We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  He stuck his hand into the berth, fumbling in the eiderdown. He felt her hair: she must be lying with her back to him. He'd dreamt of her back. He stroked her hair, which was still stiff from the salt water. She didn't react: he was sure she was asleep. He allowed his hand to wander across her neck, which felt warm and soft. His grip enclosed it. Feeling her delicate spine, he was flooded with tenderness. Still she didn't react. He couldn't hear her breathing, and he had to suppress the urge to take her pulse. Was she still asleep? Was she holding her breath out of fear? No, he was certain of it: she'd been waiting for him. His whole body was telling him so. He flung her eiderdown aside, grabbed hold of her nightdress, and yanked it up to her shoulders.

  He hesitated for a moment. I don't know her, he thought; perhaps she's stronger than I am. He was overcome by a sudden fear. Then he unbuttoned his trousers and clambered into the berth next to her. He didn't speak. He felt awkward with his clothes on; he should have taken them off first. Now it was too late. He put an arm around her and pressed her to him. His woolen pullover must be scratching her naked skin. At this point he felt he was exploiting her vulnerability rather than protecting it. The contact made him grow hard, but the heat of passion had deserted him, leaving him coolly detached. He observed himself from the outside, and his self-observation made him hesitate; but his erection was still there, like an animal's, responding to the heat of another body and blindly seeking release. He continued to watch himself from a distance. A big, clumsy man in sea boots and a pullover, fumbling with an immobile woman in a narrow berth.

  Suddenly she stirred. She mumbled something as if half asleep, and tried to turn over. Instinctively he tightened his grip around her neck and shoved her face into the bed. She screamed, but the pillow muffled it. Her body arched in protest, and her arms flailed about.

  As he entered her she let out a sigh, as though he'd dislodged the air inside her: a sigh without emotion, the noise of lungs emptying. After that she was silent, as if a spear had impaled her.

  He paused, and strained to make out if she was still breathing; seconds later he ejaculated in an involuntary surrender that made him feel he'd stepped off the edge of an abyss and was falling in the dark. His hips kept shaking for a long time. She continued to lie there, completely passive. He hugged her motionless body tight. A swarm of words buzzed through his brain: he wanted to say something, but nothing came out. To him she was Miss Kristina. But he couldn't call her that in this moment, when he'd finally become one with her. Thinking about this, he fell asleep.

  He woke up, perhaps only a few seconds later: she was shaking herself free. He managed to sit up, but before he'd had time to react, she'd kicked out at him. He was flung out of the narrow berth and landed heavily on the floor. He got to his feet and tried to button his trousers. His groin felt damp.

  She screamed and screamed.

  He felt nothing, apart from irritation at the endless screaming, which filled the narrow cabin and forced him to the door with an almost physical pressure.

  He stumbled out onto the deck. It was blowing harder, and the sails were taut. For a moment he looked across the sea. The foaming crests glowed in the dark. The only sounds were the howling of the wind in the rigging and the thud of the waves as they crashed across the deck. He went over to relieve Vilhjelm at the helm. He decided not to take in any sails, though he knew the risks of driving the ship so hard. Heavy rain pelted his face.

  He wasn't a man to weigh up the pros and cons of things. Totally emptied of thoughts, he welcomed his inner blankness just as he'd recently welcomed sleep.

  When he asked the boys to relieve him at the next shift, they refused.

  "Do you want a shipwreck?" he asked them.

  They didn't reply. They just stood there, waving their ridiculous confirmation presents, which they considered deadly weapons. The wind had fallen, and the ship lay calmer on the sea. Having secured the wheel again, he strode toward the captain's cabin. But the boys ran ahead of him and blocked the door, still holding their knives. Miss Kristina must have told them everything. Now they thought they were her protectors. He'd outraged their childish sense of justice. The worst thing about a sense of justice is that it makes people wild and crazy. In giving them courage, it robs them of their caution and their instinct to survive.

