Depths

Chapter 40

The first snow fell on 15 November.

It was dead calm, the bank of dark cloud came rolling in from the Gulf of Finland. The snow was slight at first. The thermometer showed minus two degrees and the barometer was falling.

The previous evening Tobiasson-Svartman had noted in his journal that they had been working for twenty-one days and had three rest days. He calculated that they should have finished sounding the new route, from the Sandsänkan lighthouse to the Gryt area of the northern archipelago and the approach to Barösund, by 1 December. Then the Blenda would move south to Gamlebyviken where a small area of the approach channel needed to be measured again.

However, Naval Headquarters had issued a warning that this second stage might have to be postponed until New Year, 1915. In that case Tobiasson-Svartman and his colleagues would return to Stockholm and wait there.

He was still not sure whether it would be possible to shorten the whole route from Halsskär westwards. There was one area that worried him. It was a badly charted stretch where certain indications suggested dramatic irregularities on the seabed. But were these isolated projections which he could ignore? Or was there an underwater ridge that would force him to restrict changes that could be made to the route?

He was not sure. His worry was his alone. He shared it with nobody else.

When he settled down in his bunk and blew out the paraffin lamp, he wondered why he had still received no letter from his wife. The destroyer Svea had rendezvoused with them on six occasions. Every time, he had handed his main record book over to the cryptographers, spoken to Rake about the war and drunk a glass of brandy, and before leaving had passed over his letter. He had always been sure that this time she would have answered, but Rake never had any mail for him.

Another thought came into his head. It was now two weeks since he had met the woman on Halsskär. He felt an increasing need to go back to the skerry. Two mornings in succession he had untied the painter and set off in one of the tenders, but at the last moment changed his mind. The temptation was strong, but forbidden.

He wanted to go there, but he did not dare.

The snow became heavier. The sea was calm, blue-grey. The black clouds crept past. Lieutenant Jakobsson came out on deck with a scarf wrapped round his head and a peaked cap. One rating burst out laughing, then another, but Jakobsson was not angry: he seemed to be amused.

‘This is totally against the rules,’ he said with a smile. ‘Scarves are for old women, not for ships’ masters in the Swedish Navy. But there’s no denying that they keep your ears nice and warm.’

Then, to the general surprise, he bent down and scooped up some snow from the ship’s deck and managed to shape it into a snowball despite his deformed hand. He threw it at Sub-Lieutenant Welander’s back.

‘Swedes practise to become soldiers or sailors by fighting snowball battles as they grow up,’ he shouted, pleased with himself to have scored a bullseye.

Welander was surprised, shook the snow from his overcoat; but he said nothing, just turned on his heel and walked to the rope ladder and climbed down into his launch. Jakobsson watched him all the way. He frowned.

‘Sub-Lieutenant Welander’s launch has been given a secret nickname,’ he confided to Tobiasson-Svartman. ‘The crew think I don’t know about it, but the most important task for a commanding officer, second only to making sure that his ship doesn’t set sail for Hell, is to know what rumours and whispers are circulating among his crew. I have to be aware if one of the crew is being badly treated. I don’t want a case like Richter’s on my ship, somebody who gets bullied so badly that he prefers to jump into the sea. Sub-Lieutenant Welander’s launch is known as “The Shilly-Shally”. It’s a malicious name, but an accurate one.’

Tobiasson-Svartman understood. Welander was sometimes in two minds about various sounding results and demanded, quite unnecessarily, a second measurement.

‘What do they call my boat?’ he said.

‘Nothing. That’s surprising. Sailors are generally an inventive crowd. But your crew doesn’t seem to have discovered a weakness in you that warrants the smashing of an invisible bottle of champagne against the bows and presenting the boat with a nickname.’

Tobiasson-Svartman felt relieved. He had not made himself vulnerable without knowing it.

Jakobsson suddenly pulled a face.

‘I have a shooting pain in my arm,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’ve strained it.’

Tobiasson-Svartman decided he would raise the matter he had been suppressing ever since coming on board.

‘I sometimes wonder about your hand, of course.’

‘Everybody does. But very few satisfy their curiosity. In my view it displays disgraceful cowardice not to dare to ask those you work with about their physical defects. The world is full of admirals who walk around with their heads under their arms, but no subordinate dares to ask them about their state of health.’

Jakobsson chuckled merrily.

‘When I was a child I used to fantasise and say my hand had been injured in a pirate attack in the Caribbean,’ he said. ‘Or munched by a crocodile. It was too uninteresting and woeful to admit that it had always looked as it does now. Some people have a club foot, others are born with a hand that looks like a club. I still prefer to think that I came by it from a swarthy knave and his bloodstained cutlass, but it goes against the grain to tell lies to a fellow officer.’

The snow was now falling very heavily. Welander’s launch was already on its way to the greyish white buoys that marked where the previous day’s soundings had finished.

Tobiasson-Svartman boarded his launch, the ratings started rowing and he prepared his lead. As it was snowing he had his chart, notebook and pens in a waterproof oilskin wallet.

The ratings were shivering in the snow. Two of them had bad colds and their noses were running. Tobiasson-Svartman was furious. He hated people with runny noses. But, of course, he made no comment. He was one of the disgraceful cowards Lieutenant Jakobsson had recently referred to.

They rowed towards the buoys. He stood in the stern, gazing at Halsskär and thinking about Sara Fredrika. The thought of her husband made him jealous.

The snow continued falling.

He felt as if the sea were keeping watch on him, like a sharp-eyed animal.

