Then one of the skippers on the bench shot a long blob of spittle into the polished brass pot in the corner, and the sound snapped Jørgensen out of his trance.
"Just tell me, please, please just tell me!" he begged.
"A pound of coffee. But I want it freshly ground," Abildgaard said, mechanically repeating his wife's instructions.
Jørgensen buried his face in his hands, and a strange snorting sound, halfway between laughter and tears, escaped him.
"Coffee, coffee, he only wants some coffee!" he choked from behind the lattice of his fingers.
Laughing uncontrollably, he went over to the coffee mill and began filling it with beans. His laughter made his hands shake, and he spilled beans all over the counter and the floor.
Then he pulled himself together.
"I won't be charging you for your coffee today, Pastor."
But Abildgaard was by now outraged. "Would someone kindly explain to me what is going on here?" he demanded, in the thunderous tone he employed in the pulpit.
"Jørgensen is just feeling lucky," one of the skippers behind him piped up.
Abildgaard glared at Jørgensen with all the authority he could muster. "If this is some kind of joke, I can assure you that I don't find it in the least bit amusing."
Jørgensen looked down, abashed, but at the same time a blissful smile spread across his face. He rubbed his bald head as though giving it an extra polish in honor of the minister.
"I do beg your pardon, Pastor. You see, I thought you were here because of Jørgen."
"Jørgen?"
"Jørgen, my son. He's an able seaman on board the Seagull. Well, I don't mind telling you, I was worried that you'd come to tell me the ship had been torpedoed and that Jørgen ... Jørgen..." He gulped as if even now the fear still gripped him. "Well, I thought that Jørgen had"—the grocer cleared his throat—"had been lost."
After that incident, Abildgaard grew afraid to show himself in the streets; it dawned on him that every time he left the parsonage in Kirkestræde, people thought he was coming to announce a death. He had a naturally sunny disposition, and he couldn't bear it. He'd become a harbinger of death, a black raven with a starched collar, imprisoned in the low-ceilinged rooms of grief. He struggled to breathe normally, and when he talked to the bereaved about God's mercy and help and comfort through the love of Jesus Christ, he felt he'd choke. The words came out of him in a strangely helpless, hesitant way, as though they no longer contained real answers to the questions of the bereaved.
He'd often brought the consolation of faith to a family who'd lost a father or a son. What made it unbearable now was the sheer number of dead. Like a huge flock of migrant starlings, they hovered above the town, and one by one the announcements—the death of a father, a brother, or a son—fell onto the roofs of Marstal in a downpour of wrecked hope.
Pastor Abildgaard became a recluse. He stayed indoors as much as he could, emerging only on Sundays, when he was forced to walk the hundred meters to the church, and to officiate at funerals. Fortunately, there were no more of those than usual. After all, the war dead did not return home.
Anna Egidia Rasmussen, widow of Carl Rasmussen, the marine painter who had decorated the altarpiece in the church, began visiting the stricken families when news of a death had to be broken. She was well acquainted with grieving homes. She'd lost her own husband under mysterious circumstances on a voyage from Greenland, and since then she'd had to part with seven of her eight children, all of whom had died as adults. Only one daughter, Augusta Kathinka, was still alive, but she was in America.
Anna Egidia Rasmussen lived in Teglgade, in a large house with tall windows, which her husband had designed and where he'd made his studio in the attic. For many years she'd been a source of help and comfort to neighborhood families who'd been hit by losses at sea, and who suddenly had to say goodbye to a father, a brother, or a son. She had a strange skill. She could lead crying the way some people can lead singing. She'd made it her art. Contrary to what most people think, weeping isn't an uncontrollable emotion that spills into tears. It's the opposite, a channel for feelings, a way to divert them in a healthy direction. Serenity was Anna Egidia's life mission. She'd needed it to deal with her husband, a man of a nervous disposition and a sensitive mind, introverted and prone to brooding. Carl Rasmussen would stand on the beach for hours, staring out to sea, indifferent to the weather and his own health. Finally she'd have to drag him back to their house, chilled to the bone, while between coughing fits he begged her to leave him in peace. Afterward he'd lie feverish in bed, his teeth chattering. At times like that her calm was essential, though it made him accuse her of lacking the imagination to understand his character and failing to share his enthusiasm and vision.
