Sail of Stone

32

The espresso was doubly useful. Winter could not sleep, and he could think. At three o’clock he slid out of bed and walked through the hall and looked in on Elsa, who was sleeping on her back with her eyes half open. He could tell because he was holding his face four inches from hers. He could barely hear her breathing, so he listened for a long time. At that moment Elsa let out a snore, only one, and turned onto her side, and Winter tiptoed out.

He sat down in the living room, in the dark, which would last for another several hours. The usual blue light came in through the window. The streetcars hadn’t yet begun to rumble by down there. He could hear the sound of a lost car on the way to some blue address. Suddenly he heard a cry from up by the kiosk at Vasaplatsen, which had a functionalist-style neon sign that glowed just as it had during the record years.

All of these sounds and lights would be inconceivable and just plain threatening in the house by the sea. Silence could be heard from the sea. Was that what he was afraid of? Was he even afraid?

Had Arne Algotsson been afraid? Or his sister? Or both of them?

Winter got up from the easy chair and walked over to the balcony door and opened it enough so that he could go out. He had stepped into his slippers, which were always next to the door. There was no wind out there, but there was a faint chill that smelled like autumn. A different moisture in the air, an acid scent that actually meant everything he could see growing down there was dying for now, but he seldom thought that way. He thought of the acid, and of the salt that you could sometimes smell when the wind came from the northwest. A pinch of salt.

Arne Algotsson had looked as though he had rubbed his face with salt; there was a gray film on it, like a crust of old salt that had solidified and formed a mask that had started to crack a long time ago. His eyes were deep set. There was a light in them, but Winter couldn’t see where it came from, not then, not as he was sitting across from the old man and trying to ask his questions along with Ringmar.

His sister’s name, Ella, had been mentioned early on. Ella. She had been sitting next to her brother.

“Yes, tha’s right, I have a sester called Ella,” he had said, turning to Ella Algotsson. “D’ya know her?”

She had looked at Winter and Ringmar as though to say, See, my brother is as demented as a trawl door. Or a broken trawl. Everything just falls right through. You just have to look at him, and listen to him.

“Did you know John Osvald?” Winter had asked.

“John’s a fisherman,” Algotsson had said from inside his world. “He was the skipper later.”

“What do you mean? You said he was ‘the skipper later’?”

“Shall we eat?” Algotsson had said.

Winter had looked at Ella Algotsson.

“We just ate,” she had said, leaning forward and laying her hand on his arm, and he had started. She had seen that they noticed his sudden movement.

“It’s his old injuries,” she had said.

“Sorry?” Ringmar had said.

“His old fishing injuries. Thay always got eczema out on the boats before. Thay always had the rabber clothes on. Thay got complaitly scraped up. Arne still has the marks on his arms. Thay never go away, the marks.”

“Rabber clothes,” her brother had echoed.

They, that is to say Ringmar, had had a necessary conversation with Ella Algotsson before this. Her brother had looked at Ringmar and Winter as they came in, but then he seemed to forget. He had stared through the window, into the cliffs that floated like soft waves behind the house. There were no sharp edges there.

“You can’t get anything sensible out of him about that time now,” she had said.

“But then?” Ringmar had asked.

“Then? When?”

“When he came home from Scotland. The last time. What did he have to say then?”

“Not much.” She had cast a glance at her brother, who was sitting with his face illuminated by the daylight outside. A pillar of salt.

“He did talk about the accident, of course, but there wasn’t so much thay knew.”

“What did they know, then?”

“You know too, don’t you? It was that thay had come down from Iceland and the boat sank.”

“It wasn’t so far from land, from what I understand,” Ringmar had said.

“The boat couldn’t be seen from land, in any case,” she had said.

“Where was Arne, then?” Ringmar had asked.

“On land,” she had said.

“Yes, but where?”

“In one of those towns where they stayed. I dunno. I don’t remember what thay’re called.”

“Aberdeen?” Ringmar had asked.

“No. That’s where thay were first. It wasn’t there.”

Ringmar had looked to Winter for help.

“Was it Peterhead?” Winter had asked.

She hadn’t answered and hadn’t looked at him.

“Peterhead?” Ringmar had repeated.

“FISHERMEN’S MISSION TO FISHERMEN’S VISION TO DEEP SEA NATIONAL MISSION,” Arne Algotsson had suddenly uttered from the armchair next to the window, in a loud, wooden old man’s voice. He hadn’t moved his head, but he must have been listening.

