We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [153]
"Bottom up!" the boy exclaimed. "Such a big steamer—with its bottom in the air!"
"Yes," Albert said, astonished at the effect his story had on the boy.
"Tell me some more," the boy said, looking at him expectantly.
"The steamer starts to sink stern first. Finally the stem stands almost vertically. The last thing you see before the waves close over the steamer is its name."
Albert stopped. The boy tugged his sleeve.
"More."
"There isn't any more."
The boy looked at him, disappointed. Albert realized that he'd retold one of his dreams in detail for the first time: a closed door had unexpectedly opened. As far as the boy was concerned, the story was all one great big adventure. You could see it from the way his eyes lit up. Albert could tell him everything. He could even tell him about the source of his knowledge: his inexplicable nightly dreams. And the boy would accept it all as part of the same fantastic world, where nothing needed to be explained and no one would be branded as odd just because he could see the future.
No, he hadn't known anything about children, but now he'd learned something: a child's mind is open to everything. There was so much death in his dreams; there was practically nothing else. But he sensed that to the boy, death in a story was one thing, while death in the real world another. He'd told him about a ship that had been sunk by a U-boat, and although Knud Erik's own father had disappeared at sea without a trace, along with the rest of the Hydra's crew, the boy had apparently failed to make the connection. As for himself, Albert didn't know precisely why he'd recounted one of his dreams for the first time, but he knew that it was important.
"There's no more," he repeated, "but I can tell you another story some other day."
"Do you know lots of stories?"
"Yes, I do. When spring comes I'll teach you to row. Come on. Time to go home now."
The boy's face glowed red from the cold. He skipped for a couple of paces, then stuck his icy hand into Albert's. Together they walked back down Havnegade.
ALBERT STARTED going regularly to Knud Erik's house. Anna Egidia couldn't keep acting as their intermediary, so he fetched and returned the boy himself. In fact, the boy could have made his own way to Albert's house and back home again: the town was small enough for that, though they lived at opposite ends of it. But he felt that Knud Erik had been entrusted to him. With that came responsibility, so he stuck to formalities. He collected him from the front door in Snaregade, and that was where he returned him.
When he came, Knud Erik's mother answered the door, though shyness rendered her almost mute. She'd given birth by now, and when he appeared she clutched the baby in her arms as if to protect herself from an unsettling presence. The first time he'd declined her offer of coffee because he didn't want to inconvenience her, but the second time he accepted out of concern that she'd interpret his refusal as a sign of snobbery.
There were differences on board a ship. There was fore and aft, and then there was the captain's unbreachable preserve, which Albert privately referred to as the island of loneliness. But the differences were practical necessities, enforcing rank and authority: he'd never regarded them as a class divide. His eyes were opened in Knud Erik's home. Knud Erik's father, Henning Friis, had been an ordinary seaman. He'd married early and then hadn't been promoted. Most men waited to get married until they were in their late twenties, when they could afford to, once they'd finished Navigation College and owned a share in a ship. But Henning Friis had been head over heels in love. Or possibly just plain careless.
When someone hadn't got very far in life, Albert had always regarded it as evidence of personal incompetence. Now he became aware that there might be something else. The boy's mother came from a social rank different from his own, one without expectations. He saw that