This widow became a second visitor to many houses. Death would be the first, and she would follow in its wake. She was a source of comfort not only to her own family, with its many grandchildren, but to a wide circle around Teglgade. When someone died, the family sent for Anna. She'd arrive in her worn black silk dress, sit down in the middle of the room, send the adults away, and take the children by the hand. When a mother fell ill and was admitted to the hospital while her husband was away at sea, Anna would care for the children in her own home. She was constantly invited to be a godmother to the newborn, as if she'd been charged with keeping watch at life's entrance as well as its exit.
Now the parsonage too has foundered on the coast of bones, Albert thought, when he heard about Pastor Abildgaard's reclusiveness. He could preach about death in a way that moved even me. But he'd never met it. Now that he has, he's fallen silent.
Albert went to the parsonage to volunteer to assist the widow Rasmussen in her work. He felt his dreams obliged him to. He was shown into the minister's study, where Abildgaard was sitting by the window, staring out into the garden. There was a purple beech outside, dark and somber, like a tree that knew neither spring nor summer but grew in an eternal autumn, its leaves burned black around the edges by the frost. Nearby, the rose beds, which were Mrs. Abildgaard's pride and joy, were in bloom.
Abildgaard got up and shook his hand, then returned to his position by the window. When Albert announced the purpose of his visit, the minister didn't speak for a long time. Then all of a sudden he buried his face in his hands.
"My nerves!" he exclaimed.
His narrow shoulders trembled. He took off his steel spectacles and placed them on the desk in front of him. He dug his fists into the hollows of his eyes like a child surrendering to its crying, and the tears rolled down his smooth-shaven cheeks.
"Please, please forgive me," he stammered. "I didn't mean to..."
Albert rose and went over to him. He placed his hand on the minister's shoulder.
"You've got nothing to apologize for."
The minister clasped Albert's hand with both of his and pressed it against his forehead as though he was seeking to ease a pain inside.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. Abildgaard cried himself dry, then put his steel spectacles back on his nose. As Albert rose to take his leave, he noticed a black object on the minister's desk that reminded him of a claw, but not a bird's. No, it looked more like the curled fingers of a severed human hand, with nails as yellow as old bone.
"What's this?" he asked.
"That's the awful thing. I've no idea what to do with it."
Abildgaard sounded as if he might break out in a fresh attack of tears. Albert took the object and peered at it closely.
"No, you mustn't touch it. It's vile."
It was indeed a human hand. Albert was instantly put in mind of the shrunken head. But here the preservation technique was different: the hand seemed to have been smoked and dried in the heat of a fire.
"Where does it come from?" he asked.
"You know Josef Isager? They call him the Congo Pilot, I believe." Albert nodded. Josef Isager had been a pilot on the Congo River many years ago. He'd worked for the Belgian king, Leopold, and had returned home with a medal for fa
ithful service. He was reluctant to speak about his years in Africa, but the neighbors said that they'd sometimes be wakened in the night by screaming. It was Josef Isager. Once he'd kicked the headboard of his bed to pieces: a loud crack had sounded as the large mahogany frame fell apart. He'd leapt up and thrown the furniture around as if it were an enemy and he was fighting for his life. His bed linen, which fell in a messy heap on the floor, was soaked in sweat. It was malaria, so he told us.
Albert, who'd heard the stories about these nocturnal upheavals, had his own theory. These weren't malaria attacks, but nightmares. Josef Isager was dreaming about Africa.
"And then he comes to me with a severed hand. A hand—a human hand! 'What do you want me to do with it?' I ask him, once I've recovered from my shock. 'Give it a Christian burial,' he replies. 'Who is it?' I ask. 'I don't know,' he says to me. 'Some nigger woman. Damn you, Pastor!' he says. And he gives me a furious look. Perhaps I shouldn't burden you with such things, Captain Madsen, but the man scared me."
