We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [116]
Then Albert himself grabbed hold of a rope, raised his hand in the air, and turned to the gathering.
"Right, let's pull!" he called out, thumping the air with his fist.
That was the starting signal. Albert put his whole weight into it. He was sixty-eight years old, but he didn't feel his age. It was as if his powerful body had been saving itself for this moment his whole life, as if anything he'd done up to now had just been preparation. His face reddened in the sun, and he felt a surge of happiness that seemed to come straight from his pulsing blood and tensed muscles.
Slowly the flatbed trailer shuddered to a start. They hauled it one meter at a time—until it stopped. The ground was too soft, and the weight of the stone had sunk the trailer's wheels into the gravel, so it was impossible to move it. The legs of two hundred men strained in vain. They leaned forward into the ropes as though testing their combined weight against the stone. But it resisted them.
Albert straightened up and turned to the gathering.
"Come on, folks," he called out, and punched the air a second time. "One, two, three—pull!"
But the trailer wouldn't budge.
Somewhere in the sea of people, a sailor started up a chantey. The others joined in, and soon they were all singing, swaying rhythmically to the old working song that had rung across the sea for centuries. But it did no good.
Albert called out to a boy and asked him to run to the Navigation College in Tordenskjoldsgade and bring back some students. The boy raced off, and it wasn't long before thirty young seamen came marching together down Havnegade. They rolled up their sleeves to reveal their tattoos and shouldered the ropes. That's our youth and our future, Albert thought. That boulder doesn't stand a chance now.
And sure enough, the flatbed trailer started rolling again, its wheels groaning in protest, as if the whole vehicle was being torn apart by the enormous pressure. There was a tense moment when they rolled over a curb; the stone wobbled, but it stayed put, and the chantey resumed. It wasn't until now that Albert had properly listened to its words.
I will drink whiskey hot and strong.
Whiskey, Johnny!
I will drink whiskey all day long.
Whiskey for me, Johnny!
Young boys sang along cheerfully at the top of their voice. The words held the promise of manhood. The trainee navigators led the singing. They'd sailed for long enough to feel like fully qualified seamen, and this song belonged to them: their years before the mast confirmed their right to it. For the old seamen, it was just a memory. It struck Albert that there were few men here who'd never hoisted a sail or heaved against a windlass to the tune of the whiskey song—the national anthem of all sailors. It made no difference what language it was sung in; the message was in the rhythm, not the words. It didn't preach; it traveled to men's hearts via their muscles, reminding them what they were capable of, so that forgetting their exhaustion, they'd toil in unison.
STRENGTH IN FELLOWSHIP would be the message on Albert's stone—but in the sweaty exhilaration of heaving it onto the trailer, he realized it could just as easily, though more crudely, be WHISKEY, JOHNNY! That too spoke of fellowship.
He raised his sweating face to the sun