We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  Isager bowed deeply in response to the crown prince's compliment, and Frederik patted him on the back. One-Second Svend had been ordered to keep his hands behind his back so that Frederik wouldn't catch sight of his damaged fingers.

  That was all the wisdom Isager ever imparted to us: that the thrashing rope and the ruler could achieve what a teacher's skill could not. Isager's knowledge didn't extend far even with Cramer's Arithmetic in his hand. But the rope did its work. If we learned to count, it was only to keep track of the number of strokes we were dealt.

  Marstal School was later named Frederik School in honor of the occasion. But they might as well have named it Isager Establishment. Crown Prince Frederik's pat on the back had turned the school—and our bruised limbs—into Isager's personal property. He'd bowed to two future kings, and two future kings had given him a pat on the back: that put him beyond criticism.

  An education committee consisting of a wholesale grocer and two skippers had been set up, and our parents could complain to them if we came home looking worse than usual after an encounter with Isager's rope. But the committee members were simple people, who dumbly deferred to the learned schoolteacher. After all, he'd been praised by not one but two kings. So no complaint was ever upheld.

  Besides, everyone remembered what it had been like in old Andrésen's time. There had been 350 pupils at the school in those days, but only two classes, with 175 pupils each. Andrésen couldn't possibly remember so many names, so he gave the boys numbers instead and directed them with the aid of a whistle. Pupils would sit wherever they could find space, including on the windowsills, in the kitchen, and even out in the yard. This meant that the windows had to stay open until the weather grew too severe. But long before that happened, the pupils all caught colds and bronchitis from the draft. Then, once the windows had been closed for the winter, the atmosphere became suffocatingly close, and children fainted daily. And there were no blackboards or writing implements: the pupils stood in front of a tray of sand and scratched in it with a stick. A single gust of wind could blow their combined knowledge clean away.

  With such memories, the three members of the committee regarded the new school, with its inkwells and its blackboards and its headmaster who had been praised by two future kings, as progress. There was only one remedy for children's reluctance to learn, and that was more thrashing.

  But then again, we rarely complained, because another aspect of the solidarity that Isager had taught us was that we couldn't even snitch on our tormentor. We'd return home with bald patches on our scalps where a furious Isager had ripped out clumps of hair; with black eyes; with fingers incapable of holding knife or fork. And we'd say we'd been in a fight, and when parents asked who with, we said, "Nobody."

  We swore that when we grew up, we'd give Isager what he'd been asking for. We couldn't fathom our fathers' tacit consent to our ill-treatment: they knew full well who Nobody was because they too had been victims of the rope. But they turned a blind eye to our suffering.

  Our mothers suspected that something was wrong, but they were always at a loss when dealing with the authorities. It wasn't that they lacked strength: they had considerable supplies of it, with so many children and their husbands away at sea. But when faced by the minister or the schoolteacher, they started doubting their own judgment.

  "You're sure it wasn't Mr. Isager?" they'd ask.

  And we'd shake our heads. We hardly knew why, but we never pointed the finger at him as the cause of our daily injuries. Instead, we blamed ourselves.

  "Well, perhaps this will teach you to stay out of trouble."

  And we would get a clip on the ear.

  "Look at your sister, she comes home neat and tidy every day."

  It was true. But then again, our sisters had Nothkier, the assistant teacher, and he never beat them.

  This was another malign effect of Isager. He followed us home unseen and sowed discord.

  WINTER ARRIVED, and with it the frost. The boats were laid up in the harbor, the harbor froze over, and an ice pack formed on the beach. Island and sea became one; we inhabited a white continent whose infinity both beckoned and terrified us. We could walk as far as Ristinge Klint on the island of Langeland if we wanted to, marching across frozen ships' channels between sandbanks that lay like white hills, collecting snowdrifts fringed by ice packs. It looked so wild, windswept, and deserted.

