We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  "Help! Pa!"

  Then his strength ran out. His fingers lost their grip on the rail, and he disappeared into the water. He kicked it, he bit at it, he thrashed about in it as if he were fighting a wild animal, and yet it was only gentle, soft water, which pulled its covers over his head as though it were bedtime and the waters were bidding him good night.

  And then—his father's huge arm came and dived in after him: a giant arm that could reach to the bottom of the sea if it had to, all the way down to death's door, to pull him back again. "At the very, very, very last minute," he said.

  We knew that repetition wasn't related to his stammer. It really had been at the very, very, very last minute.

  "And then he gave you a good thrashing, didn't he?" Anton asked, because that's how things were at his house.

  But Vilhjelm hadn't been thrashed, not on this or any other occasion, and we didn't understand why until we met his father, who looked more like a grandfather. Vilhjelm had been an afterthought, and he behaved toward both his parents as we normally did toward our grandparents. He was kindly and devoted, and they all spoke to one another very carefully, as if the family's problem was not deafness, but rather sensitivity to any form of noise. By a strange coincidence his mother was deaf too.

  Anyone can work out that not much talking went on in this family. When his parents did speak, it was in an earnest petitioning tone, as though they were making a humble plea. But they touched one another all the time, holding hands and stroking one another's hair and cheeks. Vilhjelm didn't just receive physical affection, he gave it to his parents too, all the time. No one ever hit anyone in Vilhjelm's family.

  So Vilhjelm got something different from a good thrashing from his father the day he nearly drowned. We didn't realize what it was until Anton asked, as he always did on these occasions, "What would you say was the worst thing about drowning?" and Vilhjelm gave a very strange answer.

  Of course Anton, who knew an astonishing amount about the world outside Marstal, thought that the worst aspect of drowning would be missing out on all the adventures he imagined having. He could reel off the names of the most famous red-light districts in the world. It certainly wasn't during our geography lessons in Vestergade that he'd learned about Oluf-Samsons-Gang in Flensburg, Schiedamsedijk in Rotterdam, Schipperstraat in Antwerp, Paradise Street in Liverpool, Tiger Bay in Cardiff, the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, the Barbary Coast in San Francisco, or Foretop Street in Valparaiso. These were discussed in Weber's Café and, with the flinty expression of a connoisseur hardly appropriate for a boy of his age, he assured us that French girls were the best and Portuguese the worst because they were too pushy, and besides, they stank of garlic. If we asked what garlic was, he'd roll his eyes to indicate that our stupidity knew no bounds. He also knew the names of all the different kinds of booze he looked forward to tasting one day: Amer Picon, Pernod, and absinthe—now that, he said, was something to really knock you flat. As for beer, he'd remain a loyal Hof drinker, no matter where on earth he might end up. Belgian beer, which many praised, was nothing but weak piss.

  "You can list every red-light district in the world," he concluded, "and every brand of booze, and then you can add them all up and you'll find the bottom line proves mathematically that drowning is a terrible waste."

  Knud Erik said that the worst thing about drowning was that he'd never see his mother again. He said this partly out of duty, because he felt he ought to say it, but also because he still longed for her.

  Vilhjelm said the worst thing was that his parents would be sad.

  "That means that you don't live for your own sake, but for your ma and pa's," pronounced Anton. He elaborated on this theory. If you were obedient, good, polite, well behaved, and dutiful, it meant that you lived for others and not for yourself.

  "That's why I'm none of those things," he said. "Because I live for my own sake."

  When Vilhjelm had hung, soaked and wriggling, from his father's rescuing arm, he'd looked into his eyes and what he'd seen there was neither anger nor fear, but grief. What kind of grief it was or what had caused it he did not know, but he felt instantly that he had to make sure that his father never had reason to be sad again. He instinctively knew how to help him: by drawing as little attention to himself as possible. Being invisible would be best of all, but second-best was to pass through life as inconspicuously as possible. So he'd turned into a quiet and dutiful child. Perhaps that was why he stammered: the effort of drawing attention to himself was beyond him.

