Depths

by Henning Mankell

  I have a father-in-law who really knows how to hate, he thought. What will happen if he discovers that I do not share his enmities?

  During the speech he kept an eye on his wife. He realised that he had no idea about her views on the war. The speech faded out of his consciousness. I don't know my wife, he thought. I share a bed and a dinner table with an unknown woman. In the far distance he could see Sara Fredrika. She came gliding towards him, the dinner table had vanished, he was back on Halsskär.

  He did not return to the dinner table until toasts were proposed at the end of the speech, and coffee was about to be served in the drawing room.

  CHAPTER 82

  The Christmas holidays passed. On 27 December Tobiasson-Svartman arrived for the meeting on Skeppsholmen as agreed. He waited impatiently in the cold corridor to be allowed in and receive his instructions. But no adjutant came to collect him.

  The door was suddenly flung open and Vice Admiral H:son-Lydenfeldt invited him in. He was alone in the room. The vice admiral sat and gestured to his visitor to do the same.

  'At short notice the naval high command has decided that no more depth soundings will be made this winter. All ships will be required to guard our coastline and to escort our merchant navy convoys. The decision was made by Admiral Lundin and confirmed by Naval Minister Boström late last night.'

  The vice admiral looked hard at him.

  'Have I made myself clear?'

  'Yes.'

  'One could argue, of course, that a very few weeks spent boring holes through the ice would hardly have a significant effect on our fleet. But a decision has been made.'

  The vice admiral pointed at an envelope lying on the table.

  'I am the first person to regret that depth sounding has been postponed indefinitely, even though I personally would prefer not to have to be out on the ice boring holes in early January. Am I right?'

  'Of course.'

  'Meanwhile you will be at the beck and call of Naval Headquarters. There seems to be no shortage of tasks needing to be carried out.'

  The vice admiral placed one hand on his desk to indicate that the meeting was at an end. He stood up, Tobiasson-Svartman saluted and left the room.

  CHAPTER 83

  Only when he was passing the Grand Hotel did he pause and open the envelope.

  The message was short. At 9 a.m. the next morning he was to present himself at the Swedish Navy's special section for navigation channels, buoyage and harbours. The order was signed by Lieutenant Kaspersson on behalf of a section head at the Naval Fortifications Centre.

  He walked to the edge of the quay. Some white archipelago boats were docked there, frozen in and deserted.

  He noticed that he was trembling. The counter-order, cancelling his mission, had been wholly unexpected. In connection with the task he was to perform at Gamlebyviken he had drawn up a plan that he had kept secret, even from himself. He would return to Halsskär and meet Sara Fredrika. Nothing else meant anything, only that had any real significance.

  He went into the Grand Hotel and found a table in the café. It was still early, there were not many customers and the waiters had nothing to do. He ordered coffee and a cognac.

  'It's cold outside,' the waiter said. 'Cognac is made for days like today.'

  Tobiasson-Svartman managed to suppress an overwhelming urge to stand up and hit the waiter. He could not cope with being talked to. The decision had been a sort of declaration of war, he must resist it, make a new plan to replace the one that had just been foiled.

  He stayed in the café for several hours. He was drunk by the time he left. But he knew what he was going to do.

  When he left he gave the waiter a large tip.

  CHAPTER 84

  He said nothing to Kristina Tacker about the cancellation of his mission. She asked how long he thought he would need to stay at Gamlebyviken and when he would be leaving. He told her that it could take several weeks, but hardly longer than to the end of January, and that she should think in terms of thirty days when she did his packing for him.

  That evening and night he sat hunched over his sea charts and notebooks with the new stretch of navigable channel at Sandsänkan. By five in the morning he had finished, and lay down on the sofa in his study with his naval overcoat over him.

  Twice during the night Kristina Tacker had got up and peeped through his study door. He did not even notice that she was there. Her fragrances did not get through to him.

  CHAPTER 85

  On 9 January 1915 a violent storm raged over Stockholm. Roofs were blown off, chimneys collapsed, trees fell, people were killed. When the storm had subsided there followed a period of extreme cold. It held the city in its grip until the end of the month.

  On 30 January Tobiasson-Svartman put his plan into action. He had started work on Skeppsholmen, apparently willingly and contentedly, on a check of all sea charts covering the Gulf of Bothnia. He arrived at the office as usual at eight, exchanged a few words with his colleagues about the severe cold, then asked for an interview with his boss, Captain Sturde. His section head was obese, rarely completely sober and regarded by all and sundry as a master of the art of doing nothing. He dreamed of the day when he could retire and devote all his time to his beehives in his garden near Trosa.

