We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [0]
Carsten Jensen
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
...
...
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
Map
I
THE BOOTS
THE THRASHING ROPE
JUSTICE
THE VOYAGE
THE DISASTER
II
THE BREAKWATER
VISIONS
THE BOY
NORTH STAR
III
THE WIDOWS
THE SEAGULL KILLER
THE SAILOR
THE HOMECOMING
IV
THE END OF THE WORLD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Translated from the Danish by Charlotte Barslund with Emma Ryder
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Boston New York
2010
Copyright © 2006 by Carsten Jensen og Gyldendal
Translation copyright © 2010 by Charlotte Barslund
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jensen, Carsten, date.
[Vi, de druknede. English]
We, the drowned / Carsten Jensen ; translated from the Danish
by Charlotte Barslund with Emma Ryder.
p. cm.
"Translation of: Vi, de druknede"—T.p. verso.
ISBN 978-0-15-101377-7
I. Barslund, Charlotte. II. Ryder, Emma. III. Title.
PT8176.2.E44V513 2010
839.8'1374—dc22 2009046568
Translation of Vi, de druknede
This translation has been sponsored by
the Danish Arts Council Committee for Literature.
Book design by Lisa Diercks
Text set in FF Clifford
Map by Joe McClaren
Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The author is grateful for financial assistance from the following:
Statens Kunstfond
Litteraturrådet
Autorkontoen
Statens Kunstråds Litteraturudvalg
Politikens Fond
J. C. Hempels Fond
Konsul Georg Jorck og hustru Emma Jorcks Fond
Fonden Erik Hoffmeyers Rejselegat
For Lizzie, the love of my life
CONTENTS
I
The Boots [>]
The Thrashing Rope [>]
Justice [>]
The Voyage [>]
The Disaster [>]
II
The Breakwater [>]
Visions [>]
The Boy [>]
North Star [>]
III
The Widows [>]
The Seagull Killer [>]
The Sailor [>]
Homecoming [>]
IV
The End of the World [>]
Acknowledgments [>]
I
THE BOOTS
MANY YEARS AGO there lived a man called Laurids Madsen, who went up to Heaven and came down again, thanks to his boots.
He didn't soar as high as the tip of the mast on a full-rigged ship; in fact he got no farther than the main. Once up there, he stood outside the pearly gates and saw Saint Peter—though the guardian of the gateway to the Hereafter merely flashed his bare ass at him.
Laurids Madsen should have been dead. But death didn't want him, and he came back down a changed man.
Until the fame he achieved from this heavenly visit, Laurids Madsen was best known for having single-handedly started a war. His father, Rasmus, had been lost at sea when Laurids was six years old. When he turned fourteen he shipped aboard the Anna of Marstal, his native town on the island of Ærø, but the ship was lost in the Baltic only three months later. The crew was rescued by an American brig and from then on Laurids Madsen dreamt of America.
He'd passed his navigation exam in Flensburg when he was eighteen and the same year he was shipwrecked again, this time off the coast of Norway near Mandal, where he stood on a rock with the waves slapping on a cold October night, scanning the horizon for salvation. For the next five years he sailed the seven seas. He went south around Cape Horn and heard penguins scream in the pitch-black night. He saw Valparaiso, the west coast of America, and Sydney, where the kangaroos hop and the trees shed bark in winter and not their leaves. He met a girl with eyes like grapes by the name of Sally Brown, and could tell stories about Foretop Street, La Boca, Barbary Coast, and Tiger Bay. He boasted about his first equator crossing, when he'd saluted Neptune and felt the bump as the ship passed the line: his fellow sailors had marked the occasion by forcing him to drink salt water, fish oil, and vinegar; they'd baptized him in tar, lamp soot, and glue; shaved him with a rusty razor with dents in its blade; and tended to his cuts with stinging