We, the Drowned

  "How could anyone profit from such horror and death?"

  "Take a walk down Kirkestræde. Look at the shops. This town is flourishing as never before."

  "Are you seriously suggesting, Captain Madsen, that the inhabitants of a little town like Marstal are keeping the mighty engines of war in motion? Can't you see the grief it's caused this town? You must. Like me, you announce a death to someone almost every week."

  "Yes, Mrs. Rasmussen, I see the grief. You and I see it because we visit the homes where death strikes. But the others are pressing their noses against the shop windows. It's human nature to worship the golden calf, and that's the main cause of the current war."

  "I know nothing of politics," she said, looking down. "I'm just an old woman who's lived too long."

  "You're eight years younger than I am, as far as I know."

  "I suppose I am. But as a widow..."

  She stopped, too bashful to continue.

  "Well?" he encouraged her.

  "As a widow you no longer have your own life. You live through others. It's as though old age arrives in one fell swoop. I've felt old ever since Carl died, and that was twenty-four years ago."

  "I've noticed that you come here often. I suppose you're thinking about him."

  "I'm here for the same reason you are, Captain Madsen. To contemplate the savior." She gave him a quick, critical glance. "You are a believer, I presume."

  "I was," he said, "but not in the savior. I believed in other things. I believed in this town and the forces that built it. I believed in fellowship, in a community of people. I believed in being hardworking and diligent. But I've lapsed now, I'm sorry to say. And I too feel I've lived too long. I don't understand this world anymore."

  "You sound like an unhappy man, Captain Madsen. I don't understand the world either. I don't think I ever did. Yet I have faith."

  "Perhaps that's precisely why you believe."

  "How do you mean?"

  "You say yourself that you don't understand the world. Surely that's why you have to believe. Faith's a mystery. It's not a mystery I share. Whether or not that's a limitation, I can't say." He gave her a questioning look, as if he expected an answer. He sensed that he was about to unmask himself to this woman, yet it didn't frighten him. There was an accepting gentleness in her and he felt that he no longer had anything to lose. "I have these dreams," he heard himself say. The urge to confide in her was overwhelming.

  "What dreams?"

  For a moment he hesitated. Then he made the leap.

  "The drowned sailors," he said. "I see them drown. I see them almost every night. It's as though I'm there. I see it long before it happens. If you don't believe me, you can ask me the names of the people from Marstal who are going to die. I can give you their names, every single one of them." She was staring at him as though she didn't understand what he was saying, but he could no longer hold back. "For years I've been walking around this town like a stranger. I feel like a messenger from the land of the dead. The klabautermann—that's me."

  He halted and gave her a pleading look. Did his words mean anything to her at all?

  She was silent for a long time. Then she took his hand.

  "It must be dreadful for you," she said. "It's more than a person can bear."

  For one moment he feared that she would start talking about the savior. But she didn't.

  "So you believe me? You believe I have this special ability?"

  "If you say it's so, Captain Madsen, then I do indeed believe it. You've never struck me as a man prone to fantasies, or one who needed to make himself appear interesting."

  "I've seen the war, Mrs. Rasmussen." He spread out his arms. "All these deaths. I see the pleading in the widows' eyes. How did my Erik or my Peter die? And I know. I could give her the answer. And yet I can't. There's a terrible helplessness in that. Helpless, yes, that's how I feel. I'm a spectator both asleep and awake. Day and night I witness suffering and grief, and I'm stuck. There's nothing I can do."

  Her hand was still resting on his. For a while they sat that way, without speaking. Then she withdrew her hand and stood up.

  "Come, Captain Madsen, it's time for us to pay our visits."

  On their way out of the church she turned to him.

  "I believe in your dreams. But I don't wish to hear about them. I prefer to live in ignorance of God's plans for us."

  THEY BOTH CONTINUED to visit the church, but now they sat next to each other. Sometimes they were silent, each lost in their own thoughts, but most of the time they conducted a whispered conversation. There was no physical contact. Her hand on his that day had been a sign of acceptance; there was no need for her to repeat it.

