“Another person from here?” Ringmar had asked.
She had nodded.
“What was his name?”
“Frans.” She had looked up again, with the strange fog in her eyes. “Frans Karlsson. My Frans.”
Winter saw that face before him again when he came back into the room.
She had looked so infinitely sad when she said that. My Frans. She had told them in very few words that Frans Karlsson was hers, that they were betrothed and that he never came home and she had waited, and she was still waiting. Like the seaman’s wife she never became. Like a living memorial to the men of the sea who didn’t return. He thought of the Seaman’s Wife down by the Maritime Museum. But she was made of stone. Ella Algotsson was not made of stone.
She hadn’t said more, but he knew through Johanna Osvald that Ella Algotsson had never married.
Her fate was connected to John Osvald and his family; their fates were linked to one another; the chain continued through the years from the past to the present. Binding the nations on both sides of the North Sea.
“He lies down there too,” she had said after a little while. “Thay never found the boat. The Marino. And nothin’ else neither.”
Ringmar had looked like he was preparing himself.
“Did you know that Axel Osvald went over to Scotland a few weeks ago, Miss Algotsson?” he had asked.
She had nodded.
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Erik Osvald didn’t say anything about it when he was here?”
She had repeated a “no” but suddenly it was as though she no longer had the strength. Her face had fallen. The clouds in her eyes were gone, but her eyes had a new kind of faintness. She seemed tired now, dead tired. Winter had again felt ashamed, as though they were using these people without really knowing why. As though nothing good could come of this.
As though this would only make everything worse. What was it Erik Osvald had said one time? Storms are good for the sea? That they stir up the stew on the bottom. That no fisherman yet has lost by betting on a storm.
What was it they were tearing up with their questions? He thought about that now, in the dark of his flat, where he’d spent the better portion of his adult life.
Would this investigation be good for anything?
He saw Ella Algotsson’s face again. He blinked and it remained. He saw Arne Algotsson nodding again, as though he were concurring with something again.
They had concluded their conversation with Ella; they had tried to speak with Arne. They had moved their chairs up to the window.
They had asked questions, but all his responses had been nonsensical. It was both comic and tragic.
Arne had no more to say about “Skipper Osvald.”
Winter had wanted to know more. John Osvald hadn’t been the skipper when they set out. He became skipper. Why?
Why weren’t Arne Algotsson and Bertil Osvald along on that last trip?
What relationship did the young men have with one another on the little island that had been their home?
How had they functioned together out at sea?
Winter had thought about Erik Osvald’s words again, about the silence on board, the relationships on board.
Had something happened on board?
How had they functioned together in their involuntary exile?
He thought about it again now, sitting in the middle of the city he’d always lived in. He wanted to know. He wanted to look for answers to all of those questions, and to several others that couldn’t be answered here, only there. Possibly. Over there in Scotland.
It was a fascinating story. There were many parts. Spread across more than fifty years, across the sea.
There was a great sadness here, but there was also something else.
He wanted to know.
There were those who knew more than he did but didn’t want to say anything.
Yes.
Axel Osvald found something in Scotland that he’d been searching for his entire life, and it ended his life. Did such a truth exist, such a reality?
Maybe.
It was connected to the sea. The fishing. The trawlers. The cities. The islands. The villages. The winds. And so on.
Winter got up to go into the bedroom and try to get a few hours of sleep.
It was as they were going to leave the house on Donsö, as they were about to say good-bye to Arne Algotsson. Ringmar had said something about Scotland, Winter didn’t remember exactly what, something about Scotland in general. Ringmar had said “Scotland” several times in a row.
But he remembered what Algotsson had suddenly answered, or said, more like said straight out to no one in particular, more like said straight out the same way he had chanted about his mission earlier:
“The buckle boys are back in town” was what it sounded like.
“What did you say?” Ringmar had asked, but of course Algotsson wasn’t rational like that; he didn’t repeat himself on command.
“The buckle boys are back in town,” Ringmar had repeated, because it was easy to say; it flowed nicely.
“The buckle boys are back in town,” Algotsson repeated, as mechanically as before.
“You said SCOTLAND before,” Winter had said to Ringmar, but also to Algotsson. “Scotland.”
“Cullen skink,” Algotsson had said, and then he had been completely silent.
The words were still there in Winter’s head. He still hadn’t made it to bed; he was standing halfway in the hall. Cullen skink. Those were damn strange words. It sounded Scottish, it did, but what did it mean? Or maybe he’d said something else? Collie skink? Collie sink. Had he said “sink?” Just as Winter had that thought, the faucet in the kitchen dripped, a sound only heard at night. An irritating sound that would stop if only he would change the washer. Drip down in the sink. That sinking feeling.
He walked back to the living room. The clock on the wall was no longer on three; it was four thirty. He could hear the first streetcars. The sound of a delivery truck getting bread down in the bakery, or leaving flour. Suddenly Göteborgs-Posten dropped down through the mail slot in the hall behind him. He still wasn’t tired. He walked over to one of the bookcases and selected one of the atlases, taking out the one he thought was the best.
