The Summer Book

  He might pass by early in the morning and throw ashore a present – a small salmon or some cod, a wild rose with roots and soil in a paper carton or a nameplate that said “Captain’s Cabin”, a pretty metal box or a couple of glass floats with the glassblower’s mark. Many of these gifts were appreciated later in the form of trivial sums of money. It was the only chance the family had to try and put a price on their dreams. And dreams burn a lot of petrol.

  Sophia adored Eriksson. He never asked her what she did or how old she was. He greeted her just as solemnly as he greeted the others and said goodbye the same way – with a short nod and no smile. They would all go down to his boat to see him off. The boat was big and old and hard to start, but once it was running, it ran. He didn’t take very good care of it. There was all sorts of rubbish washing around in the bilge water and the gunwale was cracked. But all the equipment was in good condition. He fried his fish on the engine block, and he slept in a sealskin sleeping bag the way his grandfather had done. Earth and seaweed and fish scales and sand went with him everywhere. He had his nets and decoys and his shotgun neatly arranged in the stern, but God only knew the significance of the sacks and boxes piled in the bow. He would slap the painter on board and shove off. The prop, which was used to rough treatment, would strike the shallow bottom several cheerful blows, and Eriksson would be off. He never waved as he headed out. His boat didn’t have a name.

  Just before midsummer, Eriksson landed at the island and heaved a box up on the rock. “It’s some fireworks I picked up in an exchange,” he said. “I’ll drop by on Midsummer Eve, if that’s all right, and we’ll see how they work.” He kept the motor running while he talked, and then backed off as soon as he was through. The box was pretty damp, so they put it by the stove.

  Midsummer became even more important than usual. Grandmother blacked and polished the stove and painted the stove doors silver. They washed all the windows and even the curtains. Naturally, no one thought Eriksson would notice – he never noticed anything indoors. But they cleaned the house anyway, just because he was coming. The day before the great event, they gathered birch and rowan and lilies-of-the-valley, and the mosquitoes were awful on the big islands in towards the mainland. They shook the aphids and the ants off in the sand and went back home. They turned the house into a green bower, inside and out. Every birch stood in its own pail of water. And because it was June, almost all of the wildflowers they had picked were white.

  Grandmother wondered if they shouldn’t have invited the relatives, but no one thought it would have been a good idea, not with Eriksson there. He was the kind of man who came alone and stayed that way until he figured it was time to leave.

  In the morning, on Midsummer Eve, there was a strong wind from the north. Towards noon, it started to rain, and Papa spread a tarpaulin over the bonfire they’d laid out on the point. The tarpaulin blew into the water, as it always did, so he took out a can of petrol and put it behind a tree. It was a disgrace for a Midsummer bonfire not to burn. The day went slowly, and the wind did not let up. Papa worked at his desk. His launching platform for Eriksson’s fireworks stood out on the veranda, with its cradles pointing upwards at an angle.

  They set the table for four. There would be herring and pork and potatoes, and two kinds of vegetables. And marinated pears for dessert.

  “He doesn’t eat dessert,” said Sophia nervously. “And he doesn’t eat vegetables either. He calls it grass. You know that.”

  “Yes, I know,” Grandmother said. “But it looks nice.”

  The aquavit was in the little cellar under the floor, and they had extra milk. Eriksson never drank more than one glass of aquavit, or maybe two – just for the sake of the occasion – but he did love milk.

  “Take away the napkins,” Sophia said. “They look stupid.”

  Grandmother took away the napkins.

  The wind continued to blow piercingly all day, but it didn’t increase. There was an occasional shower. The terns screamed out on the point, and evening came.

  When I was young, in Sweden, Grandmother thought, the Midsummer weather was so different. Not a breeze, not a breath of wind. The garden was in bloom, and we had a maypole with garlands all the way up to the little banner at the top. But it was too bad that we never had any wind. We never had bonfires in Sweden. Why didn’t we ever have a fire ..? She was lying on the bed staring up at the birch greenery, and after a while she fell asleep.

