Sail of Stone

14

Winter made it onto the ferry, the Silvertärnan, which left Saltholmen at 10:20. His Mercedes was on the east side of the marina, very obviously illegally parked, with the police sign in the windshield.

Someone had once broken into his Merc and stolen the sign. He had looked for it for a long time.

He bought a cup of tea as they traveled out. The sun was alone in the sky. The cliffs were illuminated in gray, in silver. The path out was covered in cliffs, stone. All over, piles of stone that were islands, all the way to the open sea.

Johanna Osvald was waiting on the quay at Donsö. He recognized her there. Time had passed, but she was standing in a place that could have been the same as it was then.

The community behind her climbed upward. Part of it seemed to be cut out of stone. There were many houses, some large, some built from expensive wood. He knew that the shipping industry was big on the island; it had given rise to wealth. The fishing fleet had been big here, but he didn’t see many trawlers in the harbor now. But of course they wouldn’t be here; they would be out at sea. He saw a modern trawler with two hangers or whatever they were called, he didn’t know, mounts for trawls on the stern. The boat was wide, heavy, big, blue. GG 381 MAGDALENA was painted on the prow. He saw a man who seemed to be looking at him, his hand cupped over his eyes, below his cap.

He saw a cross on the gable of a house. Religiousness had been widespread on Donsö, he remembered that. The church was full. That had hardly changed.

People place their lives in God’s hands. His will be done.

Johanna raised her hand in greeting. He stood in the prow of the Silvertärnan and lifted his arm. People started to get off the boat in front of him. A small gang of boys waited by their bikes, waiting for nothing as usual. Seagulls circled above the harbor, hunting for fish waste. It smelled like innards, fish, oil, fish oil, gas, seaweed, tar, everything that no sea in the world could wash away the smell of.

She had not smelled like fish oil. He had joked about it once on the cliffs. Do country girls smell like manure? she had asked with the sharp part of her tongue.

“You weren’t easy to get hold of,” he said on the quay.

“You’re one to talk,” she answered.

They had made a quick agreement over the phone a bit ago.

They sat on the first bench they saw.

Her father had still not been found.

“I think something has happened to him,” she said. “Dad would have called by this time.” She looked at him. “He obviously would have by now, right?”

“You know him; I don’t. You know best.”

“I know it,” she said.

“I’ll put one out on him,” said Winter. “A description, I mean. We’ll put out an international description via Interpol.”

“Yes.”

“I spoke with my colleague in London. The Scottish one, from the Inverness area. He may be able to help.”

“How?”

“He knows people up there.”

She didn’t answer. She seemed to look away across the water.

“Well…,” said Winter.

“Well what?”

“There’s probably not much more I can-”

“I wanted you to come out here,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something that I don’t understand here. That I’ve never understood. I have to talk about it with you. That’s why I wanted you to come over.”

“What is it?” said Winter.

“That I don’t understand?” She looked up. “It has to do with all of this. With Grandpa’s disappearance, first of all, with everything that happ-”

“Well, hello there.”

The voice came out of nowhere. Winter looked up, and at first he couldn’t see anything against the light.

He remembered the voice. And the dialect. The archipelago dialect: the sharp intonation, the indifference to consonants, to indefinite articles-they were interchangeable and so on, and so on, almost like the rolling sea, like the waves themselves. An international sea-speak that was part of the coastal regions all over the North Sea. This island was a few miles from the city of Gothenburg, but there could have been continents between them.

“’Sben a while,” said the voice, which still didn’t have a face.

Winter got up. The sun disappeared. The face became visible.

“Well, hi,” said Winter.

“’Sben a while,” repeated the man, who was about his age. Osvald. Erik Osvald. He was as tall as Winter. Osvald offered a hand. He was wearing a black cap and work clothes. Winter recognized him as the man who seemed to be studying him from the trawler as the Silvertärnan came into the harbor.

Johanna had also gotten up.

“This’n’t good, all this,” said Osvald. Winter could sense a distance in the man’s dialect, as though he wanted to emphasize something. His sister didn’t speak so… artfully. No. Not that. She spoke as though she lived on land. Her brother lived at sea.

Winter nodded, as though he completely understood what Osvald meant.

“We ha’n’t heard nothing,” said Osvald.

“I know,” said Winter.

“This’n’t like’m,” said Osvald.

“Sorry?”

“This isn’t like him,” translated his sister. Winter might have seen a weak smile in the corner of her mouth. “Dad, he means. Not like him. Not to call. But I’ve told you that.”

“’N’t like’m,” repeated Osvald, and now Winter realized that he was laying it on thick, extra thick. He just didn’t understand why. The guy was as far from a village yokel as he could be.

Johanna nodded past Winter, toward the blue trawler fifty yards away. Winter could see the name again, MAGDALENA.

“Erik has coffee ready in the mess,” she said.

Osvald seemed to laugh suddenly, and he turned around and walked toward the boat.

“Did the thing about the coffee come as a surprise to him?” said Winter to Johanna.