“He repeats that sometimes,” Ella Algotsson had said.

“What is it?” Ringmar had said.

“Didn’t you hear?”

“I didn’t understand it.”

“Me neither.” A sad smile had come to the old face, which was thin but strong. “He’s said it sometimes recently, now.”

“Recently?”

“Yes. In recent… years.”

“Since he became ill?”

“Yes.”

Ringmar had looked once more at Arne Algotsson, who had been looking at the waves of stone outside.

“Peterhead,” Winter had said in a loud voice.

“FISHERMEN’S MISSION TO FISHERMEN’S VISION TO DEEP SEA NATIONAL MISSION,” Algotsson had chanted.

“Other than that he never speaks English,” Ella Algotsson had said. “He’s forgot that. Too.”

“We said PETERHEAD,” Ringmar had said.

“FISHERMEN’S MISSION…” Algotsson repeated it, like a parrot. It had an uncanny effect, but a funny one at the same time, inappropriately funny. Winter had felt ashamed somehow, as though they were using the old man and his sister.

“Well, it’s clearly a name that means something to him,” Ringmar had said.

Ella Algotsson had looked like she was thinking about something else.

“But he was in another city when it happened,” she had said. “I remember it.”

“Fraserburgh,” Winter had said, looking at Arne Algotsson at the same time. But he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t moved.

Then Ella Algotsson had looked at Winter.

“What was that?”

“Fraserburgh,” Winter had said. “Was the city called Fraserburgh?”

“Fras… yes, I think so.”

“Did Arne come right home afterward?”

“No. He wasn’t there the whole war but he was there for a little longer.”

“How long?”

“A year, I think. He came home with a fishing boat. Thay were brothers from Öckerö who dared to come home again. Thay were crazy.”

“From Öckerö?” Ringmar had asked.

“Thay’re dead,” she had said.

Winter had thought he had seen Arne Algotsson nod, slightly, as though he concurred with what his sister said.

“Who else sailed home with Arne?” Ringmar had asked.

“Bertil,” she had answered. “John’s brother. But he’s dead, him too.”

Ringmar had nodded.

“Another brother disappeared in the accident too, right?” Ringmar had said.

“Egon,” she had said. Nothing more.

“Was anyone else from here on the boat when it went under?” Ringmar had asked.

She hadn’t answered, not directly. She had sent a quick look at her brother, to see if he was listening. Or maybe it was something else.

To make sure he didn’t answer?

“There was one more,” she said after a moment that seemed long. Her eyes had changed, as though they had clouded over. They couldn’t see.

“Another person from here?” Ringmar had asked.

She had nodded.

“What was his name?”

“Frans.” She had looked up again, with the strange fog in her eyes. “Frans Karlsson. My Frans.”

Winter saw that face before him again when he came back into the room.

She had looked so infinitely sad when she said that. My Frans. She had told them in very few words that Frans Karlsson was hers, that they were betrothed and that he never came home and she had waited, and she was still waiting. Like the seaman’s wife she never became. Like a living memorial to the men of the sea who didn’t return. He thought of the Seaman’s Wife down by the Maritime Museum. But she was made of stone. Ella Algotsson was not made of stone.

She hadn’t said more, but he knew through Johanna Osvald that Ella Algotsson had never married.

Her fate was connected to John Osvald and his family; their fates were linked to one another; the chain continued through the years from the past to the present. Binding the nations on both sides of the North Sea.

“He lies down there too,” she had said after a little while. “Thay never found the boat. The Marino. And nothin’ else neither.”

Ringmar had looked like he was preparing himself.

“Did you know that Axel Osvald went over to Scotland a few weeks ago, Miss Algotsson?” he had asked.

She had nodded.

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Erik Osvald didn’t say anything about it when he was here?”

She had repeated a “no” but suddenly it was as though she no longer had the strength. Her face had fallen. The clouds in her eyes were gone, but her eyes had a new kind of faintness. She seemed tired now, dead tired. Winter had again felt ashamed, as though they were using these people without really knowing why. As though nothing good could come of this.

As though this would only make everything worse. What was it Erik Osvald had said one time? Storms are good for the sea? That they stir up the stew on the bottom. That no fisherman yet has lost by betting on a storm.

What was it they were tearing up with their questions? He thought about that now, in the dark of his flat, where he’d spent the better portion of his adult life.

Would this investigation be good for anything?