  Suddenly someone shouted, and the door slammed. The room was quite dark, since no lamps can be lit on Midsummer. Grandmother sat up and realised that Eriksson must have arrived. “Hurry up!” Sophia shouted. “He doesn’t want anything to eat! We have to get started right away. We’re supposed to put on warm clothes and he’s in a terrible rush!”

  Grandmother staggered to her feet and found her sweater and her warm trousers and her walking stick and at the last minute stuffed the Lupatro in her pocket. The others were running back and forth, and she could hear Eriksson’s motor running down at the shore. It was lighter outside. The wind had gone over to the west and there was a fine, drizzling rain. Suddenly Grandmother was wide awake. She walked down to the water alone and climbed aboard. Eriksson didn’t greet her. He was keeping a sharp watch out to sea, and not a word was spoken as they set off. Grandmother sat on the floor. As the boat moved along, she saw the rising and falling sea in brief glimpses over the railing, and she noticed the first Midsummer bonfires being lit along the coast to the north. There were not very many, and they were barely visible through the rain and fog.

  Eriksson headed straight south for Outer Skerry. There were a lot of other boats going the same way. More and more of them appeared out of the darkness, like shadows. Wooden crates with a heavy load of lovely rounded bottles were bobbing on the grey sea with only their upper edges showing black against the choppy water. Black, too, were the boats that sailed in at full speed, slowed down to haul the crates aboard, and then swept on again. The salvage went on like a neatly balanced dance. The Coast Guard were driving about in their powerful boats and salvaging what they could, turning a blind eye to everyone else.

  All the boats in the area were out at sea, ignoring one another. Eriksson held the rudder, and Sophia’s father hung over the rail and lifted the crates on board. They stepped up the pace, cutting down on each motion so as not to lose a second, until finally they were working together in such perfect harmony with the moving boat that it was a joy to watch. Grandmother watched it, and appreciated and remembered. And all the time, there seemed to be more and more of this Midsummer bounty tossing in the waves around the Gulf of Finland. Off towards the mainland a few feeble rockets rose in the air, dreamers shooting their arrows of light against the grey Midsummer sky. Sophia had fallen asleep.

  Everything was salvaged, some by the right hands and some by the wrong, but nothing was simply lost. Towards morning the makeshift fleet split up. The boats floated farther and farther apart, each one setting off by itself to its own home. By dawn, the sea was empty. The wind died. The rain stopped. A clear and lovely Midsummer morning arranged its colours in the sky, and it was very cold. When Eriksson landed at the island, the terns began to scream. He left the motor running and set off again as soon as the others had climbed out.

  For a while, it seemed to Papa that Eriksson might have shared the booty, but that was a hasty, passing thought. He made sandwiches for everyone and dragged Eriksson’s box of fireworks out onto the veranda. He put the rockets in their launching cradles. The first one wouldn’t light, nor the second. None of them would light; they had all been ruined by the water. Only the very last one went off and sailed up towards the sunrise in a shower of blue stars. The terns started screaming again, and that was Midsummer.

  Eriksson had sailed back south to make sure nothing had been missed.

  The Tent

  SOPHIA’S GRANDMOTHER HAD BEEN a Scout leader when she was young, and, in fact, it was thanks to her that little girls were even allowed to be Scouts in those days. The
girls never forgot what good times they had had, and they often wrote to Grandmother and reminded her of this or that incident, or quoted a verse of some song they used to sing around the campfire. It all seemed a little out of date to Grandmother now, and she thought the old girls were being just a bit sentimental, but she would think some friendly thoughts about them all the same. Then she’d think about how the Scouting movement had grown too large and lost its personal touch, and then she’d forget the whole thing. Grandmother’s children had never been Scouts. No one had had the time, somehow, and it never came up.

