by Lars Sund
Fagerö Salmon AB has suspended payments. The bankruptcy petition has been lodged. The debts amount to a million euros or more. Axmar, who sometimes worked for the fish farm on an hourly paid basis, stood despondently with his arms and head hanging low when K-D told him it was all over. Axmar didn’t say a word, just stood there with a tin bucket in his hand, the damp strands of his thin colourless hair sticking to his head and his boots coated in mud. K-D saw him pedalling off in the Storby direction through the rain. He was riding the old woman’s bike he always used, a Tunturi with wooden handlebar grips worn smooth with use and a frame mottled with brown patches of rust. Axmar was bent forward over the handlebars, pushing hard on the pedals, the edges of his rain jacket flapping in the wind as he wobbled along.
What K-D is asking himself is whether he can claim that the bankruptcy of the salmon farm wasn’t his fault, whether he can be cleared of the responsibility.
He debates the issue with himself, but the debate does not last long.
Conclusion: a discharge is out of the question.
The compressor in the cold store starts up and the strip lighting flickers and dims as the load on the system increases temporarily.
K-D’s marriage is the next item on the agenda.
He proposes that the item be postponed until a later occasion.
He grows conscious of his own breathing – heavy, laboured. He licks his dry lips.
Two of the items on his list have thus been dealt with, which leaves one – the most important one.
Politics: when all is said and done, politics is what comes first with K-D Mattsson.
The dull hum of the compressor on the other side of the wall in the processing hall drowns out the rattle of the rain on the roof. The sound reminds K-D of the noise of the refrigeration units in the containers in Tunnhamn. When things were at their worst and bodies were coming ashore on Fagerö every day, the units were kept running twenty-four hours a day.
“In my opinion the bodies are not the concern of the council,” K-D says in his own defence. He hears the words echoing between the walls of the processing hall.
He had said exactly the same thing a few days earlier at the most recent meeting of the council.
But Abrahamsson from Busö had shaken his head.
“You’ve been trying to sweep this issue under the carpet, K-D,” Abrahamsson had said, his smoker’s voice rasping like a shovel scraping a pile of gravel together. He spoke slowly as if he would have preferred not to say what he was saying, but that actually made the accusation even worse.
Abrahamsson was right, of course. K-D had been trying to behave in the way he believed to be politically correct.
“But it can’t go on like this,” Abrahamsson continued. “Fagerö is a small community. We can’t take responsibility for hundreds of foreigners.”
“No more bodies have come ashore since midsummer, though.”
That’s what K-D had said and now, standing in the fish processing hall, he thinks it was a mistake to respond in that way. It implied he had acknowledged the criticism and thus exposed himself politically.
“You must know that there’s a strong feeling among Fagerö people that the bodies of these strangers should be moved from our cemetery and buried elsewhere,” Pettersson interposed. “There is a petition going round for them to be moved and it seems that many people have signed it already.”
K-D stared at Abrahamsson, at Pettersson. Both of them, along with Beda Gustavsson, had signed the invitation to the Odinsborg meeting – a meeting which, in K-D’s view, had been completely unnecessary. K-D’s reasoning was as follows: it’s possible that the dead should not have been buried on Fagerö in the first place, but he recoiled from the idea of moving them. Once buried, the dead should be allowed to remain in the earth. To dig them up, to disturb their final rest, was indecent. It went against Christian ethics. If that unhappy meeting hadn’t been organised the issue would never have come up. People would have accepted the situation as it was.
There had been a strange atmosphere in the council meeting room which K-D had found impossible to interpret. One thing was clear to him, though, and that was that he was losing control of the meeting. It was a new and unpleasant experience as far as he was concerned. He moistened his lips and reached for the chairman’s gavel. His feeling of unease grew.
“Although this topic has been raised I do have to point out that it is not, as far as I can see, on the agenda.” He looked in Solveig’s direction for support – she was standing in for the district chief executive – but she kept her eyes stubbornly fixed on her papers. “If a discussion of this issue is still thought to be necessary, it should be brought forward on a future occasion and in accordance with properly constituted democratic procedures.”
“No! We should discuss it now,” Abrahamsson said brusquely. “As elected representatives we can no longer duck our responsibilities – as we have been doing hitherto!”
This was an open attack on him, K-D Mattsson, and on the manner in which he led the work of the council. K-D Mattsson was being found wanting.
K-D Mattsson lost his temper. That was his biggest mistake.
K-D and Abrahamsson had long been colleagues in local politics and they had similar views on many questions. Both of them practised realpolitik and knew from long experience what it was possible to achieve and what was impossible.
K-D also liked to think they were friends.
The position that Abrahamsson took on the question of the dead foreigners had come as a surprise to him. Because of his money, but also because of his position, Abrahamsson was known and respected on Fagerö. Money and power were things the islanders understood. During his years in politics K-D had learnt a good deal about the importance of leadership. People rarely become active without a leader to take the initiative and point the way. K-D was certain that if Abrahamsson’s name had not been on the call for a meeting it would never have had the impact it had.
