We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [60]
I ordered a gin—for myself this time—and mentioned my father's name. That was all I did mention, because by now I'd learned my lesson. I could have said that Laurids was a Hottentot with fiery red, woolly hair that stuck out on all sides and three legs instead of the usual two and they all would have said yes, we remember that Dane well. So I left it at the name.
He stood there for a while. "What was that name again?" he asked. "And the year?"
"Fifty or fifty-one," I said.
"Just a minute."
He ordered a waiter to take over behind the bar and disappeared into a backroom, returning with a large ledger tucked under his arm.
"I never remember a face," he said, "but I do remember a debt."
He put the ledger on the counter and started leafing through it.
"There!" he exclaimed triumphantly and pushed the book across to me. "I knew it."
He pointed to a name. Laurids Madsen, it said.
I can't claim I recognized my father's signature. I still hadn't learned to read when he disappeared, and he wasn't a man to write his name down too often.
"What does he owe you for?" I asked.
"He owes me for two beers," Anthony Fox said.
I found the money and paid him.
"We're quits now."
"Don't tell me you traveled halfway around the world to pay Madsen's debt?"
I shook my head.
"He's disappeared. I'm looking for him."
"Sailor or convict?"
He gave me a searching look.
"Sailor."
"Then I suppose he must have drowned, like sailors do. Or jumped ship."
He flung out his arm in a vague gesture that might encompass the Pacific Ocean, with its tens of thousands of islands, as well as the ice-covered pole south of us, where no one had ever set foot.
"It's a big world. You'll never find him."
"I found his debt," I said.
"People who disappear don't always want to be found. Where does a sailor belong? On deck, or with his missus and kids? Sometimes he gets confused. Then he starts living like his life's a spinning top that he can spin again and again. He drowns ten times, and he comes back ten times—and each time he's got a new woman in his arms. Back home, his family's mourning him, while he's sitting next to a cradle on another continent, chuckling away. Until he gets fed up with that family too. Trust me. I've seen it happen."
"I didn't know that sages tended bar here in Hobart Town."
He grinned at me. "You're his son. Am I right?"
"I thought you said you never remember a face. Do I look like Laurids Madsen?"
"I've no idea. I don't remember him. But I recognize an offended man when I see one. Only a son would pull a face like that when his father's accused of being a cheat."
I turned to leave.
"Wait," Anthony Fox said. "I'm going to give you a name."
"A name?"
I stopped in the doorway of the Hope and Anchor.
"Yes, a name. Jack Lewis. Remember it."
"And who's Jack Lewis?"
"The man your father drank a beer with."
"And you remember that man ten years on? I suppose he owes you for a beer too."
"He owes me for a lot more than a beer. Find him for me, and jog his memory about that debt."
I turned back to the bar, where my half-empty glass of gin was still waiting. Fox hadn't cleared it away. He'd known he could pull me back. It was early in the day, and I was the only guest at the Hope and Anchor.
"Do you want something to eat?" he asked.
"Not if it's lamb." I was sick of lamb. It was the only meat they ate in Hobart Town.
"I've got sea bass." We sat down at a table. "There's plenty of room here," he said. "Australia's bigger than Europe and it's still needing more citizens. The Pacific Ocean takes up half the globe. I call it the fatherland of the homeless."
"Did you ever