Callum Vinton

Jonas stopped halfway through picking a chord, sensing an unfamiliar presence nearby. Wary of wasting his tape, he cautiously reached over to his reel-to-reel recorder and clicked it off, keeping his ears trained on the jetty behind him. 

Shadows were unreliable in the bay—ever since he first moored his houseboat there, it had been afflicted by menacing visitations as a matter of routine. Flags and ropes would transform themselves into chaotic limbs and nightmarish weaponry, which seemed without exception to bear ill will. He had to rely instead on irregular sounds that might stray from the wooden dock—footsteps and the like would reverberate in such a way that they would leak through the imperceptible cracks in the boat-frame. 

During fishing hours, he appreciated this effect; he imagined the scattered rhythmic pulse of footsteps as a loosely-woven fabric of a hundred heartbeats. In this moment, however, one loose thread from this fabric would put Jonas in fear that his own heart could be stolen from him.

He’d been recording his private songs for about ten years, and he’d written them for a good length of time before that; during that span, one could count on two hands the amount of times another living soul had heard any of them. This was by design, rather than by circumstance, for these were the constituent parts of his soul, and the expression of his being. Jonas never intended for these songs to be heard per se, but rather to exist for their own sake, or as ephemeral decorations for the air. Save for some ill-advised love affairs in his younger years, and the occasional drunken tune cajoled out of him at the inland bar this is all they ever were. 

He took a deep, soulful satisfaction in this design; the transience of his art provided for him a means of ownership and control. Should he ever have had cause to discuss his philosophy with others (though he never would, as the very thought of doing so bored him immensely), he would claim to share his ideals with the ancient karma yogis of the Hindu faith, and that doing one’s work regardless of reward or recognition was the only path towards truth. But he didn’t really believe that. He simply enjoyed keeping his soul to himself, and felt that recording it to tape in all its three or four-minute manifestations was a means of fixing it in reality.

That isn’t to say that Jonas was an isolated individual, or a hermit. If anything, he was known to his fellow lobstermen and the community at large as an exceptionally generous man. He spoke little, but listened with patience and humility; he was also known to gift whole catches to the local seafood restaurants during times of hardship. Even when things weren’t so hard-up, the widows of the town would regularly find langoustines in ice baskets on their doorstep. His industry was enough to share with the rest of the world, he felt, for it was not his alone. He was one of a number of lobstermen moored at this particular dock, all of whom worked for the same company—and time, at the base of things, is the most common resource of all, despite the company men trying to disabuse him of that notion. Of course, one could argue that his songwriting also placed him in a community of harmonious actors, but this is a hypocrisy that Jonas had made his own private peace with.

It’s not our place to pry into the deeper, incomprehensible workings of his soul, nor are we entitled to know the precise content of his songs—Jonas is an unwilling subject, after all, and we owe him respect through distance. Suffice it to say that their contents reflected the standard contours of human creativity; some were humorous and plain-faced, others were ruminative, and a select few were obscure and incomprehensible to all except their creator. They were his, and his alone—that is all we ever need know.

The only times he’d opened up in public about his secret art were in the midst of his occasional binging sessions around the Christmas season. Along with his performances, which were drawn out at great expense to his fellow drinkers, he would tell the lingering listeners about his oeuvre at considerable length. Most of those present—also being remarkably intoxicated—would forget all of these details upon waking. However, after one such night of festive revelry, the company manager Mr. Eklund had woken up with a ghost of one of Jonas’ songs haunting the periphery of his mind, and with it, the first stirrings of a long-abated ambition within him. Having divined its origin over breakfast, he ambled out into the street and down towards the dock, nominally to check on the week’s catches. When Eklund reached the troubadour’s vessel, he attempted to engage him in chit-chat as he counted the lobsters and langoustines in his iceboxes.

“You are quite the singer, you know,” Eklund said with a feigned carelessness as he tallied in the air with his pencil, “only I’d never heard that song before. You know, the one about the stranded sea lions and the maelstrom?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jonas’ shell harden as he turned away, slowly stooping back into the boat through the doorless porthole. Eklund stopped his meaningless counting and tracked him over his shoulder. He wasn’t going to give up on this new dream of his, not before it had even lettered itself on the marquee in his mind. Possessed by this strange ambition, he leaned across the porthole, grasping the top of its frame and letting his belly hang loose like a sprawled cat. Jonas searched absently through his things as a means of signalling his unwillingness to talk. Eklund spotted the stacks of reel-to-reel tapes and the recorder, which he recognised from his uncle’s old sound equipment store in the city.

Come, come,” he purred, “it was a nice little tune! You have plenty of them, it seems.”

