The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North

THE MAN IN THE BOAT ^{PER OLOV ENQUIST}

THE STORY, as I recounted it to Mats…

This all took place the summer I was nine. We lived by a lake called Bursjön, a fine lake, large, with small islands. I was nine and Håkan was ten. A river passed through the lake, entering at the northern end and flowing out at the southern. It came from far up in Lappmarken, and in spring timber was floated downstream. In May I could see it all from our window: the lake filling with logs, lumps of ice and ice floes, the timber slowly drifting southwards, and then, one day that same month, finally disappearing.

But not all the timber went. Some of it strayed off to the side, got stuck on the shore, stranded. They were top-quality logs, thick and impressive; they were buoyant, riding high in the water. We knew what would happen to them. After a week the log drivers would come, nudge the logs out from the shore, manoeuvre them together and shove them off in the wake of the others. The log drivers walked along the shore, or some of them rowed in boats; they could clean up the lake in a day, removing everything. They were called the “rear crew”. When the rear crew left, the lake was empty once more.

That was the reason Håkan and I hid the three logs. There was a ditch running into the lake, at the very spot where we lived. We hauled the logs into the ditch and up twenty metres, and then we laid them all in a long row, stashed away in the grass at the side, which covered them up, camouflaging them. It took a whole day. We knew very well it was forbidden, but Håkan said that it didn’t matter, because it was only the company who would lose out, and they had enough money anyway. They could wait a year or two for their timber.

Håkan knew all about it. The day the rear crew left, we lay low at the edge of the forest, watching the log drivers. They were walking along the shore, while a rowing boat was out on the water. Now and then one of them found a log and dragged it into the water, and then the men in the boat took over. We could hear their voices. It was still spring; we heard them talking, but we couldn’t hear what they said. And I remember how Håkan and I lay there in the undergrowth at the edge of the forest, out of view and motionless, watching the log drivers draw nearer as they talked to one another. When they reached the ditch where we had hidden our three logs, they stopped for a while and had a smoke, and I can still remember how clearly I could hear Håkan’s breathing and my own heartbeat—as distinctly as if they were echoing in the cool spring air.

But they walked on. And they didn’t see the logs. The next day the lake was empty of timber and log drivers, and the rear crew had gone for another year. But we still had the logs. And the lake was ours. We alone had command of it now, for the whole summer.

We waited two days, just in case. But I remember being woken early on the morning of the third day by someone knocking on my window. It was Håkan, who had climbed up the fire escape to the first floor and was hanging there, making faces and sticking out his tongue and tapping on the pane of glass. I got up and walked across the floor, which was comfortably cool under my feet, and I could see that Håkan was holding something in his hand: a hammer. We were going to do it today. Right now.

I threw on some clothes. I must have eaten breakfast as well, but it couldn’t have taken long. I ran out. Håkan was sitting behind the house, by the wall, wearing his red shirt and blue plimsolls, holding the hammer and a packet of three-inch nails, and smiling at me as I approached.

“Now, damn it,” he said, “we’re going to start building!”

That morning we began constructing the raft. We dragged the logs out into the water again, placed the longest in the middle and the other two on either side, and whacked some struts on top. One cross plank at the front, which we nailed onto the logs; three planks in the middle and two at the rear. We used three-inch nails, except at the back, where we used six-inch ones that Håkan had got hold of somewhere.

“When we don’t need it any more,” he said in a thick voice, his mouth full of nails, “we’ll chuck the planks away and pull the nails out. If we leave the nails in, it’s really bad for the saw blade. And it ruins the old boys’ piecework rate.”

He worked in silence for a moment, and then he said, “You mustn’t forget the piecework rate.”

Håkan was only a year older than me, but he knew a huge amount and he taught me lots of things. I remember that summer very well: we built a raft of three logs; it had a sail on it; Håkan was there. It was the summer I was nine and he was ten. It was 1943.

It only took a day to finish it.

