We, the Drowned

  It was Albert who deciphered the code of the spectacles. If they perched low toward the tip of Isager's nose, he announced, the day would be a calm one, with only minor, quick-healing injuries to faces and hands. If they were positioned halfway down, things could go either way. But if they were pressed against the bridge, that day's education would be provided by Mr. Thrashing Rope, focusing on the tenderest parts of our bodies, which were also the ones least likely to learn anything.

  This discovery earned Albert a certain amount of fame and was perceived as a tactical advantage in our ongoing war with Isager.

  It was a war that left its mark on us. Our scalps were scarred from the sharp edge of Isager's ruler, and our fingers—which would get a lashing if our handwriting offended him—would often be so swollen, we could barely hold our pens. He called this practice "the distribution of ducats"—and it was the currency he dealt out generously even on the days when his spectacles sat low. Limping and bleeding, our skin black-and-blue with livid bruises, we were always aching in some exposed place. But that wasn't the worst of what Isager did to us.

  He left his mark in another far more frightening way.

  We became like him.

  We committed appalling acts and only realized the horror of what we'd done when we stood gathered around the evidence of our atrocity. Violence was like a drug we couldn't relinquish.

  He planted a thirst for blood in us. One that could never be quenched.

  ONE AUTUMN DAY when the wind had torn the last leaves off the trees, we stood, flogged and sore, in Kirkestræde, looking for something to distract us, when suddenly it waddled by: Isager's dog, a stumpylegged, bloated creature of indeterminate breed. Its short coat was white and gray, and its belly pink as a pig's. We'd seen Karo before, clasped in Mrs. Isager's arms. She was as shapeless as her own dog and had eyes like a Chinaman's, squeezed to slits by the pressure of her fat cheeks.

  We didn't know much about her, though we suspected she was the root cause of our woes. People said that she regularly pummeled Isager with her huge, hamlike fists and that it was this humiliation that sent his spectacles high up on the bridge of his nose.

  Now here was the dog trotting down the street, with the easy air of a creature at home in its own drawing room, and perhaps that's where it thought it was, since none of us had ever seen it in town on its own before.

  "Karo," Hans Jørgen called, clicking his fingers.

  The dog stopped. Its jaw hung and its tongue protruded between its teeth. We could feel the rage building inside us; suddenly we hated that dog. Fat Lorentz kicked out at it, but Hans Jørgen held up his hand and started singing the old nursery rhyme we'd chanted when we were little and wanted a snail to stick out its horns. Holding hands, we danced around Karo in a circle.

  Snaily, Snaily, show us your horn,

  Here we come to buy your corn.

  Are you a man or are you a mouse?

  Come outside or we'll burn down your house!

  Karo jumped about, yapping.

  "Come here, boy, come here." Hans Jørgen enticed him and started running.

  The obese animal lumbered after Hans Jørgen in happy anticipation. We circled him and started racing up Markgade. Anyone passing us would have seen nothing but a gang of boys on the move. We passed Vestergade. Ahead of us lay Reberbanen. Farther out, the fields started, and it was here we'd roam when the town got too small for us and we needed to let off some steam. The road was flanked by ancient pollarded poplars, split by old age. We'd marked our ownership of them with wooden planks and nails, transforming them into tree houses with steps, rooms, and attics. These were the castles from which we lorded it over the fields. But we had to recapture them constantly because the farmers' sons claimed them too. They were children of the soil, sturdy and sullen, and they felt that the wide-open fields were their birthright. But we outnumbered them. We only turned up here in gangs, always ready to do battle, and we'd always leave the field victorious. The farm boys were the natives and they defended their soil with the passion of savages. But we were stronger and we showed them no mercy.

  "Can he run this far?" Niels Peter asked.

  Saliva hung in strings from Karo's black lips as he bounded along, struggling to keep up with us. This was better than life as a lapdog with the teacher's fat missus.

  "If Lorentz can do it, so can Karo," Josef said, and slapped Lorentz on his chubby shoulder. Lorentz was already puce from the strain of running: his shoulders and chest heaved, and he wheezed as though something inside him had punctured. His face was thick with fat and when you slapped his cheek hard, it would quiver hilariously: even his lips shook, and only his pudgy nose stayed still. His eyes would assume a pleading expression, as if to apologize for his shameful size.