And K-D had felt forced to ask Abrahamsson: “Why did you decide to lend your weight to that meeting and to this so-called People for Fagerö group?”
This was after the council meeting was already over and they were leaving the community centre in the rain. Abrahamsson lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. He coughed.
“This business of the corpses …” he said, coughing again, clearing his throat and spitting out brown slime. “Shit, I really should stop smoking. You can see how difficult it is for people to get over this, can’t you? You’ve noticed it too, surely, haven’t you?”
“Well, I suppose …” K-D conceded. “But …”
“We should have objected earlier. Should have said that we didn’t want them here. Not on our island.”
And Abrahamsson fell silent and smoked while the rain fell equally on the unjust and on the just, on the living and on the earth that covered the dead.
“The only thing I want is for everything on Fagerö to be just as it was before these foreigners were washed ashore here,” he said.
K-D Mattsson leaves the fish processing hall. It’s still raining as he locks the door for the last time. He walks slowly down to the shore and looks out over the bay. The water is grey and disturbed by small choppy waves that make a dull slapping sound.
He looks at the fish cages anchored out in the water. There are pontoon walkways linking them to the shore, where the white fibreglass tanks of fish food are fixed to steel mountings. K-D walks out along one of the pontoons. The walkway sways beneath his feet and the pressure-treated boards are wet and slippery. Waves slap against the sides of the flotation tanks and foam splashes on his boots.
He is thinking about what was discussed at the council meeting, about what Abrahamsson said and what he said himself. He is thinking about what he did and what he didn’t do.
And even now he still cannot grant himself a discharge.
And he thinks: once my bankruptcy and divorce become public I shall have to resign my chairmanship of the council. No doubt Abrahamsson wi
ll be the one who takes over. I used to think of him as a friend – not now, though.
K-D Mattsson is standing right out at the end of the swaying slippery walkway and staring down into the grim grey waters. The rain is still coming down and his face is so wet that large drops are running off it.
IX
We Visit Fagerö for the Last Time
Autumn has arrived and the wind is driving angry waves against the quay in Tunnhamn and tearing at the few leaves left on the birch trees. Dead yellow leaves skip across the ferry quay, a discarded paper bag sails up in the air, the rope on the flagpole slaps the pole with sharp tap-tap-taps. The sky is a churning mass of dirty grey. Far out over the waters of Norrfjärden a flock of scoters is flying south in formation. They have the wind behind them as they disappear out of sight behind the headland at Gråharukläppen.
The only people taking the ferry Arkipelag to cross Norrfjärden now are either islanders or faces we are familiar with. And then, of course, there’s us – the reader and the scribe.
We bump into Ghita Saarinen in the cafeteria of the Arkipelag. She has taken leave of absence from the local radio station and is working for a newly established human rights organisation that documents illegal abductions, disappearances and other injustices. It also attempts to bring the guilty parties to book. At the start of the week she returned from another journey down south where, with the help of local human rights activists, she was investigating a series of inexplicable disappearances that have taken place in recent years. She intends to spend the autumn preparing a detailed report on the basis of the information she has uncovered.
That was as much as we were able to find out before the Arkipelag reached Tunnhamn and Ghita had to hurry down to her car.
She drives up to the Old Police House in Storby. Most weekends now her small white Nissan Micra may be seen parked there alongside Riggert von Haartman’s four-wheel-drive Volvo.
We continue our trip round Fagerö, a happy little island. To live there was tantamount to winning the lottery. Well, that’s what the Fagerö islanders thought anyway.
Judit’s girl is still missing without trace. It seems unlikely that we shall ever discover what happened to her.
It was hard for Judit and she grieved.
In late summer she got into the habit of making occasional visits to the American Bar. Not, however, to seek comfort in alcohol. She used to arrive early, immediately after Kangarn had opened up and while the American Bar was still more or less empty. She would feed the jukebox and listen to the records, the old hits from the sixties. Kangarn used to stand her a cup of coffee – that was all she would take and she never stayed long.
The last time Judit came to the American Bar she played Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”: “They never get tired of putting me down…” Judit played the record twice, and then a third time. Then she rose from the table next to the jukebox, which is where she had been sitting, and left.
No one knows what she was thinking.
On the fourth Sunday in August, a sunny but quite cool day with long feathery cirrus clouds sketched on a pale blue sky, Pastor Lökström returned to the pulpit in Fagerö church for the first time since that unfortunate Sunday before midsummer.
The morning service had been more solemn than usual and the church was full because the bishop was undertaking his parish visitation and was serving at the altar as well as giving a sermon. The bishop’s sermon took as its text the words of 1 Timothy 6:12, where St Paul says: “Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called.”
Pastor Lökström did not make an appearance in the church until after the offertory hymn. Then the door of the sacristy opened and he emerged and went up into the pulpit.
