We, the Drowned

  He's very well, thank you. He lost his hair, but it grew back again, as black as his mother's. His first tooth probably bothered him a bit. He took his first steps a while back, and now he's got his sea legs. He must think the whole world's made of hills—up, down, up, down: in any case, he seems disappointed when the ground's solid. Sometimes he falls over. Then he wants his ma. Or one of his umpteen dads. Seventeen languages is a lot when you're learning to say Daddy. Seasick? Bluetooth? Never! No one in the entire Allied merchant navy has a better stomach for the sea.

  Oh yes, indeed, the Nimbus was a lucky ship. Until one spring day in 1945.

  They were bound for Southend, and for the first time in four years they were sailing through the North Sea again. There were still U-boats, but they were fewer and farther between, and reports of losses continued to fall. It was approximately ten o'clock at night when the war decided to blow them a parting kiss, just to remind them never to trust it, even when its end seemed imminent. The sea was calm. There was still a faint light to the northwest; summer wasn't far off. That's when the torpedo—the one they'd expected all the years they'd sailed in Allied service—finally tracked them down. It struck them by hatch number three, and the Nimbus began to take in water at once. The starboard and stern lifeboats were undamaged and ready in their davits. The stokers appeared in nothing but their sweaty undershirts, and any crewman who'd been off duty was also in just his underwear. Knud Erik scolded them. He'd ordered them to sleep fully dressed in case they were torpedoed, but it was an order no one took seriously anymore. There'd been a time when they'd even slept in life jackets. Now they could barely remember when they'd last heard the sound of a nose-diving Stuka. As for the U-boats—were there actually any left?

  Three minutes later they were in the lifeboats and pushing off. The Nimbus had been running at top steam in calm weather when the torpedo hit her: now she continued at the same pace, with her bow sinking ever deeper, so she looked as if she were on tracks that led directly to the sea bottom. When the water rose over the deck, a bang sounded from inside the engine room, and a column of smoke and steam soared into the cloudless spring sky, where the first stars had begun to appear. The Nimbus continued on her downward course. The last they saw of her was the stern, stamped with her name and town of registration, SVENDBORG. Then she was gone, with barely a ripple disturbing the tranquil surface of the sea.

  "All gone," Bluetooth said. He was sitting on his mother's lap wrapped in a blanket, with just his head sticking out. He sniffed, as though the cold night air had given him a cold. Then he started to cry.

  "You go ahead and have a good cry, my boy. You've got plenty of reasons to."

  It was Old Funny, parked in state in his wheelchair in the center of the lifeboat. He looked around as though he'd become Bluetooth's mouthpiece. "That was the boy's childhood home we just lost."

  They sat in silence and let his words sink in. You had to admit he had a point. At two years and seven months, Bluetooth had never known any world but the Nimbus, and now it was gone. The ship had become a kind of home for them too. Only a few of them had ever believed in the Nimbus's inherent luck. What had taken over instead, gradually, was the notion that it was only their own steely determination, the care they took in maintaining the ship, and—above all—their love for Bluetooth that kept the torpedoes and the bombs away.

  Suddenly they felt that determination slacken. The war had ended for them now—not because it had been won, but because without their ship they could no longer fight. There was no joy in the realization. They barely knew whether they were winners or losers. They were survivors, and now they wanted out. They were balanced on a knife-edge between disappointment and relief, and when the captain spoke, he spoke for all of them.

  "I think we should go home," Knud Erik said.

  Go home: that was easier said than done. The crew had more homes than there were corners of the world. "As far as I can see," he went on, "we're roughly halfway between England and Germany. Anyone who feels at home in England rows that way." He pointed westward. "And the rest—"

  He was interrupted by Old Funny: "What are you saying? There were no Germans on board the last time I looked."

  "We're not going to Germany. We're going home."

  "To Denmark?" Sophie asked.

  "To Marstal."

