Remember Me
by Finn Bille, 1109 Hanover Street, Chattanooga, TN 37405, finnbille@comcast.net
The first story in the series, From Bacon Fat to Peanut Butter
February 1, 2016. 1718 words
My father laid a hand on the green patina of a bronze cannon aimed out at the strait between Denmark and Sweden. Above us, the two red tips of the royal split flag whip-snapped in the salt wind blowing off the Kattegat, its cord beating against the tall white pole. The theatrical backdrop of Kronborg, made famous by Shakespeare as Elsinore Castle, loomed over us. I wondered why my father had brought us—me at age eleven, and my brother Per at age 13—to this old castle. While I enjoyed this little excursion, my excitement for the big adventure to come kept intruding. I felt sure that this trip must have something to do with our planned immigration to America in just two weeks.
Dad turned to us and said, “You boys know about Hamlet, right?” Holding his hand out as though displaying a relic, Per said, “He’s the one who talks to a human skull, right?” “Well yes,” Dad said, “and Shakespeare’s play begins right here. We are on the very spot where Hamlet’s father’s ghost appears. Before the ghost leaves at dawn, he says”—and this in solemn English—”remember me, remember me!” He spoke the command formally and with a slight emotional quaver in his voice. In his heavy Danish accent it sounded like “rrememba mi, rrememba mi.”
We had never heard him speak English before and we did not understand. It sounded so strange that Per tried to imitate him. I joined him by forcing my voice into a guttural chant: “rrememba mi, rrememba mi.” We doubled over with laughter. But when we looked up at Dad, he wasn’t laughing. He forced a small tight smile as he turned to walk toward the castle. “Let’s go” he barked. We glanced at each other, Per wondering aloud, “What’s wrong with Dad?” We ran to catch up. He led us through a narrow passage to the castle’s courtyard. There, we joined a group of tourists under a sign advertising dungeon tours.
We descended stone stairs hollowed out over centuries by thousands of prisoners. In the dark, vaulted basement Dad held us back until the guide’s light disappeared in the gloom. “Stand still and be quiet,” he ordered. “Now hold on to my belt.” Shivering from cold and fear of the dark, I stammered, “Dad, I’m . . . ” but he cut me off. “Be quiet!” he hissed. He led us into deeper darkness and around a corner, then stopped. “OK boys, be quiet, be still,” he said in a tense stage whisper.
After a heavy pause, through the absolute silence, came a rustle of cloth, then a faint rattle followed by a scratch when Dad struck a match. A yellow flame erupted in a cloud of smoke as sulfur stung our noses. Through the smoke a massive grey seated figure looked down at us. A sword as long as I was tall lay across his lap, and his helmeted head seemed to look at us and nod in the flickering light. I gasped and drew back, still clinging to Dad’s belt. Dad’s solemn voice intoned, “Boys, this is Holger Danske. You . . . will . . . not . . . forget . . . Holger . . . Danske!” The flame died and the statue merged with blackness. “Okay Dad,” we said in unison, our voices shaking. We hardly noticed the spot of light that wavered on the stone floor and a nearby column, then on the bowed head of Holger Danske until we turned and were blinded by the guide’s flashlight. “You are not allowed to stay down here without a guide,” he said angrily. Dad said, “I was just showing Holger Danske to the boys before we leave for America.” “Oh, I see,” the guide said. He continued in a voice that had changed from harsh authority to pained sympathy, “Yes, boys, don’t forget Holger Danske when you get to America. Now please follow me to the courtyard.”
A vague feeling of impending loss gripped me, but it dissipated as we emerged, squinting, from the darkness. We crossed the courtyard and walked through the portal. On the drawbridge, I pointed down to the water. “Look Dad! look Per! Black swans! Dad, do they have black swans in America?” “I don’t know,” he said impatiently as we cleared the moat. We crossed the cobblestone square and the harbor where we passed and smelled a fishing boat unloading its catch of herring inside a screaming flock of gulls. When the ferry blew its horn, we hurried aboard.
