The Ship

by Stefan Mani

  ‘I know.’ The captain puts the gun down on the window ledge.

  ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have let me have it back, right?’ asks Satan. Or, more precisely, declares.

  Silence.

  ‘Had you already, um, you know …’ mutters the captain. He looks out the port windows – the only windows on the bridge that are intact.

  ‘Killed a man?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly. Killed a man.’

  ‘Are you feeling blue about that thug you popped?’ asks Satan with a grin as he taps ash from his cigarette onto the floor.

  ‘Maybe.’ The captain hesitates. ‘It gets to you, I won’t deny it.’

  ‘It was either him or you, don’t forget that.’ Satan sticks his cigarette in his mouth and sucks smoke into his lungs.

  ‘Yes, I know, but the thing …’ The captain sighs. ‘What I’m thinking is … isn’t it better to die innocent than to live with …’

  ‘Are you crazy, man? If you can’t be grateful you’re alive, you should have the guts to hang yourself instead of whimpering like a spoiled kid!’

  ‘Yes, no … sorry!’ fumbles the captain. ‘I didn’t mean to —’

  ‘Sorry?’ says Satan with a laugh, blowing smoke out his nose. ‘Do I look like Jesus?’

  ‘No, I just —’

  ‘I know how you feel, man! That was quite a rush last night. A hell of a lot going on. You popped a guy and … you know, all blood and frenzy! Now it’s just over, quiet and that … but in your head the frenzy is still at full steam, see? Anger, fear, hate, speed, everything that happened is still there inside and happens over and over … boom, boom, boom! And then all of a sudden that’s over too, man … I’m telling you: life just goes on … as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘Yes, maybe. If you say so.’

  ‘I’m telling you, man!’ Satan takes a drag on his cigarette before letting the stub fall into his coffee. ‘After blood come the blues, but no-one wants to be blue forever … it’s just too fucking boring!’

  Silence.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question just then,’ says the captain.

  ‘You didn’t give me any sugar and milk in my coffee,’ Satan retorts.

  Silence.

  ‘I don’t know whether you know this,’ says Guðmundur, straightening his back and raising his voice, ‘but the chair you are sitting on is the captain’s chair, and the captain is the highest-ranking officer on board the ship.’

  ‘Right,’ says Satan with utter indifference, then he yawns like a lazy cat. ‘Listen, I need some clean clothes. Do you think that big engineer could loan me something? He’s the only one on board who wears grown-up sizes.’

  18:45

  When Satan enters the engine room there is no-one to be seen, but he knows that Stoker is in there somewhere.

  It’s pretty dusky down there: only the most vital lights are on. It’s warm as a good summer’s day and the rumble of the generator communes with its own echo in this greasy-smelling metal box.

  After walking through the empty control booth, Satan strolls across the platform at the front of the room and into the machine shop to port, where the door is wide open. He sees Stoker standing barechested on a footstool, peering into a large pot that sits on a small electric hotplate up on the work surface. Stoker is holding the lid with his left hand while, with his right, he fishes for something in the pot with a piece of bent wire. Steam rises from the pot and the smell filling the workshop is disgusting, to say the least.

  Satan stands in the doorway, holding his nose and breathing quickly through his half-closed mouth while he watches Stoker, who drags the wire out of the pot and knocks bits of hair and shreds of something off it before replacing the lid.

  ‘I sure as hell hope that’s not supper.’

  Stoker is so startled that he falls backwards with the bent wire in his hand, and comes perilously close to hooking one handle of the pot and dragging it with him as he falls. He knocks the footstool out from under him and screams like a little kid when he lands flat on the hard metal floor. Cans, flasks and spare parts fall from the shelves under the counter, and the pot spits dirty water which runs onto the hotplate and turns into black smoke.

  ‘Johnny?’ cries Stoker and he blinks his eyes as he rolls over onto his belly.

  No, this isn’t Johnny. Of course it’s not Johnny – but …

  ‘You’re wearing Johnny’s clothes!’ shouts Stoker, standing up and examining Satan.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Satan, closing the door so the noise from the generator drops by several decibels. He’s wearing a blue-checked cotton shirt, dark blue trousers made of some synthetic material and tightly laced military boots.

