Depths (24 page)

He found her at the far north end of the island. She had crawled into a crevice, pressed herself down into the heather, lay with her eyes wide open but seeing nothing. He sat down beside her.

There is nothing so easy as taking control of suffering people, he thought. People totally lacking in resistance. He remembered his mother, weeping, alone in one of the dark rooms that comprised his childhood home.

A flock of crows was cawing somewhere in the distance. The sound died away. He waited. Thirty-two minutes passed. Then she stood up and hastened away. She walked back to the cottage. He was about to follow her in when she came out and hurried down towards the inlet.

He stood quite still. Should he allow her to be on her own? There was nowhere she could disappear to, there were no hidden doors in the rocks that could open up.

Then he saw smoke and could smell tar. When he got there he found she had set fire to a tar barrel and was stuffing nets and eel traps into the flames.

'You can burn yourself!' he yelled. 'You can get burning tar all over you!'

He pulled at her, but she refused to budge. So he smacked her, hard, in the face. When she stood up he hit her again.

This time she stayed sitting on the ground. He knocked the barrel over and kicked it into the water. The barrel sizzled, the smoke stank. She was lying on the ground now, stained with tar and blood, her skirt pulled up way above her stomach. He reminded himself that there was a baby inside there, a baby that existed even if it couldn't be seen.

The burning tar slowly went out. There was a thin layer of smoking grease on the surface of the water. He helped her up.

'I must get away,' she said. 'I can't stay here.'

'We'll leave the island. Soon. But not yet.'

'Why do we have to stay here? Why not now?'

'I haven't finished my task.'

She examined her tar-stained hands.

'I salvaged the bones and cut off the floats,' he said. 'The net has gone.'

'It'll come floating up again.'

'It will be driven by the currents down deep in the water. It will never come up to the surface again. Not here at least.'

She looked around.

"The bones are in the cottage.'

'I have to bury him.'

She set off. When they got to the door he took hold of her again.

'I found something else.'

'His head! God, I can't take this.'

'Not his head. But a foot.'

'They were big and dirty. His feet were only important for him, not for me.'

She collected the remains on the ground in front of her and squatted down. She was murmuring, conducting a whispered conversation between herself and the bones. He leaned towards her to hear what she was saying, but he could not make out any words.

Then she stood up and fetched the fur from the mad fox. She rolled up the bones and the piece of leather inside it, and asked him to bring a spade.

The grave was a shallow hollow in one of the rocky ledges towards the west of the island. She did the digging, would not allow him to do it for her. When the spade struck rock she put the pelt in the hole and covered it with the soil. That evening she took the pipe and threw it into the fire. It seemed to Tobiasson-Svartman that she did that for his sake, removing the last trace of her husband. That night she clung tightly to his body. Her hands made it clear to him that she never intended to let go.

The next day, in the evening, he told her that Halsskär was a sort of haven. A remote outpost in the sea for people with nowhere to go.

'It's like a church,' he said.

She had no idea what he meant by that.

'This skerry from Hell? A church?'

'Nobody commits a crime in a church. Nobody sticks an axe into his enemy's head in a church. It's a haven. In the old days outlaws were able to seek sanctuary in a church. Perhaps Halsskär was that kind of place for you and your husband? Without your realising it?'

She looked at him in a way he did not recognise. It was as if her eyes were turning away.

'How did you know about her?' she asked.

'Know about who?'

'The woman who sought sanctuary on this island. The goddess. I heard about her once from Helge. A storm had blown up and I let him stay overnight. That was when he told me about the winter's night in 1843. You can't always believe what Helge says, but he tells lovely stories. He has many words, just as many as you have. It was a severe winter that year, the ice was so thick that they say it roared like a wild animal when it formed pack ice. But there was an open channel from the sea way out near Gotska Sandön, and a woman came floating along in that channel, she must have been a goddess because there was a sort of halo all around her body. She had been thrown overboard by a drunken sailor. She was transparent and freezing cold and the open channel froze over once she had passed through it. But she reached here, and she hid herself on the skerry. The following year a dead sailor drifted ashore, he had cut his own throat. It was the sailor who had thrown her overboard, and now it was his turn to be washed up here. Helge had heard the story from his father. I sometimes think that she and I are the same person.'

