We, the Drowned

  Erna and Jepsen never had children of their own. In the convivial company of Weber's Café, our favorite joke was that Jepsen was too short to conquer Erna's majestic thighs, which were as tall and as thick as the mizzenmast on the Two Sisters. But when Erna was gone's and Herman was left alone with no family in the world, Jepsen, who was more softhearted than was good for him, gave the boy all the affection he'd once given Erna, convinced that he needed a father's love and guidance more than anything in the world.

  But Herman was of the opposite opinion. There was nothing he wanted more than to get rid of his stepfather.

  And he did get rid of him, sooner than anyone had expected.

  The way it happened both stirred our admiration and planted a strange, vague feeling of fear.

  AS SOON AS Herman Frandsen was confirmed, he was off to sea. Holger Jepsen, who wanted only the best for the boy, made the mistake of signing him on to the Two Sisters rather than another ship. They had some good times, and some bad too—though their disagreements never actually ended in fisticuffs. Jepsen had more authority on the deck of a ship than he did on land. Although he was slight, he had a powerful voice, and he used it to order Herman up and down the ratlines and out on the footropes of the yards.

  "Never trust your feet," he shouted at the overgrown Herman, dangling up there like a seasick gorilla. "Feet can slip and ropes can fail, and then you're falling sixty feet and learning the most useless lesson of your life. The sea won't spit you back up, and if you hit the deck we'll be scraping you off it with a shovel."

  Herman looked at his feet. If he couldn't trust them, what could he trust? Up on the yard, Herman stalled like a clockwork toy somebody had forgotten to wind. Not from fear or panic, but mistrust. He didn't understand what Jepsen meant.

  Jepsen had to climb the rigging himself to get his stepson down. He clambered onto the yard and held out his hand.

  "Come here," he said, gently.

  Herman scowled and tightened his grip on the ropes.

  "Don't be scared," Jepsen said, placing a hand on Herman's arm.

  But Herman wasn't scared. He was simply rigid with reluctance.

  Jepsen had to prise open his fingers, one by one. It was a test of strength, but Jepsen was the stronger. "There we go. Slowly. One step at a time. One hand at a time." He spoke to Herman as if he were a child learning to walk. Herman looked down at the deck. The able seaman and the first mate were staring up at him. They too thought he'd panicked.

  "I can manage on my own. Leave me alone," he hissed.

  Jepsen pulled away, still facing him.

  "Now remember," he said. "Hold on tight with your hands. And if you can't use your hands, use your teeth. And if your teeth fail you, use your eyelashes." He gave Herman an encouraging grin and winked at him. Herman scowled back.

  A year passed and we asked ourselves if it was time for Herman to sign off. There was bad blood between them now.

  Then one spring day, shortly after Herman turned fifteen, the Two Sisters sailed out of the harbor with nobody on board but Holger Jepsen and his stepson. They were off to pick up a first mate and two able seamen who were signing on in Rudkøbing before the ship headed for Spain. It wasn't far to Rudkøbing, but we still thought Jepsen was running a risk sailing there with just a cabin boy on board. Perhaps Jepsen had pictured the crossing as a kind of initiation for his adolescent stepson? Or perhaps his tenderheartedness had worn off, and he felt the need to show Herman who was in charge on board, once and for all?

  The trip did indeed turn out to be a test of manhood—but not the one Jepsen had in mind.

  Jepsen and Herman set off early in the morning, and we didn't expect to see the Two Sisters again for another seven to eight months, when she would return via Newfoundland and dock in Marstal for the winter. But that very afternoon the ship reappeared, with her course set straight for the harbor. A crowd quickly gathered on Dampskibsbroen. What was going on? Her sails were set and a brisk wind was blowing: we could tell, even from this distance, that she was going too fast. She was headed for collision—either with the breakwater at the harbor entrance or with one of the ships moored to the black-tarred posts just inside it.

