One dream was different, though. He dreamt he was about to drown.
"I called for my dad. But he didn't come."
His eyes grew blank as he told it. For a moment, he sat just the way he had when Albert met him for the first time, with his shoulders hunched and his head hanging. "And so I drowned." He finished in a dull voice.
They sat facing each other in the boat. Albert took the boy's face in his hands and looked him straight in the eye. "You're not going to drown. It was just a bad dream. If you're ever about to drown, then you'll call out for me. And I'll always come."
The tension left the hunched shoulders. The boy's relief was palpable. A moment later he'd forgotten all about it. He pulled at the oars, not expertly yet, but with enthusiasm. His eyes sparkled.
"Where am I rowing us today?"
They were in the middle of the harbor, and they watched the Memory pass Dampskibsbroen, a black ribbon of smoke pouring from her tall, narrow funnel. Albert stared at the steamer long and hard. He knew she wouldn't return. The boy waved to the town's deaf sand digger as he rowed past them.
"Keep your rhythm steady," Albert ordered.
That night he had his final dream. He knew it was the final one because it began the same way as the first he'd had, thirty years earlier. It was the same voice speaking. "You're heading for danger."
But this time he didn't wake. He wasn't on a ship, as he had been on the first occasion. It was years since he'd last been on one. He could have leapt out of his bed and run onto the balcony and stared into the darkness, but there'd be no shipwreck outside, no people needing to be rescued. He was on dry land, though he no longer knew if dry land was safe. It was an unsettling dream, filled with terrifying episodes. And like the dreams that had announced the coming of the war, he had no idea what it meant.
The next day he told the boy. "Last night I had the strangest dream," he began.
The boy looked up at him expectantly.
"Go on, tell me," he urged when he saw that the old man was hesitating.
"I saw a phantom ship," Albert said. "Well, I saw lots of phantom ships. But that wasn't the oddest part of it."
"What's a phantom ship?" the boy asked.
"It's a ghost ship."
"How did you know?"
"Well, everything on the ship was gray. There were no other colors. Just gray."
"Like a warship?" the boy asked, though he wasn't old enough to remember the day the torpedo boats called at the harbor.
"Yes, like a warship, only it wasn't one. It was a freighter, a steamer, a bit like the Memory, only gray all over."
"And then what happened?"
"Well, now here's the odd thing. It was the middle of the night. But it was as bright as day. There were dazzling lights high up in the black sky. They didn't hang still like stars. They moved slowly down toward the water and when they hit the sea, they went out. But new ones kept coming. On the shore there were buildings on fire, but they weren't buildings like the ones we know. They were big and completely circular, with no windows. And the flames that shot out of them were even taller than the buildings themselves. Big guns were being fired all over the place. You can't imagine their thunder. And airplanes. Do you know what airplanes are?"
The boy nodded. "What did the airplanes do?"
"They dropped bombs and the ships caught fire and sank."
The boy sat very quiet. Then he asked, "Was it the end of the world?"
"Yes, maybe."
"Do you know something?" the boy said. "That's the best story you've ever told."
Albert smiled at him. Then he looked away, out across the sea. There was a part of the dream he hadn't told the boy. He hadn't been able to see the name of the phantom ship in the dark. But he knew, with the strange certainty his prophetic dreams had taught him to recognize: the boy was on board. Knud Erik was there. Right at the end of the world.
ALBERT HAD THE feeling that something in his life was nearing a close. It wasn't just because of the war. He had accounts to settle. The Negro hand on Pastor Abildgaard's desk kept haunting him. Albert too had the remains of what had once been a human being in his care, and it seemed to him that Josef Isager, who was so contemptuous of his fellow men, had acted with more morality than he had. After all, he'd requested a Christian burial for the hand, which he'd once packed in his suitcase like a cheap souvenir, undisturbed that it had been brutally chopped from a human being.
A severed head in a box—was that any different? Surely he owed James Cook a funeral too?
