We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [132]
Then one of the skippers on the bench shot a long blob of spittle into the polished brass pot in the corner, and the sound snapped Jørgensen out of his trance.
"Just tell me, please, please just tell me!" he begged.
"A pound of coffee. But I want it freshly ground," Abildgaard said, mechanically repeating his wife's instructions.
Jørgensen buried his face in his hands, and a strange snorting sound, halfway between laughter and tears, escaped him.
"Coffee, coffee, he only wants some coffee!" he choked from behind the lattice of his fingers.
Laughing uncontrollably, he went over to the coffee mill and began filling it with beans. His laughter made his hands shake, and he spilled beans all over the counter and the floor.
Then he pulled himself together.
"I won't be charging you for your coffee today, Pastor."
But Abildgaard was by now outraged. "Would someone kindly explain to me what is going on here?" he demanded, in the thunderous tone he employed in the pulpit.
"Jørgensen is just feeling lucky," one of the skippers behind him piped up.
Abildgaard glared at Jørgensen with all the authority he could muster. "If this is some kind of joke, I can assure you that I don't find it in the least bit amusing."
Jørgensen looked down, abashed, but at the same time a blissful smile spread across his face. He rubbed his bald head as though giving it an extra polish in honor of the minister.
"I do beg your pardon, Pastor. You see, I thought you were here because of Jørgen."
"Jørgen?"
"Jørgen, my son. He's an able seaman on board the Seagull. Well, I don't mind telling you, I was worried that you'd come to tell me the ship had been torpedoed and that Jørgen ... Jørgen..." He gulped as if even now the fear still gripped him. "Well, I thought that Jørgen had"—the grocer cleared his throat—"had been lost."
After that incident, Abildgaard grew afraid to show himself in the streets; it dawned on him that every time he left the parsonage in Kirkestræde, people thought he was coming to announce a death. He had a naturally sunny disposition, and he couldn't bear it. He'd become a harbinger of death, a black raven with a starched collar, imprisoned in the low-ceilinged rooms of grief. He struggled to breathe normally, and when he talked to the bereaved about God's mercy and help and comfort through the love of Jesus Christ, he felt he'd choke. The words came out of him in a strangely helpless, hesitant way, as though they no longer contained real answers to the questions of the bereaved.
He'd often brought the consolation of faith to a family who'd lost a father or a son. What made it unbearable now was the sheer number of dead. Like a huge flock of migrant starlings, they hovered above the town, and one by one the announcements—the death of a father, a brother, or a son—fell onto the roofs of Marstal in a downpour of wrecked hope.
Pastor Abildgaard became a recluse. He stayed indoors as much as he could, emerging only on Sundays, when he was forced to walk the hundred meters to the church, and to officiate at funerals. Fortunately, there were no more of those than usual. After all, the war dead did not return home.
Anna Egidia Rasmussen, widow of Carl Rasmussen, the marine painter who had decorated the altarpiece in the church, began visiting the stricken families when news of a death had to be broken. She was well acquainted with grieving homes. She'd lost her own husband under mysterious circumstances on a voyage from Greenland, and since then she'd had to part with seven of her eight children, all of whom had died as adults. Only one daughter, Augusta Kathinka, was still alive, but she was in America.
Anna Egidia Rasmussen lived in Teglgade, in a large house with tall windows, which her husband had designed and where he'd made his studio in the attic. For many years she'd been a source of help and comfort to neighborhood families who'd been