We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  "He's a completely ordinary man. His name is Markussen. He was once an able seaman. Now he's a friend of the king. There are those who say his word is more powerful than His Majesty's. He'll help you.

  They crossed the square and stopped in front of the entrance. She gazed up at the façade: THE FAR EAST ASIA CORPORATION, said the brass plate next to the door.

  "It's a big house."

  "No smaller than his houses in Vladivostok and Bangkok."

  "Should I really go in?" she asked.

  He nodded encouragingly, but he was already regretting this whim. Which was all it was, after all. He'd felt magnanimous when they left the stock exchange. Then he'd seen the sense of defeat spreading across her face and felt obliged to do something more for her, to cheer her up. Magnanimity was a new and unfamiliar feeling for him. Finding it to his taste, he'd wanted to bathe in the sunshine of selflessness a little longer. But this was downright ridiculous. If she'd been disappointed earlier, her disappointment would only deepen with the rejection that awaited her. He cursed himself. Damn it all to hell! He should never have come with her on this doomed mission to Copenhagen; in a moment of weakness he'd once again succumbed to the temptation to look important.

  "I'll wait for you out here," he said, and smiled cheerfully.

  This won't take long, he thought to himself as she disappeared behind the heavy door. But time passed, and she stayed in there. Herman started pacing up and down the sidewalk. Why hadn't they seen her off? He went up the steps and opened the heavy door. A man in uniform blocked his path and asked him what his business was. Herman was taken aback; he hadn't prepared an answer. He looked over the doorman's shoulder, but there was no sign of Klara in the vast lobby. The doorman again demanded that he account for his intrusion. Herman shrugged and went back down the steps.

  An hour later she reappeared.

  "I'm meeting the commissioner again tonight," she said. Herman's face was one big question mark. "Markussen, I mean. He gave me some excellent advice. I'd like to thank you so very much for your help, Herman."

  His jaw dropped. Her tone of voice had changed. She was back to calling him by his first name. Before, she'd briefly addressed him as Mr. Frandsen, and he'd taken it as a sign of respect. But since her audience with Markussen, he'd been demoted to the level of a servant.

  She pulled her purse from her handbag. "I'm delighted that you brought me here," she said. "I want to give you something for your trouble."

  Out came a hundred-kroner note. His initial impulse was to reject the money. What did she take him for? Did she think he had no pride? Then he reconsidered. He'd done her a favor, after all. And wasted his own time, to boot. A hundred kroner wasn't to be sneezed at. He needed to get drunk. A roll in the hay wouldn't come amiss either. The good reasons for accepting the cash piled up until they tipped the balance. His precious pride forgotten, he didn't thank her, but stuck the note in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  "So, what did you and Markussen decide?" he asked with forced casualness.

  "The commissioner felt our conversation should remain confidential."

  Klara Friis pronounced the last word slowly and carefully, as if making sure that Herman caught every syllable. The word confidential was clearly a new one for her too. Then, for the first time, she smiled.

  When she'd entered the building, she'd found it just as forbidding inside as out. The heavy door had barely closed behind her when a uniformed man blocked her path, as if to inform her that she'd confused the front door with the tradesman's entrance. She'd sensed immediately that this was as far as she'd get.

  A small man holding a black silk hat came over to her and asked her politely if he could be of assistance.

  It was Markussen.

  She'd been dreadfully confused. When she mentioned Albert's name and her inheritance, his expression changed from politeness to impatience. He was slim, with white eyebrows and a white, well-groomed mustache. His features were sharp, with a jutting nose and a firm chin, but there was a sunkenness to his face that bore witness to the first onslaughts of old age. His gaze grew inquisitorial. The doorman approached again, as if awaiting the signal to show her the door.

  The worst thing was that she seemed unable to stem her own nervous jabbering and take off on her own accord, and thereby preserve the last vestige of her dignity. Instead, she fumbled deeper and deeper into her story, which wasn't so much a story as a load of information's that poured out helter-skelter. When you came right down to it, she had no actual business there. She just needed someone to listen to her.