  The crew split up again, this time according to destination. Old Funny remained in Knud Erik's lifeboat: it seemed he'd given up on vanishing from Marstal and was now ready to go home. Anton, Vilhjelm, and Helge wanted to head back too. Knud Erik looked at Sophie for a moment. Then she nodded. Wally and Absalon too were curious to see the tiny town that had been presented to them as the center of the universe. So why not?

  They divided the provisions between the two lifeboats. There were three wool pullovers and three sets of oilskins in each. These were given to the freezing stokers. The boats rocked alongside each other as the crew shook hands across the rails. Bluetooth was passed around and got a hug from every man. He'd just said goodbye to his childhood home. Now he had to say goodbye to half its occupants. He didn't understand and cried for his mother as if she was the only fixed point that remained in the world.

  They started rowing, and Old Funny insisted on being lifted out of his wheelchair and settled on the thwart so he could do his bit. He pulled hard at the oar with his one arm but struggled to maintain his balance on the thwart, so Absalon moved closer and supported him with his shoulder.

  The other boat soon vanished from sight in the growing darkness.

  Dear Knud Erik,

  When I believed you had been drowned, I did something I have never liked to think about since.

  I became so visible to myself, and that is never comfortable.

  It happened one afternoon. I was wandering about aimlessly in the cemetery and suddenly found myself in front of a grave in the northwestern corner. It was Albert's. I had never tended his grave, though he was my benefactor.

  Old Thiesen, the gravedigger, was busy painting the castiron fence around it. He had already weeded it, and it was clear that he would soon turn the neglected grave into a fitting memorial to one of the town's great shipowners.

  Suddenly everything inside me—my fears, my grief and uncertainty, my eternally hidden and lonely life, my self-reproach, and the heavy burden of the almost impossible task I had set myself—all of it came out in a huge eruption of rage. It was not caused by any particular offense, but sprang from that feeling of helplessness that has dogged me all my life. I grabbed the paint bucket and flung it at the cracked gray-and-white marble column where the dates of Albert's birth and death were engraved. And I screamed the same three words over and over. I suppose I wanted them to sound like a doomsday curse. But I cannot imagine they would have stirred any feeling but profound pity in anyone who might have heard my shouting, because my madness was so obvious.

  "Everything must go! Everything must go!"

  I had given away my plan—but fortunately Thiesen was the only one who heard me. He understood the words, but not their meaning.

  The gravedigger knew my story well. He knew that I had spent many days in the most agonizing uncertainty about your fate. He seized my hands, as if he was trying to protect me, rather than prevent me from causing further damage.

  "Calm down, Mrs. Friis. Everything will be all right. I don't think you're quite yourself," he said.

  He meant it reassuringly, but the terrible truth was that, in that moment, I had been precisely that: myself. I was being myself more than I ever had been before or would be again. The words came straight from my heart: everything must go. I had revealed the entire purpose of my life. Everything must go. Finally I had said it.

  I collapsed, exhausted, on the grass at Thiesen's feet. "I apologize," I said, as he helped me back up. "I'm not myself."

  So I encouraged him in his error. I agreed with him. I had to, if I was to go on living among people. "No, I don't think I'm quite myself," I repeated.

  Everything mus
t go. Everything has gone, and now I know that this was never what I truly wanted. I walk the streets of this town, which seems to have been hit by a curse, empty of the men who made up half of its inhabitants. And I see more and more women with an expression in their eyes that tells me that it has been so long since they last received a letter that they have finally given up hoping.

  We are not in the habit of keeping accounts of the dead in this town. But I do know that far more have not returned from this war than Marstal ever lost in the last war or on the Newfoundland route. And it goes the way it always goes for those who drown. No earth for them to rest in.

  I visit the cemetery every day and place flowers and wreaths on the few graves that we do have. Now I am the one who tends Albert's.

  I ask you again to forgive me for having once exiled you to the dead.

