—But the hold…You seem to be suggesting he has a special relationship with it.
—He spends a lot of time down there, writing stuff on the walls. But I don’t know. He’s liable to move on to something else.
Wilander pressed him on the subject of Mortensen, but Arnsparger, after answering a couple of questions, tucked his chin onto his chest, pushing his lips in and out as might a sullen child, his replies growing terse; finally he scooped up the cardboard box, surged to his feet and said he needed to get going, there were things he had to do, and when Wilander, bewildered by this shift in mood, asked if he had in some way offended, Arnsparger said, I’m fed up with you pretending to be my buddy so you can pick my brain. I’m not a fucking reference library! and stormed out, leaving Wilander to consider whether he had been insufficiently enthusiastic about Arnsparger’s samples, or if the man’s reaction was attributable to an irrational fit of temper, or if he, Wilander, had inadvertently crossed some impalpable boundary, one of many such boundaries for which Viator appeared to serve as a nexus.
The homogenous quality of the delusions that gripped the crew of Viator intrigued Wilander—although he had previously observed a sameness of mental defect among the men, not until his conversation with Arnsparger did he recognize how deep that sameness ran, and this gave him to recognize, in turn, that their presence onboard Viator, something he had theretofore thought of as a peculiar circumstance, might be a mystery of profound proportions. During his daily tours through the ship, in hopes of shedding light upon the mystery, he made concerted attempts to connect with Halmus and Nygaard and Mortensen—and with Arnsparger, who apologized for his flare-up, though he offered no excuse for it; but despite all Wilander’s efforts, only twice did his contact with the men result in anything approaching an illumination, the first instance occurring one morning when he entered the galley, a room with stratifications of petrified grease darkening the ceiling and whose contents had been ransacked (whether by vandals or a rebellion against shipboard cuisine, no one could say), the shelves knocked down, a sink ripped away from the wall, the top of the stove—a black iron monstrosity blotched with rust (icthilio), but still functional—cracked, one of the oven doors missing, and there he discovered Nygaard cuddling a corroded saucepan in his arms, talking in a tender tone of voice, a hushed, consoling tone, as if the pan were a sick kitten that he was encouraging to suck milk from an eyedropper. Wilander asked him about the pan—what was its attraction, its point of interest?—and, receiving no response, pried it from his grasp, whereupon the gray little man fell back toward the door, gazing morosely at the prize that had been stolen from him. The inside bottom of the pan bore a whitish discoloration that resembled a ship ploughing through heavy seas, a similarity that seemed unremarkable until Wilander noticed that the overall shape of the ship was identical to the shape of Viator and a ragged dark line along the bow corresponded exactly to the placement of the breach in Viator’s bow. He suspected that the questions he wanted to ask were beyond Nygaard’s ability to answer, but nonetheless he pointed to the discoloration and said, This looks like a ship, right? What do you think it signifies?
Anxious as a mouse, eyes darting this way and that, Nygaard retreated into the passageway. Wilander offered him the saucepan. Here, he said. I only wanted a look. But when Nygaard came forward to take the pan, Wilander hid it behind his back. First answer my question. What do you think it means? The picture of the ship.
Nygaard stared at a spot on Wilander’s stomach, as if he were employing x-ray vision to peer through flesh and bone and see the pan. Viator, he said.
—This is a picture of Viator? That’s what you’re telling me?
Nygaard gave a tight little nod.
—Why do you think so?
—Because it’s traveling.
—What’s that got to do with anything?
—Viator means traveler.
—The name, Viator? Who told you that?
Nygaard’s stare never wavered.
—Did someone tell you that’s what it meant? Wilander asked. Who was it?
—Halmus. Nygaard stuck out his hand. Give it to me.
Wilander extended the pan, but kept hold of the handle when Nygaard tried to snatch it. What else did Halmus tell you? Did he talk to you about the ship?
—Viator means traveler.
—That’s all he said? You’re sure?
Using both hands, Nygaard wrenched the pan from Wilander’s grip, but instead of running, as Wilander expected, he stood hugging the pan and said, I need some metal polish.
—What else did Halmus tell you?
—Metal polish, Nygaard said stubbornly.
—All right. I’ll bring it tomorrow. Now what else did Halmus say?
—Promise you’ll bring the polish?
—Yes, I promise. Now what did he tell you?
With the pan cradled in his arms, a crafty smile playing over his lips, Nygaard had the look of a husband who had been caught just as he was about to cook up his murdered wife’s liver and thus no longer had any reason to hide the beautiful glare of his insanity beneath a humble exterior. He told me to fuck off, he said.
Several days later, as Wilander descended the stairs toward the engine room, he encountered Halmus, who was climbing the stairs, going with his head down, carrying a toolbox, and asked him what he had told Nygaard about Viator. Scowling, Halmus pushed past him, and Wilander, who—albeit taller and stronger—had previously been quailed by Halmus’ temper, felt a burst of heat and hatred so all-consuming, it seemed to have been produced by a chemical reaction, the ignition of some volatile agent in his blood, a childish response buried beneath years of socialization, muffled by the practiced constraints of a business life, and—eventually—suffocated by reflexes born of poverty and failure and dissolution, by an appreciation of your own unworthiness that leads you to avert your eyes whenever an insult is hurled your way, and yet had never been extinguished, hiding like an ember beneath a board, waiting to be rekindled. He caught Halmus’ elbow and slung him into the railing, which broke free with a shriek and went spinning down to clang against the floor thirty feet below, and Halmus, arms windmilling, teetered on the brink of a fatal drop until Wilander hauled him back and pushed him against the opposite railing and asked his question a second time.
—I don’t know what you’re talking about! Halmus struggled against Wilander’s hold.
Goaded by the man’s foppish beard and the contemptuous set of his mouth, Wilander knuckled his Adam’s apple and said, You told him Viator means traveler.
—That’s what it means, you ass! It’s Latin! Didn’t you go to school?
—The school I went to, we didn’t learn faggot shit like Latin! You know what I learned? While you were studying Latin and going to art movies and jabbering about political injustice in coffee bars, preparing yourself for a life of taking drugs? I learned statistics, cost accounting! I learned how to make a fucking living!
—Yeah? And how’d that work out?
Wilander forced Halmus harder against the railing. What else do you know about the ship? What did you tell Nygaard?
—I didn’t tell him anything! I don’t know anything! Halmus twisted his head, trying to see behind him. Let me go! The railing’s loose!