  Suddenly his eyes changed. She could never afterward describe to herself the expression that appeared on his face, though she'd often try, because she felt it contained the key to so much more than Markussen himself. A suddenly awakened curiosity? Yes, that was part of it. Darkness, pain, longing, and regrets? Perhaps.

  At any rate, his impatience with her suddenly and swiftly evaporated. Bending toward her, he looked searchingly into her eyes with an intensity that frightened her. She stopped talking. What did I say? she wondered. Why's he looking at me like that?

  Then he took her by the hand. "Come" was all he said.

  They took the elevator to his office on the third floor. It was the first elevator she'd ever been in. When the floor wobbled beneath her feet, her hand trembled in his.

  He told a secretary to telephone to cancel the meeting he'd been on his way to. He was still holding her hand, as if afraid she'd vanish into thin air if he slackened his grip.

  He gestured her into his office. "I don't want to be disturbed," he said to the secretary. He pulled a chair out for her and they sat opposite each other at a large desk of dark wood. Through the window she could see the statue of Niels Juel below.

  "Chance is a strange force," he said, stroking his white mustache. "You came to me for reasons that seemed to me quite unclear, and I was close to asking you to leave. But in reality you and I have much more in common than you can imagine."

  "It was something I said," she mumbled, and looked down.

  "Very much so. But perhaps you don't realize what it was?"

  She shook her head. Again she felt her inadequacy.

  "I understand that you have some papers you wanted to show me. Let's get that out of the way first."

  He held out his hand. Obediently she delved into her spacious oilcloth bag and handed him the envelope containing Albert's will, together with the relevant deeds and share certificates.

  For a while he sat bent over the documents, glancing up at her critically from time to time. She said nothing. Finally he gathered the papers back into a pile on his desk. "It's as I thought," he said. "The shipping company's just the tip of the iceberg. The actual fortune is invested in plantations in Southeast Asia and factories in Shanghai. You're rich, Mrs. Friis. Not quite as rich as I am. But still rich. Your assets in Asia actually constitute a kind of parallel enterprise to my own. It's not as strange as it may sound. The same person created both fortunes, you see."

  She looked at him, astounded.

  "You mentioned her name yourself. I'm speaking of Cheng Sumei. I understand that she was Albert Madsen's mistress. She was mine once too. She wasn't a woman who left her men empty-handed."

  He folded his hands on the desk. For a moment he looked lost in reverie. His gaze darkened. "For many years I knew nothing of what became of her," he murmured. Then he snapped out of his trance and looked at her with new energy. "Now tell me about your plans."

  She'd never described them completely to anyone before and as she gave an account of them, she felt unsure how they'd sound to a stranger's ears. She felt she was breaking out of a shell of loneliness, one she'd been trapped in for months. When her flow of words finally ebbed and ceased, he was silent for a long time.

  "Have you heard of Xerxes, king of Persia?" he finally asked. "Xerxes got it into his head to punish the sea because a sudden storm arose and destroyed his fleet before a decisive battle against the Greeks. His method was somew
hat unusual. He had the sea whipped with iron chains. I'd say, Mrs. Friis, that you're a modern-day successor to Xerxes." He looked at her, but she didn't react. What he said had made no impression on her. "I hope you understand that your plans will have fatal consequences for your little town."

  "On the contrary," she said, mustering all her courage. "I intend to save it."

  THAT SAME EVENING she dined with Markussen in a suite that he kept at his disposal in the Hotel d'Angleterre. He used it for business's associates and important meetings. This evening it was reserved for the story of Cheng Sumei.

  "Women," he said, "see themselves as conciliators. They're always diplomatic: not by nature, but by necessity. Women need to have a supple grip. Cheng Sumei did too. But only until she'd found her real mission. Then that grip became as tough as steel."