  December came, and in the twilight the damp winter cold seemed to concentrate itself inside the unheated church.

  "We're freezing here," she said one day. "Let's go to my house and have a cup of coffee."

  He looked around as they entered the drawing room of the house in Teglgade. A couple of Rasmussen's paintings hung on the walls. He knew she'd sold most of them, but clearly she'd kept a few as well. One was a portrait of a little girl from Greenland. Rasmussen had been one of the first Danish painters to travel to that icy wilderness, but the portrait wasn't typical of his work. His real subject was the sea and its ships; he'd made his name as a marine painter. The other painting showed a man wearing a gown, kneeling in prayer on the desert sand. In the background were a woman and a donkey. The man's face was strangely blurred, as if the painting was unfinished or Rasmussen's talent for human portrayal had fallen short.

  "It's the Flight into Egypt," the widow said, entering at that moment with the coffeepot. Albert nodded politely. There had been no need for her to tell him that. Though he was not a believer, he did know his Bible. "It was rare for him to be inspired by stories from the Bible. Such a shame. I think it might have led him in a new direction. But toward the end it seemed as though nothing would come right for him. At any rate, he was very dissatisfied, very dissatisfied indeed. He was a tormented man. Please don't think that I was blind to his real character."

  Albert had first met the painter, who'd been a few years older than him, when he was just a boy. Back then Carl Rasmussen had made an indelible impression on him, not just because of his remarkable talent for drawing but also because of his peculiar innocence. He was from the neighboring town of Ærøskøabing, and the first time he showed up in Marstal a hostile gang of boys had instantly surrounded him: he was an outsider and he'd be made to feel it. But something about his attitude kept them at bay. He'd seemed unaware that he was in danger. Instead, a friendship had developed between them, and they'd all spent one long summer roaming the island together. When Carl did his drawings, a crowd of admiring boys would watch. He'd also read aloud to them, awakening a hunger for a world beyond the dead rote-learning of Isager's lessons. Albert could still recall the impact The Odyssey had made on him, with the story of Telemachus who waited for his father for twenty years, never doubting that he was alive. Who knows, perhaps the path of his own life was set that day.

  But the idyll had ended with a confrontation. Albert no longer recalled what caused it, only that Carl had left with a bloody nose, and he didn't see him again until as an adult Carl came to settle in Marstal with his family. In the meantime Carl Rasmussen had made a name for himself as a painter and earned plenty of money by it, which he invested in the town's ships. He'd painted the altarpiece in the church and used local skippers as the models for Jesus' disciples. Jesus himself was modeled on a carpenter who ran an illicit pub opposite the church. It was an audacious choice, but Rasmussen got away with it. There was no end to the town's enthusiasm for his talent. His likenesses were uncanny.

  He'd asked to paint Albert too. But when Albert brought out James Cook and asked for a double portrait, the sight of the shrunken head had turned Rasmussen's stomach, and he'd had to lie down on the sofa.

  Albert always had a feeling that the painter had come to Marstal in search of something
he never found. Rasmussen's death was said to have been a suicide. That wasn't malicious rumor, but a conclusion reached through basic sailing knowledge. It was inconceivable that anyone could fall overboard in fair weather. One moment Rasmussen had been standing on the deck, painting; the next, he was gone.

  ***

  Anna Egidia Rasmussen poured coffee into the blue-patterned china cup.

  "Do have a cookie," she said, pushing a bowl in his direction. "I baked them myself. Well, I mostly do it for the grandchildren," she added, smiling.

  Albert took a cookie and dipped it in his coffee.

  "Your husband and I had many discussions about his paintings," he said. "But not about the religious ones."

  "Yes, I remember that well. You thought he was limiting himself by just painting life on Ærø and the other islands. I think in the end he agreed with you."

  "I'm no painter," Albert said. "I was probably the wrong person to be giving advice. I believe in progress, or at least I used to. But how do you paint progress? I can't answer that one."

