Depths (7 page)

The burial took place at nine thirty.

The crew gathered on the afterdeck. The carpenter had rigged up a plank between two trestles. The body wrapped in the tarpaulin was laid with the foot end next to the rail. The ship's three-tailed flag was at half mast.

Lieutenant Jakobsson followed the ritual laid down in his instruction book. He was holding a hymnal. The crew mumbled out the hymn. Jakobsson had a loud voice, but he sang out of tune. Tobiasson-Svartman only moved his lips. The seagulls circling the ship joined in the singing. After the hymn, Jakobsson read the prescribed prayer over the dead body, then the plank was tilted and the body slid over the rail and entered the water with a muffled splash.

The ship's foghorn sounded eerily. Jakobsson kept the crew to attention for a full minute. When they dispersed there was no sign of the body.

Jakobsson invited Tobiasson-Svartman to a glass of aquavit in the mess. They toasted each other and the lieutenant asked: 'How long do you think it took for the body to sink down to the mud or sand or whatever there is at the bottom just there?'

'It's mud,' said Tobiasson-Svartman. 'It's always mud in the Baltic.'

He made a rapid calculation in his head.

'Let's assume the body and the metal weigh a hundred kilos and the distance to the bottom is 160 metres. That would mean it would take two to three seconds for it to sink one metre. And so it will have taken the body about six minutes to reach the bottom.'

Jakobsson thought that over for a while.

'That ought to be enough to save my crew from worrying if he'll be coming back up to the surface again. Sailors can be as superstitious as hell. But the same applies to commanding officers if things are really bad.'

He poured himself another drink, and Tobiasson-Svartman did not say no.

'I shall spend a lot of time wondering about why he drowned,' Jakobsson said. 'I know I'll never know the answer, but I won't be able to forget him. Our meeting was brief. He lay on the deck of my ship under a piece of grey tarpaulin. Then he departed again. Even so, he will be with me for the rest of my life.'

'What will happen to his belongings? The miniature, the picture of the dog? His pay book?'

'I'll send them to Stockholm together with my report. I assume they'll eventually be sent to Germany. Sooner or later Frau Richter will find out what happened to her son. I know of no civilised nation where the procedures for dealing with dead soldiers and sailors are not meticulously observed.'

Tobiasson-Svartman stood up to prepare for resuming work. Lieutenant Jakobsson raised a hand to indicate that he had something more to say.

'I have a brother who's an engineer,' he said. 'He has been working for a number of years at the German naval yards in Gotenhafen and Kiel. He tells me that the German shipbuilders are considering making incredibly big vessels. With a deadweight of getting on for 50,000 tonnes, half of which is accounted for by the armour-plating. In some places that will be thirty-five centimetres thick. These ships will have crews comprising two thousand men and more, they'll be floating towns with access to everything you can think of. Presumably there'll be an undertaker or two on board as well. I suppose one of these days ships like that will come into being. I wonder what will happen to the human race, though. We could never have skin thirty-five centimetres thick, a skin that could withstand the biggest shells. Will the human race survive? Or will we end up fighting wars that never end, with nobody able to remember how they started, and nobody able to envisage them ending?'

Jakobsson poured himself another drink.

'The war that's being fought now could be the beginning of what I'm talking about. Millions of soldiers are going to die simply because one man was murdered in Sarajevo. Some insignificant Crown prince. Does that make any sense? Of course it doesn't. The bottom line is that war is always a mistake. Or the result of absurd assumptions and conclusions.'

Jakobsson did not appear to expect any comment. He replaced the bottle in its cupboard, then left the mess.

Just as he stepped out on to the deck he swayed and stumbled. But he did not turn round.

Tobiasson-Svartman remained in the mess, thinking over what he had just heard.

How thick was his own skin? How big a shell would it be able to resist?

What did he know about Kristina Tacker's skin, apart from the fact that it was fragrant?

For a moment he was overcome by utter panic. He was transfixed, as if poison were spreading all over his body. Then he got a grip on himself, took a deep breath and went on deck.

They started work again and managed to complete eighty soundings before dusk.

That evening they were served baked flounder, potatoes and a thin, tasteless sauce. Lieutenant Jakobsson was very subdued and did no more than poke at his food.

