We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  Of course, one big question remained. Would Isaksen know how to talk to the widows?

  First he talked to us. He did a round of the harbor and sat down among the old skippers on the benches. He knocked on the doors of the brokers' firms, stepped inside, raised his hat, and said immediately that he wasn't some rival come to spy on them. He'd come because he felt that this town was a community, one that could tackle the challenges of the future only if it set aside rivalries and grudges, pulled together, and, to sum it up, dared to think big.

  What he said reminded us of Albert and his speech about fellowship. Only a few years had passed since we'd stood in front of the newly mounted memorial stone and heard those words, but it seemed a lifetime ago. It finally struck us: that day on the harbor in 1913 had marked the end of an era. And not a single one of us had noticed.

  Isaksen's words had a magic to them. He helped us see how things looked from the outside. Our multiply owned shipping shares had helped us get this far, but the age of the small investor was over. The money now required was far more than a maid, a cabin boy, or even a good captain could supply. Big investments demanded big money: the capital of a whole town. Marstal had that capital; it was just a question of knowing how to use it.

  "My suggestion is that Marstal's capital should be in fewer hands. It's the only way that merchant shipping, and the control of it, can remain here."

  What was he hinting at? Some thought he seemed a bit too similar to the enterprising Mr. Henckel, who'd promised us the world and ended up robbing us blind. But it was soon clear that Isaksen wanted something very different. He didn't want to take our money. He wanted to be our compass. He wanted to chart the course, not just for one shipping company but for the whole community.

  He had only one hostile encounter and that was with Klara Friis. He'd done his homework, so he expressed no surprise at finding a youngish, modestly dressed woman at the helm of one of Marstal's most renowned shipping companies. He knew all about Albert Madsen and his alliance with the widow in Le Havre; he also knew that Denmark's last great barks, the beautiful Suzanne, Germaine, and Claudia, were registered in Prinsegade. There was only one lesson he'd neglected. He hadn't looked into Klara Friis's heart, or into her safety-deposit box. He had no idea of the size of her fortune, and more important, he knew nothing about what she planned to do with such a vast amount. She'd have welcomed him if he'd arrived like Genghis Khan, to lay waste to the entire town. Instead, he arrived like Alexander to found a city. So she received him as an enemy.

  He wanted to build the new Marstal from the ruins of the sailing trade that had once made the town flourish. He was offering a renaissance, not a funeral. No swan song here: instead, a joyous salute to the future.

  He touched something in us. Once before we'd seen progress arrive—sooner than most people—and we'd stood to salute it. Now he was asking us to rise and welcome it again.

  Klara Friis had pondered what to wear when she received Frederik Isaksen. Finally she decided to dress in her usual modest fashion, so as not to draw attention to herself in any way. She wouldn't flaunt her wealth or her recently acquired self-confidence, or, for that matter, her femininity. She wouldn't have been able to seduce him anyway—not because she'd lost her bloom, but because she didn't have a sufficiently high opinion of her charms. She thought it safer to reprise the role she'd played effectively for much of her life, which she too had believed in: that of the poor, self-effacing woman who allowed herself no richer emotion than a barely articulated bitterness at the wicked-stepmother treatment that life had given her. She wouldn't act downright dumb, but she'd let him think she was paralyzed by anxiety and an inability to understand the great big world in which men moved; she'd feign the very helplessness that she encouraged in the three widows.

  She responded to everything Isaksen said with a hesitant, mechanics cal smile and a nod contradicted by the blankness of her eyes, which clearly hinted that she hadn't understood a word of what he'd said but was merely acquiescing to it, with the timidity and submissiveness so typical of her sex.

  But Isaksen didn't give up. He changed his wording, making his images simpler and more accessible. He even waxed lyrical about the sailor's uncertain existence, to persuade her that his proposal actually involved a whole new style of life, one that would take the sailor's dependents into account and thereby free them from constant anxiety about his fate.

  "Imagine the difference a big, well-managed shipping company could make to a sailor's job. Regular leave, safety on board, none of the poverty that currently forces smaller skippers to take risks in dangerous waters."

  He fixed her with his thick-lashed brown eyes, which she hadn't met until now. His voice grew urgent. He wasn't satisfied with the empty gaze that was her sole reaction to his words. She felt tempted to surrender and was immediately overwhelmed by a familiar terror: of darkness and flooding, of black waters rising up to reach the roof where she huddled; of Karla disappearing into the torrent; of the ridge of the roof, shaped like the sawhorse that landowners had once used to beat rebellious peasants, pressing against her groin like an instrument of torture

  Cold sweat erupted on her forehead. She grew pale and had to ask him to leave, making excuses in a feeble voice about a sudden attack of migraine.

  Isaksen left with a frown. He sensed that the performance he'd just witnessed was a peculiar mix of authenticity and pretense, but the point of it was beyond him. He had no reason to suspect that this woman—who reminded him of a timid servant girl—was his main opponent.

