We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [307]
"I know what you're thinking. It's no use you trying to make any kind of sense of what you go through in this war. No use blaming yourself, either. The only thing that helps is forgetting. Forget what you've done, and forget what others have done. If you want to live, then forget."
"I can't."
"You'll have to. It's the same for all of us. Talking about it does nobody any good. It only makes it worse. One day the war will be over. Then you'll be back to who you were."
"I don't believe that."
"We have to believe it," Anton said. "Or I don't know what'll become of us." He placed his hand on Knud Erik's shoulder and shook him gently. "Come on, Skipper. Time for us to turn in."
The next day, he saw her. She was standing on the wharf in her uniform, with the machine gun hanging from the strap. Even before he looked up, he felt her gaze resting on him as if they had a secret connection, a kind of sensitivity to each other's presence that created a bond. He didn't understand its nature; her look never developed into a smile or a nod that might betray her real intentions. He held back too. Only their eyes connected. In her rigid face, unapproachable as any other soldier's, he saw no sign to suggest that this exchange was anything but a test of strength; its only possible outcome would be one of them finally falling on their knees in surrender.
A sudden thought filled him with terror: she'd execute another German prisoner working in the harbor. And she'd do it for him, as if a dead body might provide a new link in some secret connection that strengthened by the day. To his relief, nothing happened.
The unloading was proceeding slowly, and they guessed that it would be some months before they'd be able to leave. By now most of the crew had found themselves girlfriends, and all of the women appeared at the club with red lips. Several had eyes lined with kohl, and in the breaks between the dances, there was unashamed hand holding.
It was another seven days before she appeared in the club.
He was disappointed when he saw her. Had it not been for those eyes, which, as usual, stirred a tickling sensation at the nape of his neck, he wouldn't have recognized her. Her thick ash-blond hair was parted at the side and fell heavily across her forehead. She'd put on red lipstick like the others, and she stared continuously at him from the table where she sat alone. The other women seemed to keep their distance from her. He immediately stood up and went over to ask her to dance. The others, both men and women, were staring at him now. It was the first time the captain of the Nimbus had joined them on the dance floor.
She was wearing a white, freshly ironed shirt. She had lines around her mouth and was probably in her midthirties. Life had left its mark on her, but she wasn't unattractive.
It wasn't her appearance that disappointed him. But now that she'd taken off her uniform and laid down her machine gun, she was just a woman like the others. She was no longer his angel of death. He'd been mistaken about that. She'd simply looked at him the way any woman looks at a man and there'd been nothing else to it. He'd been so affected by all the destruction he saw, and participated in, that his normal sense had evaporated. All he sought was oblivion and he sought it with such intensity that it was indistinguishable from a desire for obliteration.
He put his arms around her and she pressed herself against him. She was a good dancer and they stayed on the dance floor for a long time. She never took her eyes off him, and he could see the longing in them. She wanted something that he felt he no longer was: a human being. She wanted his tenderness and his embrace. But he had nothing to give to anyone, only a brutal, urgent lust that sought its own relief.
How could she hope for anything, she who'd shot down a defenseless human being before his eyes and made herself a part of the horror that surrounded him?