Depths

  He breathed on the mirror until it misted over, and the face disappeared.

  I am drawing a line under this journey, he thought. It is over now. I fulfilled my mission. I have done what was expected of me. I will not get much thanks for it, that is hardly the done thing at Naval Headquarters. But I shall be given new jobs to do, more responsibility, and sooner or later I shall be promoted. I am proceeding up life's invisible staircase.

  He checked his suitcases, made sure he had not forgotten anything and left the cabin. It was lighter now, the archipelago stepped forward out of the mist. Corves full of fish in little cargo boats sailing towards Stockholm to unload their catches. Grey men hunched over tillers and leaning against masts.

  He had a quick breakfast in the officers' mess. Without joining in, he listened to a heated discussion between a lieutenant and an engineer officer. The lieutenant, who was red-haired and pale, insisted in a shrill voice that the outcome of the war was obvious. Germany would win, since that nation was driven by a fury that the English had lost. The first engineer maintained that the Germans and Russians were arrogant, they wore 'Napoleon's boots', he claimed, which meant they would be punished and defeated.

  Tobiasson-Svartman left the mess and went on deck. What kind of boots am I wearing? he wondered. They were now approaching Djurgården. He remembered his dream. What did it mean? The German sailor who had returned from the bottom of the sea off Sandsänkan, what did he want?

  A warning, he thought. Don't proceed too quickly, don't forget too quickly.

  That was as far as he got. His thoughts got in each other's way, short-circuited his power to reason.

  CHAPTER 70

  The Svea had docked. Captain Rake bade him farewell. A rating had already carried his suitcases down to the quay, where he was hailing a man with a wheelbarrow.

  Rake looked hard at Tobiasson-Svartman. The dawn light was very bright.

  'You look pale,' he said. 'Paler than you did.'

  'Perhaps exhaustion is taking its toll.'

  Rake nodded thoughtfully. 'Like when there's been a battle at sea,' he said. 'While it's happening you notice nothing. Doctors have maintained that it's a purely physical process. Something they call "adrenalin" is pumped around the body. A chemical or biological name for human bloodthirstiness. When the battle is over you are either dead or alive. If you are dead the bloodthirstiness was pumped round in vain. If you are alive you are overcome by exhaustion. Whether you have won or lost is of no great significance. Or rather, if you have survived you have won, even if you are on the losing side.' He stopped abruptly, as if he had realised he was uttering something inappropriate. 'I talk too much sometimes,' he said, embarrassed. 'I often tell people around about me to hold their tongues, but I don't always practise what I preach.'

  He stood erect, saluted and shook hands.

  'Good luck.'

  "Thank you.'

  Tobiasson-Svartman walked off the gangway. He turned, but there was no sign of the captain. He took a few hesitant steps, almost stumbled. He had experienced the same dizziness each time he landed on Halsskär. On board ship he had to work actively to keep his balance, whereas on dry land it was up to the earth or the stones under his feet to prevent him from falling.

  The rating saluted and returned to the ship. The man with the wheelbarrow full of luggage was old and toothless. His cheeks were hollow, he wheezed when he breathed. Tobiasson-Svartman had to help him to get the wheelbarrow on the move.

  Stockholm was all hustle and bustle. It seemed to him rusty, covered in mud and dirt, all these houses, trees, streets and people that suddenly surrounded him. The city gushed all over him, unexpectedly; perhaps it was frightening, perhaps beautiful.

  CHAPTER 71

  He did not go directly home.

  He had in him something of the sluggishness of a large ship, the need to reduce speed slowly, to yaw without excessive impetuosity. He could not walk through the door of his flat in Wallingatan too soon. That would be like losing control and crashing your bows into the quay.

  The first time he had been away on a mission after marrying Kristina Tacker he sent a telegram saying when he expected to be home. That was the only time. He had never repeated the mistake.

  He parked the toothless man outside the building in Wallingatan and went to a modest licensed cafe in the next block. It was early in the day, but he knew the owner, the widow of a sailmaker who had spent his life working for the Crown. Her name was Sally Andersson and she was full of life. He could go to her place and get drunk at six in the morning if he wanted to. She was still young, this merry widow, and he never ceased to be surprised by her gleaming white teeth.

  Sally was standing among her cups and beer mugs and saw him coming.

  'I haven't seen you for ages. You must have just returned from a long voyage,' she said, wiping down the corner table where he usually sat. 'Can you tell me why the navy employs such wretched cooks?'

  'What makes you say that?'

  'You are too thin. A ship's master can't be as thin as that. One of these days the wind will blow right through you. You'll be seagull meat.'

  'The cook was good. But the sea wears you down. You don't grow thinner, you get worn down by all the salt and the constant motion of the sea.'

  She laughed, flicked at the arm of a chair with her cloth and served him his usual glass of aquavit with a beer chaser.

