Depths (14 page)

He had slept badly the night before he arrived back in Stockholm. When he blew out the paraffin lamp he began to feel that a catastrophe was approaching. It could arrive at any time: a single German torpedo fired by an unseen submarine racing through the dark water. He lay in his cabin with sweat pouring off him and listened to the sound of the powerful engines. Rake's assurance that he would not expose the engines to undue strain did not help him. The boilers could explode without warning, create big holes under the waterline and sink the ship in less than thirty seconds.

That was his greatest dread: being trapped inside a bubble of air deep in the innards of a ship that was sinking to the bottom. Not even his screams would leave any trace. He was afraid that death would be totally silent.

It was not until dawn when the vibrations had lessened and the ship was in the inshore channel of the Stockholm archipelago that he managed to fall asleep. But the vibrations followed him into his dream.

He was in an engine room. The heat was unbearable, he was surrounded by groaning and screaming stokers with black faces, backs covered in oil, and he knew everything would soon be over. Then he noticed that one of the sweating stokers was the dead German sailor. He had a shovel in his hand, but his eyes were missing, there were only two bloody sockets.

At that moment he managed to kick himself free of the dream and rise to the surface.

He was very tired, but he got dressed and went on deck. The sea was grey, the dark, rocky skerries came and went through the mist. His exhaustion led to his eyes playing tricks. Sea and sky merged to form vague points of light, an interplay of light and shade.

The temperature had fallen during the night. He moved to the spot where nobody could see him. He stayed there until they had passed Oxdjupet. Then he returned to his cabin, closed his suitcases and examined his face in the mirror.

His father was more evident now, the wrinkles drawing his eyebrows closer together, a feature that made him look bitter and had always frightened him as a boy. Against his will he was on the way to inheriting his father's tortured face. His father was trying to reclaim the power he used to have, to resurrect himself in his son's face.

He breathed on the mirror until it misted over, and the face disappeared.

I am drawing a line under this journey, he thought. It is over now. I fulfilled my mission. I have done what was expected of me. I will not get much thanks for it, that is hardly the done thing at Naval Headquarters. But I shall be given new jobs to do, more responsibility, and sooner or later I shall be promoted. I am proceeding up life's invisible staircase.

He checked his suitcases, made sure he had not forgotten anything and left the cabin. It was lighter now, the archipelago stepped forward out of the mist. Corves full of fish in little cargo boats sailing towards Stockholm to unload their catches. Grey men hunched over tillers and leaning against masts.

He had a quick breakfast in the officers' mess. Without joining in, he listened to a heated discussion between a lieutenant and an engineer officer. The lieutenant, who was red-haired and pale, insisted in a shrill voice that the outcome of the war was obvious. Germany would win, since that nation was driven by a fury that the English had lost. The first engineer maintained that the Germans and Russians were arrogant, they wore 'Napoleon's boots', he claimed, which meant they would be punished and defeated.

Tobiasson-Svartman left the mess and went on deck. What kind of boots am I wearing? he wondered. They were now approaching Djurgården. He remembered his dream. What did it mean? The German sailor who had returned from the bottom of the sea off Sandsänkan, what did he want?

A warning, he thought. Don't proceed too quickly, don't forget too quickly.

That was as far as he got. His thoughts got in each other's way, short-circuited his power to reason.

The
Svea
had docked. Captain Rake bade him farewell. A rating had already carried his suitcases down to the quay, where he was hailing a man with a wheelbarrow.

Rake looked hard at Tobiasson-Svartman. The dawn light was very bright.

'You look pale,' he said. 'Paler than you did.'

'Perhaps exhaustion is taking its toll.'