Chapter 41

Shortly after ten o’clock Welander shouted that he had come across a significant underwater peak. Over twenty metres the depth of water had decreased from sixty-three metres to nineteen. It was like coming upon a cliff wall that had risen unnoticed beneath the surface of the sea. Tobiasson-Svartman sank his own lead. The last sounding, a mere ten metres astern, had been fifty-two metres. He held his breath, hoping for the same measurement again. But his lead came to a stop after only seventeen metres. What he had feared had come to pass. They had hit upon an underwater ridge that had not previously been marked on charts.

The sea had raised its voice and refused to cooperate.

Instead of continuing along the transit line, he requested readings at right angles to the course the launches had been following so far. They must find out if the ridge was a long one or just an isolated stack. They took soundings every three metres and shouted the results to each other. Welander found depths of 19, 16, 16, 15 and then suddenly 7 metres, thereafter 7 again, then 4, followed by another jump to 2 metres. For a further stretch of a hundred metres the distance to the seabed was between 2 and 3 metres.

Tobiasson-Svartman had the same result. This was no minor irregularity: they had come across a stretch of shallow water that for some reason had hitherto been missed. Off the top of his head he could not remember it being mentioned as a good place for herring fishing in old documents describing the best fishing grounds around the Sandsänkan lighthouse.

The snow was falling even more heavily. He felt disappointed. The sea had tricked him.

He shouted to Welander, instructing him to stop work for the day. The thoroughly soaked ratings came to life. One of them yawned noisily as he took hold of his oar. A lump of yellowish-green snot was trickling down his upper lip. Tobiasson-Svartman stood up abruptly and hit the sailor in the face with the chart pouch. It was a hard blow, and blood appeared immediately on the rating’s lip.

It all happened so quickly that nobody had time to react.

Weakness, Tobiasson-Svartman thought. Now I have made myself vulnerable. I lost control.

The ratings carried on rowing. He sat with his eyes fixed on Halsskär. Nobody spoke.

Over dinner, which consisted of roast beef, potatoes and pickled gherkin, he told Lieutenant Jakobsson about the invisible cliff wall.

‘What are the implications?’ Jakobsson asked.

‘I shall be able to relocate the navigable channel closer to the mainland, but it will not be as wide as I had hoped.’

‘So it hasn’t been a complete failure?’

‘No.’

He went on to speak of the other incident.

‘I gave a rating a good dressing-down today. It was necessary. He wasn’t rowing as he should have been. I hit him with the chart pouch.’

Needless to say, Jakobsson knew about it already. He smiled.

‘Naturally, the crew has to be punished if they don’t obey orders or fail to carry out their work properly. I must ask you, though, from curiosity purely, what are you doing when you are not “rowing as you should be”?’

‘He was lazy.’

Jakobsson nodded slowly, and eyed him quizzically.

‘I didn’t think a shipping lane could be such a personal matter,’ he said. ‘I can understand that a ship might be. I have seen old captains and bosuns weep when their ship has been towed away to the breaker’s yard. But a navigable channel?’

Tobiasson-Svartman thought he ought to respond to that. But he could not think of anything to say.

Chapter 42

He finished his meal and left the mess. When he came out on deck he stopped to gaze in the direction of Halsskär, which was invisible in the dark. He tried to imagine what Sara Fredrika’s husband looked like, and wondered if there were any children in the grey cottage.

A slight breeze had got up from the south. He could feel that the mercury had risen above freezing point.

It had stopped snowing.

He sat down at the table in his cabin and tried to deal with his disappointment. He had made a mistake, he had assumed that he would triumph. He had been convinced that he could change an arc into an almost straight line on the sea chart, give naval vessels more protection, and above all enable them to approach land or head out to sea at faster speeds. Although he knew from experience that a navigable channel was like an invisible obstacle course, he had allowed himself to approach the mission with too much confidence.

The sea had not tricked him. It was he who had failed to show sufficient respect. He had committed a grave sin: he had guessed.

The paraffin lamp started smoking. As he adjusted the flame a memory came to him. His father had once lapsed into one of his most furious rages when Lars arrived late at the dinner table because he had guessed the time and got it wrong. With a bellow his father had boxed his ears and sent him to bed without food.

To be late was to desecrate other people’s time. Guessing could be an amusing game, but was never permissible in connection with dinner or other serious matters.

Such as being responsible for checking the depth of secret naval channels.

He wrote up the notes he had made during the day and worked out a plan for how they would continue their work. They would be forced to retreat about 150 metres. When they came to the previous course of the navigable channel they would start sounding again.

He calculated how long it would take. Provided nothing unforeseen happened, they should be finished by 1 December even so.

He put the main record book away, turned down the flame and stretched out on his bunk. There was a faint creaking from the hull. He could hear the watchman walking over the deck. Somebody coughed. He thought how there always seemed to be a coughing epidemic on board a naval vessel. It rattled like an echo through the collective chest of ships. When on board a warship you could be certain that the wind and the sound of the engines would always be accompanied by somebody coughing.

He pictured the crew of a big battleship, perhaps two thousand men, standing on parade and coughing in unison while their superiors looked on.

He thought about the sailor he had struck. What did he know about him? He was nineteen, came from inland, Vimmerby, and was called Mats Lindegren. That was all. The lad spoke an almost incomprehensible dialect, often smelled of sweat and gave the appearance of being frightened. He was an insignificant person with a pale, pimply face, and unnaturally thin to boot. There was something vague and elusive about him. It was incomprehensible that he should have joined the navy, even if he was not among the worst when it came to being seasick. He knew as much from Lieutenant Jakobsson, who always had people keeping a check on which members of the crew — himself included — became incapable of working during a bad storm. Mats Lindegren was one of those not affected. He was not sick, nor did he become dizzy.