Håkan weighed thirty-eight kilos and I weighed thirty-five. The logs lay deep in the water. Generally, only a tenth of the log sticks up. It depends partly on how green it is. Some are pretty much sunken timber, while others float high in the water. Together, we weighed seventy-three kilos. When the wind blew, the waves nearly always splashed over the deck and came up in the gap between the logs. The water was quite cold to begin with, no more than 14 to 15 degrees; we were wearing wellingtons. Apart from that, the raft was well kitted out. For the most part, we pushed ourselves along. The pole was exactly three metres long and reached quite a distance out. Two pieces of plank were supposed to be paddles (but it was almost impossible to paddle; very slow at any rate). We had provisions in a small food container right at the back (secured with a one-inch nail to the rear platform). They consisted of: 1 bottle of water, 1 piece of sausage (10 cm long), 1 half-loaf, 8 biscuits, 1 knife, 100 grams margarine, 20 sugar cubes, 1 small tin of treacle (a kind of dark syrup that the cows were given, but Håkan maintained it was better than ordinary syrup; I didn’t like treacle myself, but he wanted to take a tin with us and I didn’t argue). Those were our provisions. Our armoury on the raft was a wooden crossbow with six arrows, a willow slingshot for pine cones plus ammunition (thirty-five cones) and Håkan’s old catapult with spare elastic and ten smallish stones.

There was no doubt, we ruled the lake.

However, the day I have to tell you about, when everything ended and everything began, we went out quite late. It was after seven in the evening; we had said we were going fishing, for which we were given permission. It was August. For the last two days, we had been experimenting with a sail on the raft, stretching a sheet between two long sticks. Sometimes we held onto the sticks ourselves, at other times we tried to lash them down. Neither way really worked, but this evening there was a good wind, coming straight off the land. After we had secured the provisions and ammunition, we set out. The sun was just setting on the other side, the wind was strong and we could see we were skimming along nicely, being blown out into the middle of the lake. It was all rather lovely; I didn’t want to mention it to Håkan, but as the sun went down, it was beautiful. Whenever I confided to him my thoughts about that kind of thing, Håkan would laugh.

It is at this precise point that I find it hardest to recall exactly what happened—but I’ll try to explain it all the same. Håkan was sitting in front and said he had just spied an enemy skiff we needed to ram. He ordered full sail, commanded the crew to stand by with the grappling irons, and he went astern to fetch the crossbow, which was lying in the middle of the raft. By this time, the waves were fairly high and it was dusk as well. Now I remember better: darkness had started to fall, except in the direction the sun had set, where the sky was still red—and Håkan stood up and walked astern to fetch his crossbow. The whole surface of the raft was quite slippery and slithery, and I saw him stagger and step to the side; and then he lost his balance. It all happened right in front of me. Håkan’s silhouette swaying and toppling over against the deep pink horizon. I remember it clearly. And I remember equally clearly his face in the water; I could see he was scared and embarrassed at the same time (scared because he couldn’t swim very well, embarrassed because he had been so clumsy).

There was a heavy swell on the lake. I held my hand out to him. It was just as the light was fading; poor visibility, extremely cold water, a deep pink streak where the sun had set. Håkan’s face, down there in the water, smiling, as if he were thinking: Damn it, how stupid of me! And I stretched out my hand to him.

The next thing I remember must have been quite some time later. An hour perhaps, probably more. I was sitting aft. Håkan was sitting at the bow end, on the forward platform. He was sitting with his back to me, huddled up. Huddled up, as if he was freezing cold. When I looked around on the raft, I realized we must have lost a lot of our things in the confusion when Håkan fell in. The sail was gone. The bits of wood that were supposed to be paddles were gone. The pole to push ourselves along with was gone. The entire raft was empty, apart from the nailed-down food container with emergency provisions, because I was sitting on that—and apart from Håkan and me, sitting hunched up, at either end of the raft.

And yet the most remarkable thing was something else; and I have thought long and hard about this since, and come somehow to the conclusion that there is a gap in my memory somewhere. The remarkable thing was that the wind had stopped, totally. It was utterly calm: the waves had subsided, the water was like a mirror. It was completely still and completely dark. It felt like the middle of the night, but the moon had risen. It was shining. The moon was almost full, the night was black, the water flat; but the moon was shining. It looked so strange. In the shimmering path of moonlight reflecting on the lake was a silent raft, almost a wreck, and on it two boys crouched; the water was like silver, still and absolutely soundless.

