Echoes From the Dead

Öland, July 1936

The man who is to spread so much sorrow and fear throughout Öland later in life is a ten-year-old boy in the middle of the 1930s. He owns a stony shore and a large expanse of water.

The boy is called Nils Kant; he is sunburned and is dressed in shorts in the summer heat, and he is sitting on a big round stone in the sunshine, down below the houses and the boathouses in Stenvik. He is thinking:

All this is mine.

And it’s true, because Nils’s family owns the shore. They own large tracts of land in northern Öland; the Kant family has owned this land for centuries, and ever since his father died three years ago, Nils has felt that it is his responsibility to take care of it. Nils doesn’t miss his father, he remembers him only as a tall, silent, strict man who could be violent sometimes, and Nils thinks it’s a good thing that only his mother, Vera, is waiting for him in the wooden house above the shore.

He doesn’t need anyone else. He doesn’t need friends; he knows that there are children of all ages living in the villages along the coast, and older boys where he lives who are already working in the quarry — but this particular stretch of shore belongs only to him. The millers in the mill up above and the fishermen who use the boathouses up on the ridge are no threat.

Nils gets ready to jump down from the stone; he’s going to have another swim, one last swim before he goes home.

“Nils!” shouts a high, boyish voice.

Nils doesn’t turn his head, but he can hear the gravel and the pebbles on the slope up above the shore loosening and trickling down, then rapid footsteps approaching.

“Nils! I got toffees from Mum too! Lots of tòffees!”

It’s his brother. Axel, three years younger than Nils and full of life. He’s carrying a knotted gray cloth in his hand.

“Look!”

Axel hurries over and stands beside the big stone, looking excitedly up at Nils, and he undoes the bundle and spreads the contents out on the piece of cloth.

There’s a little pocketknife in there and toffees, dark, shiny butter toffees.

Nils counts eight toffees. He only got five from his mother before he came out this morning, but he’s eaten them all by now, and his heart races in a sudden spurt of rage.

Axel picks up one of his toffees, looks at it, shoves it in his mouth, and gazes out over the sparkling water. He chews slowly and with satisfaction, as if not only the toffees belong to him but also the shore and the water and the sky up above them.

Nils looks away.

“I’m going for a swim,” he says, facing the water. He jumps down and pulls off his shorts and places them on the stone.

He turns his back on Axel and begins to walk out into the waves, balancing his feet on the stones, shiny with algae. Little tendrils of brown seaweed get stuck between his toes.

The water has been warmed by the sun, and foams out to the sides as Nils throws himself in a dozen or so steps from land. This summer he has learned to swim underwater. He takes a deep breath, dives beneath the surface, wriggles his way down toward the stony seabed, turns, and comes hurtling up into the sunshine again.

Axel is standing on the shoreline.

Nils glides around in the water, splashing it all around him, turning somersaults, the bubbles sparkling around his head. He swims a few yards further out, so far that he can no longer touch the bottom with his feet.

Out here there’s a big boulder, a block of stone lying just beneath the surface like a slumbering sea monster. Nils clambers up onto its back, stands with his feet just below the surface of the water, then dives in. He can’t touch the bottom here. He floats, treading water, and sees Axel still standing by the water’s edge.

“Can’t you swim yet?” he yells.

He knows Axel can’t.

Axel doesn’t reply, but he drops his eyes, his expression darkening with both shame and rage beneath his bangs. He tugs off his shorts and sets them on the stone beside the toffees.

Nils swims calmly around the boulder, first on his stomach, then on his back, just to show how easy it is when you can do it. A kick with his legs, and he’s back on top of the boulder again.

“I’ll help you!” he calls to Axel, and for a moment he considers actually doing it, being a big brother and teaching Axel to swim today. But it would take too long.

He just waves.

“Come on!”

Axel takes a wobbly step into the water, feeling his way across the pebbles with his feet, his arms waving about, as if he were balancing on the edge of an abyss. Nils watches his little brother’s unsteady progress from the shore in silence.

After four paces Axel is standing there with the water up above his thighs, looking at Nils, his face rigid.

“Are you brave enough?”

A joke, he’s just having a little joke with his brother.

Axel shakes his head. Nils quickly dives off the boulder and swims toward the shore.

“It’s quite safe,” he calls. “You can touch the bottom almost all the way out.”

Axel reaches for him, leaning forward. Nils moves backwards, and his little brother takes an involuntary step forward.

“Good,” says Nils. The water is up to their waists now. “One more step.”

Axel does as he says, takes one more step, then looks up at Nils with a nervous smile. Nils smiles back and nods, and Axel takes another step.

