We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  "How's your love life, Li'l Albert?" she asked in the high-pitched keening voice that countrywomen once used at funerals. "When's the wedding?"

  Captain Madsen's face seemed to indicate he'd decided this was some sort of endurance test, and that if he stood it long enough, it would end of its own accord.

  The bride placed a large gloved hand on his thigh, close to his groin. "Trouble down there?" For a moment she forgot her part and burst into loud, braying laughter.

  Then the pig tore itself away from the pirate in the corner and approached them, its two pointy udders sticking out from its pink belly, rigid and fixed as fingers of accusation. "Have you lost your appetite, Li'l Albert?" asked the pig.

  The bride made kissing noises and the pig offered him its snout.

  It was Shrovetide. Fun and games.

  By now the housekeeper had left and the large punch bowl was almost empty. "Li'l Albert," intoned the pig. It must have had a poetic bent because it started improvising on the subject of our host.

  Have you lost your appetite

  For the fun of the night?

  Is the girl too cold?

  Or are you too old?

  Captain Madsen stood staring at the floor.

  The pig raised its trotter like a conductor calling the orchestra to attention, and we repeated the crude verse in unison: we were in high spirits, and it came to us easily. Then Albert looked up and shot out his huge fist with a speed we'd never had thought possible in a man whose old age we'd just mocked. He slammed the pig right on the snout, completely flattening it. Though cushioned by the mask, the blow was still hard enough to send the pig flying into the stand, and the punch bowl went crashing to the floor. The pig stayed down there amid the shattered glass, blood dribbling from its wrecked snout.

  Then the bride, who was still standing right next to Captain Madsen, punched him in the face, and the back of his head smacked against the wall. He staggered, then regained his balance. Tentatively he ran a finger across his split lower lip, staring straight ahead with empty eyes.

  The bride looked as if she was getting ready to have a second go at him, but we restrained her and dragged her away. Things had got out of control and we had to put a stop to it, though we didn't understand what had gone wrong. Had we crossed a line? But surely the whole point of Shrovetide was that there were no lines. On this one evening, anything went. And we'd after all done only what we always did, which was to tell a few home truths in an entertaining fashion. There was no need for anyone to get violent.

  We put the fallen table back up. There was nothing we could do about the punch bowl. The housekeeper would have to see to that. Then we carried the unconscious pig into the hall and down the steps into Prinsegade.

  There we turned and looked up at the bay window. Albert was looking down at us. Our masks were beginning to disintegrate in the cold February rain. The bride waved to the dark shadow in the pane.

  "Is the girl too cold? Or are you too old?" she yelled.

  One of her sleeves had slipped down to reveal a beefy forearm with a tattoo of a lion crouching to attack. In the dark, you couldn't make out the words.

  NORTH STAR

  IT HAD RAINED in the morning, but then the weather changed, and the lid of gray clouds that had covered the island gave way to a high, blue sky that warned of frost.

  Albert staggered blindly, gripped by despair. "You're ashamed of me!" Klara had screamed after him. No, he wasn't ashamed of her. He was ashamed of himself. He had to get away, take a walk to clear his head and decide on an unambiguous statement, a yes or a no, and then live with it. He wanted to say yes, but couldn't bring himself to. He could have said no, but he didn't want to do that either. This wasn't a case of "where there's a will there's a way." There was nothing but will, but both ways led to a void. He was too old. They were right, these masked Shrovetide revelers who'd so humiliated him, and that was why he struck out at them. He couldn't handle such a big change in his life. He recognized this with savage indignation, a helpless rage that had nowhere to turn but inward.

  He headed for the beach. Farther out, a figure appeared. As it came closer, he recognized Herman and braced himself for a confrontation. It hadn't been difficult to figure out who'd played the bride that night, when he'd been ridiculed and struck in his own home.

