Depths

Chapter 186

He thought it was an optical illusion.

But the boat was real. Kristina Tacker was sailing resolutely, the sail straining in the wind. She was heading for Halsskär because she knew that was where he was hiding.

He searched for a way of escape. But there was none. He had nowhere to escape to.

He set off in a hurry for the inlet when he saw her turning the boat into the wind. All the time he was trying to find an explanation. Could he have left a trail by way of his sea charts? He had never imagined that she would start to interpret them. Or had somebody given him away, somebody who knew where he was?

He could not find an answer. There wasn’t one.

By the time he reached the shore the boat was inside the inlet. Kristina Tacker had already dropped anchor when she noticed him, stood up and started yelling. In order to shut her up he waded out into the cold water until it was chest-deep.

‘Stop shouting,’ he said. ‘Everything can be explained.’

‘Nothing can be explained!’ she screamed. ‘Why do you keep lying to me? Why are you hiding here? How can you explain that away?’

She had moved into the bows and started hitting him over the head with a piece of rope. He tried to defend himself, but she went on hitting him, he would never have imagined her capable of such fury. This was not the wife he knew, this was somebody else, somebody who smashed china figurines every time she moved them around on their shelves.

The only way he could shut her up was to pull her out of the boat. He took hold of her and dragged her into the water. She resisted, but he kept hold of her, pushed her down under the surface. Every time she came back up again she continued shouting at him. He smacked her face, once, twice, harder. She went quiet in the end. Her wet hair was sticking to her cheeks. He could no longer smell her fragrance, nothing of the wine nor the subtle perfume.

‘I can explain everything,’ he said. ‘Provided you stop shouting.’

He had never felt as scared as he felt at this moment. If Sara Fredrika were to turn up now all the walls would crumble around him. Nothing would survive.

Kristina Tacker looked at him in disgust.

‘Behind a secret there can be another secret,’ he said.

She lurched at him and scratched his face. She did it perfectly calmly, without taking her eyes off him.

Blood ran down his cheek.

‘I don’t want to hear any lies about what you are doing and why you are here,’ she said. ‘I just want you to explain the only thing that is important. Why did Laura have to die? That’s all I want to know.’

He took a step backwards, stumbled over a piece of rock and fell. She grabbed hold of his arm.

‘Don’t you try and run away again. You’re never going to do that again. I’ll find you no matter where you hide. All your lies leave a clear trail that I can follow, wherever you go.’

He was punch-drunk. It felt as if the cold water was penetrating his skin and making his body swell up.

‘We can’t stand in the water like this,’ he said. ‘It’s too cold.’

‘This is only water. Death is cold. Laura is cold, not this water.’

‘What happened?’

She took hold of his head and pulled it towards her. She had tears in her eyes, he recognised her now. There were glimpses of the woman he was married to behind all the wet hair.

‘After you went off I stayed in hospital for a few weeks. Laura grew as she ought to do. She grew bigger and stronger. But then one night I was woken up by her screaming. It wasn’t the usual sort of scream, it was something different. Dr Edman came. He thought it was colic and would die down of its own accord. But it didn’t die down, it wasn’t colic, it was ileus, an obstruction of the intestine. Laura died in terrible agony. There was nothing I could do, and where were you? I thought you were on an important mission, I thought that you were with me in spirit, I thought about all the sorrow we would have to bear together. But the baby’s death exposed all your lies, that was the terrible price I had to pay in order to discover who you really are.’

She leaned even further forward into his face.

‘Was it you who attacked my father?’

‘Of course it wasn’t. But will you stop shouting, I can’t bear such loud noises.’

She slapped the water with her hand so that it splashed into his face.

‘What do you know about noises? You have no idea what a dying baby sounds like. Do you want to hear? I can imitate exactly what she sounded like just before she died.’

He shook his head.

‘I’m devastated,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. Is Laura dead?’

‘On 22 August at 4.35 in the afternoon Dr Edman said that he could only express his sympathy. She is dead. But you are alive. What can’t you understand?’

He did not answer. He tried to picture the dead child, but all he could see was a black hole.

‘We can’t stay in the water like this. It’s too cold.’

She started to hit his face again.

‘Can’t you hear what I’m saying? My daughter is dead.’

‘She was my daughter as well.’

‘She wasn’t your daughter. You were never there, you reacted to her by telling lies to get away from her and from me and from yourself and from everything I’ve ever believed in.’

She could not find any more words. She stood in the water screaming in despair.

