“Anyway, Knud Christensen ain’t a man. He’s a bear. A polar bear.”
“He’s a loony, diving in water that cold,” someone else said. “Lucky he came up himself.”
“Anyway, it wasn’t in 1945 that the Christensen boat went down,” Krag added, as if to put an end to the matter. “It was January this year, end of January.” His voice became philosophical. “Knud hasn’t been the same since his brothers died. Farm’s going to hell.”
“He should have married—”
“Who’d marry him? Sits like a log and just stares half the time. Drinks more than he should. More than he can afford, too. Going to lose the farm he doesn’t wake up—”
“Don’t think he cares. Anyway, going to starve first, one of these days—”
“This Knud Christensen,” Ruth said suddenly. “Where does he live? I’d like to talk to him — for my article.” Although, she added to herself with honesty, he doesn’t sound like the man who could possibly have brought up the treasure, not if he’s on the verge of starvation. Still, he might have seen something when he was bringing up his brother’s body—
Jens Krag pointed. “You must have passed it on your way here. It’s back the way you came, by the light. Name’s on the mailbox.”
“Only he don’t get no mail,” someone said, and sounded sad about it.
“Thank you. Thank you all.” Ruth gave them a brilliant smile that each man felt more than repaid him for the effort, and walked back to the car, climbing in. Gregor looked at her.
“Well?”
Ruth raised her shoulders. “None of them were here in 1945. They don’t think anyone in Gedser was, although they’re obviously wrong. We can follow up on that later, maybe at the church or at the police. They say that nobody would trawl off the light because of the sharp rocks there. The only person known to have dived in those waters in the last three or four months did it in January to bring up the body of his brother whose boat had gone down in a storm. He brought up the body, but no box.”
“So where do we go from here? Church or police? Or, better yet, why not go back to Copenhagen?”
“We go visit the man,” Ruth said evenly. ‘We’re here and he’s here, and maybe he saw something when he was diving. At least he was on the bottom of the sea near our boat. Or my boat, if you prefer. He lives back down the road we just came on, near the lighthouse. His name is Knud Christensen, and the name is on the mailbox...” She looked at Wilten, who had been listening. “Back down the road a bit, please, Wilten. I’ll tell you where to turn in.”
Knud Christensen often wondered why he had wasted a good portion of the money he had gotten from his distant cousin, Professor Nordberg, on anything as silly as a new anchor. He had never taken the boat out since the night he had brought the box up. The boat had lain in the water until the wood had started to swell and the caulking had begun to dry and shred and after it had slowly filled with water and sunk to the oarlocks to rest on the bottom. He had not even taken the trouble to bail it and haul it higher on land to dry. He hated the sea for what it had taken from him and knew he would never go out on it again.
Nor had the cross he had purchased with the remainder of the money been of long endurance. Some young fellows, driving a borrowed automobile through the cemetery one night while drunk, had torn the cross from the small base he had made for it and twisted it beyond repair. He had nailed together another cross from wood and replaced it above Gustave’s grave, but neither the cheap metal cross nor the wooden one satisfied him. He had even considered using the anchor as a memorial, setting it in cement at the head of the grave, but although other graves in the small cemetery demonstrated similar memoria for those whose lives had been taken by the sea, the thought was repugnant to Knud. It would have reminded him too strongly of the body as he had seen it dangling in the shrouds. It would also have reminded him of his foolishness in buying the anchor in the first place.
What Knud Christensen would have liked to do was to buy a real stone, a large one of rough granite with a large granite cross on top, and with a polished panel on the face of it that would allow space for the names of both brothers to be engraved upon it. Or, better yet, a monument large enough to go across the heads of all the Christensen graves lined up together in the cemetery, with the names of his father and mother there as well as Gustave’s, and Niels’s, and a space for his own name when the time came. There would be no need for further space. There would be no further Christensens — not of their family.
He thought about the monument constantly, taking time from chores that needed doing. In his imagination he would run his calloused hands over the coarse grain of the huge gravestone and feel with his worn fingertips the cool smoothness of the highly polished panel, and pick out, like a blind man, the sharp indentations where the names had been carved. But it was an idle dream, and he knew it. Stones cost money. The block of granite as wide and thick as he wanted, finished and engraved as he wanted, would probably cost more than he could ever hope to obtain in a lifetime of hard work. Still, the longer he dreamed of the stone, the more exact the details as he pictured them, the more the project became fixed in his mind, until he had reached the point where he knew he would not settle for less, even though less would have still meant the most massive monument in the cemetery. To sell the farm? Knud Christensen was honest enough to know that in the condition it was in, the farm would bring little, certainly not enough for the memorial he wanted. And what would he do then? Where would he go? He could never leave Gedser and the cemetery.
He looked up, frowning, at the sound of an automobile being driven into the entrance to the farm, braking in the gravel of the driveway. Visitors? He never had visitors. Someone wishing directions? Let them get them elsewhere. He came to his feet heavily and walked through the living room to the front door, opening it, and watched a woman and a man come down from a car and approach while another remained in the driver’s seat. His first reaction was to close the door in their faces. He had nothing to do with strangers. Let them go away and leave him in peace. But there was something about the friendly smile on the woman’s face that reminded him that once he had been a part of the world, had not always been the recluse he had become in the six months since he had lost his brothers. He suddenly realized the condition of the kitchen with the dirty pans and dishes piled high in the sink, and he hurried back to close the door to that room, and then looked about as if to see if he should straighten out the living room, but the living room appeared to be all right. He never used the living room to sit and think; it faced the sea.
The woman was peering into the gloom of the living room from her place at the open door. The man, a stocky, strong-looking man, with a pleasant face, stood at her shoulder protectively. Christensen cleared his throat; it was almost as though he wondered after his long self-imposed exile from people, if he still had the power of speech. But his voice came out low and hard, even slightly suspicious.
“You want something, ma’am?”
Ruth gave him her friendliest smile, a smile that Gregor would have wagered would make any man her slave, but Christensen merely waited impassively for an answer. Ruth looked past the bulky body to the room. “We should like to talk to you a bit. May we come in?”
“Talk about what? If you’re collecting for some charity, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“It’s nothing like that. It’s something important. And I think we’d all be more comfortable sitting down,” Ruth said, and moved forward in such a way that Christensen automatically took a step backward. The action appeared to be an invitation to enter although all three knew it was not. Ruth sat down on a sofa; Gregor sat beside her. Christensen walked to the windows and raised the drawn shades, letting sunlight pour in through the curtains. Dust rose in the air from the unattended furniture, dancing in the shafts of light. And why should I apologize for the dust or the dirt? Christensen thought angrily. I didn’t ask these people to come here! He sat down in a chair across from the two, his cold blue eyes moving from Ruth’s face to Gregor’s and then back again, resentful of the unwanted intrusion.