We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [219]
"Look what I've found!" he shouted.
We all stared at the object he was holding in his hands. At first we couldn't make out what it was. Then Helmer gasped.
"It's a dead man!"
The others could see it now too. Anton was holding a skull, green from long years in the water and covered with seaweed, which hung from the cranium like a drowned man's hair. The lower jaw was missing. Where the eyes used to be, two gaping holes stared with the inscrutable glare of the dead. The bared teeth in the upper jaw grinned in malicious triumph, as though the head anticipated the fate that awaited us when we too became sad human remains.
"No," Anton said. "This isn't a dead man. It's much better. It's a man who was murdered." He lowered his arms and held out the skull to us. "See for yourself."
We formed a circle around him. He turned the skull of the murdered man so we could view it from all angles. At the back of it we saw a big hole.
"It's a Stone Age man," Knud Erik said. "Someone whacked him with an ax."
"No, this is no Stone Age man," Anton declared. He looked around at all of us in turn, pausing between each of us to heighten the suspense. "I know who it is."
"Who is it?" we asked at once.
"I'm not going to tell you right now. But this was the treasure I asked you to find."
Knud Erik and Vilhjelm were well aware that Anton was lying. We hadn't found the head of James Cook. But we'd found something, and Anton always knew how to turn the unexpected to his advantage. "I want you to place your hand on the head of this murdered man," he said, "and swear not to breathe a word to anyone. Or I'll never tell you who it is."
We all placed our hands on the skull. The slimy weed that sprouted on it was disgusting to the touch, and we shuddered. "Swear," Anton commanded. And we swore in unison that we'd never reveal the secret.
"Now tell us who it is."
"Later," Anton said, and made a calming gesture, as if asking us not to get too excited.
We rowed out to the perches and retrieved the rest of our clothes. The sun and the wind had dried them, but none of us had remembered to gather the clogs. We supposed that after Helmer capsized the boat, the current had taken them.
Vilhjelm couldn't find his trousers either, and his embarrassment worsened his stammer.
"Give him yours," Anton said to Knud Erik. "That'll make your mother really cross." This remained Anton's recipe for freedom: annoy your ma and pa as much as you possibly can.
People stared at the bunch of barefoot, trouserless boys walking home through the streets. We were clearly in for a thrashing.
But we didn't care.
Nothing could touch us the day we found the murdered man's skull. We had a secret. And a secret meant power.
A COUPLE OF days later Anton went to see Kristian Stærk to suggest they join forces to form a new gang, which, he reckoned, would be the mightiest in town. Though "the strongest" was the phrasing he chose, quite deliberately, to flatter Strong's leader. He'd taken Knud Erik and Vilhjelm with him as deputies. Their most important task was to bear the wooden casket containing the murdered man's skull, which Anton considered to be vital leverage in the delicate negotiations ahead.
With Kristian Stærk, Anton's biggest disadvantage was his age and his height. Kristian was fifteen and much bigger than Anton. He had broad shoulders and a thick neck, with a remarkably small head perched on top. The prominence of his ears once prompted Anton to remark that his head had "unfolded its wings because it was planning to fly off and find a body that fitted better." But no one came out with things like that when Kristian Stærk was within earshot, because he loved nothing more than dealing out horse bites and Chinese burns, gripping the skin of your wrist between his clammy hands and twisting.
He was an apprentice at an ironmonger's, Samuelsen's in Kongegade,