His entrance came as a surprise to everyone since as far as anyone knew he was still on sick leave. Lökström looked very pale and the people sitting right at the front thought they could see tears in his eyes.
From the small crow’s nest of the pulpit Lökström had a glimpse of the blue sea. He saw the votive ship hanging on a cable from the ceiling, he saw the organ loft and the whitewashed vault of the transept, and down below he saw the faces in the pews turned up to him, wondering and confused.
His wife was sitting in the front row, her head bent.
He wiped his hand across his eyes, took a firmer grip on the edge of the pulpit and swallowed. His throat was as dry and coarse as sackcloth.
“Dear friends …”
He had to start again.
“Dear friends, I have a confession to make.”
His decision had by no means been an easy one. He had paced around the manse night after sleepless night. He had tried to pray, he had wept his eyes dry and, in despair, even screamed at God. The bishop had cut short his holiday in order to talk to him and counsel his soul.
Meditation had been of no help, nor had prayer, nor the words of the bishop.
Pastor Lökström began: “Before the bishop, before the dean and other members of the cathedral chapter, and before you all I wish to state that when Death came to haunt our island I failed you. I …”
His voice broke again and he gulped for air several times.
“Before you all I admit that I was frightened by all the dead strangers washed ashore on our island. I denied these people … in my great fear I denied them the sympathy to which they had the right. The words I spoke over them were empty sounds, nothing more than empty sounds.”
He swallowed hard again.
“In medieval pictures depicting the ravages of the plague we often see the dead greeting the living with the words: ‘As you are now so once were we. As we are now so shall you be.’ In the presence of death all humankind is equal. Death is our common fate irrespective of where we originate, of what colour we are, of which language we speak. All of us have the right to be treated as equals whether we are dead or alive. But in my fear and horror I saw the dead who came among us as different.”
Pastor Lökström looked out over the congregation.
“I failed these strangers and I failed you. I was unable to give you the comfort and help you had the right to demand of one who calls himself your shepherd. And I failed myself. I have no faith left.”
He reached round behind his neck and unfastened his white clerical collar.
“I have decided to resign my post and to leave the congregation. And I ask for your forgiveness.”
He came down from the pulpit and, with the eyes of the congregation on him from all sides, slowly walked the length of the aisle and out through the porch. The silence in the church was such that the creak of the hinges and the rattle of the iron latch rang through the church as he closed the door behind him.
At the beginning of September Jarl Enros, skipper of the Kaleva, died in the University Hospital following a heart attack. His funeral was attended by everyone on Fagerö.
Abrahamsson placed two wreaths on the grave, one from himself and his wife and one from Fagerö Shipping. He bowed his head and stood for a time with his big wrinkled hands folded on his stomach as he contemplated the flowers and the wreaths lying on the grave. The ribbons on the wreaths fluttered in the wind.
“I really shouldn’t have told you to keep quiet about the corpses you saw on that voyage, Jalle,” Abrahamsson muttered.
It was as if the motor schooner Kaleva understood that her skipper was gone forever. Something happened to her and she went into decline, suddenly becoming a worn-out old boat that no longer wanted to go anywhere.
Abrahamsson, with a heavy heart, decided it was finally time to let her go to the breaker’s yard and a tug came to fetch her from the quayside.
But the Kaleva still had her pride intact and she had no desire to die on some slipway on the mainland. She wanted to end her days out here. A sudden storm took them all by surprise and with the seas running high the Kaleva broke free from the tug. Before the crew of the tug managed to fix a new towline the Kaleva had run on to rocks off the island
of Stora Pungö. Her hull was breached and she went down in eight metres of water, which left only the top of her mainmast above the surface.
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the M/aux Kaleva committed hara-kiri on her final voyage.
Fagerö Salmon AB was declared bankrupt at a court hearing on 18 September. The creditors’ petition revealed that the debts amounted to €1,141,920.70. The business was put on the market by the Southern Archipelago Cooperative Bank.
A rumour was soon doing the rounds on Fagerö that Kangarn was interested in buying the fish farm. It has not as yet been possible to confirm that rumour.
Even before the decision of the bankruptcy court was made public K-D Mattsson announced that he was standing down from all his activities in local politics.
The door of the American Bar is ajar, the windows facing the summer terrace have been covered with translucent builder’s polythene that is rustling in the wind, and there are tarpaulins over a part of the roof where the felt is torn.
The polythene has been pulled aside from one of the windows and St Olof is passing out blackened pieces of tongue-and-groove panelling to St Erik who then throws them down into a container below the terrace. The container is already almost full of charred boards, soot-damaged furnishings, ruined kitchen fittings and the twisted and burnt remains of a Wurlitzer 1300 Americana jukebox. Though everything is now cold, you can still smell the acrid stench of fire and smoke. Kangarn’s boys are working in dogged silence.