  As he spoke, she understood instinctively that he was confiding something he'd never told another human being. He was like her. She too was unable to open her heart to anyone but a stranger.

  She and Markussen needed each other.

  He'd met Cheng Sumei in Shanghai. He'd been trying to break into the Chinese market, but being too inexperienced and ill-equipped to weather the losses that a beginner inevitably suffers, he was faring badly.

  Cheng Sumei's background seemed unusual to him, as a Dane. But in fact it wasn't extraordinary for the type of woman foreigners met then in a city like Shanghai. She'd been orphaned at an early age and had survived on the street by selling flowers. And flowers weren't all she sold. But that wasn't where he came across her. She'd been adopted by a benevolent Jewish businessman from Baghdad, a Mr. Silas Hardoon, who would almost literally pluck urchins from the gutter and offer them a home, an upbringing, and an education, teaching them English, Hebrew, and Confucian ethics. He'd died relatively young and left a legacy to each of his twelve adopted children. This money had enabled Cheng Sumei to buy a share in a popular bar, the Saint Anna Ballroom. Markussen had first met her at a party there. Spotting the foreign guest who was clearly feeling like an outsider, she'd approached him.

  Her beauty was all too apparent, but it was her intelligence that attracted him more than the perfect curves of her face. They spoke about nothing other than business. "That's all I can talk about," Markussen added coyly.

  Klara Friis could tell it wasn't the first time he'd used this line.

  He'd come to China to "carve up the melon," as foreign initiative was referred to in those days. But others had carved it up before him, and he found that Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, and even Norwegians were in a more favorable position than Danes with no connections. He'd done quite well under the circumstances. He'd established himself on the Bund, chartered out ships for coastal sailings, built warehouses, and founded a shipyard. But he hadn't made a profit from any of it yet.

  "Fill your warehouses," Cheng Sumei said.

  He gave her a baffled look. What with? Yet more goods he couldn't move?

  She shook her head and laughed.

  "Just do it on paper, lao-yeh. Fill your warehouses, but only in your account book."

  "And what if people find out that I forged them?"

  "Stack your board with bigwigs from the cream of society. Then no one will know. That's the Shanghai way, lao-yeh."

  When that crisis was over, she suggested that he move the activities of his shipping company to Port Arthur. There, not Shanghai, was where the Russian expansionists had their headquarters.

  "But there's a war coming."

  He was well informed about politics: he had to be. And he'd heard the Russian interior minister say that it was bayonets, not diplomats, that would make Russia great. The question of who had the right to plunder the defenseless giant that was China would be decided by weapons, and he had no doubt as to who'd win.

  "Exactly," she said. "But there will come a time after the war that you can turn to your advantage."

  The war came, and Port Arthur was besieged. Following her advice he stayed on, rather than pull out his staff and dispose of his enterprises. Could he bear the loss if the town fell? It fell, and instead of loss he reaped an unexpected reward: Russian troops and refugees were evacuated on board his company's ships, and he was paid handsomely for it. His fleet also transported war matériel to the embattled Russians when the Japanese fleet blockaded Vladivostok; and there was a need for neutral-looking ships that could be loaded and unloaded without rousing suspicion, whose cargo would travel on to the Russian fortifications near Nikolayevsk, at the mouth of the Amur.

  "Have you learned your lesson now?" Cheng Sumei asked him. The question was teasing. But as always with her, it was pointed too. "Listen to your little sampan girly. You succeeded in Port Arthur for the very same reason you failed in Shanghai, lao-yeh. You failed in Shanghai because the big powers had already carved up the melon. There was nothing left for a little Dane. An English businessman, or a French one, or an American can always support his claim with gunboats. A Dane can't. But that's why he's welcome in certain places. No one suspects he's got battleships to back up his merchant fleet. Being Danish, all you have is your supple grip and your light touch. There are plenty of places in the world where the guest who extends a weaponless hand is the most welcome. A man from a small and weak country is as good as stateless. Just wave your Danish flag. They won't see a white cross against a red background as a crusading banner; they'll just see it as a white cloth. So wrap yourself in its innocence, lao-yeh."

