Sail of Stone

16

It was still daylight on Donsö. Winter stood on the Magdalena’s quarterdeck. The sun was starting to burn low over the sea. It would soon disappear. Does the sun go out when it goes down in the water? Elsa had asked last summer, when they had been swimming down in Vallda Sandö and lingered there for a long time. It was a good question.

“There must be a lot of sunsets like that out at sea,” Winter said to Erik Osvald, standing beside him.

“Well, we don’t exactly sit there applauding a sunset,” answered Osvald.

“But you must see the beauty in it.”

“Yes…,” answered Osvald, and Winter understood that the weather and sun and rain and hours of the day and nature’s beauty were something different for Osvald than they were for him, for everyone who lived on land.

Osvald watched the sun, which was in the process of sinking.

“Soon it will be a season when you can miss the light,” he said in the twilight. “Soon we’ll have to have lights on from three in the afternoon to ten in the morning.” He looked at Winter. “And in the summer we complain that the sun stings our eyes at four in the morning.”

Winter nodded. Everything must be so much sharper out there.

“But there’s really no day at sea, and no night.”

Winter waited for him to continue. The sun was gone.

“There’s no day, there’s no night,” repeated Osvald.

It sounded like poetry. Maybe it was poetry. Work and everyday life make up poetry because everything unessential has been scrubbed away.

Osvald looked at him again, back in the reality of his job.

“We never really have any morning or any night like this out there, you know. Days and nights go on; every five or six hours the trawl has to come up.”

“No matter the weather?” asked Winter.

Osvald squinted at him. He had fine lines all over his face; none were longer or wider than the others. He had a tan that would never disappear when it was dark between three and ten. The slits of his eyes were blue. At that moment, Winter wondered what Osvald thought about when he was out on the lonely sea. What did he think in a storm?

“The weather isn’t a big problem for us these days,” said Osvald, nodding as though to emphasize his words. “Before, boats went under in storms.” He looked out across the sea again. “Or were blown up by mines…,” he said, as though to himself. He gave Winter a quick glance again. “Last fall we had very bad weather, but there were only two nights we didn’t fish because of a storm. If the wind is over forty-five miles per hour we don’t put out the trawl.” He gave Winter a smile. “At least not if the bottom is bad. It’s not so good if it gets caught when it’s forty-five miles an hour.”

He turned around to see if his sister was standing there. But Johanna had excused herself for a second and climbed down the ladder off the boat and gone in among the houses, which came almost up to the quay.

“We’re a little split on the weather, of course,” said Osvald. “If it’s bad weather it’s good pay. There might not be any others who will risk going out. And there’s no fisherman yet who lost by betting on a storm! Prices go up after a storm. And the storm stirs up the stew on the bottom, too. Storms are good for the sea.”

The storm stirs up the stew, thought Winter. That’s true. Everything is moved around, comes up, is turned over, stones are turned over, everything old is new, everything new is old, round, round, up and down.

That’s how it was with his work. That’s how he wanted it to be. The past didn’t exist as a past; it was no more than an abstraction. It was always there in reality, present in the same manner as the present, a parallel state that no one could sail away from.

He looked at Osvald. This man was at home here, in his own harbor, or rather he was at home out at sea, but the sea was nearby.

“What’s the best part out there?” asked Winter. “Out at sea?”

Osvald seemed not to hear. Winter repeated his question. Osvald kept looking out across the water, as though he were waiting for company, as though a ship would become visible on the horizon, like a replacement for the sun that had gone down there. A pillar of smoke. A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.

“Man is king,” said Osvald suddenly. He let out a laugh. “If you stand up on the bridge and look around you’re higher than everything. As far as you can see, you’re higher. In a lot of ways, spiritually, too.”

Winter understood what he meant. Osvald was a man of faith.

But he also wanted to be king, a worldly king. To keep being a king at sea. Winter wondered to himself what Osvald was prepared to do to be able to keep his kingdom, and the big trawler that was his throne. Winter considered the risks again. How far would Osvald go? Was there anything that could stop him?

“Think of the contrast with the forest,” continued Osvald. “My brother-in-law has a clearing way down in the forest, inland, and when you’re there, far under the trees, you’re the smallest of everything there.”

“Yes,” said Winter, “it makes one humble somehow, I suppose.”

“Humble… mmhmm… yes, humble. Don’t get me wrong, twenty-five years on the North Sea make you humble, it leaves its mark. All year round, all day long… you are cocky about some things, but you’re not cocky about everything. You are very humble about some things.”

