We, the Drowned

  We saw him sitting late at night in the bay window facing Prinsegade, with a book in his hand, trying to read. Most of the time, though, he simply stared into space.

  What was he thinking about? He was old, but he hadn't found peace.

  Had he realized that a long life didn't automatically bestow wisdom?

  Albert and Klara did have one thing in common: their concern for Knud Erik. She trusted all his views about the boy implicitly, even though he'd never had children of his own. His presence set Klara apart from most Marstal women who, with their husbands at sea, were forced into the role of father as well as mother. Any doubts about their ability to achieve this they'd hide behind a strict, almost harsh manner. For many months of every year and sometimes for years on end, they lived life like a dress rehearsal for widowhood.

  Klara Friis was now experiencing the rare privilege of having a man around, an unexpected luxury that made her surrender to an inner weakness, which she should have fought. She handed things over to him and stopped making her own decisions. She looked to Albert as though expecting that from now on, he'd organize her life.

  She stood firm on only one point: Knud Erik was not to follow in his father's footsteps. She'd listened to the conch and she'd heard the rush of death. Her son must never make a living at sea. When she talked about this, she abandoned the passivity that characterized her behavior in Albert's presence: she straightened up in her chair and her voice took on an unwonted sharpness.

  The boy flinched whenever Klara raised the subject. Albert had heard him promise his mother that he'd never be a sailor. But the boy's bad conscience was written all over his face. Albert almost felt guilty himself, though he'd long concluded, privately, that things could go no other way. Indeed, he'd been part of the boy's inspiration. His stories, the endless conversations about foreign countries and ships, the rowing and sculling, all these had pushed the impressionable boy in that direction. But there were other influences too, which lay beyond the control of a mother or a father. The constant roar of the sea beyond the breakwater; the sight of topsail schooners, topgallant schooners, and brigantines, with the early spring wind in their sails, ready for their big migration to the great ports of call: Rio de la Plata, Newfoundland, Oporto, Le Havre, Valparaiso, Callao, and Sydney—legendary places that formed part of every boy's mental geography and pulled at his young soul.

  Klara Friis knew this. There was a hint of pleading in her sharpness, and it was directed at Albert. He had the power to wrench the boy in a different direction if he would only use it.

  She looked from the boy to the old man and back again, and she sensed a conspiracy between them. "How's your reading going?" she asked her son.

  "Well," the boy replied, as unforthcoming as any child questioned about school.

  "He's only just started his second year, but he's already reading fluently," Albert said approvingly.

  Klara looked at him. "So he's good at schoolwork," she stated. "Perhaps ship brokering would suit him?"

  The question took Albert by surprise. He had to admit that he'd never imagined that path for the boy. In his view, the career of a good ship broker didn't begin in an office. It began on deck, then spread into the more abstract world of freight rates. That was how he'd done it, and he'd expect all future ship brokers to do likewise.

  "It most definitely would," he said, but his tone was evasive. He couldn't bring himself to explain his principles to her. Sensing his lack of enthusiasm, she took it to mean that he wouldn't be prepared to help the boy. Her mouth became a thin line, and she slumped in silence. "There are many things you can become if you get good marks. Surely it's a little early—"

  She interrupted him. "I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that a man with a good education can pass the navigation exam as well. But believe me, that's not the path my boy's going to take." She turned to her son. "Do you hear, Knud Erik?"

  The boy nodded mutely and lowered his head. A tear rolled down his cheek and he breathed in with a loud sob. Then he jumped up from the chair and ran into the kitchen. Klara gave Albert an accusing look, as though it was he, rather than she, who'd prompted the boy's tears.

  "There are several ship broker's offices in this town," he said. "I can easily get a place for him when the time comes."

  "That would be wonderful." Her face softened and she blessed him with a smile. Then she went into the kitchen to bring the boy back. He could hear her voice through the wall. He sat alone, feeling the emptiness of his promise.

  "When the time comes," he repeated to himself, and did a quick mental calculation. "When that time comes, I'll be dead."

  WHEN KLARA WAS expecting a visit from Albert, she heard an unfamiliar knock on the door. She went to open it and found Herman on the steps. He was an acquaintance of hers dating back to the time when her husband was alive. Henning had sailed with Herman and talked about him. He'd heard the rumors about Herman murdering his stepfather all right, but he hadn't believed them. Henning always said Herman was a good mate. They'd shared a fondness for grandiose talk, and she suspected that for the most part, their comradeship had been forged in sailors' bars.

  When Herman reappeared in Marstal, he'd taken the time to stop by and offer his condolences. She'd never forgotten that, and it had disposed her more favorably toward him. She hadn't met him since then, but he always greeted her kindly when they passed in the street, and on one occasion he'd actually stopped to ask her if there was anything she needed.

  Now he was standing at her door. She took a step back in surprise.

  "I just wanted to see how you were getting on," he said. Without waiting for an invitation, he strode over the threshold. For a moment they stood jammed in the small hallway, before continuing into the parlor. "Hello," he said jovially to Knud Erik, and ruffled the boy's blond hair as if they were old friends. Knud Erik, who didn't know him, took a step back, while Klara remained in the doorway.

