We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [207]
That was the day he started living for himself.
IN BOYE'S SHIPPING company only the widows remained: three women stunned not just by grief at the sudden loss of their husbands but also by the task they'd inherited, a task as unfamiliar as it was titanic. Marstal's future lay in their hands. They alone had sufficient capital to switch the town's fleet to steam power, as the times demanded. The age of sail was over; the men had known it and now it was up to them to turn their prematurely deceased husbands' vision into reality. The company owned five steamers already: the Unity, the Energy, the Future, the Goal, and the Dynamic—names that spoke of a master plan.
In theory the widows knew what had to be done, but they didn't know how to put theory into practice. They'd turn up at the shipping office every morning and have coffee served to them while the day's documents were presented. Munching their home-baked vanilla cookies, they brooded over freight offers, maintenance and crew costs, and proposals regarding acquisitions and sales. The whole world was clamoring for their attention, and every piece of information, every figure, every question mark felt like an insurmountable challenge.
No one ever saw them actually put their hands over their ears, but they might as well have. Every decision was discussed at such length that by the time they'd made it, it was too late. The fact that the Unity, the Energy, the Future, the Goal, and the Dynamic, built to transport huge cargoes safely across the sea, were mostly laid up in port was due not just to unfavorable market conditions, but to the confusion of their owners.
Poul Victor's widow, Ellen, the oldest of the three, was tall and stately, just as he had been. But any willpower she might once have possessed she'd ceded to her enterprising husband, and he'd failed to return it when he went to his grave. His sisters, Emma and Johanne, were more confident. Despite being thorough matriarchs in their own homes, outside them they were at a loss. They looked to Ellen—and she looked to the cemetery. But the defaulting Poul sent her not the slightest hint.
The women owned a fair amount of land around the town, and they started selling it off. It was Klara Friis who bought it. She sat in Prinsegade and watched the three widows as a vulture watches some miserable animal about to collapse from thirst and exhaustion, and when three of the Boye lots came up for sale, she took her first bite.
All three lots lay along Havnegade, the first on the corner of Sølvgade, the second at the corner of Strandstræde, and the third, a large field enclosed by a fence, at the end of Havnegade, which was where the town ended too. Farmer Sofus had once grazed sheep in the enclosure and raised hens and pigs there, ensuring a supply of live provisions for his ever-growing fleet. But those days were long gone, and the field lay fallow. Everyone said Klara had been wise to buy the three lots: she could build on them.
But Klara Friis did no such thing. Stinging nettles still grew tall there, and the apples and pears from the trees Farmer Sofus had planted were still targets for birds and thieving boys. Marstal watched and wondered. What had Klara wanted with them, then? we asked ourselves. But we didn't ask hard enough. If we had, we'd have got an inkling of what lay in store for us.
Klara still dressed modestly, as if unaware of her change in status. This made a good impression on the three widows, who regarded thrift as a virtue. They weren't snobs and didn't look down on her, though their wealth was far more established than hers. They'd been surrounded by servants for several generations, but they still took part in the housework. They baked their own vanilla cookies every Christmas, a generous batch that over the course of the year grew rock-hard like the sea biscuits eaten every day on the company's