We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [21]
A small pond that lay between the warehouses made our yard seem a complete landscape in itself. The eye rests easier on a fence than on a bayonet, and the pond fired our imagination much more than the headstones in Rendsburg, so outside too we found something new to enjoy: we built model ships, fixing scraps of fabric to masts made of sticks and staging naval battles on the smooth surface of the pond. Half the ships sailed under the Danish flag, while the other half—which appeared to be stateless—represented German rebels, whom we could not bring ourselves to honor even with their own colors. During our battles we bombarded the flagless German fleet with pebbles, and we Danes won every time, suffering losses only when one of our fleet took an accidental hit from a stray pebble.
We clustered in our hundreds around the ponds, cheering every time a pebble struck its target and a toy ship tipped over. This was our hour of restitution.
But Laurids turned his back on us, fuming with contempt.
"Yes, that's all we're good for. If only we could win when it really matters."
Laurids spent most of his time in the straw, staring out a window that faced the river Elbe, watching the ships sail to and from Hamburg. His eyes followed them as far as they could, and his heart went even farther. He longed for the sea.
After his trip to Heaven, he'd become a different man.
During the day we'd relax in the sunshine. Benches had been put out in the yard, and some of us played cards. We dictated our letters home to a literate seaman from Ærøskøbing, Hans Christian Svinding. He was never without a notebook in his hand and his eyes were always on the alert; he wrote everything down. But most of the men just stared vacantly into space, halfway to a schnapps-induced haze. In the evening there would be singing and dancing, and the heavy floor planks would creak under our weight. The cadets made the most noise. They didn't mix with the crew but stayed behind the closed doors of their rooms, their drunken shouting drowning out even our music. They were mere boys and couldn't hold their drink. Not one of them was older than sixteen; most were thirteen or fourteen. The youngest was twelve. Many of us had sons their age or older, yet as junior officers the cadets were our superiors, though they knew nothing and could do nothing either. We had to stand to attention to a bunch of cabin boys.
Speculation about Commander Paludan's desertion at the moment of greatest peril remained rife. Why had our commander got into the boat before everybody else? A soldier from Schleswig started the rumor that Paludan had claimed a German officer arrived on board the Christian the Eighth and commanded him off the ship before the wounded could be brought ashore. Paludan protested bravely but was told that if he disobeyed, the bombardment would resume. However, no one on board the Christian the Eighth had known anything about this officer, whose name was supposed to be Preuszer, and the German rebel army denied any knowledge of him. The soldier from Schleswig said he thought that Commander Paludan had invented Preuszer as a cover for his own cowardice.
When Little Clausen heard this story, he opened his mouth to defend his commander: his own honor, as a Dane, was at stake. But he couldn't think of a single argument to make. In fact, the story sounded all too plausible. We'd been led by dishonorable men. Ejnar too stayed silent, but his eyes filled with tears of shame. Laurids swore.
Commander Paludan's treason didn't light the fire of rebellion in us; instead, it sent us more frequently to the schnapps pail. As our disgust at our captivity grew, our manners coarsened.
The cadets became a target for our anger. We'd already cracked plenty of jokes about their smooth chins, but only behind their backs. Now we told the little men to their faces, "Pull down your trousers so we can see if you're hairless there too."
The cadets' leader was a fourteen-year-old