  ‘What are you doing down here?’ says Stoker, pointing at Satan with the bent wire. ‘Nobody has any business down here, nobody but —’

  ‘Shut up, man!’ says Satan, grimacing at the smell that issues from the pot. ‘I just need something to cover the broken windows in the bridge – plywood or a sheet of aluminium or plastic or something. What is that god-awful stink, man? What the fuck are you boiling?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ mutters Stoker, backing towards the pot with arms outstretched as Satan steps forward. ‘Just want to get some oil and junk off … off something.’

  ‘Goddamn liar!’ says Satan, trying to force a grin, but the smell is so disgusting that he’s feeling seriously nauseated.

  ‘There’s some plywood out there, up on the shelf above the sink,’ says Stoker, backing all the way to the counter. ‘You can use it for the windows. And there’s a saw on the hook beside it.’

  Stoker knocks his left heel into a can of axle grease, which hits an empty turpentine container that falls over and rolls out on the floor, and then Satan sees brown fingers on the floor below the shelf under the counter.

  Brown fingers?

  ‘What are you up to here?’ says Satan, leaning down and pulling at the brown fingers, which are stiff and cold and blue under the nails.

  ‘DON’T!’ screams Stoker. ‘DON’T TAKE —’ He grabs Satan’s arm, but it’s too late. On the floor in front of the work table lies an arm that belongs to neither Satan nor Stoker. It’s the bare right arm of someone who was, hopefully, dead when the arm was chopped off at the elbow.

  ‘What have you done?’ says Satan with a sigh. He looks under the work table and, as far as he can see, there are other body parts hidden there. He sees a leg, another arm and, furthest in on the shelf, something large, maybe a torso.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Satan says, straightening up.

  ‘A pirate.’ Stoker scratches his head.

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re quite the guy.’ Satan spies his hunting knife and picks it up. The knife is covered with congealed blood, the edge is nicked and dull, and there are pieces of bone and flesh in the grooves.

  ‘I wasn’t going to …’ Stoker rubs his dirty palms together. ‘I just …’

  ‘Listen,’ says Satan, stabbing the tip of his knife into the surface of the work table, ‘you are going to dump this carcass in the sea. And don’t let anyone see you. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says Stoker, breathing more easily.

  ‘If the others should see this!’ says Satan and whistles softly.

  ‘Thank you – thank you!’ says Stoker, looking at Satan with tearful puppy eyes. ‘You’re the only one who has –’

  ‘None of that!’ says Satan, snapping his fingers in Stoker’s face. ‘Get rid of the carcass and then clean up my knife and sharpen it before you give it back. Understood?’

  XXX

  21:13

  They sit silent at the table in the seamen’s mess, the two seamen and the engineer, drinking coffee after a late supper of sandwiches, apple wedges and a few doughnuts. The eternal Doors cassette is now telling them about a moonlight drive.

  Satan sits at the end, away from the door. Stoker sits on his right and Sæli on his left.

  Sæli sniffs
and looks at Stoker. He blinks and looks at Satan, who yawns, a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other. Skuggi, who is lying under the table, doesn’t take his eyes off Satan.

  ‘What happened to Jónas, anyway?’ asks Sæli, just to say something and break the heavy silence.

  ‘Didn’t he take the lifeboat?’ Satan says, lighting his cigarette and puffs it into life.

  ‘That’s one theory,’ says Sæli and shrugs. ‘But he was kind of handicapped.’

  ‘Maybe nobody took the boat,’ says Stoker, turning his coffee mug around on the table. ‘Perhaps it just shot itself overboard. I saw the boat land in the water. There wasn’t anybody in the window, nobody started the engine and the boat just drifted away.’

  ‘And the fifth pirate?’ says Sæli. ‘Nobody knows what became of the fifth pirate. Maybe he took the boat?’

  ‘Maybe he just fell in the sea,’ says Satan, looking at Stoker as he exhales smoke.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Stoker and nods at Satan. ‘It seems likely to me that he simply fell overboard when nobody was looking.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ murmurs Sæli. ‘I hope, at least, that he isn’t just hiding somewhere. Have we definitely searched everywhere?’