He could picture the shelves with the china figurines slowly falling down one after another, each one smashing to smithereens.

Chapter 187

He led her carefully out of the water.

He was appalled by her bitterness, but shaken most of all by the boundless sorrow he had caused her. For the first time he felt utterly defenceless when facing her. This time he would not be able to wriggle off the hook. And Sara Fredrika would not be able to rescue him. Her presence would only compound the catastrophe.

‘Do you remember our holiday in Oslo?’ she asked. ‘That day when we went to Bygdøy, the beach, the young boys bathing naked in the water, a bunch of balloons climbing up into the sky?’

He remembered, but decided to deny it.

‘Of course you remember. Above all you must remember the cross we drew in the sand, and said that the most important thing in our lives would always be telling the truth. Good Lord, I believed it, I really did believe that I had met a man who was as good as his word.’

A quick gust of cold wind made them shiver.

‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘I try to understand, but I can’t. I simply can’t pin you down, my image of you cracks and breaks up, you become an incomprehensible creature that seems to thrive on deceiving others.’

‘I can explain,’ he said.

Her response came with no hesitation at all.

‘If there is one thing you can never do it is to explain. I have followed in your footsteps and it has been like climbing down into a well where the stench at the bottom gets more and more putrid. I have realised that I am married to a man who doesn’t exist, a shadow with a circulatory system and a brain that is nothing more than an invention, a figment of the imagination. It is intolerable to think that my child had a figment of the imagination for a father. Can you make me understand? You are driving me mad.’

‘I have to know how you found me.’

‘I come here and tell you that Laura is dead. You don’t react, you say you feel sorrow, but all you ask about is how I found you.’

‘You can think whatever you like. But I mourn the death of my child.’

‘You ought to mourn the fact that you are who you are. It was my father who helped me. When Laura died he contacted Naval Headquarters and told them what had happened. He forced his way through all the barriers, I can hear his voice inside my head: A baby has died, my granddaughter. Her father is on a secret mission, but of course he has to be told about the tragedy that has befallen him. There was silence. My father said that everybody seemed to be astonished. Jaws dropped on the faces of the entire Swedish high command. In the end a vice admiral informed my father that you no longer held a commission in the Swedish Navy. Then they became secretive, they couldn’t go into details about why, they could only say that you were no longer enlisted. My father insisted that I personally should be given an explanation. The following day I went with him to Skeppsholmen. The vice admiral was there, and several other people, I can’t remember who they were. They expressed their condolences. But when I asked them for an address so that I could send you a letter, they said that they didn’t have one. My father was with me, he was standing behind my chair and put his hand on my shoulder when he heard that you were no longer in the navy. There was no mission, they knew as little about where you were as my father and I did. How do you think that felt? First I lost my baby, then I found out that I was married to a man who didn’t exist. How do you think that felt?’

He said nothing. He was searching feverishly for a way of escape. It must have been Welander, he thought. There’s no other possibility. Perhaps he suspected that I would head for here.

‘I went home, and my father came with me. I was numb, but I was kept going by his fury. Especially after I gathered that he suspected it was you who had tried to kill him.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘I would put nothing past you, Lars.’

She used his first name. It felt as if she were using it to hit him.

I can hit back, he thought. That is the ultimate escape route. I can kill her.

He asked a question to give himself a breathing space.

‘Whose is the boat?’

‘Does it matter? It belongs to one of my father’s friends.’

‘I didn’t know you could sail.’

‘I learned when I was a child. When I realised where you might be hiding I decided to get a boat and come here. My father protested, but I paid no attention to him.’

‘Was it Welander who told you where you could find me?’

‘He came a few days after I’d been to Skeppsholmen. I didn’t want to let him in at first, but he said he’d heard rumours about your disappearance, and that you had lied to the admirals about him. He also said he knew where you might be, that you used to row to a skerry when you were working together.

‘I didn’t want to know at first, I never wanted to see you again. The first night after I realised what kind of a man you were I gathered together all your clothes, your overcoats, uniforms, shoes, and piled them up on the floor. The next day Anna fetched a rag-and-bone man who took the lot. I didn’t even accept any money. I wanted you to cease to exist.

‘But my father talked me round. He said that you shouldn’t be allowed to die in sin. He contacted Welander, who came round again a few days later. He had been talking to a police superintendent or maybe it was a parish constable from round here who said he thought you were on a skerry at the far edge of the archipelago.