  Despite the cold, Herman's shirt was unbuttoned down to his belt, where his hairy gut, which hadn't shrunk during his many months of the good life at Hotel Ærø, spilled over. His face glowed red from the cold and he was staring ahead with glazed eyes. He passed Albert without so much as glancing at him, walking as if he was set on a distant goal, somewhere beyond the houses of Marstal, and was prepared to walk through every wall in his path to get there.

  Relieved to avoid a clash, Albert walked on and was soon consumed by his thoughts again. He wanted to get away from the town, in the hope that out here, surrounded by nothing but sea and sky, a solution would reveal itself. "Ha!" he snorted to himself. "The only answer would be to stay out here forever." He strode forward, half expecting that some refuge really would present itself on the narrow strip of sand, in a limbo where no one could force a decision on him.

  Walking on the wet sand was hard work. After some time it gave way to a carpet of pebbles left by the surf, which he stumbled across until he reached the dense shrubbery on the sandy crest of the spit, where well-trodden paths wound through the vegetation. Walking on, he came to the spot where the spit bent like a crooked elbow. Here, between spit and breakwater, the water lay heavy and oily, as if anticipating the arrival of frost and its own imminent crystallization. It was dotted with tiny islands where rushes and bulrushes sprouted from thick, heavy mud. The breakwater lay between him and the town. He could see the masts of the ships in winter harbor. Behind them were the red-tiled roofs of Marstal and the newly constructed copper church spire.

  He was staring at the town that spread panoramically along the coast, searching for a solution to the dilemma that tormented him, when he suddenly realized that he was stuck. He'd strayed from the sandy spit and into the shallow water by the shore of one of the little rush-covered islands.

  The muddy ground tugged at him. He pulled back, first one leg, then the other, so hard he nearly lost his balance, but he got nowhere. He felt the icy water seep into his boots. He stared down in disbelief. Then he laughed out loud, a brash artificial laughter, to mock his own folly. He tightened the muscles of his right leg and tried again. With the shift of weight, his left leg suddenly sank deeper. This wasn't quicksand. He wasn't about to be sucked down. He was just stuck. It was nothing. He had to try again. He bent to haul himself up by his boots and nearly toppled over. He was a big man in a heavy winter coat, and he'd lost his suppleness long ago. He was aware that he was growing increasingly desperate, but he still refused to accept that he was in a risky situation. Ridiculous, yes, but not dangerous. What if he was to throw himself forward into the rushes? Would he find solid ground there and be able to drag his feet after him? But he didn't know what lay beneath their dense growth. Perhaps they were rooted in water and the same muddy ground he was now stuck in, in which case he'd only make matters worse for himself.

  The sun was approaching the horizon, and with the dark would come the frost. The thought didn't fill him with panic. He just felt like a fool who'd carelessly landed himself in a tight spot. Soon it would be no more than an embarrassing memory. The highest price he'd have to pay for his stupidity would be a cold. Then he felt the icy chill creep up from his feet to his legs. He shuddered for a moment, then slapped at his body to warm it up, but he was soon exhausted. Stopping, he let his arms hang limp by his sides. He couldn't stay here. He had to think of something. He tensed his leg muscles again, but it was no use. The mud wouldn't give.

  Everything was casting long shadows now. The mast tops and the riggings threw a spider's web across the rushes. The church tower stretched over the sandy spit and reached the water behind him, and his own shadow seemed to straddle the rooftops. T
hen the sun disappeared behind a house, and the dark shape of the town swallowed him. Marstal was nearby, but it might as well have been on another planet.

  It struck him that for many years he'd observed the breakwater from within the harbor, where it lay like a protective wall. This was the first time he'd actually considered it from the outside. It no longer protected him. It was shutting him out.

  He looked around. The darkness seemed to rise from the ground and the sea itself, and he thought of Homer's description of the twilight land of the dead, where all joy is frozen, and realized that this was where he was. He felt the frost as a sharpness against his skin. Soon it would reach all his limbs. For the first time it struck him that he might be about to die.

