Depths
Page 33
Sara Fredrika, November 1915.
He read the letter again. Then he lay down on the bare rock and stared up at the clouds.
They were scudding, flying, towards the south-west.
CHAPTER 201
He stood up when he heard Angel coming out of the cottage.
He had no idea how much time had passed.
'I've read the letter,' he said.
'She asked me to stay until you said that. I don't know what's in it, of course.'
They walked down to the inlet.
'The clouds are restless,' she said. 'The November weather is as restless as an animal kicking in its stall. I think it's going to be a long winter with lots of ice.'
He did not answer. Angel looked at him.
'I never got to know you,' she said, 'but I delivered your child. Now Sara Fredrika and the baby have left. I have a strong feeling that they will never come back. I can't know that for sure and it's none of my business. But I have to ask you even so: What are you going to do? Are you going to stay here on the skerry? Will you survive here? It's not that you can't feed yourself from the sea, you can no doubt manage that. But the isolation? You come from a big city, will you be able to survive the isolation when the storms really set in?'
'I don't know.'
'You ought to go away.'
He nodded. She waited for him to say something more, but he just stared ahead in silence.
'Well, I'll be off,' she said. 'You ought to go away. I don't think you could cope with life out here. The stones will eat you up.'
He watched her strike anchor and shake off the mud clinging to it. When she set sail, he turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 202
One day the two farm labourers from Kättilö sailed into the inlet.
The rumour that Sara Fredrika had left and taken the baby with her, leaving him behind, had gone round the islands. Somebody had seen an unfamiliar sailing boat approaching Halsskär with a woman on board. But nobody knew what had happened on the skerry. All they knew was that the hydrographic engineer was wandering about the skerry like a moth-eaten animal.
Somebody maintained that he had even started to walk on all fours.
The farmhands sailed out one Sunday, taking a bottle of aquavit with them. It was pure curiosity. But he merely shook his head when they offered him a drink. He did not answer their questions.
When they got back home they reported that he had definitely started walking on all fours the moment they turned their backs.
CHAPTER 203
A few days before Christmas he scratched his name into one of the rocks on the north side of the skerry, a rock that was submerged at high tide. There was a thin layer of snow over the archipelago, the temperature was now more or less constantly below zero. He had wrapped himself up in a shaggy blanket held in place by a rope round his body. He lived on with one question, the only one he still had the strength to worry about. How could she have known what happened out on the ice the day the German deserter died? He sought in vain for an answer.
He kept walking round the skerry, and feeding the cat, which was growing more and more shy, with small fish. Once every day he went to check that the mine was still at its mooring.
After Angel's visit he had stopped measuring distances altogether. He had fallen headlong into the abyss inside himself. Down there in the darkness Kristina Tacker was by his side. He tried to climb up out of the depths, but the walls were slippery, he kept sliding back down, his strength faded and eventually vanished altogether.
In the end there was nothing left.
CHAPTER 204
There were moments when his thoughts were crystal clear. Then he realised that he could never have grown close to another human being because he had an irrational fear of losing himself. There were also other moments when he wanted to tear off all his clothes, wash himself, and drag himself out of his degradation.
One day he sailed through a bitter winter wind to Valdemarsvik and bought some newspapers. He read about the war, how the sea battles had been replaced by long-drawn-out fighting in the muddy fields of Flanders. He had the strong impression that life was the same for everybody, and he sank back down into his abyss, unable to raise the strength to resist.
It was clear to him that most things in his life had been based on a lunatic idea. He had built his existence on distances instead of seeking closeness.
It was then, a few days before Christmas, that he carved his name into the rock.
Afterwards he realised that he had prepared his own headstone.
CHAPTER 205
On Christmas Day a northerly gale blew in over the archipelago.
He recalled that it was this very morning some years previously that Sara Fredrika had lost her husband.
When he clambered on to the rocks he discovered that the mine had broken loose from its mooring. He scanned the choppy water, but he could see no sign of it. It was drifting out to sea, into the shipping lanes.
I am taking part in the war, he thought. But I do not know on which side.
CHAPTER 206
Death came at New Year, 1916.
One night there was a strong, persistent, northerly gale. The cottage caught fire. He had neglected the chimney, which had cracked, and red-hot soot had forced its way through. The walls went up as if they had been soaked in petrol.
He was woken by the dazzling light By then it was too late to control the fire. He hurried out of the burning cottage with his sounding lead, his notebooks and his clothes.
The cottage burned quickly, and was a complete ruin before dawn broke.
He felt very cold, there was a fierce wind.
During the night he thought he could see Sara Fredrika and Laura in the glow from the fire.
Kristina Tacker had not been in the flames. She was gone, silent, he could not even remember her face now.
The gale blew over by afternoon. The sea was calm once more. The ice would soon begin to form, if the cold weather continued.
He felt cold all the time, then the feeling developed into a pain approaching the intolerable.