  Tobiasson-Svartman spread his charts out on the table.

  'A serious error has crept into the calculations relevant to the new section of navigable channel at Sandsänkan,' he said. 'In the notes I received from Sub-Lieutenant Welander, the depth for a section of three hundred metres has been wrongly presented as eighteen metres on average. I have reason to believe, on the basis of my own notes, that the average depth can be put at six or seven metres at most'

  Captain Sturde shook his head.

  'How could that have happened?'

  'No doubt you are aware that Welander suffered a breakdown.'

  'Was he the one who drank himself silly? I'm told he's in a mental hospital now. Destroyed by alcoholism and the desperation caused by his having to stay sober.'

  'I'm convinced my measurements are correct.'

  'What do you suggest?'

  'Since the measurements I am referring to can neither wait nor be carried out by anybody else, I propose that I should go down to Östergötland and make another check.'

  'Isn't the sea there under ice?'

  'Yes, but I can get help from local fishermen and bore holes through the ice.'

  Captain Sturde thought for a moment. Tobiasson-Svartman looked out of the window and observed a flock of bullfinches squabbling over something edible in a tree made white by the hoar frost.

  'Obviously something needs to be done about this,' Sturde said. 'I can't think of a better solution than the one you suggest. I just find it hard to understand how this could have happened. Indefensible, of course.'

  'Sub-Lieutenant Welander was very good at concealing his alcohol abuse.'

  'He must have realised that his negligence could have given rise to a catastrophe.'

  'People with a severe alcohol problem are said to be interested in nothing but the next bottle.'

  'Tragic. But I'm grateful to you for discovering the error. I suggest that this matter should stay between you and me. I shall give instructions to the effect that the new chart should not yet be sent out. When could you embark on this mission?'

  'Within the next two weeks.'

  'I'll see to it that you get the necessary orders.'

  Tobiasson-Svartman left Captain Sturde and returned to his own office. He was drenched in sweat. But everything had gone according to plan. Without anybody knowing, he had taken Welander's journals home and spent several evenings altering the figures. It was a perfect forgery that would never be discovered. Even if Welander were able to leave hospital one of these days, his memories of the time spent on the Blenda would be twisted and muddled.

  He thought about Sara Fredrika and the journey over the ice that was in store. He thought that his father would no doubt have secretly a
dmired him.

  CHAPTER 86

  Somebody was practising the violin. The tone was tinny, the same phrases were repeated time after time.

  It was the evening of 12 February. The severe cold lay like a carpet over the platform of Norrköping railway station when Tobiasson-Svartman stepped off the train and looked around for a porter. There were only a few passengers, black shadows hurrying through the darkness. Only when the engine hissed out steam and a shudder ran through the coaches as it began its journey further south did a man with icicles in his beard appear to take care of the luggage.

  Tobiasson-Svartman had sent a telegram and ordered a room in the Göta Hotel. The river running through the town was frozen over.

  The room was on the second floor and looked out on to a church squatting in the half-light. It was warm in the room – he had chosen that hotel because it had central heating. When he had closed the door behind him he stood perfectly still and tried to imagine that he was on board a ship. But the floor beneath his feet refused to shift.

  That was when he heard the violin. Somebody in a room nearby was practising. It might have been Schubert.

  He sat on the bed. He could still call off the journey. He thought he was mad. He was heading willy-nilly towards chaos, towards an abyss from which there was no return. Instead of continuing with it he could take a train back to Stockholm. He would be able to explain it away. He could remember at the last minute that he still had the correct figures. He could dispose of the forged chart and replace it with another one that was correct. Nothing was too late, he could put a stop to the headlong dash he had set in train, he could still save himself.

  A cage, he thought. Or a trap. But is it inside me? Or am I the trap myself?

  CHAPTER 87

  He went down to the dining room and had dinner.

  A string quartet played something he took to be highlights from Verdi operas. The dining room was almost empty, waitresses standing around with nothing to do. Outside, where it was very cold and the snow crunched underfoot, was somewhere the shadow of a war that nobody really understood, nor very much cared about, in fact.

  He imagined himself with a gun, firing gas shells. A red-faced man sitting next to one of the pillars in the dining room was hunched over a newspaper. He estimated the distance as thirteen metres, then fired the gun. The man was blown to smithereens and swallowed up by flames. He killed the diners one by one, then the waitresses and the cashier, and finally the musicians in the string quartet.

