We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [38]
We saw his face in the light from Mathiesen's window. For a brief moment his slack expression gave way to the same look of rage he wore on a punishment round, and we fully expected to hear him scream "Rascal!" at the snowstorm. Instead his lower lip drooped and his eyes returned to their vacant look.
Now, outside, he was nothing but a shadow against the snowdrifts.
We followed him for a while to make sure that he was heading home via Kirkestræde. He made progress laboriously, getting stuck in drifts and shoveling himself free frantically with his hands. This might have helped him warm up, but it didn't speed him on his way.
We could have got him right there and then.
Only the oldest of us were out that night. Niels Peter had sneaked downstairs from his attic room and left via the back door. Hans Jørgen had lied and said he was visiting a friend. His father was away on a long voyage that winter and his mother had started treating him like a grownup. Josef and Johan Isager were not with us, obviously.
We all knew that our plan would mean trouble in some form or other the next day. But an extra beating made no difference to us.
Lorentz begged to be part of it.
"Please, please let me," he said.
"Haaaaaaaaaa," we said, imitating his wheezing when he was out of breath. "We'll be running fast. You're no good."
In fact, if we'd really loathed him, we would have let him join us. He had no idea what we were saving him from that night.
We waited for Isager on the corner of Kirkestræde and Korsgade, the crystals in the falling snow reflecting the starlight above us. Then we spotted him, a shadowy figure slowly growing in size among the glimmering snowflakes. The darkness protected us, and we had tied our scarves around our faces so that only our eyes were visible. Our breath felt hot behind the wool. We were shadows ourselves, a pack of wolves in the snowy night.
We started bombarding him with snowballs. We came up close, hitting him hard and with precision. But it was only fun and games. So far, at least. Just a gang of boys throwing snowballs.
One knocked his hat off. He staggered forward to pick it up. Then another, crusted hard with ice after being lovingly molded in a hot and vengeful hand, slammed right into his ear, which was already burning in the severe cold. It might as well have been a stone. He touched his head.
"Rascals!" he screamed. "I know who you are!"
He took a step toward us, and a snowball smashed him right in his face, blinding him. Then a direct hit to his neck. He raved in pain.
"Rascals!" he screamed again.
But the power was gone from his voice. He was moaning now—and he was scared.
That was what we wanted. We'd moved on from fun and games. Now he'd see us for what we really were. With every backward step he took, our fear shrank; we'd tasted our own strength and it had whetted our appetite. Outside the classroom he was nothing but an old drunk, alone in a winter storm. But we didn't see him like that. We had Satan himself in our grasp. And having captured the bringer of all evil, we'd show him no mercy—for if we did, we'd stay scared the rest of our lives. Hans Jørgen had once brought Isager to his knees and twisted his arm behind his back, but even then, he'd kept his power over us, and Hans Jørgen had let him go.
But this time there'd be no escape.
We backed off briefly and he cleared the snow from his eyes. Still he's didn't see us. He seemed to think he was safe, but that was our plan. He gave up looking for his hat and stumbled on through the drifts, mumbling to himself. We knew he was cursing us. Then we attacked again. Harder snowballs this time. Pure lumps of ice. And there was no missing at such close range. It was like pounding him in the face, first one cheek, then the other, forcing his head to jerk from side to side. This was our thrashing rope. We stayed silent while he grunted and moaned. We would have loved to break every bone in that detested face,