He walked around to Josef Isager's house in Kongegade and knocked on the door. He heard noises inside, but no one came to answer it. Albert knocked again. The noise continued. It was muted by the door, so he couldn't make out exactly what it was, but it sounded like fighting. Someone was running. Then there was gasping, and the sound of a body smashed heavily into a wall. Albert grabbed hold of the knob, and the door opened instantly. He entered the small, dark hall and knocked hard on the door to the drawing room.
"Is anyone there?"
The noise stopped. He pushed the door handle down. Josef was in the middle of the room, with his stick poised, ready to strike. Maren Kirstine was standing on the sofa, looking like a little girl who'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. She'd clearly scrambled there out of fear. Her hair, which she normally kept under a net, was disheveled; gray strands hung down across her distorted face. She was clasping her mouth with one hand as though trying to suppress a scream.
Josef turned to his unexpected guest.
"Are you next?" he shouted, and stepped forward menacingly.
His face, with its heavy, drooping mustache and cold, arrogant eyes, was as formidable as ever, but his aging body was bent and slumped. Albert snatched the stick from his hand and broke it in two across his thigh. A small feeling of triumph went through him. He still had his strength.
"We don't hit women here," he said, and forced Josef onto the sofa with one hand, while holding out the other to the stunned Maren Kirstine. She took it and clambered off.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head, but her old red-rimmed eyes were brimming. Unsteadily, she dragged herself to the kitchen and closed the door behind her. The sight of her cowed back as she left made Albert incandescent with rage. Josef was too dazed to get up from the sofa, so Albert grabbed him by the lapels and started shaking him, backward and forward.
"You beat your own wife?" he yelled.
Josef's hawklike head lolled. His eyes remained cold, but Albert could see how frail the former pilot had grown. If he had any strength left, it lay in his will, not in his hands.
"Ha!" Josef Isager snorted. "I've grown too old, damn it. When I hit her these days, she can't even feel it."
Behind them the door to the kitchen was cautiously opened.
"Please don't be hard on him," Maren Kirstine begged in a pathetic voice.
Albert let go of Josef and straightened up, then stood there helplessly, not knowing what to do next. Josef collapsed on the sofa. He didn't look up. His face was drained, as though his confession of diminished muscle power had sapped the last of his strength and he was unprotestingly surrendering to old age.
"Sit down, please, Captain Madsen. I'll make us some coffee."
Maren Kirstine's voice had returned to its normal pitch, as if all visitors roughed up their host before taking coffee.
Albert and Josef sat facing each other silently while Maren Kirstine moved about in the kitchen. Eventually she came in and set the dining table. Then she returned with the coffee and some pastries. She'd gathered her hair back under the net and wiped her eyes, though they were still red. Once she'd poured the coffee, she vanished back into the kitchen.
Josef's mustache dipped in the coffee as he slurped it. He stuffed a piece of pastry in his mouth and started chewing, spraying crumbs as he did so.
"Why are you here?" he asked. He was still eating. He wanted to show his contempt for the man who'd just put him in his place
.
"The Negro hand—" Albert said.
Josef interrupted him. "Yes, what about it?"
"Why did you give it to Pastor Abildgaard?"
"None of your business." Josef pressed his lips tightly shut and sucked them in. He was still chewing. Despite his drooping mustache, he suddenly looked like a toothless old crone, munching away on her sore gums.
"Is that all you have to say?"
"Yes, and you'd damn well better believe it!"
Josef had finished the pastry and, with his mouth empty, his speech became clearer. He stood up abruptly, pushing the table so his coffee cup toppled, sending its contents flying across the embroidered tablecloth.
"Maren Kirstine!" roared the Congo Pilot. "Maren Kirstine! Your coffee's as thin as piss! I want proper man's coffee!"
Holding the coffee cup in one hand, he flung open the door to the kitchen and slammed it shut behind him. The noise of the cup smashing onto the floor followed soon after.
Albert stared at the door, seemingly making his mind up. Then he rose from the table and left the house.
The next day he lowered the head of James Cook into the sea.