Tobiasson-Svartman copied the day's notes into the main record book. When he had finished he felt restless and went on deck.

Once again it seemed to him that there was something glinting on Halsskär. As before, he put it down to his imagination.

That night he slept clutching his sounding lead. He cleaned it thoroughly every day, but he thought it smelled of mud from the bottom of the sea.

He woke up with a start. It was dark in the cabin. The lead was next to his left arm. Water was lapping gently against the hull as the ship slowly rolled. He could hear the nightwatchman coughing on deck. It did not sound good, it had a rattling quality. The man's footsteps faded away as he moved aft.

He had been dreaming. There had been horses, and men whipping them. He had tried to intervene, but they ignored him. Then he understood that he was about to be whipped himself. At that point he woke up.

He checked his watch, hanging by the side of his bunk. A quarter past five. Not yet dawn.

He thought about the flash he thought he had seen on two occasions now. But surely Halsskär was just a barren rock? There could not be any kind of light there.

He lit the paraffin lamp, dressed, took a deep breath and examined his face in the mirror. It was still his own.

When he was a child – all the time he was growing up, in fact – he had looked like his mother. Now, as he grew older, his face had begun to change and he thought he could see more of his father every time he looked in a mirror.

Was there yet another face within him?

Would he ever be able to feel that he looked like himself and nobody else?

It was hazy over the sea when he came out on deck.

The watchman with the hacking cough was sitting on the capstan, smoking. He jumped up when he heard footsteps. Hid his fag behind his back. Then he succumbed to a violent coughing fit. Scraping and rasping noises seemed to be tearing his chest.

Tobiasson-Svartman clambered into one of the tenders and untied the painter. The watchman, who had recovered from his coughing fit, asked breathlessly if the officer required an oarsman. Tobiasson-Svartman declined the offer.

The sun had not risen over the horizon as he rowed towards Halsskär. The rowlocks squeaked forlornly. In order to get to the skerry as directly as possible he lined his tender up with the starboard wing of the bridge, and did not need to change course at all. He rowed with powerful strokes and beached the boat at the same place as last time.

Halsskär gave the impression of having been crushed by a giant's hand. There were deep ravines and hollows, muddy soil had accumulated in depressions and provided a footing for moss campion and occasional clumps of wormwood. Lichens were creeping over the rocks, and sparse red heather.

He followed the shore northwards. Here and there he had to move inland when the cliffs became too steep. The terrain was in constant conflict with him, cliffs turned into precipices, rocks were slippery, every obstacle he overcame gave way to a new one.

After ten minutes he was covered in sweat. He was deep down in a crevice with steep rock walls on either side, and he could no longer see the sea. He was surrounded by stone. A snake had shed its skin at the bottom of the fissure. He continued clambering over the rocks, saw the sea once more and came to the edge of an inlet that seemed to have been carved out of the cliffs.

He stopped dead.

As far in as you could go was a rickety jetty. Moored there was a dinghy. A sail was furled around the mast, situated towards the bows. On the shore were some fishing nets hanging from hooks attached to poles that had been driven down among the stones. There was also a big washtub made of tarred oak, a heap of stones for weighing down the nets, and some floats made of bark and cork.

He stood motionless, taking in what he saw. He was surprised to find that a skerry so far out in the archipelago, next to the open sea, was being used by fishermen and bird-hunters. They could not very well be seal-hunters as there were no rocks or skerries in the vicinity of the Sandsänkan lighthouse where grey seals were known to bask. You would have to go further into the archipelago for that, to the shallows east of Harstena.

He continued walking along the shore towards the sheltered inlet, and noted that the dinghy was well looked after. The sail furled round the mast was not patched and the sheets were whole rather than being knotted together from odds and ends of line. The nets, hanging neatly from the hooks, were small-meshed and evidently intended for catching herring. Furthest in was a well-worn path leading towards dense thickets of dog rose and sea buckthorn. The path meandered on beyond the thickets and between two large outcrops. Beside it, to his surprised delight, he observed a freshwater spring.

