by Stefan Mani
‘What was it he said again?’ says Sæli, peering out the back window. ‘Something about a ship. Five men on a ship. What was it?’
‘He’s just a drunk,’ Rúnar mutters, irritated. ‘Let’s forget him!’
‘Yeah, let’s forget him,’ says Methúsalem, peering into the passenger-side mirror, but there is nothing to be seen but the wet roadside, fading into the darkness.
Little by little the lights and houses grow more scarce. By the time they reach the mouth of the Hvalfjörður fjord there is nothing to be seen but the rain-laden night.
‘Take the tunnel, mate,’ says Big John, his great paw clapping the driver on his right shoulder. ‘We’ll pay the toll.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ the driver nods.
From the radio come the soft A-major chords of the lyrical Adagio Cantabile movement of Beethoven’s eighth piano sonata, the Pathétique. The chords dissolve into monotonous static as the car plunges into the deep, dark tunnel under Hvalfjörður.
IV
A black telephone rings. It sits on a crocheted doily on the telephone table in the hall in the home of Jónas Bjarni Jónasson, second mate on the freighter Per se. Jónas lives in a fairly new semi-detached house in the Lendur district in Mosfellsbær. It’s ten to one in the morning and the ring sounds uncomfortably loud in the house. The lights are on in most of the rooms and the curtains carefully drawn over all the windows.
Jónas stands utterly still, wearing only his underpants, and stares at the phone as if hypnotised, as if he is unsure whether the ringing is real or just in his imagination.
Nearly a minute passes before Jónas lays a sticky sledgehammer on the telephone table and picks up the receiver with bloody fingers.
‘Hello?’
‘Jónas, ish ’at you?’ asks a thick-tongued voice in a place where the heavy beat of music must be shaking the walls as it blends with the sound of loud chatter.
‘Who is it?’
‘Ish your brother-in-law, Kalli.’
‘What do you want?’ asks Jónas quietly.
‘Listen! Gonna gimme a lift later on?’
‘No. Can’t you just take a cab?’ says Jónas, looking at himself in the mirror above the telephone, covered with blood from his chest halfway down his calves. Blood that isn’t his. Blood that is turning black and starting to clot.
‘I don’ have enough money,’ says Kalli. ‘Can’t I take a cab to your place an’ just go along with you, eh?’
‘If I’ve already left, just thumb a lift. Okay?’ says Jónas.
‘You in some kinda hurry?’
‘No,’ says Jónas, clearing his throat. ‘But I have to go now.’
‘Where’s my sister?’ Kalli asks cheerfully.
‘She … She’s just lying down,’ says Jónas softly.
‘I get you! Listen, I just —’ But Jónas hangs up before Kalli can finish the sentence.
Jónas picks up the phone again, waits for the dial tone, punches in a number.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum? It’s Jonni,’ he says when his aged mother answers.
‘Jonni dear, is everything all right?’ his mother asks, her voice weak.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to wake you,’ says Jónas. He coughs a little. ‘I just wanted to let you know that María won’t be able to fetch the kids tomorrow.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘Just … something came up,’ says Jónas, taking a deep breath. ‘She’s going to be away for a few days. A week, even.’
‘A week?’ asks his mother, sounding bewildered. ‘But your father and I are leaving for the Canaries in three days. We can’t …’
‘Mum! I’m about to be late! I haven’t got time for this!’ says Jónas, his voice shaking. ‘I’ll explain it all later. I … can’t …’
Jónas hangs up and pulls the phone cord out of the wall. Then he wipes the sweat off his forehead, smearing blood across his face.
On the floor in the bedroom, Maria’s naked body lies on a tarpaulin. She’s on her back in a sticky puddle of blood, staring empty-eyed at the ceiling.
Jónas pulls off the stained bedding and uses it to hide his wife’s cooling body. There is a bloodstain the size of a dinner plate on her side of the mattress. She had been asleep when he’d struck her in the head with the sledgehammer.
Jónas fetches a clean towel and places it over the bloodstain. Then he wraps the tarp around the body and the bedding and ties it all up with the cords on the tarp that have special loops for tent pegs.