  Anton, on the other hand, lived for his own sake, and when Vilhjelm had balanced on the acorn of the top of the mast, with his arms and legs outstretched twenty-five meters above the deck, he'd been living life the Anton way. For a moment, he'd forgotten to be invisible.

  Of course, Anton had parents too, though according to him he might as well not have. He could make his mother, Gudrun, believe almost anything. When she found out that he'd been lying about his school reports, she wept and said as soon as his father came home, he'd get a good thrashing—though she was quite big and heavy enough to dole one out herself. In the end his father just gave him a feeble slap: on the rare occasions he was home, he found that punishing his children for old, long-forgotten offenses was hardly a priority. He could deliver a stinging blow, but it had to be cash on delivery, as he put it. He didn't want to mess with something stored in a bank.

  "Spanking and banking! Do you get it?" his father roared, laughing idiotically.

  At roughly the same time as Vilhjelm, Anton had made a discovery of equally far-reaching significance about his own father, Regnar, whose last name was Hay. Anton's last name was Hay too, of course, but his middle name was Hansen. That was the mother's maiden name.

  Regnar, who had recently returned after several years' absence at sea, had just settled his son on his lap, having boxed his ears first, in compliance with his wife's demand that he punish the children for transgressions committed in his years of absence. He hadn't struck Anton very hard and didn't expect that Anton would hold it against him. Encouragingly, he asked the boy what his name was. Presumably Anton's willingness to affirm his paternity would assure him that harmony once more reigned between them. It's also possible that Regnar wanted to assure himself that he'd thrashed the right child, so that, having performed his fatherly duty, he could leave the house and head for Weber's Café.

  "Anton Hansen Hay," Anton said.

  "What the hell did you say, boy?" his father shouted. His face grew fiery red, and he began shaking Anton, rocking him violently back and forth on the knee he'd sat him on only a moment earlier, in a mood of father-son reconciliation. Then he hurled the bewildered Anton to the floor, where he skidded on its varnished surface until coming to a halt among the chair legs under the dining table.

  "Would you believe it?" Anton said, as he told the story. "The asshole didn't even know his own kid's name."

  Anton had been christened while his father was away at sea, and Regnar had never troubled to look at his birth certificate or ask about the ceremony. Nor had he imagined that his wife would call the boy by her maiden name, Hansen, for he'd made no attempt to hide his loathing for her family. Anton's fat, compliant mother wasn't made for rebellion. She deferred to her husband just as she had always deferred to her own family and ended by trying to please them all; so she'd squeezed her family name between Anton's and his father's. Anton Hansen Hay became a three-word recipe for a family feud.

  Anton himself couldn't care less. He never sided with anyone and described his father as a fool. Most of us called our fathers "the old man." It was a term of respect, because that's how sailors refer to their captain. But Anton respected no one. His nickname for his father was the Foreigner.

  However, their relationship could have been worse. The Foreigner, after all, was the source of most of Anton's knowledge of the world, not because he confided in his son about his visits to brothels in foreign parts, but because he allowed him to listen in when the sailors on leave sat brag
ging in Weber's Café.

  Deep down, Anton wanted to be like his father, but no one ever heard him say so, or indeed utter a single kind word about Regnar. Not since the day his father had hurled him to the floor for having the wrong middle name.

  That was the day he started living for himself.

  IN BOYE'S SHIPPING company only the widows remained: three women stunned not just by grief at the sudden loss of their husbands but also by the task they'd inherited, a task as unfamiliar as it was titanic. Marstal's future lay in their hands. They alone had sufficient capital to switch the town's fleet to steam power, as the times demanded. The age of sail was over; the men had known it and now it was up to them to turn their prematurely deceased husbands' vision into reality. The company owned five steamers already: the Unity, the Energy, the Future, the Goal, and the Dynamic—names that spoke of a master plan.

