We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [232]
And Herman would never guess what had hit him. That was the most satisfying part of all. Although he'd got the lads fired up about it, Knud Erik hadn't told them the real reason for their persecution of Herman. It was far too risky to tell them the secret of Holger Jepsen's murder. Who's Jepsen? they might well have asked, and been stupid enough to take their question to the adults, and then there'd have been trouble. No, he'd done something else. He'd taken them to Anton's home and dug up Tordenskjold, right in front of their eyes. He'd shown them the gull's limp neck, its dead eyes, its wide-open beak, the feathers that had lost their shine, and the broken, dislocated wings. The body was crawling with maggots. "Look," he'd said. "Herman did this."
After that, they'd itched to see the seagull killer lying at their feet, transformed into a mass of bloody pulp. His bones should be ground to meal, his skin should be flayed and hung from a tree, his guts should be dragged through the streets. But Knud Erik proposed something far better. They could make him shrink into something less than a man. They'd see his hands shake with fear.
The stares that had haunted and followed the terrifying killer everywhere he turned had been nothing but a boy's imitation of a mother's reproachful look.
No, Herman would never guess what had driven him out of town. We hadn't accused him of a man's murder.
We'd accused him of a seagull's.
HERMAN WAS GONE, but the horn-rimmed spectacles still sat smack-dab in the middle of Anton's face, and he still had no future. The Foreigner wasn't due home until the summer, and in the meantime the boys' confirmation was coming up. Without discussing it with his mother, Anton went up to his teacher, Miss Katballe, and informed her that after seven years he was now quitting school. It was the best day of her life, she replied. With unexpected politeness he bowed, thanked her, and said, likewise.
He was confirmed and publicly swore to denounce the devil and all his works. He didn't know if Hell meant the singe of fire or the gnawing of worms. All he knew was that he was already there, because for him, Hell was a life cut off from the sea and the world it offered. He'd never find out if French girls were the liveliest, or if Portuguese girls really did stink of garlic, or even what garlic was. During the service, he stood beneath the marine painter's altarpiece, which depicted Jesus saving his disciples from the raging storm. He wasn't seeking salvation from the sea, but access to it.
When Pastor Abildgaard placed his hand on Anton's head, he shut his eyes tightly behind his glasses. He was in Hell, and yet he didn't want to go to Heaven. He felt homeless.
Regnar came home and threw a glance at his son. "Why the hell are you still here?" he said. "Why haven't you gone to sea? I even bought you a sea bag."
Anton said nothing. He just waited for the mockery to start.
"Is it because of your spectacles?" his father said. "Runs in the family. I'm so nearsighted, I can't see farther than my own beer gut. Only no one's noticed." He chuckled noisily.
"You can't go to sea if you're wearing spectacles," Anton said patiently, as though talking to a child.
"No," his father answered, unperturbed. "Not if you want to waste your life on board some crock of a schooner. But you're going to be a proper sailor. You want to get yourself a job as a machine man on a steamer. Nobody cares about spectacles there."
So Anton was apprenticed to Hans Baldrian Ulriksen, the smith in Ommel. He learned to tell the difference between a sink hammer, a set hammer, a lock hammer, and a shoeing hammer. He knew when a horse needed a wedge shoe and when it needed a ring shoe. He handled hoof irons, hoof jacks, files, and rasps the way he used to handle the dead man's skull and Albert's boots. They started calling him the Horse Friend. He built his own bicycle so he could cycle the three kilometers to Marstal every evening to attend