 “They’re mine, sir. I prefer to keep them here,” Jonas said as he continued flitting aimlessly through his scattered papers and boxes. 

This was as close as he would ever get to an exposition of his obscure philosophy, and even this statement left him feeling exposed. Still, Eklund began to needle from his unusual vantage point, smirking tautly at the prostrate man below.

“Ah, you are selfish, Jonas! A sin easily forgiven.” He swaggered down the steps into the boat, which caused Jonas to stop rifling and lift his head slowly, poised to react. “But why keep them on this little boat when they would be better served in the ears of others?” 

As soon as he heard Eklund stooping uncomfortably to pick up a tape, he spoke deliberately and with force.

“Get out. Put it down, and get out.” 

Eklund froze for a moment, cautiously analysing the dynamics at play. When his eyes drifted from Jonas’ icy stare to the revolver nestled amongst the scattered papers on the floor—and the younger man’s hand resting nearby—he retreated. He replaced the tape-box gently, and backed slowly out through the porthole.

“You’re insane,” Eklund spat as he left.

Later that day, something truly maniacal began to take root within Eklund. Ignoring the well-earned derision of his wife, he ransacked their bedroom dresser for a long-buried pair of binoculars from an ancient holiday in the Alps. Once he retrieved it and hastily wrested the caps from its eyes, he immediately set his sights on the dock, specifically on Jonas’ boat. He witnessed him standing on the stern, with a pile of the tape boxes resting on a stack of traps. He was dropping them into the bay. Eklund’s mania had guided him well, he thought, and he submitted himself like a lapdog to its further instructions. Impulsively he called Jonas’ mobile, and watched as he pulled back from the boat’s edge to answer. In that instant, the company man decided to cloak his wolfish entreaty in the sheepskin of an apology.

“Yes?”

“Jonas, it’s Eklund. Listen, I’m… I’m sorry for prying into your private business this morning. I don’t know what came over me! Let me buy you a pint to make it up to you, at the usual place.” 

An exhale on the other end of the line; he could see Jonas’ head stooped in contemplation, doubtlessly considering the necessity of appeasing his boss after such a confrontation.

“Okay. See you there in an hour.”

The two men talked frigidly for several hours, but were amicable enough. Eklund succeeded in convincing Jonas of his ultimate lack of interest in his songs, and his willingness to drop the subject in perpetuity. His sole addendum to the matter was an earnest encouragement for the young man to continue with his private work. 

“After all, each man can illuminate his days however he chooses. What does it matter if it’s only for his eyes or ears? You should go on. There, that’s all I have to say.” He paused to shovel shrimp into his slovenly mouth, as Jonas ruminated half-heartedly on his superior’s plastic wisdom. “Now, how about that cup final on Saturday?” Jonas bit cautiously at the question, and the remaining hours were idly squandered. 

Eklund maintained regular observations over the coming days from his bedroom window, and saw no more tapes falling overboard. His will was resolute.

So we return to our opening scene: our friend Jonas, sat braced his chair listening for his stray threads. His assailant, however, had left his shoes by the entrance to the jetty, and was moving deliberately but quickly between the loose boards. Jonas heard nothing. In the moment where his attention lapsed through the natural ebb and flow of consciousness, he suddenly felt the weight of bare feet rushing down the steps through the porthole, and snapped his head to see a pair of broad arms at full extension. 

Eklund, he thought. His last thought. His skull was crushed by a thirty-kilogram rock, pounded point-blank into his temple. He fell limply to the floor, smashing his head once again on the metal corner of a practice amplifier. The assassin watched as the body convulsed like frog’s legs in salt, while the colour drained from its skin and out into the carpet. He went about his remaining business like a ghost, as if he too had been slain. By the sunrise, he was long-gone. 

Naturally, there was no-one left to wake up on Jonas’ boat the next morning. Had there been a soul present in that vessel, they would’ve observed very little out of place in the room all things considered—just some glass shards littering the floor, the pool of blood staining the carpet by his desk and conspicuous dust-shadows of where his reel-to-reel and tape boxes had once stood. And the body, of course, stone dead by now. Jonas’ soul had taken flight some hours beforehand; therefore, only he might have had the motive and the means to observe the dealings that followed. His tapes—the contents of his soul—were traded to an executive, packaged with a sob story of a dear friend lost at sea, and a desire to see his legacy preserved. As for the machine, it was sold on the way back for twenty-five kroner and a case of premium pilsner—a pitiful price in today’s market. 

Following that, Jonas’ spirit would have floated yet higher to see the earth in its totality, turning obstinately about its axis as if to say that this is the way things must be. One can only hope that Jonas had made peace with the cruelty of his life by the time his thoughts dissipated into the rainclouds over the bay.

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