The Ship

by Stefan Mani

  ‘Just remember to clock in on the dead man’s bell,’ says Jónas, who is putting on an old parka marked Polar Ships back and front. ‘That’s all you have to do.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s this instrument here.’ Jónas points to the dead man’s bell. ‘When the lights flash and you hear a peep, you have to push the button within fifteen seconds. Otherwise you’ll wake the captain.’

  ‘Right,’ says Jón Karl, standing up to refill his coffee mug.

  ‘This instrument here,’ says Jónas, still pointing at the little grey transceiver.

  ‘Are you going outside for that crap, man?’ asks Jón Karl, finally looking at the mate.

  ‘Ha?’

  ‘The parka.’

  ‘Yeah. Might check on the weather while I’m at it.’

  ‘So why don’t you just go?’ Jón Karl again takes his seat by the window. ‘A guy could go grey listening to your bleating. You’re worse than the engineer with the hash.’

  ‘Just remember the dead man’s bell.’ Jónas zips up his parka. ‘It’ll peep in ten minutes.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll be off, then,’ says Jónas. There’s a click as he closes the bridge door behind him, then it rattles as he opens the door to the platform behind the wheelhouse, letting the wind into the stairwell.

  Jón Karl sits at the window of the bridge, drinks coffee, eats biscuits, looks out and watches the ship rise and fall on its journey through the turbulent blackness that never changes yet is never the same.

  The darkness of night, the ocean and the blowing clouds, the whole hellish spectacle, run together into a dark, seething whole which looks, from the bridge, like a vertical whirlpool turning counterclockwise, round and round, growing neither larger nor smaller, shallower nor deeper.

  It’s somehow relaxing, this movement of the ship, the interplay of natural forces, the roar of the engine and the many thousands of tonnes of steel. There’s something hypnotic about the heavy, measured rhythm that keeps the slow dance going forever, with ever-new variations on this classic theme.

  The blows that pulse back along the ship when the bow kisses the waves no longer echo in his head but, rather, pump salty blood in time to the lifeless heart of the engine.

  Boom, boom, boom …

  And before the voyage ends they will probably disappear from the surface of consciousness and merge with the low ticks of the clock of life itself.

  Jón Karl sits completely still and silent, staring out the window like an eagle on a high mountain or, simply, the mountain itself. It must be at least twenty years since he has sat so still and let his mind wander. He’s the man who can’t sit still to watch a movie without making a few calls, fixing a meal, going to the toilet, eating, drinking and fast forwarding over all conversations.

  There’s something quite magical about sitting there in the dimly lit bridge and looking down on this gigantic ship as it sails into the night, as if one were an explorer, an astronaut or God almighty travelling through a spiritual sea of oblivion beyond space and time.

  Jón Karl allows the ship to rock him in the exhilaration of the moment; it’s almost as if his soul awakens and floats higher and higher while his sleepy body sinks deeper and deeper. This sleeping while waking and waking while dreaming is utter bliss, and Jón Karl feels as if he could sit there all night, all his life, forever and ever.

  But after four minutes he starts to get bored.

  Captain Guðmundur lies sleepless under the doona in his cabin, blowing like a whale and turning over at regular intervals.

  He keeps the light on in the bathroom and the door open, to thin out the darkness that would otherwise engulf him and fill his head with heavy thoughts. Besides, he has to pee every half-hour whether he sleeps or not, so he may as well simply keep the light on.

  04:27

  The digital clock stares at him with its red numbers that look like broken letters and which will remain meaningless until 06:59 becomes 07:00. Then Guðmundur will get out of bed, take a hot shower and shave, whether he has had a wink of sleep or not.

  04:28

  Every time Guðmundur closes his eyes he sees the face of his wife, Hrafnhildur. She looks at him as if she were waiting for him to say something. Say what? Or is she implying that he forgot something? Forgot what?

  Did he kiss her goodbye? He can’t remember. It had all been so strange and awkward. But did he leave the envelope?

  Yes, he left the envelope.

  Did she say anything? She said nothing. Or did she?

