Depths

by Henning Mankell

  'I'll bunk with my second in command,' said Lieutenant Jakobsson. 'It's a bit cramped and crappy on these gunboats, the more so as we've had to take on extra crew because of the particular nature of the mission. And my orders include that you have the best possible conditions in which to carry out your task. As I see it, a good night's sleep is one of the cornerstones of human existence. And so I'm prepared to put up with my cabin-mate grinding his teeth in his sleep. It's like sharing a cabin with a walrus. Assuming walruses grind their teeth, that is.'

  He asked Jakobsson to tell him the history of the ship.

  'Parliament voted for it in 1873. She was the first of a series of gunboats, and none of the farmers who dominated parliament in those days had any idea about how many there should be. We have room for eighty tonnes of coal in the bunkers, and that's enough to see us through 1,500 nautical miles. The engines are horizontal compounders, in accordance with the Wolf system. I'm not at all sure what's special about the Wolf system, but it seems to work. She's a good ship, but getting on in years. I suspect they'll soon retire her.'

  Tobiasson-Svartman went to his cabin. It was bigger than the one he'd had on the Svea. But it had a different smell to it. Like an anthill, he thought. As if there had been an anthill in the cabin, but it had been removed during the night.

  He smiled at the thought. He imagined explaining to his wife about his first impressions of his cabin, and the smell of formic acid.

  He went up on deck and asked Lieutenant Jakobsson to assemble the crew. It was a fine day, with a southerly breeze.

  The crew consisted of seventy-one men. Eight of the ratings and a naval engineer had joined the ship to help with the expedition. What they knew about the work in store was little enough.

  The crew assembled following a whistle from the second in command, whose name was Fredén.

  Tobiasson-Svartman was always nervous when required to address a crew. To conceal his unease, he came across as strict and liable to lose his temper.

  'I will not stand for any slapdash work,' he began. 'Our mission is important. These are unsettled times and battle fleets are sailing round our coasts. We shall be remeasuring the depths of parts of the shipping route used by the navy, to the north and south of where we are now. There is no margin for error. A sounding that is out by even one metre could result in disaster for a ship. Shallows that are overlooked or wrongly positioned on a chart could wreak devastation.'

  He paused and surveyed the crew, standing in a semicircle before him. Many of them were young, barely twenty. They eyed him expectantly.

  'We'll be looking for what cannot be seen,' he went on. 'But because it cannot be seen, that doesn't mean it isn't there. There could be sandbanks just below the surface that have not previously been discovered or charted. There might also be unexpected depths. We shall be looking for both of these features. We'll be mapping out a route along which our warships can proceed in safety. Any questions?'

  Nobody had a question. The gunboat rocked up and down in the swell.

  The rest of the day was spent establishing the necessary routines and organising reliable procedures. Lieutenant Jakobsson plainly had the confidence of his crew. Tobiasson-Svartman could see that he had been lucky. A naval officer forced to hand over his cabin to a colleague on a temporary, confidential mission could easily have reacted sourly, but Lieutenant Jakobsson did not seem put out. He gave the impression of being one of those rare people who do not conceal their true character behind a false front. In that respect Lieutenant Jakobsson was the opposite of himself.

  The routines were duly established. Every fourth day he would report to Captain Rake. It was estimated that in ideal weather conditions the destroyer would pass their position every ninety-sixth hour. Rake had at his disposal cryptographers who would encode Tobiasson-Svartman's reports and transmit them to Naval Headquarters. Within a few days the changes that needed to be made to the charts would be with the cartographers in Stockholm. The work would proceed at tremendous speed.

  Late that afternoon Lieutenant Jakobsson fixed an exact bearing. They were three degrees north-north-east of the Sandsänkan lighthouse. According to the latest charts the depths around the Juliabåden buoy were twelve, twenty-three and fourteen metres.

  Tobiasson-Svartman gave the order that the Blenda should stay where it was until the following day. This was where the measuring work would begin.

  He studied the sea through his telescope, scrutinising the distant horizon, and the lighthouses within view. Then he closed his eyes, but without taking away the telescope.

  He dreamed of the day when only in exceptional circumstances would he need the help of various instruments. He dreamed of the day when he himself had become the only instrument he needed.

  CHAPTER 28

  The following day. Three minutes past seven. Lars Tobiasson-Svartman was on deck. The sun was hidden behind low clouds. He was dressed in uniform. It was plus four degrees, and almost dead calm. A musty smell of seaweed was coming from the sea. He was tense, nervous about the work that was about to begin, afraid of all the mistakes waiting in store for him, mistakes he hoped not to make.

