I must have fallen asleep. I was woken up by the feel of something cold against my neck. The bedside lamp was switched on. I opened my eyes and saw Sima standing over me, with the sword pressed against my neck. I don’t know how long I held my breath until she removed the sword.
‘I liked your car,’ she said. ‘It’s old and it doesn’t go very fast, but I liked it.’
I sat up. She placed the sword on the window ledge.
‘The car’s standing outside,’ she said. ‘It’s not damaged.’
‘I don’t like people taking my car without permission.’
She sat down on the floor, her back against the radiator.
‘Tell me about your island,’ she said.
‘Why should I? How do you know I live on an island?’
‘I know lots of things.’
‘It’s a long way out to sea, and just now it’s surrounded by ice. In the autumn, storms can be so bad that they throw boats up on to land if you don’t moor them properly.’
‘Do you really live there all alone?’
‘I have a cat and a dog.’
‘Don’t you feel scared of all that empty space?’
‘Rocks and juniper bushes don’t often run at you with a sword. It’s people who do that.’
She sat there for a moment without saying anything, then got to her feet and picked up the sword.
‘I might come and visit you one of these days,’ she said.
‘I very much doubt that.’
She smiled.
‘So do I. But I’m often wrong.’
I tried to go back to sleep. I gave up at about five o’clock. I got dressed and wrote a note to Agnes, saying that I’d gone home. I slid it under the locked door of her office.
The house was asleep when I drove off.
There was a smell of burning from the engine, and when I stopped for petrol at an all-night filling station, I also topped up the oil. I arrived at the harbour shortly before dawn.
I walked out on to the pier. A fresh wind was getting up. Despite the vast stretch of ice, the wind brought with it the salty smell of the open sea. A few lamps illuminated the harbour, where a few abandoned fishing boats were gnawing at the car tyres.
I waited for it to get light before starting off for home over the ice. I had no idea how I was going to adjust my life in order to cope with everything that had happened.
Standing alone out there on the pier, in the bitterly cold wind, I started to cry. Every single door inside me was swinging back and forth in the wind, which seemed to be getting stronger all the time.
THE SEA
CHAPTER 1
IT WAS THE beginning of April before the thaw came. This was the longest the sea had been frozen during all the years I had lived here. I could still walk over the channels to the mainland at the end of March.
Jansson came by in his hydrocopter every third day, and reported on the condition of the ice. He thought he could recall a winter in the 1960s when the ice had remained for as long as this in the outer archipelago.
The white-painted landscape was dazzling when I climbed up the hill behind the house and gazed towards the horizon. Sometimes I hung Grandfather’s ice prods round my neck, collected an old ski pole and went for wintry walks around the skerries and rocks where the old herring-fishing grounds used to be: my grandfather and his father before him used to land catches that nobody nowadays could even dream of. I walked around the skerries where nothing grows and remembered how I used to row out to them as a child. You could find all kinds of remarkable flotsam and jetsam hidden in the crevices. I once discovered a doll’s head, and on another occasion a watertight box containing several 78 rpm gramophone records. My grandfather asked somebody who knew about such things, and heard that they were German songs from the war that had ended when I was a little boy. I didn’t know where the records were now. On another rocky islet I had found a large waterproof logbook that some raving or desperate sea captain had thrown into the sea. It had been from a cargo ship taking timber from the sawmills of northern Sweden to Ireland, where it was used for housebuilding. The vessel had weighed 3,000 tons and was called Flanagan. Nobody could say how or why the logbook had ended up in the water. Grandfather had spoken to a retired schoolteacher who used to spend his summers on Lönö, in what used to be the cottage of a former pilot, Grundström. He had translated the text, but there was nothing unusual noted in the logbook on the day it had been thrown into the sea. I can still remember the date: 9 May 1947. The last entry had been a note about ‘greasing the anchor gear as soon as possible’. Then nothing more. The logbook was incomplete, but had been thrown into the sea. It had been on its way from Kubikenborg with a cargo of timber for Belfast. The weather was fine, the sea almost dead calm, and a note made that morning said there was a south-easterly breeze blowing at one metre per second.
As the long winter progressed, I often thought about that logbook. It seemed to me that my life after the catastrophic error was a bit like throwing my unfinished logbook into the sea and then sailing on without leaving any trace behind. The insignificant notebook I was now keeping, recording such things as vanished waxwings and the ill health of my pets, wasn’t even of any interest to me. I made notes because it was a daily reminder of the fact that I was living a life of no substance. I wrote about waxwings to confirm the existence of a life in a vacuum.
I suddenly started to think about my parents. I would often wake up during the night with my head full of remarkable memories, long since forgotten, that had returned in my dreams. I could picture my father on his knees, lining up his tin soldiers and moving them in a reconstruction of Waterloo, or Narva. My mother was generally sitting in her armchair, watching him with an expression of great tenderness – his games always took place in absolute silence: she just sat there.
