Stefán Máni - The Ship

Brown fingers?

‘What are you up to here?’ says Satan, leaning down and pulling at the brown fingers, which are stiff and cold and blue under the nails.

‘DON’T!’ screams Stoker. ‘DON’T TAKE—’ He grabs Satan’s arm, but it’s too late. On the floor in front of the work table lies an arm that belongs to neither Satan nor Stoker. It’s the bare right arm of someone who was, hopefully, dead when the arm was chopped off at the elbow.

‘What have you done?’ says Satan with a sigh. He looks under the work table and, as far as he can see, there are other body parts hidden there. He sees a leg, another arm and, furthest in on the shelf, something large, maybe a torso.

‘Who’s that?’ Satan says, straightening up.

‘A pirate.’ Stoker scratches his head.

‘Did you kill him?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re quite the guy.’ Satan spies his hunting knife and picks it up. The knife is covered with congealed blood, the edge is nicked and dull, and there are pieces of bone and flesh in the grooves.

‘I wasn’t going to…’ Stoker rubs his dirty palms together. ‘I just…’

‘Listen,’ says Satan, stabbing the tip of his knife into the surface of the work table, ‘you are going to dump this carcass in the sea. And don’t let anyone see you. Understood?’

‘Yes, of course,’ says Stoker, breathing more easily.

‘If the others should see this!’ says Satan and whistles softly.

‘Thank you – thank you !’ says Stoker, looking at Satan with tearful puppy eyes. ‘You’re the only one who has—’

‘None of that!’ says Satan, snapping his fingers in Stoker’s face. ‘Get rid of the carcass and then clean up my knife and sharpen it before you give it back. Understood?’

21:13

They sit silent at the table in the seamen’s mess, the two seamen and the engineer, drinking coffee after a late supper of sandwiches, apple wedges and a few doughnuts. The eternal Doors cassette is now telling them about a moonlight drive.

Satan sits at the end, away from the door. Stoker sits on his right and Sæli on his left.

Sæli sniffs and looks at Stoker. He blinks and looks at Satan, who yawns, a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other. Skuggi, who is lying under the table, doesn’t take his eyes off Satan.

‘What happened to Jónas, anyway?’ asks Sæli, just to say something and break the heavy silence.

‘Didn’t he take the lifeboat?’ Satan says, lighting his cigarette and puffs it into life.

‘That’s one theory,’ says Sæli and shrugs. ‘But he was kind of handicapped.’

‘Maybe nobody took the boat,’ says Stoker, turning his coffee mug around on the table. ‘Perhaps it just shot itself overboard. I saw the boat land in the water. There wasn’t anybody in the window, nobody started the engine and the boat just drifted away.’

‘And the fifth pirate?’ says Sæli. ‘Nobody knows what became of the fifth pirate. Maybe he took the boat?’

‘Maybe he just fell in the sea,’ says Satan, looking at Stoker as he exhales smoke.

‘Yeah,’ says Stoker and nods at Satan. ‘It seems likely to me that he simply fell overboard when nobody was looking.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ murmurs Sæli. ‘I hope, at least, that he isn’t just hiding somewhere. Have we definitely searched everywhere?’

‘Yep,’ says Satan. ‘As far as we could. But it’s probably safer to sleep behind locked doors.’

‘Yeah.’ Sæli sips his warm coffee. ‘If we can sleep at all, that is.’

Silence.

There’s a soft click from the tape recorder as side A of the eternal Doors cassette comes to an end, one motor stops and the other takes over, the wheels turn clockwise and the B side of the tape moves across the magnetic head.

‘Well, boys,’ says Guðmundur as he enters the mess with four shot glasses in his left hand and an ice-covered bottle of liquor in his right. ‘I think it’s about time we drank a nip or two in memory of our dear departed.’

He sits down at the door end of the table, puts the shot glasses on the foam-covered table and unscrews the top of the bottle.

‘What have we there?’ asks Stoker.

‘I found it in the freezer,’ answers the captain as he pours a thick clear liquid. ‘I think it’s Icelandic schnapps.’

He fills the glasses to the brim before passing them out to his shipmates.

‘In memory of Methúsalem, John, Rúnar and Ásmundur, good lads who all died far too young,’ says the captain, standing up with his glass in his hand. ‘We bow our heads and show our respect with a minute of silence.’

The remaining crew stands up, bow their heads and remain silent for one minute.

‘God rest their souls,’ says the captain as he opens his eyes and lifts his glass.

‘Amen.’

They all toss back their drinks and then sit back down. The captain collects the glasses and refills them.

‘Enjoy,’ he says and screws the top on the bottle.

The ice on the outside of the bottle has become clear; it is melting onto the table.

‘Why did those men attack us?’ Sæli says, sighing. ‘I mean, what were they after?’

‘There’s a curse on this ship,’ grumbles Stoker and gnashes his teeth. ‘A curse that—’

‘Óli! Not now!’ says the captain, giving the engineer a severe look. Stoker looks away shamefaced, but Sæli straightens up, all eyes and ears, as if there’s nothing he wants more at this moment than to learn from Stoker’s lips about the alleged curse on the ship.

‘They probably imagined that the hold was full of something valuable,’ says Guðmundur, clapping Sæli’s right shoulder.

‘Couldn’t you tell them the hold was empty?’ asks Stoker, grinning impishly.

‘Unless they were going to steal the ship itself,’ the captain replies, looking askance at Stoker. ‘We just don’t know.’

‘That reminds me of something… I read,’ says Sæli and looks up at his shipmates, as if not sure whether or not they want him to continue.

‘What was that?’ asks Guðmundur.

‘There’s a tribe on the islands of Micronesia,’ says Sæli, rocking back and forth and sniffing repeatedly, his face going red. ‘They’re primitive islanders who believe their ancestors will one day appear in a ship loaded with food.’

‘Really?’ says the captain with a crooked smile. ‘And they just wait for it, year after year?’

‘Yes. Something like that. This belief is called “cargo cult”.’

‘They wouldn’t be very happy if we ran aground there!’ says Stoker, giving a low laugh. ‘A dead-in-the-water ship laden to the gunwales with darkness!’

‘Yeah – no – probably not.’ Sæli coughs. ‘It would have been more fun if Rúnar had told us about this. He told stories so well, did Rúnar. Knew how to stretch it out and tie up the loose threads at the end.’

‘Yeah, but it’s not the storyteller who makes all the difference,’ says the captain, smiling paternally at the seaman. ‘Rather, it’s the story that’s told. And this was a pretty good story!’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ mumbles Sæli, blushing. ‘But what difference does a fucking story make when your life’s hanging by a thread?’

‘We have to keep up hope, Sæli, lad!’ says the captain, putting his hand on the seaman’s shoulder. ‘Without hope we are lost.’

‘Nothing can be changed that’s written in the stars,’ says Stoker into his beard. ‘Nobody can flee his day of judgement.’

‘Óli Johnsen!’ growls the captain, so that Stoker jumps and accidentally bites his lips.

‘Whether you live life laughing or crying, it’s still just life,’ says Satan and tosses back the contents of his glass.