We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [59]
"I finally got rid of Isager," Albert said many years later.
"But we don't want to hear about him," we said. "We want to hear about the boots."
THE VOYAGE
I SIGNED ON for Singapore and from there to Van Diemen's Land, to Hobart Town, the last port where my father had been seen. But it wasn't just his final port: it was everyone's dead end—and if it wasn't yours, it soon would be, if you didn't get yourself out in time. Picture the workhouse in Marstal: that's what Hobart was like.
The year was 1862. I met a man with one eye who'd been there since and never had a day of freedom for the better part of forty years. He'd counted every lash they'd given him during his imprisonment: three thousand in total, he said. He was free now, but his will was as broken as the skin of his back, which had more ridges than a washboard. He wasn't the only one. He'd tell you his story in exchange for a glass of gin, and with forty years on the wagon to make up for, he'd happily tell it ten times a day. But in Hobart Town there weren't many to listen. The place was full of outcasts and ex-cons like him, who'd murder for the price of a drink.
Hobart had been a penal colony since the first house was built there in 1803. Now they called it a town of free men, but since everyone was either a former convict or a guard, the distinction didn't mean much. They were all men used to either giving beatings or receiving them. The option of living together like men with their heads held high didn't look like it had occurred to anyone. No one there ever looked me straight in the face. They'd keep their eyes on the ground, and if they looked up, it was to judge the depth of your pocket and whether what you had in it was worth killing for. People said they'd steal the joey from a kangaroo's pouch. Kangaroos carry their young in a pouch, did you know that?
There were plenty of old men in Hobart Town, but few young ones. Anyone who had the strength or the slightest hope left in him fled for greener pastures. Whole flocks of filthy children ran wild, with no sign of any fathers. The mothers were left in peace though, because, they say, convicts lose their appetite for women when they're long in the clink and go for other men instead. Whether that's true or not I don't know and don't care to know. But one thing's for sure: I wasted my wages on those scumbags.
I started my search at the police station, but they just said the same thing that all the other authorities I spoke to said: "If a man wants to lay low and vanish without a trace from the surface of the earth, then he'll pick Hobart Town."
But papa tru hadn't had any reason to disappear, I knew that. The officers just shook their heads and said they couldn't help me.
So I walked up and down Liverpool Street. Every second pub was called the Bird-in-Hand. That made sense to me. In Hobart Town alcohol sang sweeter than any other bird, and if you've nothing else to believe in, then you'll believe in whatever you can grab hold of.
I bought gin for anyone who looked as if he might have a story to tell. And they all did. They'd start by asking me about papa tru: height, nationality, what he looked like. Then, oh yes, they remembered him well, they'd say, and they'd scratch their filthy hair until the dead lice dropped out, and look mournfully into their empty glass and tell you in this humble voice that another gin might just jog their memory. And sure enough, now they remembered him: the tall Dane with the big beard and the distant eyes! He'd stayed at the Hope and Anchor in Macquerie Street. Then he'd signed on to the...
Oh, but the name of the ship escaped them. They'd give their empty glass another wistful look and as soon as they'd had a refill, the name of the ship would come out.
Within a few weeks it was clear there'd been a thousand Laurids Madsens in Hobart Town, and my papa tru had signed on to a thousand ships sailing to a thousand destinations. I didn't have a single bird in my hand, but I had thousands in the bush. Laurids Madsen wasn't a man. He was an entire race.
Even so