We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [255]
Vilhjelm had survived on sea biscuits, but they'd run out some days before. During the storm a freak wave had cleared the deck and the galley and taken the rest of the provisions with it. The galley boy was already dead: the lifeboat had torn itself loose and crushed him against the bulwark. He didn't know what had happened to the other seamen. He assumed they'd been washed overboard. He had no concept of time anymore and no idea how long the Ane Marie had been trapped in the ice.
He spoke in a very weak voice and there were long pauses between the sentences. He didn't sound like Vilhjelm at all.
"The sea biscuits were disgusting," he said. "They were frozen solid and I had to keep them in my mouth for ages to thaw them. I was really scared that the maggots would start wriggling in my mouth when they warmed up. But they'd died from the cold. So I ate them too."
"You probably owe your life to those maggots," Dreymann remarked dryly.
Knud Erik stared at Vilhjelm. He realized suddenly why the emaciated boy in the skipper's berth didn't sound like his friend from Marstal.
"You're not stammering anymore!" he exclaimed.
"Aren't I?"
Rikard and Algot had arrived. They all stared at Vilhjelm as if he were the most wondrous sight they'd ever clapped eyes on. Here lay a boy who couldn't just munch a biscuit: he could articulate properly too.
"Well, would you believe it," Dreymann said. "Seems that keeping your mouth shut can cure a stammer."
"I didn't keep it shut," Vilhjelm said with his new voice.
"So who did you talk to, if I may ask?"
"I read the Merchant Navy's Book of Sermons that the skipper had. Every day for hours. I walked up and down the deck and read it aloud. Everyone else was dead. And it was so quiet."
"Helmer!" Bager roared. "Where's that blasted boy? We need to get that roast in the oven."
They all looked toward the door and then back at Vilhjelm. He'd turned his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. He'd fallen asleep again.
Rikard and Algot retrieved the dead first mate and captain from the Ane Marie, carried them across the ice on laths, and laid them out on the deck of the Kristina. Dreymann wrapped the bodies in canvas and left them there, face-up, waiting for the ice to break so they could be buried at sea. Captain Hansen had once been a hefty man, and his body still looked big under the canvas. Cold and hunger alone couldn't have finished him off; age and the physical weakness it entailed must have played a part too. He'd been in his late fifties, far too old for the North Atlantic.
The first mate, twenty-seven-year-old Peter Eriksen, didn't take up much room next to his skipper. He had a wife and two little girls back in Marstal, and there they were, not knowing what had happened to him. Why had he succumbed and Vilhjelm survived? The first mate of the Ane Marie lay on the deck like a great unanswerable question. Knud Erik looked at the contours of his face, which you could faintly make out through the canvas, and thought of his father.
Bager also stood there, contemplating the dead. He'd known Captain Hansen well and was probably asking himself a similar question. Why him? Why not me? The two ships had left Iceland roughly a week apart. It could just as easily have been Bager brought to rest on Captain Hansen's deck. As he gazed at his friend he held the Book of Sermons in his hand, and from time to time he read it. Vilhjelm had given it to him, and he was presumably rehearsing the ceremony for burial at sea.
By now Vilhjelm had recovered enough to leave the berth and take a walk on the deck. He even asked if he could help out in the galley. For the time being there were sufficient provisions, and when Vilhjelm and Knud Erik wanted some time alone, they'd give Helmer a break and send him to the fo'c'sle. But he was reluctant to leave: apart from the skipper's cabin the galley was the warmest place on the ship. Besides, he was convinced that the two older boys would begin to share secrets the moment he was gone, and he had the young boy's appetite for