We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [139]
Of course, we knew what Børsen was. It was a place frequented only by the rich and those skilled in arithmetic, where everything could be measured in money that could grow or shrink; where people could be victorious one hour and vanquished the next; where life could shift from triumph to tragedy in the space of a second. Oh, we knew that. We also knew that we too were subject to the laws that governed money, and that the rate of freight was not simply determined by its weight and the number of nautical miles it had to travel, but also by supply and demand. And what we didn't know, Madsen, Boye, Kroman, Grube, and Marstal's other ship brokers and owners did. But though we knew the laws that controlled all this circus existed, we also knew that they were beyond us, and that any one of us was more likely to survive a typhoon than to stroll out of Børsen with money in his pocket. Yet Herman seemed to have spent half the years he'd been away sailing the maelstrom of money and bonds, where people and fortunes were swallowed up and spat out again. He called it the New America.
"You don't have to travel all the way to America to get rich. Just drop anchor in Copenhagen. Even the milk boys speculate on the stock exchange. You can deliver churns one day and be a millionaire the next."
He spoke to us as though we were a bunch of illiterate, bare-assed savages and he was a missionary come to enlighten us about the promised land. His voice was larded with a condescension that didn't suit him, and which annoyed us. Thorkild Folmer, first mate on the Ludwig, grimaced and retorted defiantly, "Marstal housemaids have shares in ships too." Herman laughed.
"Ha-ha! Yes, a hundredth share. A hundredth of what? How much can one miserable old tub earn in one season? Who can become a millionaire from that? A tightfisted man from Marstal, probably, if he lives to be two hundred and doesn't eat or drink in the meantime."
And he renewed his unpleasant laughter, which supposedly proved him smarter than the rest of us.
New words were forever on the man's lips. Margin, bull, bear— magic spells for those who understood their meaning, but to the rest of us pure unfathomable gibberish. He mentioned the names of his friends at Børsen, who were visionary men of courage: indeed, pioneers in this new country. The Negro Thug, the Rolling Sidewalk, the Tooth Extractor, the Red Jew, the Track Changer: these men, as informal and straightforward as their happily worn nicknames implied, welcomed anyone into their club as long as he had the right attitude and wanted to get rich quick. Including an ordinary seaman. Or indeed a cabin boy.
"All I had to do was mention my inheritance and they lent me money. On the strength of my blue eyes. Me, a cabin boy." Herman's face darkened briefly, and he looked around the circle at Weber's Café. "Unlike others I could name."
He hadn't forgotten that no one in Marstal had been prepared to sign him on as a cabin boy, let alone an ordinary seaman. But Børsen hadn't rejected him. He was good enough for the fine moneymen of Copenhagen, who included him in their circle. We'd shunned him. But now he was back.
"Just you wait and see," he repeated for the umpteenth time, narrowing his eyes to slits. "Just you wait and see, damn you!" He took a swig from his beer and spat it onto the floor. "Beer—ha! No one's drinks this dishwater in Copenhagen. We drink champagne for breakfast there."
Weber's Café was packed, and Herman was the star attraction. He'd rolled up his sleeves, and we stared at the lion on his right arm. SMART I AND POVERFULL. Perhaps he was a murderer. Perhaps he was just a fool. But then again, perhaps everything he told us was the truth, and we were the fools, and he was the SMART AND POVERFULL one. We weren't like the boys who'd trail him through town, ridiculing someone they secretly feared. None of us grownups dared laugh at Herman; we were too scared