After washing off all the blood in a hot shower, and drying himself carefully from head to toe, Jónas makes up the double bed with clean linen. Then in one bag he collects everything that clearly or just possibly has come into contact with his newly deceased wife’s blood: the hammer, the phone, the doily from the telephone table, the soap from the shower and the towels with which he dried himself. He wets a cloth in hot water and wipes invisible fingerprints and imaginary bloodstains off doorknobs, doorframes, walls and floors, bedside tables and the bedstead. The cloth then follows the hammer and the other stuff into the bag. He ties a knot in the bag, sticks it into another bag and knots it as well. Then he puts on a shirt, trousers and a windcheater before wrestling the body out to his four-wheel drive.
The vehicle is a ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee, white with fog lights on the front and a ski rack on the roof. Jónas backs out of the carport by his house, looking around his peaceful neighbourhood. Not a light to be seen in any window, no people up and about.
Jónas puts the automatic shift into drive and starts slowly down the street. Suddenly he slams on the brakes, goes into reverse and returns to the front of the house. On the rear-view mirror hangs a rosary with a wooden crucifix that swings back and forth.
Did he definitely turn off all the lights?
Yes. It is dark behind the curtains in all the windows. But did he remember to lock the door? What the fuck does it matter! Jónas sighs and drives off again, turns once left and twice right, and then he’s out on the Westland Highway, National Highway Number One.
It starts raining as he drives past the turn-off to Mosfellsdalur and Thingvellir. First there’s only a few drops on the dirty windscreen, then the rain becomes heavier. Jónas turns on the windscreen wipers, whose worn blades spread the raindrops and mix them with the month-old dirt on the glass. Jónas tries to spray washer fluid on the windscreen, but the fluid tank is empty. This makes him check the gauge of the 100-litre petrol tank. The needle has reached the red part of the dial, but Jónas knows from experience that there are then about 20 litres left in the tank – more than enough to get him to the bottom of Hvalfjörður. By the time he signals right and turns east the rain has turned into a downpour. The wipers whip back and forth, and the heavy, ice-cold rain has washed away most of the dirt. Jónas clenches his hands on the steering wheel, the engine purrs under the hood, the wipers beat a steady rhythm, the heater blows warm air and his sleepless eyes stare into the gloom that sucks in the Jeep like a black hole.
After making his way along the shore by the old whaling station, Jónas gets out a shovel and in the light of the Jeep’s spotlights digs his wife a damp grave in the black sand. Steam rises off him as he struggles against the collapsing sand and flowing water. In the distance waves collapse with a heavy thud, stirring up the pebbles and seaweed. Within just a few hours the ocean will hide this grave that deepens so slowly and fills so quickly with seawater and rain.
Jónas tosses aside the shovel and runs to get the body. The body is hard to handle and heavy, heavier with every step he takes. His feet sink in the soft sand and the rain pounds on the rumpled tarpaulin.
When Jónas lets his burden fall into its grave, water splashes all around it. He piles large beach stones on top of the body before shovelling sand over it. Huge sand mites wave their legs and antennae. They are deathly white, waxy insects that live off dead flesh – the ever-hungry descendants of the millions of sand mites that thrived in the time of Icelandic whaling.
Jónas leans on his shovel and vomits warm beer and poison-green digestive juices over the shallow grave. Then he walks, soaking wet, to the car, which is still revving in neutral up on the gravel ridge.
When he reaches the turn-off for Grundartangi on the north shore of the fjord it’s seven minutes to three. The petrol light starts to flash a warning just as he signals left and turns into the road, which leads downhill. He sails his Jeep down this road like it’s a little boat sailing along a river to its wide-open mouth.
He drives out onto the jetty where the lit-up ship lies along the quay. Rúnar and Sæli are waiting at the gangway and wave him to come near.
‘Is something wrong?’ asks Jónas after rolling down his window. His heart beats madly and his bloodless hands clench the wheel.
‘Isn’t your brother-in-law with you?’ Rúnar says.
‘Kalli – no,’ says Jónas and clears his throat to squeeze out some saliva. ‘Hasn’t he arrived?’