  The stars appeared, and the mud froze between his feet until he was standing in a concrete block of cold. He looked up and saw the North Star, and he thought about Klara Friis. In the last moments before old age closed in on him, he'd reached for youth. But youth was as unreachable to an old man as the North Star on a winter's night. Now he was certain. It was over. His life was about to end as unexpectedly as a ship wrecked in a freak storm.

  Numb with cold, he stood motionless in the mud. It was as if he was planning to die on his feet. He thought about Knud Erik, and a sense of warmth filled him. That was his heart deploying its last resources.

  Then the cold moved in and started its blockade of his flowing blood.

  WE DON'T KNOW if that's how it actually happened. We don't know what Albert thought or did in his final hours. We weren't there. We only have the notes he left us, together with the columns of figures that spelled out what proved to be the beginning of the end of our town. In telling this story, each of us has added something of his own. Our picture of him is made up of a thousand thoughts, wishes, and observations. He's entirely himself. And yet he's one of us.

  We've walked out to the Tail. We've visited the place where Albert died. We've planted our boots in the mud and tried to pull ourselves out of the sucking ground. Some of us say yes, he was stuck. Others say no, he could have freed himself. Or he could have rolled out of the trap that the cold and the mud had set for him. A drenched winter coat and soaked trousers are a small price to pay for an escape from death. Even pneumonia is preferable to a sudden end to it all, and he was a strong man.

  We don't really know anything, and we each have our own version of the story because we're all looking for a little of ourselves in Albert. Some of us would like to condemn him. Others regard him as being above all petty-mindedness. We all have an opinion about Albert. We followed him everywhere he went. We watched him through our windows and passed his words on, not always for kind reasons, and possibly they weren't the actual words he'd used, but we attributed them to him because we thought it proper or likely that he'd have said them.

  We've gone over his life again and again, just as we always go over one another's lives in our conversations—some whispered, some spoken aloud. Albert is a monument we've all carved and erected.

  We thought we knew everything about him. But that's not how life is. When all's said and done, we can never truly know one another.

  ***

  Albert was found the following day.

  It had snowed through the night, and in the morning a couple of boys appeared on the breakwater. They'd half rowed, half crashed a boat through the new ice toward Kalkovnen, and they were in line for a major ass whipping from their fathers, or anyone else who caught them doing something so blatantly dangerous. When it comes to boys who flout the rules that apply on the water, every single one of us has a father's rights and responsibilities.

  But this time there was no ass whipping.

  They saw him from the top of the snow-powdered granite boulders of the breakwater, where they were leaping about like mountain.

  "A snowman!" shouted one, a boy called Anton. "Who's built a snowman there?"

  They ran through the stiff rushes, which rang in the frost like a forest of steel blades, across the rock-hard mud and solid puddles and frozen shallow creeks.

  There he was.

  They never forgot him. You rarely see such a sight. Some say never.

  Between Marstal and the sea, frozen to death in Laurids's boots, Albert stood upright.

  III

  THE WIDOWS

  IN THE MONTHS that followed Albert's death, Klara sat in her house in Snaregade, staring blankly into space. We saw her when we walked past and glanced inside the lit parlor, where she'd neglected to draw the curtains. It looked as if her brain had stopped. At first we thought she was in mourning. It was a while before we recognized that Klara wasn't numb with grief, but rather in a state of profound contemplation.

  Sometimes life unexpectedly throws up a wealth of possibilities, so many that the mere thought of having to choose between them can floor you. Was that Klara's problem? The sudden flood of freedom in which an ordinary person, unaccustomed to making her own decisions, might drown?

  Then one day she ordered a horse and cart to move her furniture. She called Edith and Knud Erik, and they all walked hand in hand to Prinsegade, where she took a key from her purse and let herself into Albert's empty house. She had her own furniture stored in the loft and left Albert's where it was. She sat on his sofa and slept in his bed like a guest in someone else's life. The housekeeper dismissed herself.

  Klara sat in the bay window facing the street and stared into space again.

