We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [234]
When, after serving him coffee for the first time, Knud Erik collected his cup and saucer to wash up, Pinnerup let out a roar and clocked him on the jaw. The cup and saucer were his personal possessions: no one else touched them. And to prove his attachment to his property, he spat in the cup and rubbed at it with his dirty thumb.
"Filthy swine," he cursed. "Monkey brain, snot rag, devil spawn!"
Every other morning, when he was on duty and came to rouse Knud Erik, he'd appear in the fo'c'sle with a thick rope and stand there, gathering his strength, before he began lashing out at the sleeping boy. He always went for his head, but the narrow berth hampered his swipe and diminished the force of his blows. Wakened by the first stroke, Knud Erik would scramble to the bulkhead, where the first mate couldn't reach him. He never uttered a sound: instinct told him that if he gave in to his fear, he'd have a hard job recovering.
One morning Olav, a crewman Knud Erik had known in the Albert Gang, arrived a few minutes before Pinnerup.
"Time to wake up," he whispered, tapping his friend on the shoulder. Knud Erik arranged his eiderdown and pillow so that in the dull light of dawn, they'd look like someone sleeping. The first mate lashed away as usual: when he realized the deception, he seemed to slump. His hand, still clutching the rope, fell limply to his side, and he shuddered as though in a high fever.
"Spawn of the devil," he hissed. "One day I'll get you with the belaying pin."
Then he stormed up the ladder and onto the deck.
When Pinnerup was at the wheel, Knud Erik would inevitably be wakened during the night watch to make coffee or to climb up and rope a sail in the pouring rain. Down below the sea raged, and in the darkness he could dimly make out the foam. Freezing raindrops fell, mingling with the salt on his cheeks. It wasn't impotence or self-pity that made him weep. It was rage and defiance.
At the beginning of his first voyage he'd cried, with his head buried in his bedclothes. He'd cried over his dead father and his rejecting mother, whose coldness he believed was his own fault, and he'd cried over his own nagging feeling of inadequacy. He wasn't sure he'd made the right choice in becoming a sailor. He was paying the price for it now. But he couldn't change his mind and go ashore. The loss of face would be unbearable.
Pinnerup used sleep deprivation as a form of torture. For whole days and nights Knud Erik might get no rest at all. He was called on incessantly, often in the deepest night, and there were times when he'd have to climb the rigging wearing only his underpants. He'd heard stories about what it was like to be the youngest on board. The inexperienced were sent to work in the topgallant sails, twenty-five meters up. Able seamen never ventured that high. You were sent up to the mainmast to take in the vane sail, wobbling on the footropes, with one hand clutching the hand ropes and the other grasping the canvas. You did it even if you'd never been taught how, or if you suffered from vertigo, or if you were just a clumsy idiot who was a danger to himself. You just got yourself up there and hoped you'd get down again in one piece. Climbing around on the rigging of moored ships in the harbor, for fun, had been a kind of preparation for this, but out here the sea was high and the wind was screaming, for God's sake! Everyone took it for granted that you'd come back alive, but the way you saw it, you'd just become a survivor. Not that anybody noticed.
One time he'd hung up there with the narrow deck far, far below him, frightened out of his skin, every muscle so cramped from the strain that he thought his hands would let go by themselves,