Stefán Máni - The Ship

On a shelf under the working bench, a heater fan slowly revolves and in front of it there is something black and sticky, about the size of a tomato, sitting on a five-page-thick pile of newspaper, opened to a double-page spread. Stoker pulls the newspaper off the shelf and places it on the workbench. The black sticky thing glued to the newspaper is the heart of the fifth pirate. It’s shrunk to half its size and become much darker, but it’s still resilient to the touch and the newspaper is still absorbing blood, which colours it black and brown almost out to the edges.

Stoker grins to himself and slides the paper back onto the shelf in front of the heater. Once the heart is completely dry he’s going to grind it into a fine powder and keep it in a locked copper casket. Powdered heart of pirate! How much for a gram of that on the black market in New Orleans or Casablanca? If it’s even on offer!

But he’s not going to sell this treasure. No, he’s going to…Stoker is startled out of his daydreams when he hears a heavy thud.

Or was it?

He listens carefully but hears nothing but the tiresome rattle of the generator engine.

Boom, boom, boom…

There!

‘What…’ Stoker switches off the lights in the machine shop and walks out to the engine room. What’s that banging? Who’s hitting…?

Boom, boom, boom…

He walks over to starboard side and into the storeroom. Is the banging coming from above or…

Boom, boom, boom…

Stoker walks into the boiler room and from there up the steel ladder leading to the electrical workshop. That’s where the banging is coming from, he could be pretty…

Boom, boom, boom…

Yes! He turns to the right and along a corridor, totally unlit apart from a faint green light from above the door leading to the empty hold. On the cold steel floor are pools of oily dampness, the walls are covered with old and new rust, and the clacking of his wooden clogs echoes along the corridor.

Clack, clack, clack…

‘Is somebody there?’ calls Stoker, who has figured out where the heavy blows are coming from. Someone has left the door to the hold open, and the heavy metal door swings with the movement of the ship, slamming every now and then into the doorframe, which shudders, and the metallic blow is magnified in these empty metal surroundings.

Who opened the door to the hold?

Stoker holds the door with his left hand and the doorjamb with his right. then sticks his head into the darkness and calls into the cool emptiness.

‘IS SOMEBODY IN THERE?’

There is no answer. Of course there’s nobody in there! Who could be there? Jónas? No. The door opened by itself. It’s the only logical explanation.

‘Bloody stupid,’ mutters Stoker and straightens up. Just as he’s about to step aside, the ship takes a heavy blow and he slips on the floor, losing his grip on the door, which swings…

31°W 8°S

It’s now or never! Well, maybe not never , but this is the right time , that’s for sure. If they mess up this opportunity, there’s little or no hope of another one.

Guðmundur stands out on the starboard bridge wing and checks the weather, then glances at his watch.

The sun is shining in a clear sky, the temperature is nearing thirty degrees and it’s ten past eight in the morning. He goes back in the bridge and looks over the control board and the table. He has compass, charts, pocket calculator and sextant. He’s recorded all the necessary information in the ship’s log: everything about the ship, the crew and the events of the past few days, in both Icelandic and English. Everything’s ready. If the foghorn were working he’d blow it as a sign that everyone should prepare to depart.

But since the foghorn is out of commission, the captain keeps shouting out to his shipmates as he makes his way down to B-deck.

‘IS EVERYONE READY? WE ABANDON SHIP IN TWENTY MINUTES. ALL HANDS ON DECK!’

When he walks out onto B-deck Sæli and Satan are there already, so he could have saved himself the shouting. Stoker is doubtless down in the engine room, fetching something or making some final adjustments.

‘Hello, lads!’ says the captain, who is both excited and anxious about the pending boat trip. ‘Ready to go?’

‘Yeah,’ says Sæli. ‘I guess so.’

‘Are you abandoning ship in this thing?’ asks Satan. He gives the inflatable a kick so it turns in a half circle on the slippery deck.

‘Yes,’ says Guðmundur, putting on a lifejacket and then tossing one to Sæli and another to Satan. ‘This boat is our only hope.’

‘How far is it to land?’ Sæli asks as he puts on his lifejacket.

‘About 110 kilometres, maybe more,’ says the captain with a shrug. ‘We should get to shore before dark, if all goes well.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ says Satan, throwing his lifejacket to the deck. ‘This thing’s going to sink, that’s for sure. I’m not leaving a million tonnes of steel to get in a bath toy. No way!’

‘You have no choice!’ says Captain Guðmundur, his eyes going red. ‘This ship is on its way to hell! One hundred and ten kilometres is quite a way, I’ll grant you that, but sunset tonight marks the end of any chance we have that this ship will ever be found! It could drift out beyond the earth’s atmosphere, as far as that goes – there’s just about the same degree of shipping traffic out there as in the godless depths this rustbucket is heading for. So there!’

‘No need to get all worked up, man,’ says Satan, squinting against the sun and lighting a cigarette. ‘Can’t we just drop anchor and hang out here until some losers find us?’

‘We might as well hang Christmas lights on the ship as drop anchor,’ says the captain with a grim laugh. ‘At a guess the water here is a good five kilometres deep.’

‘You must be joking!’ says Satan, his eyes widening as he blows smoke through his nose.

A good five kilometres! That’s about the length of the drive from the Höfðabakki Bridge all the way to Snorrabraut in the west of Reykjavík. Satan is dizzied by the thought of water so deep and dark that it may as well be bottomless. How long would it take a human body to sink a good 5000 metres? Six hours? Twelve? A full twenty-four? Or would the enormous pressure have turned it into pàté halfway down?

‘If we don’t go now,’ says Sæli, slapping the side of the Zodiac, ‘we’ll never go.’

‘All together now!’ says the captain and grabs one of the Zodiac’s handles. ‘Let’s get this dinghy afloat.’

‘Fuck it!’ says Satan and sticks his cigarette in his mouth before also grabbing a handle. ‘I’ll help you launch this junk but I’m staying on the ship, thank you very much. This wading pool is going to sink and I don’t plan to sink with it. No fucking way am I going to bob around in the water for days on end just to be smelled out and eaten by a shark. No way!’

‘Up to you,’ says the captain with a sigh as they lift the boat and head for the steps leading down to the weather deck.

‘There aren’t any sharks around here,’ says Sæli. ‘Are there?’

31°W 8°S

Desert upon desert as far as his distorted consciousness can reach; a burning hot desert, yellow and deadly…

The sun is shining on Jónas’s sickly face, salty sweat runs into his eyes, there’s nothing to be seen but the flaming sand and dancing mirages in the distance…

He’s walking and walking but can’t feel his legs…

Maybe he’s on horseback?

He doesn’t know where he’s going but he carries on, he has to carry on, he can’t do anything but carry on, gliding as if in a dream…