We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [241]
He recalled their confirmation classes, marking the end of their childhood, where they'd sat in church every Sunday beneath the model ships suspended from the ceiling: symbols of Christian salvation. He'd looked up at the altarpiece, at Jesus calming the storm on Galilee with just a gesture. He'd joined in the old sailor's hymns that they'd all had to learn by heart.
Abide with us and turn away all evil,
Send good winds and kind weather,
To see us safely home!
That's what they'd sung. Had that hymn been on Vilhjelm's lips in the final minutes before the ship went down? Or had he, like Knud Erik in front of the marine artist's Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, begun to doubt?
Where had God been when the Hydra vanished without trace, with his father on board? Perhaps God was like Vilhjelm's father? Perhaps He was sitting with His back to us, and just when it really mattered, heard nothing?
It was pure luck who came home and who didn't. Knud Erik could find no meaning in any of it, and he thought this must be how Vilhjelm had felt when he sank for the third time: God was deaf and hadn't heard him.
They had to clean the hold to prepare for the cargo of salt cod. They hosed it down and scrubbed it for five days, covered the bottom with a layer of spruce branches, layered birch bark on top, and nailed more bark to the lining. The smell was pungent and fresh: it was the unfamiliar scent of mountains and woods. They were building a log cabin in the bottom of the ship. Salt cod was a demanding guest. Its lodgings must be ready and waiting.
Every day around midmorning a curious event broke the monotonous routine of loading. A boat approached diagonally across the harbor, passing close to the Kristina. At the oars sat a young girl with black hair, cut short so that her neck was bared. She was tanned, with full lips, Oriental eyes, and strong brows. She rowed like a man, with long dogged strokes, and her skiff moved quickly. As she passed the Kristina she always glanced up. The crew would stand along the rail and stare back at her, but she never turned away: she seemed to be searching for a particular face.
After a couple of days Knud Erik grew convinced that she was looking at him in particular. One day their eyes met, and he blushed and had to look away himself.
Rikard and Algot talked about her afterward. She always wore a baggy sweater and moleskin trousers, which made it difficult to comment on her body. She was slim, though, that much they could see, and this spurred their speculations. Judging by her dark eyes and generally Oriental appearance, they were sure she was a descendant of "the cunt ladder."
"That's the ladder the hookers in Bangkok use to get on board the ships," Rikard explained. Knud Erik said nothing. He pondered the look he'd exchanged with the girl and blushed every time he recalled the way her eyes had rested on him. Mostly, though, he thought about Vilhjelm. He couldn't sleep at night, and during the day his head buzzed.
The next time the girl came by, Dreymann waved at her. She waved back, and this took the tension out of the situation. She always rowed the same stretch, out to a certain rock, behind which she disappeared. She'd reappear a couple of hours later, but on her return she didn't come close to the ship, or look in its direction. Instead, she fixed her gaze straight ahead and rowed hard.
The question of where she was going and what she did when she got there was another topic of discussion. Rikard puffed on the cigarette in its Polish holder and stated his opinion that she was visiting a lover. Dreymann dismissed that as nonsense.
"Look at her," he protested. "She's not a day over sixteen—seventeen at most."
Rikard responded that the girls started early in Newfoundland, and looked around as if he wouldn't mind being interrogated on how he'd come by this special knowledge.
Dreymann said he thought that the girl was going to piano lessons.
"On a rock?" Rikard mocked him.
At least they knew who she was: the daughter of Mr. Smith, a tall, broad man who went about dressed in plus