During the dreadful days and nights when she believed that he'd gone down with the Copenhagen, she'd gone over their last conversation again and again. He'd asked her again if he could sign on to the Claudia. It was one of the few times he'd opened up to her, and she'd rejected him. Now he was gone. Her obstinacy had sent him to his death.
"Do you realize," he'd said to her, "that the barks you inherited from Albert are the last big sailing ships in the world?" They weren't just the last, they were also the most beautiful, and the final vestiges of an entire era. With their thin summer sails set, they'd ply the northeast trade wind right across the Atlantic to the West Indies to fetch dyer's broom. Every sailor, just once in his lifetime, had to experience what it was like to stand under those towering white sailcloths, with the trade wind behind him and the hot sun above, or to sit on the yardarm of the main sixty feet above the deck, king of the whole world. His eyes lit up as he spoke. He'd let her see inside him.
He was a man now. Long-limbed, but no longer gangly. Muscular and straight-backed. She could see Henning in him. She'd always been able to, but now she could see something more, something better and stronger.
"No" was all she'd said.
She couldn't even be sure that he had died, because his name was missing from the list of those lost when the Copenhagen went down. So where was he? She walked past the Collector's workshop. She was afraid to look in. What if he was carving her drowned boy right at this very moment?
There were nights when she paced the rooms restlessly, screaming out her loneliness and the loss she felt so cruelly responsible for, while Edith lay in her room with a pillow over her head. She too was weeping for the brother they both thought was lost, but her mother's uninhibited grief terrified her.
Those of us who passed by in the street didn't label Klara insane. We're all familiar with the line that separates grief from madness, and we know that sometimes the only way to stay on the right side of it is to scream.
Then a letter arrived from Knud Erik, postmarked from Haiti. Klara's hands trembled. She waited a long time before opening it. She thought it was a missive from the Hereafter: that the devil himself had written her a letter, mocking her hubris for thinking she could prevent the sea from taking her son.
But from the letter it was clear that Knud Erik knew nothing of the loss of the Copenhagen—and consequently nothing of what she'd gone through. He was simply writing to apologize for telling her he had signed on to the Copenhagen when he hadn't: for the past few months he'd been sailing on the Claudia. He closed his letter as he always did, with a line that always upset her because she knew how many unspoken things it must hide: "I am doing fine."
Her response was instant. She wiped her remorseful night vigils from her mind completely and sold the deck right out from under his feet. When the Claudia called at St.-Louis-du-Rhône, she offloaded the bark to Gustaf Erikson from Mariehamn on the Åland Islands. The remaining barks followed shortly after.
Having practically destroyed all seafaring in Marstal, she now decided to kill her son too. It would put an end to her constant fear of losing him.
For several tortured months she'd believed him dead and reproached herself for it. Then she'd found her agony was based on a lie. When Knud Erik returned to Marstal to pass his first mate's exam at the Navigation College in Tordenskjoldsgade, and she spotted him from the bay window coming to pay her a visit, she immediately ordered the maid to turn him away.
"Tell him he's dead," she said.
"I won't say that," the girl answered.
"Do it!" screamed Klara, losing control.
The girl went to open the door, but instead of remaining in the doorway and delivering Klara's message, she stepped out and closed the door behind her. "She doesn't want to see you," she told Knud Erik. "I don't know what's the matter with her. You'd best come back another day when she's in a better mood."
From her bay window Klara watched her dead son as he walked back to the harbor.
Was she a good person? Or a bad one? Was she someone who'd wanted to do good but ended up doing the opposite? These were questions she'd asked herself during her night vigils when she believed Knud Erik was dead and blamed herself. The doubts lingered, and her only way of suppressing them was to shut Knud Erik out of her life completely.
She'd founded her orphanage, and according to the school, its children were among the best in the class and always full of confidence. That had to be a good deed. She'd donated a library to the town and created a financial base for the Maritime Museum. She'd even done it anonymously. She'd given money to the Østersøhjemmet, the big old people's home that lay to the south, with a view over the meadow and the beach huts on the Tail. She'd donated funds to purchase equipment for the hospital in the neighboring town of Ærøskøbing.
Kristina wasn't the only young girl she'd helped get to America. Sometimes she thought she ought to send every young woman in Marstal across the Atlantic, so the men could learn their lesson. She kept in touch with the teachers at the school, and if a girl showed academic promise, she'd step in and pay for her education off the island. This was the future she'd planned for Edith. She wanted to make women independent. They had to help themselves and provide their own counterbalance to the tyranny of the sea.
In the old days, in the crisscross grid of Marstal, the main streets had always been those that led to the harbor and the sea. Then along came Kirkestræde, full of shops, with women bustling in and out. It was around their lives that she wanted to build a new town on the ruins of the old one. The orphanage, the old people's home, the library, the museum. Women would leave the island and return home stronger and wiser. And that was just the beginning.
It was a secret conspiracy and she was heading it.