  Klara Friis, a sailor's widow of modest birth, had inherited an imposing house, a broker's office, and a fleet of ships. In one fell swoop she'd become one of the biggest shipowners in town. With the last glow of youth on her cheeks, she'd reached for the big prize and won it. Albert hadn't married her in life. But he'd delivered in death.

  We wasted no time discussing how much she was worth, though we failed to understand that the most fascinating thing about Albert's legacy wasn't its size, but the power it bestowed. It was during these months, as Klara sat frozen in the bay window, that our town's fate was sealed.

  One day Klara called a halt to her reflections and went to visit the widow of the marine painter in Teglgade. Since her introduction to Albert was all thanks to Anna Egidia, Klara Friis felt she owed the widow a favor. She now informed Mrs. Rasmussen that she would like to be of assistance in her tireless charity work. But she offered more than that. As they sat in the drawing room with the tall windows and the paintings on the walls, she explained that her plan was to found an orphanage in Marstal.

  "It will be an orphanage like no other," she said. "Where children will feel loved. They won't feel they're in the way—or at best, that they deserve to live only because they'll be of use to others. No: they'll feel they're entitled to be on this earth for their own sakes. It'll be a place where the least wanted children will feel welcome." Her voice ought to have been filled with light and energy as she described her plans to improve the existence and the future of life's overlooked, but it trembled strangely.

  Mrs. Rasmussen observed her for a long time.

  "You knew an orphanage from the inside once, didn't you?" she said gently.

  Klara Friis nodded and began to weep. This was the unutterable part of her story, the part she'd been unable to tell Albert Madsen, even at their moment of deepest trust, when he'd guessed the secret of Karla, the rag doll lost to the dark waters of the flood.

  Under the widow's maternal gaze, she finally confided her story. She'd grown up in Ryslinge Orphanage on the island of Funen. Then she'd been "collected," as she put it. It wasn't an adoption: at least she'd never use that word for it, because the Birkholm farmer who'd taken her in at the age of five had no caring parental impulse. She wasn't a human being to him: just an extra pair of hands, cheap in terms of wages, food—and emotions. She laughed bitterly. No, when it came to feelings, she'd cost nothing at all. Love was a luxury that had been available to everybody except the orphaned girl.

  On Birkholm there was no getting away from the sea. It ringed the small island like a wall enclosing h
er restricted life, but it also represented escape. She didn't dream about a knight riding in on a white charger so much as a knight blown in by a white sail. And every spring she imagined that he'd arrive. Hundreds of sailing ships passed the island—and then disappeared again. They came from Marstal, and the town became a place she yearned for. One day the sea came to her in the form of a flood. Doomsday was paying a visit. Instead of bringing a knight, the waves took away her doll. Now, at long last, with the help of Albert's fortune, she could stick her hand into the water and haul Karla out again.

  "Do you want to know how I met Henning?" she asked the widow suddenly. The confidences were pouring out of her now, and before Anna Egidia had time to reply, she continued. "I met him one winter night on the frozen sea."

  "On the ice?" The widow looked up in surprise.

  "I was so young. Only sixteen. I wanted to go to a dance on Langeland."

  The sea had frozen over, and it was as if tiny, flat Birkholm had started to expand, trying to meet and merge with the surrounding islands. On that moonlit Saturday night, snow crystals lit a path into the world, and her longing became irresistible. Having no dresses of her own, she borrowed one from a girl on the farm, then got hold of a bicycle and cycled across the ice toward Langeland. She wasn't running away. She'd just headed toward the lights of the houses on the distant island, hoping for a moment of happiness. Back then, she still dared to dream.

  But she hadn't gone far before she reached black water. Suddenly, a rift appeared in the ice ahead of her, plowed by the A.L.B., the ferry between Svendborg and Marstal, whose massive steel hull functioned as an icebreaker. As it went past, sparks flew from its funnel. The ice under her feet shuddered. In the ship's wake came the Hydra, homebound, her sails set to catch even the slightest wind that frosty night.

  The Hydra's crew crowded along the rail. A girl in a party dress in the middle of the ice was the last thing they'd expected to see.