We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [161]
"You beat your own wife?" he yelled.
Josef's hawklike head lolled. His eyes remained cold, but Albert could see how frail the former pilot had grown. If he had any strength left, it lay in his will, not in his hands.
"Ha!" Josef Isager snorted. "I've grown too old, damn it. When I hit her these days, she can't even feel it."
Behind them the door to the kitchen was cautiously opened.
"Please don't be hard on him," Maren Kirstine begged in a pathetic voice.
Albert let go of Josef and straightened up, then stood there helplessly, not knowing what to do next. Josef collapsed on the sofa. He didn't look up. His face was drained, as though his confession of diminished muscle power had sapped the last of his strength and he was unprotestingly surrendering to old age.
"Sit down, please, Captain Madsen. I'll make us some coffee."
Maren Kirstine's voice had returned to its normal pitch, as if all visitors roughed up their host before taking coffee.
Albert and Josef sat facing each other silently while Maren Kirstine moved about in the kitchen. Eventually she came in and set the dining table. Then she returned with the coffee and some pastries. She'd gathered her hair back under the net and wiped her eyes, though they were still red. Once she'd poured the coffee, she vanished back into the kitchen.
Josef's mustache dipped in the coffee as he slurped it. He stuffed a piece of pastry in his mouth and started chewing, spraying crumbs as he did so.
"Why are you here?" he asked. He was still eating. He wanted to show his contempt for the man who'd just put him in his place.
"The Negro hand—" Albert said.
Josef interrupted him. "Yes, what about it?"
"Why did you give it to Pastor Abildgaard?"
"None of your business." Josef pressed his lips tightly shut and sucked them in. He was still chewing. Despite his drooping mustache, he suddenly looked like a toothless old crone, munching away on her sore gums.
"Is that all you have to say?"
"Yes, and you'd damn well better believe it!"
Josef had finished the pastry and, with his mouth empty, his speech became clearer. He stood up abruptly, pushing the table so his coffee cup toppled, sending its contents flying across the embroidered tablecloth.
"Maren Kirstine!" roared the Congo Pilot. "Maren Kirstine! Your coffee's as thin as piss! I want proper man's coffee!"
Holding the coffee cup in one hand, he flung open the door to the kitchen and slammed it shut behind him. The noise of the cup smashing onto the floor followed soon after.
Albert stared at the door, seemingly making his mind up. Then he rose from the table and left the house.
The next day he lowered the head of James Cook into the sea.
Mørkedybet seemed a fitting place of rest for the great explorer. So many voyages had started here, where the Marstal fleet set sail with the first spring. A grave in the local cemetery would have been too complicated, and he didn't think Abildgaard's nerves could handle a funeral.
He decided to invite Knud Erik to come along for Cook's last voyage. He'd never shown him the shrunken head. It wasn't appropriate for a child, he'd thought. But now he brushed all such considerations aside. He'd filled the boy's head with horror stories about sinking and burning ships, and Knud Erik had loved it. He'd probably enjoy the ghastly head too.
However, the real reason for inviting the boy along was that he intended to give the shrunken head a proper sendoff and wanted the boy as his witness. He suspected there was a moral linked to the story of James Cook—though the more he thought about it, the vaguer he felt about what it might be.
On his first two voyages, James Cook had treated the natives he encountered with respect. He'd regarded them as his equals, but they'd reacted with scorn. So he learned from his mistakes and became brutal and callous instead. In a way, he'd ended up like Josef Isager and the white men in Africa.
Where was the balance in the life of James Cook?
On a ship it was