  Would she come? Probably not. Would she be at home when he returned from this tour? Or would she have left him? Would the house be lit up or dark? He hopes it will be lit up. But he fears it will be dark.

  04:29

  The silence is unbearable. It’s more than unbearable – it’s driving him crazy.

  What he wouldn’t give to have her here with him. What he wouldn’t give to be able to kiss her now. Or just touch her hand. Feel her breathing. Her heat.

  If only he could hear her voice. Even if she were just scolding him. Oh, how wonderful it would be if she could just scold him now.

  ‘I must phone home tomorrow,’ Guðmundur says to himself with a sigh as he turns to his other side.

  First thing in the morning!

  04:30

  A red light blinks by his cabin door, then a loud bell starts ringing at three-second intervals, which means there is no-one on watch in the bridge. If they forget what they’re doing in the engine room, or lose consciousness there, or if the main engine stops, then the bell rings at one second intervals. But if a fire starts, all the bells on the ship ring without stopping.

  ‘What the hell!’ says Guðmundur. He sits up in bed and looks searchingly at the expressionless face of the digital clock.

  04:30

  ‘What’s Jónas up to?’ Guðmundur throws off his doona and leaps out of bed in his pants and undershirt. He still hasn’t felt up to unpacking his bags, but has at least arranged his toiletries and bathrobe in the bathroom.

  ‘Goddamn the man!’ mutters Guðmundur as he puts on his robe, but he can’t find his slippers anywhere, so he runs barefoot up to the bridge.

  ‘Hello!’ he calls as he storms into the bridge, but there is no answer. He walks straight to the dead man’s bell and pushes the button, at which the light stops flashing and the bell goes silent.

  ‘What in the fucking fires of hell!’ Guðmundur roars, so furious that his face has gone red, his hands are shaking and his tongue is dry in his mouth.

  He looks over the instruments to check the ship’s speed and direction. They’re on the right course, the main engines are turning over at full speed, there are no warning lights on – but what’s this?

  The radar screen is as black as the night outside.

  ‘What the …!’ Guðmundur breathes hard through his nose. He taps the screen, pushes all the buttons and turns the brightness knob as far as it will go clockwise, but all for nothing. Instead of a ray of light going circle after circle around the image of the ship with a green blur in its wake, he can see only dark glass with grains of dust and fingerprints on it.

  ‘I am completely …’ Guðmundur stops and smoothes his damp palm over his head, then he tears his staring eyes off the darkened radar screen and turns them to the GPS navigation device, which is about the size of an alarm clock and displays the exact position of the ship in red letters on a black screen:

  55°N 32°W

  ‘Well, at least we’ve got …’ Guðmundur falls silent as the red letters disappear from the black screen of the GPS device.

  His heart skips a beat. He taps the instrument, turns the knobs to left and right, pulls the cord, flicks his nail at the screen, but the letters don’t return.

  ‘JÓNAS!’ screams Guðmundur and beats the instrument panel with his clenched fist, but there is no answer.

  Guðmundur takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself; he rolls his head back and forth and silently coun
ts up to fifty. He steps across to port and pours inky coffee into his mug, splashes some milk in it and sits down in the captain’s chair. He rocks back and forth, drumming his fingers on the chair’s arm while he sips the thickened coffee.

  ‘Goddammit! I’ll have to call somebody out to relieve me,’ he says to himself after a while. He gets out of the chair, then stops to listen as a door opens and someone enters the bridge. Someone who stops to catch his breath by the map room, sneezes like a dog and then snorts something out of his nose.

  ‘Who’s there?’ the captain asks frostily as he takes two steps forward, a murderous glint in his staring eyes.

  XVI

  04:17

  Jónas opens the door to the platform behind the wheelhouse, but screws up his eyes and steps back when the wind and rain hit him. He grabs the doorframe with his left hand, holds the doorknob tightly with his right, steps over the threshold, out onto the platform and, on the third try, manages to slam the door behind him.