  "He's tired," she said.

  "I won't be staying long." Herman sat down on the sofa and crossed his legs. "I hear you're doing well." Klara didn't reply. He looked at her. "Old Madsen isn't a bad match."

  She stared harshly. "What are you talking about?"

  "What am I talking about? The same thing everyone in town's talking about. We're hearing wedding bells. You and the children provided for: good thinking."

  Klara blushed scarlet. She glanced down and chewed her lower lip. When she lifted her head, she avoided looking at her visitor.

  "That's just people talking," she said weakly.

  Herman eased into the sofa, as though in his own home. "Now take it easy," he said. "A boy needs a father. I understand old men are good with children. All right, so he's not always very careful. But a bit of water never hurt anyone."

  "What do you mean?" Her question came out as a whisper. Knud Erik was watching both of them, but Klara had forgotten his presence.

  "Well, the boy fell off the boat one day and nearly drowned. But I expect Madsen told you."

  Klara was shocked. She turned to Knud Erik. "Is that true, what Herman says? Did you nearly drown?"

  Knud Erik looked at the floor and grew red. "It was nothing. I just fell into the water."

  Klara opened the door to the hall. "I think you'd better leave," she said to Herman in a voice that had suddenly recovered its strength.

  "By all means, if I'm not welcome." Herman heaved his large body up from the sofa. When he reached the doorway he turned. "I'll stop by another day."

  Klara slammed the front door behind him. Then she sat down on a chair and folded her hands. Her knuckles grew white, and her face assumed a look of concentration. The boy peered at her anxiously.

  After a while she broke the silence. "Why didn't you tell me that you'd fallen into the water?"

  "But, Ma, it was nothing."

  "Nothing! You could have drowned. Why didn't you tell me?" Knud Erik pressed his lips together. "Did Captain Madsen tell you not to tell me? Answer me!"

  He
blinked and looked away. A tear slid down his cheek. He swallowed. And then nodded.

  When Albert turned up an hour later, Klara received him at the front door with Edith on her hip. "What do you want?" she snapped, without returning his greeting.

  She looked at him directly, and the fury in her eyes gave her femininity a hint of something feral. A mother defending her young, he thought, and understood in that instant that he wasn't welcome inside. She'd answered the door only to deny him access to the house. He wouldn't be allowed in to assert his authority; no, he was to stand in the street and be made to feel small.

  Knud Erik appeared by her side. "Go back inside," she ordered him. The boy disappeared into the house. Again she turned to Albert and threw her head back as if she meant to butt him.

  Albert instinctively took a step backward. "I don't understand..."

  "You don't understand what?" Her tone was commanding, as though she was still speaking to the boy.

  "I understand that you're angry with me. But I don't understand why."

  "You don't understand why? Look at this child, take a good look. Look at me and my child. This child who's never known her father." Her voice grew louder and angrier.

  Taking fright, Edith started screaming, and squirmed in her mother's arms to be let down. Then she stretched her arms toward Albert. "Daddy," she cried.

  Klara's anger was undiminished. "And you want to turn Knud Erik into a sailor. So he can drown like his father! That's what you want, isn't it?" She sneered at him. "You want him to be like his father, like you, like the whole damned town, and drown like a real man!"

  "But the war's over," he said, trying to placate her. Her accusation was by now a familiar one, but he'd never heard her state it with such venom.

  "So sailors don't drown anymore? So ships don't get lost? So now everyone can survive a couple of days afloat after a winter storm in the North Atlantic—or even swim home to Marstal, if they're unlucky enough to lose their ship? So no one drowns in peacetime? Perhaps we've all grown gills? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

  He stood dumbstruck by this outburst from a woman whom he'd come to regard as half mute. He shrugged, in self-deprecation. Behind her he saw the boy's face at the window. But sensing Knud Erik's stare, his mother instantly shouted, "Get away from that window!"

  "Mrs. Friis," Albert began, with the formality he'd use to address a stranger.

  "Be quiet," she yelled. "I haven't finished with you. And then I have to hear it from strangers that the boy nearly drowned. That he fell into the water and that you calmly pulled him out and forbade him to tell me! Well, that's a fine thing. His own mother gets to hear it from others. And all those stories you fill his head with: shipwrecks, destruction, shrunken heads, mad adventures! Do you think that's the way to help a child who's lost his father at sea? Do you?"

  She stared him right in the eye. He looked away. He didn't know what to say to her. He supposed she was right. He said so out loud. "I suppose you're right. I don't know anything about children."

  "Don't know anything about children." She snorted. "No, you know nothing about children. You..." She looked him up and down as she searched for the right word. "You bachelor."

  "I did my best," he said. "I was told that the boy needed some adult company and so I came."

  "Yes, you came. And now you can leave. I want to be a sailor like my dad who drowned! What a fine lesson Knud Erik learned in your company."

  The boy's face reappeared in the window. "You get away!" she screamed.

  "Daddy," Edith cried again.

  Klara Friis turned her back on him and slammed the door behind her.

  He lifted his cap to the closed door. Then he turned and walked down Snaregade. He thought he could feel the boy's eyes on his back.