Mørkedybet seemed a fitting place of rest for the great explorer. So many voyages had started here, where the Marstal fleet set sail with the first spring. A grave in the local cemetery would have been too complicated, and he didn't think Abildgaard's nerves could handle a funeral.
He decided to invite Knud Erik to come along for Cook's last voyage. He'd never shown him the shrunken head. It wasn't appropriate for a child, he'd thought. But now he brushed all such considerations aside. He'd filled the boy's head with horror stories about sinking and burning ships, and Knud Erik had loved it. He'd probably enjoy the ghastly head too.
However, the real reason for inviting the boy along was that he intended to give the shrunken head a proper sendoff and wanted the boy as his witness. He suspected there was a moral linked to the story of James Cook—though the more he thought about it, the vaguer he felt about what it might be.
On his first two voyages, James Cook had treated the natives he encountered with respect. He'd regarded them as his equals, but they'd reacted with scorn. So he learned from his mistakes and became brutal and callous instead. In a way, he'd ended up like Josef Isager and the white men in Africa.
Where was the balance in the life of James Cook?
On a ship it was the captain's job to find balance. But a ship wasn't the world: the world was far bigger. Where was the world's balance? Did he even know himself? Was there anything at all he could pass on to a seven-year-old boy?
James Cook had lived under enormous pressure, constantly having to prove his worth to himself and to others. Though Cook had been the great mapmaker of the Pacific, there'd been no chart to help him navigate his own life.
Albert had looked for a father and found none. He'd had to make his own way, and so would Knud Erik. Perhaps he could tell him that. Or perhaps he should say nothing at all. Perhaps it was all the same in the end.
Yet he brought the boy along.
He'd placed the bag with the shrunken head in a makeshift coffin, a wooden casket filled with stones. He positioned the casket on the thwart between himself and the boy.
"It's a surprise," he told the boy. "We'll open it once we get there."
They took turns rowing. Albert did most of it. When it was Knud Erik's turn, he gave it his all. Soon they were in Mørkedybet, looking toward the flat island of Birkholm.
"That's where your mother's from." Albert pointed to the shore. "One spring day she was standing there when your father came sailing. And then she fell in love."
He was making this up. Klara Friis had probably never told the boy about her first meeting with his father, but it wouldn't hurt the boy to add some color and scenery to his parents' love.
"So she knew he was a sailor?"
Albert nodded.
"Then why won't she let me go to sea?"
"She will one day. Your mother just needs some time. She's still upset about your father."
The boy sat for a while. "I want to see the surprise," he said at last.
Albert opened the casket and took out the shrunken head. It was just as he'd inherited it from the captain of the Flying Scud fifty years before, and still wrapped in the same crumbling cloth. Removing the cloth, he held up the head.
Knud Erik stared at the dark face, as wrinkled and lined as a walnut.
"What is it?" There was no fear in his voice.
"It's the head of a man. He died many years ago."
"Do you go that small when you're dead?"
Albert laughed and explained the technique of making shrunken heads.
"How did he die?"
"He died on a beach in Hawaii. He was fighting for his life, but the natives outnumbered him. In the end he was defeated."
"And then they turned him into a shrunken head?"
Albert nodded. Knud Erik looked at James Cook for a while.
"Can I have him?" he asked.
"No, it's time for him to go to the bottom of the sea."
"And he won't ever come back up again?"
"No. He was the greatest explorer in the world. But now he needs a rest."
"Can I hold him?"
Without waiting for a reply, Knud Erik took the head of James Cook and cupped it in his hands. "You died in the end," he said to the shrunken head. "But you fought first." He patted the dry, faded hair of Captain Cook as if applauding his accomplishments.
They wrapped the head in the cloth again and put it back in the casket.
"I want to say a few words," Albert said. And then he said the Lord's Prayer, as he'd done when Jack Lewis, captain of the Flying Scud, had been eased over the side of the ship, wrapped in canvas, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt. He'd not prayed since then.