  In between visits to the town's shipping companies, Isaksen worked on the three widows. He spoke of the sea and ships in a language he thought they would understand, using housekeeping as a metaphor. Shipping too had its shopping lists, expenses, accounts, and servants. He knew these women were skilled housewives and he tried to make them grasp that, viewed in that light, the shipping trade was not so very different from their own everyday experience.

  It had just the effect he hoped for. The widows calmed down. They no longer felt that bullets were whizzing past their ears. Isaksen had done what they'd asked him to do: he'd released them from the war zone. The responsibility was out of their hands.

  ISAKSEN CALLED A grand meeting of the owners of the Boye shipping company: its entire staff, all its skippers and first mates who were currently ashore, and their spouses. He was smart enough to grasp that the wives were a force in maritime affairs as well as in matters domestic. He booked the Marine Room at Hotel Ærø, the grand salon hung with royal blue Danish china plaques, Danish flags, and paintings of ships registered in Marstal, and he planned a three-course meal. For the first course, he gave the hotel's kitchen a recipe for bouillabaisse, which he knew most of the skippers would be familiar with from their travels in the Mediterranean. For the main course, he chose traditional roast beef with crispy fat. He addressed the guests between the bouillabaisse and the roast.

  It was a speech about the future.

  He began by describing his years in Casablanca, the port he'd been summoned from, and where he and so many of Marstal's skippers had become acquainted. Apparently he'd made a good impression on them, and he took this opportunity to thank them for their support. But his heart sank, he said, whenever a Marstal ship left Casablanca. Because he always feared it was the last time he'd see it there. He wasn't referring to the risk that the ship might be lost on her return voyage, although of course that was always a tragic possibility. No, he was thinking of another far more shocking notion: the ship might simply vanish into thin air, never to be seen again. However strange this might sound to his honored guests, this was more likely than a conventional shipwreck. They might well be surprised to hear it, but the fact was, the ship's disappearance was as certain as the sun setting tonight and rising again tomorrow.

  By now he had his gawking audience's full attention. Not a single one of us could imagine where he was going with this peculiar statement.

  "But listen," he said. "I can explain this stran
ge premonition of mine. What's more, I can help you make sure that it never comes true. The cause of my despondency whenever I see a Marstal schooner raise anchor in Casablanca"—and here he looked down so that his long eyelashes swept his tanned cheeks (visible all the way up the long table, this caused the bosom of more than one skipper's wife to heave and sink in a most unusual way, as if from shortness of breath)—"the cause of my despondency"—he repeated the striking phrase—"is"—and he suddenly assumed a most prosaic tone—"that I happen to know the French authorities in Casablanca plan to build a new port. You'll all understand the consequences of this."

  Again he paused, but this time, instead of lowering his eyes, he looked around urgently, as if to remind us of some piece of knowledge we already possessed but had momentarily forgotten or suppressed. One or two women returned his gaze with flashing eyes, as if they'd received an invitation, and several of the skippers looked shamefacedly at the table, as if they knew only too well that they themselves should have said, or at least thought, what Isaksen was about to follow up with.

  Resuming his speech, his words now came fast and sharp as whiplashes.

  "It means that Marstal schooners will never again carry freight to Casablanca. The only reason that steamers have kept away from one of the most important ports in North Africa is the lack of a suitable harbor. Now the steamers will come, with their bigger cargo capacity and greater speed. You can time their arrival down to the minute. The compass plots a course, and the steamer follows it, without any deviations or delays. And I'm not just talking about Casablanca."

  Isaksen's voice, which had grown more and more forceful, now took on a doom-laden significance.

  "I'm also talking about the freight to the French Channel ports, where the tide used to let in only sailing ships. The railways are taking over. I'm also talking about Rio Grande in Brazil and the Maracaibo Lagoon in Venezuela. In both those places, the shallow water over the sandbanks allowed only small vessels through. Now, with the railways, that obstacle to the steamers will be removed as well."

  At the mention of each port, the skippers and the first mates started visibly, as though he'd threatened them with his fist and they had no idea how to defend themselves.

  "The sea was your America. But now America is closing her borders to you. There will be less and less demand for your services. The freight contracts will vanish into thin air. And that means that your ships will too. You might decide to sell them. But think about it. Who's going to buy them? All that awaits them is the demolition crew. A funeral pyre to an era, your era, turned to wood smoke. But not all hope is lost..."

  Isaksen's voice assumed a comforting tone, like the minister who has just described Hell and now offers Heaven as an alternative open to anyone who sees the light.

  "There are still places where nobody else sails. Harbors that can't be dredged or where dredging doesn't pay. Or where currents, rocks, and frequent storms conspire to ban the steamer forever." The comforting tone disappeared abruptly from his voice. "Newfoundland. The most inhospitable coast in the world, the most dangerous waters on earth. The Marstal schooner will still be able to load stinking dried cod there. You'll still be welcomed by places and cargoes nobody else will touch. You'll be reduced to living off the leftovers of the world markets. You'll be the pariahs of the seven seas, the rubbish collectors. You'll be those left behind."

  We'd thought he was going to give us encouragement. Instead, he had delivered our funeral oration. A deathly silence descended upon the table. Ellen Boye looked down. Her cheeks were burning bright red. Emma and Johanne looked to her for support, but her agonized face pained them so deeply, they nearly burst into tears.

