We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [281]
It wasn't until that evening, when they were sitting down to the dinner her housekeeper had served, that Markussen aired an objection that made her temporarily doubt her own wisdom.
"What if," he said, smiling, as if merely testing her intelligence, "what if the men run off to sea anyway? There are no longer any significant shipping companies in Marstal, so they might just decide to sign on elsewhere. They won't find it hard to get work. They've proved their skill over the course of several centuries."
For a moment he reminded her of Frederik Isaksen. "They won't do that," she retorted sharply. "Every year the Navigation College admits fewer and fewer students from Marstal."
"Congratulations," he said, and raised his glass. "Then you've almost completed your mission." She couldn't avoid noting the sarcasm in his voice, but nodded to him all the same over the rim of her glass.
"You don't understand me," she said.
"You're right. I don't understand what your goal is. You pretend to do one thing while simultaneously doing the exact opposite. A library, an orphanage, a museum, a home for old people: you act like the town's benefactor, while pulling its means of living right out from under its feet."
"The sea was never a real way to make a living."
"I built up this country's greatest shipping firm. I'm a shipowner."
They both fell silent. They'd reached the point they always reached.
"Your son's a sailor," he said, out of nowhere.
She looked down. "And his father was lost at sea. You don't need to remind me of that. Can't you understand what I want?"
"Yes," he said. "You want the impossible. You want to whip the sea until it begs you for mercy."
That was the last time they saw each other. She'd known it would be. Their conversation had come to an end. She'd learned what she needed to learn, and he'd conveyed what he'd wanted to convey. He'd built a monument to Cheng Sumei, and even though that monument existed only inside Klara Friis's head, at least he'd shared the story. It was up to her to extract meaning from it. He'd never managed to fathom it himself.
Klara Friis had put herself in Cheng Sumei's place. Like her, she was a player who never revealed her hand, and they both had an excuse for their subterfuge. Cheng Sumei's was love. She'd wanted to make herself irreplaceable to a man who'd never previously needed one particular human being any more than another, and then she'd built an empire around him. True, he hadn't needed her heart, her sex, or her lips. But he couldn't do without her talent for business, and the cynical methods she'd learned in a lawless town. And these became her gift of love.
Klara too had a gift of love to offer. Not to a man, but to Marstal. She wanted to save it from the sea. She wanted to return its lost sons—boys to mothers, husbands to wives, fathers to children.
Oh, she knew well enough that the night of the flood would never really end. She'd still keep plunging her hand into the waves over and over again, trying to save Karla. Every time she sold a ship or laid it up, every time Marstal was ruled out as the possible home for yet another ship, every time the shipyard received one order fewer from one of the town's shipowners, every time a young man found a livelihood on land, every time the number of students from Marstal at the Navigation College declined—then her hand grasped Karla and pulled her upward through the dark water. The flood would abate, and for a while the pressure would ease. She dreamt of a globe on which the seas retreated and the landmasses merged, offering people a home where they could all live together. Fathers, mothers, and