We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  Our captors weren't much better off. They led us away from the beach, their faces frozen, mute witnesses to the destruction they'd so closely avoided themselves. Our march looked more like a wholesale retreat from the theater of war than an organized transportation of prisoners.

  The Germans had routed us, but their faces showed no signs of triumph. Horror at the unthinkable forces that war had unleashed united both victors and vanquished.

  THEY TOOK US TO Eckernförde Church. Straw had been spread across the floor so we could collapse and rest our weary bodies. We were soaked through and shivering with cold. Once the sun had set, the April night grew chilly. Those of us who'd managed to save our sea bags changed our clothes and lent our less fortunate comrades what they needed. Soon food rations arrived: whole-grain bread, beer, and smoked bacon collected from the town's grocers. No one in Eckernförde had expected to see the town filled with prisoners of war. On the contrary, they'd been expecting Danish soldiers to be patrolling their streets before the day was out. Now, instead of being under guard themselves, the town's citizens were playing host.

  Old women appeared in the church to sell white bread and schnapps to those with money. One of them was Mother Ilse, with the crooked hip. She stroked one prisoner's cheek with a sooty finger and muttered, "You poor lad."

  She'd recognized him from his previous visits to the town. We'd all bought schnapps from her in our time. The man grabbed her hand.

  "Don't you call me a poor lad. I'm alive."

  It was Ejnar.

  In the long pause that had followed the hoisting of the signal flag, Ejnar had wandered the deck looking for Kresten, but he could find him among neither the living nor the wounded. Many of the dead were lying face-down, and he'd had to turn them over. Others had had their faces shot off. But Kresten wasn't among the bodies around cannon number seven.

  Torvald Bønnelykke, who'd been standing by one of the other cannons, came up to him.

  "Are you looking for Kresten?" he asked.

  He was a Marstaller and had been party to Kresten's grim premonitions.

  "He's lying over there," he said, pointing. "But you won't recognize him. A cannonball took off his head. I was standing next to him when it happened."

  "So he was right," Ejnar said. "Bloody awful way to die."

  "Death is death," Bønnelykke said. "I don't know if one way is better than another. The result's always the same."

  "I'd better go find his sea bag. I promised him I would. Have you seen Little Clausen?"

  Bønnelykke shook his head. They asked around, but no one had seen him.

  By now it was around ten o'clock. Exhausted, we were getting ready to sleep when the church door opened and yet another prisoner was led in, wrapped in a huge blanket. He sneezed incessantly, and his whole body shook.

  "Damn it, I'm cold," he said hoarsely, then gave another explosive sneeze.

  "My God, if that isn't Little Clausen!"

  Ejnar struggled to his feet and went over to his friend.

  "So you're still alive."

  "I damn well am. I told you I would be. But this bastard cold will be the death of me instead: I'm sick as a dog." He sneezed again.

  Ejnar put his arm around him and led him to the straw bed he'd prepared for himself. He could feel Little Clausen shivering beneath the blanket, and his white face was mottled with feverish red.

  "Do you have some dry clothes?"

  "No, damn it, I didn't manage to save my sea bag."

  "Take these. I hope you don't mind wearing Kresten's stuff."

  "So he—"

  "Yes, it turned out he was right. But what happened to you? We looked everywhere. I thought you..."

  "Don't they say that you don't drown if you're meant to hang? Seems the Lord has decided I'm to die from a cold, rather than in combat. I spent the whole battle suspended in an old bosun's chair along the side of the ship. I was supposed to be mending the holes with lead plates. They kept shooting at me, the bastards. But somehow they missed."

  "I didn't think you were a weakling," Ejnar said. "How come a bit of fresh air made you sick?"

  "The rest of the crew damn well forgot about me. I was stuck there the whole day with my legs in the water, freezing my butt off." Little Clausen sneezed again. "It wasn't until the ship was evacuated that I managed to flag down a boat. By then I was blue all over. I couldn't even walk when I got back on shore." He'd put on the dry clothes and now slapped himself for warmth as he glanced around the church. "How many were killed?"

