We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [280]
It was like walking a tightrope. He was a father to her. She'd never known what it was to have one, and had always longed for one. But because she had never been able to satisfy her longing with a real person, she didn't know that a father had limitations. Now at last she was learning them. Yes, he was a rock she could cling to. But he was also a rock she could smash herself to pieces against. She learned to keep her distance and this distance lay at the heart of their relationship. Distance was his element.
Markussen was old now. Rheumatism had bent him so that it looked as if he was growing in the wrong direction. He walked beside her, hunched over his cane, taking tiny, cautious steps as if doubting the solidity of the ground beneath his feet. His helplessness filled her with maternal tenderness, an emotion she hadn't felt in a long time. But she knew she should keep those feelings to herself. Not because he'd be offended if she recognized his increasing decrepitude: indeed, he made a joke of it, laying bare his own weakness with the confidence of the powerful. That's the luxury of power, and power was what he was all about, she could see that clearly. He was surrounded by people who depended on him, and in their attentiveness and helpfulness he recognized nothing but rational self-interest. Of course they'd want to keep on the good side of him. It benefited them personally.
She took him for a stroll through Marstal; Markussen himself had insisted on it. His photograph was never in the newspapers, so no one recognized him. She was obviously entertaining a distinguished visitor, but people knew no more than that.
They walked past the vacant plots, and as he cast his glance across the nettles growing high behind the tarred fences, she was aware that the sight intrigued him. He eyed her sideways and smiled, acknowledging her willpower. Money could have been growing in there instead of weeds.
"What do they think of you?" he asked.
"That I'm a bit odd, maybe. But they don't think ill of me."
"They should." He laughed conspiratorially. He saw the destroyer in her. The avenger. The punishing fury who operated underground. This was what attracted him, and this was the pact they'd entered into: he'd make all his experience available to her, and then let her do the opposite of what he'd have done himself. He created; she demolished everything. What she wanted to do besides that, he didn't understand.
They turned toward the harbor. Moored to the black-tarred posts lay the true evidence of her efforts—a sight that made him point out, not for the first time, that her big chance was now.
There they lay, with their huge black hulls and their tall narrow funnels, towering as high as the smaller masts, which were there only because of the derricks. Two thirds of the town's tonnage was distributed among those five steamers, the Unity, the Energy, the Future, the Goal, and the Dynamic. The rest were smaller ships, including the last three or four Newfoundland schooners; the others had been converted to motor-powered vessels, which sailed only local routes. The hope of progress had foundered on a rock. And the rock was Klara.
"My steamers will stay where they are," she said. "I won't allow them to sail again."
Markussen nodded. Klara Friis was an apt pupil. She was strangling Marstal. The town needed to get back on its feet after the long depression that followed the 1929 crash, sentencing large parts of the merchant fleet to idleness.
Instead, she made sure that nothing happened.
The laid-up steamers represented an era that, thanks to Klara Friis, was gone forever.
People talked about it. She was well aware of that. But she hadn't been lying when she told Markussen they spoke no ill of her. They saw the steamers idling in the harbor