  A couple of years back, in May 1912, after a lengthy mission checking the depths of the secret channels around the north of Gotland and Fårön, he had drunk far too much when he got back home. He was very drunk by ten in the morning and started talking non-stop. He had lost control of himself, and Sally Andersson saved him from making a fool of himself. When he started saying things about the naval chiefs of staff that he would later regret, she piloted him to a room behind the kitchen and laid him down on a wooden bench. Although she employed two waitresses, Sally always served him herself. Nobody else was allowed to come near him, recharge his glass, wipe up when he was drunk and started spilling beer. She gave him what he needed to drink, never more than that, and she was always the one who would eventually tell him he had had enough.

  'You've come back,' she would say. 'You can go home now.'

  He had never questioned her judgement, simply settled his bill, and left.

  CHAPTER 72

  She gave him watered-down aquavit and beer that morning, and made him eat some sandwiches with lots of butter and thick slices of ham.

  He drank quickly. He was merry after only half an hour. Sally sat down at his table and looked hard at him. Her white teeth glistened. They were like seashells. Straight, polished seashells in a row, stuck down in dark red sand.

  'How close is the war?' she wanted to know.

  He searched in his befuddled brain for an answer.

  'Firelight,' he said eventually. 'In the distance, over the sea. A terrible silence.'

  'I asked how close the war was, not what it looks like.'

  He pointed to his forehead.

  'Inside here,' he said. 'That's how close the war is.'

  'How can a clever man like you talk such a lot of crap?' she said.

  He emptied his glass, but she shook her head when he asked for more.

  'If you have any more now, you'll pass the limit.'

  'What limit?'

  'The limit where a woman no longer recognises the man she married.'

  He put what he owed her on the table. There was a strong smell of old leather and wet wool as he left the room and its tobacco-laden fug. He stumbled, emerging into the street. He walked round the block and stopped at his front door in Wallingatan. The man who was supposed to be guarding his luggage had fallen asleep, propped up against one of the wheels. Tobiasson-Svartman gave him a kick. The man jumped to his feet and unloaded the cases.

  He opened the door. He left everything that had happened in the bright light of the street. In the darkness of the stairwell he had the feeling that he had docked at the Wallingatan qua
y.

  CHAPTER 73

  Kristina Tacker was waiting for him in the dim hall.

  That made him feel insecure, it went against his plans. He had not sent her a telegram, nobody else would have had a reason for letting her know when he was due. She noticed his confusion, also of course that he was a bit drunk.

  'I saw the wheelbarrow with your luggage. I could almost smell it from the flat window. But I was beginning to wonder when you were going to appear.'

  'I went for a walk round the block to shake off the spray and the seaweed and the smell of mud. Leaving a ship is a complicated process.'

  He embraced her, sucked in all her fragrances, the wine, her perfume with the hint of lemon zest. She didn't hug him tightly, there was a gap between them, but he hoped she was pleased to have him home.

  Somebody started giggling behind them. His wife gave a start, whipped round and dealt the maid a mighty box on the ear.

  'Go away,' she said. 'Leave my husband and me in peace.'

  The girl ran. Her rapid footsteps made no sound. He had never known his wife physically violent before and was scared by the force of the blow, as if he had been on the receiving end.

  'Did you get my letter? The one where I wrote about her?'

  'I got all your letters.'

  Nothing was said as he hung up his naval overcoat, removed his shoes and followed her into the living room where the china figurines were standing on their shelves.

  Nothing had changed. It was like entering a room that nobody lived in.

  They sat on the chairs by the window. The light from the low sun came in through the thin curtains.

  He told her about his mission in great detail. He could hide among the details. Everything he said was true, and he only omitted one detail: the existence of an island in the sea called Halsskär.

  He erased it from the map, let the skerry sink down to the seabed.

  Recalling that he had said his wife and daughter were dead upset him for a moment. He felt a pain in his stomach.

  She was as sharp as a bird.

  'What's the matter?'

  'Just a shooting pain in a tooth.'

  'Where?'

  'My lower jaw.'

  'You must go to a dentist.'

  'It's gone. It was only a shooting pain, nothing to worry about'

  He continued with his story as if nothing had happened.

  When she got up to instruct the maid to serve coffee, it seemed to him that he had measured out a considerable distance between himself and his wife.

  He had planted a lie between them. A lie that would continue to grow, even if everything else he had told her was true, or at least honestly meant. The lie did not need feeding. It would continue to grow of its own accord.

  He wondered if it were possible to live without lying. Had he ever met a person who did not tell lies? He searched his memory, but he could think of no one.

  CHAPTER 74

  They sat by the window drinking coffee.

