Characters
Lukas Ahrens
Oceanographer at Lena’s side, died at sea eight years ago
Lukas Ahrens is an oceanographer. Lena met him on the Heron, a university ship stuck off Helgoland for sixteen hours with a broken pump. She is thirty-three, he is thirty-six. While she keeps working, he shows up with two mugs of tea and a historical map of the German Bight and shows her where Rungholt used to be. He asks questions that are real questions, and when he explains something he draws on whatever is at hand: napkins, receipts. By his own account, he became an oceanographer because of a children’s Bible in which the Flood filled an entire two-page spread. Three weeks after the Heron, he moves in with Lena, bringing fourteen boxes of books and an espresso machine. They live together for six years. Eight years ago, he died at sea in a single night.
First encounter
- First noticed: tall, his sweater too short at the wrists, his hair blown to one side by the wind, a face that looks as if it had just been laughing at something
- Speaks: starts with a single word, “Why?”, and makes offers instead of demands: “Let me show you where there used to be islands here.”
- Object: a napkin covered in current diagrams, with arrows, depth figures, and a tiny legend
Connected to
- Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line
- Kai SörensenFS Nordmark captain, eight years without a word to Lena
- FS Heron and HelgolandA broken-down ship off Helgoland, where Lena meets Lukas
- The NapkinLukas’s current diagrams on a napkin from the galley
- FS VindelThe research vessel of the night Lukas died
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.