The Ship

by Stefan Mani

  ‘We’ll see.’ John squeezes the doorknob. ‘But I’m not killing the engine unless the weather’s reasonable. It’s not a good idea to set a ship this big adrift in bad weather.’

  ‘I can’t see it makes any difference whether this pile of scrap iron sails lengthways or drifts sideways!’ snarls Methúsalem. ‘If you’re giving in to these fuckers you’d better admit it right now – and I mean this instant.’

  ‘I’m not giving in,’ says John, going red around his eyes. ‘But if seawater gets in the engine room I can’t be sure of starting the engine again. You must see that!’

  ‘I’m not going on the dole,’ says Methúsalem, as calm as can be, staring into space as if he’s alone in the cabin. ‘Just so that’s clear.’

  ‘See you at eleven,’ Big John says then tears open the door and disappears into the corridor.

  09:17

  ‘So, what’s the outlook?’ asks Rúnar as he comes into the bridge.

  ‘Good morning to you, too,’ says Guðmundur, turning round in his leather chair. ‘Can I offer you some fresh coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ says Rúnar, walking over to the coffee machine. ‘I was hoping we’d be able to work outdoors today.’

  ‘Looks to me like we’re heading straight for another storm,’ says Guðmundur and he turns his chair back towards the front.

  ‘I guess we’ll scrub the stairs, then, to start with,’ says Rúnar as he pours steaming coffee into a clean mug. ‘And when I say “we”, I mean me and Sæli. The new guy hasn’t shown his face.’

  ‘Forget him,’ mutters Guðmundur. ‘Forget him for the time being.’

  ‘Either we’ve got three deckhands aboard or we haven’t,’ says Rúnar. He shakes loose a cigarette and puts it in his mouth. ‘If Sæli and I do all the work it seems obvious we get to divide the third man’s pay between us. Right?’

  ‘I’ve got a little job for you,’ says Guðmundur softly, drumming on the chair’s arms with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Oh?’ says Rúnar then lights his cigarette.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Guðmundur, looking out the window at the swirling cloud banks that seem to be eating up the daylight about ninety kilometres away. ‘I want to ask you to have a look up on the roof before we sail into that storm.’

  ‘On the roof? What for?’

  ‘This is just between you and me … for the time being.’ Guðmundur glances at Rúnar. ‘Is that understood?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem,’ says Rúnar, nodding, with the cigarette stuck fast in the corner of his mouth. ‘You can trust me.’

  10:11

  Guðmundur sits alone in the bridge, his arms resting on the arms of the chair while he watches, as though hypnotised, out the window.

  Maybe the crew knows about the pending dismissals. They suspect something, at least. But it hasn’t been decided. The CEO had spoken of it as a possibility – a last resort to help the business recover.

  Goddammit! As if he doesn’t have other things to think about! As if he doesn’t have enough worries already!

  There’s anger in the crew, some bloody unrest, some upheaval that may break out into a genuine revolt if it is allowed to fester under the surface long enough. What can he do? Tell them the truth? Threaten them with serious consequences? Make them some promise he won’t be able to keep?

  Or just pretend there’s nothing going on?

  What if the ship’s been sabotaged, though? Then what will he do? What could he do? Search out some culprit to appease the others? Who? The new guy?

  Or maybe that’s exactly what they’re waiting for him to do? Are they expecting him to make a wrong move – string up the wrong guy – just so they can denounce him as a dictator? Is that meant to be the final straw?

  The key now is to remain calm and not let difficulties, bad luck or challenges upset him.

  To begin with, it’s best to do nothing at all. Just take his time. Watch how the crew reacts to things.

  The captain has been cornered. He’s been outmanoeuvred in an unexpected way. Okay. If people want to play blindfold chess he’s not afraid. But there’s one thing they should know: he’s going to think for as long as he wants before he reacts to the threats of this invisible opponent.

  10:13

  ‘Don’t you want me to come with you?’ asks Sæli, putting down his bucket of soapy water. He leans on a long-handled scrubbing brush and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He has already scrubbed the bridge and the stairs down to F-deck, and is beginning to wet the floor there.

