He counted to two hundred paces. Then he turned round. She had gone. She was left behind.
PART VII
Capture
CHAPTER 110
The train came to a halt between stations. They had just passed through Åby. The station had been in darkness, but a fire was burning next to the line. It was evening, with a wind blowing from Bråviken. Tobiasson-Svartman was in the carriage next to the engine. He was sharing a compartment with a man fast asleep in a corner, his head buried in a moth-eaten fur coat. He listened to the sighing noise coming from the steam engine, and was overcome by a feeling of unreality: he would be stuck here, the train would never start moving again. There were no rails ahead of him, only an endless vacuum and sighs from the engine.
It was the second day after he had left Halsskär and started his trek to the mainland. He had spent the night in the boathouse on Armnö, but he had been unable to sleep and as soon as dawn broke he went on walking over the ice towards Gryt.
Round about Kättilö he had heard rifle shots, first one, then another. Apart from that all was silent: the ice, the islands, solitary birds.
When he came to Gryt, walking up the hill towards the church, he had a stroke of luck. A car approached and they gave him a lift as far as Valdemarsvik. The driver said not a word all the twenty-kilometre journey. There were big rust holes in the car, and Tobiasson-Svartman could see the road beneath his feet.
On the back seat was the body of a child, a little girl, wrapped in a blanket Only when they reached Valdemarsvik did he ask what had happened.
The man replied wearily: 'She scalded herself. Knocked over a bowl of boiling water. She was soaked in it from her stomach downwards. She screamed something awful before she died. But her face wasn't burned.'
The girl was lying with her face turned towards him.
As he sat on the train he did not think about Sara Fredrika or Kristina Tacker. He thought about the girl who had scalded herself. Who had died from the stomach downwards.
CHAPTER 111
A conductor came past. Tobiasson-Svartman was standing in the corridor between the first and second coaches, and he asked the man why the train had stopped. He noticed that he had a Bible in one of his uniform pockets.
'It's the cold. A set of points has frozen. A couple of linemen are thawing it out. We're twenty-five minutes late.'
'Twenty-nine,' Tobiasson-Svartman said.
They started off again shortly after midnight. The man in the corner woke up, gave Tobiasson-Svartman a bleary look and went back to sleep.
Tobiasson-Svartman had killed a man. Was he now less scared of death than before? Or more scared? There was no answer. His instrument was dead. His sounding lead was silent in his rucksack.
They arrived in Stockholm as dawn was breaking on 2 March. Outside the Central Station he passed the conductor from his train, but the man did not recognise him.
CHAPTER 112
Stockholm greeted him with snow flurries and freezing temperatures. He stood with his luggage and a porter, wondering where he should go. At first he gave his home address, then changed his mind and named a little hotel at Norra Bantorget. The porter disappeared into the snow and Tobiasson-Svartman went back into the station. He ordered breakfast in the first-class dining room, but the food stuck in his throat and he was forced to run to the toilets and throw up. The waitress looked at him in astonishment when he returned with tears in his eyes.
She can see, he thought. She can see that I have killed a man.
He paid his bill and left. The city and the falling snow made him dizzy. He came to the hotel where the porter was waiting for him. When the receptionist told him that the hotel was full, he was furious. The receptionist turned pale and gave him a room that was in fact already booked. The porter carried up his luggage.
'That's the way to treat them buggers,' he said with a smile as he pocketed his payment.
Tobiasson-Svartman closed the door, locked it and lay down on the bed. It was like being back in the boathouse on Armnö. He closed his eyes and clutched his sounding lead to his chest. Nobody knew where he was, nobody knew where he was heading for, least of all himself.
There was a draught from the window. He wrapped a scarf round his head, moved as close as possible to the wall and waited for the strength to make a decision.
CHAPTER 113
The snow eased off at about eleven. He stood in the window and looked down at Vasagatan. He was looking for somebody among the pedestrians who might be himself.
He made his decision. He would stay in the hotel today and tonight. Then he would go home to Kristina Tacker.
The events on Halsskär began to fade. He examined his hands. No trace there of what had happened. His fingers were smooth and unmarked, his hands were unaltered.
He went out in the evening. It had stopped snowing, but it was bitterly cold and the city was deserted. Only those who had to ventured out of doors. He took a cab outside the Central Station and asked to be taken to the Grand Hotel.
As he was entering the dining room a man turned towards him. It was his father-in-law, Ludwig Tacker.
Tobiasson-Svartman could see no escape. Tacker introduced him to the man he was with, Tobiasson-Svartman understood his name to be something like Andrén. Tacker asked his companion to wait in the foyer.