Then he came upon a patch of level ground and a little cabin squatting in the shadow of a cliff wall. It had a brick chimney, and a thin wisp of smoke was rising skywards. The foundation was of rough stones, and the walls were made of grey planks, varying in width, none of them planed. The roof was patched with moss, but its base was a layer of turf. There was only one window. The door was closed. There was a little vegetable patch alongside the cabin. Nothing was growing in it at present, but somebody had made the effort of covering it with bunches of seaweed, to act as fertiliser. Further away, next to the cliff wall, was a potato patch. He estimated it to be twenty square metres. It too was blanketed in seaweed mixed with old, dried potato haulm.

At that very moment the door opened. A woman emerged from the cabin. She was wearing a grey skirt and a dishevelled cardigan; she was carrying an axe, and her hair was long, golden and braided into a plait tucked into her cardigan. She caught sight of him and gave a start. But she was not scared and did not raise the axe.

Tobiasson-Svartman was embarrassed. He felt as if he had been caught in the act, without knowing what the act was. He raised his hand to the peak of his cap and saluted her.

'I didn't mean to come creeping up on you,' he said. 'My name is Lars Tobiasscn-Svartman, I'm a commander but not the master of the naval vessel that's anchored off the east side of the skerry.'

Her eyes were bright and she did not lower her gaze.

'What are you doing? I've seen the boat. It anchors here day after day.'

'We're sounding depths and checking if the sea charts are reliable.'

'I'm not used to seeing ships lying at anchor out here among the shallows. Even less to finding people on the island.'

'The war has made it necessary.'

She did not take her eyes off him.

'What war?'

He could tell that she was genuine. She did not know. She walked out of the door of a cabin on Halsskär and did not know that there was a major war in progress.

Before answering, he glanced at the door, to see if her husband might put in an appearance.

'There has been war for several months now,' he said. 'A lot of countries are involved. But here in the Baltic it's mainly the German and Russian Fleets stalking each other and hoping to strike a telling blow.'

'What about Sweden?'

'We're not involved. But nobody knows how long that will last.'

Silence. She was young, could not have been thirty. Her face was entirely honest, like her voice.

'How's the fishing going?' he asked politely.

'It's hard.'

'No herring about, then? Any cod?'

'There are fish about. But it's hard.'

She put the axe down on a chopping block. Next to it was a collection of branches and driftwood for making firewood.

'I rarely have visitors,' she said. 'I've nothing to offer you.'

'Oh, that's all right. I'm going back to my ship now.'

She looked at him. He thought she had a pretty face.

'My name's Sara Fredrika,' she said. 'I'm not used to being with people.'

She turned and vanished into the cabin.

Tobiasson-Svartman stared for ages at the closed door. He hoped against hope that it would open and that she would come out again. But the door remained closed.

Then he went back to the
Blenda.
Lieutenant Jakobsson was smoking by the rail as he clambered on board.

'Halsskär? Is that what the skerry's called? What did you find there?'

'Nothing. There was nothing on it.'

They continued with their work, lowering and raising the sounding leads through the water.

All the time he was thinking about the woman who had emerged from the cabin and looked him straight in the eye.

Towards mid-afternoon a wind got up from the south-west.

Just as they finished work for the day it started raining.

The first snow fell on 15 November.

It was dead calm, the bank of dark cloud came rolling in from the Gulf of Finland. The snow was slight at first. The thermometer showed minus two degrees and the barometer was falling.

The previous evening Tobiasson-Svartman had noted in his journal that they had been working for twenty-one days and had three rest days. He calculated that they should have finished sounding the new route, from the Sandsänkan lighthouse to the Gryt area of the northern archipelago and the approach to Barösund, by 1 December. Then the
Blenda
would move south to Gamlebyviken where a small area of the approach channel needed to be measured again.

However, Naval Headquarters had issued a warning that this second stage might have to be postponed until New Year, 1915. In that case Tobiasson-Svartman and his colleagues would return to Stockholm and wait there.

He was still not sure whether it would be possible to shorten the whole route from Halsskär westwards. There was one area that worried him. It was a badly charted stretch where certain indications suggested dramatic irregularities on the seabed. But were these isolated projections which he could ignore? Or was there an underwater ridge that would force him to restrict changes that could be made to the route?

He was not sure. His worry was his alone. He shared it with nobody else.