  In theory the widows knew what had to be done, but they didn't know how to put theory into practice. They'd turn up at the shipping office every morning and have coffee served to them while the day's documents were presented. Munching their home-baked vanilla cookies, they brooded over freight offers, maintenance and crew costs, and proposals regarding acquisitions and sales. The whole world was clamoring for their attention, and every piece of information, every figure, every question mark felt like an insurmountable challenge.

  No one ever saw them actually put their hands over their ears, but they might as well have. Every decision was discussed at such length that by the time they'd made it, it was too late. The fact that the Unity, the Energy, the Future, the Goal, and the Dynamic, built to transport huge cargoes safely across the sea, were mostly laid up in port was due not just to unfavorable market conditions, but to the confusion of their owners.

  Poul Victor's widow, Ellen, the oldest of the three, was tall and stately, just as he had been. But any willpower she might once have possessed she'd ceded to her enterprising husband, and he'd failed to return it when he went to his grave. His sisters, Emma and Johanne, were more confident. Despite being thorough matriarchs in their own homes, outside them they were at a loss. They looked to Ellen—and she looked to the cemetery. But the defaulting Poul sent her not the slightest hint.

  The women owned a fair amount of land around the town, and they started selling it off. It was Klara Friis who bought it. She sat in Prinsegade and watched the three widows as a vulture watches some miserable animal about to collapse from thirst and exhaustion, and when three of the Boye lots came up for sale, she took her first bite.

  All three lots lay along Havnegade, the first on the corner of Sølvgade, the second at the corner of Strandstræde, and the third, a large field enclosed by a fence, at the end of Havnegade, which was where the town ended too. Farmer Sofus had once grazed sheep in the enclosure and raised hens and pigs there, ensuring a supply of live provisions for his ever-growing fleet. But those days were long gone, and the field lay fallow. Everyone said Klara had been wise to buy the three lots: she could build on them.

  But Klara Friis did no such thing. Stinging nettles still grew tall there, and the apples and pears from the trees Farmer Sofus had planted were still targets for birds and thieving boys. Marstal watched and wondered. What had Klara wanted with them, then? we asked ourselves. But we didn't ask hard enough. If we had, we'd have got an inkling of what lay in store for us.

  Klara still dressed modestly, as if unaware of her change in status. This made a good impression on the three widows, who regarded thrift as a virtue. They weren't snobs and didn't look down on her, though their wealth was far more established than hers. They'd been surrounded by servants for several generations, but they still took part in the housework. They baked their own vanilla cookies every Christmas, a generous batch that over the course of the year grew rock-hard like the sea biscuits eaten every day on the company's ships—the only difference being that no maggots fell out of the vanilla ones if you tapped them against the table.

  Farmer Sofus had been a man of the people, and his children and grandchildren were cut from the same cloth. They didn't make up a caste of their own; like everyone else, they belonged to the town. They knew that their money came from the hard toil of sailors: the boys had had to work their way up from the bottom of the ship's brutal hierarchy before reaching the broker's office or the board of the shipping company. Every word spoken in their daily meetings expressed a reality these men had personally experienced. But to their widows, who'd been brought into this new world with neither warning nor preparation, the language of shipping was a barrage of abstract terms that flew about their ears like lethal projectiles on a battlefield.

  Sometimes Klara Friis would give them a piece of sound advice or display a sudden decisiveness that astonished them. Their good nature made them regard the young widow as a helpless creature who needed their charity. So they were baffled when the opposite frequently occurred; she was the one who rescued them from their difficulties. As they didn't have much faith in women's business acumen, they imagined that her good advice was pure serendipity, snatched out of thin air.

  They didn't know, of course, that Klara Friis was taking her own correspondence course in brokering, ship ownership, and much more. Like the prince's kiss that breaks the witch's spell, the wealth that had come to her after Albert's death had aroused her slumbering intelligence. Before then, her mind had been imprisoned by her own humbleness, a humbleness imposed on her not only by her harrowing childhood but also by her position in adult life, which demanded that she work with her hands, not her head.