  ‘No, and not another word about it!’ says Rúnar, zipping his fur-lined overalls up to his chin. ‘The Old Man asked me to not let it go any further.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’ asks Sæli half to himself, letting the wet floor cloth slap onto the grey-speckled linoleum. ‘What do you think you’ll find up there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Rúnar, putting on a dark-blue woollen cap. ‘You just be careful not to mention it to a single soul.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ says Sæli, scrubbing away. ‘But what’ll we do if it’s sabotage or something?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Rúnar lights a cigarette. ‘But if it is, then I think I actually don’t want to know who it is on board who has such an evil nature. I mean, we’d throw a shit like that headfirst into the sea without a thought, understand?’

  ‘Yeah, I understand.’ Sæli pushes the wet cloth around with the scrubbing brush. ‘But then we’d be the ones being grilled in a maritime court, not the guilty party.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,’ says Rúnar, putting on thick leather gloves. ‘But not another word. I’m going up.’

  ‘Listen!’ says Sæli when Rúnar is halfway up to the bridge deck.

  ‘Yeah?’ says Rúnar, turning round, his cigarette smoking in his mouth and one eye half closed.

  ‘Be careful up there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Rúnar, trudging up the stairs again. ‘You just keep scrubbing.’

  10:33

  Rúnar stands at the forward edge of the bridge roof, holding onto the wet railing with both hands. The ship plunges down off one giant wave simply to climb up the next one; the inky-black cloud banks tower over the ocean to the south, roaring like a bull and shooting lightning in all directions; wind pounds the ship, buffets the waves and brings salty tears to the eyes of the bosun, who clenches his fists round the icy metal and stares out.

  ‘Why didn’t I become a joiner?’ he asks himself, but the wind takes his words and whips them away. ‘WHY?’

  It’s exhilarating to shout where no one can hear you. Rúnar stands at the top of the visible world and laughs in the face of the furious gale, which is speeding across the surface of the ocean and will be hitting the ship within the hour.

  However, Rúnar laughs neither loud nor long. He doesn’t feel much like laughing. He just needs to laugh. It is the only thing he can think of to do. Either that or lose his mind to the bewildering thoughts that are building up like those clouds, in his head, accumulating negative energy. Laughter releases tension and prevents the nervous system from burnout.

  He has found what he was most afraid of: cut wires.

  Someone sabotaged the radar mast and the satellite receiver.

  There is a louse on board. A lowlife. A terrorist.

  But who could it be?

  Rúnar curses under his breath and holds on as tightly as he can while the ship attacks a wave the size of a mountain. The wind dies down for a moment then slams into the bosun’s chest as the ship reaches the crest. He looks down across the ship and notices the rust seeping around railings, joints, bolts and the hatches of the hold. It’s been a long time since they’ve had the right weather for working outside, and the forces of nature are quick to take control if maintenance is postponed. If this ship isn’t to look like a Russian ghost-hulk it needs some time in the dockyard pretty soon.

  Rúnar takes his right hand off the railing and looks at the palm of his leather glove. It’s red with rust. In ju
st a few more weeks the whole ship is going to be pretty much the colour of a dead leaf.

  Painting will have to wait, though. There’s a storm on the way and the crew has other, more serious matters to think about.

  There is a traitor on board. A rotten apple in a rusty barrel.

  XX

  11:09

  ‘Is someone in the engine room?’ asks Guðmundur, breaking the silence that settled over them after Rúnar made his report on the situation on the roof of the wheelhouse.

  ‘I sent Stoker down there,’ Big John says, staring distractedly into his coffee.

  ‘What the fuck does it matter whether somebody sits on his arse down there or not?’ says Methúsalem, clenching his fists. ‘There’s a terrorist aboard the ship! A terrorist, I say!’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asks Rúnar in a hushed voice. He leans forward against the windowsill and stares into the darkness.

  Guðmundur sits, scowling, in the leather chair, rolling his empty mug in his sweaty palms; Big John is standing with his feet apart to starboard, sighing repeatedly, and Methúsalem can’t keep still and either dithers near the captain or strides from one side of the bridge to the other.

