‘I’ll take this one.’ Rúnar grasps the over/under shotgun.
‘Here’s its back end.’ Methúsalem hands Rúnar a magazine attached to a lacquered wooden stock.
‘Then I’ll take this one,’ says Big John, picking up the other shotgun, which is both older and more worn.
‘Meeting closed,’ says Methúsalem, winding the canvas sheet around the rifle. ‘Now go hide the guns in your cabins, either under the beds or in the cupboard. I’ll go straight up to the bridge.’
‘What about shells?’ ask Rúnar.
‘I’ll get them to you when I have a chance,’ says Methúsalem, gesturing them to leave. ‘It’s not a good idea to be wandering about with both hands full of guns and shells.’
‘No, probably not,’ Rúnar agrees with a shrug.
‘I’m going to regret this,’ Big John says quietly, undoing the catch before he opens the door and shows Rúnar out ahead of him down the narrow corridor.
‘Thanks,’ Rúnar says, stalking out with the shotgun parts upright in his right hand.
He walks straight into Jón Karl, who is on his way up to the bridge.
‘Fuck!’ says Big John when he sees the deckhand, and hastily closes the door.
‘What?… Who?’ says Rúnar, backing against the closed door. He stiffens and stares in confusion at Jón Karl, who shows no change in expression and seems not to have noticed the gun.
‘Evening,’ says Jón Karl, nodding to the bosun, who hesitates in front of him, twists his body and sneaks the gun behind his back.
‘Yeah… evening… I, uh,’ Rúnar stumbles, but Jón Karl strolls on past him and up the stairs without looking back.
XIII
Like tumbling down a huge river in a closed barrel…
Jón Karl stands spread-legged in the shower stall, steadies himself against the slippery walls, squeezes his eyes shut, breathes fast and shallow, and lets the ice-cold water splash over his head and trickle down over his back and chest. He grits his teeth and silently counts to a hundred.
And burning up in a cold flame…
He had slept after the second mate’s visit, but has no idea for how long. It’s pitch black outside, but there is also a thunderstorm, so it’s not easy to figure out what time it is. His watch and mobile phone had been left at home in Staðahverfi.
Cold, dark and eternal night…
Without scientific instruments or a visible sun, time is just a relative experience, subjective evaluation or, simply, a dream.
And the dreams are madness…
Sleeping on board a ship is really weird. Rolling back and forth as if in a swing, only more slowly, but with unpleasant sideways movements as well, and always the strange feeling that the roll down is both longer and deeper than the roll up, as if the ship is plunging over some kind of brink, shown in slow-motion like a replay on television, again and again. It’s kind of relaxing in some hypnotic way, but first and foremost it’s a state of endless lethargy that gets more and more unreal the longer you float about in this oppressive void that smells of oil and is as large or small as your mind, as deep as the echo of the slow drumbeat of the engines:
Boom, boom, boom…
The heartbeat of nightmare.
In a small first aid kit in the bathroom cabinet, Jón Karl found a bottle of painkillers – paracetamol with codeine – ten bitter white pills that he washed down with tap water. Maybe not the breakfast that the Public Health Centre would recommend, but the narcotic effects of the drug were now a welcome change from the screaming headache, bubbling nausea and steady messages of pain sent by his frayed nerve endings.
A hundred seconds in a shower provides a local anaesthetic…
Jón Karl turns off the cold water, opens his eyes and then stands still, staring at the clear whirlpool disappearing down the drain while his teeth chatter, muscles twitch and joints tremble. His skin is bright red and numb, fingers and toes virtually frostbitten, and each and every muscle so stiff with cold that he can hardly step out of the shower and walk from the bathroom to his bed.
The night of the living dead…
But he does it in the end. Cold and wet, he crawls under the sweaty doona, curls up in the foetal position and waits for the shivering, the biting cold in his nails and the muscle twitching to pass, and the extra-strong painkillers to kick in. The cold is a comfort but it only reduces the hellish pain to a certain point.
‘Come on, then.’
His tongue swells, his lips go dry and a woolly drug fog fills his head…
He had felt tolerable after that long sleep or unconsciousness or whatever, at least while he sat and did nothing, but the second mate’s visit had tired him more than three hours of heavy lifting would. While flesh, bones and sinews are healing there’s no energy left over. You can’t do anything but rest, gather strength and wait for the green light from your body’s Department of Restoration.
Breathe and wait.
A million, trillion seconds in an itchy woollen cloud…
Lightning tears through the dark like a crackling electric sword cleaving the inner heavens of the skull.
Silence.
And the thunder rattles flesh and bones, growls and kicks the steel like a ragamuffin who spots a tin can in the gutter.
Another silence.
The ship hovers in the air, just for a moment… before it crashes down on the heavy wave.
Boom, boom, boom…
Jón Karl jumps, opens his eyes and sees nothing.
‘STOP!’
He sits up in bed, clenches his fists and stares into the darkness while his heart pounds in his chest and his lungs pump foul air in and out of his flaring nostrils.
‘Stop,’ he mutters hoarsely, exhales like a dying man and falls back down on the sweat-soaked pillow.
Down into a pitch-black woolly cloud…
The lights are on, the window half open and Jón Karl has dressed in trousers, socks and a T-shirt. He sits on the couch with a lit cigarette clamped between his lips, the revolver in his hands and a glint in his eye.
He double-checks all the gun’s movable parts, then pushes the cylinder to the side and empties it. Two empty shells and three whole ones fall onto the tabletop. He rubs soot away with his fingers, blows powder grains out of the barrel and reloads the gun, leaving eight whole shells.
‘Speak softly and carry a big gun,’ Jón Karl says to himself as he slides the gun into its holster.
The eight shells he drops into a sock which he then rolls up and slides into the left pocket of his trousers.
He places the ruined passports, the bank books and the stock and share certificates in the bottom of his duffel bag and arranges his clothes on top of them.
He laces up his army boots, straps the handgun to the upper part of the right boot, sticks his sheathed hunting knife into the left boot and hides the weapons with his trouser legs. Óðin had slit the left leg but Jón Karl found a needle and thread in the first aid kit and sewed it back together. He stands up, tosses his cigarette out of the window and throws the bag into the wardrobe. The open pack of cigarettes goes in his right trouser pocket, along with the matchbook containing one unused match, then he puts the eight unopened packs in the bathroom cabinet.
He closes the cabinet door and looks himself in the eye in its mirror.
‘Rock ’n’ roll,’ says Jón Karl, forcing a smile as he runs his fingers through his greasy tangles, then he winks at himself before turning off the bathroom light.
He takes one turn round, intently scanning the cabin, catches sight of the empty shells and tosses them, like the cigarette butt, out the window. Then he closes the window and turns off all the lights before opening the door and, for the first time, leaves this simple room that is neither a prison cell nor a hotel room, and least of all a home of any kind, yet some combination of all three.