  "Look at him, he's disgusting," said Little Anders, pointing at Karo. "He's dribbling, yuck!"

  "And he's got legs like a chest of drawers. What kind of a dog does he think he is?"

  Karo responded by yapping merrily. He had company, and he had no idea of what lay in store for him. Why should he, the blameless creature? But in our eyes, Karo was no innocent. He was Isager's dog, and he couldn't escape the hatred we felt for our tormentor. As we ran alongside Karo, we pointed out the many similarities between the animal's ugly squashed face and our teacher's.

  "All that's missing is the spectacles," Albert said, and we all laughed.

  We were heading for the high clay cliffs before Drejet, but Karo, used to only the short journey between his basket and his food bowl, was soon defeated: his stumpy little legs gave out and he collapsed on his belly, drooling from exhaustion.

  But he was going to have to stick with it. What we had in mind wasn't something for the open fields.

  Hans Jørgen picked him up and cradled him in his arms; Karo licked his face happily and Hans Jørgen grimaced.

  "Eurk!" we shrieked in unison, and ran on, our excitement mounting. Down the first slope and up the next we ran, then along a field boundary and up the hillside. The cliff edge, with its dizzying drop to 6/ the beach below and the sea stretching in every direction, had always entranced us. As we stood there, gazing out at the water, it seemed that a great mystery lay before us: the mystery of our own lives, spread before our eyes. No matter how often we came here, it was a sight that always rendered us speechless.

  The drop wasn't sheer everywhere. The cliff face was steep, but there were ledges where western marsh orchids, yarrow, and golden buttons grew in the rich clay soil. You could hurl yourself off the edge and into the void, and land just a few meters below. You couldn't walk down the cliff, but you could conquer it ledge by ledge if you descended with care. Not always without injury—but then, cliff climbing was all about putting yourself in mortal danger.

  We reached the edge and surveyed the Baltic. Hans Jørgen was still carrying Karo, who yelped again. He probably thought we wanted to show him the whole wide world. We hadn't agreed on a plan. There was no need to. We all knew what was going to happen.

  Hans Jørgen gripped Karo's front paws and began swinging him to and fro. Karo, in pain, tried to snap at him, but his thick neck was too short. He bared his tiny teeth and bit at the air, half whining, half growling, his hind legs flailing as if grappling for a foothold.

  "Snaily, Snaily, show us your horn!" Hans Jørgen shouted, and we joined in.

  "Here we come to buy your corn!"

  Then he let go. Karo sailed up toward the overcast autumn sky, making a wide arc as he plummeted toward the stones on the beach far down below, his fat torso twisting and turning in midair. How funny he looked! We jostled right up to the edge so we could see him slam into the beach. At first he just lay motionless and silent, on his side, but then a sort of whine started up: the groan of someone losing strength. He twisted laboriously until he lay on his belly. Then he tried to stand up, but couldn't. His hindquarters wouldn't budge, although his front legs kept clawing. He tried again and again, and all the time we could hear him. His cries sounded more like a child's than a
n animal's, a haunting, frail, yet penetrating sound.

  Our triumph died instantly within us.

  We didn't look at one another as we climbed down the hillside separately. Suddenly, we weren't a group anymore. Most of us wanted to turn around, run home, and forget all about Karo. But Hans Jørgen led the way and we followed, stumbling. Little Anders lost his footing and rolled down several meters before hitting a rock, then scrambled to his feet, crying. We were battered and bruised by the time we gathered's around Karo, who was still whimpering in this scary way we couldn't bear to listen to.

  He gazed up at us and licked his nose with his tiny pink tongue. At that moment he almost looked happy, as if unaware that we were the cause of his plight, and was simply waiting for us to make everything all right again. His tail wasn't wagging, but that was only because his back was broken.

  We gathered around him in a circle. None of us felt like kicking him now. He looked so innocent. He hadn't done anything wrong, and now there he lay, whining, with his spine snapped.

  Albert squatted beside him and started stroking his head.