  ‘First and foremost, we must show restraint,’ says Guðmundur with a quick look at Methúsalem. ‘Though the wires have snapped, it doesn’t mean someone on board damaged them.’

  ‘What?’ says Methúsalem. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Someone could have damaged them while the ship was in dock with a view to their coming apart while we were under sail,’ says Guðmundur slowly. ‘If this was done on purpose. Sabotage, I mean. As things stand, we can’t rule out other possibilities.’

  ‘And what possibilities are they?’ Methúsalem says, raising his eyebrows. ‘That insects gnawed the wires in two or something like that? Maybe seagulls flew into all of them?’

  ‘Methúsalem,’ says Big John, signalling to the chief mate to take it easy.

  ‘They were cut,’ says Rúnar, looking over his shoulder. ‘I saw it with my own …’

  Rúnar stops talking when something slams against the window in front of him. The pane cracks in all directions; Rúnar recoils and they all fall silent.

  ‘What was that?’ asks Guðmundur, staring in disbelief at the fourth windowpane from the port side, which is still hanging together but is shattered and looks like a badly made spider web.

  Outside, the growing wind whistles, the ship rises on a huge wave and there is a rumble of thunder.

  ‘It’s a conch!’ says Rúnar, pushing his face against the cracked glass and staring at the broken shell and greyish mess sliding down the outside of the pane. ‘A conch hit the windowpane. I’ve never heard of that!’

  The ship lists to starboard and falls, as if in midair, down off the wave; the sea gets rougher in the pounding wind, and the weather deck disappears in a dark grey haze that looks like a horizontal waterfall. The men in the bridge hold tightly to whatever is nearest and can hardly believe their eyes when the windows of the bridge all disappear at once in sandy ocean spray that hits the ship like black hail.

  ‘It’s raining sand, seaweed and shellfish,’ murmurs Big John when the ship is more or less back on an even keel.

  ‘It’s a sudden storm,’ Guðmundur says, switching off the autopilot and turning the small wheel counterclockwise a number of times. ‘Hold on, lads! I’m going to turn the ship hard astern and see if we can’t get to the east of the worst of it.’

  ‘Sudden or not, it doesn’t matter,’ says Methúsalem, who’s holding onto the railing on the wall behind the captain. ‘There is still a felon on board the ship, whether you’re prepared to face that fact or not. Someone cut our connection to the outside world, and when I say “someone” I don’t mean a seagull or a conch.’

  ‘While this storm is raging, the safety of this ship and everyone aboard her is top priority,’ says Guðmundur as he steers the ship to the east along a long, deep trough in the cliff-like waves on either side.

  ‘So long as the captain refuses to face the real danger threatening the ship, the safety of everyone on board hangs by a thread,’ says Methúsalem, icily composed. ‘While this felon is loose, the danger of more terrorist attacks looms over us like a black shadow.’

  ‘If you had your way, Methúsalem, the witch hunt would already have begun,’ says Guðmundur as he steers the ship out of the trough and sails angled on to the wind. ‘But it’s the captain’s role to look after the interests of every person on board and to ensure that they don’t split into factions that are for or against individuals on board. If there is a felon amongst us, I will find that person – but I will do it using my own methods.’

  ‘And what methods might they be, if I may ask?’ asks Methúsalem.

  ‘I will begin by speaking to those on watch,’ says Guðmundur. He sets the autopilot, since the ship is free from the claws of the storm – for the time being, at least. ‘That is to say, those that were on watch when we lost our communications.’

  ‘He hadn’t arrived yet, that new guy, when I left the bridge,’ says Rúnar, pouring himself more coffee.

  ‘And there wasn’t a soul here when I came up at four-thirty,’ says Guðmundur with a scowl.

  ‘What in the world?’ says Big John to the captain.

  ‘What were you doing here last night?’ asks Methúsalem.

  ‘Dead man’s bell woke me up,’ says Guðmundur distractedly, looking through the sand-covered window at the storm that is, little by little, drawing near again.

  ‘Then what?’ asks Big John.

  ‘Where were the men?’ says Rúnar.

