We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [167]
"You're going now?"
"Yes, I think I'd better," he said, and hoped his words sounded neutral, so that his leaving didn't become a verdict on the awkward situation they'd just found themselves in.
"Oh," she said, as if his going surprised her.
He remained sitting and waited for her to continue. She stared at her hands.
"Well, I don't mean to impose on you. But would you like to come to dinner tonight? After all, we have the shrimp," she said, looking up at him.
"I'd like that very much. I'll bring a bottle of wine."
"Wine?" Her awkwardness grew.
"Ah, perhaps you don't drink wine?"
She wiped her forehead. Then she suddenly laughed behind her hand.
"I've never tasted it."
"There's a first time for everything. And that time is tonight."
When he left the house, he noticed the thickset figure of Herman striding briskly toward the harbor, with his flat cap pulled down over his forehead. Looking up, Herman gave the Friis house a quick once-over, glanced back at Albert, and touched one finger nonchalantly to his cap. Albert returned the greeting, but there was no exchange of words.
Albert kept walking in the direction of Kirkestræde, pondering the look the young man had just given him. Was he checking up on him? Was he aware of something? Then he shrugged. What kind of nonsense was this? Nothing had happened between him and Knud Erik's mother. But the invitation for tonight? The wine? Not long ago he'd held a weeping widow in his arms. When they'd talked about the wine just now, their tone had been almost coquettish. Her laughter behind her hand. Was she falling in love with him? Or was it the other way around? Was he interpreting everything in a certain light because he'd fallen for her?
He shook his head at himself. The mere thought was inappropriate. He didn't know the exact age difference between them, but it was huge. He couldn't just be her father; he could be her grandfather.
He had his own life and habits. He didn't want them disturbed. He'd seen and heard more than he needed to: his dreams had shaken him to the core. He'd experienced them as a cruel and vicious halting of his life, inflicted by a God whose savagery repelled him, who inspired in him neither the urge to believe nor the impulse to beg for mercy. His faith had been faith in mankind, and he'd lost it, ending up in the darkness, a badly injured, shipwrecked man on a shore of bones at the end of the world.
But, unexpectedly, his life had restarted. A seven-year-old boy had restored his faith. And now the boy's mother had become part of it too, and the appeal of this new life grew stronger all the time. He couldn't deny that he felt strangely exhilarated in the presence of Klara Friis. Knud Erik had knocked the first hole in the wall of loneliness he'd lived behind. But now, when Klara was there, he felt the entire wall was on the brink of collapse.
Yes, it was inappropriate. And yet he couldn't stop smiling.
It was late in the afternoon and he was sitting in his bathtub in preparation for dinner when he felt something like a shooting pain in his mind. A man with a character less proud and stubborn would have called it anxiety. Once again, his thoughts were circling around Klara Friis. Human beings are afflicted by a need to judge. So what might people think if they suddenly saw him in the company of a much younger woman? Some men, like the monstrous O'Connor, lash out with their fists, but there are other ways to do damage, and the tongue can be the most vicious weapon of all: in the courtroom of gossip, there's no appeal. But why should he care? He'd done his duty in life. He'd earned respect and built up a fleet of ships. His work was done, yet he carried on living. What was left? Might there be new, unexpected freedoms awaiting him in these closing years?
He got out of the bath and dried himself. He went over to the mirror and with his towel wiped a porthole shape on its steamy surface so he could inspect himself. He'd rarely viewed his body through the eyes of