‘I sailed into the archipelago then turned south. Somewhere round about Landsort I was becalmed, I had plenty of time to think. And I still ask myself: Why did you marry me if your only intention was to hurt me, to lie to me? Why do you hate me?’

He gave a start. A shadow had moved on a high rocky ledge, but it wasn’t Sara Fredrika. It was a bird, a crow that soared up and flew off northwards over the island. There wasn’t much time. He needed to drive her along in front of himself instead of cowering in the face of her accusations.

‘The fact that I was dismissed from the navy is due entirely to a misunderstanding, which was due in turn to the fact that I was disgracefully slandered by Welander. I tried to protect him when he hit the bottle. Everything else is a pack of lies. He is getting his revenge for having shown me his weakness, because I saw his humiliation. He was lying on deck in a pool of vomit and had to be carried away. I couldn’t tell you that I had been dismissed, that was too shameful, too much of a disgrace. I came here to think out a way of telling you about it. Not everything I have told you has been entirely correct, but there has always been a kernel of truth.’

And what would that be?’

‘My love for you. I came here in solitude to punish myself for not being able to tell you exactly how things were. I needed time, time to think, time to summon up courage.’

‘But the letters? The inventions, the fantasies?’

‘The same thing: shame, disgrace.’

‘How can I possibly believe you?’

‘Look me in the eye.’

She did as he asked. He could feel that he was starting to regain control, was able to regulate the distances.

‘What do you see?’

‘A person I don’t know.’

‘You know me. We have been married for nearly ten years. We have been intimate.’

‘If I come too close to you I’m frightened of getting burned. You give off a corrosive acid, all those untrue —’

She broke off without completing the sentence.

‘What I understand least of all is why you tried to kill my father.’

He felt an overwhelming urge to tell her the truth, that it was all those accursed Christmas dinners, his father-in-law’s contempt for the naval commander who had married his daughter. But there was no place for the truth yet.

‘It wasn’t me who attacked your father. I would never turn to violence.’

‘You hit me, not long ago.’

‘That was only because I had to stop you screaming.’

‘Can’t you tell the truth for once? Can’t you try? Your lies are wrapping themselves round my legs like heavy weights.’

‘I have told you the truth. I hid myself away here in order to think things over.’

Fear was being batted back and forth between them, like the ebb and flow of never-ending waves. Occasionally he would glance up at the path. He knew his time was limited, and that sooner or later Sara Fredrika would wonder where he had got to.

‘I want you to go back home,’ he said. ‘I’ve been ordered to terminate my mission.’

‘But you haven’t got a mission. I heard the admiral say so himself: you are no longer a member of the Swedish Navy, you have no unfinished missions. I heard that with my own ears. Are you incapable of telling the truth?’

‘You must understand that secrecy doesn’t only apply to me. He wasn’t able to say that I am still working on a task.’

‘What are you doing on this skerry? I’ve been sailing all round these grey, barren islands, I’ve hardly set eyes on a single soul, here by the open sea everything is dead.’

‘I’ll tell you, even though I shouldn’t. I have a wireless transmitter here, one of the inspired inventions of the engineer Marconi and Admiral Henry Jackson, for communications between ships and land, or from one ship’s captain to another. We are conducting top-secret tests of a Swedish system, a variation of the ones the warring parties are using.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Invisible waves that travel through the air, that can be captured and interpreted. A secret language that will transform all aspects of war as it has been known until now. Every day at certain times I have to be stationed by the wireless in order to receive and transmit.’

She considered what he had said.

‘Perhaps that is true,’ she said. ‘Show me round this island that you have made your home, show me these invisible waves that are dancing around in the air here. Show me something that is true. Show me where you live, in a cave or a hut.’

‘You are right,’ he said. ‘One hut to live in, and another for my measuring equipment. I’ll show you.’

He racked his brains for a way out of this desperate situation. It was becoming clearer to him where he really belonged. It was on Halsskär with Sara Fredrika and Laura, that was where he was at home. For the first time in his life there was something he did not want to lose. He was a stranger to Kristina Tacker and her china figurines, in the cold and warm rooms in Stockholm. All the years he had lived with her had ceased to exist. That was the biggest lie, he thought, I could never understand or control that. We had nothing in common, we just came together in a fantasy of love.

But not even that is true, he thought. I can only speak for myself. She must have felt something different. She has come here, not merely to expose a lie, but also to understand how she could have given me so much love.

She aimed her light at a cold cliff face. It never became warm. I tried to tame her all the years we lived together.