Rake nodded thoughtfully. 'Like when there's been a battle at sea,' he said. 'While it's happening you notice nothing. Doctors have maintained that it's a purely physical process. Something they call "adrenalin" is pumped around the body. A chemical or biological name for human bloodthirstiness. When the battle is over you are either dead or alive. If you are dead the bloodthirstiness was pumped round in vain. If you are alive you are overcome by exhaustion. Whether you have won or lost is of no great significance. Or rather, if you have survived you have won, even if you are on the losing side.' He stopped abruptly, as if he had realised he was uttering something inappropriate. 'I talk too much sometimes,' he said, embarrassed. 'I often tell people around about me to hold their tongues, but I don't always practise what I preach.'

He stood erect, saluted and shook hands.

'Good luck.'

"Thank you.'

Tobiasson-Svartman walked off the gangway. He turned, but there was no sign of the captain. He took a few hesitant steps, almost stumbled. He had experienced the same dizziness each time he landed on Halsskär. On board ship he had to work actively to keep his balance, whereas on dry land it was up to the earth or the stones under his feet to prevent him from falling.

The rating saluted and returned to the ship. The man with the wheelbarrow full of luggage was old and toothless. His cheeks were hollow, he wheezed when he breathed. Tobiasson-Svartman had to help him to get the wheelbarrow on the move.

Stockholm was all hustle and bustle. It seemed to him rusty, covered in mud and dirt, all these houses, trees, streets and people that suddenly surrounded him. The city gushed all over him, unexpectedly; perhaps it was frightening, perhaps beautiful.

He did not go directly home.

He had in him something of the sluggishness of a large ship, the need to reduce speed slowly, to yaw without excessive impetuosity. He could not walk through the door of his flat in Wallingatan too soon. That would be like losing control and crashing your bows into the quay.

The first time he had been away on a mission after marrying Kristina Tacker he sent a telegram saying when he expected to be home. That was the only time. He had never repeated the mistake.

He parked the toothless man outside the building in Wallingatan and went to a modest licensed cafe in the next block. It was early in the day, but he knew the owner, the widow of a sailmaker who had spent his life working for the Crown. Her name was Sally Andersson and she was full of life. He could go to her place and get drunk at six in the morning if he wanted to. She was still young, this merry widow, and he never ceased to be surprised by her gleaming white teeth.

Sally was standing among her cups and beer mugs and saw him coming.

'I haven't seen you for ages. You must have just returned from a long voyage,' she said, wiping down the corner table where he usually sat. 'Can you tell me why the navy employs such wretched cooks?'

'What makes you say that?'

'You are too thin. A ship's master can't be as thin as that. One of these days the wind will blow right through you. You'll be seagull meat.'

'The cook was good. But the sea wears you down. You don't grow thinner, you get worn down by all the salt and the constant motion of the sea.'

She laughed, flicked at the arm of a chair with her cloth and served him his usual glass of aquavit with a beer chaser.

A couple of years back, in May 1912, after a lengthy mission checking the depths of the secret channels around the north of Gotland and Fårön, he had drunk far too much when he got back home. He was very drunk by ten in the morning and started talking non-stop. He had lost control of himself, and Sally Andersson saved him from making a fool of himself. When he started saying things about the naval chiefs of staff that he would later regret, she piloted him to a room behind the kitchen and laid him down on a wooden bench. Although she employed two waitresses, Sally always served him herself. Nobody else was allowed to come near him, recharge his glass, wipe up when he was drunk and started spilling beer. She gave him what he needed to drink, never more than that, and she was always the one who would eventually tell him he had had enough.

'You've come back,' she would say. 'You can go home now.'

He had never questioned her judgement, simply settled his bill, and left.

She gave him watered-down aquavit and beer that morning, and made him eat some sandwiches with lots of butter and thick slices of ham.

He drank quickly. He was merry after only half an hour. Sally sat down at his table and looked hard at him. Her white teeth glistened. They were like seashells. Straight, polished seashells in a row, stuck down in dark red sand.

'How close is the war?' she wanted to know.

He searched in his befuddled brain for an answer.

'Firelight,' he said eventually. 'In the distance, over the sea. A terrible silence.'

'I asked how close the war was, not what it looks like.'

He pointed to his forehead.

