We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [205]
We knew that repetition wasn't related to his stammer. It really had been at the very, very, very last minute.
"And then he gave you a good thrashing, didn't he?" Anton asked, because that's how things were at his house.
But Vilhjelm hadn't been thrashed, not on this or any other occasion, and we didn't understand why until we met his father, who looked more like a grandfather. Vilhjelm had been an afterthought, and he behaved toward both his parents as we normally did toward our grandparents. He was kindly and devoted, and they all spoke to one another very carefully, as if the family's problem was not deafness, but rather sensitivity to any form of noise. By a strange coincidence his mother was deaf too.
Anyone can work out that not much talking went on in this family. When his parents did speak, it was in an earnest petitioning tone, as though they were making a humble plea. But they touched one another all the time, holding hands and stroking one another's hair and cheeks. Vilhjelm didn't just receive physical affection, he gave it to his parents too, all the time. No one ever hit anyone in Vilhjelm's family.
So Vilhjelm got something different from a good thrashing from his father the day he nearly drowned. We didn't realize what it was until Anton asked, as he always did on these occasions, "What would you say was the worst thing about drowning?" and Vilhjelm gave a very strange answer.
Of course Anton, who knew an astonishing amount about the world outside Marstal, thought that the worst aspect of drowning would be missing out on all the adventures he imagined having. He could reel off the names of the most famous red-light districts in the world. It certainly wasn't during our geography lessons in Vestergade that he'd learned about Oluf-Samsons-Gang in Flensburg, Schiedamsedijk in Rotterdam, Schipperstraat in Antwerp, Paradise Street in Liverpool, Tiger Bay in Cardiff, the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, the Barbary Coast in San Francisco, or Foretop Street in Valparaiso. These were discussed in Weber's Café and, with the flinty expression of a connoisseur hardly appropriate for a boy of his age, he assured us that French girls were the best and Portuguese the worst because they were too pushy, and besides, they stank of garlic. If we asked what garlic was, he'd roll his eyes to indicate that our stupidity knew no bounds. He also knew the names of all the different kinds of booze he looked forward to tasting one day: Amer Picon, Pernod, and absinthe—now that, he said, was something to really knock you flat. As for beer, he'd remain a loyal Hof drinker, no matter where on earth he might end up. Belgian beer, which many praised, was nothing but weak piss.
"You can list every red-light district in the world," he concluded, "and every brand of booze, and then you can add them all up and you'll find the bottom line proves mathematically that drowning is a terrible waste."
Knud Erik said that the worst thing about drowning was that he'd never see his mother again. He said this partly out of duty, because he felt he ought to say it, but also because he still longed for her.
Vilhjelm said the worst thing was that his parents would be sad.
"That means that you don't live for your own sake, but for your ma and pa's," pronounced Anton. He elaborated on this theory. If you were obedient, good, polite, well behaved, and dutiful, it meant that you lived for others and not for yourself.
"That's why I'm none of those things," he said. "Because I live for my own sake."
When Vilhjelm had hung, soaked and wriggling, from his father's rescuing arm, he'd looked into his eyes and what he'd seen there was neither anger nor fear, but grief. What kind of grief it was or what had caused it he did not know, but he felt instantly that he had to make sure that his father never had reason to be sad again. He instinctively