  It’s a little better standing on the iron platform outside than in the draught that’s formed in the doorway, but it’s still quite hard for Jónas to keep his feet. He’s forced to let go of the cold, wet railing so he can tighten his parka hood. Then he loses his balance, falls flat on his back, slamming the back of his head against the wheelhouse.

  ‘Holy Mary, mother of …’ Jónas moans, rolling over onto his hands and knees. Through the X-pattern of the iron platform he can see the iron stairs winding all the way down to B-deck, and from the corner of his eye he sees the stern, poised like a lid above the cauldron-like sea.

  Jónas scrambles to his feet holding fast to the railing and climbs up the top stair, which leads onto the roof of the bridge. It’s a completely level green-painted iron roof, surrounded by the same kind of railing as the platform behind the wheelhouse.

  At the back of the roof, directly above the stairs, is a twelve-metre-high radar and lighting mast with two radar scanners and three aerials for cellular and radio telephones, as well as the mandatory lights. Further up the mast, which is triangular and narrows towards the top, are two railed platforms; the lower one is quite roomy but the upper one is only half the size. Jónas makes his slow and cautious way up a vertical iron ladder on the mast, doing his best not to look down. This far above sea level, the ship’s movements are fully exaggerated – Jónas is swinging back and forth so fast that his stomach lurches and heat streams into his head. The sideways movements pull so hard that he almost loses his grip on the rain-slick iron and when the ship pitches into troughs between the waves it feels as if his flesh is pulling on his bones and all his blood is flowing into his legs.

  Jónas climbs all the way up to the lower platform but decides not to try to climb onto it. The rain smacks against him like a wet cloth and the wind tosses him back and forth, tears at his soaking parka, thrusts water into his nose and eyes. His trousers stick to his thighs, his shoes are full of water, his hands are red and his fingers stiff as thick rubber hoses.

  In front of him are two horizontal iron tubes; from their ends insulated wires wind upwards and connect to such things as the foghorn, the little blinking red lights on the mast, the radar scanners turning circle after circle in the wind, and the aerials, long needles reaching into the black heavens. Jónas locks his left arm around the mast’s frame and pulls big, yellow-handled wire-cutters out of his right parka pocket.

  He wants to clip apart only the aerials, but doesn’t know which wires lead to them, so he has to clip all the wires to be sure, although the ship can’t really do without its radar. The wires are both rigid and wet; the wire-cutters are stiff and slippery in his cold hand. Jónas screws up his eyes in concentration. He mustn’t drop the cutters, and he mustn’t lose his hold on the mast. One by one the wires slip apart; the fingers of his left hand slip on the wet iron; he’s blinded by the rain but finally all the wires have been cut. They dangle there like licorice straws with a copper filling.

  Jónas slides the cutters back into his parka pocket and climbs down the steep ladder. When his shoe soles touch the roof of the bridge a foolish feeling of happiness washes over him. But he’s not finished yet: he still has to cut the wire that leads down from the satellite receiver at the front end of the roof on the port side, a white dome standing on a narrow pole. It’s about the size of the body section of a large snowman. Jónas stands still, holding onto the mast while he recovers from his climb. To his right is the ship’s funnel, a square chimney out of which protrude four curved exhaust pipes. The black smoke merges with the darkness and disappears into the night, but off and on it blows in Jónas’s face, causing him to lose his breath and cough in the sour and irritating fuel oil soot.

  There are a few protrusions on the roof of the bridge, besides the satellite receiver. There’s a searchlight on its stand, towards the front on the starboard side, and in the middle a magnetic compass on a six-foot platform, wrapped in green canvas. But the roof is mostly bare – just the green-painted metal, covered with slimy salt, soot, oil spills and running water.

  The ship is lifted slowly onto the crest of a wave, listing a bit to port; in front of it clouds drift to the east and suddenly Jónas catches a glimpse of something that shines like gold in the sky.

  It’s a new moon that looks like a cradle, resting on top of the churning clouds.

