by Lars Sund
This discussion raged for a time like the sea in autumn, but in the end the arguments on both sides became so tired and overused that any further deliberations were pointless. The case was shelved for lack of proof.
But a case dropped is not the same as a not-guilty verdict. Celia had to accept being something of an outsider. People greeted her just a touch more distantly than they greeted others and people talked to her just that much less.
That didn’t bother Celia at all. She had Albert, her son.
She kept him close, too close in the opinion of many. She was still giving him the breast until he was five and he slept with her until he was almost old enough for confirmation. She would feed him from her own plate and she sang him to sleep with old folk songs – the girl who lay with men in the field and the wind that blows and the ship that sailed away and others. She taught him the rhymes and ditties she remembered from her own childhood and she told him the stories of the boy and the giant, of Kattburga Castle and of the Bemböle people who were stupid enough to sow salt in their field. Whenever he started crying, she would cuddle him and comfort him even before the first tears had time to roll down his plump cheeks. If he coughed she would immediately check whether his forehead was hot and then she would give him warm milk flavoured with butter and onion. When he went out he was accompanied by her warnings to be careful and not to go too close to the shore, and if he was away too long Celia would drop whatever she was doing and go and look for him.
Celia’s anxiety was, for the most part, exaggerated. Albert was a healthy and strong child who grew and developed quite normally, made friends and joined in all the games with gusto. When he was with his friends he forgot all his mother’s warnings and liked to be best. He wanted to climb higher, dive deeper and walk farther out on the first creaking ice of autumn than any of the other boys dared. An angel of the Lord must have constantly been at his side because he never fell from a tree or broke through the ice. And Celia neither saw nor heard of his disobedience: her motherly love blinded her eyes and filled her ears with wax. Her Albert was a nice quiet boy who revered his mother.
When he was small he occasionally asked about his father – without receiving an answer. Those were the only times Celia turned her back on her son. Her back was like a high wall without doors or windows or even a little opening for him to crawl through. Then he realised how small he was and he stopped asking after his father.
But it’s strange and wonderful how quickly the wheel of life can turn. In no time at all the little bundle you were carrying in your arms a short while before is now a big strong tall fellow, educated, confirmed, with down on his upper lip and a voice that has broken. Why, O Lord, do the years pass so quickly?
Albert began to tug at the traces. No longer satisfied with being reined in by Celia, he wanted out. It was in any case high time for him to find work since there was neither space nor work at Grannas for a youth soon to be a man. And there was not a great deal of choice for someone like Albert.
He said he wanted to go to sea.
Celia said that was out of the question.
He tugged at the traces harder, became more impatient. Celia hung on stubbornly.
Then Albert ran away. He was seventeen years old.
He managed to sign on as a deckhand on the little tramp steamer SS Oihonna of Fagerö by showing the unsuspecting captain a certificate on which he had skilfully forged Celia’s signature. It was only after the Oihonna had departed for Felixstowe with a load of pit props that Celia heard Albert was on board.
The information reached her in a strange way.
When Albert didn’t arrive home one evening Celia went out to look for him. She searched all night, going from farm to farm and asking after Albert. Dawn found her on the road down to Tunnhamn where she was stopped by a stranger, a man. The stranger was wearing a long grey coat, had a black beard and limped with his left leg. He also gave off a peculiar pungent smell.
Celia was initially rather anxious, especially since she was alone with this stranger. But her anxiety turned to anger when the stranger told her his news.
“No! You must be mistaken! My Albert wouldn’t do something like that! Goodbye!” she snapped sharply.
She hurried away quickly, but when she had gone a little way she began to wonder how someone who was clearly a stranger on Fagerö could possibly know she was Albert’s mother and that she was out looking for him? On an impulse she turned round to shout a question back to the stranger.
But he was gone, swallowed up by the earth. The road behind her was empty and deserted.
The human mind is a funny thing, fickle and unpredictable. It’s like the deep sea: no one can be sure what is happening down in its depths. When they eventually managed to convince Celia that Albert really had run away to sea, she felt a kind of relief. She immediately forgave him for having gone behind her back and began waiting for his return home.
Waiting is a pleasure in itself, a kind of advance on joy to come. Celia talked about Albert’s homecoming as if it was going to be next week rather than in several months’ time when the Oihonna was expected back in her home port at the end of the sailing season. She boasted about how much he would have grown and how manly he would have become, and she talked eagerly about the mutton soup and cod dumplings she was going to make for him – two of his favourite dishes.
So Celia set about waiting for Albert with a sort of impatient patience. “It won’t be long now,” she said two or three times a day, usually to herself.
But Albert never did return to Fagerö.
Instead Abrahamsson from Busö – the father of the present Abrahamsson and owner of SS Oihonna – came to Bengfols one day. The sea was pounding, dull, heavy and autumn grey; the bare outlines of the birch trees stood out like clean-picked fish bones; flocks of greylag were beating their way south below low boiling clouds. For a long time Abrahamsson stood in the parlour of Grannas Farm hesitating and chewing his moustache, for the words he had come to say weighed as heavy as ballast stone and he needed all his will and strength to bring them forth. Abrahamsson stood there big and black, nervously fingering his hat and collecting his thoughts. His bald head gleamed like a varnished spar. He cleared his throat, as if tuning his voice, and then finally the dread words emerged slowly and reluctantly from his mouth.