She snuggled down under the covers. He sat down on the floor next to the bed, she stroked his hair.

Then he started to tell her about another goddess, the one who stood guard on the edge of the great city in the west, far away over the sea, and bade welcome to everyone who went there seeking sanctuary.

'I'll take you there,' he said. 'It's time for me to make a new start as well. You have your dead husband, I have my dead family.'

'I want to go to somewhere far away from the sea. I don't want to see it, or hear it, or smell it.'

'There are towns surrounded by desert. It's a long way to the sea from there.'

'What would you do there? In the middle of a desert? With your sounding leads and your sailor's book and your navigable channels?'

'There are things to measure in deserts as well. I could explore the depth of the sand. I could keep track of how it keeps moving.'

'But what about the water?'

'If I started to long for it, I could no doubt find a sea out there to start sounding out.'

She fell asleep. He lay close to her, felt her warmth.

That night he dreamed about a ship sailing backwards across the horizon. It felt like somebody being taken to be executed.

One night in the middle of May she woke him up and put his hand on her stomach. The baby was kicking.

The cry of a bird rang out through the night.

They said nothing, just the hand, the baby kicking, the cry of a bird.

He tried to conjure up the baby. Sara Fredrika's baby. Kristina Tacker's baby.

Kristina Tacker's had a face, it was his own.

Sara Fredrika's looked like the skeleton of a foot.

When she fell asleep again he got up and went out. It was a bright spring night, damp, with a breeze blowing over the rocks. He went to the highest point of the skerry and looked out to the sea.

He was overcome by his helplessness. All his lust and desire had gone. All he could envisage was dirt and misery.

I have to get away from here, he thought. Without her. I have to find a way of following her from a distance. Of seeing her without her seeing me.

I will have to enjoy my child from a distance. I cannot stay here.

Although it was now May, it was still on the cold side.

A short but devastating storm demolished the cottage's chimney. He climbed on to the roof and repaired the damage. He could hear Sara Fredrika talking to herself inside the cottage.

As he was about to climb down he noticed a sailing dinghy approaching the island along the narrow Lindöfjärden channel. It was making good progress, its sail positively bulging.

He jumped down from the roof, and told Sara Fredrika about the dinghy.

'It will be Helge,' she said. 'You must remember him, and his son.'

He prepared to receive the dinghy.

'I want to talk to him in private,' she said. 'But I'm not going to say a word about my husband's foot in the net.'

He went into the cottage, lay down on the bed and went to sleep. When he woke up again it was already evening. He walked down to the inlet. Sara's dinghy was still there. But there was no sign of the visiting boat.

Nor was there any sign of Sara Fredrika.

He shouted for her all over the skerry. No response. It was only when he came to the steep north edge of the island that he found her, where the breakers were rolling in to the battered rocks.

She was asleep. Beside her among the rocks was a broken bottle.

She woke with a start and sat up.

She started coughing, the smell of strong drink slapped him in the face. When she tried to stand up she stumbled and grazed her cheek on a rock. He stretched out a hand, but she pushed it away with a laugh.

'I'm drunk. Helge realised that I needed something to drink. He always has aquavit in the boat. It doesn't happen often. I'll be back to normal tomorrow.'

'You can't spend the night out here.'

'I shan't freeze to death. No birds are going to come and peck at me. I have to lie here in order to gather strength to stand up again.'

She stretched, pulled up her skirt and straightened her legs.

'You won't be able to get me to the cottage tonight. But you can stay here with me if you like.'

She grabbed hold of his leg and almost succeeded in pulling him over. She was strong, her hands were like monkey wrenches. When he tried to pull himself free she laughed even more and tightened her grip.

'Haven't you got it? I'm not going to let go of the man who's going to take me away from here.'

'I've gathered that.'

She let go and curled up in the hollow.

I have to get away, he thought. One of these days she'll stick an axe into my head when she finds out that I'm not the person who's going to rescue her. It had dawned on him that he was afraid of her. He could not control her, whether she was drunk or sober. She tore some moss off a rock and covered her face with it.