The vital decision was creeping quietly up on him. Soon it became an obvious inevitability. There may have been a trace of fear inside him, but it was mostly exhaustion and the intense cold that he could not cope with.
He started to look for the cat so as to kill it, but he did not have the strength. It would survive the cold, it did not know what death was, it would only die if it could not find anything to eat.
He carried his sounding lead and his notebooks to the inlet, packed everything into a net and tied it to a sinker before throwing them on board.
He suddenly felt that he was in a hurry. He looked anxiously up at the sky, worried that a wind might get up again.
He wanted to set out when the sea was calm.
The boat glided out of the inlet.
He rowed to the spot where the two German sailors had sunk to the bottom of the sea. When he reached it he took in the oars, sat on the stern seat and let the boat drift. There was still no wind, the sea was as calm as a millpond. He lifted the net with his lead and the notebooks over the rail and let it sink to the bottom.
One last time he tried to clamber up the slippery walls of the abyss, but slid down again immediately.
He had made up his mind to get it all over with quickly. The sinker was heavy, he made his last measurement and decided it weighed seven kilos. He tied the rope attached to the stone round his legs.
But first he took off all his clothes. He wanted to die naked. The cold water would deaden his senses.
Then he lifted the stone over the rail and followed it down into the depths.
Some days later the boat drifted ashore at the Häradskär lighthouse. One of the pilots identified it as Sara Fredrika's sailing dinghy.
The sea froze over in mid-January.
The ice covered all the sea graves in the winter of 1916.
Afterword
This story takes place in a border
land between reality and my own invention.
I have redrawn many sea charts, given islands new names, added new bays and eliminated others. Anybody who tries to sail along the shipping lanes I have sketched out must reckon with coming upon lots of unexpected shallows and other hazards.
In December 2001 the Swedish Navy handed over responsibility for hydrographic surveys in Swedish waters to civilian organisations. I hope both they and all earlier generations of hydrographic engineers will forgive me for creating my own routines regarding the charting of naval channels. What is beyond dispute is that the sounding lead that was dropped into the water and allowed to sink down to the seabed was the instrument originally used to decide the safest route for ships to follow.
I had the sounding lead used in this novel made in Manchester. That could well have been a fact, but need not be.
Many of the ships that feature in the novel did exist, but were long since sent to the scrapyard or have otherwise disappeared from our consciousness. Other vessels have been constructed by me, in my role as shipbuilder. I have increased and decreased tonnages, downsized the crew or added an artillery officer when it seemed to me appropriate.
To be frank, I have been rather self-indulgent.
Some of the people I describe have also existed. But most of them have never set foot on the islands in the beautiful, barren and occasionally stormy Östergötland archipelago. Nor have they been bosuns or captains on board Swedish naval vessels.
Nevertheless, I can imagine them – in the shadowy world where history and imagination merge, on the literary shores where the flotsam and jetsam of fantasy and reality intermingle.
Some years ago, in the early 1990s, I rowed through the fog in the Gryt archipelago. Later, when the weather had cleared up and everything seemed reminiscent of a curious dream, this story was born.
H.M.
Maputo, August 2004
Harvill Crime
in
Vintage
HENNING MANKELL
The Fifth Woman
'Mankell could turn you to crime'
Daily Telegraph
Four nuns and a fifth woman, a visitor to Africa, are killed in a savage night time attack. Months later in Sweden, the news of the unexplained tragedy sets off a cruel vengeance for these killings.
Inspector Wallander is home from an idyllic holiday in Rome, full of energy and plans for the future. Autumn settles in, and Wallander prays the winter will be peaceful. But when he investigates the disappearance of an elderly bird-watcher he discovers a gruesome and meticulously planned murder – a body impaled in a trap of sharpened bamboo poles.
Once again Wallander's life is on hold as he and his team work tirelessly to find a link between the series of vicious murders. Making progress through dogged police work and forever battling to make sense of the violence of modern Sweden, Wallander leads a massive investigation to find a killer whose crimes are the product of new realities that make him despair.
'The real test of thrillers is whether you want to spend
more time in the detective's company. I certainly do'
Sean French, Independent
Harvill Crime
in
Vintage
HENNING MANKELL
Sidetracked
'Inspector Wallander has touches of Dexter's Inspector Morse about him, while remaining an original and highly likeable creation'
The Times
A girl commits suicide in baffling circumstances. Three vicious murders shatter the tranquillity of the Swedish province of Skåne. Is there a connection? Inspector Wallander must find out.
Midsummer approaches, and Wallander prepares for a holiday with the new woman in his life. But his summer is ruined when a girl commits suicide before his eyes, and a former minister of justice is butchered in the first of a series of apparently motiveless murders. Wallander's hunt for the girl's identity and his furious pursuit of a killer who scalps his victims will throw him and those he loves most into mortal danger.
'Another terrific offering from the talented Mankell'
Publishers Weekly
'Inspector Wallander is one of the most wonderful
creations in contemporary crime writing'
Le Monde
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