There in the darkness Tobiasson-Svartman suddenly realised why he had been unable to control himself. The yawning sailor with the snotty nose had reminded him of the dead man Richter, the one who had been pulled out of the sea a few weeks ago. The similarity of their appearance, that and the fact that, they had stumbled upon a big underwater ridge had shattered all his best-laid plans, had made him lose control.

He closed his eyes and thought about his wife. She was walking towards him through the darkness; he felt wholly calm deep down; the cabin was filled with a sweetish scent, and finally he managed to fall asleep.

Chapter 43

She followed him into his dreams.

It was 1905, they had just married and were on their honeymoon in Kristiania. The struggle over the ‘to be or not to be’ of the Swedish-Norwegian union was at its most troubled stage and he had made the naive mistake of going out for a walk with his wife along Karl Johan wearing his Swedish naval uniform. Just as they were passing the university somebody had shouted at him, and even in his dream he could hear that hot-tempered voice: ‘Swedish bastard, go home.’ He turned round, but there was no obvious culprit, just a crowd of people who looked the other way or smiled and looked down at the ground. They were staying at the Grand Hotel, and went back there immediately. Kristina Tacker had been fearful and wanted to leave right away, but he had refused. He changed into civilian clothes, they went out again and nobody had shouted at them. No one was hostile when they went to the Blom restaurant or the Grand Hotel’s veranda, nor when they visited the newly built National Theatre. They saw Johanne Dybwad as Mrs Alving in a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts, which his wife thought was disgusting. He agreed with her, to be polite, but in fact he had been disturbed and moved because the play reminded him of his own childhood and resurrected uncomfortable memories of pain and ignominy.

Thus far his dream was clear, a walk down memory lane. But then everything became chaotic. They become separated in a crowd at Bygdøy and soon afterwards he sees her with another man. He tries to pull the man away from her, but he is dead and his body is already decaying, the stink is something awful. Then suddenly everything is back at the beginning again. They walk along Karl Johan, stop at the entrance to the Blom restaurant and examine the menu, they talk about everyday things, she squeezes his arm and then the picture goes white, featureless, without content or meaning.

When he woke up he tried to interpret the dream. He had let it finish in nothing but whiteness. He had rubbed Kristina Tacker out.

His pocket watch showed three minutes to five. No thin light yet. He lay with his eyes open, and in the darkness — the opposite of the whiteness of the dream — he decided to row to Halsskär that morning.

He had to. That was all there was to it. He had no choice.

The watchman was pacing up and down the deck.

Tobiasson-Svartman stretched out a hand and touched his sound, which lay on the floor next to his bunk.

Chapter 44

The sea was wreathed in fog when he rowed over to Halsskär.

About halfway there the Blenda had faded away like a dark shadow amid all the white.

He wondered if the whiteness in his dream had presaged the fog. A fish broke the surface of the water alongside the boat with a plop. That’s what pike do, he thought, but would a pike really be as far out to sea as this?

He rested on his oars and listened. The fog magnified the noises from the invisible ship. Some of the ratings had been ordered to scrape away rust. The blows of hammers and chisels bounced through the fog and reached his ears. There was no risk of his getting lost, he could navigate on the basis of the noises. He counted his strokes and when he looked ahead he saw he was close to land. He beached the tender as before, having considered rowing a bit further and tying up in the little inlet where the sailing dinghy was moored. That would save him having to clamber over the slippery rocks, but the inlet was not his, and he did not want to intrude.

He made his way to the protected natural harbour and paused to observe the dinghy. It was in the same place as last time, but the sail was not furled round the mast, it was flapping gently in the slight breeze. The nets were hanging as before, but as he approached he could smell fish. There were the remains of cod and a few flounders in the water next to the boat He was surprised that the gulls had not already been there and eaten the lot. He walked on over the slippery rocks, slipped and cut his hand on a sharp stone. He had a handkerchief in one of his pockets, Kristina Tacker had embroidered his initials into one corner. He pressed it against his hand until the bleeding had stopped.

The door of the grey cottage was shut. Smoke was coming out of the chimney. He sat behind some large rocks and let his telescope glide over the building, the door, the walls, the window. The only moving thing was the smoke. He waited. Suddenly a black cat with a white nose appeared round one corner of the cottage. It paused and looked towards where he was sitting, one front paw poised. He held his breath. The cat moved on again and vanished into some bushes. The door opened. Sara Fredrika came out. She lifted up her skirt and squatted down. He had a glimpse of her white legs. He hesitated for a moment, then grasped the telescope and aimed it at her. Just as she stood up she looked straight at him. He jerked the telescope away and closed his eyes. She walked along the path towards the inlet where the sailing dinghy was moored, and disappeared behind an outcrop of rocks.

He stood up and half ran to the highest point of the skerry, where he could see down into the inlet. There was the creaking sound of an oar, some squeaking from a rowlock, and then he saw the boat moving away from land. She rowed with good, strong strokes, and the sail was hanging loose, flapping as if enjoying its freedom. He could see through the telescope that she had tucked her skirt above her knees, and that there were nets lying on the stern thwart. She emerged from the inlet but did not follow the line of the coast. Instead she headed for the inner archipelago where the nearest landmark was a group of bare rocks sticking up out of the water.