Scotland.
The buckle boys.
Cullen sink.
He turned on the floor lamp and remained standing.
He searched for map 6, northern Scotland. He found Inverness in the innermost part of the bay called Moray Firth. He saw Thurso and John O’Groats way up there, but they didn’t mean anything to him. He read the names of towns and cities from Inverness to Aberdeen. It was far, but not that far. He started inland, from west to east. He came across Dallas, a little dot, but still there. Proto-Dallas. Maybe Steve’s father had started the milking there now, along with Steve’s brother. Mom was making oatmeal like mad, Scotland’s delicious national dish.
Winter came to Aberdeen with his finger, and now he let it run north. He came to Peterhead. He came to Fraserburgh at the northeastern tip. He continued straight west, back toward Inverness, along the coastline now, village after village: Rosehearty, Pennan, Macduff, Banff, Portsoy, Cullen.
Cullen. Cullen as in Cullen sink or skink. Sink from Cullen. A kitchen sink from Cullen, Scottish kitchen sink realism.
So there was a Cullen between Portsoy and Portnockie. Something had told him it was a place.
He continued west along the coast, but only to the next city.
Buckie.
The Buckie boys are back in town.
33
He was home again. This was the only place he called home now. He was walking on the beach. The protruding rock formation in front of him, to the west, was called the Three Kings. Everyone here had always called the rocks that. It had to do with the sea. Ruling the sea, being the master out there.
In a different time this had been a city of life, a royal burgh for the future. No more.
No trawlers went out for herring, none came back. Haddock wasn’t smoked here anymore; there was no haddock and therefore no smoke that stung your nose. Once there had been three smokehouses. Now the smoke smelled like garbage when it came up out of the houses where the poor souls tried to get warm. The smoke hit the sky and it too was petrified.
He turned around. It was a blue day. He could see. The sky was cracked as though from some cursed strikes of a hammer, and it had collapsed at the edges and was wide open, and he could see across Seatown and the viaducts and the city above and the hills above the city and the blue sky above the hills. That was what he wanted to see. It was why he had walked here, wandered down Castle Terrace and climbed over the Burn. He could still climb. He could do a lot, still.
Jesus!
He closed his eyes and saw the water and the quarterdeck and the storm that still hadn’t come, not the storm, and the faces and the eyes and the movements and … and … Frans’s eyes. Just afterward. When he knew. The hand that Frans tried to reach out.
Egon’s scream.
Jesus. Save me, Jesus!
He stumbled and nearly lost his balance. There was a sharp pain in his hip.
Why couldn’t he forget?
Where are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour
Stand aye accursed in the calendar!
Some became old and forgot everything. They managed to get sick. There was nothing left for them; it was washed away like the offal on a deck, all that crap was gone, overboard with that, the deck lay shining in the sun, or the moon, washed clean. No memories left. No traces. They could move on, free from memories, go to Jesus with consciences washed clean.
He limped as he went back across the sand. A dead whiting lay at the edge of the beach. The fish came willingly in to land to die when no one here went out after them. He heard the waves strike against the kings behind him. He covered his ears for a brief moment. Someone screamed inside him. He kept the scream inside with his hands over his ears, and then he let it out.
A man he recognized was sitting there when he stepped into the Three Kings. Another one. He debated turning around, but the man hadn’t reacted when he stepped in. He had only looked from stranger to stranger with a cold gaze and then looked out at North Castle Street, where the shadows were sharp under the viaduct. The houses on the other side had a thorny pattern, as though they were covered in graffiti. In an hour the sun would have moved so much that the shadows would be gone, replaced by the smooth stone. There was no graffiti here. The young people who would have made it fled west and east as soon as they could fly, to Inverness, Aberdeen. This was exactly in between them; presumably they fled farther than that, to Edinburgh, Glasgow. Some all the way down to London.
He ordered his pint and his whisky. A woman he didn’t recognize was standing behind the bar. She wasn’t young and not old either, on her way from nothing to nowhere. She spilled foam on the bar and sighed and got a rag. He could smell the rag. His ale smelled the same as he drank. He washed it down with whisky. He who wanted to hold his liquor must follow that order. Beer on whisky, mighty risky. Whisky on beer, never fear.
He took another sip of ale. The man over by the window got up and walked toward the door. Suddenly he turned around and said, “Good-bye,” and he nodded in answer. The woman behind the bar nodded too, but he had felt that the farewell was meant for him. He didn’t like it. He drank quickly and took the whisky glass and stepped off his stool. There was a sudden pain in his hip again. He saw the man closing the door of a car across the street, and the car started and drove out onto Bayview Road and disappeared. He didn’t know the man, had never seen him. Why had the man said good-bye to him? He finished his whisky and placed it on the table where the stranger’s beer glass was still standing.