“Grandpa was a farmer’s son from Hisingen,” said Osvald, pouring the coffee. They were sitting in the mess, which was as modern as could be, wooden floors, woodwork on the walls. They left their shoes above deck, in the little hall inside the bridge. Osvald’s pronunciation was different now, as though he had wanted to show something, or prove something, earlier.

He had been out of coffee, but he returned from the store with more after five minutes. He no longer looked surprised.

“They were fishermen, too,” said Osvald. “They caught sprat and horse mackerel, which they sold to the people on Donsö for longline fishing, which was a tradition here.”

“Hooks?” said Winter.

“Exactly,” said Osvald, with surprise in his voice. “You know this stuff.”

“No. But I heard about longline fishing when we had the house on Styrsö.”

Osvald drank his coffee and Winter noticed how strong it was when he drank too. He could have used a knife and fork for it. He would lose face if he asked for milk.

“Grandpa found a woman here, or a girl, I guess you could say, and it went fast,” said Johanna. “He came here to work on a trawler. He’d gotten in contact with a skipper.”

“He was quite young,” said Winter.

“For what?” said Osvald.

“To get married and have kids,” said Winter.

Neither sibling answered. But then it wasn’t a question. Maybe there was nothing strange about it. Those who lived here wanted to begin life immediately, and continue it.

And to disappear, thought Winter. Quite young to disappear. He had his young family, a son, and another son on the way.

“He had two brothers,” said Johanna. “John had.”

“What?” said Winter.

“Two brothers came along,” she said. “Bertil and Egon. They were on the same boat.”

“The same boat? The same boat that disappeared?”

“One of them came back,” said Osvald. “Bertil.”

“Explain,” said Winter.

The Osvald brothers were a few of the people who dared to cross the sea during the beginning of the war. John Osvald was the youngest. The trawlers that could make it over to England and Scotland and unload-there was a fortune to be had. The fish were there; the harbors were farther west. It was a world at war.

Many “passed on,” as Osvald put it, “but they were propelled by the money.”

A fixed price was put on fish in the beginning of the war. It turned out that the price was extremely high.

“But the other price was even higher,” said Johanna.

Winter nodded. The other price was death.

“The ones who made it became rich,” said Osvald. “People here were able to build new houses with all the most modern things you can imagine, and when the workmen left the house, everything was paid for! With taxed money.”

“The ones who came back,” said Johanna.

“But your grandpa didn’t come back,” said Winter. “What happened?”

He heard the boat move. It was big, bigger than he’d thought a trawler could be, more modern. It must have been very expensive. It must have weighed several hundred tons, have thousands in horsepower. There were mounts for two trawls in the stern. Osvald had seen his glance, and he’d said that this was a twin rigger. He sounded proud.

“Marino was out fishing in the North Sea, and they weren’t on their way west just then, but the Germans came up from the south and they decided to get out, and fast,” said Osvald.

“Marino?”

“That’s what the trawler was called.”

Marino. Not Marina, not a woman’s name, like Magdalena.

“How many people were on board?” asked Winter.

“Eight men, normally,” said Osvald. “That was the usual number.”

“How many are on this boat?”

“Four.”

“They had twice as many? On a trawler that was half as big?”

Osvald nodded.

“How was that?”

“Well, they all lived in the forecastle, and it was damp and wet. There were no personal berths like here.” He nodded toward a closed door that led to the sleeping hall. “So they couldn’t manage to do what we do now. The weather was a big problem, for example, but it isn’t anymore.”

“Why not?”

“You’re sitting on a boat that can handle any weather at all,” said Osvald.

“Can you manage to take care of it yourself?” asked Winter. “Could you be alone on it?”

Osvald nodded without saying anything.

“There weren’t eight of them that time,” said Johanna. “It wasn’t fully manned.”

Her brother turned to her.

“Did you forget, Erik? There were five of them.”

“Yes, right.”

She looked at Winter.

“That was everyone who wanted to come along on the last crossing from Donsö. Everyone who would dare.”

“The three brothers and two other men,” said Winter.

“Yes.”

“Where are they now?”

He knew what had happened to the brothers. Egon had gone under with the boat, along with John. Bertil came back and died on Donsö, in modern times.

“Frans Karlsson disappeared too,” said Johanna. “That’s what we were told by Arne, Arne Algotsson. He came back with Bertil.”

“Arne Algotsson?”

“He lives here on the island. He was along with them.”

“Oh?”

“But he is hopelessly senile,” said Osvald.

“Is he?”

“He forgets his thoughts before he thinks them,” said Osvald with a weak smile. “If he even has any.” He rubbed his hand over his chin, and the rasp of two days’ stubble was audible. “In that condition, he probably doesn’t think at all.”

The Marino had fled from the German destroyers, through the minefields, to the Scottish coast.

“They came to Aberdeen, and it wasn’t the first time, but this time they didn’t have very much fish along,” said Osvald.

“And they weren’t from there,” said Johanna.

“It was too dangerous,” said her brother.

