Depths

by Mankell Henning

  He had left his telescope on top of his luggage. It was a modern model, with double lenses that could be adjusted by sliding a cylindrical ring in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction. If the ring had been moved he could be certain that Sara Fredrika had taken the telescope and kept him under observation.

  He was in the middle of a vast stretch of ice. Directly underneath him the distance to the bottom of the sea was forty-nine metres. He knew the precise depth at every spot on all sides.

  For a fraction of a second he hoped the ice would break, that it would be all over. All this pointless searching for a place where there was no bottom, where every measuring device had to accept defeat.

  Then he felt that Kristina Tacker was standing at his side. She leaned forward and whispered something in his ear, but he could not hear what it was.

  He went on over the ice. The surface was rough, there were ridges that looked like seams on a garment. He went to the place where they had sunk the body of the dead sailor, and paused over the deepest part of the sea in this area.

  He took his ice drill from his backpack. It had been made by the skilled craftsmen at Motala Verkstad in accordance with his own design. Unlike the ice drills used by the navy, his had a short handle. He found it made the work less strenuous because he could kneel on the ice and press down with his chest as he worked his way through the ice. He used one of his crampons to mark out a one-square-metre area. Then he started drilling.

  Somewhere in the distance Sara Fredrika would be watching him through the telescope. Maybe she had Dorflinger by her side. The deserter was suspicious, of course, and for his sake if for no other reason it was necessary to put on this performance.

  He made the first hole and was sure Sara Fredrika would be deceived into thinking he was sounding the depth. He drilled another hole and noted that the ice was fourteen centimetres thick.

  Then he drilled two more holes in the remaining two corners of his square. He made the holes big enough for him to be able to force his fist through them. When he had finished he pressed down with his foot in the middle of his square. He took off his hat and listened.

  The ice creaked loudly. He would be able to carry out his plan.

  The light was dazzlingly bright. The ice reflected it into his eyes. He turned round and shielded them with his hand.

  He thought he could see Sara Fredrika on a ledge just below the highest point on Halsskär. If he was right, the thing by her side was not a misshapen juniper bush, but the deserter he had promised to protect and assist.

  He didn't want to mention his name, it was easier to think of him as the despicable deserter, the man who had abandoned his duty and got in the way.

  CHAPTER 98

  He returned over the ice.

  Where the dead cat had been was only the patch of dried blood. He forced his way through the bushes growing by the shore and made his way towards the cottage.

  Gunfire could be heard from out to sea. Then came the shock wave. Then another shot and another shock wave. Then all was silent again. Perhaps it was a warning signal. Perhaps the deserter was surrounded, perhaps the whole German Fleet was moving towards them at the edge of the ice? He sat down on a ledge to the north of the cottage. From there he could keep watch on it. A solitary bird flew over his head, its wings flapping madly. He imagined it to be a projectile, aimed at nobody.

  Sara Fredrika came out, followed by the deserter. He had taken off his tunic and replaced it with an old jacket that must have belonged to her husband.

  Jealousy.

  He thought about the revolver locked away in a cupboard in Stockholm. If he had had it with him, he could easily have killed them both.

  She pointed towards the inlet, they set off. The deserter suddenly stopped, took hold of her arm and pulled her towards him. She let it happen. At first the jealousy had been minor, creeping and not especially worrying. Now it had grown into something intolerable.

  Then came fury.

  His father had once spoken to guests at dinner about the importance of people learning to act like snakes. Cold blood, endless patience and poisonous fangs that struck at exactly the right instant. He had not been at the table, it was a dinner for grown-ups and he was only a child. But he had listened from behind the door.

  Afterwards he had played snakes. He had dressed in brown, painted a stripe on his tongue so that it seemed to be forked, and tried to wriggle his way forward, wait patiently in the shade cast by a tree, stretch himself out on some rocks. He had even taught himself to spit thin squirts of saliva through his front teeth.

  When he was eight he had forced himself to endure the ultimate snake test. He had caught a mouse in a trap, still alive, and bitten it and killed it. He had not been able to eat it, though.

  Now here he was confronted by the unexpected. A deserter had got in his way. I shall kill him, he thought. And I'll cut off her hair that he has touched.