  "By painting steamers with smoke coming out of their funnels?"

  He heard the irony in her voice and laughed.

  "You're right, Mrs. Rasmussen. We laymen should keep our noses right out of art. Once I believed the breakwater symbolized everything the people of this town were capable of achieving. But a big pile of stones like that would never have been much of a subject for a painter. And now I realize that there's one thing the breakwater can't protect us from, and that's our own greed. I must admit the way the town's livelihood is being sold off frightens me just as much as the war."

  "You mean the sale of the ships?"

  "I do indeed. We make our living from the sea. If we cut our connection to it, then what will become of this town? It's as though the times have gone soft. Suddenly being a sailor isn't good enough anymore. Better education plays its part too, I suppose. Children learn more and they begin to see options other than simply going to sea, like their fathers and grandfathers. But I think the mothers play their part in it too. They never miss the chance to tell their sons about their father's tough crossings, and all the sorrow and anxiety they put up with when he's away. That kind of whining kills a boy's desire to go to sea. And why hold on to the ships when the market's favorable? There's no one to carry on the tradition."

  "Have you ever considered what it's like to be the child of a sailor?"

  "Yes, of course I have. I come from a family of seamen."

  "So let's imagine a fourteen-year-old boy who's off to sea. How much do you think he has seen of his father, when he leaves the home he grew up in?" He could hear the obstinacy in her voice and he knew she wasn't presenting it as a question. She was going somewhere with this, and his job was to follow her.

  "I'll tell you, Captain Madsen. His father will probably have been at home roughly every other year, and never stayed more than a few months at a time. So when it's the boy's turn to go to sea at the age of fourteen, he'll have seen his father seven times. One and a half years in total, at the most. You call Marstal a sailors' town, but do you know what I call it? I call it a town of wives. It's the women who live here. The men are just visiting. Have you ever looked at the face of a twos year-old lad, toddling down the street holding his father's hand? He looks up at his dad, and it's all too clear what's going on inside his little head. He's asking himself, Who is this man? And just when he's got used to this man he's just met, the man is off again. Two years later it's the same story all over again. The boy's four, and even his happiest memories of his father have faded. And the father has to reacquaint himself with a boy he hardly knows too. Two years is an eternity in a child's life, Captain Madsen. And what sort of a life is it?"

  Albert said nothing. He drank his coffee and ate another vanilla cookie. His own father had failed him in a way he'd never been able to forgive. Yet he realized that he'd always regarded the absence of fathers as part of the natural order, even though men in other trades never left their homes for years at a time.

  "Yes, what sort of life is it?" the widow repeated. "For the father who barely knows his own children, and for the children who grow up as orphans even though their father's alive somewhere on the other side of the globe. For the mother who's left alone with full responsibility for them, living in constant fear that the ship will be reported missing. Why wouldn't she try to talk her sons out of going to sea? We have electric light, the telegraph, and coal-burning steamers; why should women and children be excluded from that kind of progress and live as they did in the past century? You believe in progress, Captain Madsen. So why don't you welcome this development? Because it changes the world you know so well? If I've understood it correctly, that's the nature of progress. It doesn't just make the world a better place, it makes it an unrecognizable one."

  Albert wasn't a parent himself. He'd never held a living child in his arms, a baby animal who, when it learned to speak, would call him Father. He was completely out of his depth here. At times he'd felt there was a void in his life, but he had no regrets. That was just the way things had turned out.

  When he came ashore at fifty years of age, it had been too late to start a family. Besides, who could you get at fifty? Not even a spinster, unless she came equipped with a serious defect. A widow? Oh yes, there were plenty of those. They were keen to marry too, though mostly for practical reasons. But they were hardly capable of having more children: their wombs were withered, their breasts were dry. And a young woman burdened with an old codger like him wouldn't have much of a future, would she?

