by Lars Sund
Before depopulation began to empty the outer islands of their permanent residents, and before the days of ferries, it was the postmen who were responsible for communications between the islands. Their rounds covered large areas. Janne the Elder’s round was no exception: it included Fagerö, Lemlot, Busö and the rest of the Gunnarsholmar islands right out to Dömaskär and the other inhabited islands far out in the open sea. Janne the Elder did his round three times a week. His work was difficult and exhausting and, at times, life-threatening.
The closest he came to disaster was the time his boat capsized off Dömaskär one black and windy December afternoon. By dint of pure will power he tore himself from the icy embrace of the sea and scrambled up on to a wretched little rocky reef washed by breakers driven in by the wind from the wide open firth. The moment he got ashore he realised he no longer had the waterproof drum that contained the mail. He saw it bobbing on the waves a little way out and without a moment’s hesitation he went back into the sea to rescue the drum.
The really strange thing was that he had never learned to swim. But he still managed somehow.
He got his breath back and considered his situation. It wasn’t that bright.
There were people living on Dömaskär – Sylvius Andersson, his wife Manda and their six children. But Dömaskär was almost two kilometres away and Janne realised that there was no point in shouting against the wind and the waves in the storm. He would have to hang on until it got light and with luck someone on Dömaskär would look out over the sea and notice him there on the reef. He saw, too, that he would have to keep on the move. The air temperature was a couple of degrees below zero and the wind would freeze his wet clothes into a suit of icy armour within minutes.
A weaker man would have thrown in the towel at that point, but not Janne the Elder. He had a wife and a newborn son at home on Fagerö and he had no intention of ending his days on a miserable reef out in the firth.
So he began to walk round the reef.
Clutching the post drum to his bosom he walked over icy rocks and stones. Eighty-four steps was all it took to bring him back to his starting point. He did ten circuits in a clockwise direction and then he turned and did ten anticlockwise. Strangely enough the circuit took eighty-seven steps in that direction. His feet went numb, his calves went numb, his thighs went numb, his genitals went numb. But Janne continued walking round and round with the post drum frozen to the front and sleeves of his sweater.
He even kept his mouth moving – not, however, with prayers to Our Saviour or with hymns as most people would have done in his situation. The words that Janne had at his disposal were a good deal more powerful than that.
Towards dawn the wind backed to the south-west and eased. A dense raw fog filled the air.
Janne continued walking round his reef, numb and only semi-conscious.
But his mouth still kept working of its own accord.
As darkness approached that December day the fog became less dense and Sylvius on Dömaskär decided to row out and see how the nets he had set had weathered the storm. His wife accompanied him and when their boat came near Janne’s rocks they heard a hoarse voice croaking in the mist: “… if a fully franked remittance be addressed to an individual resident at an address to which the said remittance may be delivered without significant delay or substantial deviation from the fixed postal round, delivery is permissible.”
Sylvius’s first thought was that they were hearing a selkie or possibly even the Prince of Darkness himself.
“No, there’s no way a selkie or the devil would be talking that nonsense, I’m sure of that,” Manda said. She was a sensible and down-to-earth woman. “Let’s row over and have a look.”
And so the elder Janne the Post was rescued that time.
“Well, how’s it going?”
Janne the Younger pays no attention to our question. He is scanning through the most recent letter he has opened and tut-tutting. He carefully picks up the sheet of paper between thumb and forefinger and goes through to the bedroom. We follow. The bedroom is as tidy as the kitchen – the most nitpicking corporal would have approved of the uncrumpled appearance of the bedcover, there were no clothes or newspapers on show and there was a crocheted mat under the water glass on the bedside table. The earnest gaze of Janne the Post’s parents watch over their only son’s bed from a framed wedding photograph that hangs on the wall at the head end.
Janne has arranged one corner of his bedroom as a home office with a computer, a fax machine and a photocopier. He takes a copy of the letter, uses a punch to make holes in it, takes a file down from a shelf full of files and clips in the copy. He then puts the file back on the shelf.
“Of course I take copies of all the letters that could be of any interest at all,” Janne explains. “I study reality. That way I don’t have to tell lies and make things up like some other people do.”
Janne returns to the kitchen taking the original of the letter with him. We take the opportunity to finish the story of Janne’s father.
For a long time Janne the Elder had luck on his side while making his rounds. He supported his family on the rather thin gruel of a state salary, but supplemented it with fishing and some modest agriculture. He married fairly late in life, his wife being a daughter of the farm at Nygrannas Oppstu, a competent and hard-working woman by the name of Agnes. They had just the one child, our Janne. It wasn’t that they didn’t try to have more – they did, often and enthusiastically, but Agnes didn’t get pregnant. That was the one respect in which her competence failed her.