I failed. She stayed wild. The china figurines deceived me. She had more sides to her than I had ever suspected. Hidden behind her calm, almost apathetic exterior was something else.

He recalled the Christmas market when she had intervened to stop a man hitting his child. He had not drawn the right conclusions from that. He ought to have realised even then that she was in fact a stronger individual than he was.

Chapter 188

It was starting to get dark. They were freezing cold. He heard footsteps on the path. Sara Fredrika emerged from the hawthorn bushes.

He wondered if she’d been waiting there, just as he used to hover out of sight.

Sara Fredrika gave a start and stopped dead.

‘Who’s she?’

He did not answer. His first reaction was to head for the water. He could hijack the sailing boat and then vanish, straight out to sea, or to the south, to one of the German ports around Kiel, where he could seek asylum.

Sara Fredrika was approaching now, and asked again who the woman at his side was.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Don’t know?’ Kristina Tacker said. ‘Don’t you even know who I am any more? Who’s she? What do you get up to here? Do you ever say anything that’s true?’

Sara Fredrika took hold of him.

‘Who is she?’

He could not answer. He was trapped. He did not have his sounding lead with him.

Both women showered him with questions, who was this woman who had come from the sea, who was this woman clinging on to his arm? He said nothing, the trap had been sprung, it would soon be over and he had no idea how it would end.

Sara Fredrika and Kristina Tacker did all the talking. But he was the one they were staring at, as Kristina Tacker grew more and more outraged and Sara Fredrika more and more desperate. The cat appeared from out of nowhere, it seemed to sense that a trial of strength was taking place and was waiting to witness the outcome. He tried once again to find a way out, to identify a weakness in what he was faced with. But all he could feel was weariness and an urge to give up.

Somewhere in the rocks round about him was his father’s face, his eyes would soon be liberated.

The stone hands were hovering over his head.

In the end, he told the truth: that was the only possibility left.

‘Her name’s Kristina. She’s my wife. I’m married to her.’

‘But you said your wife was dead? And your child?’

Kristina Tacker took a pace forward.

‘He said that I was dead?’

‘Who are you?’

‘I am his wife.’

‘But that’s impossible. His wife fell over a cliff. And the child was dragged down as well.’

‘Well, he lied to you, whoever you are! I’m alive and I am married to him.’

Kristina Tacker screamed and set off running along the path. She disappeared from view, but her screams bounced back and forth off the rocks.

‘Who is she?’ asked Sara Fredrika again.

‘She’s telling the truth. I am married to her, I have not yet concluded the divorce proceedings.’

‘But you said she’d fallen over a cliff, and your daughter as well?’

‘That was my first wife. I haven’t told you everything about my life. I work on top-secret missions, and it’s infectious, I end up by being top secret even to myself.’

She backed away from him, he could see that she was frightened.

‘What’s she doing here?’

‘I don’t know. She came here in the sailing dinghy.’

Kristina Tacker came back. He tried to embrace her and calm her down, but she avoided his grasp.

‘I don’t want you to touch me, never again.’

She turned her back on him and started talking to Sara Fredrika. ‘Who are you?’

‘I live here with him.’

‘With him?’

‘Yes, I just said so. What’s it got to do with you? It’s my life, not yours.’

‘But I’m the one who’s married to him. Can’t you hear what I’m saying?’

‘He’s not married. He lives here with me, and he’s going to take me away to a new country. I want you to leave here.’

Another voice joined in the argument, from the far distance, a baby crying. It was clearly audible in the silence. Kristina Tacker looked round wildly before she grasped the truth. She started shaking and then she collapsed.

‘It’s my baby,’ Sara Fredrika said. ‘My daughter. She’s called Laura.’

Kristina Tacker started whimpering and crawled away, trying to force her way into the thorn bushes.

‘Is she out of her mind? She’ll cut herself to pieces on the thorns.’

‘She’s ill,’ he said. ‘She’s very ill. She needs help.’

He tried to pull Sara Fredrika away, but she beat him off with enormous strength.

‘Don’t you dare lay your hands on me. I don’t know what’s going on here, I’m hearing things that I refuse to believe. Don’t you dare touch me, and don’t touch her either.’

Sara Fredrika squatted down by Kristina Tacker’s side. Kristina Tacker was wrestling with the thorn bushes.

