Stefán Máni - The Ship

On the ground floor of the bar customers are smoking and drinking at the tables; some are playing chess or whist, others talking with their neighbours and others still are sitting alone at the bar, intent on their own wretchedness and the oblivion of drink.

Like the guy dressed in denim who looks glassy eyed at the last sip in a greasy beer glass and then at his watch, which tells him it’s fifteen minutes to one in the morning on Tuesday.

00:45

He’s on is way to work as a deckhand for the first and last time. He’s going to work alongside his brother-in-law on a ship to Suriname, where he’s going to buy a thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine and smuggle it back home. Actually, he’s not going to smuggle it himself – he’s going to let one of the other deckhands do it, but without the deckhand realising who he’s working for. That’s precisely the reason he begged his brother-in-law Jónas for the job. He had heard about some wretched deckhand on the Per se who owed loads of money to the same gambling joint where he had himself lost all his savings.

Once he got the job he called the deckhand and said he was collecting on the debt. He told him his name was Satan because he knew that if the guy asked around about that name he’d be advised to do as the debt collector said, if he wanted to live. Then he got his mother to sell her flat and give her children their inheritance in advance. He was going to buy her a house, later.

He’d threatened to hurt the deckhand’s family if he wouldn’t fetch the package in Suriname and bring it to Iceland. Not a nice thing to do, but he couldn’t take the risk of smuggling it himself, since he had a record and all. He’s going to reward the lad later, once he’s got the money for the coke and found a place to live in more southern climes. He’s going to reward him for the task – he’s determined to do that, since he’s going to be so rich you can’t imagine.

Money in the bank, man! Money in the bank!

Yes, he’d made his final call to the lad earlier this evening, just to put the finishing touches to the whole deal before he left port. Nothing left but to buy the coke over there and get it to the lad. He had phoned him and threatened him and stuff – ha! Since then he’d been in here boozing and floozing and schmoozing.

He’s fuzzy headed from the drink, slouching over the bar, but then suddenly seems to remember something or get an idea. At any rate, he abruptly straightens his back and pulls a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his denim jacket, unfolds it and reads what’s written on it in blue pen.

555-SKIP

He sticks the paper in his pocket, finishes the last of his beer, puts out his half-smoked cigarette and gets down off the high bar stool. Then he weaves his way over to a circular table, where five out of the nine-man crew of Per se sit drinking. He claps the two nearest on the back, leans forward between Rúnar Hallgrímsson and Ársæll Egilsson, and smiles vacantly through his unkempt beard.

‘D’you think you could lend me a ten-coin, lads?’ he asks, clearing his throat. ‘I haven’t got any change and I have to make a call.’

‘Leave us alone, man!’ says Rúnar, poking his elbow in the drunk’s stomach and pushing him away from the table.

The drunk takes two steps back then stops to gain his balance, freezes in that position and stares straight ahead, as though in a trance.

It’s as if his soul has gone to sleep, as if his personality has abandoned the drunken body. His eyes go dark and sink into his head, his mouth gapes and for just a moment there is literally no sign of life in his deathly pale face, which is little more than a skin-covered skull. He is lifeless – he has turned into a ghost or a zombie – but only for that single moment.

Then it’s as if a silent explosion takes place inside the man.

Boom, boom, boom…

His lungs draw breath, his eyes re-emerge, his fingers twitch and from his mouth comes a long, eerie sucking sound, as if from the throat of a sea monster that is desperately trying to crawl ashore.

‘ Slrrrghh… merge in me,’ mutters the man inarticulately as he stares at nothing, his eyes more like the shiny black of a raven than any window on the soul of a civilised human being.

He twitches all over as if he’s cold; the skin of his face stretches till his gums and the whites of his eyes stand out, then his expanded pupils fill his ghostly eyes, dark red blood drips from his nostrils and spit runs from his gaping mouth, down his chin and onto the floor.

Then he straightens his back, blinks his eyes and briefly looks around at the table of five.

‘Five dead men,’ he says in a soft bass voice, looking deep into Sæli’s eyes, ‘four of them in a ship.’

‘What?’

The man regains his balance on the wooden floor, then turns around and crosses to the bar, where he takes the same bar stool and leans over the bar.

‘So how about paying your bill now, pal?’ says the bartender, wiping the bar with a damp cloth.

‘Hold on,’ mutters the man, patting all his pockets until he finds a crumpled pack containing one cigarette in his trouser pocket. ‘Guess I’ll have one more round. Double whiskey on the rocks and a glass of soda water. And a pack of cigarettes – Princes.’

The man sticks the cigarette in his mouth and lights it with a match from a worn matchbook that’s lying on the bar. On the front of the matchbook there’s a grainy black-and-white photo of an old passenger ship afloat under a full moon. The ship’s name is Noon . Inside the matchbook cover some barfly has written in blue ink:

That which sleeps forever is not dead.

‘Here you go. Anything else?’ asks the bartender as he serves the drinks.

‘No,’ says the man, sticking the matchbook in his pocket before drinking the ice-cold whiskey in one gulp.

‘That’ll be twelve hundred,’ says the barman, wiping sweat from his forehead as he thumbs through his notebook till he finds ‘Slot-machine Kalli’. ‘Which brings the bill to nine thousand one hundred.’

The man pats the front of his jacket and checks under the left side, where he feels something thick underneath. He sees a thick wad of bills but shows no reaction. In his hip pocket he finds a thin wallet, which he opens and inspects.

‘I seem to be broke for the moment,’ says the man with a smile, after searching through his wallet and finding only 1500 crowns.

‘Can’t you pay your bill?’ asks the bartender, irritated, staring into the infinite deep of the man’s eyes.

‘Just chalk it up,’ says the man with a bearded grin, taking a sip of his soda. ‘Open an account or something. I’ll pay tomorrow.’

‘You don’t have credit here, as you’re perfectly aware,’ says the bartender, shaking his head. ‘Either you pay up or I get the doorman to—’

The bartender stops talking when the man takes him by the throat and pulls him halfway over the bar. The bartender’s feet leave the ground and the veins at his temples swell and darken.

‘You chalk it up or I kill you! Understood?’ says the man, tightening his grip on the bartender, who is going bright red and blue round his nose and eyes, and nods as best he can.

‘And your full name?’ asks the bartender, gasping for breath as he takes out an account book and pen.

‘Satan,’ says the man, knocking the ash off his cigarette as he grabs the pack of Princes and gets down off the bar stool.

‘Satan?’ says the bartender, looking up, but the man is halfway out the door.

Outside the bar is a little garden. The sky over the city is dark and the air is cool and bracing. Under a tree sits a black dog of doubtful parentage who looks at Satan with its brown eyes and wags its tail.