  He lay motionless on the ledge until they were out of sight. Then he went to the cottage, found the deserter's papers in his tunic pocket and studied them. Stefan Dorflinger, born in Siegburg on 12 September 1888. Parents, Karl, regular seaman, bugler, and Elfriede Dorflinger. Signed on as a rating in the gunnery section of the cruiser Weinshorn in November 1912. A number of regular appraisal reports were positive. There was also a photograph of his parents. Karl Dorflinger had a prominent moustache; a friendly seeming, smiling man, but on the stout side. Elfriede Dorflinger was also large, her head seemed to rest on her shoulders with no neck. A bugler and a housewife pictured at a pavement cafe in a park. A shadowy, blurred waitress was walking by in the background with a tray of empty beer glasses. They were holding hands.

  He studied the photograph at length. Two fat people holding hands.

  He thought about the pictures that existed of him and Kristina Tacker. They used to go to the photographer's studio at least once a year. But there was not a single picture in which they made physical contact with each other, no holding hands, not even a hand on the other's shoulder.

  He replaced the documents and picked up his telescope from on top of his rucksack. He opened the door and put the telescope to his eye.

  The image was blurred. She had used it.

  CHAPTER 99

  He was standing with the telescope in his hand when he heard them approaching. He put it down on the ground, closed the door and sat down in the sun, his back resting against the house wall.

  They were running. Both of them were out of breath.

  'There are people on the ice,' she said.

  'Did they see you?'

  'Yes.'

  'Who are they?'

  'Presumably hunters. But you can never be sure.'

  He thought for a moment.

  'Did they get a good view of you, or just sufficient to see that there were two of you?'

  'They are a long way away, in among the little reefs at Händelsöarna.'

  The Händelsöarna islands were more than a kilometre away from Halsskär. Unless the hunters had a telescope they couldn't possibly have been able to identify the people they had seen.

  'If they come here we can say that it was me and you they saw. Will they be sleeping here?'

  'They can build huts on the ice. They all know that I don't allow strange men to sleep in my cottage. Unless there's a storm or they've been in an accident.'

  'He'll have to hide himself outside.'

  He explained rapidly in German. The deserter seemed to trust him now and did not hesitate when they went out on to the rocks shortly afterwards. Tobiasson-Svartman led him to a crevice big enough for him to curl up in.

  'Why are you doing this for me?'

  'I would have done the same as you, and I would have hoped to meet somebody who was prepared to give me the same help.'

  'I would never have survived if Sara Fredrika hadn't taken care of me.'

  The deserter had lain down in the crevice and looked up at him. He had a scarf round his head, and the mad fox's pelt wound round his neck.
/>   'I love her,' he said. 'I shall never forget her. One day when the war is over I shall come back here.'

  'Does she know that?'

  'We can't talk to each other. But I think she knows.'

  Tobiasson-Svartman nodded slowly.

  'Yes,' he said. 'I am sure you're right. No doubt she does know.'

  He returned to the cottage and explained where the deserter was hiding. She had tied up her hair and was wearing a shawl.

  She shrank back when he touched her.

  'I promise to help him,' he said. 'But does he want to be helped? I'm afraid that one of these days he'll simply wander off over the ice.'

  'Why would he do that?'

  'He has been through something that nobody can put up with. It's important that we keep an eye on him. I'll let him come with me when I'm working on the ice. He can be of assistance.'

  She stood by the window. 'I remember the first time you came here,' she said. 'I thought you were a man I could never trust. Now I'm ashamed when I recall that.'

  'Why did you think you couldn't trust me?'

  'I thought you were lustful and up to no good. Now I know I was wrong.'

  'Yes,' he said. 'You were wrong.'

  'I keep thinking about your dead wife and your dead daughter.'

  'That's something we have in common,' he said quietly. 'The dead.'

  CHAPTER 100

  The men were from the inner archipelago. They carried shotguns and were going to hunt seabirds that were overwintering in the area. They were father and son, the father thin with sunken eyes, the son tall with a stutter. The father had a gold ring in one ear – perhaps he had been a seafarer who believed that the ring would save him from drowning, or at least pay for his funeral. Sara Fredrika had seen them before. They would call in now and then every winter, asking for nothing more than to know if she had seen any seabirds. They had decoys in baskets which they carried on their backs, and Tobiasson-Svartman noticed that the father smelled of strong drink.