The march of the tin soldiers ensured that there would be moments of genuine peace in our home, albeit only occasionally. In my dreams I relived my fear of the arguments that sometimes flared up. My mother would be crying, and my father making a feeble attempt to show his anger by cursing the restaurant owner who employed him. I was slowly dreaming my way back to my roots. I had the feeling that I was walking along with a pickaxe in my hand, searching the ground for something that had gone missing.
Even so, it was a winter characterised by things that had been reclaimed. Harriet had presented me with a daughter, and Agnes didn’t hate me.
It was also a winter of letters. I wrote, and I received answers. For the first time in the twelve years I had lived on the island, there was now a point in Jansson’s visits. He still regarded me as his doctor, and demanded consultations for his imagined pains. But now he brought me mail, and sometimes I would hand him a reply.
I wrote my first letter the very day I got back home. I had walked over the ice in the grey light of dawn. My animals gave the impression of being starved, despite the fact that I had left more than enough food to feed them properly. When I was satisfied that they had eaten as much as they wanted, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a letter to Agnes.
‘I apologise for leaving so abruptly. I suppose I was overwhelmed by meeting the person who had suffered so much because of me. There was a lot I would have liked to talk to you about, and you might well have had a lot of questions for me. I am now back again on my island. The sea all around me is still frozen hard. I hope that my sudden departure will not result in our losing contact with each other.’
I didn’t change a single word. The following day I asked Jansson to post it for me. He didn’t seem to have noticed that I’d been away. He was curious about the letter, of course, but said nothing. He didn’t even have any pains that day.
In the evening I started writing a letter to Harriet and Louise, despite the fact that I’d not had a reply to my previous one. It became far too long, and it had become clear that I couldn’t write a letter addressed to both of them: I didn’t have much idea how close they were. I tore the letter up, and started again. The cat wa
s lying on the sofa, fast asleep, the dog was lying next to the stove, breathing heavily. I tried to see if it had pains in its joints. It probably wouldn’t live beyond the coming autumn. The same applied to the cat.
I wrote to Harriet and asked how she was. It was a silly question, as I knew that she was ill, of course. But I asked, even so. The impossible question was the obvious one to ask. Then I wrote about the journey we had made together.
‘We went to that forest pool. I very nearly drowned. You pulled me out of the water. It’s only now, when I’m back at home, that I realise fully how close I was to drowning.’
I shuddered at the thought of drowning. But that didn’t prevent me from opening up the hole in the ice for my bath every morning. However, after a few days I realised that I didn’t need my bath as badly as I used to do. Having met Harriet and Louise, it didn’t seem as essential for me to expose myself to the cold. My morning baths became less frequent.
That same evening I also wrote a letter to Louise. I read about Caravaggio in an old encyclopedia from 1909, the so-called Owl edition. I started my letter with a quotation from the encyclopedia: ‘His striking, albeit sombre colours and his bold reproductions of nature aroused widespread and justified attention.’ I tore the sheet of paper up. I couldn’t pretend that what I had written was my own opinion. Nor did I want to admit that I had stolen the quotation from a reference book almost a hundred years old, even though I had updated the language.
I started again. It turned out to be a very short letter.
‘I slammed the door of your caravan as I left. I shouldn’t have done that. I couldn’t handle my confusion. I apologise for that. I hope we shall not continue with our lives pretending the other doesn’t exist.’
It was not a good letter. I discovered two days later just how badly it had been received. The telephone rang in the middle of the night. I groped around half asleep, stumbling over my frightened animals, before I was able to lift the receiver. It was Louise. She was furious. She was shouting so loudly, she almost burst my eardrums.
‘I’m so angry with you. How could you write such a letter? You slam the door shut the moment things turn unpleasant.’
I could hear that she was slurring her words. It was three in the morning. I tried to calm her down. That only made her more furious. So I said nothing. I let her carry on ranting.
This is my daughter, I kept telling myself. She’s saying what she needs to say. And I knew my letter was not a good one.
I don’t know how long she carried on screaming down the line. But suddenly, in mid-sentence, there was a click and the call was over. The silence echoed. I stood up and opened the door to the living room. The anthill was growing bigger. Or so I fancied, at least. But do anthills really grow during the winter when the insects are hibernating? I knew as little about that as I did about the best way to respond to Louise. I understood why she was angry. But did she understand me? Was there anything to understand, in fact? Can you regard a grown woman, whose existence you knew nothing about, as your daughter? And who was I to her?
I got no more sleep that night. I was gripped by a fear that I was unable to cope with. I sat at the kitchen table, clutching at the blue waxed tablecloth that had covered it ever since Grandmother’s day. I was overwhelmed by emptiness and powerlessness. Louise had dug her claws deep into my innermost being.
I went out as dawn broke. It seemed to me it would have been better if Harriet had never appeared out there on the ice. I could have lived my life without a daughter, just as Louise could have got by without a father.
Down by the jetty I wrapped myself up in my grandfather’s old fur coat and sat down on the bench. Both the dog and the cat had wandered off on their separate ways, as their tracks in the snow showed. They seldom went anywhere together. I wondered if they sometimes lied to each other about their intentions.