Nils leans over, falling slowly backwards with outstretched arms, just to show how soft the water is.

“Everybody can swim, Axel,” he says. “I taught myself.”

He kicks his legs and swims slowly out toward the boulder. Axel follows him, keeping his feet on the bottom. The water is up to his chest.

Nils jumps up onto the boulder again.

“Three more steps!” he says.

Although that isn’t quite true, it’s more like seven or eight. But Axel takes one step, two steps, three steps, has to stretch his neck upward to keep his mouth above the surface, and there are still three yards to go before he reaches the boulder.

“You have to breathe,” says Nils.

Axel takes a short, panting breath. Nils sits down on the boulder and holds his hands out calmly to Axel.

And his little brother throws himself forward. But it’s as if he quickly regrets it, because he takes a big breath and his mouth and throat are filled with cold water, he’s flailing around with his arms and staring at Nils. The boulder is just out of reach.

Nils watches Axel struggling in the water for a second or two, then quickly leans over and pulls his brother up onto the safety of the boulder.

Axel holds on tight, coughing and taking short, jerky breaths. Nils gets to his feet beside him and says what has been in his mind the whole time:

“The shore is mine.”

Then he throws himself off the boulder, diving straight as an arrow, and comes up several yards away, swimming with long, sure strokes until his hands touch the pebbles by the shore and his joke is complete. Now he can enjoy it. He shakes his head to make his ears pop and goes over to the stone where Axel unwrapped his bundle.

The little shorts Axel took off are there too. Nils picks them up, imagines he can see a flea crawling along a seam, and throws them away on the shore.

Then he bends over the bundle. The butter toffees are lying there in a pile, shining in the sun, and Nils picks one up and places it slowly in his mouth.

He hears an infuriated roar across the water, from the boulder, but takes no notice. He chews carefully, swallows, picks up another toffee.

The sound of splashing reaches him from out there. Nils looks up; his little brother has finally thrown himself off the boulder and into the water.

Nils is already beginning to dry off in the sun, and overcomes his first impulse, which is to go out to Axel. He picks up a third toffee from the cloth on the stone instead.

The splashing continues, and Nils watches. Axel can’t touch the bottom with his feet, of course, and he’s desperately trying to get back onto the boulder. But his hands keep slipping off.

Nils chews on the toffee. You have to get some speed up to get onto the boulder.

Axel has no speed, and turns to make his way back to the shore. He’s flapping his arms wildly, the water foaming all around him, but he isn’t moving forward. He’s looking at Nils with wide, terrified eyes.

Nils looks back at him, swallows the toffee, and picks up another one.

The splashing quickly grows fainter. His brother yells something, but Nils can’t hear what it is. Then the waves close over Axel’s head.

Now Nils takes a step toward the water.

Axel’s head pops up, but not as far out of the water as before. All Nils can actually see is wet hair. Then he sinks beneath the surface again. Air bubbles come up, but a little wave sweeps them away.

Nils is in a hurry now, he jumps into the water. His legs kick up foam and he’s fighting with his arms, his eyes fixed on the boulder. But there’s no sign of Axel.

Nils makes his way quickly to the boulder, and when he’s almost there he dives, but he’s not very good at keeping his eyes open underwater. He closes his eyes, feeling his way in the cold darkness, touches nothing with his hands, and comes up into the sunlight again. He grabs the boulder with his hands, coughs, and pulls himself up.

Nothing but water all around him, wherever he looks. The sunlight sparkling on the waves hides everything that exists beneath the surface.

Axel is gone.

Nils waits and waits in the wind, but nothing happens, and in the end, when he starts to feel cold, he dives in and swims slowly back to the shore. There’s nothing else he can do. He gets out of the water, breathes out, and leans on the big stone.

Nils stands there in the sun for a long time. He’s waiting for the sound of splashing, a familiar shout from Axel, but he hears nothing.

Everything is quiet.

There are four toffees left on Axel’s cloth, and Nils looks at them.

He thinks about the questions that will be waiting for him, from his mother and others, and thinks about what he’s going to say. Then he thinks about when his father died and how gloomy everything had been during the long drawn-out funeral up in Marnäs church. Everybody had been dressed in black, singing hymns about death.

Nils tries a sob. That sounds good. He’ll go up to his mother and sob and tell her Axel is still down on the shore. Axel wanted to stay, but Nils wanted to go home. And when everybody starts looking for Axel, he can think about the sad organ music at his father’s funeral and cry along with his mother.

Nils will go up to the house soon; he knows what he’s going to say and what he’s not going to say when he gets there.

But first of all he finishes off Axel’s toffees.