We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [19]
When he stood on the pulpit, he found he had nothing to say. His gullet stung. Then he leaned forward and threw up.
We greeted this with cheering and applause.
Here was a sermon we could all appreciate.
Laurids remained silent the rest of the day. Once again, officers and local bigwigs turned up to visit him and hear the story of his ascension, but he turned his back to them in the straw, like a hibernating bear. They offered him money, but nothing could tempt him out of his retreat and in the end they had no choice but to leave. His fame dwindled in the days that followed. It would have been lucrative to put himself on display, press the flesh, and expound his views of the Hereafter. But he was in the grip of a foul mood.
He lay on the straw or paced up and down with his arms folded across his chest, frowning.
"He's thinking," Ejnar said, filled with awe.
Ejnar was Laurids's only remaining disciple. But he could have spawned a whole sect if he'd wanted to.
***
As for the rest of us, our mood had improved; we gathered in small groups, and soon music and singing echoed from various corners of the church. At first we'd grouped according to our home districts, islands, or towns and looked at one another almost as enemies. But music united us. Here was a man from one of the islands next to a man from Jutland, here a man from Lolland next to a man from Seeland. As long as our voices were in harmony, it didn't matter that our accents were at war. That said, all the melodies came courtesy of the schnapps pail.
A few days later Little Clausen received a letter from home. It was from his mother, who gave him her version of the fateful Maundy Thursday when the battle took place. Ejnar and Laurids settled down beside him on the straw, and Torvald Bønnelykke joined them. We were all eager to hear news from home. Little Clausen read aloud in a stumbling voice, with long pauses.
His mother wrote that they'd heard the cannon fire in Marstal from early morning, and it was loud enough for you to think the battle was being fought at the end of the breakwater, rather than on the other side of the Baltic. The thundering had been especially fierce during Pastor Zachariassen's sermon in the church; the ground had literally trembled beneath their feet, and the minister had been moved to tears.
Around noon it grew quiet, but no one could relax. Instead of going home for lunch, the citizens of Marstal wandered the streets, discussing the course of the battle. A few men with combat experience, such as Petersen the carpenter and old Jeppe, and even Madam Weber—all veterans of the great mobilization, the night we thought the Germans were coming—had insisted that there was no way we Danes could lose. A ship-of-the-line could never be defeated by a coastal battery. The Germans must have got a good thrashing: what they'd been hearing all day was unquestionably the sweet music of victory.
Toward evening came a boom so gigantic that it collapsed the cliffs at Voderup. No one in Marstal got a wink of sleep all night, tormented by a creeping unease about the battle's outcome. News finally reached them well into the afternoon of Good Friday, a day that must have been as tough for them as it was for our savior. For now their worst fears were confirmed.
"I was completely beside myself with despair, though I should have put my trust in the Lord. I prayed to Him all night to keep you safe and He heard my prayers, though there were others He did not heed. Kresten's mother walks around with a tearful face and blames herself for not forcing him to stay behind. I tell her that Kresten foretold his own death and that no one cheats fate, but she says that Kresten had lost his wits, and it is a mother's duty to shield her son from his own lack of sense, and then she starts to cry again."
Little Clausen read all of this in a monotone. The strain of deciphering the letters required every ounce