  "If you come closer, we'll kill you," Knud Erik said, and his voice trembled.

  Helmer was sobbing loudly, but he held on to his knife. They were blind with fear, and in their blindness they had only one point of reference, the jackknives in their hands. He didn't doubt in the least that they were capable of stabbing him. Perhaps it was the only way they could cope with the terror he'd provoked. They were unpredictable, and for this reason alone they suddenly presented a danger.

  He realized that nothing would ever come of his plans, whatever they'd been, exactly. Miss Kristina was lost to him. He was alone with three boys who might do just about anything out of panic, and who didn't care whether they lived or died. He could snap their spines one by one, but what good would that do?

  Disgust welled up in him. It was time to move on and do what he always did in these situations, when all other exits were closed: show the world that he didn't care and that he could leave it all behind. His life heaved and collapsed like the rise and fall of a wave.

  He returned to the wheel. From now on it was an endurance test. He'd get no more sleep. The French Atlantic coast stretched to the east. In harsh weather like this, its surf could mean ruin for a schooner, especially one without skilled mates.

  It was sometime later that day that he changed their course.

  THE HOMECOMING

  MONSIEUR CLUBIN WAS the first person to notice that the topgallant sail schooner pitching in the sea by Pointe de Grave was in distress. At first he wasn't sure there was anyone on board, but after watching the ship through his binoculars for a few minutes, he realized that some desperate will was fighting to keep the ship clear of the dangerous beach. No distress signals were being sent, but Monsieur Clubin's sense of duty, forged over thirty years as a ship's pilot in Royan, demanded that he investigate.

  On board the Kristina he found three boys and a young woman, all of whom seemed bewildered. The captain lay dead in the fo'c'sle. There were no able seamen and no first mate, and the lifeboat was missing.

  The boys' explanation, as presented to the port authorities and subsequently to the police in Royan, was that the first mate had murdered an able seaman and the captain, and then assaulted the captain's daughter. Precisely what they meant by assault, the boys either could not or would not specify, and the young lady herself refused to open her mouth: during her entire stay in Royan, the young woman uttered not a single word.

  They further claimed that the first mate had committed a murder in his hometown, the same town they came from, though he'd never been punished for it. He'd jumped ship earlier that morning when Monsieur Clubin came on board, and used the lifeboat to make his escape.

  After a thorough examination, the police found no cause to charge the missing first mate. The captain's body showed no signs of violence, and the subsequent autopsy established that he'd died of heart failure. The circumstances surrounding the drowning of the able seaman were not sufficiently well documented to bring charges, and his death was ascribed then, and later, in the maritime inquiry that followed in Copenhagen, to one of those unfortunate incidents that occur at sea, though it was acknowledged that the first mate's disappearance might justify any number of suspicions. However, none of them could be proven.

  Ultimately what triggered the unfortunate chain of events that culminated in the Kristina of Marstal drifting around Pointe de Grave was her captain's lack of judgment in signing on as first mate a notorious character without proper papers. Nor did the alleged assault on the young woman lead to an indictment. The lack of evidence was due to her stubborn and persistent silence, along with the boys' unclear description of the nature of her assault.

  The captain was buried in the town
cemetery. Because the local newspaper, La Dépêche de l'Ouest, had written about the ill-fated ship— "le navire maudit"— a number of curious onlookers turned up for his funeral.

  Monsieur Clubin's compact figure was also to be seen there, but it was duty, rather than curiosity, that made him attend. After all, he had come to the ship's rescue, led her to a safe port, and looked after the crew, who in his eyes were nothing but children. He'd welcomed them into his home, and Madame Clubin had provided the young lady with a room and lent her a black hat and veil so she could be suitably dressed for the funeral.