She tossed a cork float over the side and as the dinghy glided downwind at a fair pace she let the net go. The breeze was easterly, barely enough to cause ripples. He estimated the net to be forty-two metres long, and she quickly adjusted the flow whenever it threatened to become tangled. She knew what she was doing and wasted no time. Her blonde hair kept falling over her face, she kept blowing it away, shaking her head, and eventually hung on to a long strand with her teeth to keep it out of her way.

He lowered the telescope. Odd that she was out in the boat on her own. Was her husband ill? Was he in bed at the cottage, behind the closed door?

He made up his mind on the spot. It would be some time before she finished laying out the nets and came back to the skerry.

He walked down to the cottage. The door was still closed and there was no sign of the cat. He approached cautiously and peered in through the window. It was quite dark inside and difficult to see anything. A fire glowed in the hearth. Suddenly it flared up. There was only one room, a bed, a table and a chair inside the rough walls. He could not see anybody in there. He tried the door, knocked gently, then opened it. The room was empty. No sign of her husband. No boots, no overcoat, no pipe on the table, no shotgun on the wall. She lived there alone.

There was no husband. Sara Fredrika lived all alone on Halsskär.

He thought he heard the dinghy scraping against some stones in the inlet and hurried back to his hiding place behind the rocks. She soon appeared, walking towards the cottage. She glanced up at the sky then went inside.

The fog was lifting when he returned to the ship. He rowed so fast that his clothes were sticking to his body. Why was he in such a hurry?

Was he running away from something, or towards something?

Chapter 45

Lieutenant Jakobsson was standing by the rail, cleaning his pipe.

He smiled.

‘You get up early.’

‘I hope I didn’t wake you?’

‘If I manage to sleep, I dream I’m awake. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m awake or asleep. But when I come out on deck it’s the real world, and I saw that one of the tenders was missing and they said you had rowed off into the fog.’

‘I need some exercise. The work in the boats isn’t enough.’

He climbed up on deck and headed for the mess and breakfast. He had spent too much time on Halsskär. Work would be late in starting today.

Jakobsson followed him.

‘Maybe I should accompany you,’ he said, after lighting his pipe. ‘Maybe you’ve discovered something?’

For a moment Tobiasson-Svartman thought that Jakobsson knew. Then he understood that it was an innocent question.

‘There’s nothing there. You can’t even get ashore. But I enjoy rowing.’

‘It’s not something I try to do, not with my hand.’

Tobiasson-Svartman drained his cup of coffee then stood up, went back on deck and climbed down into his launch.

Sub-Lieutenant Welander gave him a clumsy salute. His launch had already cast off.

The rating Tobiasson-Svartman had struck in the face the day before had a swollen lip, but there was no snot hanging from his nostril. He had changed places and now had the oar furthest from the stern thwart It would be harder for Tobiasson-Svartman to reach him there, should he have another fit of rage.

Chapter 46

Late that afternoon the Svea appeared on the horizon.

They stopped their work immediately. Tobiasson-Svartman had written up his notes by as early as six o’clock.

He made his way over the gangway that had been set up between the two vessels. Anders Höckert welcomed him aboard. While they were on their way to Captain Rake, he politely asked after Lieutenant Sundfeldt and Artillery Captain von Sidenbahn.

‘Von Sidenbahn has done his stint and is back ashore,’ Höckert said. ‘That’s where he prefers to be. He was damned annoyed, having to live on a moving floor. Sundfeldt is asleep — he was on bridge watch yesterday evening. He has an amazing ability to sleep, that man. Some of those who choose a seafaring life dream about being rocked to a sound night’s sleep by their ship. I have a theory that says they are really longing for their mothers. So how’s the work going?’

‘Well.’

Höckert paused and eyed him up and down.

‘Well? Neither more nor less? Just “well”?’

‘Some things go brilliantly. Other days cause a few problems. Let’s say, we’re making progress.’

Höckert knocked on the door and opened it before Rake had a chance to respond. Then he stepped aside and vanished down a companionway.

Rake was waiting for him, his jacket unbuttoned.

He held a letter in his hand.

Chapter 47

He saw right away that it was from Kristina Tacker.

The handwriting was unmistakable, with marked, fancy flourishes on the capital letters. He would have preferred to leave Rake immediately and return to his cabin to read the letter.

Previously he had been worried because she had not written. Now that had changed and he was anxious to know what the letter said.

Rake picked up the brandy bottle. Tobiasson-Svartman noticed that he was wearing a black armband on his left arm.

Rake saw what he was looking at.

‘My mother has died. I’ll be going ashore in Kalmar and will hand the ship over to Lieutenant Sundfeldt for a few days while I deal with the funeral.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

Rake filled his glass.

‘My mother was 102,’ Rake said. ‘She was born in 1812, so if she had lived in France she might have met Napoleon. Her own mother was born sometime in the 1780s, I forget the exact year. But it was before the French Revolution. When I touched my mother’s hand it often occurred to me that I was feeling the skin of somebody who in turn had touched the skin of people born in the eighteenth century. In certain circumstances it’s almost incomprehensible how time can shrink.

‘But it’s hard to mourn a person who is 102 years old. For the last ten years she hasn’t known who I was. Sometimes she thought I was her late husband, my own father, that is.

‘Extreme age is a spiritual pitched battle fought in the dark. A battle that inevitably ends in defeat. The darkness and degradation of old age is something for which religions have never been able to offer us consolation or a satisfactory explanation.

‘But death can come suddenly and unexpectedly even for one so very old. It might seem an odd thing to say, but death always disturbs us no matter when it comes. Although my mother was in spiritual darkness she had a strong will to live. She did not want to die, despite being so old.’