  There was one man at the wheel, and he appeared to be the only one on board. As the Two Sisters came nearer, we could make out that the lone helmsman was Herman, wearing yellow oilskins and a sou'wester. For a moment it looked as if the ship would crash straight into the wharf. But just then, at the last minute, with a movement whose elegance none of us missed, Herman turned the wheel and the ship glided along the edge of the wharf, with only a few inches to spare. But she was still moving at top speed and in danger of colliding with another ship. If the situation hadn't been so unusual—not to mention desperate—we'd have believed that the boy was simply trying to show off.

  Suddenly a broad figure shot out of the crowd on Dampskibsbroen and landed on the deck of the Two Sisters. It was Albert Madsen. He was in his sixties by then, but he was the one who did what the rest of us much younger men should have done. He'd spotted that something was terribly awry, with the boy alone on deck, all sails set, the ship on a collision course.

  Albert may not have set sail in ten years, but the captain inside him was still alive.

  He strode straight across the deck and landed a hand on Herman's shoulder. At this, Herman looked up and then did something that made no sense. He tried to hit him. The big boy and the stout old man were about the same height and equal in bulk. But while the boy had the energy of youth, Madsen had the experience—and he responded instantly. His famous open-handed blow had the power to send a grown man flying several feet across the deck. And now was no exception.

  Not a word had passed between them: there'd been no time for that. By the time Albert grabbed the wheel and turned the ship sideways, the Eos, moored to one of the posts in the middle of the harbor, was only feet away. When the stern of the Two Sisters hit the bow of the Eos, her speed had dropped enough to avoid any major damage.

  Herman scrambled back to his feet, his hand clasped to his burning cheek. He'd lost his sou'wester. The way he glared at Albert Madsen, you'd think the old captain had spoiled some game he had been playing, rather than averted a wrecking. As soon as we'd moored the Two Sisters to the wharf and inspected the damage, it was clear to all that Herman felt humiliated. No one told him off. But no one praised him either, though he probably deserved it. He was only fifteen, and he'd steered a ship single-handed. Perhaps this was when things turned sour: when Albert hit him and we remained silent. But perhaps something had gone wrong with Herman long before. Perhaps he'd misunderstood the silence of the stars the night he stood staring at the Milky Way.

  We don't know.

  In any case, adolescent sensitivities were not uppermost in our minds at this point: a ship had arrived at the port with only the cabin boy on board. Where was the captain? Had he gone ashore in Rudkøbing, and had Herman run off with the ship?

  "What's happened to Captain Jepsen?" we asked him.

  Herman was still nursing his sore cheek. "He fell overboard."

  He sounded absent-minded, as though he needed time to recall who Captain Jepsen was.

  "He fell overboard? No one falls overboard between Marstal and Rudkøbing in a light wind."

  "Maybe I didn't put it the right way," Herman said. It was then that we first sensed a terrible arrogance in him. "What I meant was, he jumped."

  "Jepsen? Jumped overboard?"

  All we could do was stupidly repeat Herman's words like a bunch of parrots. It was that impossible for us to grasp what he'd said.

  "Yes," he said. "He was always whining about missing Ma. In the end I suppose he couldn't take it anymore."

  You could hear his arrogance grow with every word, and we felt like asking him whether he too hadn't "whined" about Erna, and whether her death hadn't been a blow for him, as well as his stepfather. Then, finally, the truth dawned on us. Herman had lost his mother long ago, on the day she'd married Jepsen. By the time
she died for real, he felt nothing but contempt for his stepfather's despair. Maybe he even had a morbid feeling that things had fallen into place. Had his stepfather's grief and anguish given him satisfaction? Did he feel avenged when Jepsen jumped overboard? Or—and here we hesitated, we never voiced it, but we thought it privately (and when enough Marstallers privately think the same thing, it's as good as spoken aloud)—when Jepsen was "given a hand"?

  "Where did he jump?" we asked—though we sensed that the way we phrased the question would take us farther from the truth.

  "I dunno," the boy replied brazenly.

  "You don't know? But you've got to. Was it in Mørkedybet? Outside of Strynø? Think. It's important."

  "Why?" He shot us a defiant look. "Water's water. And when you're drowned, you stay drowned. Makes no difference where."

  We got nowhere with him.