  They eyed him curiously and made no attempt to conceal the fact that they were wondering what on earth a naval officer was doing out here on the skerry. He told them about his depth-sounding mission in the late autumn, and that he was now checking a number of measurements.

  'I remember people sounding the depths here when I was a young lad,' said the father, whose name was Helge Wallén. 'It must have been about 1869 or 1870. There were boats anchored at Barösund, measuring. My dad sold them groceries, eggs, milk, he even slaughtered a pig cos they paid him well. Us kids were half starved, but Dad knew what he was doing. He was able to buy our farm the year after, with all the dosh he raked in. They were here for ages, measuring. Can there really be so much going on down there that you have to go through it all again?'

  'It's because of the boats,' Tobiasson-Svartman said. 'Bigger ships, bigger draughts, the need for wider navigable channels'

  They were standing outside the cottage. The son had stammered when he introduced himself as Olle.

  'So you're still here, then?' the father said to Sara Fredrika.

  'I'm still here.'

  'We saw that you weren't on your own as we were passing Händelsöarna. I says to Olle, Sara Fredrika's got herself a husband.'

  'I'm still here,' Sara Fredrika said, 'but my husband is still my husband, even if he's lying at the bottom of the sea out here.'

  They stood a while outside the cottage. The father was chewing over Sara Fredrika's answer. Then he spat and lifted his bags.

  'We'd best be off,' he said. 'Have you seen any birds?'

  'At the edge of the ice. But further south, on the way to Häradskär. That's the place to put your decoys.'

  The men wandered off towards the inlet. Tobiasson-Svartman and Sara Fredrika clambered up a high rock and watched them leave, saw how they turned southwards when they reached the edge of the ice.

  'I'm related to them somehow or other,' she said. 'I can't quite work out how. But the link is there somewhere in the past.'

  'I thought everybody in the skerries was related to everybody else?'

  'We get quite a few incomers,' she said. 'The types who like to hide away, the ones that aren't tempted by the towns. I was in Norrköping once. I can't have been more than sixteen. My uncle was going to sell a couple of cows and he wanted me with him. The town has some kind of smell that made it hard for me to breathe.'

  'But even so, you want me to take you away from here?'

  'I reckon you can learn. Like swimming. Or rowing. You can learn how to breathe even in a town.'

  'I'll take you away from here,' he said. 'But not now. First I have to help this man.'

  She looked at him doubtfully.

  'Do you really mean what you say?'

  'I always mean what I say.'

  Sara Fredrika went back to the cottage. He watched her jumping from rock to rock, as if she knew them, every one.

  He waited until she had gone inside. Then he fetched the deserter, who was shivering in his crevice.

  CHAPTER 101

  At some point he was woken by a movement during the night.

  The man lying by his side got quietly to his knees. The embers in the hearth had almost gone out, and the chill had already started to take over the room. He heard the man groping his way to the bunk, a few faint whispers, then silence, only their breathing.

  He stayed awake until the man made his way quietly back to his place on the floor. His jealousy started rising from out of the depths and reached the point where he knew it was ready to burst to the surface.

  CHAPTER 102

  There was a change in the weather. It was warmer during the day and the snow started to melt, but the nights were still cold. Every morning for a week he took Stefan Dorflinger with him on to the ice. It developed into a peculiar sort of game, with him drawing up an imaginary line a hundred metres from where he had prepared the trapdoor in the ice. He taught the deserter how to drill, explained the principles of depth sounding and let him drop the lead down to the seabed and do the calculations. Tobiasson-Svartman played the role of magician who would occasionally predict an accurate measurement even before the lead had reached the bottom.

  Nothing is as magical as exact knowledge, he thought. The man who had run away from his German naval ship had found a strange magician in the Swedish winter landscape. A man who can see through the ice, who can measure depths, not by using a sounding lead but by using his magical powers.

  The deserter became calmer as the days went by. Every morning he would gaze out to sea, but when there was no sign of a ship he seemed to forget all about being tracked down.

  He would occasionally talk about his life. Tobiasson-Svartman asked his questions diplomatically, always politely, never intrusive. He soon formed his opinion of the deserter's character. Dorflinger was a limited young man, with no knowledge, no interests. His greatest resource was his fear, the fear that had driven him to try to row away to freedom.

  They spent the mornings out on the ice. They drilled and measured. Now and then they could see Sara Fredrika on the rocks on Halsskär.