“So they had to stay there,” said Johanna.

“In Aberdeen?”

“At first. Then they went up to Peterhead and it became like their home harbor during that year. They went out sometimes, of course.”

“But never very far?”

“Well, they probably went around the point at Fraserburgh sometimes, and a bit to the west into the strait, in toward Inverness, I think.”

“Inverness?” said Winter, looking at Johanna.

“Yes. Not all the way in, if Arne could be believed before he completely lost his memory. But into the strait there, Firth something.”

Winter nodded.

“And then they went to Iceland a few times,” said Osvald. “That was pretty bold.”

“They were crazy,” said Johanna.

“Up to Iceland?”

“The fishing grounds off of the south coast of Iceland,” said Osvald. “Witch flounder. They got a very good price for them down in Scotland.”

“But still,” said Johanna.

“It was on their way home from one of those trips that it happened,” said Osvald.

There was no wind when Winter came up on the bridge. The Magdalena wasn’t moving.

“Do you want to take a look in the pilothouse?” asked Osvald.

Winter saw screens everywhere, telephones, faxes, technology, lamps, switches.

“Looks more or less like dispatch at the central police building,” he said.

“Most of it is to keep an eye on the coast guard,” said Osvald, smiling. “Especially the Norwegians.”

Winter nodded and smiled back.

“That’s the big threat to the fishing industry today,” said Osvald. “We have so many borders across the sea today, there are so many lines out in the sea today. You can’t cross the zones, but lots of times the fish swim all over the place, crossing borders, and it’s frustrating, you know, if you know that there’s fish a nautical mile away and people from other countries are sitting there pulling them up while we Swedes are spinning our wheels at the border.”

Osvald did something with one of the levers on the dashboard. Winter heard a sound like a winch.

“And then it’s tempting to go over to that side, and then you have to turn off the satellite transmitter,” said Osvald. He looked at Winter. “You understand?”

Winter nodded.

“You won’t say anything to them, right?”

“The Norwegian Coast Guard? I don’t have any contacts there,” said Winter.

“They’re not nice,” said Osvald, smiling again. “Three inspectors can suddenly be standing in the pilothouse. Their mother ship, a big coast guard boat, it’s seven nautical miles away because they know that all fishing boats have a range of six nautical miles on their radar, and they’ve driven a little dinghy up from the back at thirty knots, and they’ve snuck up alongside and snuck up on the deck and rushed into the pilothouse. It’s happened to us twice!”

“Not nice,” said Winter.

“And in addition, he wanted fillet of cod for dinner,” said Osvald.

“What did you do?” asked Winter.

“We gave him pork tenderloin,” said Osvald. “Who can afford to serve fish these days?”

Erik Osvald was proud of his twin rigger. He shared ownership of it with two other fishermen from Donsö. Three hundred and twenty tons gross weight; 1,300 horsepower.

They had left the pilothouse. Osvald had told him about the wireless sensors on the trawls, which could monitor everything down there: the currents, the bottom, things that were in the way. He described the automatic controls, the regulators, how the winches were operated. The hydraulics.

They stood on the quarterdeck, the work deck. It was dry, dry under the September sun. Osvald said something that Winter would remember and return to when so much more had happened. When he knew more.

“It’s always a competition,” said Osvald. “At sea. And here.”

“What do you mean?”

“When my grandfather came here and started fishing, when he and his brothers tried to buy their own boat-and they did it quickly-it wasn’t accepted. They didn’t accept it. Not here on the island. They weren’t supposed to be boat owners. They were supposed to be the serving class. We, our family, were supposed to continue as the serving class.” Osvald looked at Winter. “My grandfather changed all that.”

“And you’re still competing,” said Winter.

“Always,” said Osvald. “It’s always a competition out there, between boats, across zones, and it’s always been a competition here on the island. Between people.”

“Mmhmm.”

Winter could see the entrance to the harbor, and the bridge over to Styrsö. A ferry traveled out, on its way south to Vrångö, the last island. He hadn’t been there in years. After Vrångö there was only the sea.

“For my part, I’m also competing with the shipowners here,” said Osvald. “The shipping industry. It’s immense here on Donsö. It turns over a billion per year. Donsö is the home harbor for over fifteen percent of the Swedish merchant fleet. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“They’re my old friends,” said Osvald, “the shipowners and officers of those vessels are my age.”

“I understand,” said Winter.

Erik Osvald changed when he discussed the competition. The Osvald family had come from nothing and become something. Winter understood that. It meant a lot to Osvald. How much? Winter could see that Osvald’s thoughts were lingering on the rivalry, the competition. Maybe money. Maybe great risks to attain success, riches.

What risks had Erik Osvald been prepared to take to attain his position, here on the island and out at sea? Winter wondered. Beyond the risk of being out on the great sea. To expose oneself to solitude-or whatever happened out there. It was a lonely life, an abnormal life. People had gone crazy at sea.

“You hav’ta hold your own against that lot and get th’ best people for fishin’ instead,” said Osvald.