  ‘Yep,’ says Satan. ‘As far as we could. But it’s probably safer to sleep behind locked doors.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sæli sips his warm coffee. ‘If we can sleep at all, that is.’

  Silence.

  There’s a soft click from the tape recorder as side A of the eternal Doors cassette comes to an end, one motor stops and the other takes over, the wheels turn clockwise and the B side of the tape moves across the magnetic head.

  ‘Well, boys,’ says Guðmundur as he enters the mess with four shot glasses in his left hand and an ice-covered bottle of liquor in his right. ‘I think it’s about time we drank a nip or two in memory of our dear departed.’

  He sits down at the door end of the table, puts the shot glasses on the foam-covered table and unscrews the top of the bottle.

  ‘What have we there?’ asks Stoker.

  ‘I found it in the freezer,’ answers the captain as he pours a thick clear liquid. ‘I think it’s Icelandic schnapps.’

  He fills the glasses to the brim before passing them out to his shipmates.

  ‘In memory of Methúsalem, John, Rúnar and Ásmundur, good lads who all died far too young,’ says the captain, standing up with his glass in his hand. ‘We bow our heads and show our respect with a minute of silence.’

  The remaining crew stands up, bow their heads and remain silent for one minute.

  ‘God rest their souls,’ says the captain as he opens his eyes and lifts his glass.

  ‘Amen.’

  They all toss back their drinks and then sit back down. The captain collects the glasses and refills them.

  ‘Enjoy,’ he says and screws the top on the bottle.

  The ice on the outside of the bottle has become clear; it is melting onto the table.

  ‘Why did those men attack us?’ Sæli says, sighing. ‘I mean, what were they after?’

  ‘There’s a curse on this ship,’ grumbles Stoker and gnashes his teeth. ‘A curse that –’

  ‘Óli! Not now!’ says the captain, giving the engineer a severe look. Stoker looks away shamefaced, but Sæli straightens up, all eyes and ears, as if there’s nothing he wants more at this moment than to learn from Stoker’s lips about the alleged curse on the ship.

  ‘They probably imagined that the hold was full of something valuable,’ says Guðmundur, clapping Sæli’s right shoulder.

  ‘Couldn’t you tell them the hold was empty?’ asks Stoker, grinning impishly.

  ‘Unless they were going to steal the ship itself,’ the captain replies, looking askance at Stoker. ‘We just don’t know.’

  ‘That reminds me of something … I read,’ says Sæli and looks up at his shipmates, as if not sure whether or not they want him to continue.

  ‘What was that?’ asks Guðmundur.

  ‘There’s a tribe on the islands of Micronesia,’ says Sæli, rocking back and forth and sniffing repeatedly, his face going red. ‘They’re primitive islanders who believe their ancestors will one day appear in a ship loaded with food.’

  ‘Really?’ says the captain with a crooked smile. ‘And they just wait for it, year after year?’

  ‘Yes. Something like that. This belief is called “cargo cult”.’

  ‘They wouldn’t be very happy if we ran aground there!’ says Stoker, giving a low laugh. ‘A dead-in-the-water ship laden to the gunwales with darkness!’

  ‘Yeah – no – probably not.’ Sæli coughs. ‘It would have been more fun if Rúnar had told us about this. He told stories so well, did Rúnar. Knew how to stretch it out and tie up the loose threads at the end.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not the storyteller who makes all the difference,’ says the captain, smiling paternally at the seaman. ‘Rather, it’s the story that’s told. And this was a pretty good story!’

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ mumbles Sæli, blushing. ‘But what difference does a fucking story make when your life’s hanging by a thread?’

  ‘We have to keep up hope, Sæli, lad!’ says the captain, putting his hand on the seaman’s shoulder. ‘Without hope we are lost.’

  ‘Nothing can be changed that’s written in the stars,’ says Stoker into his beard. ‘Nobody can flee his day of judgement.’

  ‘Óli Johnsen!’ growls the captain, so that Stoker jumps and accidentally bites his lips.

  ‘Whether you live life laughing or crying, it’s still just life,’ says Satan and tosses back the contents of his glass.

  Silence.

  ‘He who bears arms is not an educated man,’ says the captain, looking directly at Satan. ‘He who is educated does not bear arms.’