Tobiasson-Svartman made to leave, but Rake was not finished.

‘There has been a military confrontation near the Gulf of Riga,’ he said. ‘Our clever radio operators who listen in to communications between the German and Russian ships and their high commands have been able to confirm the engagement. It happened at the end of last week. One German cruiser was damaged by torpedoes, but was able to limp back to Kiel. Two Russian vessels, a torpedo boat and a troopship, were torpedoed and sank.’

‘Is there anything to suggest that Sweden might be drawn into the war?’

‘Not a thing. But there are opinions, of course. Mine, for one. I think we should join in on the German side.’

Tobiasson-Svartman was astonished. The captain was openly declaring that he was opposed to Swedish neutrality, which had been decided on by parliament and the government. A vigorous Navy Minister would have stripped him of his command forthwith if he had heard what Rake had just said. But it was an open question whether a Navy Minister would dare to fall out with his senior officers.

Rake seemed to read his thoughts.

‘Obviously it is forbidden to say something like that. But I’m not especially concerned about the consequences. If the worst comes to the worst, I can always plead diminished responsibility due to the sudden death of my mother.’

He stood up. The audience was over. He handed over the letter and opened the door leading to the deck. Rake accompanied Tobiasson-Svartman to the gangway sloping steeply down to the gunboat’s deck.

‘I keep thinking about that dead German sailor,’ he said. ‘There will now be lots of dead bodies floating around in the Gulf of Riga. All seas are graveyards, but there are no remains at the bottom of the Baltic. It is a big cemetery that is devoid of any human remains. The lack of calcium means that bodies and skeletons very quickly decay here, or so I’ve been told.’

They said their farewells when they came to the gangway. Rake asked how the work was going.

‘Some days everything goes well, other days bring setbacks. But we are making progress,’ Tobiasson-Svartman said.

On the way down the gangway he stumbled. For a moment he was in danger of dropping the letter.

Chapter 48

He shut himself away in his cabin and sat down to read the letter.

Suddenly he was overcome by the conviction that she had not written before because she had been unfaithful. The letter was bound to contain a confession that she had met somebody else. He sat for a long while with the letter in his hand, not daring to open it.

The letter contained nothing of what he had feared.

First she apologised for the delay in writing. She had been unwell for a few days and unable to write. Then their maid, Anna Beata, had left without warning. Perhaps she had got herself pregnant — it had not been possible to extract any sensible reason for her resignation. That had meant she was forced to turn to Fru Eber, who had an agency for domestic servants in Brahegatan, and then she had had to interview the applicants. It had taken several days and evenings before she was in a position to appoint a girl from Ödeshög who spoke in a funny dialect but had good references, including one from the headmaster of the grammar school in Södertälje — she had worked for him, it seemed. She was also called Anna, was twenty-seven, and Kristina Tacker described her as ‘on the chubby side, with large, foolish eyes, but she seems reliable and honest. She is also strong, which could be useful as our carpets are heavy.’

The letter ended with her saying how much she missed him, how empty and dreary the flat seemed, how frightened she was by the war, and how she hoped he would soon come back home. He put the letter down and felt guilty about having suspected the worst. He had a wife who opened her heart to him, a letter that had been delayed by a maid who might have been made pregnant in the bushes at Djurgården and no longer wanted to fulfil her duties. He had a bad conscience about leaving her on her own to take care of all the practical details that she might have difficulty in coping with. She was like one of her own china figurines.

It seemed to him that what he was feeling must be love. The tension that had eased, his bad conscience and her fragrance that filled the cramped cabin.

He wrote a reply immediately: he made no mention of Rudin’s illness and death, nor did the dead German soldier feature in the letter. He was afraid that any such detail would only worry her the more. He wrote positive things about the sea that had a mind of its own, the endless hours in the launch, the lonely mealtimes. And how he longed for her and dreamed about her every night.

When he had finished, it dawned on him that not a word of it was true. Nothing he had written was genuine. It was all fantasy, empty poetry, nothing more.

It was as if something had come between him and Kristina Tacker. He knew what it was. Or, rather, who it was. It was Sara Fredrika, the woman who lived alone on Halsskär.

It was as if she was in his cabin here and now, with her skirt pulled up above her knees.

He went out on deck and gazed at Halsskär. It was hooded in darkness.

That was where he was heading for.

Late that night, just before midnight, Anders Höckert came across from the Svea and returned the main record book, which had been copied.

Tobiasson-Svartman handed him the letter he had written to his wife. Höckert invited him to join a game of cards that was in progress in the destroyer’s wardroom.

He declined.

He lay awake. He was longing to be with the woman on Halsskär.

Chapter 49

The Svea weighed anchor during the night.

He was woken by the powerful vibrations as the destroyer backed away from the Blenda. The letter to his wife was on its way. The carrier pigeon was made of steel and instead of wings it had powerful steam engines.

Chapter 50

When he got up at dawn he was greeted by Lieutenant Jakobsson looking grim. He asked Tobiasson-Svartman to accompany him to the bows of the ship.

Lying among several large capstans was Sub-Lieutenant Welander. He was covered in vomit and smelled strongly of spirits. There was an empty vodka bottle between his feet. His hair was matted, his eyes bloodshot and when he tried to stand up he was incapable of maintaining his balance and fell backwards among the hawsers.

Jakobsson watched him in disgust.

‘I suspected something like this,’ he said. ‘I could sometimes smell it, but he’d turn away and speak with his mouth almost closed. I’ve been waiting for the bubble to burst. Well, it has burst now. We’ll let him lie here for the time being.’