Tobiasson-Svartman looked at his wife. She was like a wounded animal. He was the one who had pulled the trigger, but he had not been able to give her the coup de grâce, he had only wounded her. Sara Fredrika pulled her away from the thorn bushes. Kristina Tacker did not resist. Despite the darkness he could see the blood running down her face from where the thorns had pierced her skin. She was hanging like a dead body in Sara Fredrika’s powerful arms.

He was motionless. The cat was still observing proceedings from a distance. Four metres, he thought. The shadows make it hard to be precise about the centimetres. But the cat is sitting four metres away from me. Kristina Tacker and Sara Fredrika and the baby are a few metres further away. But in fact the distance between me and them is infinite, and it is growing all the time. The lines have been cut and the current and the wind are propelling us in different directions.

He was reminded of the ice. The open channels, people falling in and meeting their fate in the black cold of winter.

But most of all he was reminded of the drift net he had seen the previous summer, when the sun’s rays were beating down on the water, the drift net with all the dead ducks and fish. At that time he had interpreted it as a symbol of freedom. But he was not the net, he was one of the dead fish. What he had seen then was his own downfall.

He started running along the path, running away. He stumbled and hit his face on a rock, cutting his lips. It seemed as if the whole skerry had made him its enemy and was attacking him.

The sailing dinghy was at anchor in the inlet. He waded into the cold water and scrambled aboard. But the sail was furled tightly round the mast and a locked chain prevented him from unfurling it. The tiller was also locked: she had prepared for all eventualities, she knew him far too well to leave anything to chance. She had cut off his escape route even before they had started shouting at each other in the freezing cold water. He tried to break the chain with a hammer he found in one of the pigeonholes in the cockpit. But it refused to yield, and he could see that he would break the tiller if he kept on trying. He threw the hammer into the sea and slumped on to the seat in the cockpit. Everything was still on all sides.

Beneath him, underneath Kristina Tacker’s sailing dinghy, the depth was two and a quarter metres.

Chapter 189

He spent the night in the cockpit.

Loneliness was the walls that encircled him. He had exchanged his wet clothes for hers that he had found in the cabin. He was waiting for the conclusion to all this while dressed in his wife’s underclothes. As the long night drew to a close and light started to creep in, the rocks looked to him like stones waiting to be used for the building of a mighty cathedral.

He had dozed off at one point during the night. He had dreamed about flotsam and jetsam. He had been walking along a beach, searching. The kelp seemed to be transparent, and the smell of mud very strong. Eventually he found what he was looking for, a splinter of wood from a stern. He was that splinter of wood, wrenched out of his context, drifting out of control.

The first thought that occurred to him when he woke up was that the seabed inside him had slowly started to transform itself into an infinite, unmeasurable depth.

I know how to set up a lie, he thought. But I cannot cope with living in the world that lies create. The impostor lives a life, but the deceit involved lives a different life.

Chapter 190

He heard footsteps on the path. It was Sara Fredrika.

It was still only half-light, and he felt very cold sitting there in the cockpit.

‘Come ashore,’ she shouted.

He neither answered nor moved.

‘She’s ill. If she stays here she’ll die. I don’t care what you’ve done, but she must have help.’

He waded ashore with his half-dry clothes over his head. The cold water made him gasp for breath. He started sobbing, but she merely shook her head dismissively at his tears. Her hair was tousled, like it had been the first time he had observed her in secret.

She kept him at a distance all the time.

‘I know everything,’ she said. ‘She’s told me all. I can cope with that even if I ought to tie a sinker round your neck and send you down to the deepest part of the seabed. I can cope. But she can’t. The baby was too much. I have just one question before I run out of words. How could you give both your daughters the same name?’

He did not answer.

‘It’s hard to imagine that so much shit can come out of a little man like you. It just comes pouring out. But for the moment we are not important, she is. I think she’s going out of her mind.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Help me to get her to the boat. I can’t take her in the dinghy, if she starts getting violent she could throw herself overboard. I can’t tie her up either. I can’t take a tied-up person ashore.’

‘Can she cope with seeing me?’

‘I don’t think you exist any more as far as she is concerned. When she saw our baby, when she heard its name, something snapped. I could hear it inside me, the sound of a branch snapping. That branch was her life.’

She looked at the sailing boat.

‘I’ve never sailed a boat as big as this, but I dare say I’ll manage. How many sails does it have?’

‘Two.’

‘I’ll be able to sail it, even if it is big.’

‘Where do you intend to take her?’

‘I’ll make sure she gets back home.’