Janne the Elder loved his wife very dearly and he loved his son just as dearly. He would read the Code of Posts and Telegraphs out to the boy at bedtime and the child would go to sleep feeling safe: the smallest and largest permissible sizes for letters, the rules for the handling of registered remittances, the routes and numbering of mail trains – these were his equivalent of Gentle Jesus meek and mild, look upon a little child. From childhood on the younger Janne wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps; he, too, would be a dauntless deliverer of the posts, the conqueror of stormy waters and creaking ice. He knew large parts of the Codes of Posts and Telegraphs off by heart before he even started at primary school.
But then, one dreadful day in March, luck finally deserted Janne the Elder.
And what happened happened before the eyes of Janne the Younger, who was just seven years old.
It was truly incomprehensible, truly inexplicable. They were into the season for bad sea ice, but Janne the Elder knew sea ice as well as he knew the Posts and Telegraphs Code and was the least likely to miss a little water lying on the ice or a deep open channel. Using his kick sledge he had gone over to Örsund that day to deliver and collect the mail, and his wife had gone with him. Agnes often used to accompany him over to the mainland in order, as she put it, to see some new faces for a change.
They were returning to Fagerö early in the afternoon, kicking their way rapidly across the frozen Norrsundet. It was a fine sparkling day in early spring, the light was already strong enough to make them screw their eyes up, the sun warmed their faces and they had the wind at their backs. Kungshamn was full of people at the time because the Söder Karlby folk had been seine-net fishing under the ice that day and had just come ashore with their horses, sledges, nets and winches. Consequently many people, their son included, saw Janne the Elder and his wife approaching land. The young Janne and the other children had all run down to the harbour after school to meet the seine netters and to help them with their catch.
Janne the Elder and Agnes were just passing Moringharun a kilometre or so out. Travelling alongside one another, they were really covering the distance, almost as if they were having a race. Their sledge runners hummed over the ice as they kicked hard, keeping time with each other. Their speed was such that Agnes’s long skirt fluttered out like a flag. The simple joy of life gave them wings, made them fly, made them laugh – that fleeting, bright and translucent joy of life which fills you
when you are speeding across smooth ice on a kick sledge on a day in March when the sunlight is sharp and unbelievably bright and the air feels as if it’s carbonated.
We can imagine that’s what their last journey was like. It may, of course, have been quite different, there is no way of knowing for sure.
Anyway, young Janne, sharp-eyed and quick-witted as he was, had picked out his parents when they were still far off. They chose to pass round the outside of the little island of Kummelpiken in order to avoid the weak ice on the landward side. Janne followed his father and mother with his eyes until they were hidden by the granite knolls. They should soon reappear, round Kummelpiken and come into Kungshamn.
But Janne the Elder and Agnes did not reappear.
The minutes passed and they did not emerge from behind Kummelpiken.
“Fucking hell!” Hilmer Nordman shouted, dropping the net he was untangling and rushing out on to the ice that covered the inshore shallows.
The other adults watched him in astonishment, then suddenly understood the reason for his haste and set off after him.
The children followed, young Janne included.
They reached Kummelpiken and from there they could see that the ice had opened up on the seaward side.
There was a black postbag floating in the opening. And through the clear water two kick sledges were visible beside one another on the sea bottom. That was all.
“God in Heaven!” a shrill woman’s voice shouted.
“We need ropes to drag with! And poles! Get a move on!” Hilmer shouted.
Janne the Younger saw the postbag floating in the break in the ice and the kick sledges lying on the bottom. He heard shouting and swearing. A couple of men ran back to the shore to fetch ropes and poles. Women put their hands over their faces. Hilmer waved his arms about. Janne saw and heard all this, but as yet it meant nothing to him.
Then someone called out: “Lord Above! The boy! The boy is here!”
All at once silence fell around Janne. He looked up and saw that all faces were turned his way. Big, pale faces.
“Oh the poor child,” Ottilina from Västergrannas whispered and stretched out her arms to him. “Poor child.”
That was when something burst within him. He uttered a strange short grunt like a seal cub when the grappling iron goes into its neck and he turned and ran for shore. He fell, got to his feet and ran again, the air rasping in his throat. Through the watery haze before his eyes he could pick out the vague outlines of the Kungshamn boathouses. He heard shouting behind him, but then everything went black.
“Come on, Janne, please help us with our story! What do the people of Fagerö think about all this? What’s the mood like? What’s going to happen next?”
Janne doesn’t answer. He is standing by the kitchen window with his hands in his pockets. It is raining again. Another shower, the raindrops tip-tapping hard on the windowsill and the water running down the pane like tears down a cheek.
The day’s harvest of letters has been dealt with, the envelopes carefully resealed and lying on the kitchen table. A few more pieces have been added to the puzzle which, once complete, will be a portrait of the small community we call Fagerö. An all-round picture of the islanders will at last be available. Janne’s activity may well be high-handed, illegal and in many ways reprehensible, but the knowledge of Fagerö and its inhabitants that he gathers, sorts and classifies with scientific precision is invaluable. Without Janne …
“Don’t have the energy,” he said. “All you do is talk a load of rubbish anyway!”
“What we’re trying to do is to describe what happens when a small community is afflicted by unexpected strains and stresses. How do people react, both individually and communally?”