  Sooner or later Jepsen's body would drift ashore on one of the archipelago's many little islands, on Strynø, Tasinge, or the coast of Langeland, perhaps as far in as Lindelse Nor. And there it would lie, sloshing about in the seaweed, half eaten by fish and crabs. But it wouldn't be your regular washed-up body. Or so a lot of us reckoned. Because the forehead would be caved in by a marlinspike. Or a swinging boom. Or one of the many other weapons a would-be murderer might find on board ship.

  But Jepsen was never found. Perhaps he sank to the bottom, with a stone around his neck to keep him down. Or perhaps, a long-distance traveler to the very end, he drifted with the current and went south, deeper into the Baltic. Either way, he never came back to testify.

  And that's why we never voiced our thoughts, though some of us would hint at them in a whisper: "There's something not quite right about that Herman, isn't there? And Jepsen—could he really have jumped?"

  A space grew around Herman. He was only a fifteen-year-old boy, but he was something else too, something different and alien. We slapped him on the shoulder and praised him, eventually, for having steered the Two Sisters safely back to Marstal. We had to, because he'd done something spectacular, something no other boy his age could have done. Another kid would have panicked or simply given up. Yes, Herman had the makings of a good sailor. But the toughness that we applauded in him also kept us at a distance.

  Herman inherited the Two Sisters and Jepsen's house in Skippergade. He wasn't old enough to be the legal owner of either the ship or the house, so Jepsen's brother, Hans, was appointed his guardian. Hans Jepsen found a new captain and a crew for the ship, but when Herman demanded to be signed on to it as an ordinary seaman, he refused.

  "You haven't been at sea long enough," he said.

  "I sailed a whole damn ship on my own," Herman shouted. Red in the face, he took a menacing step toward Hans—who reacted by taking an equally menacing step toward the kid.

  "You're only a boy and you'll sail as a boy."

  "It's my ship!" Herman roared.

  Hans Jepsen had been a first mate for many years so he was unimpressed by rebellious cabin boys, no matter how tall they were or how loudly they shouted.

  "I don't give a damn who owns the ship," he growled in a low, savage voice that was more terrifying than any yell. "You'll be an ordinary seaman when you're old enough and no sooner, you upstart pup!" He jutted his unshaven chin. He'd sailed on an American ship as a young man and used threatening expressions like "You're dead meat, buddy" and "You're history." We were never quite sure what they meant, but we got the gist when he ground his teeth and spat out more American cuss words as if they were gristle. Now he stared at Herman, his jaw working. "I don't know what you did to my brother, but if you so much as look at me wrong, you can kiss your fat ass goodbye."

  Herman had his pride. If he wasn't allowed to sail as an ordinary seaman on a ship he regarded as his own, he didn't want to sail on her at all. He did the rounds of the harbor, but no one wanted to take him on as an ordinary seaman, or as anything else. So he went off to's Copenhagen and signed on there.

  For some years we heard nothing from him. Then he returned, and everything changed.

  THERE ARE MANY WAYS to tell a man's story. When Albert Madsen first began writing his diary, it contained very little personal information but concentrated instead on our town and its progress. He wrote about the school in Vestergade, which was now the biggest building in town; about the new post office in Havnegade; about improvements to street lighting and the removal of the open sewers; about the network of roads that extended in all directions; and about the new streets that appeared in the southwest outskirts of the town and were named after Danish naval heroes: Tordenskjoldsgade, Niels Juelsgade, Willemoesgade, Hvidtfeldtsgade.

  A sailor's often asked why he goes ashore. Whenever anyone put that question to Albert, he'd always reply that he hadn't gone ashore, he'd just swapped a small deck for a big one. The whole world was moving forward just like a ship at sea. And our island was just a ship on the endless ocean of time, heading for the future.

  He always reminded us that the island's first inhabitants hadn't been islanders. Ærø had once been one of many hills in a rolling landscape. Then the huge northern glaciers had started melting. Rivers had plowed their way through the country, and the vast freshwater lakes to the south had expanded. Then the sea had poured in, and what was once a range of hills became an archipelago. Which came first? Albert would ask. The wheel or the canoe? Which would we rather do, master the weight of burdens too heavy for us to carry or conquer the distant horizons of the ocean?