Winter nodded. Osvald was serious. It was suddenly as though Winter weren’t standing there in front of him. Osvald was speaking to the sea. Winter understood that this was a man who seldom spoke this much, but who sometimes longed to be able to do so, like now. But Osvald spoke in his own way and followed his own logic.

If I keep going with this, the disappearance is a logic that I will also have to follow. Winter felt the wind pick up in his face. This logic, these thoughts, they come from a different world than the one on land. Life in this world is what means something here. And things that are larger than life. That’s what Osvald is talking about.

“There’s a higher power,” said Osvald, as though he had read Winter’s thoughts. “Besides the coast guard,” he said with a laugh, but he was immediately serious again. “If there isn’t a higher power, everything is meaningless.”

Winter turned around and saw the community, the big houses, the smaller ones, the narrow roads, the flatbed mopeds, which were the vehicles of the southern archipelago. He saw the crosses. The mission hall. He remembered now that the Osvald family were members of the Mission Covenant Church.

“You said that you were higher than everything out there,” said Winter. “Is that like saying that you live near the heavens?”

“Well, which heaven are you talking about?”

“The one you were just talking about.”

“The higher one?” Osvald seemed to smile at his words, as though he were joking. The high heaven, the higher one above. “No. Religion has nothing to do with fishing.”

“It doesn’t?”

Osvald shook his head.

“But don’t they have to go together?” said Winter.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the church is so important here. It’s everywhere.”

“Mmhmm.”

Winter didn’t know if Osvald would say anything more. But he knew that this was important. Religion was an important subject here.

“No one from here thinks that it’s strange to go to church if you go into a foreign harbor in a storm, for instance,” said Osvald after a bit. “No fisherman from the west coast would hesitate to.”

Winter nodded.

“All fishermen from the west coast believe in God,” said Osvald.

“Does that mean there’s a God-fearing atmosphere on board?” asked Winter.

“All of us fear God,” said Osvald.

“And no one does anything evil on board?” said Winter.

Osvald didn’t answer.

“No one swears on board a fishing boat,” said Johanna Osvald as they sat in her house. Her brother nodded. It had grown dark. Winter was going to take the Skarven back to Saltholmen at 7:02.

“Not even when they slam their fingers in something?” said Winter.

“Not even then,” said Erik Osvald. “I have to say that you really react if you hear someone swear on the radio or something. If it happens, it must be fishermen from the east coast or Denmark.”

“Do you have a lot to do with Denmark?”

“We bring our fish on land in Denmark,” said Osvald. “In Hanstholm in Jutland. It’s on the west side of Jammer Bay. Across from Hirtshals.”

“West of Blokhus?” asked Winter.

“Exactly. Blokhus is farther into the bay.”

Blokhus was familiar to Winter. Several years ago he’d found some of the answers in a case he’d worked on there. A murdered woman couldn’t be identified, and the old clues had led him to Denmark and Jammer Bay. There the past had cast its long shadows into the future, which was the present.

“The Magdalena is never here in the Donsö harbor,” said Osvald.

“No?”

“No, no, she’s just here for an overhaul now. Usually we change off in Hanstholm.”

Osvald explained. The routine went like this: The Magdalena was out for six days fishing for cod and haddock and went into Hanstholm on the seventh day at five in the morning with the fish cleaned, “gutted,” as he said, weighed and sorted and packaged in six different sizes for the cod and four for the haddock. Fifteen to twenty tons of fish. The fish auction took place at seven, the same time all along the North Sea and North Atlantic. During the morning, the four of them worked on maintenance and taking supplies on board. The four relief shift workers came at noon and went right out with the Magdalena. The four who had been relieved got into the relief shift’s car and drove across Jutland to the ferry in Frederikshavn.

“What happens to the fish?” asked Winter.

“Fish and chips in Scotland,” said Osvald.

“Really?”

“The haddock should be just over minimum size, as it’s called. So the meat isn’t tough. And small cod can also become fish and chips. And it goes by truck on a ferry to Scotland. It’s a little strange, isn’t it? We sit off Scotland and catch fish that eventually go by truck to Scotland. There’s a ferry that goes directly from Hanstholm to Thurso, by the way.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Winter.

“It’s not much to know,” said Osvald.

Winter wasn’t sure he was right. There was something in what Osvald had said that Winter listened for. Something Winter didn’t understand then.