  Your mother

  IT TOOK THEM three days to reach the German coast, an endless sandy beach with white dunes behind it. They arrived in the early dawn. The sky was overcast, and a pink rim across the landscape announced the sunrise. The weather had been calm all the way. They maneuvered through the surf, and Absalon and Wally jumped into the water to push the lifeboat ashore. Then they eased Old Funny out of the boat and into his wheelchair. He was heavy to push in the sand. Bluetooth ran alongside. He needed to move his legs after the long period of inactivity. He was clutching his stuffed toy dog, Skipper Woof, who'd also been born at sea, according to the boy. A new life awaited both of them. The up-down, up-down of the waves was a thing of the past. Now they were on boring land, and here they'd stay, for the time being at least.

  "Where are the houses?" he asked. He'd never seen a beach before. The only world he knew consisted of the sea and bombed harbors. But some things hadn't changed. He looked around. There was Daddy Absalon, there was Daddy Wally (his special pal), there was Daddy Knud Erik, Daddy Anton, and Daddy Vilhjelm. There was Old Funny in his wheelchair, and there was his mother.

  They found a road that led away from the beach. There was no traffic on it. Knud Erik walked with a battered leather suitcase in his hand.

  "What's inside it?" Wally asked.

  "Money."

  "You have German marks?" Wally gave him a look of surprise.

  "Something better. Cigarettes."

  "You're a man with foresight," Sophie said.

  "Only sometimes," he said.

  ***

  They hardly knew where the front line was: whether they were ahead of it or behind it, or whether the Germans were still holding out or had already been overrun. The Russians were far away, but the Americans were pushing forward. They'd landed somewhere in the German Bight and would still have to cross northern Germany to get to the Baltic. It was only the last leg of their journey to Marstal that they'd be able to complete by sea.

  During the first few hours, they saw no signs of war. The road ran through flat marshland sparsely dotted with farms. The main road ahead of them was still empty. Bluetooth grew tired of running about and climbed onto the lap of Old Funny, who'd miraculously conjured a bottle of rum from beneath his blanket. Wally always maintained that Herman's wheelchair had a false bottom that concealed a stash of booze.

  Later that morning they reached a village. Seeing smoke emerging from the chimney of a house, Knud Erik walked up the garden path and knocked on the door. No one came to open it, but he saw a face staring at him from behind a curtain. They continued: the first bomb craters appeared in the road, filled with water and reflecting the blue spring sky. Soon they found themselves skirting craters and burned-out transport trucks. They were nearing a town, and people began to appear on the road, while unshaven soldiers in filthy uniforms trudged along indifferently. It was hard to decide whether they were on the run or had merely been sent on a mission they no longer believed in. Horse-drawn carts rumbled past, piled with towers of tightly packed furniture and mattresses, followed by dead-faced people moving with the mechanical steps of prisoners in a chain gang. Others struggled along with wheelbarrows and pushcarts. No one spoke: they kept their eyes on the ground and seemed lost in mute introspection.

  "Look, a horsie!" Bluetooth cried out in his baby English, pointing a finger.

  They hushed him—not for fear of standing out in the growing crowd, but from a worry that in the midst of this silent, funereal traffic, any exclamation of joy was out of place. Soon, though, they realized that they were no different from anyone else. A man in a wheelchair with a child on his lap, a woman, and a group of men trudging along: just another motley crew of refugees. The main roads of Europe were teeming with people like them, who'd lost a home and were on the lookout for another that hadn't been wrecked by war. But they had two things that most of the others didn't: they had hope, and a fixed goal. They must keep a low profile: if they showed any curiosity or raised their voices, they'd attract attention. Knud Erik had feared that Absalon's black skin might give them away as foreigners, but in the end no one paid them any heed. The Germans were too busy with their own wrecked lives and dreams, oblivious to anything but the blind onward trudge from one blasted city to the next.

