Jón Gnarr - The Pirate

After we got to the house, the girls invited us in; they’d already got the children to sleep. We were inside the living room, just chatting. I only knew these girls from Rétto. They weren’t disco freaks, just your typical girls. We talked about the teachers and how stupid they were. The travel sickness tablets didn’t seem to be working. Strangely, the girl who had a crush on me was looking at me, which was both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time, her eyes searching. She asked me about one thing and another, and I tried to answer as best as I could. Did she want to kiss me? Should I take the initiative? Do guys always take the initiative? I wondered if I should try to kiss her. But she was talking. What would she do if I tried to kiss her? Would she get mad? I was getting so nervous and didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I excused myself, went into the bathroom, and thought about things. I decided to take some more sickness tablets and get going with it. I saw the other boy and girl were kissing on the other couch. The girl with a crush on me was sitting on the couch and looked at me questioningly. I sat next to her.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied, awkwardly.

The excitement increased. Were we about to kiss? I peeped sideways at the pair on the couch, who were clasped in an embrace, their tongues up inside one another. How had it started? I shouldn’t have gone off to the bathroom. Suddenly a hallucination poured over me. Someone was behind the curtains and whispering to me, but I could hardly make out the words. “Jón,” whispered the voice. I giggled nervously.

“What?” asked the girl and smiled.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Just Siggi the Punk,” I muttered and laughed.

“Huh?” she asked, surprised.

Siggi the Punk was hiding behind the curtains and whispering to me. The room was moving, and the furniture waddled back and forth. The girl looked questioningly and surprisedly at me. I was clearly about to fuck this up. Then everything went black.

All of a sudden I’m inside the kitchen at home, sitting at the kitchen table, and Adam Ant is lying on top of the kitchen cabinet with his hand under his cheek, gawping at me. I glance at Mom, who clearly can’t see Adam Ant.

“Adam Ant?” I ask, taken aback.

Adam Ant begins to laugh. “Stand and deliver,” he shouts at me. I’m starting to laugh, but my mom doesn’t think it’s funny.

“What tablets have you been taking?”

“What? I’ve not taken any tablets.”

Adam Ant disappears, and someone else comes and whispers to me. Mom tries to talk to me, but I cannot hear what she says because of the whispering. My mom has a worried expression. The floor rocks back and forth. Mom stands up, walks into the telephone room, and says something into the phone. There are three people inside the room. Definitely some friend of Mom. I call out to them:

“Hello.”

No answer. Adam Ant is nowhere in sight. The Sex Pistols are standing outside the kitchen window and looking inside. How great that they’ve turned up.

“Hey,” I tell them and wink.

I’m going to bed. I’m tired. I’ve definitely acted fully composed and tricked Mom so she doesn’t realize a thing. I just need to watch my step with the waving and rocking, to take care not to fall on my face when the floor tilts. When Mom comes back, I say firmly:

“Good night, Mom, I’m going to sleep now.”

Did she hear what I said? What did I say again? Did I tell her I was going to go to bed, or did I tell her I was asleep? I repeated the words to be on the safe side.

“Well, Mom, I’m going to sleep. Good night, Mom.”

I was all set to leave and had deliberated it in my mind, calculating the angle of the floor and how I could walk to my room as normally as possible. I set off, except I forgot to stand up and fell over right there and hit the floor. Damn sloping floor. I had miscalculated and couldn’t stand up by any means. It was so ridiculous that I started laughing again. Before I knew it, I was sitting in the back, seat of a car and my dad was behind the wheel. The next thing I remember was that some people were running beside the car. Maybe some kids were trying to get the car. Still, it was strange because it was nighttime. It was all incredibly funny and amusing, and I laughed.

The next day I woke up in intensive care at City Hospital. Someone was sneaking about inside the hospital room. Whispers. I didn’t follow what was being said. Sneaky demons shot back and forth. Whispers.

“Huh? What are you saying? I can’t hear.”

The room rocked back and forth and turned in circles. I was dizzy. A doctor came walking towards me, and I poked him to see if he was real — he was — but I didn’t understand what he was saying and struggled to distinguish his voice from all the other voices.

“What’s your name?”

“Jón. Jónsi Punk.”

He took my hand.

“Do you know what year it is, Jón?”

I knew that.

“Nine hundred and eighty…” I couldn’t remember. “…something,” I added and giggled.

When I woke up next it was evening. The hallucinations were gone. What had happened? What was I doing here? I thought about Tintin. Did they have any Tintin here? The nurse came and asked how I felt.

“All right,” I replied. “Do you have any Tintin comics here?”

She didn’t answer, and I let my eyelids droop. Endless pictures of Tintin flicked past my mind’s eye. I vaguely heard the nurses who came and went, taking blood pressure, saying things to me, then going ahead. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. My eyelids were as heavy as lead shutters.

“Do you know where you are, Jón?”

“In the hospital?”

“You’re here in intensive care at City Hospital, you came here with your Dad last night — don’t you remember?”

“Sure,” I said, but didn’t.

“You’d taken a lot of pills and had them pumped out of you.”

Pumped out of me? I didn’t remember it. How were they pumped out of me?

“We gave you some drugs which should counteract the poison you ingested.”

“Okay.”

“What pills did you take?”

“Travel sickness tablets?” I asked, with eyes closed.

“Travel sickness tablets, okay.”

“Do you think there’s someone here with Tintin?”

The effects of the sickness tablets persisted through the course of the evening. I received a sedative, and that felt good. Tintin continued to haunt me. I tried to get the nurses who came and talked to me to talk about Tintin and read me Tintin books. I told them about my favorite book about the adventures of Tintin and then asked them what their favorite Tintin book was and so on. When I changed the subject to Tintin’s friends Thomson and Thompson, I couldn’t keep from laughing. The bed I was lying in was on wheels. Someone came and said something to me, and I was moved into another room. There was a closet, like inside all hospital rooms. When I was alone I crawled out of bed over to the closet, curled myself into a ball, squeezed myself into the closet, and closed the door on myself. The closet was a rocket. I was in the hospital, but it was still a rocket. But maybe this was just my own nonsense? Maybe I was just an idiot inside a closet? I heard the voice of Captain Haddock: “A hundred thousand blistering barnacles.” The closet took off and shot into space. I felt the whole cubby shaking. I slept. Outer space was infinite. Someone came and opened the closet. I took a breath. Then I was back in bed where someone gave me medicine.

When I woke up the next day, I was in yet another room. I staggered out of bed, opened the door and went into the hall. I only vaguely remembered what had happened. I was filled with terror. What had taken place? A doctor or nurse came walking towards me.