Albert nodded. The Congo Pilot had the same effect on him. Josef Isager was a tough customer. But there were many of those. Life had kicked them around and they'd kicked back. The son of the old schoolteacher, he and Albert had been at school together, and Josef had been trapped in the war between the boys and their brutal tormentor, unable to take sides because he'd be a traitor no matter whom he supported. He'd taken out his frustration with his fists, beating up his brother, the ever-whining Johan. Then he'd gone to sea and no one knew what he'd seen there: new abuses, with fresh victims, no doubt, where he himself had an outlet, for that was how things were. But perhaps he'd also found a way out. That, at least, was what Albert reckoned. The sea was a vast space where a boy could leave the ill-treatment of his childhood behind and rediscover himself.
After Josef shipped out, we saw nothing of him for several years. We heard he'd gone to the Congo via Antwerp, and sailed on its great rivers. He returned to Denmark, but not to Marstal. Then he left again. Africa had got into his blood. We didn't know why. After many years the fever left him, and he came ashore and worked as a loss assessor, first in Copenhagen and then in Marstal. His wife, Maren Kirstine, whom he'd married in his youth, was a Marstaller, and they'd settled down in Kongegade.
At first he didn't even mention his years in Africa. When we questioned him, he'd shake his head dismissively as though he couldn't find the strength to describe it and because we wouldn't understand anyway. One day he'd asked Albert if he could see the shrunken head. For a while he sat holding James Cook in his hands, turning the head while he assessed it. He looked at it with expert eyes.
"Well, that's not how we used to make them," he finally said.
"We?" Albert frowned.
"Yes," Josef replied casually. "We preferred to smoke them."
He laughed—Albert couldn't determine whether from disgust or cynicism.
"They have put an effort into this one." Josef went on. "We only made sure they dried out. They looked like they were sleeping. Closed eyes, their lips rolled back a bit so you could see a thin white line of teeth." He looked at Albert. His eyes grew distant, as though he was dwelling on the memory.
"Who are you talking about?" Albert asked.
The Congo Pilot snapped out of his trance.
"The niggers, who else?" He sounded disappointed. "We had to show them who was boss, you see. There was this Belgian captain. He used Negro heads as decorations around his flower bed. To each his own."
He laughed again, and this time Albert thought he detected a hint of embarrassment. He sensed that it wasn't the mention of the severed heads that had triggered this embarrassment, but his own ignorance. It was as if Josef had taken him to be a fellow conspirator and was only just realizing that he'd been mistaken. Albert stared at his old schoolmate and didn't know what to say.
"I know that look you're giving me." Josef's voice was suddenly harsh. "But it's the only language they understand. It was for their own good. Otherwise we'd have had to shoot the whole lot of them. They didn't want to work. They'd lie stretched out on a mat, soaking up the sun like crocodiles in the sand. They could do that, all right. Proud and vain, they were. But otherwise they were just like animals."
"I thought you worked as a pilot?"
"Yes, I was a pilot, port captain in Boma, commissaire maritime. I took the Lualaba all the way up to Matadi, along a narrow and tricky branch of the river. Before I arrived, the ocean steamers could get only as far as Boma. Later they went all the way to Matadi too. But I was the first."
There was pride in his voice. He raised his head and looked Albert straight in the eye. For a moment it seemed as if Josef was observing him from a great height, though they were both sitting down and Albert was taller. Josef had deep-set eyes, a protruding, straight nose, and a mustache whose ends reached all the way down to his strong jaw. His gaze became arrogant.
"I was the best pilot on the Congo River. I was the port captain in Boma. I did it all. But that wasn't what swung it. This is the most important thing..." He poked his cheek with his index finger. "Your skin color. That's what decides it. I was a white man. And I was master of all I surveyed. It's as hot as hell in Africa. But that's nothing compared to the fire you feel flare up inside you. That's Africa's gift to you. To finally teach you your own strength. Only one man in four comes back. Fever takes the other three—the fever or the blacks. But it's all worth it."