‘You can’t sail her to Stockholm. It’s a long way, you’ll never find your way.’

‘If I could find you I’ll no doubt be able to find the way to Stockholm as well. I’ll take the baby with me, of course. But you will stay here. When I come back we’ll leave. I don’t forgive you for all your deceit, all the falsehoods you have surrounded yourself with. But there must be something genuine somewhere inside you.’

He touched against her arm. She gave a start.

‘Don’t come too close. If I weren’t so hardened I’d be as mad as she is. All you really deserve is a sinker attached to you. But I can’t bear the thought of losing another husband. Even if he does act as if he has no guts and had evil intentions when he first came to this skerry with all his kind words and smiles.’

They walked up to the cottage. He shrank back when he saw Kristina Tacker. Her face was covered in scratches from thorns and branches, her clothes were torn and covered in vomit. She was sitting on the stool, swaying backwards and forwards. Sara Fredrika squatted down in front of her.

‘Let’s go now. There’s not much wind, but enough to get us away from here.’

Kristina Tacker did not react. Sara Fredrika had prepared a basket of food, and another one with clothes. The baby was lying on the bed, wrapped up in a fur.

‘You carry the baskets,’ she said. ‘She and the baby are mine.’

Sara Fredrika led the way, carrying the baby and supporting Kristina Tacker.

Behind them walked Tobiasson-Svartman, carrying the heavy baskets.

Once again he had the feeling he was in a procession. Behind him were other marchers that he could not see.

Chapter 191

They waded out to the boat.

It was a cold, clear autumn morning. There was a south-easterly breeze. Kristina Tacker said nothing, allowed herself to be led out into the water as if she were to be baptised. Sara Fredrika laid her down in the cockpit together with the baby. He stood by, up to his waist in water. Using a key she had found in one of Kristina Tacker’s pockets, Sara Fredrika first unlocked the chain round the sails, then the one securing the tiller.

‘I’ll come back,’ she said. ‘I ought to make myself scarce, but I won’t. You could take the dinghy and sail away, of course, but where would you go? You’ll wait for me to come back because you have no choice.’

She struck anchor and told him to give the boat a push. He stayed in the water until she had raised the mainsail and set off in a north-easterly direction.

The sailing boat disappeared behind the headlands. He waded ashore.

His only thought was to get some sleep.

Chapter 192

The time that followed was like a conversation with shadows.

He wandered around the island, climbed among rocks, wriggled his way into crevices where there was some protection from the autumn winds that were becoming colder and colder.

One night he was woken up by the sound of a heavy gun, and he could see the glow on the horizon. Otherwise he slept soundly, without dreaming. The cat was curled up at the foot end of the bed.

He fished only when he needed food. He started to hear voices coming from the rocks, from all the people who had lived on the skerry before it was abandoned. People used to live here once upon a time. Sara Fredrika said they had rowed here using their ribs as oars. I did not understand what she meant then, but now her words are crystal clear. They came here in rowing boats, the skerry received them in admiration. They sailed, rowed, fished and died.

People used to live here once upon a time. Nobody saw them come, nobody saw them leave, only the rock lifted its hand of stone as a farewell salute.

When he was curled up in the crevices, sheltering from the bitter autumn winds, he tried to imagine what would have happened when Kristina Tacker had got to Stockholm. But he could not picture her. Her face, even her fragrance, had disappeared for ever.

He also tried to imagine what would happen when Sara Fredrika returned.

America, her great dream? He could certainly imagine going there, but he would want to be on his own: a Swedish naval officer could make a new life for himself in the US Navy. But he would never be able to go there with Sara Fredrika.

It was really the child he was thinking about. Laura Tobiasson-Svartman. He could see her even in pitch darkness. If he abandoned her, he would have finally abandoned himself.

Chapter 193

November came, frosty nights were more frequent. He was waiting for Sara Fredrika to return.

Autumn, waiting, winds from the north.

Chapter 194

One night he was woken up by dreaming that she had come back. He went out into the darkness and listened. Nothing but the sound of the sea.

Then he heard the beating of wings. The swishing of migrating birds, the last flocks of the autumn leaving Sweden in the night.

Over his head, this vast armada, that allowed him to stay behind.

Chapter 195

The first snow fell over the sea on 4 November.

He took in the nets that morning, felt the damp snow seeping into him. There was only a light breeze, he had not raised the sail but rowed slowly. Off Jungfrugrunden he noticed something bobbing up and down in the water. When he came closer he saw that it was a big mine with horns sticking out from its globular casing, most of which was submerged. It was a Russian mine, and had no doubt drifted away from a minefield set elsewhere.