  ‘And when did they come back?’ asks Methúsalem.

  ‘The radar was out by the time I got up here,’ replies Guðmundur. ‘Then I watched the GPS go out —’

  ‘The bastard must have been up on the roof!’ says Methúsalem, pounding his right fist into his left palm.

  ‘A little later Jónas came in, soaking wet,’ says Guðmundur, clearing his throat. ‘Said he’d gone to check out the radar.’

  ‘And left the bridge unattended, did he?’ Big John says.

  ‘Where was this brother-in-law of his?’ asks Rúnar.

  ‘Yes, where was he?’ Methúsalem’s voice is cold.

  ‘I still have to get these facts sorted out,’ says Guðmundur with a sigh. ‘They didn’t quite agree as to who had left the bridge unattended. But this brother-in-law of Jónas’s was wet, too, though not as soaking as Jónas. But I don’t know – why should any man damage the ship he’s sailing in himself?’

  ‘When had you been thinking of speaking to those two?’ Methúsalem demands. ‘After they’ve had time to get their story straight, or after they’ve muddled it even further?’

  ‘I can’t believe Jónas is involved in this,’ mutters Big John.

  ‘That leaves the other one,’ says Rúnar, looking at Methúsalem, who nods in agreement.

  ‘I will speak to Jónas when he comes on watch at four this afternoon,’ says Guðmundur, turning off the autopilot and steering the ship even further east. ‘After that I’ve got the evening watch with his brother-in-law. Then I can hear his side of the matter. But –’

  ‘Don’t you want to just put it off till we get to Suriname?’ says Methúsalem, interrupting the captain. ‘Or maybe till we get back home to —’

  ‘But!’ Guðmundur repeats, looking angrily at the chief mate before he speaks again. ‘But I wish to make it quite clear that nobody – absolutely nobody – is under suspicion. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ says Big John, shrugging his broad shoulders.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ murmurs Rúnar with a sniff.

  ‘Methúsalem?’ asks Guðmundur without taking his eyes off the dark sea outside the window.

  ‘If you like. But it’s pretty obvious, if you ask me.’

  ‘I’m not asking you or anyone,’ says Guðmundur firmly. ‘I alone am responsible for safety and working atmosphere aboard this ship. I will not ha
ve any conjectures, any backbiting or any witch-hunts! Shipmates must be able to trust one another, not least when there’s danger. I trust you and must insist that you trust me. If there is a breach of trust between a captain and his crew, it’s nothing but the first step towards mutiny.’

  ‘I understand,’ says Methúsalem, nodding. ‘And now, in the light of this declaration of trust, I’m asking the captain whether or not he has any knowledge of the reputed plans of the shipping company to dismiss the present crew and hire a new one to replace it?’

  Silence.

  ‘Can we trust that the captain will inform us of the facts of this matter?’ Methúsalem says, stepping nearer to Guðmundur. ‘Or don’t you trust us to know these facts?’

  ‘I’m not discussing company matters in the middle of a tour,’ answers Guðmundur. ‘The company hires the men for the ship. My job is to sail the ship and ensure the safety of the crew, whoever they may be in each instance.’

  ‘So the answer is no?’

  ‘The answer is no,’ says Guðmundur without looking anyone in the eye. ‘If I did have knowledge of impending lay-offs I would not be free to speak about that knowledge. I would be betraying the trust of my superiors.’

  ‘So they are going to lay us off?’ asks Big John.

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ says Rúnar, hands in the air.

  ‘I never said you were going to be laid off!’ says Guðmundur, putting the ship on autopilot once again. ‘I just said that I couldn’t talk about it if I knew such a thing. Is that understood?’

  ‘Oh, perfectly – it doesn’t need saying,’ says Methúsalem with a sneer.

  ‘Methúsalem!’ says Guðmundur and he turns around in his chair. ‘I need hardly remind you that you are chief mate on board, I think?’

  ‘We could of course just phone the CEO and ask him,’ says Methúsalem, staring coldly into the bloodshot eyes of the captain. ‘No, that’s right – we can’t! Someone cut the wires.’