The casket bobbed briefly on the surface of the water. Then the weight of the stones dragged it down. A few air bubbles rose before it disappeared into the green-blue depths.
Albert contemplated the boy's words to the shrunken head. Knud Erik had extracted his own moral from the little that Albert had told him. There was a kind of wisdom to it. Perhaps the most basic. "You died in the end, but you fought first." As long as the boy held on to this, things couldn't get that bad. Life could throw in its own complexities later.
When they moored the boat at Prinsebroen, the boy tried to leap from the boat to the bridge, but miscalculated his jump and fell overboard. Albert stuck a hand into the water and pulled him out.
Knud Erik laughed. "Let's do it again!"
"You've been baptized now," Albert said. "Once in the church and once in the sea. You're a sailor now."
"Did I nearly drown?" the boy asked, trying to look important.
"Yes, you can boast about that. But not to your mother. Once underwater, twice underwater, but never three times. Remember that."
"What happens the third time?" the boy asked.
"The third time's the shortest journey," the old man said. "The journey that leads to death. It only takes two minutes. Always take the longer journey when you become a sailor. Never the shorter. Remember that."
The boy looked at him and nodded gravely. He hadn't understood any of this speech, but he sensed that something important had been said.
Albert pulled the boy's clothes off him and hung them to dry on the front thwart. "Come on," he said. "Let's do some more rowing. It'll warm you up."
"IT CAN'T GO ON," we said about the war. "It has to end."
We didn't know anything and we didn't understand politics.
"The good times will be over soon," the old skippers said, as they sat in the summer sun on their benches by the harbor. Their lined faces, tanned to leather, gave nothing away. With their eyes hidden beneath the shiny brims of their caps, it was impossible to tell whether this was gallows humor or whether they really meant what they said.
Albert too sensed that the war would be over soon. The right-hand column was now nearly as
long as the left-hand one. September came. The boy started school, but they continued to meet in the afternoons, as they always had. Seven more ships were lost. The last to go down was the steamer Memory. Then it ended. Albert delivered his last messages to the bereaved. The war lasted a few more months, but as far as Marstal was concerned, it was done with.
Albert sat down next to the skippers in the harbor who were soaking up the September sun, giving their old bones a last warm-up before the winter. The group shifted uneasily. They weren't used to his company.
"Yes, the good times are indeed over," he said, and he didn't hide the sarcasm in his voice. They shifted again.
"Four hundred and forty-seven Danish sailors were lost," he said. He knew his figures. "Fifty-three of them came from Marstal. That means roughly one in every nine men who drowned came from this town."
He paused to let them digest this fact. Then he continued with the figures.
"The number of Marstal inhabitants is only a thousandth of Denmark's total population. And what's the bottom line of our sum, gentlemen? Does our total amount to good times?"
He got up from the bench, touched his cap with his finger, and left.
They looked after him as he swung his stick and walked up toward Havnegade. Yes, he knew his math, did Albert.
"Fifty-three hands lost," Albert thought, as he continued along Havnegade. "Perhaps I'm being unfair. A town quickly forgets. A mother, a brother, a wife, or a daughter won't. But a town will. A town looks ahead."
Mr. Henckel still visited Marstal. Tall and broad, with his light coattails flapping behind him, he'd stride down Kirkestræde on his way to the Hotel Ærø, where he kept a room permanently at his disposal. His arrival was celebrated with grand champagne galas for investors and's other interested parties, of which there were always plenty. Herman, meanwhile, had sold both the Two Sisters and his house in Skippergade. This had left him homeless, and so he'd moved into Hotel Ærø, where he soon ran up an enormous bill. With his entire fortune sunk in Mr. Henckel's engineering projects, he was unable to settle it right away. But that didn't matter, said Orla Egeskov, the proprietor; he was happy to extend credit to him and Mr. Henckel. Orla Egeskov was an investor himself. He knew that every penny would come back tenfold; each bottle of champagne would be paid for out of future profits. And champagne was all Herman drank.
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