They went to Welander’s cabin. Beneath his bunk Jakobsson unearthed a collection of bottles, most of them empty, some unopened. He made a rough calculation.

‘Sub-Lieutenant Welander has drunk a litre of spirits per day since he came on board. Only an advanced alcoholic can drink that much. He has done his job and not given himself away. But there are limits. He passed the alcoholic’s meridian last night. Everything has fallen to pieces, he couldn’t give a fig for his responsibilities or his reputation. He couldn’t care less about his commission or his family. All he cares about is his damned bottles. It’s tragic but not unusual. And very Swedish.’

They went back on deck. Jakobsson gave the order to carry Welander back to his cabin. They watched the sorrowful procession, with Welander’s arms hanging limply between two strong ratings.

‘He must leave the ship immediately, of course,’ said Jakobsson. ‘I’ll send for the gunboat Thule to take him to port. But how are we going to resolve the business of his launch?’

Tobiasson-Svartman had started working on that problem the moment he saw the drunken officer sprawled among the hawsers. At the same time he was asking himself why he had not suspected that Welander was concealing his alcoholism behind a mask of correctness. He was irritated that Lieutenant Jakobsson had sharper eyes than he did.

He preferred not to wait for another naval engineer. One of the oarsmen in Tobiasson-Svartman’s boat, Karl Hamberg, was older and more experienced than the rest. He could take over the responsibility until the soundings in this area were completed. The people in charge in Stockholm could come up with a successor to Welander for the next stage, the soundings at the approaches to Gamlebyviken.

Jakobsson listened to his proposals and gave his approval. Hamberg was a conscientious and energetic sailor from Öland. They called him in and explained the situation. He seemed to be honoured and not overawed by the responsibility he was being given.

Late that afternoon the Thule set sail from Slätbaken to fetch Welander. The crews of the launches watched with interest as Welander staggered over to the sister ship.

Tobiasson-Svartman could hear the oarsmen muttering contentedly among themselves. They made no attempt to conceal their Schadenfreude over the fact that an officer had been caught out.

Never again would Tobiasson-Svartman meet Sub-Lieutenant Welander. The thought scared him. It was like a cold wave hitting him from behind.

I will never learn how to cope with leave-taking, he thought. Never ever. Every leave-taking implies a threat.

Chapter 51

That evening he felt restless and started listing his assets.

He had settled into his bunk and snuffed out the paraffin lamp. Then it took possession of him, as if he were starving. He lit the lamp again and took out the black notebook in which he wrote up his accounts.

It was a habit he had inherited from his father. Throughout his childhood and youth, at the most unlikely times, sometimes at midnight, but just as often at dawn, Hugo Svartman would sit hunched over his black notebooks, checking his assets and the stock exchange index.

Hugo Svartman had left a fortune. When he died in 1912, his estate was valued at 295,000 kronor. Most of it was in equities, bonds and debentures. There was also a portfolio of industrial shares. He had invested mainly in Separator, Svenska Metallverken and Gas-accumulator.

His son calculated, checked, crossed out and started all over again. It was as if he were suffering from a fever. By two in the morning he felt satisfied. His insecurity had melted away.

Not only were his assets still there, they had grown. Since the death of his father the fortune had swollen to more than 300,000 kronor. The share index had shot up after the outbreak of war. Trenches and naval battles supplied the stock exchange with bloodstained energy.

He put out the light and lay down ready for sleep, on his left side, with his hands clenched by his crutch.

He was at peace.

Chapter 52

The next day it was grey and foggy again.

The temperature was plus two. He woke up with a start and saw that it was 5 a.m. He could hear the watchman walking on deck, but no coughing. It was a new watchman. They followed a rota drawn up by Lieutenant Jakobsson which, for some reason unknown, kept changing.

He stayed in his bunk until it started to get light. Then he got up and had coffee in the galley, where the cook was preparing breakfast. He climbed down into one of the tenders and pushed off, having turned down the offer of a rower.

The tender glided into the fog of its own accord. He established his course then started rowing. Somebody had oiled the rowlocks, which no longer squeaked like awkward children.

The silence was split by a desolate sound, a whining noise, possibly from birds gone astray in the fog.

When he came to the skerry he could not work out at first where he was. Nothing alters a shoreline so much as negotiating it in fog. He rowed cautiously alongside the shore, scraping the bottom now and then, and eventually found his usual landing place.

It was damp and he was freezing. The dinghy was moored in the inlet. The sail was furled round the mast and the tiller was lying on the rocks. Nets hung wet from the hooks on the grey poles, and he gathered that she had already been out that morning and taken in the nets. He continued walking, but stopped dead when he heard a noise he could not identify. He waited until it had stopped then advanced with caution to his hiding place. He raised his head and looked down at the cottage. Fog was streaking in among the cliffs.

She was getting washed. She was naked, standing in a baler and facing him. Her hair hung down over her breasts, which were dripping wet. She was rubbing herself vigorously with a flannel, bending down for more water, quickly, as it was cold. The fog was a curtain that had been pulled aside and this performance was just for him.

A memory came to mind. A few months previously he and Kristina Tacker had gone to the Svenska Teatern and seen the young and highly praised actress Tora Teje in a play whose name he had forgotten. During one of Teje’s big monologues he had undressed her in his mind’s eye and she had stood there on the stage, just for him, belting out a monologue of which he could not remember a single word.

