We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [186]
"Evening, Li'l Albert," we yelled in unison.
Li'l Albert said nothing. A bad sign.
The housekeeper poured punch from the bowl into glasses, which she passed around to us. We'd made holes in our masks and stockings where our mouths were, and we'd brought our own straws so that none of us would have to take off his mask and reveal his face.
After all, it was Shrovetide.
Most of us present that night were women: great broad-shouldered women with huge breasts. Their weight should have made us topple, but instead we pushed and battered them about like goose-down pillows. We wore woolen skirts with velvet ribbons, tight blouses, embroidered aprons, and shawls long enough to cover head, chest, and back—all from the bottom of the dressing-up box, mended and remended over the years, and brought out especially for this evening.
We swayed our hips and fluttered our hands with the giddy abandon that comes not just from emptying so many punch bowls in the course of an evening, but from the odd feeling of freedom that floods a man when he dresses up in women's clothing. Hidden beneath capes and bonnets, caps, lampshades, and wigs, with masks that were nothing but red-painted pouts and wide-open eyes with black lashes the size of fans, we snuggled up to the nearest manly chest, while cooing like doves and delivering daring remarks—as close to outright obscenity as we could get away with in our character of virtuous ladies—in falsetto voices.
***
The crudest reveler of all that evening was the bride. She wore her petticoat on the outside, and a flesh-colored garter belt circled her massive waist: two breasts swung in opposite directions behind her cream-colored silk bodice, and every time she swirled coquettishly they'd collide with a loud slap. She wore a blond wig with thick braides sticking out, and her starched veil stood as stiff as a frozen snowstorm of lace.
She went up to Captain Madsen and tweaked his earlobe. He pulled back his head with an irritated movement.
"How's your love life, Li'l Albert?" she asked in the high-pitched keening voice that countrywomen once used at funerals. "When's the wedding?"
Captain Madsen's face seemed to indicate he'd decided this was some sort of endurance test, and that if he stood it long enough, it would end of its own accord.
The bride placed a large gloved hand on his thigh, close to his groin. "Trouble down there?" For a moment she forgot her part and burst into loud, braying laughter.
Then the pig tore itself away from the pirate in the corner and approached them, its two pointy udders sticking out from its pink belly, rigid and fixed as fingers of accusation. "Have you lost your appetite, Li'l Albert?" asked the pig.
The bride made kissing noises and the pig offered him its snout.
It was Shrovetide. Fun and games.
By now the housekeeper had left and the large punch bowl was almost empty. "Li'l Albert," intoned the pig. It must have had a poetic bent because it started improvising on the subject of our host.
Have you lost your appetite
For the fun of the night?
Is the girl too cold?
Or are you too old?
Captain Madsen stood staring at the floor.
The pig raised its trotter like a conductor calling the orchestra to attention, and we repeated the crude verse in unison: we were in high spirits, and it came to us easily. Then Albert looked up and shot out his huge fist with a speed we'd never had thought possible in a man whose old age we'd just mocked. He slammed the pig right on the snout, completely flattening it. Though cushioned by the mask, the blow was still hard enough to send the pig flying into the stand, and the punch bowl went