  He didn't take offense. He wasn't a patriot. His loyalty was to his ledgers, even if they were forged, and he recognized the wisdom of what she said. He used his Danish citizenship to signal his harmlessness before he struck. He acquired the supple grip and light touch of a woman.

  "So why did the two of you part?" Klara asked.

  The trust between them had already put them on a more familiar basis, without either of them thinking about it.

  "I'll tell you one day. But not now. I've told you this story because I want you to learn something from it: not about me, but about what it's like when a woman runs a business. I've got three children, but my daughter's the only one who takes after me. My sons are complete write-offs. If I left the business to them, it would sink immediately. My daughter's the one with the talent—but her sex works against her. So although she's going to be the real head of the entire company, she'll be working behind a front man. She'll never get any recognition for her achievements. That'll be her tragedy. She'll operate through deceit, which in turn will be her strength. You must do the same thing. From now on, consider yourself a con artist."

  KLARA FRIIS RETURNED to Marstal, where she found a new, unexpected ally.

  Death.

  The Spanish flu had arrived and was making a dent in our population, just as it was everywhere. Influenza was different from the sea, which took only men. This took everyone, but graciously, as they lay in their beds, and it left us graves to visit afterward.

  Pastor Abildgaard did his rounds, spoke to the bereaved, and officiated at each graveside ceremony. The flu didn't scare him the way the war had. The cemetery acquired new headstones and flowers that needed watering every Sunday afternoon: the bereaved came along and mumbled to their dead, and from time to time they sobbed, but if they looked up and spotted a neighbor at the next grave, they'd soon strike up an animated discussion of the latest news. Forgetting where they were, children ran around noisily on the newly raked paths until somebody hushed them.

  It was tough on the bereaved, but still, that was life. We had to bow our heads and accept it. No one lost control and raged at the heavenly powers or indeed the earthly ones. "We'll manage. We have to," we replied, when we met and asked one another how we did.

  Though the Spanish flu struck without regard to age or sex, and made no distinction between rich and poor, it seemed to take a special fancy to the family of Farmer Sofus. Sofus Boye had died many years before, but his shipping company remained in the hands of his descendants. The year after Henckel's bankruptcy, they'd opened a new
steel shipyard farther north in the harbor. Every time we heard the boom of hammers knocking glowing rivets into a steel hull, the same thought went through our minds: We can still do it. The Boyes, a family from our own town, had created this shipyard. While all else, these past years, had proved fleeting or doomed to failure, what we created ourselves endured. Like the breakwater that shielded the harbor, we built things to last.

  However, Poul Victor Boye, who was head of the shipyard, did not endure. He was a tall and dignified man, with a wavy beard down to his chest. As a ship's carpenter and qualified ship's engineer, he'd been equally capable both in the office and at the slipway, where he'd always muck in if the yard was late with an order. But the flu came along with its sick breath and blew out his light.

  A month later, his two sisters, Emma and Johanne, bade farewell to their husbands—both solid, sensible men who'd jointly run the Boye shipping company. They'd managed to maintain a precarious balance in their wartime account books; they'd lost men and ships, but never money, and when afterward they felt the time had come to make the big change from sail to steam, they were ready to help launch that future.

  But the flu had other plans.

  For a second time and then a third, half the town accompanied a Boye coffin out onto Ommelsvejen. Those who died at home rather than at sea got to have a bit of a fuss made of them: in keeping with the old tradition, the funeral procession was led by girls who scattered greenery over the cobbles to prepare the deceased's path to paradise. Then came the hearse, drawn by a black horse.

  Within weeks of one another, one by one, Farmer Sofus's heirs were laid to rest. The first time it didn't strike us that anything significant was happening, but by the third time we knew that we'd buried a lot more than three men.