Iceland review - 2019, Síða 122

120
Iceland Review
with the women and sighed over the horrors in the
smoky silence of a jazz bar. They told me, a geologist,
about lacerations that you can still see in the earth.
When darkness fell, the pubs by Tamara moun-
tain filled with sonorous tones and every night, a fog
descended over the village. Grasshoppers sang infants
to sleep and kangaroos lazed in back gardens. Muffled
birdsong and cold laughter from the bars could be
heard, echoing off the mountain.
Having taken advantage of the villagers’ hospitality,
I boarded the boat
with a polka-dotted
scarf around my
neck and a Burberry
bag for my luggage
and sailed the rest
of the way. And
when I start missing
you, I think of the
buffet on that boat,
which I sailed down
the Tumida river
on my few days’
journey around
Makastar.
I liked to sit at
the front of the
boat, each of my
legs dangling off
the side, feeling the gentle splash as it licked my lightly
furred, slender calves. To look pensively down into
the water. Think nostalgically about the women in
Makastar who parted from me with gifts and words of
warning to be careful in the wilderness. Record what I
saw and what captured my attention on the way.
I watched the trash pass lazily with the river’s cur-
rent and ate strawberries on a stick.
On the third day, I met a drunk, weather-beaten
German. Decisively and without a word, he positioned
himself behind me and kissed me between my shoulder
blades. We had never even said hello. He told me he’d
been watching me since he first saw me struggling
onboard alone with my Burberry suitcase. He had a
particular weakness for blond women and said that I’d
captured his interest because I had such sad eyes. “A
bit like a lonely panda. You remind me of a panda with a
death wish.”
He was the type of guy who swaggered around with
stories of his travels around the globe and quoted world
literature more often that he said anything he’d come
up with himself. He found it difficult to pronounce
my name and asked if he could call me Sancho Panza
instead of Friðmey. I said no.
He was nice. Rather simple, of course, but a good
drinking buddy, good at marinating his worries in
cheap homebrew.
On deck, a banquet table was laid out three times
a day and the cooks conjured forth exotic dishes that
I’d never tasted before but were divine. I liked croc-
odile best, especially the tail, quick-fried and spiced
with rosemary. My
German preferred
the kangaroo. In my
memory, the sun
shined twenty-four
hours a day, even
though a bitter gale
pummelled the sail
the whole time.
We mainly
talked about me,
about geology.
“All geologists
should sail down
the Tumida,” I told
him, even though I
didn’t really think
that was true. I was
afraid if he told
me who he really was I would hate him, so I asked him
nothing. He said he was impressed I’d also studied a
little philosophy. I remember it well. Remember that
the sun was just stretching its rays across the pink
morning sky over Makastar and that we were looking
out at a lavish temple perched on a green mountaintop.
All morning we sat and watched the little birds hopping
daintily amongst the stones along the riverbank and
the monkeys swinging through the trees in the calm.
We listened to the cheerful songs of the birds and ate
their sticky breasts with mango sauce.
“Natalia, the first duchess of Makastar, had that pal-
ace built – she was quite the lady, you know. Called Nada
by her friends.” He purposefully made his voice husky
so that he’d sound sexier. He pointed a finger shaped
like a bratwurst in the direction of an enormous, daz-
zling golden palace in the distance.
I liked this man’s company; he awakened my curi-
osity. I liked how he stretched himself and bent over
backwards to get my approval. Asked me to believe him
when he explained that gray-eyed men know no fear.
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