We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [238]
That autumn Klara bought the five steamers, the Unity, the Energy, the Future, the Goal, and the Dynamic, from the widows.
We were pretty taken aback by this purchase, which would have required determination and willpower, not to mention the kind of capital we'd never have believed she had. We didn't know precisely how much she paid, but it had to be in the millions. For a long time we spoke of precious little else. She'd acquired a new, enigmatic quality. We'd finally caught on that she was up to something. But what it was, we didn't know.
The widows had never found a replacement for Isaksen. There'd been several applicants for the post of managing director, but none of them was found suitable, and the company's skippers had shaken their heads. The rumors about why Isaksen resigned had traveled far and wide, so the qualified candidates stayed away, and the company was almost at a standstill. But there was still a chance that a man with the clout to sway the widows and revive their halting business might one day appear and make the town flourish again. This was a risk Klara Friis wasn't prepared to run.
"But, my dear, there's really no need for you to do that," Ellen said when Klara put forward her proposal, after lengthy discussions with Markussen. Ellen seemed to believe that Klara was buying the ships only out of gratitude for the coffee and vanilla cookies they'd served her so frequently.
"It's the least I can do," Klara said, making it sound as if the enormous purchase was a display of good neighborliness, though she was fully aware of the craziness of this conversation. Perhaps the widows had an inkling too, for Ellen turned unusually pale, and Emma and Johanne's cheeks were scarlet. They glanced at one another, and Klara knew that despite their chronic indecisiveness, they'd cave in.
She hadn't exploited them. She'd offered them neither too much nor too little for the steamers, given the unfavorable state of the world market. Profit wasn't what drove her. What drove her was the damage to Knud Erik's hands.
It was the sea gashes that had made her buy the steamers. The salt-water blisters on her poor son's fingers, wrists, and neck had repelled her: they'd brought to mind the wounds of African slaves, chained and dragged across a continent before being stowed on ships and sold. They must have had scars like that, where raw iron had gnawed at bare skin.
This was Klara Friis's mission: to free the slaves. She wanted to re-lease Knud Erik from the chains that his mad and misconceived manhood had shackled him to. Sailors who had barely returned home, bruised and battered by their constant battle with the sea, would set off again as soon as they could, as if begging for more, unable to get enough of the lashings that came at them from all sides: the storms, the waves, the cold, the poor food, the dreadful hygiene, the brutality, the violence. And the weakest always bore the brunt. It had to stop.
A few days later Knud Erik informed her that he'd signed on to a new ship. He would get his sea bag and sea chest ready himself.
THE KRISTINA WAS a topgallant 150-ton sail schooner. Her captain, Teodor Bager, was a lean man with an anxious, sunken face, which neither the sun nor the wind seemed to touch. He remained equally pale in summer and winter, in northern hemisphere and southern. People said he had a weak heart and he should have retired, but he was too miserly to do so. His only love was his eighteen-year-old daughter, Kristina. He'd named his ship after her.
There were five men in his crew, including Knud Erik, who was now fifteen. He'd graduated from the galley to the deck as an ordinary seaman and regarded himself as an experienced sailor. He knew his compass. He'd mastered eye splice and short splices, and he could whip a rope. He could heave in the stays, veer, and tack.
The boy in the galley, feeding the