  "You mean how many Marstallers?"

  "Yes, what else would I mean? I don't know the others."

  "I think we've lost seven."

  "Was Laurids one of them?"

  Ejnar stared at the floor. Then he shrugged, as though embarrassed about something shameful. "I can't answer that."

  "You don't mean he ran away?"

  "No. Not exactly. I saw him shooting up into the sky. But then I saw him come down again."

  Little Clausen stared at him in disbelief, then shook his head.

  "My eyes tell me that you've not been wounded," he said. "But my ears tell me that you've lost your mind."

  He let off another sneeze and sat down abruptly on the bed of straw. Ejnar sat next to him and stared into space with lost eyes. Perhaps he really had gone mad. Little Clausen leaned toward his friend and put his arm around his shoulder.

  "There now." He comforted him. "It'll come back, you'll see."

  He lapsed into silence. Then added, softly, "But I suppose we might as well write off Laurids."

  They sat for a while longer, saying nothing. Then they lay down and fell asleep, utterly spent.

  At seven in the morning they woke us and treated us to more bread, bacon, and warm beer, and an hour later there was a head count. When an officer arrived to take down our names and our hometowns so that our families could be informed, we fell on him, yelling out our details so clamorously that by ten o clock, when the order came to march us to the fortress in Rendsburg, he'd noted only half our names.

  Outside the church they lined us up in ranks. The mood had shifted: it seemed that Eckernförde was turning against its vanquished enemy, and our guards were losing patience with us. Many of us were still half-deaf from yesterday's cannon fire and couldn't hear orders even when they were shouted right into our faces. So they shoved us around and beat us. The town's citizens hustled around us, whooping at our humiliation, while a crowd of sailors with cutlasses swinging from their belts hurled out coarse oaths—which, to our great irritation, we had to endure in silence.

  The high road ran along the shoreline, affording us a final glimpse of our inexplicable defeat: the wreck of the Christian the Eighth, floating on the water. She was still smoldering, with smoke waiting from her charred hull, and the beach was littered with the debris of masts and yards flung ashore by the explosion. Like ants stripping the carcass of a lion, the Germans were already busy securing the flotsam from what had recently been one of the Danish navy's proudest vessels. We passed the southern battery, which we'd spent a day bombarding and that in the end had sealed our fate. Not even the most unschooled among us needed to count fingers to calculate the enemy's firing power. Four cannons! That was all. David had fought Goliath. And Goliath had been us.

  Several vehicles overtook us, carrying officers from the Christian the Eighth and the Gefion. They too were heading for prison in Rendsburg. We exchanged salutes, and they were gone in a cloud of dust. Then came the rumbling of yet another cart and the sound of laughter. Some Holstein officers drove past us. Among them towered a man. He was bareheaded.

  Little Clausen and Ejnar looked at each other.

  "The devil take me," Little Clausen said. "That was Laurids!"

  "I told you so. He went shooting up into the sky and came back down again."

  Little Clausen's face split into a grin.

  "Well, I don't care how he did it! The most important thing is he's alive."

  The cart stopped a short di
stance ahead, and the officers got out and shook hands with Laurids. One of them shoved a bottle of schnapps into his coat pocket, and another thrust a wad of bank notes at him. Then they raised their arms to salute him, and left. For a while Laurids just stood there, dithering. Little Clausen called out his name. He looked in our direction and lifted his hand hesitantly. A soldier took hold of his arm and nudged him into the ranks next to the two men from Marstal.

  "Laurids!" exclaimed Little Clausen. "I thought you were dead."

  "And so I was," Laurids said. "I saw Saint Peter's bare butt."

  "Saint Peter's bare butt?"

  "Yes, he pulled up his tunic and flashed his ass at me."

  Laurids fished the schnapps bottle out of his coat pocket and took a swig of the clear liquid. He handed the bottle to Little Clausen, who drank deeply before passing it on to Ejnar, who still hadn't said a word.

  "Didn't you know," Laurids said, "that when Saint Peter shows you his ass, it means your time's not up yet?"