  Now once more, there was a man in her life—but this one she didn't have to seduce with her already timeworn feminine charms. Unlike poor Albert, Markussen wasn't interested in kisses or cuddles, or what they might lead to. It was Cheng Sumei who bound him to her and to the task that, so late in his life, had fired his curiosity one last time: helping Xerxes find an apt way of punishing the sea.

  They exchanged letters frequently and often spoke on the telephone. Every now and then Klara Friis would travel to Copenhagen. She could manage on her own now and didn't need Herman or anyone else to accompany her.

  "You're not interested in taking over a shipping company on the verge of bankruptcy," Markussen said, "and you can soon straighten out the shipyard. Give them good advice, but not too good. They shouldn't get confident. You must make sure they keep thinking that disaster's only one wrong decision away. Tell them how dangerous the world is." He wrote all this on a piece of paper, so she'd remember. Klara Friis was getting the support she needed.

  But it was she who determined the course.

  ***

  The three widows completely misread Klara Friis, both overestimating her character and underestimating her abilities. They thought her helpfulness was altruistic: they were wrong. They thought her often remarkably useful advice was pure luck: they were wrong there too. Deep down, they all thought they were doing her a favor by listening to her. They gave her their company and a little bit of attention—surely that was what a young woman in her situation, stricken by a dreadful loss and alone with two children, really needed.

  They offered her home-baked bread to take with her.

  "My dear," Johanne would say to her, patting her cheek.

  They recognized themselves in her. She was a woman—and by definition just as helpless as they were when it came to the ways of the world.

  As they continued to puzzle out the mess in which their own widowhood had landed them, it finally dawned on them. They were in the jungle, and they needed what women had always needed to survive there: a man.

  His name was Frederik Isaksen. He was the Danish consul in Casablanca, employed by a renowned French broker's firm. He'd started with Møller in Svendborg, then worked for Lloyd's in London. A number of Boye's skippers who regularly called at Casablanca, including Captain Ludvigsen, had recommended him. Competent, and a man with a vision, pronounced the Commander, who'd been elected spokesman by the other skippers.

  "But does he do his job prop
erly? Is he someone you can talk to?" Ellen asked.

  "Not too pushy, I hope?" Johanne added anxiously, when the Commander mentioned that Isaksen had vision.

  "Yes, I've heard about him," Markussen told Klara over the telephone. "I'd be happy to hire a man like him. He has drive. He wouldn't come to Marstal if he saw it as a provincial backwater. He's spotted an opportunity. Old Boye must have done better than we suspected. Capital in the bank, no debts. An enterprising man could go far with that. Isaksen could very well throw a wrench in the works."

  Isaksen was hired on the skippers' recommendation, and he arrived in the middle of August. Avoiding the complicated ferry and train transfers that made the journey from the capital to Marstal so onerous, he'd opted instead for a nonstop trip on the packet boat, which normally carried passengers of humbler origins. He stood on the deck, tossed the mooring line to the people on the wharf with familiar ease, then waved his broad-brimmed straw hat as if he was greeting the whole town.

  He was dressed in a white linen suit and wore a fresh carnation in his buttonhole, and when he raised his hat, we saw that his skin was as dark and tanned as a sailor's. Or perhaps it was his natural coloring. His brown eyes were fringed by thick lashes that made him look both gentle and enigmatic.

  A man of the world, we concluded as we returned his greeting. We didn't mind men of the world. That's what we were ourselves, and we had no need for any new arrival to go all meek and self-effacing just to suck up to us. He was welcome to show off a bit if he could back it up.

  Isaksen could indeed back it up, and as the days went by, his popularity increased. The skipper of the packet boat, Asmus Nikolajsen, who'd chatted with him as they navigated the archipelago, reported him to be a straightforward and informed man, full of natural curiosity. Indeed, after answering all his questions, Nikolajsen reckoned the exotic-looking stranger probably knew more about packet sailing than he did himself. He clearly knew his way around a ship, and he'd very deftly lent a hand on board without once soiling his beautiful suit—something that further raised him in Nikolajsen's esteem: all sailors value cleanliness.