  Sæli turns a questioning look on Stoker, who shrugs.

  ‘God allows even those whose intentions are evil to have their way,’ says Satan and smirks.

  ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword,’ responds the captain calmly.

  ‘The fact that men die means that men are doomed to death when they are born. And if a person is born dead he can’t die,’ answers Satan without blinking. ‘Only those who believe they’re alive fear death. I’m dead. I fear nothing!’

  ‘I haven’t heard that one before,’ says the captain, opening his eyes wide. Then he smiles crookedly, picks up the bottle and passes it over the table to Satan.

  ‘What was that about?’ asks Sæli, smiling faintly.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Satan, taking the bottle from the captain.

  ‘Dear friends,’ says the captain once Satan has filled his glass. ‘Now let’s drink to those of us who are still alive. Here’s to life! Cheers!’

  ‘Cheers!’

  They empty their glasses, grimace and lick their lips. In the distance they can hear the loud, mournful song of whales calling to each other, and the ship’s hull creaks as it slips sideways down the side of a wave that had lifted it up towards the starry night sky.

  ‘No, things don’t look so good, dear friends,’ says the captain and smiles at his men like a pastor attempting to hearten the mourners at a funeral. ‘But whether you believe it or not, it’s not the worst trouble I’ve been in.’

  Silence.

  ‘After I graduated from Navigation School I wandered around Europe and signed on to the odd tub, both to get experience and to have a look round on shore. Lisbon, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Hamburg. That was a great time, boys!’ says Guðmundur with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Then, in communist Estonia, I was offered a job I was too young and foolish to turn down. The only thing I heard was the word “captain”. They wanted to take me on as captain. A group of about sixty people had bought a sailboat named Lootus and needed someone to sail it over the Atlantic, first to Sweden and then to the US. The people were desperate. One mother looked at me pleadingly. She held an infant swaddled in tattered clothes, a dark-haired girl with a hare lip. How could I refuse these people?’


  He pauses briefly to fill their glasses. He looks at each of his shipmates in turn, hands them back their glasses and licks his lips.

  ‘The boat was a sorry sight. It was actually criminal to go to sea with all those people – men, women and children – in a rotten old bucket like that. It wasn’t until things came to a head that I found out that hiring me had been the refugees’ last hope. Nobody else had liked the look of the enterprise.’

  Guðmundur half smiles, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes, which stare into the boundless distance.

  ‘The deck leaked and there was always a line outside the head, which actually was just a crummy shed. The people lived on rotten potatoes that were stored in wooden crates on the deck, the water tanks were corroded and those poor children got dysentery, and they were covered with red rashes and sores. But I turned a blind eye to all of this because I had an irrational belief in the job I was doing. I was helping these people to free themselves from the chains of communism and begin a new life in a new world.’

  Guðmundur drains his glass and refills it. Then he carries on with his story.

  The navigation equipment available to him had consisted of an ordinary wristwatch, a sextant, a compass and a two-bit map. But he had succeeded in keeping on the right course for about 8300 kilometres – or until they hit a storm. According to the captain’s calculations the ship was about 2000 kilometres south-east of Florida when threatening thunderclouds began to pile up on the horizon. The radio batteries had gone dead and there wasn’t even a barometer on board, so the captain had no way of confirming his suspicions about an impending storm.

  In the evening they were hit with hurricane-force winds that went on to rage for four days solid. The boat was about to fall apart and at least one man had fallen overboard.

  Below decks the passengers crowded together in the airless damp. The stench from sweat, vomit and unwashed baby clothes was unbearable. Mothers and sick children lay together in the bunks but the others stood. Seawater rained down from the leaky deck and, little by little, the boat filled with water.

  The merciless battering of the waves eventually loosened the planks of the old sailboat’s hull, so that it began to leak below the waterline. People bailed furiously and the hand pump was in constant use, but the water level in the boat still rose steadily. In the engine room the sea slopped onto the already overheated engine, forming a cloud of steam so you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. They were also bailing furiously down there. Soot-covered men passed pails from one to the other, silent and exhausted after three days of continuous struggle. Women and men down in the cabins stuffed their ragged clothes into the cracks and lay on top of them to stop the leaking.