He saw Ella Algotsson’s face again. He blinked and it remained. He saw Arne Algotsson nodding again, as though he were concurring with something again.

They had concluded their conversation with Ella; they had tried to speak with Arne. They had moved their chairs up to the window.

They had asked questions, but all his responses had been nonsensical. It was both comic and tragic.

Arne had no more to say about “Skipper Osvald.”

Winter had wanted to know more. John Osvald hadn’t been the skipper when they set out. He became skipper. Why?

Why weren’t Arne Algotsson and Bertil Osvald along on that last trip?

What relationship did the young men have with one another on the little island that had been their home?

How had they functioned together out at sea?

Winter had thought about Erik Osvald’s words again, about the silence on board, the relationships on board.

Had something happened on board?

How had they functioned together in their involuntary exile?

He thought about it again now, sitting in the middle of the city he’d always lived in. He wanted to know. He wanted to look for answers to all of those questions, and to several others that couldn’t be answered here, only there. Possibly. Over there in Scotland.

It was a fascinating story. There were many parts. Spread across more than fifty years, across the sea.

There was a great sadness here, but there was also something else.

He wanted to know.

There were those who knew more than he did but didn’t want to say anything.

Yes.

Axel Osvald found something in Scotland that he’d been searching for his entire life, and it ended his life. Did such a truth exist, such a reality?

Maybe.

It was connected to the sea. The fishing. The trawlers. The cities. The islands. The villages. The winds. And so on.

Winter got up to go into the bedroom and try to get a few hours of sleep.

It was as they were going to leave the house on Donsö, as they were about to say good-bye to Arne Algotsson. Ringmar had said something about Scotland, Winter didn’t remember exactly what, something about Scotland in general. Ringmar had said “Scotland” several times in a row.

But he remembered what Algotsson had suddenly answered, or said, more like said straight out to no one in particular, more like said straight out the same way he had chanted about his mission earlier:

“The buckle boys are back in town” was what it sounded like.

“What did you say?” Ringmar had asked, but of course Algotsson wasn’t rational like that; he didn’t repeat himself on command.

“The buckle boys are back in town,” Ringmar had repeated, because it was easy to say; it flowed nicely.

“The buckle boys are back in town,” Algotsson repeated, as mechanically as before.

“You said SCOTLAND before,” Winter had said to Ringmar, but also to Algotsson. “Scotland.”

“Cullen skink,” Algotsson had said, and then he had been completely silent.

The words were still there in Winter’s head. He still hadn’t made it to bed; he was standing halfway in the hall. Cullen skink. Those were damn strange words. It sounded Scottish, it did, but what did it mean? Or maybe he’d said something else? Collie skink? Collie sink. Had he said “sink?” Just as Winter had that thought, the faucet in the kitchen dripped, a sound only heard at night. An irritating sound that would stop if only he would change the washer. Drip down in the sink. That sinking feeling.

He walked back to the living room. The clock on the wall was no longer on three; it was four thirty. He could hear the first streetcars. The sound of a delivery truck getting bread down in the bakery, or leaving flour. Suddenly Göteborgs-Posten dropped down through the mail slot in the hall behind him. He still wasn’t tired. He walked over to one of the bookcases and selected one of the atlases, taking out the one he thought was the best.

Scotland.

The buckle boys.

Cullen sink.

He turned on the floor lamp and remained standing.

He searched for map 6, northern Scotland. He found Inverness in the innermost part of the bay called Moray Firth. He saw Thurso and John O’Groats way up there, but they didn’t mean anything to him. He read the names of towns and cities from Inverness to Aberdeen. It was far, but not that far. He started inland, from west to east. He came across Dallas, a little dot, but still there. Proto-Dallas. Maybe Steve’s father had started the milking there now, along with Steve’s brother. Mom was making oatmeal like mad, Scotland’s delicious national dish.

Winter came to Aberdeen with his finger, and now he let it run north. He came to Peterhead. He came to Fraserburgh at the northeastern tip. He continued straight west, back toward Inverness, along the coastline now, village after village: Rosehearty, Pennan, Macduff, Banff, Portsoy, Cullen.

Cullen. Cullen as in Cullen sink or skink. Sink from Cullen. A kitchen sink from Cullen, Scottish kitchen sink realism.

So there was a Cullen between Portsoy and Portnockie. Something had told him it was a place.

He continued west along the coast, but only to the next city.

Buckie.

The Buckie boys are back in town.