"THIS IS YOUR big chance," Markussen said in his dry, detached manner. "War in Asia, civil war in Spain, crop failure in Europe. Things are looking up. Freight prices will rise again." He scrutinized her with that look of his, which she could never quite fathom and which made her feel both safe and uncertain. He took care of her. She never doubted that. Not once during all these years had he given bad advice. He'd trained her and she was an apt pupil, and every time she made the right decision, she received a look of approval that assured her that she'd not yet exhausted all her options. But there was also a cool curiosity in him, and she sensed that if she was to fail and go under, it wouldn't disturb him unduly. He'd regard her downfall as merely another chapter in the endless textbook of life; he might even feel enriched by the new knowledge that the study of her ruin might afford him.
It was like walking a tightrope. He was a father to her. She'd never known what it was to have one, and had always longed for one. But because she had never been able to satisfy her longing with a real person, she didn't know that a father had limitations. Now at last she was learning them. Yes, he was a rock she could cling to. But he was also a rock she could smash herself to pieces against. She learned to keep her distance and this distance lay at the heart of their relationship. Distance was his element.
Markussen was old now. Rheumatism had bent him so that it looked as if he was growing in the wrong direction. He walked beside her, hunched over his cane, taking tiny, cautious steps as if doubting the solidity of the ground beneath his feet. His helplessness filled her with maternal tenderness, an emotion she hadn't felt in a long time. But she knew she should keep those feelings to herself. Not because he'd be offended if she recognized his increasing decrepitude: indeed, he made a joke of it, laying bare his own weakness with the confidence of the powerful. That's the luxury of power, and power was what he was all about, she could see that clearly. He was surrounded by people who depended on him, and in their attentiveness and helpfulness he recognized nothing but rational self-interest. Of course they'd want to keep on the good side of him. It benefited them personally.
She took him for a stroll through Marstal; Markussen himself had insisted on it. His photograph was never in the newspapers, so no one recognized him.
She was obviously entertaining a distinguished visitor, but people knew no more than that.
They walked past the vacant plots, and as he cast his glance across the nettles growing high behind the tarred fences, she was aware that the sight intrigued him. He eyed her sideways and smiled, acknowledging her willpower. Money could have been growing in there instead of weeds.
"What do they think of you?" he asked.
"That I'm a bit odd, maybe. But they don't think ill of me."
"They should." He laughed conspiratorially. He saw the destroyer in her. The avenger. The punishing fury who operated underground. This was what attracted him, and this was the pact they'd entered into: he'd make all his experience available to her, and then let her do the opposite of what he'd have done himself. He created; she demolished everything. What she wanted to do besides that, he didn't understand.
They turned toward the harbor. Moored to the black-tarred posts lay the true evidence of her efforts—a sight that made him point out, not for the first time, that her big chance was now.
There they lay, with their huge black hulls and their tall narrow funnels, towering as high as the smaller masts, which were there only because of the derricks. Two thirds of the town's tonnage was distributed among those five steamers, the Unity, the Energy, the Future, the Goal, and the Dynamic. The rest were smaller ships, including the last three or four Newfoundland schooners; the others had been converted to motor-powered vessels, which sailed only local routes. The hope of progress had foundered on a rock. And the rock was Klara.
"My steamers will stay where they are," she said. "I won't allow them to sail again."
Markussen nodded. Klara Friis was an apt pupil. She was strangling Marstal. The town needed to get back on its feet after the long depression that followed the 1929 crash, sentencing large parts of the merchant fleet to idleness.
Instead, she made sure that nothing happened.
The laid-up steamers represented an era that, thanks to Klara Friis, was gone forever.
People talked about it. She was well aware of that. But she hadn't been lying when she told Markussen they spoke no ill of her. They saw the steamers idling in the harbor as evidence of female indecisiveness and lack of skill in running the affairs of men. They forgave her for her impossible gender. They were tolerant, almost condescending. Women included. And although Klara Friis received no thanks for the things she had achieved, either, she enjoyed the secret satisfaction of having done the right thing. She saw herself as a breakwater, shielding the land from the ocean's destructive force.
It wasn't until that evening, when they were sitting down to the dinner her housekeeper had served, that Markussen aired an objection that made her temporarily doubt her own wisdom.
"What if," he said, smiling, as if merely testing her intelligence, "what if the men run off to sea anyway? There are no longer any significant shipping companies in Marstal, so they might just decide to sign on elsewhere. They won't find it hard to get work. They've proved their skill over the course of several centuries."
For a moment he reminded her of Frederik Isaksen. "They won't do that," she retorted sharply. "Every year the Navigation College admits fewer and fewer students from Marstal."
"Congratulations," he said, and raised his glass. "Then you've almost completed your mission." She couldn't avoid noting the sarcasm in his voice, but nodded to him all the same over the rim of her glass.
"You don't understand me," she said.
"You're right. I don't understand what your goal is. You pretend to do one thing while simultaneously doing the exact opposite. A library, an orphanage, a museum, a home for old people: you act like the town's benefactor, while pulling its means of living right out from under its feet."
"The sea was never a real way to make a living."