Sara Fredrika stepped out of the baler and wrapped herself in a grey linen sheet. She spent for ever rubbing her hair, it was as if she were drying a newly scrubbed floor. She emptied the baler, dressed and went indoors.

Crouching down he ran back along the path, slipped and stumbled on one of the rocks, but he did not stop until he had reached the tender. He rowed into the fog, the rowlocks had started squeaking again, he was sweating, and all he wanted to do was to get away.

What was he afraid of? He had no answer to that.

He lost his way in the fog and could not at first find the ship. Everything was strangely silent, he was forced to shout and only when he heard a response was he able to get back on course.

Jakobsson was smoking his pipe next to the rope ladder, waiting for him.

‘You keep making your early-morning trips,’ he said. ‘Everybody has a right to their secrets. Welander had his, until the bubble burst. When will yours burst?’

Tobiasson-Svartman wondered yet again if Jakobsson knew something.

‘I just row around in the fog,’ he said. ‘It might seem pointless, but it wakes me up, body and soul. I row myself into a state where I’m ready to do my work. It chases away all my ugly dreams. Rowing can be like getting washed.’

Lieutenant Jakobsson held out his pipe.

‘I smoke. Without tobacco I wouldn’t even be up to being in charge of one of the navy’s old tugboats. I mean that metaphorically, I would never dream of saying nasty things about a tugboat. They are like Ardennes horses. Even if a tug doesn’t have a heart or lungs, they wear themselves out in the end and eventually they are no longer capable of towing. Horses are sent to the knacker’s yard, boats to the breaker’s yard.’

Tobiasson-Svartman was growing tired of Jakobsson. He was a bit of a fusspot, tended to be ingratiating. And he was a damned chatterbox with bad breath and a smelly pipe. It was the same as the sailor with the snotty nose. Tobiasson-Svartman had an urge to punch him.

He had breakfast, then he went back to work. The rating who had taken Welander’s place performed excellently. They broke the record that day, making 144 soundings before they had to stop work because of failing light.

All the time he was thinking about what he had seen that morning. It seemed to him more and more like a mirage, something he had not in fact experienced.

Chapter 53

Late that evening, when he had already fallen asleep, Lieutenant Jakobsson knocked on his door. He dressed quickly and went on deck.

Way out to sea, on the eastern horizon, tongues of fire rose up through the darkness. A naval battle was taking place.

‘We have had radio telegrams to the effect that something big and possibly crucial was in the offing,’ said Jakobsson. ‘The Russian and German fleets have come up against each other. People will die tonight in a mixture of steam and fire, they’ll be blown to pieces, drown.’

The flashes came and went, shooting up into the night sky. Distant rumbles and blasts could be heard.

Tobiasson-Svartman thought about the tragedy that was taking place. The heat of battle was hellish. An orchestra comprising the musicians of evil was playing out there in the darkness. Every flash in the night sky was a note that turned into a lethal projectile.

They stood on deck for a long time, watching the battle. Nobody said a word. Everybody was depressed, silent.

Shortly after three in the morning it was all over. The flames died away, the gunfire ceased. All that remained was the wind, which had veered to the east. The temperature had fallen again.

Chapter 54

Snow came, then drifted away. The wind remained light, alternating between east and north. They had just one day with a strong northerly gale. Tobiasson-Svartman forced the work rate up, the ratings were sometimes on their knees with exhaustion, but nobody complained.

The sea held its breath: there were fewer and fewer flocks of birds, and those, barely visible over the crests of the waves, heading due south.

The days became shorter.

All the time he was thinking about the woman on Halsskär.

Chapter 55

A week passed without his going back there.

He became more and more restless, wanted to go, but did not dare. Was he too close, or was the distance too far?

The Svea turned up, without Captain Rake, who had gone to Stockholm to bury his mother. Lieutenant Sundfeldt received him in the saloon. He had two letters. One was from his banker, Herr Håkansson at the Handelsbanken head office, and the other from his wife.

They conversed briefly. The cryptographers collected his record book.

When he returned to his cabin he first read the letter from Håkansson. The stock exchange was still reacting bullishly to the war. There was no reason to worry. The war meant rising share prices and stability in key industrial stocks.

His banker advised him to consider buying into Russian Telecom and Bofors Gullspång, both of which had just posted good profits forecasts.

He spent some time just holding the letter from his wife. Eventually he decided not to open it. It was as if he already knew what was in it, and it upset him. He tucked it into some pages in an old atlas he had in his travel archive.

Then he sat down at his little table. How should he reply to a letter he had not read?

He scribbled a few lines: he had a bad cold, a sore throat. Every evening his temperature varied between 37.9 and 38.8. But he was managing to cope with his work, which was now entering a crucial phase. He thanked her for her letter, and told her he loved her. That was all.

In his heart, he knew that he would soon return to Halsskär.

Chapter 56

By 27 November they had reached the point in their soundings where the new section of the navigable channel would join the old one.

It was further and further to row there from the mother ship. Lieutenant Jakobsson had offered to move the Blenda, but Tobiasson-Svartman had insisted that she remain where she was.

‘My calculations regarding the new channel are based on the point where the Blenda has been anchored all the time. It would make matters more awkward if the ship were to be moved now,’ he said.

Jakobsson accepted that response. He could not know that Tobiasson-Svartman did not want the Blenda to come too close to Halsskär.

On that morning he noted that the ship’s barometer was falling. The slowness of the change might suggest that there was no major storm on the way, but he suspected that the weather would soon deteriorate significantly. The first dramatic storm of winter was looming.