  "There, there." He comforted the dog, and suddenly we all wanted to cuddle Karo.

  If only he'd started wagging his stubby tail at this moment. But he didn't, and he never would again. We knew that.

  Swiftly, Hans Jørgen moved across to Albert.

  "Stop it," he said, grabbing hold of Albert's arm to pull him away.

  Albert got to his feet and faced him. Hans Jørgen was still holding on to him. He was the biggest of us and the most fair-minded. He was the one who bravely stood up to Isager when he paced up and down the classroom with the thrashing rope. He always defended the youngest children. Now he stood there, his shoulders sagging, just as lost as the rest of us.

  "We can't leave Karo here," Albert said.

  "Well, cuddling him won't do him any good either," Hans Jørgen snapped.

  "Can't we take him back to Isager?"

  "To Isager? Are you out of your mind? He'd kill us!"

  "What are we going to do then?"

  Hans Jørgen let go of Albert and shrugged. Then he started walking up and down the beach.

  "Help me find a big rock," he said.

  None of us stirred. Anders was still crying. Karo had gone very quiet, as if Hans Jørgen's words had made him pensive.

  "Listen," Albert said. "He's stopped whimpering. Perhaps he's feeling better."

  "Karo isn't going to get better," Hans Jørgen said darkly. That's when we understood there was no other way.

  "You can go if you want to," he said.

  He'd found a rock. He was clutching it in both hands.

  We wanted to go, but we couldn't. We couldn't leave Hans Jørgen. If we did, it would be like being left alone with Isager.

  Hans Jørgen knelt in front of Karo. The dog looked up at him expectantly, as though he thought Hans Jørgen wanted to play.

  "Turn him on his side," Hans Jørgen said.

  Niels Peter put a hand under the dog's hairless pink belly and turned him over. That's when Karo screamed. He didn't whine. He didn't moan. He screamed. We were all so terrified, we started screaming with him, because it was all so sad: sad that he was so stupid, and sad that he couldn't understand a single thing about this world.

  Afterward, when we climbed back up the hillside, each of us carried a stone in his hand. We didn't really know why. We walked home without speaking, clasping our stones.

  Lorentz met us, wheezing. He had given up on the first slope.

  "What's happened?" he asked in his usual sucking-up way. Then he saw our faces.

  "Where's Karo?"

  "Shut your gob, you fat pig."

  Niels Peter walked right up to him and punched him in the stomach, and Lorentz sat down in the middle of the road with that begging expression on his face that we all loathed. No matter what you did to him, he always put up with it.

  Later we met two boys from one of the farms in Midtmarken. They stank of cow shit, so we chased them, pelting them with our stones. They howled as they scampered home to their dung heap. We didn't care what they told their parents. Our mood hadn't improved. We had a feeling that once again, Isager had won.

  The next day we were sure that Isager would have vengeance on his mind. Sure enough, his spectacles sat high on the bridge of his nose, and he paced the schoolroom with the springy, elastic steps we had learned to fear. The thrashing rope too seemed to have acquired a life of its own. We sensed it twisting and turning in his hand, ready to lash out at its first victim. We were already cowering.

  This was it.

  Karo's failure to return home must have caused an upset in the schoolteacher's house, and whether or not Isager thought we were involved, we knew he'd make us pay the price, the way he'd made us pay for every other disappointment in his life.

  Isager marched up and down, muttering "Bad boys, bad boys" as usual. But no one was ordered to kneel on the floor: when he struck, there was no warning. He started on Lorentz, who was sitting by his desk, taking up two spaces. He attacked him from behind, swiping him across his broad back. Then, quick as lightning, he whipped around to the front of the desk and hit him first across the chest and then the face. Lorentz squealed in a mixture of pain and fear and covered his head with his massive arms. Isager tugged at them to gain clear access for the rope, but Lorentz held fast, so Isager pulled him to the floor—he landed with a loud thud—and started kicking him. We'd all tried hitting Lorentz, even the smallest of us. His obesity had something fascinating and irritating to it, a feminine softness that attracted and provoked us at the same time. Word had it that he didn't have any balls and that his tiny white worm hung between the fatty masses of his thighs with an empty scrotum dangling behind. This feature made him a born clown in our eyes. We believed that his fat protected him, and even when he wailed from our blows, we thought he was crying because he was a sissy and not because it really hurt. So we hit him harder to make him stop whining.