  This new landscape even forced its way into our streets, where a blizzard of snowflakes whirled and danced on the heavy drifts, then leapt back into the air to obliterate the world once more. We were desperate to get outside and join the dance, to take our skates down to the harbor or trek out across the fields to the hills at Drejet to fight the farmers' sons with snowballs and hurtle down the slopes on our toboggans.

  Isager was an obstacle to this, but winter was on our side: without a stove in the classroom, we couldn't cope with the cold—but the stovepipe was easily obstructed, and once the room filled with smoke, he had to send us home. On these occasions he'd stand in the doorway, treating us to a clip on the ear by way of goodbye as we filed out.

  "You rascal," he would mutter to each of us. By now he could barely breathe and his eyes would be red behind his spectacles. But like the captain of a sinking ship, he was always the last to leave the classroom: if he could still see well enough to strike us, even though he was hacking and coughing, he'd stay on to do it. He hated us so much that he'd rather choke than miss out on a single blow.

  So only on Sundays could we devote ourselves to the snow without paying for it with a sore neck.

  ***

  One day Niels Peter deftly dismantled the stovepipe and stuffed his entire sweater inside, whereupon the stove duly started to smoke as planned—but the sweater too caught fire. Isager stifled the blaze immediately. But the flames that burst briefly from the pipe wouldn't be forgotten in a hurry: even Isager was silenced by the episode.

  If we could smoke him out, what else could we do?

  On cold winter evenings Isager would go visiting. He frequently called on Christoffer Mathiesen, the grocer, his most fervent supporter on the education committee. A few other local people sat with him around the grocer's mahogany table, but not Pastor Zachariassen. Isager wasn't on good terms with the pastor, who was embarrassed by his poor teaching. Mr. Mathiesen, on the other hand, was honored to entertain the learned gentleman who had been patted on the back by royalty.

  "And as the king said to me—" was Isager's most frequent remark in that company. He would sit there in his tailcoat, with a two-finger toddy in front of him. Describing his royal encounters served as a form of payment for the steaming brew, which he never raised to his lips without referring to it as "the best medicine against the cold the good Lord ever created."

  As the medicine took effect, his lower lip would begin to sag and his spectacles slide toward the position Albert described as "fair weather," revealing a face we never saw at school: not amiable exactly, but relaxed.

  When Isager left Mathiesen's house in Møllegade that night, he was unsteady on his legs. It had snowed all evening, and now there were drifts against the stone steps and all across the street. There was no street lighting in Marstal, so the town lay dark in the whirling snow. The wind was easterly, blowing up from the harbor straight into Møllegade.

  We saw his face in the light from Mathiesen's window. For a brief moment his slack expression gave way to the same look of rage he wore on a punishment round, and we fully expected to hear him scream "Rascal!" at the snowstorm. Instead his lower lip drooped and his eyes returned to their vacant look.

  Now, outside, he was nothing but a shadow against the snowdrifts.

  We followed him for a while to make sure that he was heading home via Kirkestræde. He made progress laboriously, getting stuck in drifts and shoveling himself free frantically with his hands. This might have helped him warm up, but it didn't speed him on his way.

  We could have got him right there and then.

  Only the olde
st of us were out that night. Niels Peter had sneaked downstairs from his attic room and left via the back door. Hans Jørgen had lied and said he was visiting a friend. His father was away on a long voyage that winter and his mother had started treating him like a grownup. Josef and Johan Isager were not with us, obviously.

  We all knew that our plan would mean trouble in some form or other the next day. But an extra beating made no difference to us.

  Lorentz begged to be part of it.

  "Please, please let me," he said.

  "Haaaaaaaaaa," we said, imitating his wheezing when he was out of breath. "We'll be running fast. You're no good."

  In fact, if we'd really loathed him, we would have let him join us. He had no idea what we were saving him from that night.

  We waited for Isager on the corner of Kirkestræde and Korsgade, the crystals in the falling snow reflecting the starlight above us. Then we spotted him, a shadowy figure slowly growing in size among the glimmering snowflakes. The darkness protected us, and we had tied our scarves around our faces so that only our eyes were visible. Our breath felt hot behind the wool. We were shadows ourselves, a pack of wolves in the snowy night.

