We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [203]
"No, no way in hell." Knud Erik hesitated as he repeated the words, trying to sound like Anton.
"There's a surefire way of avoiding this," Anton advised him. "You just need to do badly in school."
Doing badly in school is harder than you think. Knud Erik was infinitely tempted to stick his hand up when he knew the answer. After all, he'd done his homework, and his instinct was to be a good boy.
Having always belonged to the middle stream of his class, he now deliberately sank to the bottom. This did no harm to his reputation among his friends, but he paid the price in punishment. Most of the teachers were spinsters. Some were fat and others were scrawny, but they all hit, scratched, pinched, and otherwise disciplined the boys with an energy you'd never have guessed they had in them. Miss Junckersen would pull your ears; Miss Lærke would tweak the hairs at the back of your neck; Miss Reimer would slap you with the palm of her hand. Miss Katballe would put unruly children across her knees and smack their backside, something that only Anton was sufficiently hardened not to dread. Rage would turn her face a terrifying blue-black. It was a color we feared—along with her spluttering and her flying spittle—far more than the spanking itself. But the worst was Mr. Kruse. There was no escape from him because he was a man, with a man's strength. He would dangle lazy pupils over the first-floor windowsill and threaten to let go: no one could withstand the all-consuming terror that breathed from the void below. In his lessons, his every question was greeted by a forest of hands.
Knud Erik did his homework but kept his mouth shut in class. He didn't feel comfortable about it, but he trusted Anton's advice and hoped he'd get his reward in the hereafter that followed the years of marking time at school.
In class he sat next to Vilhjelm, who had a stutter. Whenever Vilhjelm tried to answer a question, the teachers lost patience with him—which in turn would make him lose patience with himself, and give up before finishing his answer. Knud Erik took to whispering the right answers in his ear or writing them on a scrap of paper. Soon he'd become a kind of ventriloquist, with Vilhjelm as the dummy through which he channeled the knowledge he refused to show his teachers. Over time a friendship grew between the two of them.
Vilhjelm took home his best school report ever—and Knud Erik his worst.
His mother gave him an accusing look.
"What's happening to you at school?" she asked. In her voice he heard concern, budding panic, and anger. But mostly anger. She was a different person now, and he was glad of the change. If she'd remained permanently close to tears as before, he'd never have been's able to pull this off; he'd have been too busy being her trusty little helper. Nowadays she lectured him, and he hardened himself to her just as he hardened himself to his teachers. She was a part of the regiment of women he had to endure before he was granted his freedom.
"You're a strange boy," she said to him.
The words stung him; they felt like a rejection. For a moment he had the urge to throw himself into her arms and beg forgiveness. Part of him still desperately wanted to be reconciled with her, so he could be the big boy again, and she could be the poor little mother who needed him so badly. But she was no longer helpless, and her anger taught him to give as good as he got, and to stand firm.
Anton, meanwhile, remained guarded in his attitude to Vilhjelm. He wasn't keen to amass all the runts of the playground as his followers, and his interest in Knud Erik was mainly due to his connection with the late Captain Madsen, who in Anton's eyes grew into more and more of a hero as Knud Erik retold his tales. Anton had heard