We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [98]
So instead, I stayed. I knew exactly why.
Because I wanted him to embrace me. Just the once.
"Right, let's go home and get a bite to eat in Korsgade," he said.
Had he completely lost his mind? Korsgade! Rasmus, Esben—and Albert! And it followed that there would have to be a sister called Else too somewhere. It felt like staring into an abyss. Here, in the shade of the palm trees, my father had re-created the family he'd turned his back on. I might have been able to take the betrayal if he'd been living an entirely different life—if, I don't know. But this!
The small dark-skinned boy trotting alongside me was claiming to be Albert. So what did that make me? A first draft?
My heart was unmoved by the sight of the boys darting after papa tru. They were my half brothers—but I felt no kinship to them. All I could feel was sudden, fierce bitterness that overwhelmed me. Now I understood Heinrich Krebs's warning. Hell, I even approved of his mockery. I watched my father's muscular back above his sarong. My father! No, he wasn't my father. He was the father of the little dark-skinned boys. Our blood tie was gone.
I watched the red dust beneath my feet; the hens, wandering freely; the woven fences with the snorting black pigs behind them; the airy huts. I heard the rustle of the palm tops. In the days when I'd dreamt of the Pacific, that sound had called to me. Now here I was, reunited with my father, and it was no dream come true: it was a loss of hope. I'd rather have found his grave than the man himself.
"Papa tru," I called out to his back.
He didn't even turn around.
"Papa tru." I mocked him. "That's what you taught me to call you. Do you actually know what that means? Papa tru—my true father. But what kind of father are you? One big lie—that's what you are!"
I should have turned and left at that point. But I followed him to his hut.
***
He shouted something and I understood that he was demanding food for his guest and himself. A woman appeared in the opening to the hut. I didn't look at her. I didn't want to know anything. I had no idea whether she knew about me. We sat there, waiting. The children formed a circle around us.
Laurids looked at my boots again.
"Give them to me," he said.
"You're not getting them!" All of my disappointment was expressed in those words. "You're not getting them!" I repeated.
He gave me a baffled look, as if he hadn't anticipated a refusal.
Then I looked him in the face and saw a peculiar lethargy in his eyes—and I knew that he was lost. He was no longer my father. Nor was he Laurids Madsen anymore. He'd left everything behind, including a part of himself. I saw now that all the names from home that he'd strewn around him were nothing but a desperate attempt to grasp at something that was gone forever. My rage gave way to horror. I wanted to get up and leave. I looked around for my sea chest, which I had set down, but it was nowhere to be seen.
"The boots," Laurids said again.
He'd recovered his commanding tone, but I'd seen evidence of something else in his eyes. So I ignored him and began looking about for my sea chest, which I found over by the woven fence: the boys had dragged it there and were just opening it. They giggled in anticipation. The oldest one put his hand inside and rummaged around.
Then he froze. His eyes widened as though he'd discovered a poisonous snake, and he screamed. His brothers scattered. A word, whose significance I didn't know but could easily guess, echoed through the palm trees and across the whole village.
Laurids froze too, and the lethargy in his eyes gave way to terror.
I can't explain how, but I knew instantly what was going on in his addled brain. The boy had found Jim—and Laurids now believed that I was a ruthless killer who wandered about with his victims' heads in his sea chest. Maybe