  "And so you decided to return to earth."

  The explanation illuminated Ejnar's face, and he spoke with the relief of someone who has just been let off a criminal charge.

  "I saw it," he said. "You were standing on the deck when the Christian the Eighth blew up. You were flung high into the air, ten meters at least, and then you came back down and landed on your feet. Little Clausen said I must have lost my mind. But I saw it. You did it. Isn't that right?"

  "It was hot as hell," Laurids said. "But cooler higher up. I saw Saint Peter's ass and I knew I wasn't going to die."

  "But how did you get back ashore?" Little Clausen asked.

  "I walked," Laurids said.

  "You walked? You're not telling me you walked on water?"

  "No. I'm telling you I walked on the seabed."

  Laurids stopped and pointed at his boots. Somebody in the column behind him bumped into his broad back, and the ranks became muddled. A soldier rushed over and shoved Laurids with the butt of his gun.

  Laurids turned around.

  "Gently, gently," he said with the tolerance of a drunk. He made a calming gesture, then fell back into the ranks and picked up the rhythm of the march.

  The soldier kept pace alongside him.

  "I didn't mean to hurt you," he said in Danish. He had a South Jutland accent.

  "No harm done," Laurids replied.

  "I've heard about you," the soldier continued. "You're the man who was blown up with the Christian the Eighth and landed right back on his feet, aren't you?"

  "Yes, that's me," Laurids replied with considerable dignity, straightening up. "I landed on my feet, thanks be to God and my sea boots."

  "Your sea boots?"

  Now it was Ejnar's turn to be mystified.

  "Yes," said Laurids in a tone of voice you'd use to explain something to a child. "It's because of my sea boots that I landed on my feet. Have you ever tried wearing my sea boots? Damn heavy. No one wearing them could stay in Heaven for long."

  "It's like the Resurrection." The soldier gawked.

  "Hogwash," Laurids snorted brusquely. "Jesus never wore sea boots."

  "And Saint Peter didn't flash his bare ass at him either," Little Clausen added.

  "Too right," Laurids said, offering the bottle around.

  The soldier too was offered a drop. Glancing quickly over his shoulder, he took a big swig.

  But our merriment soon abated. It was thirty kilometers to Rendsburg and we had to walk all day to get there. When the farmers came out to stare at us, we didn't look back at them; our bravado had faded. As we staggered on, most of us just kept our eyes on the highway dust. A leaden weariness had us all in its grip, but whether it stemmed from our sore feet or from our sunken spirits we couldn't tell. Past caring, we jostled one another like drunken men, though only Laurids was enjoying the privilege of actual intoxication. He, for his part, was unmoved by our predicament. He marched along, humming tunes to himself—despite his visit to the Lord, none of the songs he chose were godly. Finally even he too fell silent and trudged on with his eyes turned inward, as if beginning to sleep off his inebriation while on foot.

  From time to time we would stop at a pond for a drink of water. The soldiers would keep an eye on us, bayonets at the ready, while we filled our caps with water and passed them around. Then the marching resumed. Halfway to Rendsburg, our guards were relieved, and Ejnar and Little Clausen bade goodbye to the friendly soldier. Laurids was still in a world of his own. The soldier took one last look at him and swapped a few words with his replacement, a Prussian. The Prussian threw Laurids a doubtful look and shook his head. But throughout the rest of the march, he kept eyeing him.

  We reached Rendsburg at dusk. Rumors of the battle had preceded us, and the highway and ramparts were teeming with people who had come out to gawk at the prisoners. We passed through the town gate and crossed a bridge before going through the inner portal, then found ourselves in the narrow streets of the town center. Here thousands more had gathered to stare, and our guards had to show their guns to make way for us and keep curious onlookers at bay. There were plenty of pretty girls among them, and it was an ugly thing to know that their eyes rested on us with contempt.

  They held us in a spacious old church whose floor had been strewn with so much straw that it looked more like a barn than a house of God. We had eaten nothing all day, but now they distributed sacks of biscuits and warm beer. The biscuits must have been several years old, they turned to dust in our mouths, but the beer was welcome, and soon we lay scattered across the broad church floor, fast asleep.