  The harbor rang with the cries of seagulls, the banging of shipyard hammers, and the rattle of ropes in the wind. The roar of the sea rose above it all, a noise so familiar it seemed to have been born in our ears. Those were the years when everyone was talking about America. And many left. We left too, but not for good. In earlier days, we'd had to cram our houses right on the shoreline because there'd been no room anywhere else: the gentry and the peasants owned the fields. With no other choices open to us, we'd turned our gaze seaward. The oceans were our America: they reached farther than any prairie, untamed as on the first day of creation. Nobody owned them.

  The orchestra outside our windows played the same tune every day: it was nameless, but it was everywhere. Even in bed, asleep, we'd dream of the water.

  But the women never heard its music. They couldn't—or they didn't want to. Outside the home, they never looked toward the harbor, but always inland, across the island. They stayed behind and filled the gaps we left. We heard the sirens' song while our wives and mothers blocked their ears and bent over the washtub. The women of Marstal didn't grow bitter. But they grew hard and practical.

  Albert Madsen didn't miss the sea. How could he, living in a world capital like Marstal? He could sit on a harbor bench and chat with Christian Aaberg, the first Dane ever to walk right across Africa. Or with Knud Nielsen, who'd just returned after seventeen years on the coast of Japan. Half the male residents of the town had rounded Cape Horn, a perilous rite of passage for sailors the world over, and done it as casually as they'd take the steamer to Svendborg. Every street and lane in Marstal was a main road leading to the ocean. China was in our back garden, and through the windows of our low-ceilinged houses we could see the Moroccan shore.

  There were a few cross streets in our town, but none of significance. Tværgade, Kirkestræde, and Vestergade didn't lead to the sea but ran parallel to it. At first we didn't even have a market square. Then a butcher opened in Kirkestræde, followed by an ironmonger, two drapers, a chemist, a savings bank, a watchmaker, and a barber. The sailors' hostel was torn down. We were to have a market square just like any other town. Suddenly we had a main street, but going the wrong way: instead of taking you to the harbor, it skirted the coast and then veered toward the heart of the island. Heading away from the dangers of the sea, it was a women's street.

  Our streets all met and crossed. Some were men's and some were women's, and together they formed a network. The ship-brokering and shipping companies were situated on Kongegade and Prinsegade, while t
he women did their shopping on Kirkestræde. But that balance was about to shift. At first no one paid much attention to it or saw what it might lead to.

  The 1890s were Marstal's heyday. Our fleet expanded until only the one in Copenhagen could beat it: 346 ships! These were boom times, and we all caught investment fever. Everyone wanted a share in a ship, even cabin boys and housemaids. When a ship returned from a voyage and was laid up for the winter, the streets teemed with children delivering sealed envelopes containing the dividends that were paid out to practically every household.

  A ship broker needs to know how the Russo-Japanese War will hit the freight market. He doesn't need to be interested in politics, but he has to pay attention to his skippers' finances, so a knowledge of international conflict is essential. Opening up a newspaper, he'll see a photograph of a head of state and if he's bright enough, he'll read his own future profits in the man's face. He might not be interested in socialism, in fact he'll swear he isn't: he's never heard such a load of starry-eyed nonsense. Until one day his crew lines up and demands higher wages, and he has to immerse himself in union issues and other newfangled notions about the future organization of society. A broker must keep up to date with the names of foreign heads of state, the political currents of the time, the various enmities between nations, and earthquakes in distant parts of the world. He makes money out of wars and disasters, but first and foremost he makes it because the world has become one big building site. Technology rearranges everything, and he needs to know its secrets, its latest inventions and discoveries. Saltpeter, divi-divi, soy cakes, pit props, soda, dyer's broom—these aren't just names to him. He's neither touched saltpeter nor seen a swatch of dyer's broom. He's never tasted soy cake (for which he can count himself lucky), but he knows what it's used for and where there's a demand for it. He doesn't want the world to stop changing. If it did, his office would have to close. He knows what a sailor is: an indispensable helper in the great workshop that technology has made of the world.