  Then Isaksen started speaking again. He'd only paused for effect, but his pause had sounded like a full stop to us. What could possibly follow this annihilating verdict?

  "Marstal has a great future," he said, and again we raised our chins attentively, conscious now that we were nothing but puppets dangling from the strings of his artful words. "Marstal has a great future because it has a great past. It's not always the case that one guarantees the other. Traditions can be a burden. If we believe a method will work forever because it worked once, we get stuck in the past and miss out on the future. But it's different here in Marstal. You came up with your own design of ship—the hull with the heart-shaped stern and the rounded bow—and you named it after your town. You kept experimenting until you discovered what best suited your purpose. Your tradition is one of catching the wind. You may think that's an odd expression, and so it is in the mouth of a farmer, who thinks someone who blows with the wind has no roots and lacks stability because he doesn't do what his father did before him. But think as the sailors you are. Catching the wind: that's about seizing the moment, when the wind and the currents are on your side, and then hoisting the anchor and setting your sails. I'm sure you've heard of the Englishman Darwin and his famous theory about the survival of the fittest, and some people may have tried to make you believe that 'the fittest' means 'the strongest' and that Darwin is saying that only the strongest will survive. But that's not what he means. The fittest are those who catch the wind. And that's you. Your town mirrors the way you sail: you've always known how to navigate your way through life's upheavals. That skill you can carry forward with you. But you'll have to abandon the ships whose decks you learned it on, because they're sinking. The age of sail is long gone, but the age of the sailor has just begun. Trust me: a town that's been the home of sailors for generations possesses a unique capital in a world where everything needs to be transported and the continents move ever closer to one another. The difference is that from now on, you'll put your skills to use on a deck that trembles from the vibrations of powerful engines working beneath it."

  He presented us with the same vision he'd given the town's various brokerage firms over the previous few days. But he went a step further. He confided secrets about the future of the shipping company that he'd kept from the others. He predicted that in time the Boye company would merge with all of the town's other shipping companies until only one big company remained. And this company would be rich not only in capital, but also, more important, in experience—centuries of accumulated experience, generated by the inventiveness, persistence, vision, and will to survive that lay beneath the construction of the breakwater, the acquisition of the telegraph, and the creation of one of the country's biggest merchant fleets—an experience that even now, at a time when Marstal was in a decline, inspired us to continue the fight to find new or forgotten corners of the globe where we could sail ships that should have become obsolete many years ago.

  Isaksen held out his hand and counted on his fingers: inventiveness, persistence, vision, will to survive, and, more than anything, the ability to unite in a common purpose to achieve what was impossible for the individual. Five fingers, one hand. The hand that catches the wind, the hand of flexibility, the hand that seizes every opportunity that presents itself!

  "It's the best kind of hand there is," Isaksen said. "With this hand you can shape the future to your own liking, and that's what you should be doing. The company already owns one shipyard. That's important because you need to control every link in the shipping trade chain, from the construction of the ship to the lading of the cargo. But the shipyard must switch over completely, not just to steel ships, but also to steam and motor vessels. That way we'll be able to control the price of every single ship we launch under the company's name. And here too the right conditions already exist. After all, the shipyard isn't short of skilled and experienced shipbuilders. It will require greater tonnage. We'll need to dredge channels so the new ships can pass through. We'll build our own Suez Canal, right across the archipelago, where it's shallow, and out into the open waters of the Baltic. We also's need to move into the business of ship's provisions so we can supply not just our own ships but others too. In addition, one day we'll have to move into the fuel business. We'll own coal mines and, later, oil fields, because the motor ship will
eventually replace the steamer. That way we can ensure a supply of fuel for our fleet at stable prices."

  Not only would we sail, but we'd manage half the world, and our town would be at the heart of it all. That was what Isaksen was telling us.

  When he finally finished, our faces were flushed. We were exhausted, confused, and reeling with the kind of giddiness you feel when you step off a merry-go-round. We rose to our feet and applauded him: brokers, office clerks, skippers, first mates, and blushing wives. Even Ellen, Emma, and Johanne got up to clap. This time they didn't need to glance at one another first for confirmation, as they almost always did. Their vacillation, which had been their defense against every final decision, had vanished. They rose along with the rest of us.

  There was such power in Isaksen's enthusiasm that it spread through us like an inner weightlessness. If he'd spoken for much longer, we'd have ended up floating out of the windows of Hotel Ærø.

  ISAKSEN HAD CONSULTED the compass and plotted the course. He'd spoken eloquently about our ability to navigate through life even when it was at its hardest, but he'd overlooked one essential thing about the art of steering a ship. You don't just keep your eye on the compass; you also check the rigging, you read the clouds, you observe the direction of the wind and the color of the current and the sea, and you look out for the sudden surf that warns of a rock ahead. It may not be like that on board a steamer. But that's how it is on a sailing ship, and in this respect its journey parallels that of life: simply knowing where you want to go isn't enough, because life is a windblown voyage, consisting mainly of the detours imposed by alternating calm and storm.