He leaned forward and fixed Albert with his gaze. His arrogance had gone. He seemed to appeal to Albert for understanding. His voice grew pleading. "I've tried to explain it to people I meet at home. But they don't understand. No one can unless they've tried it themselves. Everything you've seen before—it's nothing. Everything that follows—nothing. Mirages. You bring only one thing back with you from the Congo, and it's not those trinkets that I've got lying about at home. We had this song. No, I'm not going to sing it to you." He cleared his throat.
"Congo," he recited. His voice suddenly quivered with emotion. "Even the strongest man will shut his mouth and lie down for good. Even the hardest, wildest man soon ends up as rat food. They died like flies in the Congo." His voice became more and more urgent, almost thick with passion. "But I didn't die. I lived. Yes, I lived." He slammed the table with the palm of his hand. "Not like here! This is no life!"
Albert still hadn't spoken. He wanted to look away. But they kept staring at each other and Albert knew what he'd seen in Josef's eyes. The Congo Pilot had learned to look at other people as only a god can: the look that asks, Should this man be allowed to breathe, or does he deserve to die? This was the look that Josef Isager, the schoolteacher's son, had brought back from Africa.
Josef was an old man now. He was as tough-minded as ever, but he was old, and in Africa they needed youth and vitality. So Josef had returned to Marstal, where he came from, and where he was now living like a king in exile. Nobody bowed before the threat in his eyes, apart from Maren Kirstine, who was a mute and terrified witness to his nightly rages.
"Did he say why he suddenly wanted the hand buried?"
Abildgaard shook his head. "I asked him how he'd got hold of it. He said it was a kind of souvenir, like an elephant tusk, a necklace, or a spear—he'd come back with plenty of those sorts of things. It was common, he told me, as if he was discussing something quite ordinary, for Belgian soldiers to chop off the hands of natives they'd killed, so they could prove that they hadn't wasted their cartridges. It was on such an occasion that the hand had fallen into his possession. I didn't know what to say." The minister gave Albert a look of despair. "I didn't want the hand. But he left it here. 'You're a minister,' he said. 'The dead are your field.' I can't make myself throw it out. But I can't put it in a coffin and bury it in the cemetery either. There isn't even a name attached to it. I'm at my wits' end."
"Pastor Abildgaard, in one of your sermons you spoke about feeling how the world withdraws and your strength disappears precisely when you need it the most."
Abildgaard looked up wi
th a smile of surprise.
"You were there, Captain Madsen? I'm delighted that you can remember my sermons. Yes, that was an excellent choice of words."
Albert had been going to say something more, but now he fell silent, and Abildgaard relapsed into despondency.
"What am I going to do with that hand?" he wailed. Again he looked out of the window, as though the garden could provide him with an answer to his question.
THE MONEY KEPT rolling into Marstal. The freight market had never been so favorable, nor had seamen's wages. Ship prices too continued their incomprehensible rise. Every other house in one street might be grieving, yet the merriment of those families that remained untouched couldn't be entirely suppressed. Women in their Sunday best mingled with widows in black. Shop fronts were decorated as if Christmas had already come. And no hearses drove to the cemetery, with girls strewing flowers before them: the dead sailors politely kept away. They didn't disturb us, and the elderberry hung low and blossomed over the streets that summer.
Every spring, before the fleet left the harbor, all of Marstal would smell of tar. Sailors armed with sticky brushes would coat the stone foundations of their houses as if they were ships whose bottoms needed caulking in preparation for the summer's sailing. On the house gables were numbers in cast iron, painted black, announcing the year each house had been built: 1793, 1800, 1825. When we hammered away at the tarred plinths, the black peeled off in layers like the rings of a tree trunk. But the numbers never fit. The layers of tar recorded not the years, but the absences. The plinths were tarred only when the men were home.
Now the men were disappearing, one by one, and the women would have to take on this masculine job, along with many others. Soon we'd see them in springtime, tarring away, with brushes as black as their fresh widow's weeds.
Excited students from the Navigation College cycled through the town and pretended to mow down children playing in the streets, who squealed at them in mock terror. The young men were going back to their boardinghouses to eat their hot lunches. Albert froze at the sight of them. He'd seen them too. The U-boats were waiting for them.