Morrison keeps singing about being strange. ‘I need to speak with him.’
‘Okay,’ Sæli replies. He stands up with his mug in his hand and strolls out to the corridor, past the infirmary, the computer room and the kitchen, over to the mess on the starboard side, where Jónas sits alone, seemingly deep in thought.
‘Why don’t you just come and join us, lonesome cowboy?’ asks Sæli, leaning against the doorframe. ‘Rúnar wants to talk to you.’
Jónas slowly raises his head, looks at Sæli then nods and follows him over.
The Doors’ song ‘Horse Latitudes’ starts.
‘Jónas!’
‘What?’ says Jónas, jerking out of a buzzing daydream in which sand mites the size of trout squirm about in the wet, black sand that fills his head and runs like syrup out of his eyes and down into the pitch-black coffee.
‘Hand me the bread, man,’ says Rúnar, who is not known for being cheerful or sweet-tempered in the mornings.
‘Sorry,’ says Jónas, handing him the tray of sandwiches.
‘Are you sick or something?’ Sæli says, smacking his lips on rye bread with meat roll. ‘You’re kind of pale and wan and somehow without that broomstick shoved as far up your arse as usual.’