  One summer, Sophia’s father bought a tent and put it up in the ravine so he could hide there if too many people came. The tent was so small that you had to crawl in on all fours, but inside there was enough room for two if they lay close together. But no candles or lamps were allowed.

  “Is it a Scout tent?” Sophia asked.

  Grandmother snorted. “We sewed our own tents,” she said, remembering what they had looked like – huge, sturdy, greyish-brown. This was a toy, a bright yellow plaything for veranda guests, and not worth having.

  “Isn’t it a Scout tent?” asked Sophia anxiously.

  So grandmother said maybe it was, but a very modern one, and they crawled in and lay down side by side.

  “Now you’re not allowed to go to sleep,” Sophia said. “You have to tell me what it was like to be a Scout and all the things you did.”

  A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge.

  “We had campfires,” she answered briefly, and suddenly she felt sad.

  “And what else?”

  “There was a log that burned for a long time. We sat around the fire. It was cold out. We ate soup.”

  That’s strange, Grandmother thought. I can’t describe things any more. I can’t find the words, or maybe it’s just that I’m not trying hard enough. It was such a long time ago. No one here was even born. And unless I tell it because I want to, it’s as if it never happened; it gets closed off and then it’s lost. She sat up and said, “Some days I can’t remember very well. But sometime you ought to try and sleep in a tent all night.”

  Sophia carried her bedclothes to the tent. She closed the door to her little cottage and said goodbye as the sun went down. All by herself, she walked out to the ravine, which this evening had become an infinitely distant place, forsaken by God and man and Scout – a wilderness with an entire night ahead. She zipped shut the door of the tent and stretched out with the quilt up to her chin. The yellow tent glowed in the sunset, and suddenly it seemed very small and friendly. No one could look in and no one could look out; she was wrapped in a cocoon of light and silence. Just as the sun disappeared, the tent turned red and she fell asleep.

  The nights were already long and when Sophia woke up there was nothing to see but the dark. A bird flew over the ravine and screamed, first close by and then once more far away. It was a windless night, yet she could hear the sea. And there was no one in the ravine, yet the gravel crunched as if under someone’s foot. The sheltering tent had let in the night, as close as if she’d been sleeping on the open ground. More birds cried in various ways, and the darkness was filled with strange movements and sounds, the kind no one can trace or account for. The kind no one can even describe.

  “Oh, dear God,” Sophia said, “don’t let me get scared!” And immediately she started thinking about what it would be like to get scared. “Oh, dear God, don’t let them make fun of me if I do get scared!”

  She really listened for the first time in her life. And when she got out in the ravine, she noticed for the first time what the ground felt like under her toes and the soles of her feet. It was cold, grainy, terribly complicated ground that changed as she walked – gravel and wet grass and big flat stones, and every now and then some plant as high as a bush would brush against her legs. The ground was dark, but the sky had a faint, grey light. The island had grown tiny, floating on the water like a drifting leaf, but there was a light in the guest room window. Sophia knocked very gently, because every sound had become too large.

  “How’s it going?” Grandmother asked.

  “Good,” Sophia said. She sat on the foot of the bed and looked at the lamp and the nets and the raincoats hanging on the wall, and her teeth stopped chattering and she said, “There’s no wind at all.”

  “No,” said Grandmother. “It’s quite calm.”

  Grandmother had two blankets. If you put one of them down on the rug and got a cushion, it would make a bed. It wouldn’t be like going back to the cottage – it was almost like outdoors. No, it was indoors, it really was. But even if she wasn’t out in the tent all alone, nevertheless, she had been. She had slept outdoors.

  “So many birds tonight,” Grandmother said.

  There was another possibility: she could take a blanket and sleep on the veranda right next to the house. That would be outdoors and all alone. Oh, dear God!

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Grandmother said, “and I got to thinking about sad things.” She sat up in bed and reached for her cigarettes. Sophia handed her the matches automatically, but she was thinking about other things.

  “You’ve got two blankets, haven’t you?” Sophia said.