“It’s your son, Albert. I have the sad duty to inform you that he went overboard at the Dogger Bank and is feared to have drowned.”
Celia looked at him, her face as calm and smooth as the sea when the wind has dropped for the day.
“I’m sorry, truly sorry,” Abrahamsson said wearily.
But Celia gently shook her head. Unbelievably she almost seemed to be smiling.
“You’re mistaken. It wasn’t Albert. He’s coming home soon.”
Abrahamsson from Busö investigated the accident to find an explanation. The deck cargo had shifted in heavy weather and the only thing they could do was throw it overboard in order to correct Oihonna’s list. Ignoring the warnings of his fellows Albert climbed up on the pit props to cut through the ropes securing them. Suddenly a stanchion gave way without warning, the cables snapped and the whole load went overboard. Albert had no chance of reaching safety and was carried over with it.
The captain immediately stopped the engines and they tried to launch a lifeboat into the heavy seas, but all their efforts had been in vain.
But Celia just shook her head.
“You’re mistaken. It wasn’t Albert,” she said again.
And now Celia began her walkabouts. What drove her wasn’t grief but the absence of grief. Grief is a seamstress who brings sharp needles and strong thread to the task of mending the rents death has torn in the human soul. It’s true that she may be a harsh seamstress who works slowly with needles that prick and stab, but when she finally bites off the last thread the patches she has stitched more or less cover the tears, though the stitches will always be visible. The seamstress of grief, however, has her vanity and she demands
that we bend the knee to her before she will open her sewing case and thread her needle. Celia refused to bend the knee. She could reconcile herself to Albert having run away, but not that he was gone forever out there on the Dogger Bank.
She started walking down to Tunnhamn regularly to ask after Albert. She walked along the shore seeking him and she approached the people she met in the village and asked them whether they had seen her Albert.
At first they let her get on with it. Given time, they thought, she will come to her senses. But Celia did not come to her senses. Instead, she became obsessed, possessed, and she could be heard down by the sea calling Albert’s name for hours on end. She looked for him in boathouses and woodsheds, and she would burst in on people at the most awkward hours of day or night with pressing questions about her son. Worst of all was the uproar she caused when the then pastor Joel Lökström came to talk to her about a memorial service for Albert – Ruben had felt he had no choice but to lock her in the attic so as not to have shame brought upon the house.
Ruben Dahlström was a kind-hearted and patient man. He did not desert his daughter. He sat with her in her room entreating and talking to her quietly and persistently. “Dear Celia, you will have to accept that Albert has gone forever,” he told her time after time. “There is no life for you if you cannot accept that.”
There is an old saying that dripping water hollows out stone. Ruben Dahlström wanted his words to be the drops that wore down Celia’s stubbornness, not so much by force as by frequency. It seemed to him that his persistence did give results in the end. That, at least, is what he tried to convince himself.
“Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right,” Celia said at last. She wasn’t talking to her father but to her hands resting in her apron. He eyes were as dry as the pebbles on a dusty road. She promised her father that she would stop asking after Albert. She promised to stop calling out his name down on the shore.
But she didn’t stop looking for him.
It is now more than forty years since Albert disappeared, but Celia is still seeking him. Faithful to her promise to her father she no longer asks people about Albert and she no longer calls his name out over the waves. She goes out at night for the most part and if she meets anyone she quickly slips away like a dormouse among last year’s leaves.
Celia still lives at Grannas, in the cottage that Klas-Åke, the present owner, fixed up for her. She looks after herself. Ruben Dahlström passed away one winter many years ago after going through the ice when he was checking his fixed lines in Skedholmssundet. It got to his lungs, but he might well have survived if they hadn’t made the mistake of calling the doctor. Several of the people present at his funeral noticed a stranger standing outside the cemetery wall. He was wearing a grey coat and seemed to walk with a limp. He had disappeared by the end of the ceremony. Everyone in Bengfols is familiar with Celia’s strange obsession and they keep an eye on her. These days they usually find her quite soon because she doesn’t go far when she is on one of her walkabouts. People take her gently by the arm and she is happy to go with them. She doesn’t say anything, just looks down at the ground in front of her feet.
Celia has gone walkabout.
She walks quickly along the road through Söder Karlby, past Norrgrannas, Mex, Andelslaget, the post office and Simon’s place. She is moving surprisingly quickly in spite of being an old woman bent under the immense burden she has imposed upon herself.
It’s a long time since Celia has gone walkabout – the year before last according to Janne the Post and he should know. Klas-Åke and Inger at Grannas Farm had begun to hope that she was at last finding peace with herself when it came to Albert. That’s probably why it didn’t occur to Inger that Celia seemed unusually happy when she popped into the cottage to see her earlier that evening: that has often been a sure sign that Celia will soon be going on one of her walkabouts.