'Leave me alone now,' she said. 'Everything will be back to normal by tomorrow.'

There is no normality, he thought. She'll discover the abyss inside me if I do not leave the island. Her abyss is hers, mine is mine. I'm too close to her.

Later that night he returned to the hollow in the rocks.

He could smell that she had been vomiting. He left her there.

The next day it was drizzling and blowing a gale from the east.

When he woke up she was sitting outside the door like a wet, shivering dog.

'I'm not taking a dead woman with me to America,' he said. 'Go inside, take your wet clothes off and get warm. Otherwise you'll be ill. The baby will die.'

She did as he said. He went down to the inlet and sat down on a broken corf.

Why would he not tell her the truth, that he could not come back and fetch her?

He knew the answer. He had killed his wife, and he had killed his daughter. He had been caught by the nets he had set out. He was being pulled down, just as her husband had been when he got caught in a herring net.

He went back to the cottage and stole a look through the window. She was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped up in a blanket, with her head turned away. Just like Kristina Tacker, he thought. Two women who turn their faces away from me.

Later that day he started to prepare for his departure. He talked to her, convinced her that she would not have long to wait. He would soon be leaving, but he would soon be back.

They continued fishing together, sleeping together, and he tried to look her in the eye all the time.

After a week he was convinced. She believed he would be coming back.

He could leave the island.

It was 7 June, at the crack of dawn.

They were sailing northwards, with Harstena and the seal rocks to starboard, and were making good progress towards the skerries where they would turn westward towards the Slätbaken approach. He was sitting by the mast, in charge of the sail. They did not speak much, nor did they pass any other boats.

Late in the afternoon the wind died down. They found themselves drifting and they still had not reached the Slätbaken approach. They could see a warship passing by on the horizon, and shortly afterwards another one. He could see through the telescope that they were gunboats, but they were too far away to be identified. They steered to the nearest skerry, beached the dinghy, lit a fire and ate the potatoes and cold fish she had brought with her in a basket. She also had a jug of water.

The summer's night was light. A few stars twinkled in the sky. Despite everything he felt quite close to the woman he would soon abandon. She was by his side, despite his efforts to build a wall of inaccessibility around himself.

She had lain down, using the basket lid as a pillow.

'Is it true?' she asked suddenly. 'The stars, the winter darkness and the light summer nights – is it true that they will never end? Or will they cease to exist? You must know, because you can measure depths and see distances that nobody else can see.'

'Nobody can know that,' he said. 'You can only believe.'

'What do you believe?'

'That you can go mad if you look too far out into space.'

She thought over his reply.

'My husband,' she said eventually. 'He used to dream about that. He would get restless when it started getting dark in the autumn. Strangely scared. He had to go outside at night, I had to go out with him and hold him tight. He could never explain it. He started to stammer as autumn set in. He never stammered at other times, but then, as it grew dark and the eels started to run, he would stare up at the stars and begin to stammer. He could not understand it, he said. It was beyond comprehension. There was a sailor on Haskö who got drunk and claimed that nothing came to an end, not the sky, not the stars, nothing. Everything just kept on going for ever.'

'Nobody can know that,' he said again. 'You are alone with the stars even if you see them together with somebody else.'

'Can you see your daughter up there? And your wife?'

'I can see them. But I don't want to talk about them.'

She said no more. Soon it will all be over, he thought.

The fire died out.

* * *

At daybreak they continued towards Slätbaken and the approach to the Göta Canal. They had a following wind, sailed through the sound at Stegeborg and had fresh winds when they came to Slätbaken itself.

Small boats were queuing up at the first set of locks at the entrance to the canal. They headed for the mouth of the river and rowed to the quays in the centre of Söderköping.

Their leave-taking was perfunctory. Her last impression had to be that he was telling the truth, that he really would complete his mission and hand the results over to his superiors in Stockholm. Then he would return to fetch her from Halsskär.

They moored at the quay next to the Brunns Hotel. It was low water. He clambered on to the quay. She stayed in the boat.

'Go home now,' he said. 'Sail carefully. I'll soon be there.'

He waved to her. She waved back and smiled.

He hoped she believed him. To be on the safe side he did not turn round.