  They arrived at a town. Most of it had been destroyed by bombs, but they'd seen ruins before, in Liverpool, London, Bristol, and Hull. In some places the house fronts were still standing, four to five stories high, their sooty walls punctured by empty windows. In others, even the façades had crumbled, exposing the gaps between the floors. They looked into rooms, guessing at which had been bedrooms and which kitchens. They kept expecting the people they saw in the streets to return to the half-houses that had boards nailed across the doors and start a new shadow life that matched their dead faces and downcast eyes.

  Bluetooth was used to ruins. He thought houses were meant to be burned out. So for him, it wasn't the somber, ravaged landscape that stood out, but the big white bird sitting high up on the spire of a shelled church.

  "Look," he said. "That's Frede."

  He said it in Danish. He switched freely between that and English. They'd told him about the stork on Goldstein's roof, but they never mentioned Anton's attempt to kill it. Now he thought he was seeing Frede.

  "No, it's not Frede. It is a stork just like him."

  Knud Erik couldn't help laughing. A passerby stared at him as if his laughter was a kind of high treason, and he'd cursed Hitler in a loud voice.

  The stork took off and flapped heavily above the street. They followed it. When it reached the railway station, it landed on its damaged roof as if showing them the way.

  The puddles on the stone floor inside the station suggested that it had rained recently, and there were people all over the place, lying and sitting on piles of rubble as though they were benches and chairs supplied by provident authorities. The majority had to be homeless. They didn't look as if they were going anywhere. Where would they travel to anyway? To the next bombed-out railway station?

  In a corner someone was handing out coffee and bread; a notice announced that later that day soup would be served. Though they were hungry, the former crew of the Nimbus avoided the bread line, afraid of giving themselves away. Knud Erik went off alone with a pack of cigarettes and returned shortly with a loaf of bread, a sausage, and a bottle of water. Bluetooth bolted his share eagerly, but the others chewed theirs for a long time. They didn't know when their next meal would be.

  They spent the night in the railway station and took a train to Bremen the next morning. In Bremen they'd change for Hamburg. They had no tickets, but Knud Erik's cigarettes solved that problem. The platform was overcrowded, so they used Old Funny as a battering ram. People moved out of his way, doubtless presuming him to be a tragic war invalid. All that was missing was an Iron Cross pinned to his chest.

  A woman in an oversize winter coat was standing in the middle of the platform: she didn't seem to be headed anywhere, but just stood I there. Her pale, emaciated face, half-covered by the scarf tied under her chin, wore the most lost expression Knud Erik had ever seen. She wasn't withdrawn so much as absent: he
r eyes were completely blank. She was pushed and shoved from all sides by the blind throng, and the suitcase that she carried in her hand suddenly sprang open and an infant fell out. Knud Erik saw it clearly. It was the burned body of a little child, withered and practically unrecognizable, a mummy shrunk by the heat of the same fire that had clearly devoured its mother's mind too. A man, focused on the train, pushed her away, and without even noticing where he put his feet, trod right on the tiny corpse that lay in front of him. Knud Erik turned away.

  "Look," Bluetooth said, "the lady dropped her Negro doll."

  As they approached Hamburg, for almost thirty minutes they traveled through nothing but ruins. They thought they knew what bombs could do to a town, but they'd never seen anything to compare with this. No ghostly scorched façades rose from the piles of rubble: there was no guessing what streets might have once existed there. The devastation was so complete that you could barely believe it was caused by man. But it didn't look like a natural disaster either: that would have left something standing, however randomly. This destruction was so systematic that it looked like the work of a force that knew neither earth, water, nor air, but only fire.

  For the first time in almost six years of war, they felt they'd existed only at its periphery. Like the other passengers in the overcrowded train, they averted their gaze: they couldn't bear the sight. The scale of the city's destruction was so unfathomable that they gave up trying to understand what neither their minds nor their eyes could take in. They knew that if they stayed here any longer, they'd end up like the people around them, and lose the hope that drove them on. Even Bluetooth looked away and started fiddling with a button on his coat. He didn't ask any questions, and Knud Erik wondered if it was because he was wise enough to fear the answers.