We must be in the middle of the lake, I thought. When I turned, I saw the lights from home, small white dots, far away, like tiny white pinpricks in black velvet. I looked at the moon. Then back at the water, at the curious white moonlight and the raft in the middle of the shimmering moon path, at Håkan’s rigid back. It felt like a dream, so strange, the quietness so deep I didn’t dare to break it. I wanted to speak to Håkan, but instead I said nothing.

We sat in silence, for a long, long time.

I don’t know what I was thinking about. I know I tried to work out what had happened, how Håkan had fallen in, how he had climbed back up, why he was sitting there, so silent. Why the wind had stopped. Why the waves had dropped. Why the moon was shining. I must have thought about how we would get home. We had nothing to row with, no sail, no wind.

I must have felt cold, but I have no recollection of that. I remember the peculiar stillness, the motionless black water, the moon, the raft in the middle of the moon path, the silence, the pitch-black night around us.

An hour or so passed, perhaps. Then I heard the faint sound, as if from an immense distance, of oars. The sound didn’t come from home, but from due east, which was odd, because there were no houses in that direction. But it was the stroke of oars, no doubt about it. I sat with my head turned to the east, staring straight out into the inky blackness, but could see nothing.

The stroke of oars came closer and closer. He was rowing slowly. Splish. Splash. I couldn’t see anything. Nearer and nearer. Then, all at once, a boat appeared against the reflection of the moon on the water, the silhouette slowly slipping into the moon path. As it came towards us, I could see the back of the man who was rowing.

I stood up and could see that Håkan was on his feet too. We stood still, staring at the boat gliding towards us.

“Hello,” I shouted, over the water, “please, come and help us!”

The man in the boat didn’t turn round. He didn’t look at us. He simply let the boat glide silently up to us and lifted the oars. Water dripping from the oars, the boat gliding, as in a dream, the man not turning round—I remember it so well. Why didn’t he answer?

And then he reached us. Came to rest beside the raft. And only then did he turn around.

I saw his face in the moonlight. I didn’t recognize him. I had never seen him before. He had dark hair, a thin face, he didn’t look at me. He looked only at Håkan. He was not from these parts, but he had come to help us. And he stretched his hand out to Håkan, and Håkan took his hand and stepped carefully into the dinghy and sat at the stern. Neither of them said a single word. And I stood still and watched them.

The rowing boat then slowly moved off, so imperceptibly I didn’t understand what was happening at first. But the man had sat down, sat down at the oars. And started to row. Håkan sat in the stern, his back to me, and he didn’t move, didn’t look at me. The man started to row, and the boat slowly disappeared in the darkness.

I couldn’t call out. I stood still, turned to stone. I must have stayed there like that for a long time.

What I remember of this is so confused, it’s difficult to recount. I must have sat down on the platform at the back. I must have been extremely cold. I know that I opened the box with emergency provisions, I ate. I lifted out the tin of treacle, the syrup I didn’t actually like; I ate it. I dipped my fingers in and put it in my mouth; it tasted sweet. I sat on the platform at the back and watched dawn breaking, watched the light creeping in over the lake, the morning mists rising and lifting, until finally it was light.

And then the boats came.

It was Grandfather who arrived first. Later on, they said they had been searching and calling for a long time, but I hadn’t answered. I told them I hadn’t heard their shouts. Grandfather arrived first. I stood up, my face sticky with the treacle that had run down my chin. Grandfather took my hand and lifted me into the boat; my face was covered in treacle, but I was perfectly calm. I remember I lay down flat on my back in the bottom of the boat, lay still, staring straight up, while they wrapped blankets around me, and Grandfather started to row, very fast, as if in a great hurry. I was lying in the bottom of the dinghy. My lips and chin were sticky with the treacle that had run down my neck. Grandfather was rowing. I lay there, looking at his face.

I must have been very ill after this. I remember being in bed with a fever, dreaming such strange dreams. Sometimes I was bathed in sweat; other times I slept and was woken by my own screams. They came in and sat with me: Mama was there, Grandfather and Grandmother, and Annika. Many days must have passed; I don’t know how many.

Until one day I was well. It happened so quickly, it was like switching on a light. First very ill. Then—all at once—I woke one day and was completely well.

