We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [145]
She bowed her head, and her tears fell onto Albert's hand.
Time passed. Albert said nothing.
"Well, it turns out I haven't run out of tears after all," she said eventually.
He could hear the relief in her voice. Her endurance test was over. She'd recovered feeling.
"There's something else you haven't run out of," Albert said. "Don't forget that there's still someone who needs you."
Mrs. Koch gave him a perplexed look, then jerked upright as if someone had just called her. "Ida!"
Lorentz had told Albert something of the family; Ida was Mrs. Koch's middle child, a girl of eleven. Today she'd be at school in Vestergade.
"Ida," Mrs. Koch said again, and rose with a bustling movement. "I must go and get her."
Quickly she put on her coat and was soon standing in the hall, ready to go out. They walked together up Vinkelstræde and along Lærkegade. Albert offered to accompany her to the school, but she declined.
"You said something very true a moment ago, Captain Madsen."
She shook his hand as they parted.
"There's always someone who needs us. We might forget it sometimes. But it's what keeps us alive."
Albert turned into Nygade and shuddered. The sleet blew directly into his face. Was he useful? Did anyone need him?
He stamped the slushy ground in irritation and wiped his wet face.
THE WIDOW OF the marine painter often visited the church too. She sat alone on a pew, staring up at Jesus and the troubled sea. Perhaps she was thinking about the savior, or about the children who had been taken from her, one after another, until only one remained. Or perhaps she was pondering her late husband. It was impossible to know. The first time Albert entered the church and found her sitting there, with her back to him, he'd left quietly, not wanting to intrude. He'd even checked the time—perhaps she had regular habits—and started coming earlier in the day. If he stayed long enough, she'd always turn up. She didn't leave when she saw him; she simply sat some distance away and began her own quiet worship. He could hear the rustling of her dress and the scraping of her shoes. Once, when he rose to go she looked up, and he nodded briefly to her on his way out. After that he arrived every day at the same time. Eventually, she too would appear. Two old people, sitting quietly at opposite ends of the church.
Albert wasn't a man who knew how to seek solace. He knew how to be useful to others, and sometimes the two things are one and the same. But the burden he bore was something he couldn't discuss with anyone, and since he didn't believe in God, it followed that he couldn't talk about it at all. Yet he still came to church every day, half an hour before Anna Egidia Rasmussen, and he sat there as though waiting for her arrival.
If he didn't visit the church to find God, perhaps he went to find a human being.
One day she sat down next to him. He wondered if that was what he'd been waiting for. He looked up from his hands and greeted her.
"So you're here again, Captain Madsen?" she said.
He nodded, not knowing what to say next. The Hydra had been reported missing and he had another message of death to deliver, for the widow of Captain Eli Johannes Rasch. Mrs. Rasmussen had one too.
"Will this dreadful war never end?" she sighed, as she sank into her usual contemplation of her late husband's altarpiece.
"No. It'll never end." He spoke in a burst of anger. Suddenly he was doing what he had sworn never to do in the presence of the bereaved: voicing his opinion about the war. "It'll never end as long as someone profits from its continuation."
"How could anyone profit from such horror and death?"
"Take a walk down Kirkestræde. Look at the shops. This town is flourishing as never before."
"Are you seriously suggesting, Captain Madsen, that the inhabitants of a little town like Marstal are keeping the mighty engines of war in motion? Can't you see the