We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [156]
He gave her an awkward pat on the back. "There, there," he said, "sit down. Have some more coffee, you'll see it'll all..." He took her gently by the shoulders and steered her back to her chair. She slumped forward and buried her face in her hands. He poured a fresh cup of coffee and held it out to her; then, overcome by sudden tenderness, he stroked her hair. She looked up, but instead of taking the cup, she clasped his other hand in both of hers and gave him a beseeching look.
"Knud Erik needs you so much. You can't possibly know what it means to him—to us. I didn't mean to..." She stopped, and Albert seized the opportunity to free his hand. He sat down opposite her.
"Believe me, Mrs. Friis," he said. "I do understand you. I know how hard your situation is. I'll do everything I can to help you." The final words came as a surprise to him. He'd always drawn a clear distinction between the boy and his mother. He'd got involved with the boy. But now another barrier had fallen away.
She'd found her handkerchief and was wiping her eyes. Her voice was thick. "No, that's not it," she said. "We can manage. It's just..." Again she struggled to stop herself from crying. "It's so difficult..." The tears slid down her cheeks. The hand holding the handkerchief lay in her lap. She had forgotten it was there.
Suddenly Knud Erik appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. His eyes were wide with fear.
"What's wrong, Ma?"
Incapable of speech, she gestured to him to let her recover. But he ran over and she pressed her face into his chest. He flung his arms around her.
"Don't be sad, Ma."
There was an adult tone to his voice. Albert realized that Knud Erik was a child when he was with him, but at home with his mother, he was a grown man, with a grown man's responsibility and duties.
"I'm going now," Albert said quietly. Neither of them looked up.
As he closed the door behind him, he heard Knud Erik's voice.
"I promise you, Ma, I promise. I promise I'll never be a sailor."
IF THE WEATHER made going for walks out of the question, Albert and the boy would pay visits instead. Before, Albert had been an eccentric who kept himself to himself. But now we saw him everywhere. One day he knocked on Christian Aaberg's door, and when the captain, who was in his midfifties, opened it, Albert introduced the boy.
"This is Knud Erik. He'd like to hear about Africa."
The boy bowed and stuck out his hand, as he'd once done with Albert, but this time he didn't stand staring at his shoes but followed the men cheerfully into the drawing room, where Captain Aaberg recalled the time he traveled right across Africa and was put in charge of twenty-two Negroes in a boat on Lake Tanganyika.
"D'you want to see my Negro spear?" he asked.
Knud Erik nodded.
Aaberg had two iron chests in his drawing room. "They've traveled with me all the way to Africa and back home again," he said, pointing.
"Did you carry them yourself?" Knud Erik asked.
Aaberg laughed. "A white man doesn't carry anything himself in Africa," he said. He opened one of the chests. "Look, a Negro spear. And a shield. Why don't you try holding them?" He handed Knud Erik the spear and showed him how to grasp the shield. "You're a proper Negro warrior now."
Knud Erik straightened up and raised his arm as if to throw the spear.
"Watch out," Christian Aaberg warned him. "That spear can kill a man."
Mr. Blach, the telegrapher who had been to China, showed them Mandarin costumes and chopsticks. But they didn't visit Josef Isager: Albert was of the opinion that severed hands were unsuitable for children. Instead, they called on Emanuel Kroman, who'd rounded Cape Horn and could do a terrifying imitation of the howling of a storm in the rigging in the world's most dangerous sea.
"I heard penguins squawk in the pitch-black night," he said. "We were at sea for two hundred days. The water ran out, and we drank melted ice in wineglasses. When we got to Valparaiso, we ate a whole sack of potatoes.