We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [227]
Not even the eye patch, which made him look quite formidable, changed matters. Especially because Anton refused to hand over Albert's boots and the dead man's skull. Without them, Kristian was unable to perform the initiation rites of the Albert Gang, and he didn't have the imagination to come up with new ones.
Without the boots and the skull, the Albert Gang seemed to lose its soul. In fact, Anton had been its soul, and Kristian Stærk had been nothing more than Anton's right arm. Now he was a right arm with no head, and that was the end of it.
The gang dissolved and new factions emerged. But things were never the same again. The truth is, Marstal became a more peaceful town once Anton got his spectacles. He sat alone in his attic bedroom in Møllevejen. When we learned about General Napoleon and his exile to St. Helena, we were reminded of him. But we judged Anton's fate to be sadder than Napoleon's, because Napoleon created his own misfortune. He'd lost his final, decisive battle, but Anton hadn't lost anything. He'd just become nearsighted.
Kristian withdrew from gang life altogether and no longer needed to beat up smaller kids to prove his worth. Instead, he concentrated on his apprenticeship with Samuelsen. He regarded himself as a grownup, and the ironmonger had come to share this opinion. He'd noticed that the chief effect of Kristian Stork's conversion to adulthood was that the stock of canes, which Kristian had considered part of his armory, stopped diminishing abruptly.
Initially, Kristian had felt that the score between him and Anton had been settled peacefully. Anton had said sorry and Kristian had said that he almost pitied him, the poor nearsighted devil, for having to wear those ugly glasses. But when Anton refused to hand over the skull, Kristian realized that he had plenty of reasons to bear him a grudge. First and foremost there was the business of his eye. Second, Anton had always tried to outmaneuver him and make him look a fool. It was his fault that Kristian had lost control of the Albert Gang, a position of power he secretly missed every time he held a cane in his hand. His newly acquired adulthood went no deeper than that. The sum total of all these reasons was the conclusion that he was entitled to revenge. And, vindictive as he was, he chose the most devious and cruel payback he could imagine.
Anton had entrusted him with the name of the murdered man. And in this case, or so we'd heard, if you knew who the victim was, you'd automatically know who'd killed him. So Kristian decided to tell the murderer that Anton could prove his guilt.
One day Herman entered the ironmonger's shop to buy a folding ruler. When the two of them were alone for a moment, Kristian blurted, "Anton Hansen Hay knows that you killed Holger Jepsen." He hadn't exactly thought through the wording in advance. His ears were rocking madly. "He has his skull as proof. And there's a big hole in it."
If Herman hadn't been as clever as he was, he'd probably have grabbed Kristian Stærk by the collar there and then, and given him a thorough shaking until he revealed where Anton kept the skull. Instead, he wisely played the part of the injured innocent—which entailed whacking Kristian across the head and sending him flying into the tool drawers.
"What the hell do you think you're accusing me of, boy?" he shouted.
Samuelsen came rushing in from the backroom.
"What's going on here?"
His voice sounded frightened. Like most people, he was afraid of Herman.
"I'm teaching your apprentice some manners," Herman said's calmly.
Turning