Iceland review - 2019, Page 124

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Iceland Review
If he didn’t sense sufficient admiration for his
muscular arms, or when I’d stopped responding to him
when he enlightened me about the creation and history
of the state of Makastar, or when I just snorted when he
managed, after countless attempts, to pronounce my
name – Friðmey Helgadóttir – mostly without faltering,
he would direct the conversation to philosophy. He’d
explain to me which manifestos he responded to most
when he was young, or how well-versed he was in the
teachings of Socrates, how you could transfer them to a
contemporary mentality and society. I’d heard it a hun-
dred times before, so I just shook my head and smirked,
but let his strong hands hold me tightly around the
waist. He said he knew no fear and I let him try to prove
it.
“I’ve written a little about fear myself,” he told me,
puffing out his chest with the next question:
“You know a fair amount about Plato, yes?”
He stroked my hair paternally, combed out the blond
tangles.
After a
little thought,
I answered: “I
realised today
that I’d have been
better off spending
all that time that
I was compelled
to read Plato
masturbating.”
The German
burst out in a
sort of nervous
laughter.
“Well. You dis-
like the Greek mas-
ters that much?”
“No, not at all,”
I answered after
a long silence.
“There are just
few things better
than masturbating
– every kid who’s
scraped past the
age of thirteen knows that, and very little’s happened in
the history of world literature that tops a good orgasm.”
He wanted to prove his point, and I did, too. But
without him.
The wind picked up as the day wore on, about the
time that we sailed into an ashen industrial village
with a gigantic factory and a dank coal mine. Delicate
songbirds gave way to wet-furred, slimy rats that chir-
ruped on the shore and a single weasel nosing around in
search of vermin or trash to nibble on.
“Could you hear the explosions over the wind?”
shouted the German, holding tight to my fur so he
wouldn’t be blown away.
Is it happening again? I thought, picturing the
women in the square, the anguish that had taken hold
of them as they fled into the jazz bars with newspapers
over their heads.
Although the German got no answer, he put his arms
around me, and I relaxed.
“They’re probably blasting the mountain to produce
the coal.”
A single raindrop joined the stormy waltz, but I
didn’t want to get up and the German didn’t intend to
show the first sign of hesitation, so resolved was I to
stand down the storm. The merry cook, who seemed
to have never experienced anything of cruelty, finally
called across the deck that everyone should get inside
while he took down the red Christmas lights that had
graced the day’s buffet in a battle against the weather.
People were scared
of the storm and the
explosions, so they
drank more and
laughed louder that
evening than the
others.
I ate a lot at
dinner; the moon
was red, as I had
commanded it to
be. The band played
the music too fast.
The German and
I drank stolen red
wine from the bottle
and when it was
half-finished, a long-
ing to be touched
blossomed inside
me. It occurred
to me to let those
bratwurst fingers
stroke my breasts
repeatedly. I realised I wanted it a little. Kissing him
was alright, even though his moustache was sweaty and
his kisses too eager. And when the band packed up, the
lights were turned off, and a quiet fell over the crew, I
whispered over the storm and into his ears: “I’d invite
you into my cabin, if it weren’t so hard to climb up into
the bunk.”
“Listen, babe, I’m a regular mountain goat,” drawled
the gray-eyed man, right before he passed out in his
bunk. Maybe he knew his death was approaching.