  “I mean it all seems to shrink up and glide away,” Grandmother said. “And things that were a lot of fun don’t mean anything any more. It makes me feel cheated, like what was the point? At least you ought to be able to talk about it.”

  Sophia was getting cold again. They had let her sleep in a tent, even though she was too little to sleep in a tent. None of them knew what it was like, and they had just let her sleep in the ravine all by herself. “Oh is that so?” she said angrily. “What do you mean it’s no fun?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Grandmother said. “All I said was that when you’re as old as I am, there are a lot of things you can’t do any more …”

  “That’s not true! You do everything. You do the same things I do!”

  “Wait a minute!” Grandmother said. She was very upset. “I’m not through! I know I do everything. I’ve been doing everything for an awfully long time, and I’ve seen and lived as hard as I could, and it’s been unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable. But now I have the feeling everything’s gliding away from me, and I don’t remember, and I don’t care, and yet now is right when I need it!”

  “What don’t you remember?” asked Sophia anxiously.

  “What it was like to sleep in a tent!” her grandmother shouted. She stubbed out her cigarette and lay down and stared at the ceiling. “In my country, in Sweden, girls had never been allowed to sleep in tents before,” she said slowly. “I was the one who made it so they could, and it wasn’t easy. We had a wonderful time, and now I can’t even tell you what it was like.”

  The birds started screaming again – a big flock of them flew by, screaming steadily. The lamplight on the window made it look much darker outside than it really was.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what it’s like,” Sophia said. “You can hear everything much clearer, and the tent is very small.” She thought for a moment and then went on. “It makes you feel very safe. And it’s nice that you can hear everything.”

  “Yes,” Grandmother said. “You can hear everything outside.”

  Sophia realised she was hungry and pulled the food box out from under the bed. They ate hard bread and sugar and cheese.

  “I’m getting sleepy,” Sophia said, “so I think I’ll go back now.”

  “Do,” Grandmother said. She turned out the lamp, and after the initial darkness the room became lighter again and she could see everything distinctly. Sophia went out and closed the door. When she had gone, Grandmother rolled up in her blanket and tried to remember what it had been like. She could remember better now, much better, in fact. New images came back to her, more and more of them. It was cold in the first light, but she fell sound asleep in her own warmth.

  The Neig
hbour

  A BUSINESSMAN BUILT A HOUSE on Blustergull Rock. At first, no one mentioned it. They had developed a habit, over the years, of not talking about painful things, in order to make them less painful. But they were very much aware of the house.

  People who live on islands are always letting their eyes glide along the horizon. They see the lines and curves of the familiar skerries, and the channel markers that have always stood in the same spots, and they are strengthened in their calm awareness that the view is clear and everything is in its place. Now the view was no longer clear. It was broken by a big square house, a new and threatening landmark, a deep notch in the aspect of a horizon that had been their own for a very long time. The anonymous skerries that had been the island’s threshold to the sea had acquired a strange new name and closed their lagoons. But worst of all, it was no longer the family who lived farthest out.

  There was less than a mile between them and their new neighbour. The man was no doubt neighbourly, too. It seemed very likely that he would love company and have a big family that would kick the moss off the rocks and play the radio and talk a lot. That sort of thing happened all the time, all over, farther and farther out from the mainland.

  Early one morning, the workmen nailed on the tin roof – a huge, angry, glittering roof – under a cloud of screaming gulls and terns. The house was done, the men drove away in their boat, and there was nothing to do but wait for the arrival of the owner. But the days passed and he didn’t come.

  Towards the end of the week, Grandmother and Sophia took the dory out for a little row. When they came to the perch shallows, they decided to go on to Squire Skerry to look for seaweed, and once in the lagoon behind Squire Skerry, it was only a stroke of the oars to Blustergull Rock. There was no dock, only a big bank of gravel. In the middle of the gravel was a large sign with black letters that said PRIVATE PROPERTY – NO TRESPASSING.