  The maid who had had her ears boxed seemed timid and scared. He felt sorry for her, and remembered the snotty-nosed oarsman. We are people who hit others, he thought, that is one thing, at least, we have in common, my wife and I, we deliver powerful blows that resound against people's heads. But one can always discuss the servants. We have to keep quiet about everything else, for the time being anyway.

  'I find her so annoying,' Kristina Tacker said. 'She smells of sweat despite my telling her over and over again to wash herself properly, she doesn't dust the top of picture frames, it takes her ages to empty the bins or to go shopping and she can never get the amounts right in recipes.'

  She spoke softly so that her words could not be heard outside the room.

  'I'll have a word with her, of course,' he said. 'If necessary we shall have to sack her and find somebody else.'

  'People don't want to be in domestic service any more,' Kristina Tacker said. 'We live in an unwilling age.'

  CHAPTER 75

  They had a candlelit dinner.

  The heat from the tiled stove spread all round the room. Tobiasson-Svartman would have dearly liked to find peace, and for everything that had happened around the Sandsänkan lighthouse to slip out of his memory. Then there would be no truths or lies, just the navigable channel he had redefined.

  He drank wine with the dinner and afterwards port. Kristina sat in the low light embroidering a tablecloth. He could feel that he was not yet ready for bed.

  She stood up soon after ten. He waited until he heard her settling down in bed, then he drank two glasses of cognac, washed, drank two more glasses of cognac, brushed his teeth and went into the dark bedroom. The alcohol made his desire stronger than his insecurity.

  When it was over, the act that had taken place in total silence, it seemed to him that their love was a bit like running for your life. What he felt most was relief. He tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing.

  He lay awake for a long time, knowing that she had not gone to sleep either. He wondered if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep. It was a distance he was not able to assess, using any of the measuring instruments at his disposal.

  CHAPTER 76

  It was almost three before he was sure that she was asleep.

  She was breathing deeply, snoring slightly. He got out of bed, put on his dressing gown and left the room. He took a pair of white gloves out of a cupboard.

  He poured himself a glass of cognac and went over to her escritoire. He listened to be sure she had not woken up, carefully turned the key and took out her diary. It seemed to him that the white gloves would lessen the gravity of his intrusion, not touching the pages with his hands.

  She had made an entry every day since he left. She had not recorded her sudden unwillingness to accompany him to the quay. It just gave the time, the weather, and said: Lars has left.

  He leafed through the pages, listening all the time for her padding footsteps. In the street outside a drunken man gave vent to his anger and cursed God.

  Her notes were usually short, non-committal. I have had a letter from Lars. But nothing about the contents, nothing of her reaction to what he had written. Her life is like a slow sinking process, he thought. One day she will drag me down into the depths with her. One day she will no longer be the lid over the abyss on whose edge I am balancing.

  When he came to 14 November he found something that broke the pattern. She had recorded the temperature, the wind direction, a light snowfall at about nine that soon passed over, but then something more, the first personal comments.

  She described a dream she had had that night. It had woken her up and she had immediately got out of bed and written down what she could remember. She concluded with the words: Some nights the silence is cold and unresponsive, other nights it is soft and inviting. Tonight the silence has gone away.

  After that the entries reverted to the previous pattern. Falling temperatures, gusts of wind, having a new water pipe installed in the kitchen.

  During the night of 27 November she had another dream:

  I wake up with a start. In the dark bedroom I think I can detect the presence of some person, but when I sit up there is nobody there, only the white glint of the moon on the door. I remain sitting up, and I know the dream is important. Suddenly I find myself standing in a street in an unknown town, I have no idea how I got there or where I am going. Nor do I recognise the town. The people all around me are speaking a foreign language I cannot understand. I start walking down the street, the traffic is lively, it's very hot and I have a thick black veil over my face. I come to a big open square where there is a cathedral. People are bustling back and forth over the square, they are all blind, but they are playing a violent game, bumping into one another, crashing into the cathedral walls or the fountain in the middle of the square and drawing blood. So as not to be in the way I go into the cathedral. It is cold and dark inside there. The floor is covered in newly fallen snow
, individual flakes are still drifting down from the high-vaulted ceiling. It is a gigantic church, like a vast expanse of ice. A few people are sitting in the pews. I walk down the centre aisle and sit in a pew. I don't say any prayers, just sit there; I still don't know what town I'm in, but I'm not afraid. That surprises me because I'm always made anxious by unfamiliar things, I can never bring myself to travel alone but must always have a companion. I sit in the pew, it's still cold, snow is swirling around over the stone floor, then somebody sits down in front of me. I can tell it is a woman, but am unable to see what she looks like. She turns round, and I see that it is in fact me sitting there. She whispers something I can't understand. Who am I, if that really is me sitting in front of me? Then I wake up. I have some idea of what the dream means, of course, perhaps I am unsure about what is the real me. But the most important thing is that I wasn't afraid in the dream