The Rock Blaster

1962

The alarm clock rings, shrill and merciless. It is a quarter after three in the morning in the middle of May. The oil-fired heater is cold, and the room is chilly and damp. The sea is blue-black and still. A heavy grey-white mist weighs on the surface of the water. Barren images molded by the leaden light. Oak branches rising like ruins out of the grey haze.

As I walk along the path that hugs the shoreline, the sand and the brown-grey seaweed crunch like eggshells under my heels. A gentle ripple crosses the water. Dying waves roll soundlessly past. Somewhere in the distance a boat has been sailing by. A pike splashes on the surface and the sound bounces back and forth between the cliffs on the far side of the inlet.

The island is not big. It takes half an hour to walk around it. To the headland, where Johansson has his cabin, it’s about fifteen minutes. I follow the shore, branch off in among the oaks where the sand gives way to steep boulders, get back down to the beach again, squeeze my way through a tight thicket of alder, and then I only have to follow the gentle curve of the cove along to the headland, where the house is.

The door is ajar. Oskar is already up. He is sitting at the table playing Patience, a very special version of Idiot’s Delight. He nods at me and I pick up the coffeepot standing on the spirit stove. I sit down on the bench, help myself to a blue-speckled cup, and then I just wait until Johansson says it is time to go.

Oskar bought his cabin, an old sauna, seven years ago. It was at the time when the military were disposing of the remaining barracks buildings from the emergency standby years of the Second World War. Oskar was able to buy the bathhouse for 150 kronor, provided he removed the building himself. But Oskar talked to the owner of the land on which it stood and was given permission to leave the sauna there and to occupy it for as long as he lived. The following year I helped him to tear out the benches, line the walls with hardwood, make a small partition for his bed, fit a cupboard, and open up a window. Then we painted the whole thing white and red. Johansson moves out to the island at the beginning of April and stays there until it turns cold in October.

The sauna is one and a half metres wide and little more than three metres long. When I stand on tiptoe my head touches the ceiling.

The bed: the creaky old officer’s bed which he was given for free when the large barracks up on the slope was torn down.

A brown blanket, two changes of sheets, pillowcases with a red border and the initials “A. J.” in ornate letters. Two brown kitchen chairs, a lath table with a green wax tablecloth. Spirit stove, paraffin lamp, transistor radio, pack of cards, spectacles, wallet.

The cups, the plates, the coffee, and the potatoes.

With the index finger of his left hand, Johansson presses a button on the radio. The finger is thick, stronger than two normal ones. All he has left on that hand, which has had to assume the functions of both hands, is the thumb and index finger, and together they have developed into a claw for gripping things. The index finger presses down and music fills the room, much too loudly. But it is a sign. Soon we will get up and go. Just before half past four we sit in Johansson’s rowboat. It is light, made of hardboard riveted to a simple wooden frame. Grass-green and flat-bottomed. I sit in the stern and Johansson rows out from the shore. He grips the left oar with his finger and thumb. The right one is firmly in the crook of his right arm. Once we have cleared the three wooden planks that make up Johansson’s jetty, he turns the boat and we glide over toward the other side of the headland.

We move across the water in silence. It is still chilly and the mist is as grey as before. Johansson’s oar strokes are steady and follow the rhythm of his breathing. When he pauses, he also holds his breath.

Our nets are on the other side of the promontory. One for perch. One for flounder. First the perch. Then the flounder. We pull the nets up in the same order as we always do. With me crouching in the stern, Johansson slowly rowing the boat backward. Every fish we get is counted out loud by Johansson. A number, then another number. Just that.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

One big perch and three flounder. They flap about between our feet in the bottom of the boat. The nets in a pile over my boots. Johansson turns the boat around and we row back.

May 1962. We are listening to Radio Nord. Johansson usually laughs when the voice on the radio announces the transmission frequency and talks about megacycles.

“What the hell are they doing? Cycling around on the boat...?”

He chuckles to himself and squints at me with his one eye. His index finger is drumming on the wax tablecloth.

The fog is still just as thick, the sea equally leaden, but the light is growing brighter and cutting through the haze. Johansson twists around in his chair, grips the back of it with his finger and thumb and drags himself to his feet, enough to be able to see out through the window. He has a quick look and sinks back onto his chair again, and returns to his special version of Idiot’s Delight.

The cards are dirty and coming apart. The Jack of Spades has a bloodstain on one of his faces. The Seven of Clubs is from a different pack. One has all sorts of sailing boats on the back. The other a dark red background with a thin white border.

Radio Nord is playing “The Last of the Mohicans” by Little Gerhard.

The index finger drums slowly on the tablecloth, like a dripping icicle. The Idiot’s Delight will not work out.