We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [304]
"Take a look at her behind," Helge said, pointing.
Not that you could see much: they wore felt boots and baggy boiler suits that concealed their curves. All they could do was guess at the bodies hidden under the shapeless clothing, speculating whether they were slim or thickset. Some of the women were young, though most seemed to be over thirty. It was hard to work out their ages. They had broad faces and gray, unhealthy complexions. Their hair was hidden under caps, though a few wore headscarves.
Not that any of that mattered. It had been three months since the men's last shore leave, and the sight of women in the hold or on deck was enough to stimulate the most important component of sexual desire: imagination. They started talking animatedly about their favorite parts of women's anatomy, while mentally stripping the dockers and guards in the insane hope that beneath the coarse, filthy uniforms every single one of them was a pin-up girl: a butterfly trapped in a grubby gray cocoon.
Knud Erik was wearing his captain's uniform. Normally he never put it on, but it was universally acknowledged that the Communists respected uniforms and nothing else, so when you negotiated with the Soviet authorities, it was smart diplomacy to look as official as possible if you wanted to get anything done. He noticed that one soldier kept staring at him, and he imagined it was his uniform that attracted her. He met her gaze and held it. As far as he could tell, she was slim and about the same age he was; she had ash-blond hair fixed in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. He didn't know why he looked back at her. It was a reflex he couldn't control, though he realized that it could be taken as a provocation. She didn't turn away but stared straight back, as if testing him. He couldn't interpret it any other way, though he had no idea what the point of it was.
His concentration was broken by a loud bang. A crate of ammunition had slipped out of its tackle and crashed onto the wharf, where it had sprung open. One of the German prisoners immediately began rummaging inside it, probably hoping to find something edible. Two female dockers grabbed hold of him and pulled him away. He struggled briefly, then gave up and let himself be dragged along the wharf. The unloading had stopped.
The soldier who'd been staring at Knud Erik the moment before shouted a brief command, and the dockers released the prisoner. The soldier stepped up to him, released the safety catch of the machine gun strapped across her shoulder, and fired from a short distance. She glanced briefly at the skinny figure lying prostrate before her, as if to make sure he was dead, then looked up at Knud Erik. This time he was in no doubt what she was up to. It was a challenge.
***
That evening, as he sat alone in his cabin, slowly numbing his brain with the bottle of whiskey that he never touched during the day, he had no doubt who the woman was. She was an angel of death, come to claim him. This crazy—even revolting—notion, which he didn't have the strength to resist, filled him with desire, and for the first time since the nights of bombardment in London he got an erection.
The town, which lay a couple of kilometers from the port, was nothing but a handful of wooden houses arranged around a square. The streets radiated from it like wheel spokes that led nowhere: a few hundred meters away, the wilderness began.
The town had an International Club, and that's where they headed that night. The first sight that greeted them was a badly stuffed, scrawny-looking bear standing on its hind legs, with its mouth open, baring a row of yellow teeth. The two fangs were broken, as if snapped off by someone afraid that the creature might spring to life and attack the customers.
Behind a table in