“Can’t you just leave us in peace? We’ll get through it without you people poking your noses in! Just push off!”
Janne the Post goes red in the face and clenches his fists in his trouser pockets.
V
The Cries of the Gulls
The rainy weather moved away, the barometer rose and the sea shone blue again.
A wide flat-bottomed workboat with a hydraulic winch and a front ramp chugged between the islands and skerries out in the Kvigharufjärden, rolling in the swell left by the storms of the last few days. The boat was red, with FAGERÖ VOLUNTEER FIRE BRIGADE painted in white capitals along the sides. The three crewmen were dressed in orange waist waders and windproof Helly Hansen jackets. One of the men was driving the boat and the other two were scanning the sea and the rocks on the reefs and islands with binoculars at the same time as trying to keep their balance against the movements of the boat.
The glare of the sun off the blue sea, silvery and shimmering. The fringe of foam around islands and rocks. And the cries of seabirds – common gulls, herring gulls, terns – as they rose into the air when the boat approached. Gleaming white bellies, grey upper wings, yellow and red bills – and cries.
“For Christ’s sake shut up!” Axmar shouted, shaking his fist at the birds circling above a small skerry. The skerry was no more than a long and narrow reef, too insignificant to have a name on nautical charts, and bare apart from a few tufts of arrowgrass and woad sprouting in the crevices. But it suited the birds and its granite slabs were white with droppings. Axmar and his brother Fride surveyed the shoreline with their binoculars. The swell suddenly lifted the hull of the boat and it rolled, clumsy as an old cow. Axmar had to grab hold of the rail not to go overboard and oaths poured from his lips.
“The birds seem agitated,” Perch-Johan shouted from the wheelhouse. “I’ll take her round so we can check the seaward side.”
The waves beat against the rocks, licking the granite with tongues of white foam. The birds screamed and screamed.
“Nothing here,” Axmar said with relief after scanning the skerry with his binoculars.
“Hang on a minute! What’s that over there?” Fride said pointing to a pile of rocks off the southern end of the skerry. Axmar raised his glasses reluctantly.
“Bloody hell!”
“Johan, can you take us in closer?” Fride called.
It was a woman, lying on her back and rubbing against the rock. She was naked apart from a pair of pants and the torn remnants of a bra.
She was in a bad state. Her left breast was almost torn away so that nothing but greyish flesh remained. It was impossible to tell what she had looked like, as her eyes and nose and lips were gone. Her long yellow teeth were bared in a grin at the volunteer firemen from Fagerö. The elastic of her pants cut deep into her swollen belly.
Seawater had washed away all the blood.
Perch-Johan took the boat as close to the rocks as he dared and lowered the front ramp. Axmar and Fride went down into the water and eased the woman free from the rocks and lifted her into the boat. As they laid the body down it emitted a farting noise that made them recoil. Their masks were incapable of keeping out the smell that rose from the body. Axmar produced a black plastic body bag and they placed the body in it and zipped it up. Then they placed the body bag down on the floor beside the others that already lay there.
Once they had finished Axmar ripped off his face mask and bent over the rail. No more than a few drops of bile came up this time. Perch-Johan backed away from the skerry and steered the boat towards the next one.
The Word Becomes Flesh
K-D Mattsson was the master of the word at meetings of the district council. Words became flesh when he struck the table with his chairman’s gavel. That, at least, was what K-D himself desired and hoped, for in his opinion the word was the very foundation of democracy. K-D likes to see himself as a doer of the word, as it is put in the General Epistle of James 1:25, not merely as a hearer: “But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
What James then goes on to say about the tongue as the bearer of the word is also worthy of consideration: “So also the ton
gue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!”
K-D Mattsson is convinced that the Epistle of James has much to teach us in the sphere of politics. He considers its author – according to tradition the brother of Jesus – to have been the first true democrat.
K-D did not, of course, share these thoughts on the word and democracy with his colleagues on the Fagerö District Council, for he thought he knew what a politician should and should not say and he had been wise enough to keep his interest in Bible reading and exegetics secret. K-D wanted to be thought of as down-to-earth and matter-of-fact. The man who sticks to facts achieves results, and at the end of the day results are the only things that matter in politics.
K-D surveyed the boardroom table in the committee room on the second floor of the community centre. Along with the members of the council, Gösta Berg, chief executive of the district, was in attendance and Solveig Blomsterlund-Enrot was taking the minutes.
They were ready to start the meeting.
The papers for the meeting lay in front of each participant and covered both the issues raised on the agenda and proposals for the decisions to be made. Bottles of mineral water had been laid out and the flag in the centre of the table had not been forgotten: it bore the coat of arms of Fagerö District – a sailing ship and a fish on a blue background, symbols of the traditional economy of the islands. The chairman’s gavel lay alongside K-D’s place, waiting to be wielded by his hairy fist.
K-D Mattsson usually felt rather solemn at this stage of the proceedings. With a tap of his gavel he was about to start the machinery of decision-making: the word was about to be made flesh.
But today was not an ordinary day.