We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [37]
"You're sure it wasn't Mr. Isager?" they'd ask.
And we'd shake our heads. We hardly knew why, but we never pointed the finger at him as the cause of our daily injuries. Instead, we blamed ourselves.
"Well, perhaps this will teach you to stay out of trouble."
And we would get a clip on the ear.
"Look at your sister, she comes home neat and tidy every day."
It was true. But then again, our sisters had Nothkier, the assistant teacher, and he never beat them.
This was another malign effect of Isager. He followed us home unseen and sowed discord.
WINTER ARRIVED, and with it the frost. The boats were laid up in the harbor, the harbor froze over, and an ice pack formed on the beach. Island and sea became one; we inhabited a white continent whose infinity both beckoned and terrified us. We could walk as far as Ristinge Klint on the island of Langeland if we wanted to, marching across frozen ships' channels between sandbanks that lay like white hills, collecting snowdrifts fringed by ice packs. It looked so wild, windswept, and deserted.
This new landscape even forced its way into our streets, where a blizzard of snowflakes whirled and danced on the heavy drifts, then leapt back into the air to obliterate the world once more. We were desperate to get outside and join the dance, to take our skates down to the harbor or trek out across the fields to the hills at Drejet to fight the farmers' sons with snowballs and hurtle down the slopes on our toboggans.
Isager was an obstacle to this, but winter was on our side: without a stove in the classroom, we couldn't cope with the cold—but the stovepipe was easily obstructed, and once the room filled with smoke, he had to send us home. On these occasions he'd stand in the doorway, treating us to a clip on the ear by way of goodbye as we filed out.
"You rascal," he would mutter to each of us. By now he could barely breathe and his eyes would be red behind his spectacles. But like the captain of a sinking ship, he was always the last to leave the classroom: if he could still see well enough to strike us, even though he was hacking and coughing, he'd stay on to do it. He hated us so much that he'd rather choke than miss out on a single blow.
So only on Sundays could we devote ourselves to the snow without paying for it with a sore neck.
***
One day Niels Peter deftly dismantled the stovepipe and stuffed his entire sweater inside, whereupon the stove duly started to smoke as planned—but the sweater too caught fire. Isager stifled the blaze immediately. But the flames that burst briefly from the pipe wouldn't be forgotten in a hurry: even Isager was silenced by the episode.
If we could smoke him out, what else could we do?
On cold winter evenings Isager would go visiting. He frequently called on Christoffer Mathiesen, the grocer, his most fervent supporter on the education committee. A few other local people sat with him around the grocer's mahogany table, but not Pastor Zachariassen. Isager wasn't on good terms with the pastor, who was embarrassed by his poor teaching. Mr. Mathiesen, on the other hand, was honored to entertain the learned gentleman who had been patted on the back by royalty.
"And as the king said to me—" was Isager's most frequent remark in that company. He would sit there in his tailcoat, with a two-finger toddy in front of him. Describing his royal encounters served as a form of payment for the steaming brew, which he never raised to his lips without referring to it as "the best medicine against the cold the good Lord ever created."
As the medicine took effect, his lower lip would begin to sag and his spectacles slide toward the position Albert described as "fair weather," revealing a face we never saw at school: not amiable exactly, but relaxed.
When Isager left Mathiesen's house in Møllegade that night, he was unsteady on his legs. It had snowed all evening, and now there were drifts against the stone steps and all across the street. There was no street lighting in Marstal,