We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [303]
"Do it then, goddammit!" Knud Erik cursed.
Outside the gunner kept firing as if his hands had frozen fast to the trigger. Then, through the rasping of the cannon, they heard the noise of the Junkers's engine die away. Had the pilot decided to spare them after all? They remained on the floor, unable to believe that the danger had passed. Surely any minute now, the plane's engine would roar over them again, and they'd be finished.
Total silence. The machine cannon on the bridge wing was quiet too.
"It's over," the gunner said.
They were still shaking as they scrambled to their feet. The Junkers was now a tiny dot on the horizon. The pilot must have been on his way home after an expedition when he spotted them. He must have had only one bomb left, and chanced it.
Once again, the Nimbus had proved herself to be a lucky ship.
Dear Knud Erik,
Grind a man into the dirt and observe him beneath your heel. Is he fighting to get up? Does he cry out against the injustice he has suffered? No, he stays there, proud of all the punishment he can take. His manhood lies in his foolish endurance.
What does such a man do when he is held underwater? Does he fight to get up?
No, his pride lies in his ability to hold his breath.
You let the waves wash over you, you saw the bulwark smashed in, you saw the masts go overboard, you saw the ship take her final plunge. You held your breath for ten years, twenty years, one hundred years. In the 1890s you had 340 ships, in 1925 you had 120, a decade later half that. Where did they go? The Uranus, the Swallow, the Smart, the Star, the Crown, the Laura, the Forward, the Saturn, the Ami, the Denmark, the Eliezer, the Ane Marie, the Felix, the Gertrud, the Industry, and the Harriet: vanished without a trace, crushed by the ice, rammed by trawlers and steamers, lost, smashed to pieces, stranded by Sandø, Bonavista, Waterville Bay, Sun's Rock.
Did you know that one in four ships that sailed the Newfoundland route never returned? What would it take to make you stop? Fewer cargoes? But freight rates kept falling: they halved in a decade. You simply lowered your wages, ate even worse food, gritted your teeth. You practiced holding your breath underwater.
You sailed where no one else dared or wanted to. You were the last.
You didn't have chronometers on board. You'd stopped being able to afford them. You could no longer work out the longitude, and when a steamer passed you, you would signal, "Where am I?"
Indeed, where were you?
In despair,
Your mother
WALLY WAS THE first to notice it. The others were on the bridge, supervising the unloading, when he turned to them and remarked enthusiastically, "Can't you see what a great place this is?"
They shrugged in their duffel coats and looked out over Molotovsk. Half-sunken, battered ships languished in the port, while along the pier stood vast piles of rubble, which were the remains of warehouses. Farther off in the low, rocky landscape loomed sooty barracks-like buildings roofed with tarpaulins. It was the height of summer, and although the sun was in the sky twenty-fours hours a day, it did little to warm the air. In the perpetual light they felt as if their eyelids had been cut off and they lived in a world where sleep had been abolished. The rocky gray landscape, the sunlight, and the knowledge that they were one hell of a way from civilized society filled them with a creeping, woolly-headed lethargy.
"Fetch the straitjacket," Anton snarled. "The boy's gone mad. He thinks he's in New York."
"This is better than New York. The chief engineer may have gone blind as a mole down in the machine room, but surely the rest of you can see what I mean."
And then they did. The workers unloading and placing tackles around the ammunition