Later, when the wind started to become audible out there against the mess, Winter asked, “What’s the worst part about being out?”

“Well…,” said Osvald, looking at his sister. She hadn’t said much for the last half hour. But Winter knew that he would speak with her more.

“Well, the storms have never been able to break us, of course,” continued Osvald. “And not wrecks, injuries… nothing like that, ever. You just have to grit your teeth and you’ll get past it.”

“The silence,” said Johanna suddenly.

Her brother gave a start. Then he nodded.

“What silence?” asked Winter.

“The silence among the crew,” said Johanna. “Or what do you think, Erik?”

He nodded again but didn’t say anything. Suddenly it was as though he had become a part of the silence Johanna was talking about. As though he had suddenly become an example. He looked up.

“That can break you,” he said now. “Or, it does break you. Discord on board, a bad atmosphere. It breaks you fast.”

Winter nodded.

“Then you can easily end up alone as a skipper.”

“Sorry?”

“Then you can easily end up alone,” repeated Osvald.

“As a skipper?”

“As a skipper, yes.”

Winter thought about that. Erik Osvald was a skipper.

His young grandfather, John Osvald-had he also been a skipper?

“Was John Osvald the skipper on the Marino?” he asked.

Osvald looked again at his sister, who didn’t look back.

“Not at first,” he said.

“Not at first? What do you mean by that?”

“Something happened one time… it was right before… I don’t know… but Grandpa was skipper when they sailed for Scotland.”

“Happened? What was it that happened?”

“No idea,” said Osvald.

“The ones who came home after the accident in Scotland. Didn’t they say what had happened?”

“We didn’t hear anything,” said Osvald.

“Did anyone ask?” said Winter.

“Yes,” answered Osvald, but Winter didn’t think it sounded convincing.

“But no answer?”

Osvald shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“It sounds almost like mutiny to my ears,” said Winter.

“We actually don’t know,” said Johanna as she followed him to the Skarven, which was on its way in from Vrångö. “Is it significant?”

“I don’t know,” said Winter. And significant in what way, he thought.

“Your father left the industry,” he said.

“But he was ready to retire anyway, as he put it. He was ready to be put in the Maritime Museum.”

“Which section?”

She smiled.

“But he can’t leave the sea entirely,” she said.

“How so?”

“He worries all the time. About those who are out at sea. About Erik and his crew. He listens to all the Danish weather too, and he starts at six in the morning and ends with the last report at quarter to eleven at night. But he never calls out to the boat.”

Winter noticed that she was speaking of her father in the present tense, as though he were sitting next to a radio right now and listening attentively to a monotonous voice repeating numbers, vital numbers.

“Where do they usually fish?” asked Winter.

“Oh, west of Stavanger, maybe, sixty or seventy nautical miles west. They sometimes come near the derricks, which are about fifty nautical miles east of Scotland.”

The Skarven docked at the Donsö pier with a soft thud. It would leave again in four minutes.

“Do you worry when Erik is out?” asked Winter.

“Naturally.”

Winter started to walk toward the boat.

“But now I’m worried about Dad,” she said.

“I will do what I can. We will.”

“Something has happened,” she said. “Something dangerous.”

“It would be good if you try to remember everything he said before he left. What he did. Who he talked to. If he wrote anything down and left it. If anyone called. If another letter came. Everything.”

“He prayed to God,” she said, looking at him. “My father always prays to God.” She nodded at the boat. “You should get on now.”

She gave him a quick hug.

She kept standing there as the Skarven rushed across to Styrsö Skäret. Winter thought of all the women who had stood there throughout the centuries, looking out over the sea and waiting with anxious hearts. That’s how it was with Johanna now; once again it was so. He remembered that she had talked about it, briefly, when they were young. Her mother’s anxiousness, her own. Her brother’s. Winter looked over toward the Magdalena, which had two spotlights lit above the quarterdeck. He saw figures in oilcloth moving around the deck. He saw a face outside the pilothouse, which was highest up, the highest one in the harbor. He saw that Erik Osvald was watching him. He felt a cold wind and went in from the deck.

A glow came from the sheltered houses in Långedrag. Winter swung off into the familiar Hagen crossing and continued north among even more sheltered houses. He parked in front of one of them. He knew the house, knew it well. He had spent a great deal of his childhood and all of his teenage years here.

His older sister had stayed here, in this house, first with her husband and children and then, since a long, long time ago, alone with her girls, Bim and Kristina.

