We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [237]
Suddenly Knud Erik could see him: a ridiculous, filthy man in patched clothes with a broken pipe in his mouth and a clean-shaven chin sticking out of a beard that looked as if it belonged on a graying orangutan. He'd learned to suffer Pinnerup, yet the first mate had taken up his entire field of vision, like bad weather or a force of nature. Now he saw him as if from the top of the mast, a man the size of an ant on the deck. He saw him through the eyes of the dockers.
He climbed up on the wharf, sat down next to them, and dangled his legs just as they did.
That was Pinnerup's cue. He got up and went over to Knud Erik. The dockers sat up watchfully. One of them flicked his cigarette so that it landed at Pinnerup's feet, then jumped down onto the deck and looked him in the eye. Pinnerup's face tightened.
"Come on, what are you waiting for?" said Pinnerup, lifting up a pack from the deck. The dockers looked at one another and winked. One patted Knud Erik on the shoulder and offered him a cigarette. Then they took their places and the chain resumed.
Knud Erik stayed on the wharf, smoking the first cigarette of his life. He inhaled without coughing. He studied the hand that held it. Every single finger bore a long, painful welt where salt water and harsh ropes had split the tender skin open. Sea gashes, they called them.
"Piss on them," Boutrup had advised. "It rinses them. And then bind them with a bit of wool. That'll close them up."
The sun warmed Knud Erik's face and he felt good.
WHEN HE SIGNED off from the Active, his mother asked him about the fountain pen. She'd given it to him as a confirmation present so he's could write letters home.
"A lot of good that did," Klara commented.
He'd also received a pillow-and-eiderdown set and eighty-five kroner. He'd spent forty-five on a pair of new wooden clogs, which the shoemaker said would last him a lifetime. He bought his oilskins from Lohse's in Havnegade, where he also acquired a folding knife with a white bone handle. A seaweed mattress cost him two kroner, and he'd bought himself a green-painted sea chest with a flat lid as well. He needed work clothes: a sweater and a pair of moleskin trousers. When he was fully equipped, every last øre of the eighty-five kroner was gone.
He'd written to his mother twice during his fifteen months at sea. Both letters basically amounted to the same thing: "Dear Ma, I'm fine."
He couldn't exactly write to her about the time he doubted his decision to go to sea. It would have been the same as agreeing with her view that a sailor's life was brutal misery. Nor could he write about how he'd overcome that doubt, because that meant the die was cast, and he was committed to being a sailor. So he hid himself in his letters: between the "Dear" and the "Love" there was silence.
She could see that he'd developed. But she saw more than that. The gulf between them had widened with every inch he'd grown, almost as if his growth were rooted in spite and disobedience. He looked even more like his father. He had the same blond, curly hair and strong chin. But he had her brown eyes, and when she caught sight of him in an unguarded moment, she still felt she had a share in him. If he possessed an ounce of sense, he'd tire of life at sea in the end.
It was no use talking, or trying to pressure him. Instead, she served his favorite dishes in the months he spent at home, waiting for his next job. An unexpected warmth emerged between them, but then she realized that he'd misinterpreted it, thinking she'd finally accepted his choice. He showed her the scars on his hands and the saltwater blisters and told her about the loathsome Pinnerup, proud to show off his newly acquired status as an experienced sailor.
But she was outraged when she saw what the sea had done to him.
"I hope you've learned your lesson now!" The words escaped her before she could stop them. She heard their sharp desperation.
He looked at her and guardedly said nothing. But she could read the message in his eyes: You don't understand.
No, she didn't. She felt her own