We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [92]
"Captain Hansen didn't make it," I responded curtly, feeling a pang of conscience at my second lie.
"You could probably do with a bath and some lunch. You can make your report afterward."
A native servant dressed in whites as immaculate as his master's prepared me a bath. When I'd removed my filthy, torn clothes, I examined myself in the full-length gilded mirror. Its frame was far too elegant for the sight that greeted me. I'd grown lean and angular, and my body was covered in bruises. My face too bore witness to my recent trials: it was scored with half-healed cuts and scratches. One bisected my right eyebrow, while another made a blood-red line across my cheek. I looked like a drunken sailor fresh from a brawl rather than a man who'd been shipwrecked, and I wondered why the consul hadn't told me to clear off at once. I'd got the impression that my report on the shipwreck would be purely a matter of form: that no inquiry would be held, and no official authorities would become involved. It would have been easy enough for me to blend in with the other inhabitants of Apia, where no one would have noticed an extra vagrant on the beach.
The lie I was telling wasn't even necessary. Having told it, there was no withdrawing it now—but Heinrich Krebs was unlikely to unmask me, or even try to. I guessed that he simply wanted confirmation of his own importance. My role now was to enable him to play the benefactor and provide him with some distraction—for clearly a hurricane was not novel enough in these parts to count as excitement. That said, he gave the same impression as most of the other white men I'd met in the Pacific: behind the façade of civilization and order, you sensed they all had something to hide.
Not that Heinrich Krebs's secrets were of any interest to me. I'd made enough discoveries recently to last me a lifetime.
As I stepped out of the bath, I noticed that a white suit had been laid out for me on a chair, and on the floor beside it was a pair of chalked white canvas shoes. Heinrich Krebs was lending me his own clothes—but as I was considerably taller than he was, both the trousers and the jacket were too short, and I couldn't even button the shirt. I had to forgo the shoes entirely and appeared at lunch barefoot. I still looked like a vagrant—but a lucky one.
The dining room was pleasantly cool. Floor-length white curtains filtered the light from outside. The table had been set with a damask cloth, china, silver, and crystal glasses. I've sat at many dining tables since, but never one that could match that of Heinrich Krebs.
Then he appeared. He'd taken off his hat, and his sandy hair was combed back and held firmly in place by a viscous pomade.
The table was set for two.
"You live alone?" I asked.
"I'm in the process of establishing myself. My wife and our three's children will join me later." The food was brought in. "A little surprise," Heinrich Krebs said.
When the china serving dish was placed in front of me, I blinked in disbelief. Not knowing the name of the wonderful dish in German, I said it in Danish: "Flæskesteg."
"Yes, flæskesteg," my host said, in almost flawless imitation of my Danish. "I have, of course, visited Denmark, and found that the Danes and the Germans share a fondness for pork. The crisp crackling, which I know you Danes value so highly, you'll have to do without, I'm afraid. The talents of my otherwise excellent cook do not extend that far." Krebs was studying me. He gestured at the food. "You can take many things with you. You can re-create your home, surround yourself with your treasured objects and your native culture, read familiar authors, eat the dishes of your childhood, and speak your own language, just as we're speaking mine now. And yet it isn't the same, because there's something you can never re-create. Perhaps even the very thing you once wanted to escape. Why does one leave in the first place? I often ask myself that question. Why are you here? You have been