  We started bombarding him with snowballs. We came up close, hitting him hard and with precision. But it was only fun and games. So far, at least. Just a gang of boys throwing snowballs.

  One knocked his hat off. He staggered forward to pick it up. Then another, crusted hard with ice after being lovingly molded in a hot and vengeful hand, slammed right into his ear, which was already burning in the severe cold. It might as well have been a stone. He touched his head.

  "Rascals!" he screamed. "I know who you are!"

  He took a step toward us, and a snowball smashed him right in his face, blinding him. Then a direct hit to his neck. He raved in pain.

  "Rascals!" he screamed again.

  But the power was gone from his voice. He was moaning now—and he was scared.

  That was what we wanted. We'd moved on from fun and games. Now he'd see us for what we really were. With every backward step he took, our fear shrank; we'd tasted our own strength and it had whetted our appetite. Outside the classroom he was nothing but an old drunk, alone in a winter storm. But we didn't see him like that. We had Satan himself in our grasp. And having captured the bringer of all evil, we'd show him no mercy—for if we did, we'd stay scared the rest of our lives. Hans Jørgen had once brought Isager to his knees and twisted his arm behind his back, but even then, he'd kept his power over us, and Hans Jørgen had let him go.

  But this time there'd be no escape.

  We backed off briefly and he cleared the snow from his eyes. Still he's didn't see us. He seemed to think he was safe, but that was our plan. He gave up looking for his hat and stumbled on through the drifts, mumbling to himself. We knew he was cursing us. Then we attacked again. Harder snowballs this time. Pure lumps of ice. And there was no missing at such close range. It was like pounding him in the face, first one cheek, then the other, forcing his head to jerk from side to side. This was our thrashing rope. We stayed silent while he grunted and moaned. We would have loved to break every bone in that detested face, but we held off because we didn't want him to collapse here in Kirkestræde, where he might be found before the frost finished the job for us.

  We let him get as far as the corner of Nygade before we surrounded him again, forcing him to flee down the street. We wanted to drive him out to the deserted area down by the harbor, where no one came at night. We'd almost got him down to Buegade: by now he was swaying and faltering. From time to time he'd fall into a snowdrift, headfirst. Then we'd wait until he got back on his feet and start again.

  He was blubbering.

  It was a dreadful thing to hear, but it stirred no pity in us. The snowstorm muffled all other noises, so the only sound was our tormentor's weeping. The tears ran down his cheeks, where they froze to ice. Snow hung in his sideburns, which made them seem longer, and frayed. Sobs, mumblings: was he still cursing us, or was he pleading for his life? We weren't sure, nor did we care. Finally, we had Satan under our thumb.

  Isager sought shelter by the wall of one of the tall half-timbered houses at the bottom of Nygade. He tripped over the doorstep, collapsing onto stairs that were half-buried by snow. When he raised himself with his hands, Hans Jørgen hit him on the nose with a rock-hard ball. It was dark, but the snow lit everything up, and we saw the blood drip onto it, first a small stain, then a bigger one. Isager turned his head toward us and brayed with fear, blood dangling from his nose in a snotty strand.

  Hans Jørgen launched yet another shot at him, but he missed, and the snowball smashed into the door instead.

  A lamp was lit inside, and a light flickered behind the frost flowers on the icy window.

  "Who's there?"

  We heard scrambling in the hallway.

  Then we legged it. In Buegade, Kresten Hansen was coming along, swinging his lamp in the snowstorm. The glowing wick cast a flickering light across his mutilated face. He was a night watchman now. He slept during the day and worked at night to spare the town the sight of his face. He looked horrific. He made way for us, and as we raced past, he dropped his lamp in a snowdrift and darkness descended.

  The next day, Isager wasn't there to greet us in the doorway of the school. Silently, we entered the empty, ice-cold classroom. But we felt no relief. It was so strange. We couldn't imagine a world without Isager. Was he dead?