'Inside here,' he said. 'That's how close the war is.'

'How can a clever man like you talk such a lot of crap?' she said.

He emptied his glass, but she shook her head when he asked for more.

'If you have any more now, you'll pass the limit.'

'What limit?'

'The limit where a woman no longer recognises the man she married.'

He put what he owed her on the table. There was a strong smell of old leather and wet wool as he left the room and its tobacco-laden fug. He stumbled, emerging into the street. He walked round the block and stopped at his front door in Wallingatan. The man who was supposed to be guarding his luggage had fallen asleep, propped up against one of the wheels. Tobiasson-Svartman gave him a kick. The man jumped to his feet and unloaded the cases.

He opened the door. He left everything that had happened in the bright light of the street. In the darkness of the stairwell he had the feeling that he had docked at the Wallingatan quay.

Kristina Tacker was waiting for him in the dim hall.

That made him feel insecure, it went against his plans. He had not sent her a telegram, nobody else would have had a reason for letting her know when he was due. She noticed his confusion, also of course that he was a bit drunk.

'I saw the wheelbarrow with your luggage. I could almost smell it from the flat window. But I was beginning to wonder when you were going to appear.'

'I went for a walk round the block to shake off the spray and the seaweed and the smell of mud. Leaving a ship is a complicated process.'

He embraced her, sucked in all her fragrances, the wine, her perfume with the hint of lemon zest. She didn't hug him tightly, there was a gap between them, but he hoped she was pleased to have him home.

Somebody started giggling behind them. His wife gave a start, whipped round and dealt the maid a mighty box on the ear.

'Go away,' she said. 'Leave my husband and me in peace.'

The girl ran. Her rapid footsteps made no sound. He had never known his wife physically violent before and was scared by the force of the blow, as if he had been on the receiving end.

'Did you get my letter? The one where I wrote about her?'

'I got all your letters.'

Nothing was said as he hung up his naval overcoat, removed his shoes and followed her into the living room where the china figurines were standing on their shelves.

Nothing had changed. It was like entering a room that nobody lived in.

They sat on the chairs by the window. The light from the low sun came in through the thin curtains.

He told her about his mission in great detail. He could hide among the details. Everything he said was true, and he only omitted one detail: the existence of an island in the sea called Halsskär.

He erased it from the map, let the skerry sink down to the seabed.

Recalling that he had said his wife and daughter were dead upset him for a moment. He felt a pain in his stomach.

She was as sharp as a bird.

'What's the matter?'

'Just a shooting pain in a tooth.'

'Where?'

'My lower jaw.'

'You must go to a dentist.'

'It's gone. It was only a shooting pain, nothing to worry about'

He continued with his story as if nothing had happened.

When she got up to instruct the maid to serve coffee, it seemed to him that he had measured out a considerable distance between himself and his wife.

He had planted a lie between them. A lie that would continue to grow, even if everything else he had told her was true, or at least honestly meant. The lie did not need feeding. It would continue to grow of its own accord.

He wondered if it were possible to live without lying. Had he ever met a person who did not tell lies? He searched his memory, but he could think of no one.

They sat by the window drinking coffee.

The maid who had had her ears boxed seemed timid and scared. He felt sorry for her, and remembered the snotty-nosed oarsman. We are people who hit others, he thought, that is one thing, at least, we have in common, my wife and I, we deliver powerful blows that resound against people's heads. But one can always discuss the servants. We have to keep quiet about everything else, for the time being anyway.

'I find her so annoying,' Kristina Tacker said. 'She smells of sweat despite my telling her over and over again to wash herself properly, she doesn't dust the top of picture frames, it takes her ages to empty the bins or to go shopping and she can never get the amounts right in recipes.'

She spoke softly so that her words could not be heard outside the room.

'I'll have a word with her, of course,' he said. 'If necessary we shall have to sack her and find somebody else.'

'People don't want to be in domestic service any more,' Kristina Tacker said. 'We live in an unwilling age.'