We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [35]
Lorentz never hit back. He'd put up with anything to avoid being shunned. And we strung him along because we needed someone we could bully without the risk of punishment. Perhaps he thought we tolerated him. But we didn't; to us he was nothing but the thing we called him when we wanted him to do something: the fat pig.
Sticking together was the only thing Isager had taught us. He never, ever succeeded in turning us into snitches. We'd each rather take the blame than betray a comrade, and Isager knew it. That's why he regarded us all as equally guilty and beat us all equally hard.
Lorentz lay defenseless on the floor while Isager kicked at him. Of all of us, Lorentz was the least guilty, yet even so, not one of us raised his voice to protest the boy's innocence.
Was it solidarity that made us keep silent now too?
Then we heard the familiar wheezing that usually accompanied our excursions when we ran faster and fat Lorentz began to lag behind, struggling for breath. Fighting to sit up, he forgot to shield himself—and Isager, who so far had relied on his boots, now raised the thrashing rope, ready to bring it down on his victim's unprotected face and his fat-girl chest. But something halted him in his tracks. Lorentz's arms were flapping, as though he were facing a new but invisible enemy. His face was turning blue and his eyes bulged in their sockets. He gurgled and gasped. He seemed to be choking.
Isager, at a loss, took a step back, then shoved the rope back into his rear pocket as though nothing had happened and headed for his desk.
By now Lorentz, shoulders still heaving in an agonizing struggle for breath, had managed to sit up. Isager did nothing but watched from the corner of his eye. We could tell that he was scared. Lorentz remained on the floor for the rest of the lesson, in a world of his own, his eyes sightless. Then slowly, his huge body began to relax and his wheezing died down. When he fully regained his breath, he looked around at the rest of us with eyes that seemed to beg that he might be one of us at last.
We looked away. None of us wanted to answer.
ISAGER HAD BEEN a schoolteacher for thirty years. His predecessor, Andrésen, had taught for fifty-one years, but only the old folks remembered him. Isager had met two kings. The first was Crown Prince Christian Frederik, who later became King Christian VIII. Escorted by the schooner Dolphin, his ship had dropped anchor at a stone bridge in the harbor—henceforth renamed Prinsebroen. On his way to Kirkestræde, he'd strolled up Markgade—which was promptly rechristened Prinsegade. Whatever street Crown Prince Christian Frederik put his feet on got a new name. The girls came dressed in white frocks and the pastor gave a speech, but Isager was the star attraction of the visit because the crown prince had come to inspect his pupils.
Twelve years later came another royal visit, this time from the future King Frederik VII, who arrived by ferry in a northerly gale. We were standing on the wharf, debating which passenger might be the prince, when a man in knitted gloves and a cap with earflaps leapt ashore and secured the hawser, saying, "Cold today, isn't it, lads?" That was Crown Prince Frederik.
At school we sang, "We want to be sailors, as long as we live!" (the words were supplied by Isager) and then we were subjected to the teacher's grilling—upon which the crown prince turned to his adjutant and asked him if he could do sums as difficult as those faced by the children of Marstal. The adjutant replied no, and the man who would one day succeed to the throne as Frederik VII announced, "Neither can I."
The calculation that had generated such admiration from the crown prince came from page forty-seven of Cramer's Arithmetic and went as follows: "The Earth goes through its annual course of 129,626,823 geographical miles in 365 109/450 days. Given