  That was how he'd explained it to us, in those casual, slightly contemptuous terms that can be so revealing for those who know how to listen. Now he told the widow, "Well, I can't really comment. I never did have children of my own." He took another cookie. "Strange, really. I was so absorbed by matters of kin that I forgot to ensure the continuation of my own."

  "I've never really understood that, Captain Madsen. You should have married."

  The widow knew nothing of the Chinese lady.

  "Despite my long voyages?" he quipped.

  "Those are the terms. You'd have made a good husband all the same. You have a sense of responsibility and you have vision. Those qualities aren't as common as we'd like to think. Children are a great gift. You declined that. You shouldn't have."

  "And you say that, even though you've had repeated experience of how that gift can be reclaimed?"

  She looked down at her lap. "More coffee?" she asked.

  He nodded. He felt he might have gone too far by referring to all the children she'd lost. He lifted the china cup to his lips and looked at her through the steam.

  She looked up and caught his eye.

  "No, Captain Madsen, you don't regret having had a child simply because you lose it. Having a child isn't a deal you strike with life. As I said: a child is a gift. And what remains after a child is gone is the memory of the years it was allowed to live. Not its death."

  She stopped and he could see that she was moved. He wanted to do what she'd done for him that day on the pew: place his hand on hers. But in order to do so, he would have to get up and walk around the table. He felt clumsy and shy, and the moment passed. He remained where he was, keeping a silence that might be interpreted as respectful but which he knew was caused by awkwardness.

  "I've learned to bend." Again she looked directly at him. "I believe God has a purpose for everything that happens. If I didn't believe that, I could never have endured it. I have my Jesus."

  Again he was at a loss for words. There was something in her he couldn't fathom, a gulf between them. He wondered if their contrasting ways of seeing the world were simply something to do with men and women and the differences between them. While he sought meaning in everything and became agitated if he couldn't find it, she accepted life—even when it struck in the hardest possible way, through the loss of a child. There was a fortitude in her that was beyond him. Perhaps he'd never had to be strong in the way she had, though he
believed that his dreams gave him an intolerable burden. He'd always respected Carl Rasmussen's widow. Now he admired her as well, even though something in him rebelled against her outlook on life.

  Silence had descended upon them once more, and again she was the one to break it.

  "I still have many children around me. My grandchildren—and then there are the children from the neighborhood."

  "Yes, I know you step in when a family's in need."

  "At times I look after a child for a while. I want to feel useful. If I didn't feel useful, I don't think I could go on living."

  Again she looked directly at him. "Do you feel useful, Captain Madsen?"

  "Useful?" he echoed. "Do I feel useful? I don't know. I can't tell anyone about my dreams. Even you feel repelled..."

  He hesitated for a moment. Once again he felt he'd gone too far. It was unfair to blame the widow. After all, she'd listened to him without fleeing, as Anders Nørre had done. He gave her an apologetic look. She looked calmly back at him.

  "None of us is superfluous, Captain Madsen."

  "But, you just said..."

  "I admit that I may sound pessimistic from time to time. When I think of this endless separation from my Carl, I feel I've lived too long. But when you've lived for too long and yet you can't die, then you have to invent reasons to go on. You're of no use, very well! That may be so, but only in your own eyes. There's always someone who needs you. It's just a question of finding out who."

  Albert said nothing. He'd used almost exactly the same phrases when speaking to Mrs. Koch, when he told her of the loss of the Ruth, but he didn't feel that the words applied to him. He and Anna Egidia had different ways of looking at life. She'd found a purpose to it. He'd lost his, and in his opinion, that was that.

  She leaned toward him.

  "Listen," she said. "I happen to know a little boy in Snaregade. He lost his father not so long ago. He never knew his grandfather; the man died at sea long before he was born. He hardly ever sees the other men in his family because they're all sailors. His mother's from the island of Birkholm. She's an orphan, by the way, so there's no family to help out on her side. Don't you think a little boy like that might need someone to take him for a walk along the harbor, even take him rowing in a boat and get him used to the sea?"