  The next day, Holy Saturday, we milled about, assessing the accommodations and sleeping options, rediscovering some friends, and noting the loss of others. There were men from both the Gefion and the Christian the Eighth. Some rooms in the church had chairs, and curtains in the windows; these quarters were quickly occupied, and possessing one was considered a privilege. We men from Marstal gathered in a room by the chancel. The others stuck with those from their hometowns too: men from Ærøskøbing here, men from the island of Funen there, men from Lolland, men from Langeland. There in the straw-carpeted church, we redrew the map.

  We knew nothing of discipline. We hadn't been in the navy long enough to value any formal systems of order beyond those we'd come up with ourselves. When our battleship had been set alight beneath our feet, we'd been separated from our officers. Now we obeyed only one command: that of the stomach. When the church door opened in the morning for the guards bringing bread, there was a stampede, each man thinking only of his own hunger. In the end the soldiers flung the bread over our heads and we fought over it like wild animals. Someone tore Ejnar's loaf from his hands, and Little Clausen got kicked in the shin. It was a shameful episode, but whatever discipline the navy had instilled in us had vanished. In the new hierarchy we were forced to create, fighting was a useful skill. Only Laurids remained above it all, as though untouched by hunger or thirst.

  The next meal was distributed as though it were a military exercise, with a major and a sergeant bellowing commands at us. They had brought the bosuns from the Gefion and Christian, who divided us into the same groups of eight as on the warships, so we could be fed in an orderly way. We were each given a spoon and a metal bowl and made to line up by the altar. And it was, in its way, a form of communion, because it took every last scrap of imagination to transubstantiate what was in our metal bowls into something edible, and we consumed the sorry-looking mess of gruel and prunes only out of sheer necessity. Afterward we lay down on the straw to sleep. The exhaustion that had overwhelmed us the day after the defeat still held sway.

  Late in the afternoon the church door opened again, and a group of officers entered, along with some well-dressed men, doubtless prominent citizens of Rendsburg, and the Prussian soldier who had eyed our fellow townsman so suspiciously on the second leg of the march. While the guests waited by the door, the Prussian began walking around in the church as if looking for someone. Finally spotting La
urids, he ordered him up from the straw and led him over to the party of officers and gentlemen. When they began talking, it became obvious they were questioning Laurids. Then, after a while, they did the same thing that the departing Holstein officers had done on the way to Rendsburg: they handed Laurids bank notes before politely taking their leave. A few of the well-dressed folk even tipped their hats.

  Laurids, the heavenly traveler, had become a celebrity.

  The story was now circulating around the whole church. It turned out that Ejnar wasn't the only one who'd seen Laurids shoot up into the sky when the Christian the Eighth exploded, only to miraculously reappear on the burning deck once the column of fire had subsided. They'd all believed it to be a kind of mirage, an apparition brought on by the nervous strain of mortal danger during battle, and had mentioned it to no one—but now they came forward to bear witness to the rest of us, and soon a large crowd had gathered in front of Laurids.

  We wanted to know why his clothes and hair weren't scorched.

  "My boots are," he said, sticking out a leg for inspection.

  "And your feet?" We wanted to know.

  "They stink," said Laurids.

  Ejnar couldn't take his eyes off Laurids. He looked at him the way you'd look at a total stranger—which was precisely what Laurids had become to him. He started treating him with a bashful subservience and couldn't seem to act normally around him. Little Clausen, meanwhile, accepted what had happened. Or rather, now that Laurids was standing in front of him as large as life, he accepted that others believed in his ascension. Personally he had been a skeptic right from the start, so when he became an official believer, it was mostly for the sake of comradeship, like joining in the laughter of a shared joke. In his eyes, Laurids was a born prankster. First he'd made the whole island believe that the German was coming. And now he'd made the German believe that he'd been to Heaven and back. Little Clausen felt a jaw-dropping respect for this achievement. That Laurids was one hell of a guy!