  Lorentz never hit back. He'd put up with anything to avoid being shunned. And we strung him along because we needed someone we could bully without the risk of punishment. Perhaps he thought we tolerated him. But we didn't; to us he was nothing but the thing we called him when we wanted him to do something: the fat pig.

  Sticking together was the only thing Isager had taught us. He never, ever succeeded in turning us into snitches. We'd each rather take the blame than betray a comrade, and Isager knew it. That's why he regarded us all as equally guilty and beat us all equally hard.

  Lorentz lay defenseless on the floor while Isager kicked at him. Of all of us, Lorentz was the least guilty, yet even so, not one of us raised his voice to protest the boy's innocence.

  Was it solidarity that made us keep silent now too?

  Then we heard the familiar wheezing that usually accompanied our excursions when we ran faster and fat Lorentz began to lag behind, struggling for breath. Fighting to sit up, he forgot to shield himself—and Isager, who so far had relied on his boots, now raised the thrashing rope, ready to bring it down on his victim's unprotected face and his fat-girl chest. But something halted him in his tracks. Lorentz's arms were flapping, as though he were facing a new but invisible enemy. His face was turning blue and his eyes bulged in their sockets. He gurgled and gasped. He seemed to be choking.

  Isager, at a loss, took a step back, then shoved the rope back into his rear pocket as though nothing had happened and headed for his desk.

  By now Lorentz, shoulders still heaving in an agonizing struggle for breath, had managed to sit up. Isager did nothing but watched from the corner of his eye. We could tell that he was scared. Lorentz remained on the floor for the rest of the lesson, in a world of his own, his eyes sightless. Then slowly, his huge body began to relax and his wheezing died down. When he fully regained his breath, he looked around at the rest of us with eyes that seemed to beg that he might be one of us at last.

  We looked away. None of us wanted to answer.

  ISAGER HA
D BEEN a schoolteacher for thirty years. His predecessor, Andrésen, had taught for fifty-one years, but only the old folks remembered him. Isager had met two kings. The first was Crown Prince Christian Frederik, who later became King Christian VIII. Escorted by the schooner Dolphin, his ship had dropped anchor at a stone bridge in the harbor—henceforth renamed Prinsebroen. On his way to Kirkestræde, he'd strolled up Markgade—which was promptly rechristened Prinsegade. Whatever street Crown Prince Christian Frederik put his feet on got a new name. The girls came dressed in white frocks and the pastor gave a speech, but Isager was the star attraction of the visit because the crown prince had come to inspect his pupils.

  Twelve years later came another royal visit, this time from the future King Frederik VII, who arrived by ferry in a northerly gale. We were standing on the wharf, debating which passenger might be the prince, when a man in knitted gloves and a cap with earflaps leapt ashore and secured the hawser, saying, "Cold today, isn't it, lads?" That was Crown Prince Frederik.

  At school we sang, "We want to be sailors, as long as we live!" (the words were supplied by Isager) and then we were subjected to the teacher's grilling—upon which the crown prince turned to his adjutant and asked him if he could do sums as difficult as those faced by the children of Marstal. The adjutant replied no, and the man who would one day succeed to the throne as Frederik VII announced, "Neither can I."

  The calculation that had generated such admiration from the crown prince came from page forty-seven of Cramer's Arithmetic and went as follows: "The Earth goes through its annual course of 129,626,823 geographical miles in 365 109/450 days. Given that the Earth moves constantly at the same speed, how far does it travel in one second?"

  This question was enough to make anyone dizzy, especially since Isager had omitted to tell us that the Earth circled the Sun. However, he'd drilled the answer into us. It was at the back of the book: four geographical miles—plus a fraction that no one would have known how to pronounce, had it not been for the thrashing rope. A boy called Svend gave the answer on this occasion. From that day on he was known as One-Second Svend, and he went on to take the famous fraction with him to his watery grave at the age of sixteen.