But Bim and Kristina were big now. Bim didn’t even live at home. Kristina was on her way out. Lotta Winter had watched all of this happen, and she tried to deal with it in a rational way, but it wasn’t something that could be dealt with rationally. You’ll see for yourself, she had said. See what? See how fucking easy it is. The separation? The separation, yes; come back when Elsa says bye-bye. You make it sound so final, Lotta. Well, isn’t it? she had said. You know what I mean, he had said. Yeah, yeah, she had said. Forgive me. But it’s… the quiet. Suddenly it’s so quiet. Quiet.

He rang the doorbell. The ring was the same. The same ring for thirty years. She should change it, change it now. Something new and happy and lively, energetic. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

She opened the door after four rings.

“Well, well.”

“I came by,” he said.

“I see that.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

She backed into the hall.

He hung up his coat. He always hung his things on his hook.

“Well, it’s calm and peaceful and quiet here,” she said.

“That’s nice,” he said.

“Like hell it is,” she said.

“You’ve started to curse more in your old age,” he said.

“Thanks a fucking lot. For that last bit.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why do I have such rough and salty language? I think it’s because of the salty and rough winds from the sea that’s only five minutes from here by Mercedes.”

“They never swear there.”

“Sorry?”

“There are no salty fishermen from the west coast who curse.”

“How do you know?”

He told her.

They were sitting in the living room. The view was the same. He could see the playhouse where he used to hide sometimes.

“Actually, I salt my language because the children can’t hear me anymore,” she said. “It’s my way of going back to the way I was.”

“Mmhmm.”

“What does Angela say about you being gone on a Saturday night?”

He looked at the clock.

“I didn’t mean for it to be so late.”

“So you come here and surprise me in the middle of my loneliness on this Saturday night.” She nodded toward the half-full wineglass that stood on the table. “And catch me in the act of drinking.”

“Please, Lotta.”

“Maybe I’m like Mom? Maybe I have an alcoholic inside? Who’s just been waiting for the right moment.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“You see.”

“Joking aside, Lotta. Maybe you need someone. A new husband.”

“Get remarried? Hahahahahahahahaha.”

“Well…”

“You get married. Do it and then come here and lecture me about it.”

“How much have you actually had to drink?”

“Only four bottles of wine and a barrel of rum.”

“Where’s Kristina?”

“Taken into custody by the authorities.”

“I chose the wrong time for a visit,” he said.

“You picked the wrong time to come.”

Winter placed one leg over the other. He was used to bantering with his sister, but this was a little worse, a little bigger.

“Do you know who that is? Who I was quoting?”

“What?”

“Picked the wrong time-it’s Dylan. It’s what you’re listening to right now. It’s this song, actually. ‘Highlands.’ Can you hear?”

He heard Dylan mumble, “Well my heart’s in the Highlands… blue-bells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow.”

Well. That was a little odd. Aberdeen. A remarkable sign, and he knew better than to look at it as something that just happened, that didn’t mean anything. There were coincidences everywhere, and the important thing was to accept them. To sometimes let yourself be guided by the coincidences.

Everything has a purpose. Yes.

There is a higher power.

Dylan mumbled, on the way to his destruction in a city that was made of ruins and empty of life.

“Music to make you happy,” said Winter.

She laughed, actually laughed.

“When did you go over to the happy genre?” she said. “Feel-good music?”

“Do you still have a phone?” he asked. “Or have the authorities disconnected it?”

“Why?”

“If we’re having a party, Angela and Elsa can come.”

“I’m glad you came, Erik,” said Lotta.

He nodded. He had called. Angela and Elsa weren’t going to come. Elsa was sleeping. Angela was wondering. I’m not a bitch, she had said. But one begins to wonder. Is it strange if I’m wondering?

He was going to go home in a few minutes.

“I don’t know what it is,” said his sister. “I have to pull myself together. It’s suddenly as though nothing means anything anymore.”

She looked tired in the ugly hall lighting, tired and sad.

“You know that it does,” said Winter. “You have a lot of things that mean something.” He could hear how empty that sounded.

“But that’s not what it feels like. Not now.”

“Come to my house.”

“Now? What, I don’t know…”

“Come to my house tonight. Kristina is already in custody, right?”

She smiled.

“She’s out in the islands, actually, at a friend’s house. On Brännö.”

“Aha.”

“Well…”

“Come along. You don’t even need to finish your drink. I have lots of bottles at home, wine and enough rum for fifteen men.”