An hour later in Sweden we looked back across the narrow strait where the castle glowed in brilliant sunshine. “Can you see the platform at Kronborg where we were this morning?” Dad asked. Per looked at me, giggled and said in a mock-serious deep tone, “rrememba mi.” I joined in, “rrememba mi, rrememba mi.” We laughed and laughed, but Dad did not react. He led us to a booth displaying the Swedish word “glass” for ice cream instead of the Danish “is.” I wondered what ice cream would be called in America. We settled on a bench overlooking the water.
When Per asked Dad to tell us about Holger Danske, he said, “I know you’ve heard Hans Christian Andersen’s story about Holger Danske because I have read it to you. Remember? He says that Holger Danske sleeps over there in the castle, and that whatever happens in Denmark appears in his dreams. When Denmark is in trouble, Holger Danske wakes up and grabs his sword to defend his homeland.”
Per stood up, looked strangely at Dad, threw the rest of his ice cream cone into the trash can at the end of the bench, then asked in a casual yet assertive tone, “Did Holger Danske wake up and fight when the Germans came?” Dad looked at Per like he had never seen him before. I had never seen my brother challenge my dad like that. Dad finally smiled in a way I did not understand. He winked at Per, glanced at me and said, “Of course he did. The Germans are gone, aren’t they?”
After a long pause, he said, “But did you boys know that Holger Danske left Denmark and became a great hero fighting for Charlemagne?” “When was that?” Per asked. “A thousand years ago,” Dad said. Per responded, “Oh, a thousand years ago. No wonder he looks so old . . .”
We watched as a cloud trailed a grey veil of rain across the town of Helsingør. As we looked, the rain hid the moat and the drawbridge we had crossed, then it obscured the castle itself, swallowing the spires and the green copper roof. In the middle of the strait, two ferries passed each other. I could just make out the waving people at the railings. Boat horn blasts reached us faintly across the dark ruffled water. The flag on the platform at Kronborg caught the sun, a bright red wavering swatch vanishing in grey rain.
“Time to go, boys. We have a ferry to catch.”
Two weeks later, in a misty drizzle, we stood at the railing of the ship that would take us to America. We passed the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbor. The king’s hunting lodge on the hill beyond the woods slipped by. At Kronborg, the flag hung limp in the still air. Per and I glanced at each other as he muttered “rrememba mi,” but I turned away to look through the strait to the open ocean.
Dad said, “Boys, take a good look. You may never see that flag again.” He gripped the rail with both hands, his knuckles turning white. As we came abreast of the flag, he straightened up, raised his right hand to snap a salute. I had never seen him salute, but I knew that my father had been in the Royal Danish Navy. My right hand twitched as my two-fingered cub scout salute rose and touched my right temple. Dad’s right hand returned to the railing. Slumping, his body shaking, he stared back at the disappearing Danish flag and past it toward Copenhagen where we had left my mother and my two younger siblings.
I dropped my salute as I tried in vain to get a last glimpse of Copenhagen’s spires. I saw only distant haze, but I vividly remembered clinging to my mother and feeling the warmth of her soft breasts as she hugged me. When she tucked a handkerchief into my hand, I crammed it into my pocket, determined never to lose it. Tears now stung my eyes. One drop rolled down my cheek, then dropped on the back of my hand that clasped the cold steel railing. I had not cried when I left my mother because I was determined to be her strong little man. Here on board, I turned to look at the empty expanse of grey water ahead of us. As more tears welled up, I wiped my face with my mother’s handkerchief.
We had cleared the strait between Denmark and Sweden when a cold wind chased us off the deck. We descended three sets of stairs and walked down a long hall to our cabin where we sat down on the bunk beds because there was not room for all three of us to stand up at the same time. Dad told each of us to reach out a hand, palm up. Slowly, ceremoniously, he placed a Danish krone on each palm, heads up. In a solemn voice he said, “This is King Christian’s coin. Remember this good king. Don’t lose it.” Per said casually, “But Dad, we can’t spend that in America. It will be worthless over there.” Dad did not reply. We sat there in silence for a long moment. I stuck the coin in my pocket where I polished the dull brass with my mother’s handkerchief.
We sailed through Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden, then through Skagerak between Denmark and Norway. When the ship rolled and pitched with the waves of the North Atlantic, my excitement for this adventure surged. I would soon be in America, the land of cowboys and Indians and comic book heroes.