He tied a rope round the damaged anchor loop and towed the mine back to the skerry. He secured it using a sinker.

It was as if he had started to fortify Halsskär.

Chapter 196

The next day, when he was making one of his leisurely tours of the skerry, he had the feeling that Sara Fredrika had tricked him.

She had no intention of returning, she had gone away, abandoning both him and Halsskär.

The thought filled him with panic. He scanned the horizon with his telescope, but there was no sign of any boats.

It was evening before he had managed to regain control of himself. Sara Fredrika would come back, he had seen it in her eyes. Something was forcing her to stay with Kristina Tacker, but sooner or later she would come ashore again on Halsskär.

All he could do was to wait. That was his only task.

Chapter 197

One day in the middle of November he saw a little yacht sailing fast towards Halsskär. He had difficulty in holding the telescope steady. He recognised the yacht, it was Angel’s boat. That convinced him. Sara Fredrika was on her way. The waiting would be over at last.

He went down to the inlet. It was a cold morning, he pulled his overcoat more tightly round him, and noticed that his long hair was hanging over the collar.

When the yacht rounded the last of the headlands, he saw that Angel was alone. Sara Fredrika had not come back.

Chapter 198

Angel anchored the yacht and waded ashore, holding her skirt up above her knees. She was coughing badly and her eyes were bloodshot. She shook hands and gave him a letter she had stuck inside her neckband.

‘It came to me,’ she said. ‘From Sara Fredrika. I didn’t even know she was away.’

He could see that she was curious, but he paid no attention.

‘Go back home,’ he said. ‘You’re coughing and you’re running a temperature. Thank you for bringing the letter.’

‘I’ll stay and wait in case you need to answer it.’

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘The letter was inside another one, addressed to me. She asked me to wait for your reply.’

He tried to read the expression on her face. What had Sara Fredrika written to her?

‘That’s all she wrote,’ she said. ‘She said the baby was doing fine, and I was to wait for your reply. If there was one.’

Chapter 199

They walked up to the cottage. She drank a ladle of water from the bucket and sat down in front of the fire. He went outside to read the letter in private.

He examined the envelope. It was not Kristina Tacker’s handwriting. Somebody else had written what Sara Fredrika had dictated.

He hesitated before plucking up enough courage to open the envelope. It was like taking a deep breath before diving into the water where it was very deep.

Chapter 200

The letter in the unknown handwriting:

He read the letter again. Then he lay down on the bare rock and stared up at the clouds.

They were scudding, flying, towards the south-west.

Chapter 201

He stood up when he heard Angel coming out of the cottage.

He had no idea how much time had passed.

‘I’ve read the letter,’ he said.

‘She asked me to stay until you said that. I don’t know what’s in it, of course.’

They walked down to the inlet.

‘The clouds are restless,’ she said. ‘The November weather is as restless as an animal kicking in its stall. I think it’s going to be a long winter with lots of ice.’

He did not answer. Angel looked at him.

‘I never got to know you,’ she said, ‘but I delivered your child. Now Sara Fredrika and the baby have left. I have a strong feeling that they will never come back. I can’t know that for sure and it’s none of my business. But I have to ask you even so: What are you going to do? Are you going to stay here on the skerry? Will you survive here? It’s not that you can’t feed yourself from the sea, you can no doubt manage that. But the isolation? You come from a big city, will you be able to survive the isolation when the storms really set in?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You ought to go away.’

He nodded. She waited for him to say something more, but he just stared ahead in silence.

‘Well, I’ll be off,’ she said. ‘You ought to go away. I don’t think you could cope with life out here. The stones will eat you up.’

He watched her strike anchor and shake off the mud clinging to it. When she set sail, he turned and walked away.

Chapter 202

One day the two farm labourers from Kättilö sailed into the inlet.

The rumour that Sara Fredrika had left and taken the baby with her, leaving him behind, had gone round the islands. Somebody had seen an unfamiliar sailing boat approaching Halsskär with a woman on board. But nobody knew what had happened on the skerry. All they knew was that the hydrographic engineer was wandering about the skerry like a moth-eaten animal.

Somebody maintained that he had even started to walk on all fours.

The farmhands sailed out one Sunday, taking a bottle of aquavit with them. It was pure curiosity. But he merely shook his head when they offered him a drink. He did not answer their questions.