  A heavy November rain was falling. A cold drop hit his neck and ran down under his scarf.

  ALBERT LET HIMSELF into his house and walked around, switching the lights on. He was restless and didn't know what to do with himself. Still in his coat, he went upstairs and out onto the balcony. He was aware of the rain soaking his hair as he looked across to the breakwater. In the dusk the long line of boulders seemed to shimmer, as though made of fog.

  He went back inside and asked his housekeeper to make him a pot of coffee. Then he sat down in the bay window. He watched as the dark deepened outside and felt as if he was holding his breath, and that if he let it out, something violent and unpredictable would happen: he'd start shouting, or crying, or doing something beyond his own imagination.

  He was gripped by a feeling that took him right back to childhood: the same feeling he'd experienced on the beach at Drejet as he stared in horror at Karo, lying on the stones at the bottom of the cliff, with a broken back. He'd tried stroking the little dog's fur in the hope that a bit of tenderness might piece him back together. But in that moment, a notion that something irreparable had happened reverberated inside him with a long and terrifying echo. Now it reverberated again.

  He took a sip of his hot sugarless coffee and tried to calm himself. He had to clear his thoughts. He'd never lived in a marriage, never experienced a woman's emotional outbursts. His relationship with Cheng Sumei had been ruled by what he'd jokingly called a meeting of souls. It was a meeting that had never existed between him and the young widow. How serious had Klara's anger been? Was her rage really caused by his conduct with Knud Erik? For heaven's sake, all boys fell into the water sooner or later. Someone pulled them out again and that was all there was to it.

  No, he didn't believe the boy was the problem. Klara's anger was over something between the two of them, though for the life of him, he didn't know what. Or perhaps he himself was the problem. He both wanted her and didn't. She was a disruptive force in his life. Either way, she'd now rejected him. So wouldn't the wisest course of action be to let this rejection, however hurtful, stand?

  Then what about the boy?

  If only the two things could be kept separate. But they were hopelessly entangled now and he was the one responsible for that. His thoughts ran in circles, taking him nowhere. He drank his coffee and stared into the darkness.

  His housekeeper entered and asked him when he'd like his dinner. He had no appetite and asked her to wait until eight o'clock. He put on his coat again and went back out into the November rain. A few minutes later he was standing opposite Mrs. Rasmussen's house in Teglgade. It was an age since he'd last been there. What did she think of him now? They'd been close, but he couldn't go back to her. She'd scrutinize him, and in that forthright way of hers, she'd target his sorest points. She'd do it with the best intentions, undoubtedly. But good intentions were of no use to him. He felt utterly lost.

  He turned down Filosofgangen, then continued south along the harbor, and soon he found himself in front of Klara's house again. The light was on, but the windows were steamed up from the heating and he couldn't see inside. He continued his wandering. An hour later he was back there for the third time, furious with himself.

  His longing kept drawing him back, but his fear drove him away again each time.

  A period of waiting began. What was he waiting for? He didn't know. But he felt in his bones that his own death was drawing near. He looked at himself in the mirror, and where previously he'd found evidence of undiminished strength, he now saw only the ravages of time. He hadn't known what was lacking in his life until he met Knud Erik and Klara. Without them his old age was like Ithaca without Penelope and Telemachus. But with them? Could it even go on?

  It seemed a countdown had started that couldn't be stopped.

  He stopped going out while it was still light, for fear of meeting Knud Erik. He wouldn't know what to say to the boy. He'd be unable to handle seeing the lad's face light up. Or—far worse—seeing him turn away in disappointment.

  But in the evenings, after a dinner that he mostly left untouched, his restlessness drove him out into the November darkness. We saw him wandering through the streets, icy drops of rain lashing his face.
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  He stood on Snaregade again, watching the lights glow in the windows of her house.

  Then the waiting ended. One day Klara turned up outside his door and asked to come in. Her face displayed no joy at seeing him, but remained hard and closed, as if she'd made an important decision and was here to inform him of it. He helped her off with her coat and escorted her into the drawing room. She didn't look at him as she spoke, but stared down at her lap. Her voice was neutral, almost flat, as though she was reeling off something she'd memorized.

  "I think we need to find a solution to what's happened between us," she began, and inhaled deeply. Only her uneven breathing betrayed any emotion. "We can't go on like this. You always visit us, Captain Madsen—I mean Albert. That's not right. I hear things and people stare and I'm well aware of what they're thinking. They think that I'm a kept woman, and I don't want people to think that of me."

  She stopped. Her hands, which had lain unnaturally still in her lap during her speech, suddenly clenched.

  "But, Klara, dearest..." He put out his own hand to touch her. She froze and then recoiled.

  "Let me finish. It's no use saying they don't, because they do. I know more about what people think than you do, Captain Madsen." Still she didn't look up; instead, she focused her attention on her knuckles. "I can't live like that." She went on. "Henning's dead. I'm a widow. But Knud Erik and Edith need a father, and if it's not to be you, then it has to be someone else, Albert. That's how it is."

  He noticed that she kept switching between his first name and his last. He couldn't follow her train of thought. "I'm an old man," he said helplessly.