He walked south on North Castle, took a left onto Grant Street, and came to the square. An empty bus stood on the square. The passengers and the driver were presumably eating lunch in the Seafield Hotel, on their way to Aberdeen since that was the name on the sign on the front of the bus.
The Seafield was not for him, not now and not ever.
He hadn’t even gone to a place like that in Aberdeen.
But they’d been at the Saltoun Arms Hotel in Fraserburgh.
They had washed up in a restroom that had been shining clean like the sun on the sea on a day without clouds.
That was two nights before.
Was there anyone who knew? Who had guided them there? Only two days before …
They’d eaten dinner in a room where there were big green plants, and everything had smelled nice. The food had been warm and tasted good. They had eaten a pudding afterward; it had been sweet and red. It had quivered like the belly of a deep-sea fish.
He hadn’t been there since.
People came out of the hotel. They got onto the bus. It drove toward Aberdeen.
They had docked out at Abercromby Jetty and then in Tidal Harbour. He had walked ten thousand steps on Albert Quay.
Across Victoria Bridge. Down to Timber Yards.
Up again to Commercial Quay.
He had sat at the Schooner and seen the dusk over Guild Street.
They wouldn’t let him get away.
He had known that. He had thought.
They waited. Someone waited.
Outside, he had climbed up the steep steps to Crown Street. Would he be able to get up there today? Maybe. Well, not today with that hip, but another day.
He had walked north on Crown and then along Union. The war was all around, in the shop windows, in people’s everyday clothes, in the soldiers’ uniforms. Everything was as dark as it could be, blacked out. The dark ages. Those were the dark ages.
He had written letters. He had written to his family.
He remembered the light in the mess, how it flickered in the wind as he wrote.
He asked about Axel.
He had thought of the letters in his loneliness all these years.
He had never wanted to see any of the letters again. It was someone else who had written them.
He walked south on Seafield Street, away from the sea, past the hotel, town hall, the police station where no one cared about him; he didn’t think any of the younger ones knew who he was, or that he existed, and all the older ones were gone, everyone was gone.
He continued eastward, across Albert Terrace, Victoria Place, back toward the cemetery, where he didn’t know where he would lie. No one knew.
There was a darkness over the sea when he returned, walking down the stairs to Seatown. He met someone on the stairs, but he was invisible again. He could move in and out of it. He could reach out a hand, no one would see him.
The children’s clothes on the line next to the nearest house moved in the evening breeze. The black windows, covered by shutters.
The red paint of the telephone booth glowed. It was as though it were fluorescent. He had stood in there, he had been forced to use it. He never would have believed it. At first he hadn’t understood what to do, but he could read. His hands had shaken so hard that he had to try several times before it worked. Then he had asked her.
As he walked past it rang!
He gave another start and felt his hip. He kept walking and didn’t look around. It rang and rang.
At home he lit the fireplace. The humidity had increased while he was away. He kept his coat on as he readied the fire. It flamed up from the newspaper and then began to lick at the sticks in the middle. He warmed his hands.
He looked into the blaze, which was growing now, pulled up by the air, which was a spiral through the flue. The fire was like iron that burned and turned to glowing rust. Rust. Yes. Everything was stone and rust around here now. There wasn’t anyone with hammers anymore.
They had gone into the old capital, the one for the fishing fleet. Back then it had been like a teeming square next to an open harbor.
He had gone there, and he had felt the message that burned in his coat pocket. It was like sharp flames inside
him. He had driven by the shipyard and two rusty ships lay as though frozen in the red sludge. There was only silence, no blows.
He had seen the monument again. He remembered; he had been there.
He had sent his message over the sea. He knew that Hanstholm was a second home harbor now for boats from his old harbor. The auction. The bunkering.
The few boats from home.
Before the war there had been forty fishing boats on the island.
They had gone twenty hours west, two hundred nautical miles. Mondays.
They set the trawl. They fastened well. To pipe was an art. It was gone now.
They dragged the trawl. It ran one hundred fathoms deep.
He had missed that. He had always missed it.
They pulled up the trawl by hand. He missed that too. In rough seas it could wash over. Missed it. Speed set at three knots. The last pull, the last time they lifted the trawl for the night. They cast the anchor and were still. Lit the stern lights.
On Fridays they went to the fishing harbor with the boxes. Two hundred boxes. He knew how to shovel ice.
Bertil had stood in the cabin. Egon had run the machinery. Arne had taken care of the tools.
He and Frans had done all the other scut work. They were the youngest. They had rushed back and forth across the deck, slipping, hauling, lifting, undoing knots, and watching the fish run down into the bin. They had cleaned. Their hands had been red and cold.
They had had to prepare food. The youngest prepared the food on board.
They had gone to sleep too late and been woken too early.
Trawl haul!
Their work continued.
Later he would be at the helm himself.
They fished in the dark.
They fished all night.
They continued westward.
God!
He had sung in the Mission congregation.
Almost half the people on the island had been members of the congregation.
There was always a Bible on board.
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