When he settled down in his bunk and blew out the paraffin lamp, he wondered why he had still received no letter from his wife. The destroyer
Svea
had rendezvoused with them on six occasions. Every time, he had handed his main record book over to the cryptographers, spoken to Rake about the war and drunk a glass of brandy, and before leaving had passed over his letter. He had always been sure that this time she would have answered, but Rake never had any mail for him.

Another thought came into his head. It was now two weeks since he had met the woman on Halsskär. He felt an increasing need to go back to the skerry. Two mornings in succession he had untied the painter and set off in one of the tenders, but at the last moment changed his mind. The temptation was strong, but forbidden.

He wanted to go there, but he did not dare.

The snow became heavier. The sea was calm, blue-grey. The black clouds crept past. Lieutenant Jakobsson came out on deck with a scarf wrapped round his head and a peaked cap. One rating burst out laughing, then another, but Jakobsson was not angry: he seemed to be amused.

'This is totally against the rules,' he said with a smile. 'Scarves are for old women, not for ships' masters in the Swedish Navy. But there's no denying that they keep your ears nice and warm.'

Then, to the general surprise, he bent down and scooped up some snow from the ship's deck and managed to shape it into a snowball despite his deformed hand. He threw it at Sub-Lieutenant Welander's back.

'Swedes practise to become soldiers or sailors by fighting snowball battles as they grow up,' he shouted, pleased with himself to have scored a bullseye.

Welander was surprised, shook the snow from his overcoat; but he said nothing, just turned on his heel and walked to the rope ladder and climbed down into his launch. Jakobsson watched him all the way. He frowned.

'Sub-Lieutenant Welander's launch has been given a secret nickname,' he confided to Tobiasson-Svartman. 'The crew think I don't know about it, but the most important task for a commanding officer, second only to making sure that his ship doesn't set sail for Hell, is to know what rumours and whispers are circulating among his crew. I have to be aware if one of the crew is being badly treated. I don't want a case like Richter's on my ship, somebody who gets bullied so badly that he prefers to jump into the sea. Sub-Lieutenant Welander's launch is known as "The Shilly-Shally". It's a malicious name, but an accurate one.'

Tobiasson-Svartman understood. Welander was sometimes in two minds about various sounding results and demanded, quite unnecessarily, a second measurement.

'What do they call my boat?' he said.

'Nothing. That's surprising. Sailors are generally an inventive crowd. But your crew doesn't seem to have discovered a weakness in you that warrants the smashing of an invisible bottle of champagne against the bows and presenting the boat with a nickname.'

Tobiasson-Svartman felt relieved. He had not made himself vulnerable without knowing it.

Jakobsson suddenly pulled a face.

'I have a shooting pain in my arm,' he said. 'Perhaps I've strained it.'

Tobiasson-Svartman decided he would raise the matter he had been suppressing ever since coming on board.

'I sometimes wonder about your hand, of course.'

"Everybody does. But very few satisfy their curiosity. In my view it displays disgraceful cowardice not to dare to ask those you work with about their physical defects. The world is full of admirals who walk around with their heads under their arms, but no subordinate dares to ask them about their state of health.'

Jakobsson chuckled merrily.

'When I was a child I used to fantasise and say my hand had been injured in a pirate attack in the Caribbean,' he said. 'Or munched by a crocodile. It was too uninteresting and woeful to admit that it had always looked as it does now. Some people have a club foot, others are born with a hand that looks like a club. I still prefer to think that I came by it from a swarthy knave and his bloodstained cutlass, but it goes against the grain to tell lies to a fellow officer.'

The snow was now falling very heavily. Welander's launch was already on its way to the greyish white buoys that marked where the previous day's soundings had finished.

Tobiasson-Svartman boarded his launch, the ratings started rowing and he prepared his lead. As it was snowing he had his chart, notebook and pens in a waterproof oilskin wallet.

The ratings were shivering in the snow. Two of them had bad colds and their noses were running. Tobiasson-Svartman was furious. He hated people with runny noses. But, of course, he made no comment. He was one of the disgraceful cowards Lieutenant Jakobsson had recently referred to.

They rowed towards the buoys. He stood in the stern, gazing at Halsskär and thinking about Sara Fredrika. The thought of her husband made him jealous.

The snow continued falling.

He felt as if the sea were keeping watch on him, like a sharp-eyed animal.