  A submerged sandbank long used by herring fishermen, marked on the charts as Olsklabben, was 150 metres to the west of the ship. He had in one of his suitcases an archive that he always carried around with him. He had read in an old tax roll that this sandbank had been 'used by fishermen and seal hunters since the sixteenth century and belonged to the Crown'.

  The sun broke through the clouds. He noticed a drift net, gliding through the water. He did not realise what it was at first. Perhaps some tufts of seaweed had been disturbed by the anchor? Then he realised it was a net that had broken loose. There were dead fish caught in the mesh, and the carcass of a duck.

  It occurred to him that he was looking at an image of freedom. The drift net stood for freedom. A prison that had broken loose, with some of its dead prisoners still clinging to their bars that were the mesh.

  Freedom is always taking flight, he thought. He watched the net until it had drifted out of sight. Then he turned to Lieutenant Jakobsson, who had come to stand beside him.

  'Freedom is always taking flight,' he said.

  Jakobsson looked at him in surprise.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Oh, nothing. Just a line from a poem, I think. Maybe something of Rydberg's? Or Fröding?'

  There was a long pause. Then Lieutenant Jakobsson clicked his heels and saluted.

  'Breakfast is served in the wardroom. Somebody who is used to the space available on a destroyer will find that everything is much more cramped on a gunboat. Here we cannot have crew members who make sweeping gestures. You can speak loudly, but not wave your arms about.'

  'I don't expect special privileges, and very seldom do I wave my arms about.'

  When he had finished breakfast, which consisted mainly of an over-salty omelette, it was a quarter past eight Two grey-painted launches, each seven metres long, were lowered into the water. Sub-Lieutenant Welander, the naval engineer, took command of one of the launches, and Tobiasson-Svartman the other. Each of the boats carried three oarsmen and a rating selected to take charge of the sounding lines.

  * * *

  They started sounding along a line leading south-west from Sandsänkan lighthouse. Tobiasson-Svartman's aim was to find out if it were possible for ships with a bigger draught than the ones given on the present chart to pass this far into the archipelago, shielded by the surrounding skerries and rocks.

  Sounding lines were lowered and raised, depths established and compared with the figures on the charts. Tobiasson-Svartman was in overall charge, giving instructions when necessary. He took some measurements himself as well, the brass of his instrument gleaming as it glided up and down through the water. Readings were noted down in a diary.

  The sea was calm. There was a strange atmosphere of peace around the boats, the sounding leads sinking and rising, the figures being called out, repeated then noted down. The
oarsmen rowed as noiselessly as they could. Every sound bounced back and forth over the water.

  On board the Blenda Lieutenant Jakobsson smoked his pipe and talked non-stop to one of the stokers about a leaking cooling tube. It was a friendly chat, like good-natured conversation outside church after a service.

  Tobiasson-Svartman squinted into the sun and estimated the distance to the Blenda as sixty-five metres.

  They progressed gradually westwards. The two launches proceeded with slow, steady strokes of the oars, on a parallel course, five metres apart.

  CHAPTER 29

  Shortly after eleven in the morning they found a depth that did not correspond to the depth recorded on the chart. The disparity was considerable, all of three metres. The correct depth was fourteen metres, not seventeen. They checked the surrounding depths, but found no deviations from the figures on the chart. They had stumbled upon an unexpected projection deep below the surface. Some sort of narrow and pointed rock formation in the middle of an area where the rest of the bottom was flat.

  Tobiasson-Svartman had found the first of the points he was looking for. A wrong measurement that he could correct. A depth had become less deep.

  But in his heart of hearts he was looking for something quite different. A place where the sounding lead never reached the bottom: a point where the sounding line ceased to be a technical instrument and was transformed into a poetic tool.

  CHAPTER 30

  The stretch where they were measuring at present curved round a series of small rocks and shallows to the south of the skerry known as Halsskär at the edge of the open sea. The west side had never been charted. There was a possibility that they might find a channel sufficiently deep and wide to take a vessel with a draught as big as the destroyer Svea.

  In his travelling archive he found a note to the effect that until the eighteenth century the skerry had been called Vratholmen. He tried to discover why this barren little island no more than one thousand metres in diameter would have had its name changed. A person can change his name for any number of reasons. He had done so himself. But why a skerry at the edge of the open sea?

  Could the original name have something to do with wrath, with anger? Records showed that it had been called Vratholmen for at least 250 years. Then, at some time between 1712 and 1740, its name had changed. From then on, there was no Vratholmen, only Halsskär.

  He thought about the riddle for some time, but he could find no plausible answer.