I stood up and bellowed straight out into the mist. The noise died away into the grey light. My routine had been disturbed. Harriet had appeared from nowhere, and turned my life upside down. Louise had shouted a truth into my ear, and I had no defence against it. Perhaps Agnes would also attack me with unexpected fury in due course?
I flopped back down on to the bench. I was reminded of Grandma’s words, her fear. If you went out walking in the mist, you might disappear and never be heard of again.
I had lived alone on this island for twelve years. Now it felt as if it had been invaded by three women.
I ought really to invite them all to visit me when summer comes. One beautiful summer’s evening they could take it in turns to attack me. Eventually, when there was barely anything left of me, Louise could don her boxing gloves and knock me out for the final count.
They would be able to count up to a thousand, and still I wouldn’t get up.
A few hours later, I opened up my hole in the ice and stepped into the freezing cold water. This morning I forced myself to stay there for an unusually long spell.
Jansson turned up on time but he had nothing for me, nor I for him. Just as he was about to leave, I remembered that it was ages since he had complained of having toothache.
‘How are your teeth?’
Jansson looked surprised.
‘What teeth?’
I asked no more. The hydrocopter vanished into the mist.
On my way back from the jetty, I paused by the boat and raised the tarpaulin once again. The hull was going rotten. If I left it untended for another year, it would be beyond repair.
That same day I wrote another letter to Louise. I apologised for everything I could remember and also for everything I’d forgotten, and for the annoyance I would cause her in the future. I concluded the letter with a few lines about the boat:
‘I have an old wooden boat that used to be my grandfather’s. It’s on trestles under a tarpaulin. It’s a disgrace that I treat the boat so badly. I just haven’t looked after it properly. I often think that ever since I came to live on this island, I’ve also been lying on trestles under a tarpaulin. I’ll never be able to sort out the boat until I’ve sorted out myself.’
A couple of days later I gave the letter to Jansson, and the following week he brought a reply. After a few days of thaw, it had turned cold again. Winter refused to loosen its grip. I sat down at the kitchen table to read the letter. I had shut the cat and the dog out – sometimes I simply couldn’t bear to see them.
Louise wrote: ‘I sometimes feel that I’ve lived my life with dry and chapped lips. Those are words that came to me one morning when life felt worse than usual. I don’t need to tell you about the life I’ve led because you already have an indication of what it’s been like. Filling in the details would change nothing. Now I’m trying to find a way of living with the knowledge that you exist, the troll who emerged from the forest that turned out to be my father. Even though I know Harriet ought to have explained, I can’t help feeling upset with you as well. When you stormed off, it felt as if you’d punched me in the face. At first it was a relief you’d gone. But the feeling of emptiness became too much. And so I hope we might be able to find a way of becoming friends at least, one of these days.’
She signed the letter with an ornate L.
What a mess, I thought. Louise has every reason in the world to direct her anger at the pair of us.
The winter wore on, with letters travelling back and forth between the caravan and the island. And occasionally I would receive a letter from Harriet, who was back in Stockholm by now. It was not explained how she got there. She said she felt very tired, but the thought of the forest pool and the fact that Louise and I had met at last kept her going. I asked questions about her condition, but never received an answer.
Her letters were characterised by quiet, almost reverential resignation, in stark contrast to what Louise wrote, where between the lines there was always a hint of imminent anger.
Every morning when I woke up, I resolved to start making a serious attempt to put my life in order. I could no longer allow the days to slid
e past without anything constructive being done.
But I got nowhere. I made no decisions. I occasionally lifted the tarpaulin over the boat and had the feeling that I was in fact looking at myself. The flaking paint was mine, as were the cracks and the damp. Perhaps also the smell of wood slowly rotting away.
The days were getting longer. Migratory birds started returning. The flocks usually passed by during the night. Through my binoculars I could see seabirds on the outermost edge of the ice.
My dog died on 19 April. I let him out as usual when I came downstairs to the kitchen in the early morning. I could see that he had difficulty in getting out of his basket, but I thought he would live through the summer. After my usual dip through my hole in the ice, I went down to the boathouse to look for some tools I needed to repair a leaking pipe in the bathroom. I thought it was odd that the dog hadn’t appeared, but didn’t go in search of him. It wasn’t until around dinner time that I realised he hadn’t been seen all day. Even the cat seemed concerned. She was sitting on the steps outside the front door, looking pensive. I went out and called for him, but he didn’t appear. I realised something must have happened. I put on a jacket and started searching. After almost an hour I found him on the far side of the island, by the unusual rock formations that rose up out of the ice like gigantic pillars. He was lying in a little depression, sheltered from the wind. I don’t know how long I stood looking at him. His eyes were open, glistening like crystals – just like the seagull I had found earlier in the winter, frozen to death by the jetty.
He could hide from the wind, but there was nowhere to hide from death.
I carried his body back to the house. It was heavier than I had expected. The dead are always heavy. I fetched a pickaxe and slowly hacked a big enough hole under the apple tree. The cat sat on the steps, watching the whole procedure. The dog’s body was stiff as I pressed him down into the hole, then filled it in.
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