We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [162]
James Cook had lived under enormous pressure, constantly having to prove his worth to himself and to others. Though Cook had been the great mapmaker of the Pacific, there'd been no chart to help him navigate his own life.
Albert had looked for a father and found none. He'd had to make his own way, and so would Knud Erik. Perhaps he could tell him that. Or perhaps he should say nothing at all. Perhaps it was all the same in the end.
Yet he brought the boy along.
He'd placed the bag with the shrunken head in a makeshift coffin, a wooden casket filled with stones. He positioned the casket on the thwart between himself and the boy.
"It's a surprise," he told the boy. "We'll open it once we get there."
They took turns rowing. Albert did most of it. When it was Knud Erik's turn, he gave it his all. Soon they were in Mørkedybet, looking toward the flat island of Birkholm.
"That's where your mother's from." Albert pointed to the shore. "One spring day she was standing there when your father came sailing. And then she fell in love."
He was making this up. Klara Friis had probably never told the boy about her first meeting with his father, but it wouldn't hurt the boy to add some color and scenery to his parents' love.
"So she knew he was a sailor?"
Albert nodded.
"Then why won't she let me go to sea?"
"She will one day. Your mother just needs some time. She's still upset about your father."
The boy sat for a while. "I want to see the surprise," he said at last.
Albert opened the casket and took out the shrunken head. It was just as he'd inherited it from the captain of the Flying Scud fifty years before, and still wrapped in the same crumbling cloth. Removing the cloth, he held up the head.
Knud Erik stared at the dark face, as wrinkled and lined as a walnut.
"What is it?" There was no fear in his voice.
"It's the head of a man. He died many years ago."
"Do you go that small when you're dead?"
Albert laughed and explained the technique of making shrunken heads.
"How did he die?"
"He died on a beach in Hawaii. He was fighting for his life, but the natives outnumbered him. In the end he was defeated."
"And then they turned him into a shrunken head?"
Albert nodded. Knud Erik looked at James Cook for a while.
"Can I have him?" he asked.
"No, it's time for him to go to the bottom of the sea."
"And he won't ever come back up again?"
"No. He was the greatest explorer in the world. But now he needs a rest."
"Can I hold him?"
Without waiting for a reply, Knud Erik took the head of James Cook and cupped it in his hands. "You died in the end," he said to the shrunken head. "But you fought first." He patted the dry, faded hair of Captain Cook as if applauding his accomplishments.
They wrapped the head in the cloth again and put it back in the casket.
"I want to say a few words," Albert said. And then he said the Lord's Prayer, as he'd done when Jack Lewis, captain of the Flying Scud, had been eased over the side of the ship, wrapped in canvas, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt. He'd not prayed since then.
The casket bobbed briefly on the surface of the water. Then the weight of the stones dragged it down. A few air bubbles rose before it disappeared into the green-blue depths.
Albert contemplated the boy's words to the shrunken head. Knud Erik had extracted his own moral from the little that Albert had told him. There was a kind of wisdom to it. Perhaps the most basic. "You died in the end, but you fought first." As long as the boy held on to this, things couldn't get that bad. Life could throw in its own complexities later.
When they moored the boat at Prinsebroen, the boy tried to leap from the boat to the bridge, but miscalculated his jump and fell overboard. Albert stuck a hand into the water and pulled him out.
Knud Erik laughed. "Let's do it again!"
"You've been baptized now," Albert