Grandfather was sitting with me.

“What happened to the raft?” I asked. “Did you bring it ashore or is it still out there?”

“We brought it in,” he said.

“Is it moored now?”

“No,” he said very calmly, “we broke it up and got rid of the timber. I did it myself the same day.”

“Oh,” I said. “Did you take all the nails out?”

“I did,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said. “Otherwise the chaps at the sawmill would have caught the nails on the saw and it would have ruined their piecework rate.”

“Yes, I know,” he said.

“What was the name of the man rowing the boat Håkan went in?”

But Grandfather didn’t reply; he just sat there, looking pensive.

“He wasn’t from round here,” I said. “He looked like Eriksson who works the barking drum at the sawmill, but it wasn’t him.”

“No,” Grandfather said softly. “Now you have to get some more sleep.”

He was standing at the door, looking at me, and when I started to tell him what had happened that night, he looked slightly irritated, or something else—he looked odd—and he just turned and left, quite abruptly. The next day, the first day I was allowed to get up, he came back and asked me to tell him. And I told him everything.

He just sat there, looking pensive, as he often used to do in the chapel; whenever things became slow and boring and serious, he would sit and think about fishing. He looked pensive then. He was looking exactly the same now, so I assumed he was thinking about fishing again.

I said, “It’s a good job you pulled all the nails out. It would have ruined their piecework rate.”

Then he said, straight into the air, “Well now, about Håkan. He didn’t come back.”

That summer I read a great deal. The book I liked best was the story of the Flying Dutchman. He had once committed a dreadful crime: he had not reached out his hand to some drowning sailors—he had thought only of himself—and he had let them drown. So he was damned: whenever he and his ship came to a port, a headwind blew up and he was unable to enter the harbour. He had to continue to the next one, and the next, and the next.

And there he sailed, year in, year out. Sailors would see him coming in his ship, in the middle of the night, in a fierce storm, and in the moonlight they saw him standing on the deck, lashed to the wheel, doomed to sail for evermore. An unknown man.

I told Grandfather about it.

“Do you understand?” I said. “That’s the only time you see him, in the middle of the night. He comes sailing along in the moonlight. Isn’t it strange? An unknown man, who never speaks to anyone, but just arrives, at night, in the moonlight. Do you understand, Grandfather?”

“No. What about?” Grandfather asked.

“Well,” I said, “an unknown man, a stormy night, and you see him in the moonlight. He just comes gliding along in the moonlight! Do you see? There must be a connection, mustn’t there?”

“I don’t understand,” Grandfather cut me short.

“He came rowing from the east that night,” I said. “You know as well as I do that there’s no one living in the east. Not here by the lake. Not even a tourist. But he came from the east.”

In July I began a systematic exploration of the lake’s eastern shores. I didn’t tell the others what I was doing. The grown-ups had already taken me aside for long talks, long, serious talks, about what, I don’t recall, don’t want to recall. They would never understand, they would only ask me to do something else, to help out in the cowshed, to think about something else, something else, something else.

I decided to explore the lake’s eastern shores.

It was in July 1943, a very warm summer. Håkan always used to call the eastern part of the lake “the cesspool”—it wasn’t very pleasant, there were lots of tree stumps and rubbish in the water, the bottom was mucky and slimy, the shore was scrubby and in some places cleared of trees in that barren kind of way that made you thirsty just by looking at it. I took some water in a bottle and I began to search. I started furthest away down by the shore and then walked up a hundred metres. Then diagonally down to the beach again, then up. In this way I would be able to comb the entire area.

I walked for several hours, got very thirsty, drank some water. When my water ran out, I went home.

In July I searched the eastern part of the lake, and I found nothing. The only thing I came upon was the remains of a half-rotted boat, a dinghy. It had been pulled a long way up on land, with its hull in the air. It must have been there for years.

I sat down on the boat. The sun was shining and it was very warm. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, loudly, out across the water, “Håkan! Håkan! Håkan!”

But no answer came. No echo. Nothing at all. And then I knew, finally, that there was no trace of Håkan in the eastern part of the lake, and no trace of the man in the boat.

In September that year I searched for the last time.

