Day 35

Air / Water temperature: 25°C (21°C at night) / 18°C

Wind direction / Bft: Southeast / 2-4

Area: MAGNA INSULA (can trees smell of perspiration?) – Nautical chart showing the route

Combuse: Sea trout (1 kg) break out intestines, rinse and pat dry. Put 600 g potatoes «Ratte» in pieces of 3 cm in a baking pan, pour 4 dl of hot chicken broth over it and bake 15 minutes at 220º. Add to the potatoes 250 g Spanish pimientos de Padrón lengthwise halved and deseeded, 250 g Datterini tomatoes, 2 dl white wine, zest of 1 lemon, 20 g flat parsley in coarse pieces, 2 small hot chillies deseeded and finely chopped, salt and pepper, mix everything well. Salt and pepper the fish, put slices of ½ lemon in the abdominal cavity. Set the fish on the bed of vegetables, drizzle some olive oil over it, bake for 25 minutes at 220º in the oven. (More recipes from the Chief cook of «PS Narina»)

When I wake up in the morning, my eyes are usually covered with a faint film of some sort of mucus, which makes everything look slightly blurred. I have to rub my eyes in order to direct the various fluids into the right place. That’s not always entirely successful – sometimes, islands of mucus-particles push themselves back into my vision, which makes it look as if the world is intent on protecting its haziness. Often, this also takes place in my dreams: sometimes, however long I rub my eyes the vision remains unclear. I ask myself why this plays such a big role in my dreams. I can fly and steer pirate ships in my dreams, and go skiing smoothly with my darned feet and swim like a fish; only thing is, I cannot rub the mucus out of my eyes.

As I stepped onto the deck early today, I still had the mucus of sleep in my eyes. In the middle of the luminous morning scene I recognised Oskar, who was bravely dragging something like a huge branch over the railing. The thing was dangling from his mouth and covering half the side of the boat, and seemed to be so heavy that it kept repeatedly pulling the poor fellow down. I rubbed my eyes vigorously and when my vision finally cleared I saw that it was a long black hair that Oskar was struggling to transport.

Where had it come from? I have blond hair that is rapidly turning ash-grey in colour and, what’s more, is extremely short. Had we had a secret visitor on board in the night? Exciting. But most unlikely. Has the hair been on board all along? Impossible: I have cleaned the boat thoroughly a number of times after we set sail. I understand the presence of the hair as little as I understand the sticky eyes in my dreams, which is why I’m trying to anchor the two things in the same reality. There must be something on my boat that I’ve overlooked, and that something has brought this hair on board. How, I cannot figure out. The world of a paper boat is compact, it is a totally logically arranged cosmos that essentially generates no surprises – but the presence of the hair proves that there are hiding places within this small world, too, that have escaped my notice. One can therefore uphold the hair as a divine sign or creature and revere it as such; religion feeds on that which the eye-slime conceals. Nevertheless, I ask myself what the hell Oskar is up to with that hair – considering the way he is slaving, it must be important to him. Or perhaps it’s his tribe that’s egging him on to transport the thing – even when there’s nowhere to build a nest and no queen to feed?

Or, is the hair no hair at all? Has Oskar secretly woven a rope out of dust, with which he wants to make his escape from our togetherness on the boat?

Next day (36)

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