Oh, yeah. I forget to mention that this is a nonsmoking Icelandair flight from New York to Reykjavik, Iceland. This was the surprise that awaited me at Gate 2. My exile has taken a northern turn. By the touch of my index finger, the video screen abandons Seinfeld’s hairdo for an info-map: A red airplane, the size of Britain, slowly crawls up the Atlantic, past some white thing that the talking man says is Greenland. Iceland on the other hand looks pretty green. The chatty one takes the next ten minutes to explain his theory about this mix-up: When the Norwegian Vikings discovered Iceland in some year before 1000, they found Irish monks up there, who’d already named the land Island, or The Land of Christ, for Jesus was Isu in their language. The Vikings, however, took the Savior for ice. I’m glad they did. Or else I’d be traveling to Christland.
“OK. Cool. What about Greenland then?” the basketball player asks.
“The first settlers wanted all of Iceland for themselves, so they named the other one Greenland, so that next wave of immigrants would go there instead. Many people say it was the first PR trick in history. It really should be the other way around. Greenland should be called Iceland and Iceland, Greenland.”
Cool. I’m traveling under a pseudonym to a country with a pseudonym. Not too bad. I’ve heard about Iceland before. A friend of Dikan’s went there once for some arms-for-legs deal. The nights are bright and the girls are long, he said. Or was it the other way around? It’s a small island (ah, well, it’s two times bigger than Croatia) in the middle of the North Atlantic. The in-flight magazine shows lunar landscapes and sunny faces. Mossy rocks and fuzzy sweaters. They say Iceland is a young, hot country that’s still very active, shaking from eruptions and earthquakes almost daily, with boiling water and running lava breaking up through the surface. I wonder what brings Rev. David Friendly to this remote place? That’s me, that is. I have to start thinking like a priest.
Bless my soul.
Once more I try to find the right position for my aching legs. The stewardesses all have nice bodies and speak English with super confidence. Bright girls, long nights. Yeah, that’s how it was. The Icelandic look seems to be a cross between Julia Stiles and Virginia Madsen. Broad faces, barren cheeks. Cold eyes, cool lips. One of them hands me a tray of food and gives me an innocent, oh-what-a-sweet-puppy smile. Must be the dog collar I’m wearing. I’m not a man anymore. I’m a priest.
In that way the bloody collar works. It keeps the sin away. Or keeps it all inside. My mind starts giving Munita a very long leash as I try to picture myself in bed with one of these northern nymphs. I don’t succeed. Munita has the upper hand. I miss her soft skin already.
They make you pay for food. I find a few holy bills in Friendly’s wallet and send him my warmest thanks. Then I find out airline food tastes no better even when you’re paying for it. Maybe your taste buds stop working at five thousand feet. Suddenly the Wise Guy raises his voice as well as his glass of red wine, and, smiling, says “skull!” to me and the basketball player. At first I think he must be toasting my fresh hairdo, but he explains that this is the Icelandic version of “cheers!” The Vikings used to celebrate their victories by filling their victims’ brain shells with booze.
I love this country already.
After dinner I try to fall asleep. I really need my after-killing nap. But I seem to be the only one who wants to shut his eyes. The Vikings scream for another skull of cognac. And then the captain starts his voice-over bit, his manly voice tuned to the max in the overhead speakers. As with all his colleagues around the world, he speaks in Airish, the incomprehensive language of the skies. Those cockpit-monologues always sound to me like some Latin prayer, asking God for permission to cross his lawn. This one is fourteen minutes long.
I keep my eyes shut. Being Friendly is an iron collar around my neck.
Behind me I can hear the stewardess take yet another drinking order from two happy Vikings. And down the aisle, a group of chubby women have drunk themselves back to their high-school days. The Icelanders seem to be related to the Russians, who can never leave their motherland without being totally hammered and would never return to it in a sober state. Makes me think of old Ivica, who used to live in our street in Split. He was so afraid of his wife that he had to soak himself in courage each time he wanted to leave the house, and never dared return unless he was deaf from booze.
“Skull!” “Skull!” I hear them say behind me, all around me. I give up on sleeping and open my priestly eyes.
Now it’s selling time. They’ve turned the plane into a flying mall, with the stewardesses all busy running credit cards and handing out sunglasses and silky ties. I’ve never seen that before, not even on Aeroflot. But it seems like an effective but deadly combination: drinking and shopping. I think to myself that Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s should definitely consider opening bars in their men’s and women’s departments. Or, maybe there are no shops in Iceland?
Despite the captain’s prayer, the angels keep on pinching my legs and punching a conscience I thought I’d lost. Normally my profession carries no side effects, though I do get tired after a hit. The post-slaying siesta is a close relative to the after-sex nap; though there’s little physical effort (she always prefers to be on top), the inner achievement calls for a little rest.
I finally manage to tune out the drunken shopping of my fellow travelers and fall asleep with Munita on top of me—her wonder balls bouncing and her long, black hair tickling my chubby chest, like the tip of God’s long white beard touching my sick soul.
CHAPTER 4
“FATHER FRIENDLY”
The landing wakes me up. It’s a harsh one, with the plane shaking all over, from nose to tail, long after it has touched the ground. A bright, sexy voice rings out over the system, first in the lunar language, and then in English, welcoming us to the local temperature of three degrees Celsius.
I guess Iceland is the right name after all.
The photos didn’t lie. It does look like the moon. Nothing but gray rocky fields topped with moss with small blue mountains in the distance. It’s lava, I guess. Lava fields. This is Volcano Island.
The stewardess gives me another platonic smile as I leave the aircraft. The walkway is made of glass. Actually, the landscape looks like a huge set design from a Star Wars movie. I attempt to enter this strange land like a regular visitor, trying hard to walk like the man I killed last night, swinging his black briefcase like a happy priest, wearing his all-black shoes, shirt, jacket, and coat plus the white collar. I kept the jeans on. I’m a modern minister.
I follow the basketball player inside the terminal. He’s way too small for his profession, shorter even than six-foot me. Maybe they ship all the smallest players to the small nation leagues. Wise Guy said the Icelandic nation only counted three hundred thousand people. Is that even legal? It’s like if Little Italy was a country, with its own flag and everything, a small Olympic team. They’d sure take the Gold in Restaurant Shooting.
The basketball player leads me to Passport Control, where two lines have formed in front of a glass cage housing two officers. One line is for the people of the European Union and the other is for the rest of the world. I’m trying to remember if Russia is a member of the EU when I realize that I’m American now. I’m Friendly! The line moves pretty quickly. This will be easy, I tell myself. I find the holy man’s passport in the inner breast pocket of his black coat, step up to the glass booth, and hand it to the officer, a dark-browed guy with a grayish beard. He opens it and then says something in his own language. I give him a blank look. As he repeats himself I realize he’s speaking Russian. The motherfucker is speaking fucking Russian.