‘No,’ Rúnar answers. ‘We wouldn’t be asking otherwise.’
‘He probably thumbed a lift,’ mutters Jónas, blinking.
‘You’ve got to go find the guy!’ says Rúnar, tossing his burning cigarette out into the dark. ‘We’re casting off in five minutes, whether he’s here or not.’
‘I have to get up to the bridge. My watch starts at four,’ says Jónas. He puts the car in neutral, removes the rosary and crucifix from the mirror and takes them with him as he steps out of the car. ‘Can you go look for him? I’m sure he’s already set off walking from the highway.’
‘All right,’ says Rúnar in a disgruntled tone. He gets into the Jeep. ‘So where do you want me to park this guzzler?’
‘Wherever,’ says Jónas with a shrug. ‘I don’t care.’
‘Okay.’
Rúnar takes off.
‘Has the Old Man arrived?’ Jónas asks Sæli, lighting a cigarette.
‘Of course,’ says Sæli, zipping his parka up to his chin. The rain has stopped, but the night is still cold and damp.
‘Yeah,’ says Jónas distantly and he trots up the gangplank.
‘Jónas!’ Sæli calls after him, hands in his pockets, his hood pulled down to his eyes.
‘Yeah, what?’ Jónas turns around at the top of the gangplank.
‘Haven’t you got a duffel bag or some kind of luggage?’ asks Sæli, hunching his shoulders inside his loose parka. ‘You know. Clothes, cigarettes and stuff?’
‘No,’ Jónas answers slowly and looks up at the black sky, as if expecting something to come from it. ‘I just … just forgot.’
‘Forgot?’ enquires Sæli with a grin.
‘Yes,’ says Jónas in a hollow tone. He jumps aboard the ship.
‘Your problem! See you later!’ Sæli calls out as the second mate disappears behind the wheelhouse. Sæli has the three-to-six night watch, so he will be Jónas’s companion till early morning.
The wind is picking up from the west; the powerful ship does a slow dance, rhythmically pulling on the thick mooring ropes, which jerk tightly round the steel, spitting out drops of rain and old seawater.
One could almost think that this 100-metre-long, over 4000-tonne freighter was trying to break its chains.
V
Heavy blues music, the clamour of voices and a cloud of bitter smoke are pierced by the loud peal of a bell.
‘Fifteen minutes to closing!’ the bartender shouts, letting go of the cord that hangs from the clapper of the old brass bell that once served a Dutch freighter.
At the bar sits a man dressed in denim. He looks blearily 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 the eleventh day of the month. This is Karl Gudjónsson, an out-of-work joiner nearing forty who is on his way to his first trip as second seaman on a freighter that is moored in Grundartangi harbour, ready to cast off after two days of offloading, when the cargo was vacuumed out of the hold.
Fifteen minutes to closing.
Forever.
Déjà vu.
Karl 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 men sit drinking. He claps the two nearest on the back, leans forward between them and smiles ingratiatingly through his untrimmed 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 one of the men he’s leaning on. He pokes an elbow in Karl’s stomach and pushes him roughly away from the table.
Karl takes two steps back then freezes in that position while he tries to gain his balance – and succeeds.
He is filled with darkness and silence; inside his head cold winds are blowing and, for just one moment, it’s as though he falls into a deep sleep. A sleep that is black as unending night, heavy as death and cold as eternal winter.
Empty as the echo in a bass drum.
Boom, boom, boom …
One moment, and it’s over.
‘Five, five, five … ship,’ Karl mumbles and regains his balance on the floorboards, then he clutches the stair rail and trudges up to the second floor of the bar, where a middle-aged band is playing blues with a heavy beat for the depressed, bitter, sorry bunches of drunks sitting at tables or standing along the walls or at the bar, half invisible in the hot, thick clouds of smoke.
Got to get aboard the ship …
As a mournful guitar solo and lazy drum draw to a close, it seems that the band has lost its momentum, but just before the music fades away entirely the drummer gets back in gear with a gentle touch of the snare drum, the bass catches onto the beat, the guitar starts wailing again and the bearded singer hauls an emotional lyric from his soul’s vale of tears: ‘Before I sink into the big sleep, I want to hear the scream of the butterfly …’
On the worn wooden floor, ash and dirt gets ground into the spilled beer; cigarette butts, used chewing gum and peanuts are crushed underfoot. And here and there a crown or five-crown coin may be found. Even a fifty, brass-coloured with a crab on it.