"I built up this country's greatest shipping firm. I'm a shipowner."
They both fell silent. They'd reached the point they always reached.
"Your son's a sailor," he said, out of nowhere.
She looked down. "And his father was lost at sea. You don't need to remind me of that. Can't you understand what I want?"
"Yes," he said. "You want the impossible. You want to whip the sea until it begs you for mercy."
That was the last time they saw each other. She'd known it would be. Their conversation had come to an end. She'd learned what she needed to learn, and he'd conveyed what he'd wanted to convey. He'd built a monument to Cheng Sumei, and even though that monument existed only inside Klara Friis's head, at least he'd shared the story. It was up to her to extract meaning from it. He'd never managed to fathom it himself.
Klara Friis had put herself in Cheng Sumei's place. Like her, she was a player who never revealed her hand, and they both had an excuse for their subterfuge. Cheng Sumei's was love. She'd wanted to make herself irreplaceable to a man who'd never previously needed one particular human being any more than another, and then she'd built an empire around him. True, he hadn't needed her heart, her sex, or her lips. But he couldn't do without her talent for business, and the cynical methods she'd learned in a lawless town. And these became her gift of love.
Klara too had a gift of love to offer. Not to a man, but to Marstal. She wanted to save it from the sea. She wanted to return its lost sons—boys to mothers, husbands to wives, fathers to children.
Oh, she knew well enough that the night of the flood would never really end. She'd still keep plunging her hand into the waves over and over again, trying to save Karla. Every time she sold a ship or laid it up, every time Marstal was ruled out as the possible home for yet another ship, every time the shipyard received one order fewer from one of the town's shipowners, every time a young man found a livelihood on land, every time the number of students from Marstal at the Navigation College declined—then her hand grasped Karla and pulled her upward through the dark water. The flood would abate, and for a while the pressure would ease. She dreamt of a globe on which the seas retreated and the landmasses merged, offering people a home where they could all live together. Fathers, mothers, and children united forever.
***
"This is your big chance," Markussen had told her, when they said goodbye for the last time. He'd been referring to the wars in Spain and Asia. Thousands of people killing one another was good news. The freight market would go up, and his ships would be busier than ever.
Unlike her steamers. They lay still, their boilers cold.
Now was the time to act. Here was the moment to seize. But she wouldn't be sending them out to take part in orgies of profit while drowned men floated in their wake.
She went to her office and inquired about the prices of ships. And she heard what she expected to hear: it was time to sell. She'd bought the steamers from the widows ten years ago when the freight market was in a slump and everyone was suffering losses. Now that the freight prices had increased, she could resell at a huge profit. She knew what the town's businessmen would say.
"Damn it to hell," one would exclaim. The others would nod in agreement. They'd be reluctant to acknowledge her good move with anything more than a curse. But that at least would be a tribute to her skill. They'd thought her female brain was short-circuited when it came to profit, and that her ships were laid up simply because she couldn't make up her mind what to do with them. Now they'd realize that every step she'd taken, or failed to take, had a basis in cold calculation.
Others would take a different view. They'd think that she'd sold off not just the ships, but Marstal's livelihood. They'd be closer to the truth.
Was she taking more than she was giving?
What would be left of Marstal once she'd sold off her steamers? A tiny fleet of schooners with auxiliary engines, many of them rigged down to ketches and reduced to plying the local Baltic routes, with perhaps an occasional venture into the North Sea. The circle was complete. The town would end up where it had begun more than a hundred years before.
The sea would be the loser, because there'd be no more huma
n sacrifices to His Merciless Majesty. And the winner? That would be the women.
Or would things go the way Markussen had hinted? Would the men sign on elsewhere and settle at the ends of the earth?
Would the flood never end?
IV
THE END OF THE WORLD
IT WAS THE END of the world.
He was on an alien planet or somewhere in the future. Whatever it was, it was heading for destruction. Convinced he was about to die, Knud Erik closed his eyes. Then suddenly he realized where he was.
He was in the middle of a dream. But it wasn't his own.
He was seven years old, sitting on the thwart of Albert Madsen's boat as they rowed through Marstal's harbor. The old man's voice came back to him, talking about a phantom ship painted gray all over, huge tubular buildings on fire, a night sky lit by a blinding phosphorescent white light, and air that quivered from the pressure of exploding bombs and collapsing houses.
Yes, that's where he was: in a dream that had visited the old man more than twenty years before. He opened his eyes and saw what Albert had seen, and for the first time he understood that the old man's dreams had been prophetic. What he'd presented to a child as tales of adventure had actually been his own visions of horror.
"That's the best story you've ever told me," Knud Erik had said back then. And now here he was, right in the middle of it. He'd never heard the ending. But it was on its way, and he sensed it would involve his own death.
Just then, a Stuka dived toward the ship and dropped a bomb. As he watched the missile falling, time stood still: he realized it would plummet right through the gray-painted funnel and detonate in the engine room, with devastating consequences. Preparing himself for death, he tensed his muscles.
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