  He fled the dining room at midnight. He lay in bed with the cold sounding lead clutched to his body. The freezing temperatures made the hotel walls creak. The violin in the nearby room could no longer be heard.

  Before he slept he tried to take his bearings. Where was he, where was he actually going to? Every movement made him feel dizzy, perhaps he was heading for his own demise. The last thing he thought about was the ice. Would it hold his weight? Had the sea frozen over as far out as Halsskär? Or would he be forced to pull a boat over the ice and row the last part of the way? Would he ever get there?

  Ice floes drifted through his sleep.

  CHAPTER 88

  He left the hotel after a quick breakfast.

  The receptionist, who spoke with a Danish accent, ordered him a cab. This was not straightforward since he wanted to be taken as far as the jetty at Gryt, where he would set out on his trek. The road was icy, and the cold could cause engine problems. After being offered ten kronor extra, a taxi driver with a Ford agreed to take him.

  They left shortly after half past seven. Tobiasson-Svartman was wrapped in a thick blanket in the back seat. The driver had a scarf round his winter hat. It reminded Tobiasson-Svartman of Lieutenant Jakobsson. He shuddered at the memory of the man who had dropped dead in front of him on the deck.

  The countryside was embedded in the cold.

  Just before driving through Söderköping they passed the Göta Canal. Barges were frozen in beside the canal banks. They were chained by their hawsers, like animals in their stalls. He turned to look at the barges through the back window for as long as they were visible. I shall remember those barges, he thought. One of them will take me over the final border when my time comes.

  At Gusum the engine began coughing and it was not possible to go any further when they reached Valdemarsvik.

  He decided to stay there overnight, paid the driver and booked into a guest house on a hill beyond the big tannery on the shore of the bay. The wind was from the east and blew the smell away. The landlord, who spoke a dialect very difficult to understand, promised to arrange transport the next day.

  Having installed his luggage in his room he walked down to the harbour and examined the ice. It was thick and did not give when he stood on it. He approached a man who was busy chiselling ice off a fishing boat and asked what conditions were like out in the archipelago, but he did not know.

  'If it's as cold out there among the skerries, the sea will no doubt be frozen there as well. But I don't know, and I don't want to know.'

  He had dinner at the guest house, avoided answering anything more than yes or no to the questions asked by the inquisitive landlord and his wife, and went early to bed.

  He snuggled down deep into his pillow and tried to imagine that he did not exist.

  CHAPTER 89

  The Gryt jetty was deserted, a few boats frozen into the ice, a locked boathouse, a battered slipway. The driver lifted out the two rucksacks and took his payment. There was a thin layer of snow on the ice, but the only footprints were those of an occasional crow or magpie.

  'Nobody's gone from here,' said the driver. 'And nobody's come neither. No boats'll be coming here until the ice melts in March or April. Are you really sure this is where you wanted to come to?'

  'Yes,' Tobiasson-Svartman said. 'This is where I wanted to come to.'

  The driver nodded slowly and asked no more questions. The black car disappeared up the hill from the jetty. Tobiasson-Svartman stood motionless until the sound of the engine had died away. Then he took out his sea chart. Panic was ticking deep inside him. I cannot go back, he thought. There is nothing behind me, perhaps nothing in front of me either, but I must do what I have set myself to do.

  There was an easterly breeze blowing. It would take him three days to get to Halsskär, assuming the weather did not take a turn for the worse, and that there really was ice in the outer archipelago. He decided to walk as far as Armnö in the central part of the archipelago this first day. There ought to be a boathouse there where he could spend the night and be comparatively warm.

  He strapped on his two rucksacks after fixing crampons to his leather boots and hanging his ice prods round his neck. It was ten minutes past ten when he took his first step out on to the ice. His route would take him round the south end of Fågelö and then he would head towards Höga Svedsholmen. He estimated the distance to Armnö to be eight kilometres, which meant that he ought to be there before dusk.

  He set off. The thin layer of snow had been blown away in some places, exposing the dark ice beneath. It felt like balancing on the edge of a precipice that could give way at any moment. The archipelago was empty. He would occasionally pause and listen. Sometimes an invisible bird would call, but apart from that it was totally silent. When he had passed Fågelö he stopped, unstrapped his rucksacks and made a hole through the ice with his knife. It was fourteen centimetres thick. It would not crack under his weight.

  He walked at twenty-five metres per minute. He did not want to run the risk of sweating and then freezing. He paused at Höga Svedsholmen and broke off a branch to use as a walking stick. He drank some water and ate some of the sandwiches provided by the guest house. Then he rested for twenty minutes.