Karl reaches for the fifty that is sliding around in a black puddle. He wipes the dirt off it then puts it in the slot of the payphone at the end of the downstairs bar.
From the pocket of his denim jacket he pulls a wrinkled piece of paper and checks the number that is written on it: 555-7547.
He punches in the number, pressing the receiver hard to his right ear and the palm of his left hand over his left ear.
‘Hello?’ says a suspicious voice at the other end of the line.
‘Jónas, ish ’at you?’ says Karl, pressing the receiver even tighter to his ear.
‘Who is it?’ asks the voice.
‘Ish your brother-in-law, Kalli,’ says Kalli, raising his voice.
‘What do you want?’ asks Jónas quietly.
‘Listen! Gonna gimme a lift later on?’ asks Kalli, who can hardly hear Jónas.
‘No. Can’t you just take a cab?’
‘I don’ have enough money,’ says Kalli, watching his credit growing smaller and smaller on the phone’s screen. ‘Can’t I take a cab to your place an’ then just go along with you, eh?’
‘If I’ve already left, just thumb a lift. Okay?’ says Jónas, coldly.
‘You in some kinda hurry?’ asks Karl, smiling mirthlessly to himself.
‘No,’ says Jónas, clearing his throat in the emptiness inside the telephone. ‘But I have to go now.’
‘Where’s my sister?’ Kalli asks as cheerfully as he can.
‘She … She’s just lying down,’ says Jónas, so quietly that to Karl’s ears it sounds like the scratching of mice.
‘I get you! Listen, I just —’ says Kalli as the phone’s screen starts flashing. There is a click and the silence on the phone becomes somehow more real than it has been.
‘Hello!’ says Karl into the receiver. Then he removes
it from his ear and looks at it uncomprehendingly, his eyes shiny with alcohol, before he hangs it up.
Karl stands by the phone and fishes his slim wallet out of his hip pocket, opens it and checks on the scanty contents. One bill of 1000, one of 500. Altogether 1500 crowns.
‘Did you want something else?’ the bartender says when Karl sits back down on the bar stool where he’s spent the evening.
The bartender is big and fat, his shirt unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up. On his hairy chest hangs a gold cross and chain. His smoothly shaven face is red and damp with sweat, his eyes are sunk into his bulging flesh and what is left of his dark hair is carefully combed over to the wrinkled back of his neck.
‘Yeah, maybe a whiskey,’ says Karl, feeling his crumpled pack of cigarettes before pulling out the third last one. ‘And a pack of Camels.’
‘Coming up,’ says the bartender, filling a heavy shot glass with cheap whiskey.
Karl lights his cigarette and pulls the dirty ashtray nearer.
‘So, could you pay your bill, then?’ says the bartender, peeling cellophane and silver paper off a fresh pack of Camels.
‘How much is it?’ says Karl, calm as can be.
‘That makes …’ The bartender adds the latest purchase to the evening’s total. ‘That makes seven thousand nine hundred crowns altogether.’
‘Couldn’t I just put it on a tab?’ asks Karl, taking a careful sip of whiskey.
‘Until when?’ asks the bartender, slitting his bloodshot eyes.
‘I’m off on a tour tonight, back in two weeks,’ says Karl, inhaling the hot smoke and blowing it out through his nose.
‘It would be better if you paid now,’ says the bartender, putting his burly forearm on the bar in front of Karl – a forearm displaying a deep scar from elbow to wrist along with a mighty anchor, tattooed in blue ink, that long ago started to leak out under the weather-beaten skin.
‘I see,’ mutters Karl, tapping the ash off his cigarette and at the same time running his eyes over three framed photographs that hang, one below the other, under the brass bell.
The bottom photo is of the Steamship Company ship Dettifoss, which came new to Iceland in 1930 but was sunk by a German submarine off Ireland in 1945, with fifteen men lost.