When they got back home they reported that he had definitely started walking on all fours the moment they turned their backs.

Chapter 203

A few days before Christmas he scratched his name into one of the rocks on the north side of the skerry, a rock that was submerged at high tide. There was a thin layer of snow over the archipelago, the temperature was now more or less constantly below zero. He had wrapped himself up in a shaggy blanket held in place by a rope round his body. He lived on with one question, the only one he still had the strength to worry about. How could she have known what happened out on the ice the day the German deserter died? He sought in vain for an answer.

He kept walking round the skerry, and feeding the cat, which was growing more and more shy, with small fish. Once every day he went to check that the mine was still at its mooring.

After Angel’s visit he had stopped measuring distances altogether. He had fallen headlong into the abyss inside himself. Down there in the darkness Kristina Tacker was by his side. He tried to climb up out of the depths, but the walls were slippery, he kept sliding back down, his strength faded and eventually vanished altogether.

In the end there was nothing left.

Chapter 204

There were moments when his thoughts were crystal clear. Then he realised that he could never have grown close to another human being because he had an irrational fear of losing himself. There were also other moments when he wanted to tear off all his clothes, wash himself, and drag himself out of his degradation.

One day he sailed through a bitter winter wind to Valdemarsvik and bought some newspapers. He read about the war, how the sea battles had been replaced by long-drawn-out fighting in the muddy fields of Flanders. He had the strong impression that life was the same for everybody, and he sank back down into his abyss, unable to raise the strength to resist.

It was clear to him that most things in his life had been based on a lunatic idea. He had built his existence on distances instead of seeking closeness.

It was then, a few days before Christmas, that he carved his name into the rock.

Afterwards he realised that he had prepared his own headstone.

Chapter 205

On Christmas Day a northerly gale blew in over the archipelago.

He recalled that it was this very morning some years previously that Sara Fredrika had lost her husband.

When he clambered on to the rocks he discovered that the mine had broken loose from its mooring. He scanned the choppy water, but he could see no sign of it. It was drifting out to sea, into the shipping lanes.

I am taking part in the war, he thought. But I do not know on which side.

Chapter 206

Death came at New Year, 1916.

One night there was a strong, persistent, northerly gale. The cottage caught fire. He had neglected the chimney, which had cracked, and red-hot soot had forced its way through. The walls went up as if they had been soaked in petrol.

He was woken by the dazzling light By then it was too late to control the fire. He hurried out of the burning cottage with his sounding lead, his notebooks and his clothes.

The cottage burned quickly, and was a complete ruin before dawn broke.

He felt very cold, there was a fierce wind.

During the night he thought he could see Sara Fredrika and Laura in the glow from the fire.

Kristina Tacker had not been in the flames. She was gone, silent, he could not even remember her face now.

The gale blew over by afternoon. The sea was calm once more. The ice would soon begin to form, if the cold weather continued.

He felt cold all the time, then the feeling developed into a pain approaching the intolerable.

The vital decision was creeping quietly up on him. Soon it became an obvious inevitability. There may have been a trace of fear inside him, but it was mostly exhaustion and the intense cold that he could not cope with.

He started to look for the cat so as to kill it, but he did not have the strength. It would survive the cold, it did not know what death was, it would only die if it could not find anything to eat.

He carried his sounding lead and his notebooks to the inlet, packed everything into a net and tied it to a sinker before throwing them on board.

He suddenly felt that he was in a hurry. He looked anxiously up at the sky, worried that a wind might get up again.

He wanted to set out when the sea was calm.

The boat glided out of the inlet.

He rowed to the spot where the two German sailors had sunk to the bottom of the sea. When he reached it he took in the oars, sat on the stern seat and let the boat drift. There was still no wind, the sea was as calm as a millpond. He lifted the net with his lead and the notebooks over the rail and let it sink to the bottom.

One last time he tried to clamber up the slippery walls of the abyss, but slid down again immediately.

He had made up his mind to get it all over with quickly. The sinker was heavy, he made his last measurement and decided it weighed seven kilos. He tied the rope attached to the stone round his legs.

But first he took off all his clothes. He wanted to die naked. The cold water would deaden his senses.

Then he lifted the stone over the rail and followed it down into the depths.

Some days later the boat drifted ashore at the Häradskär lighthouse. One of the pilots identified it as Sara Fredrika’s sailing dinghy.

The sea froze over in mid-January.

The ice covered all the sea graves in the winter of 1916.