September was the month I liked best. In Västerbotten’s coastal regions the cold arrived quite early, the autumnal colours started appearing in the middle of the month, and in the last two weeks you could break a thin layer of ice on the puddles every morning. The entire lake seemed embedded in a band of dark green and golden red. All the forests looked like that. Green from the conifers, golden red from the birch trees. Mist lay over the lake, and it was cold.

On one of the last days of that month, I took Grandfather’s boat and rowed out. I didn’t have permission, but I did it. It was the day of my ninth birthday.

I rowed around the whole lake. There was a thin mist everywhere, a mist that was almost transparent and only a few metres high, but which nevertheless made me feel as though I were rowing in an empty, forsaken world. As if I was completely alone. And it felt good.

I rowed around the whole lake. And then I rowed out into the middle. I pulled up the oars, settled down and waited.

It was lonely in the mist, in a very strange way; it felt safe. I thought about everything that had happened and, oddly, I no longer felt despair when I thought about Håkan’s disappearance. I just didn’t understand how it had happened, who the man in the boat was. Why had he left me behind? Where was Håkan now? Why didn’t he come back?

I must have sat there for an hour. Then I saw a boat coming towards me, out of the mist.

It was a dinghy with a man rowing. Someone was sitting in the stern with his face turned towards me.

There could be no mistake. It was Håkan. The dinghy glided slowly towards me, without a sound, straight through the mist, and I wasn’t in the least bit afraid. Håkan was sitting in the stern, looking right at me, and he looked exactly the same as before. And he smiled at me.

It was utterly silent. I sat still and watched the other dinghy glide slowly towards me, next to me, past me. The whole time Håkan was looking at me, a peculiar expression on his face. With a slight smile, he was looking right at me. As if he wanted to say: Here I am. You don’t need to search any more. You’ve found me. And now you’ve found me, you have to stop searching for me. I’m fine. You must understand that. You have to stop searching for me, because you’ve found me. And now you need to be yourself. You need to be grown up.

We didn’t say a word, but we looked at one another. And we both smiled. And then the dinghy slid away, and they were gone. And since that time I haven’t seen my only friend Håkan again.

I sat still for a long time, thinking, before I took up the oars to start rowing; but at that moment I saw something floating in the water. It was a long pole. It was the pole we used to push ourselves along on the raft. I thought: Håkan wanted to give it back. That’s good. I’ll pick it up.

I picked it up. And then I rowed back.

When I returned, Grandfather was standing on the shore. I saw him from a distance. He looked furious, which always makes his body go rigid and weird, his shoulders drop and he glares directly in front of him. I wasn’t afraid, though. I steered the boat straight for the shore, lifted the oars, picked up the pole and threw it onto the beach.

He looked at it and said, “Where did you find that?”

All I said was, “I’ve got it back.”

I climbed out of the boat and we dragged it out together. Before he had time to tell me off, I said, “And I’m just going to say, I’m not going to search any more. I’m not going to look for Håkan any more. It’s over now.”

He stood in silence, staring at me, as if he couldn’t understand what I was trying to say.

“No,” I said, “it’s over, Grandfather. Now I know.”

I set off up towards the farm, over the meadow. It was September, frost on the grass and brittle underfoot; it crunched where you walked. Grandfather was still standing down there by the boat. And I thought how odd it all is: you get knocked back, but nothing is ever hopeless. Sometimes you just want to die, but when everything seems at its worst, there is still a way out. You get knocked back and it feels bad, but you learn a great deal. And if you didn’t learn, you would never grow up, never understand. I thought about the Flying Dutchman and the story about the Snow Queen and all the other stories I’d heard. And I thought about the man in the boat taking Håkan away from me, and never again would I be ill like I’d been that summer.

I wouldn’t play in the same way as before, not believe the same kinds of tales, not try to avoid things; nothing would be the same as before. It was September: Håkan would have been ten years and one month, if he had lived. I walked up to the farm. Grandfather stayed by the boat. I remember I was crying, but at the same time I felt very peaceful. The air was cold. It was the last time I went out searching. I finally knew who the man in the boat was. I walked home. It was crunching under my feet. It was cold. And that was it, the whole story.