  Nothkier, the assistant teacher, arrived and told us Isager was ill. We were all to go home and come back tomorrow. The next day the classroom was empty again, but the stove had been lit. Nothkier arrived and informed us that "Mr. Isager's illness will be a long one" and that in the meantime he'd attend to our education, though our hours of instruction would be reduced, as he also had to teach the girls.

  Nothkier was no better at teaching than Isager: he, too, stuck to Balle's Textbook, which made very little sense to us, and Cramer's Arithmetic, which made no sense to anyone including him. But he never hit us. Sometimes he'd ask us whether we understood what he'd had just explained—and relieved, we'd answer no, we didn't. He didn't get angry or call us donkeys or give out "ducats": he just started again from the beginning.

  The snow was still there, but we didn't block the stove or pour sand into the inkwells. Fewer of us played truant. It was as though we wanted to reward him.

  Isager had pneumonia, it was said, and at home our parents talked about how he'd lost his way in the storm.

  "He was probably drunk out of his mind," the men said. The women hushed them.

  All the children knew what had happened, including those of us who hadn't been there. But we never said anything, not even to one another. As long as Isager didn't turn up for school, we were happy. Our failure to kill him the way we'd planned barely crossed our minds. Had anyone asked us if we really wanted him dead, we'd probably have replied that we didn't care, so long as we were rid of him.

  Christmas came, and with it the holidays. Isager was still bedridden, and this year we spared him the torments we normally subjected him to on New Year's Eve, in thanks for the year gone by. We didn't smash his garden fence or shoot the school's forty windows to bits, or offer our trademark New Year's greeting in the form of clay pots full of ashes and stinking waste lobbed through his windows.

  After New Year's Day, Isager returned, and everything was back to normal.

  His skin was as white as the snow outside, and even his nose had lost its color. But he wore his black tailcoat and his spectacles were high on the bridge of his nose, and the thrashing rope swung in his right hand like a viper roused from its winter hibernation, ready to attack. We stared at him as though he'd risen from the dead—not least because we'd already pictured him in his grave.

  We sang "The Dark Night Has Ended" as usual, but the words on our lips belied the feeling in our hearts. The dark night had begun anew, and a ghost walked among us.

  After the hymn, Isager strode over to Little Anders and grabbed h
im by the ear. That was all it took for Anders to position himself obediently on his knees between the schoolteacher's legs. Isager raised the thrashing rope, ready to strike.

  "Sinning is a disease of the soul. That's why it causes the soul to experience anxiety." The calmness of his voice spooked us. Normally, even at this early stage of a punishment, he'd be in the grip of a mad rage. "This anxiety we call conscience." He looked up. "Do you understand?"

  The schoolroom fell silent. The only sound was the crackling of the flames in the stove. We nodded. When Isager finished with Anders, he moved on to the next boy. Albert too knelt obediently, and Isager gripped him by the lining of his trousers.

  "The purpose of conscience is to judge and to punish." Isager's lash made Albert jump: the stroke was unexpectedly painful on a backside that had toughened during the autumn but regained its normal sensitivity during the long break. "Lie still," Isager ordered him in the same calm voice as before, renewing his grip on the lining of Albert's trousers. "But how does your conscience punish you? Through the inner unrest you experience when you have committed a misdeed. Does your conscience trouble you? Do you feel the punishment?"

  He laid off Albert and looked around the schoolroom. Again we nodded. "You're lying," he said, without raising his voice, then moved on to his next victim, Hans Jørgen. We anticipated that one of their regular confrontations might erupt—but Hans Jørgen too knelt to await his punishment. Oblivious to this unexpected triumph, Isager continued his lecture while raining down more blows. "You know nothing of remorse. And do you know why? Because you have no purpose. Do you know what purpose is? Probably not. Purpose is God's plan for us. But God has no plan for you. You have no reason and you have no conscience. You don't know the difference between right and wrong."