  The young woman put up with it all and allowed the pilot's helpful wife to treat her like a doll. She didn't express any gratitude; nor was there any sign of grief on the pale, rigid mask she showed the world. Madame Clubin was experienced enough not to attach importance to outward appearances, and made no attempt to coax emotion out of her young, stricken guest. She was firm only when it came to meals. Madame Clubin was a French Basque, and in a voice that tolerated no contradiction she ordered her guest to finish the platefuls of ttoro, gabure, camot, and couston that she placed before her every day. The young lady obeyed without thanking her for the food or expressing any opinion about it. But she ate it, and Madame Clubin announced to her husband, as she was in the habit of doing, that the sum total of her life's experience amounted to the verdict that what an unhappy person needs most is maternal care and good food.

  After receiving orders from the shipping company back in Denmark, one of the young men stayed on board the Kristina to await the arrival of a new crew. The other two left Royan with the young woman, who retained her silence to the last.

  When she stepped onto the train, her two escorts carried her luggage with brotherly care. She carried only a sea bag, said to have belonged to the drowned seaman.

  ONE DAY KLARA FRIIS returned home to find Kristina waiting in her drawing room. Klara was well aware of her story. We all were. Vilhjelm and Helmer reported only that Herman had assaulted her, but it was obvious to everyone that it had been a case of rape. Whenever the boys said the word assault, we nodded knowingly in a way that must have done more than simply irritate them. Of course they knew what had happened to her. Boys know that sort of thing. But they chose their words carefully because they wanted to protect her.

  We referred to Kristina Bager as "the poor little thing," but Klara was the first to learn that she had a secret. When she came in, Kristina rose from the sofa and stared at her. She didn't speak: she hadn't uttered a word since her homecoming. Then she pointed to her belly with one hand and made an arc in the air in front of it with the other. Klara understood right away, and her eyes welled in compassion. She felt so helpless. Not only had the poor little thing been raped, but she was carrying her rapist's child. It couldn't have been any worse, and how money could help her now was beyond Klara—though she imagined that was why Kristina had come.

  Immediately, she took the young girl's hand and said, "Come with me." Together they went to Teglgade, to Mrs. Rasmussen. Anna Egidia settled Kristina on the sofa. She served coffee and placed a bowl of home-baked cookies in front of her while making a range of comforting noises, which, like the cozy, everyday domesticities she performed around her distressed guest, were aimed at calming her down. It was a ritual Klara had observed many times before, and as always, it seemed to work. Anna Egidia placed her hand on the girl's belly and stroked it. And, as if her touch had activated some sort of inner mechanism, Kristina opened her mouth and spoke for the first time in several weeks.

  "I want to go to America," she said.

  The two women looked at each other.

  "I don't want to have this baby in Marstal," she said. "And I don't want to be sent away to have him in secret and then give him up for adoption. I want to go to America and build a new life for me and my son."

  "Your son?" Klara was stunned.

  But Anna Egidia, who knew more about matters of the heart than Klara, didn't ask her what made her think that the child was a boy. Hearing the tenderness in Kristina's voice when she spoke about her unborn child, she'd known immediately that there was more to this story than rape.

  "So Herman isn't the baby's father?" she asked.

  Kristina shook her head. Her face was lit up by a sudden happiness that quickly turned to grief, the grief she'd hidden behind her silence and stiff features. She started crying hard, and the two women sat down on either side of her and held her.

  The father, she told them, was Ivar, an able seaman to whom she'd given her heart and much more: the heart's natural companion, her virtue, which in a moment of such great and true love was not worth keeping, because he was the most wonderful man, the most handsome, the wisest she'd ever met, not like that animal, that heartless swine Herman, the monster who had murdered the best man in the world.

  "My husband," she said. "He was my darling, darling husband. We would have been married. I'm sure of that. There was no one else in the world for me."

  They understood then that when she spoke of Ivar as the baby's father, she wasn't talking about a fact so much as a hope.

  "America isn't such a bad idea," said Klara. Anna Egidia nodded. One of her daughters had been there during the war.

  Anna Egidia spoke to Kristina's mother, and Klara organized the ticket for the boat to America, making sure there would be someone to meet Kristina in New York. Now all they had to do was wait for the baby. Who would it look like when its head popped into the world? Would it be born with the signature of crime or love?

