Jón Gnarr - The Indian

The raft is ready. I made it out of pallets that I fixed to oil barrels with ropes. I put a long stick in the middle as a mast. I stretched a sheet down it and tied it to the raft with ropes. I stole the sheet from my mother. Now, it has become a sail.

I write the raft’s name on the side, using black paint from a can I found: KONTIKI, the same name as the raft Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific Ocean.

I’m not going to sail that far, just out to sea to fish for dinner. At most, I’ll sail across Kollafjörður and over to Reykjavík. It’s not that far. And maybe I can use the raft to sail between places and visit Runa and Grétar.

Runa and Grétar have recently moved up to Kjalarnes. They live in a small house near a bird farm at Móar. Their house was formerly the stables, but Grétar shovelled out the horse shit, replaced the windows and fixed everything that was faulty. Grétar works in Móar.

I can go and visit them as often as I want. I try to go as often as I can. If no one wants to drive me, I hitchhike. I stay with them all weekends and all holidays. It’s better than being stuck in town.

I mostly play on the beach. I make lots of boats out of all kinds of rubbish and put them out to sea. I pretend they’re under attack and I barrage them with rocks. If they sail away, they’ve escaped.

Sometimes I take hot dogs with me and grill them over a fire.

I can spend all day down at the beach. I gather stuff, light fires, and climb the rocks. At one point I tie a long rope to the fence stakes. Using it, I can swing from the cliff. Sometimes I go on a long exploratory expedition along the beach.

My raft is complete. It’s good weather, perfect sailing weather. The fjord is mirror-still. I lug the raft into the sea. When it’s deep enough in, I leap on board.

The raft is controlled by a single oar that I found on the beach, and a long punt. I’ll use that to push the raft by levering it against the seabed or against rocks. The sail will come in handy, too.

It’s hard to get away from the land. The raft is always carried back to the beach. I’m soon tired of pushing it out again and making sure it doesn’t get stranded on any of the rocks.

A short way off, a little river runs to the sea. If I can get the raft there, I can use the stream from the river to carry me further out to sea.

I head back in to land. I use a rope to pull the raft towards the estuary. Then I leap on board.

This works better. In an instant I’m far away from the shore. It’s gotten so deep I can’t touch the bottom with the punt. There’s not enough wind right now to fill the sail. Runa will certainly be surprised when I call her from Reykjavík:

— Hi.

— Hey, where are you?

— Oh, just at home.

— Home?

— Yes.

— At Mom and Dad’s?

— Yes.

— How did you get there?

— I sailed.

Excitement shivers through me at the thought. It’s brilliant, teasing Runa.

When she and Grétar first started living together, they rented the apartment in Mom and Dad’s basement. Runa always came up during the day to get coffee and read the papers. She was pregnant and home a lot while Grétar worked.

Once, she’d made a salad in a bowl that was standing in the kitchen. I took some plastic bugs and put them on top of the salad. They looked really real. Then I went to school.

When I returned home from school, Runa had shut herself in the television room. She’d been there all day because she was so afraid of the bugs. She was so mad, I laughed. She was always teasing me like that when I was little. But if I had known she would be scared for real, I wouldn’t have done it. It’s very silly to be so afraid of bugs in a salad. What were they going to do to her?

After I’ve looked around and admired the view for a bit, I sit down and have my lunch. I have a Coke and a Mars bar with me. I lie down and relax. Sailing takes quite a while. Maybe at some point I can get an outboard motor to make the journey quicker.

Suddenly, I jump up from my daydreams because of a movement in the water right beside the boat. Sharks? I fear nothing in the world so much as sharks. I’ve seen Jaws . I’ve read books about sharks. They can attack boats.

I scan around me. A black shadow leaps forward just below the surface of the water. The hairs rise on my head. It was just one, but there are definitely more. I hope they aren’t white sharks. They would easily shred the raft. Is this really the way my fate lies, being eaten alive in the middle of Kollafjörður?

I’m horrifyingly far from land. Kjalarnes has disappeared but Reykjavík doesn’t appear to be visible. The sea is not so calm and gentle as before. There are waves, and the raft has begun to wobble ominously. The waves beat against the barrels and the sound reverberates within them. Maybe those aren’t waves? Maybe the sharks have started to swim under the raft. I jump at each blow and look despairingly around the boat.

Suddenly the raft dips in one corner. I lose my legs and almost stumble overboard. Terror spasms through me. A barrel has come loose and is floating away. It was the only barrel not fastened with nails. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. Alone on a sinking raft surrounded by ruthless, bloodthirsty predator fish.

It’s a horrible death, being eaten by sharks. I’ve read about it. You’re swimming in the sea and see a shadow below you. And in my case it is even worse because I cannot even see the water. I’m so myopic, I can’t even see a meter in front of me in a swimming pool, never mind a black sea. Sharks see quite clearly. They swim under the surface, measuring up their victim from a safe distance. The only thing you see is a black dorsal fin when it cleaves the surface of the water. Then it disappears suddenly and silently into the water and you don’t know where it’s gone. The shark swims below you and looks up at you as you wriggle helplessly.

The attack comes without warning, when you least expect it. The beast comes from the abyss with a gaping mouth, wide and black as hell and set with flights of sharp teeth. All of a sudden you’re bitten in the leg. The shark shakes you and throws you back and forth so you don’t know which way’s up and which down. It stops as suddenly as it started, and vanishes back into the murk. It takes you a moment to recover from the attack, then you quickly realize you’re swimming in your own blood. You feel your leg and find that there’s a huge hole in your thigh, a gush of human blood. You can feel the heat from the blood seeping into the cold sea. You begin to lose your strength. Your vision blurs and flickers and you begin to swallow more of the sea. And just before you lose consciousness: the second attack.

God almighty! I grip my raft tight. My heart beats against the surface of the pallet with such force that the rhythmic taps sound on the empty oil barrels. Boom, boom, boom…

Such fear is uncontrollable, a mixture of vertigo, crippling anxiety, and psychosis. I would rather lie tied to a dental chair on top of Hallgríms Church with wasps hovering over my head and spiders crawling on my face than be here.

I pull my legs up towards me. Sharks can jump onto boats. There’s cold sweat on my forehead and I can barely breathe. Far off I see the tower of Hallgríms Church in the distance. I’ve gone past it. I’m headed to the open ocean.

— God, don’t let me die like this.

I clasp my hands and close my eyes.

— Dear Lord, if you rescue me now you won’t regret it. I’ll always do things really carefully from now on. I’ll be kind to everyone I meet and never lie or steal or anything like that. And I’ll never, never do this again. Amen.