This was the sign he had been waiting for. Swiftly he packed some of the dried food he always took with him on his travels, in case something unexpected happened. Without anyone noticing, he also paid a visit to the ship’s store and took a few red flares. He rolled an extra sweater and some warm socks in an oilskin coat and placed the parcel in one of the tenders.

As he rowed away from the Blenda, the wind was gathering strength. He was sure that a storm would be over them from the north in an hour or so.

This time he decided to row into the little inlet where the tender would be less exposed. The dinghy was there. He beached the tender on the shingle and tied the painter round the base of a robust juniper bush.

It was just turned eight. There was a moment of calm, then the north wind set in. He waited in the inlet until he was certain the storm had come to stay. Then he clambered up to the highest point on the skerry and fired one of the flares. The crew of the Blenda would know that he was safe on the island and would stay there until the storm eased.

He hurried back to the tender, collected the parcel and followed the path to the cottage. The door was closed, smoke was rising from the chimney. He sat behind his rock, waiting for the rain. He stayed there until he was wet through. Then he emerged from behind the rock.

Chapter 57

She opened the door.

When she recognised his face she stepped to one side. No sooner had he entered the cottage than he wanted to turn and run out again. It was as if he had been enticed into a trap that he had set for himself. What was there for him to do here? This is madness, he thought, but a madness that I have been longing for.

She put a stool in front of the open fire.

‘The storm blew up unexpectedly,’ he said, holding his hands towards the fire.

‘Storms always blow up unexpectedly,’ she said.

She was keeping her face in the shadow, away from the fire.

‘I was out rowing and didn’t manage to get back to the ship. I took shelter here in the inlet.’

‘They’ll think you’ve been drowned.’

‘I had a smoke grenade with me that I fired. So they’ll know I’m here, on Halsskär.’ He wondered if she knew what a smoke grenade was, but she did not ask him to explain.

She was wearing the grey skirt. Her hair was loosely tied at the back of her head, thick locks tumbled over her cheeks. When she handed him a cup, he wanted to take hold of her.

The coffee was bitter, full of grounds. She was still keeping in the shadows.

‘You can stay here, of course,’ she said from the darkness. ‘I wouldn’t turn anybody away in weather like this. But don’t expect anything.’

She sat on the bunk along the wall. It seemed to him that she was concealing herself in the darkness, like an animal.

‘I read in an old tax register that people used to live on this island,’ he said. ‘One, possibly two families settled here. But in the end it became too hard for them, and the skerry was uninhabited from then on.’

She did not reply. The wind was crashing into the walls. The cottage was draughty, although he could see that she had tried to fill the gaps in the walls.

‘I can remember word for word what it said in that tax register,’ he said. ‘Maybe it wasn’t a tax register, but rather an official letter from an enforcement officer. I think his name might have been Fahlstedt.’ He recited from memory: ‘“They live on a barren skerry at the mercy of the sea, they are blessed with neither fields, meadows nor forest, but compelled to derive from the open sea, many a time in peril for their lives, all things they eat and require for apparel, or otherwise are in need of.”’

‘It sounds like a prayer,’ she said. ‘Like a priest.’

She was still in the dark, but her voice had come closer. Her voice had that special timbre that comes from being at sea and shouting from boat to boat, shouting in gales and headwinds. Her dialect was less pronounced than he had heard in others from these parts. There were sailors on board the Blenda who came from this section of the archipelago, one from Gräsmarö, and another was the son of a pilot from Häradskär. There was also a stoker from Kättilö and he spoke exactly as she did, like the voice from the dark.

Suddenly she emerged from the darkness. She was still sitting on the bunk, but she leaned forward and looked him in the eye. He was not used to that, his wife never did that. He looked away.

‘Lars Tobiasson-Svartman,’ she said. ‘You are a naval officer and wear a uniform. You row around in stormy weather. You have a ring. You are married.’

‘My wife is dead.’

It sounded perfectly natural, not the least bit strained. He had not planned to say that, but on the other hand, he was not surprised at it. An imagined sorrowful event became reality. Kristina Tacker had no place in this cottage. She belonged to another life that he was keeping at a distance, as if looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope.

‘My wife Kristina is dead,’ he said again, and thought that it still sounded as if he were telling the truth. ‘She died two years ago. It was an accident. She fell.’

How had she fallen? And where? How could he bring about the most meaningless of deaths? He decided to throw her over a cliff. The woman sitting here in the darkness would understand that. But he couldn’t let her die alone. Inspiration was flooding into him with irrestible force.

She would have a child with her, a daughter. What should he call her? She must have a name that was worthy of her. He would call her Laura. That was the name of Kristina Tacker’s sister, who had died young, coughing her lungs away with tuberculosis, Laura Amalia Tacker. The dead gave the living their names.

‘We were travelling in Skåne. At Hovs Hallar, with our daughter Laura. She was six years old, an angel of a girl. My wife stumbled on the edge of the cliff, and happened to bump into our daughter, and they went hurtling down. I couldn’t reach them in time. I shall never forget their screams. My wife broke her neck in the fall, and a sharp piece of rock dug deep into my daughter’s head. She was still alive when they raised her up the cliff. She looked at me, as if accusing me, then died.’

‘How can you bear such sorrow?’

‘You bear it because you have to.’

She put some cut branches into the fire. The flames seemed to gather strength from the green wood.

He noticed that he was enticing her closer. It was as if he were directing all her movements. He could see her face now. Her eyes were less watchful.

It had been very easy to kill his wife and his daughter.

The storm was roaring into the cottage walls. There was a long way to go before it reached its culmination.