  A jubilant new mother telephoned from New York.

  "If it had been a boy, he was going to be called Ivar," Kristina said. "But it's a girl and her name will be Klara. Need I say more?"

  A small face, too small even to smile but big enough to bear witness to its origins, had confirmed her faith in the conquering power of love. Nature had delivered her gift and the baby's true father had signed it. Ivar had sent his last greeting from the Hereafter in the form of a strong chin, a straight nose, a clear forehead, dark brows, and black hair.

  Klara shared her joy. At least Kristina had cheated fate. And yet something inside Klara wept too, as if she'd been abandoned yet again. When we're wretched, we long for the company of others who also mourn, for the bittersweet confirmation that we aren't suffering because we've been unlucky or made the wrong choices, but because it's the law of life. When Kristina cheated her fate, Klara found hers all the harder to bear.

  Her own child had been on that ill-fated ship, alone with a man no one in Marstal now doubted was a murderer. Knud Erik could have been killed, and she knew that she'd have experienced his death—as she'd experienced Henning's and Albert's—as a stinging rebuff. No one wanted her. They turned their backs on her and disappeared into the darkness. Or they went to sea. And that was the same as dying.

  Helmer and Vilhjelm had returned with Kristina. Vilhjelm was still weak from his ordeal in the Atlantic. Helmer sobbed like a baby when he saw his parents. Now he was apprenticed to Minor Jørgensen, the grocer.

  And Knud Erik? He'd stayed in France to look after the ship until a new crew could be found. Klara assumed this was something he'd been ordered to do. She went to visit the owner of the Kristina, the late Captain Bager's brother, Herluf Bager. She'd imagined it as a meeting between two shipowners. Man to man: that was how she described it to herself before entering the shipping company's office in Kongegade.

  "Of course I realize that the boy has been through a great deal," Bager said, after getting up to welcome her and then sitting down again in his leather office chair, which seemed to absorb him until chair and man melded into a single mass of unperturbed and—she could not help thinking—manly authority. "But someone had to stay on to watch the ship."

  "He's only fifteen," she exclaimed.

  "He's a robust boy. I hear only good things about him. Of course he's welcome to sign off, though it would make things difficult for us. However, he hasn't expressed the wish to do so."

  He looked her up and do
wn, and in that moment she knew he was not going to order Knud Erik home as she'd asked. And she knew the reason, a reason that until now she'd failed to understand. This was not a meeting between two shipowners. This was a meeting between a woman and a man. And a worried mother knew nothing about the business of seafaring.

  She stamped her heel on the floor and left without saying good-bye. He could tell the whole world about this if he wanted to. Her impotence made her burn with rage. Who did he think he was, the fat, smug little so-and-so? It would require no effort at all to ruin him, to crush him under the heel she'd just stamped his floor with.

  Then she calmed down. Her agitation gave way to common sense. No wonder she couldn't get through to Knud Erik. The whole town was in the grip of this delusion that the future lay at sea, when in reality the sea promised nothing but brutalization and an ice-cold death by drowning.

  THE DAY CAME when she thought Knud Erik was dead.

  But when it turned out he was still alive, she decided she'd have to kill him herself. It was time. He was twenty when he told her, in his usual monosyllabic way, that he had signed on to the Copenhagen. A couple of months later, the big bark had disappeared en route from Buenos Aires to Melbourne. They looked for her everywhere: Tristan da Cunha, the Prince Edward Islands, the New Amsterdam Islands. But nothing turned up. No name board, no capsized lifeboats, not so much as a single life belt.

  When the list of the sixty-four crewmen was published, Knud Erik's name wasn't there. It turned out he'd been sailing on one of Klara's own barks, the Claudia. He'd repeatedly asked her for permission to do this, and Klara had always refused. But she hadn't checked the crew register, and the captain had signed on Knud Erik behind her back.