  Jónas gazes at the moon, heedless for just a moment. He lets go of the mast to shield his eyes from the wind and then the ship dips and rights itself. The wind hits Jónas in the back; he loses his balance, is thrown forward and slides at full speed across the roof on his belly until he comes to a stop up against the railings at the front of the bridge.

  His right cheek hits a sharp piece of metal, his right shoulder takes a blow, pain flares up in his breastbone and there is a low hiss as his left hand closes round the boiling-hot searchlight on the front edge of the roof.

  Jónas cries out and writhes in pain and fear, but his cries drown in the wind and the railing saves him from a lethal fall off the roof.

  ‘Good God!’ he cries, holding tight to the railing. He doesn’t dare let go and needs a few minutes to build up the courage to stand up and carry on. The night is again dark as a coalmine, no gleam of light in the sky.

  Step by step Jónas edges over to the satellite receiver on the port side. At times the wheelhouse tilts back, and he hangs from the wet railing and gazes, terrified, up into emptiness, and sometimes it tilts forward so the metal digs right into his bones and he stares with horror all the way down to the weather deck, which looks like farmland seen from an aeroplane coming in to land. But every once in a while the wheelhouse seems to be pretty horizontal, and then Jónas grabs his chance and dashes across the roof.

  Once he has locked his left arm around the pole holding the satellite receiver, he gets the wire-cutters out of his right-hand pocket, then locks the cutters around the thick wire that sways out from under the dome before it disappears into the white-painted metal pipe surrounding the base. He squeezes the handles with all his might, using both hands.

  Jónas’s knuckles go white, the blades of the cutter sink slowly into the insulated wire, Jónas grimaces and whimpers with effort, the ship falls forward and the bow kisses the heavy wave.

  Boom, boom, boom …

  The wire snaps and Jónas loses his hold on the cutters, which slip from his stiff hands, bounce once on the roof and then disappear over the edge on the port side.

  ‘Shit! ’ says Jónas and listens intently. But he doesn’t hear the cutters land on anything – no blow, no clatter, nothing. They probably fell straight into the sea, which is the best place for them.

  Jónas grabs the railing with both hands and catches his breath. He smiles crookedly and snuffles rainwater up his nose with a quiet laugh.

  He did it!

  The ship is free from the burden and fuss of telecommunication. No-one can contact the ship and the ship can contact no-one. It is out of reach. It sails away in peace and quiet, as ships are meant to do.
>
  Now Jónas is sailing undisturbed to his rendezvous with God and uncertainty, free from worry about official interference and the attention of the media, confused relatives and mourning loved ones.

  Actually, from the psychological point of view, it’s not so good to have lost both the radar and the GPS, but it doesn’t really make any difference. They still take their course from the magnetic compass and in good weather they can work out their position with a sextant, night or day. If people could do it in olden times, they can do it today. The radar keeps track of nearby shipping, but since other ships will still see this ship in their radar, there’s almost no danger of a collision, especially not in daylight.

  Jónas goes backwards down the stairs that lead to the platform behind the wheelhouse, then he grips the handrail, hurries to the door and grabs the doorknob.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaims as the wind hits the door and blows it open, yanking him like a ragdoll over the high threshold. He loses his balance but doesn’t let go of the door. He manages to resist the wind and push against the door with all his weight, so he closes out the whining wind and pounding rain.

  Silence. The freezing rain is running down his neck onto his back and chest, his hands are trembling and his teeth chatter.

  Jónas unzips his parka and pulls his soaking hood off before opening the door into the bridge. He closes the door, stops to catch his breath by the map room, sneezes like a dog and then snorts out a blend of snot and ice-cold rainwater.

  Has the underworld guy fallen asleep?

  ‘Who’s there?’ somebody asks frostily and takes two steps forward in the gloom. Jónas sees a murderous glint in staring eyes that he knows he should recognise.

  ‘Eh? What?’ asks Jónas, then stiffens as he realises that it’s the captain himself who’s receiving him in the unattended bridge.

  ‘Where’s the … seaman?’ says Jónas, just to say something, but of course Jón Karl’s absence astonishes and angers him, while the captain’s presence scares him to death.