We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [220]
In Anton's case, it was all the opposite. The adults were no fonder of him than they were of Kristian; the mothers, especially, looked askance at the boy who'd blacked out half of Marstal with a single shot. But we town boys idolized him. Anton never minded whether people were bigger or smaller than him because he was always more ingenious, and that was enough.
Kristian Stærk received him more favorably than he'd expected; his reputation preceded him. But Anton was well aware that his strongest card in their forthcoming talks was the contents of the wooden casket borne by his two deputies, Knud Erik and Vilhjelm. He was adamant that the name of the gang should be the Albert Gang, and he'd extended his plans for the initiation ritual: now, potential gang members would not only wear Albert's boots to pledge allegiance but also place a hand on the head of the murdered man. He'd scrubbed off the seaweed and polished the skull, hole and all, till it shone. Anton had decided that the name of its owner should remain a secret to all but the two leaders of the gang: Kristian Stærk and himself.
He asked Knud Erik to lift the lid of the casket, then solemnly took out the skull and handed it to Kristian Stærk. As he took it in his hands, his protruding ears rocked back and forth: we could tell he was frightened of it, but we could also see the cunning boy's brain, trapped in its adult body, racing at full tilt. The head appealed irresistibly to his imagination and he knew instinctively that it would have the same effect on his peers. Whoever owned the head would have the biggest and strongest gang. He nodded wordlessly, signaling that he agreed to Anton's terms.
"And we're not talking about some Stone Age man clobbered with an ax here," Anton said. He made Kristian squat so their heads were level and whispered the name of the murder victim in his ear. Then they looked each other in the eye to seal their pact.
The first task awaiting the newly formed gang was to procure weapons and equipment for the new recruits. The Margarine Man, who sold butter and margarine from his horse-drawn cart, gave us lids from his empty barrels. We attached straps to them and they became our shields. Kristian Stærk proved himself especially useful by procuring bamboo canes from the ironmonger's, which we turned into bows. We used garden stakes as arrows, but they weren't really much use, though they could give you a bruise if you got hit on the forehead with the blunt end. We tried sharpening one with a knife, but the wood wasn't hard enough to take a point. It was Anton who thought of tying sail needles to them. They not only hurt more, but they pierced the skin too: after a battle, some of us looked like hedgehogs. Especially in the summer, when we had less clothing to protect us, the needles went straight into bare skin. This was the life. Our games were becoming dangerous, and danger was what we wanted. We had a name to honor and the skull of a murdered man as a mascot. Only the actual threat of death made fighting worthwhile.
We had certain rules. All members had to be more than ten years old. Knud Erik and Vilhjelm, who'd only just turned ten, were exceptions; other boys their age weren't admitted. The initiation test wasn't for the weak of spirit. You had to jump into the harbor clutching a big stone, sink to the bottom, walk under the keel of a ship, and surface on the other side. If you dropped the stone while you were down there, you could wave goodbye to membership in the Albert Gang. Few adults would have been able to pass, but instead of scaring off applicants, the test attracted us in huge numbers. We all longed to prove our abilities, and we staggered around in the bottle-green darkness with bursting cheeks