  In the evening, after copying his own and Sub-Lieutenant Welander's notes into the main expedition record book, he went on deck The sea was still calm. Some ratings were busy repairing the gangway. He paused and gazed out at Halsskär.

  Suddenly, there was a flash of light. He screwed up his eyes. It did not happen again. He went to his cabin and fetched his telescope. There was nothing to be seen on the smooth rocks apart from darkness.

  Later that night he wrote a letter to his wife. It was a scrappy description of days that could hardly be distinguished from one another.

  He did not write anything about Rudin. Nor did he mention the drift net he had seen that morning.

  CHAPTER 31

  The following day, as dawn broke, he clambered into one of the tenders tied to the Blenda's stern. He unfastened the painter and rowed towards Halsskär. It was dead calm, and the sea smelled of salt and mud. He rowed through the gentle swell with powerful strokes and found a tiny cove on the west side of the skerry where he could land without getting his feet wet. He beached the tender, tied the painter round a large stone then leaned back against the sloping cliff.

  The Blenda was anchored off the east side of Halsskär. He was alone. No sound reached him from the ship.

  The skerry was resting in the sea. It was like being in a cradle, or on a deathbed, he thought. All the voices hidden in the cliff were whispering. Even rocks have memories, as do waves and breakers. And down below, in the darkness where fish swam along invisible and silent channels, there were also memories.

  The barren skerry was a poor and destitute being, devoid of desires. The only vegetation on the rocky islet was patches of lichens, clumps of heather, occasional tufts of grass, short, windswept juniper bushes and some strips of seaweed at the edge of the water.

  The skerry was a mendicant friar who had renounced all earthly possessions and wandered alone through the world.

  He was all of a sudden overcome by a powerful longing for his wife. The next time he saw Captain Rake he would ask him to post the letter he had written to her.

  Only then could he count on receiving a letter from her. He was married to a woman who answered letters, but was never the first to write.

  He climbed to the top of the cliff. The rocks were slippery and he kept stumbling. From the summit he could see the Blenda, riding at anchor in the distance. He had his telescope with him and aimed it at the ship. Watching people and things through a telescope always gave him a feeling of power.

  Lieutenant Jakobsson was standing by the rail, peeing out over the water. He was holding his penis in his deformed hand.

  Tobiasson-Svartman put the telescope down. What he had seen disgusted him. He took a deep breath.

  From now on he would feel repugnance towards Jakobsson. Every time they sat down at table together he would have to fight back the image of the man peeing through the rail, using his deformed hand.

  He wondered what would happen if he wrote in the letter to his wife: 'This morning I surprised the ship's master with his trousers down.'

  He sat down in a rocky hollow where the ground was dry and closed his eyes. After a few seconds he had conjured up the smell of his wife. It was so strong that when he opened his eyes he half expected to see her there on the skerry, standing close to him.

  Shortly afterwards he climbed down to the tender and rowed back to the gunboat.

  That same afternoon they progressed as far as Halsskär and began a methodical search for a sufficiently deep channel along the west side of the skerry.

  CHAPTER 32

  It took them seven days of hard, relentless work to confirm that it was possible to route the navigable channel on the west side of Halsskär. All the ships in the Swedish Navy, apart from the largest of the battleships, would be able to pass with a satisfactory safety margin.

  At dinner, consisting of poached cod with potatoes and egg sauce, he told Lieutenant Jakobsson what they had established. He was not absolutely certain that he was allowed to pass on such details, but on the other hand it seemed odd not to be able to speak openly with a man who could observe what was going on with his own eyes.

  'I'm impressed,' said Jakobsson. 'But I have a question: Did you know in advance?'

  'Know what?'

  'That it was deep just there? That it was deep enough for the big naval vessels?'

  'Hydrographic surveyors who guess their way forward are seldom successful. The only thing I know for sure is that it's impossible to predict what is hidden under the surface of the sea. We can pull up mud and fish and rotten seaweed from the sea, but we can also bring up some significant surprises.'

  'It must be a remarkable feeling, to look at a sea chart and tell yourself that you were responsible for its accuracy.'

  The conversation was interrupted by Jakobsson's second in command, Fredén, appearing to announce that the Svea had been sighted, heading northwards.

  Tobiasson-Svartman quickly finished his meal and hurried to write up the latest of his data. He checked through the notes briefly, then signed the record book.

  Before leaving his cabin he wrote another short letter to his wife.

  The destroyer towered over the Blenda. As it was almost perfectly calm, a gangplank was laid out to act as a bridge between the two vessels.

  Captain Rake had a bad cold. He asked no questions, merely accepted the record book and passed it on to one of the cryptographers. Then he offered Tobiasson-Svartman a brandy.