The night sky is a white reflection in the windows of Simon’s place. The ash trees in the yard rise black and still, as if they are wrought iron. The nightingale is singing in the thicket down at Kungshamn. There is the hum of midges.
Celia turns off the road and her narrow bent back disappears into the green darkness beneath the spruce trees.
On this particular night she walks out to Sorrow, a small rocky headland that got its name because a brother and sister from Norrgrannas or Mix – no one is sure which – are said to have drowned there. The sea is shining, slumbering, rising and falling in the long deep breaths of sleep. It sighs, laps and splashes softly. High, feathery, violet-grey clouds streak the sky to the south, an omen of a change in the weather, perhaps.
The gleaming green eye of the navigation beacon on the island of Busö opens, stares at her for a moment before closing again.
She scans the sea, right out to the horizon where there is still a touch of red. She stands there motionless, bent, as stunted as the juniper bushes on the hillock behind her. Her lips move though nothing can be heard. Perhaps she is silently forming Albert’s name inside her mouth – yes, that’s what she is doing. The beacon opens its eye again and closes it. The sea is breathing deeply.
Then all of a sudden she notices a slow movement in the water a little way out from the shore, a dark shadow that moves in time with the almost imperceptible motion of the sea. She screws up her eyes to see better and she goes out over the gently sloping rocks, out to the water’s edge. And there she stands, crooked and bent as a question mark at the end of a long sentence. She sees that it’s a body floating there and rocking gently on the smooth flat surface of the water. Her eyes light up. Her bent back begins to grow straight and she changes from a question mark to an exclamation mark. It is many years since she last stood upright and firm. Her eyes are full of tears, but she is smiling.
Now she is down in the sea. She wades across the slippery rocks, water up to her thighs.
“Albert!” Celia calls again after more than forty years, her voice echoing far out across the silent sea. “Albert!”
III
Deine Elisaveta
To:policedepartment@countycouncil
From:[email protected]
Subject:unidentified body
Male, c. 40 years of age, 180 cm, washed up at headland known as Sorrow, c. 1 km north of Söder Karlby, Fagerö. Probably been in water 4–5 days. Clothing: black trousers, shirt and black jacket. Left eye missing, presumably seabirds. Beak marks also visible on forehead, right cheek and right side of neck (see attached photos). The wounds appear to have been inflicted post-mortem. No identification papers found on body. A water-damaged photograph was found in left-hand trouser pocket: passport-sized black-and-white image of young woman with fair hair. Back of photograph has the inscription “Deine Elisaveta”.
Preliminary cause of death assumed to be drowning.
“She has the same name as you, Elisabeth,” Inspector Riggert von Haartman muttered, holding up the photograph with a pair of tweezers and studying the woman’s face through a magnifying glass. It’s a narrow face, serious, high cheekbones, slightly slanting eyes. She appears to be about twenty years old. Fair-haired. A greyish-purple saltwater stain discolours the top right corner.
“Pretty girl. Wonder who she was. His wife? His daughter?”
The clock on the wall in the inspector’s office, an old wind-up clock, has a hard metallic tick. Behind the glass the pendulum swings indefatigably from right to left and left to right. Through the open window he can hear the murmur of the sea and the scream of gulls in the distance. A puff of wind gently lifts the curtain.
The email report of the finding of the corpse is on the screen of his personal computer. Riggert von Haartman carefully places the photograph of the woman called Elisaveta into a sealable plastic envelope, writes the date and reference number on a label and sticks it on the plastic. For a short while he listens to the silence, which is divided into segments by the ticking of the clock. He massages the base of his nose with his thumb and index finger.
“Well, w
e don’t have a great deal to say about our drowned friend, dear Elisabeth. He probably wasn’t a seaman – I noticed that his hands were well cared for and the nails unbroken. That might not mean much, of course: the modern seaman doesn’t often need to get his hands dirty. My feeling is that he was a civil servant or an academic, and probably a foreigner from somewhere down south. The photo in his pocket points in that direction.”
The inspector straightens a paper clip in the pencil tray on his desk. All the paper clips lie with their pointed ends facing the same way.
“Unless there is some documentation we are not likely to be able to identify him … He’ll go to the grave like our first corpse, with a cross that states ‘name unknown’.”
The inspector glances through the email message once again then moves the cursor to the SEND button and double-clicks. The message vanishes from the screen as if it had never existed. He checks that it actually has gone, closes the email program and logs out of the police intranet. The clock on the wall rattles as if clearing its throat and then strikes five. Inspector von Haartman stands up from his desk. He has removed his uniform jacket, loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. He has also unbuttoned his invisible inner uniform. He takes a breath, rotates his shoulders to loosen them up, interlocks his fingers and stretches his arms by pushing his hands forward. Then he does some trunk twists with his fingers on his hips and his elbows pointing straight out.
He tiptoes across the floor in his stockinged feet. The varnished boards shine like amber in the slanting afternoon sun. He stands by the window with his back to the room.