'I spoke to my daughter yesterday,' Tacker said. 'She was very worried to have heard nothing from you.'
'My mission was classified as secret.'
'So damned secret that you couldn't even send a greeting to your wife? When did you get home?'
'I came to Stockholm about an hour ago,' he said. 'I haven't been home yet. I have to meet some of my superiors first and submit a report.'
Ludwig Tacker's eyes were narrow and cold.
'At the Grand Hotel? In the dining room of the Grand Hotel? Secret goings-on?'
'We shall be meeting in a special room. I just wanted to see if I was the first to arrive.'
Tacker eyed him up and down.
'And when are you intending to go back to your home and your wife?'
'I don't want to disturb her too late. I shall spend tonight in a hotel. I can't go back home like a thief in the night.'
Tacker leaned towards him.
'I don't believe you,' he said. 'I have never liked you, I could never understand why Kristina married you. You're lying. There's something fishy about you, something about you never rings true.'
He did not wait for a reply but marched out of the dining room. Tobiasson-Svartman went to the Grand Café and started drinking. His father-in-law had seen through him. Now he would have to repeat that explanation to Kristina Tacker when he got home the next day.
He would give her the details, apologise for having spent the night in a hotel then sit down calmly by her side. She would tell him what had happened while he had been away. He would listen, and all he would say about his expedition to the frozen waters at the edge of the open sea would be that he was glad it was over.
CHAPTER 114
That night he dreamed about very deep water.
He was holding his sounding lead in his hand, using it as a sinker and gliding down through the sea, but he felt no pressure despite being several kilometres under the surface.
It was not the fissure in the Pacific Ocean where a British hydrographic vessel had claimed to lower more than ten kilometres of line into the water before the bottom was reached. This was an unknown deep spot he had himself discovered, and even as he was gliding slowly down with his sounding lead in his hand, he knew that the bottom was 15,345 metres below the surface. It was a bewildering depth, and it concealed a secret. At the very bottom was a different world and a different life corresponding to the one he led.
He carried on sinking, perfectly calm, no hurry. His only worry was that he would never reach the bottom.
He had often had this same dream, and he had always woken up before reaching the bottom. It was the same again. When he opened his eyes he remembered that
there had still been quite a way to go.
He stayed in bed. His disappointment at not having reached the bottom metamorphosed into an intense desire to murder Ludwig Tacker.
Somewhere there must be a hole in the ice for him as well, he thought. One of these days Ludwig Tacker too will descend to the bottom of the sea with iron sinkers strapped to his body.
CHAPTER 115
A porter wheeled his luggage through the streets of Stockholm.
Horses ploughed their way through the snowdrifts. It was still cold. He held a hand over his mouth as he followed on the heels of the porter.
I am frightened, he thought. Not because of what I have done, but because she will see straight through me, just like my father used to do with his scary eyes.
He longed to be back among the silence and the ice. It was as if the city had turned its back on him.
CHAPTER 116
His father-in-law had got there first. Kristina Tacker's surprise at seeing him was pure artifice. The maid took his coat and left them alone.
'I arrived in Stockholm late last night. I didn't want to frighten you.'
'You wouldn't have frightened me.'
She took his hand and led him into the room in the middle of their flat, the warmest room in winter and the coolest in summer. There were flowers on a table. He was on his guard immediately. She never used to buy flowers.
She sat down on the edge of one of the red plush chairs and said something in such a low voice that he couldn't make out what it was.
'I couldn't hear.'
'I'm pregnant.'
He did not move. Even so, it felt as if he had started running.
'I've been waiting for a chance to tell you.'
He sat on a chair next to her.
'Are you pleased?'
'Of course I am.'
'The baby is due in September.'
He worked it out in his head and realised right away when it must have been conceived: the night after he had come home in December.
'I've been frightened. I didn't know how you would react.'
'I have always wanted to have a child.'
She stretched out her hand. It was cold. Sara Fredrika's hands had been warm. He held her hand and longed to be back on Halsskär. As he was walking over the ice he had thought that he would never return. Sara Fredrika would stay there, waiting for him. But the ice would melt away without his going back, the sea would open up but he would never go back to her island.
Kristina Tacker said something he did not catch. He was thinking about Sara Fredrika and could feel his lust rising. What he longed for was somewhere else. Not in the warmest of the rooms in Wallingatan.
'Life will be different,' she said.
'Life will be as we imagined it would be,' he replied.
He stood up and walked to the window since he couldn't bear to look her in the eye.
He heard her leaving the room. Her steps were sprightly. There was a clinking noise as she started moving her china figurines about. He closed his eyes, and it seemed to him that he was now sinking down to the point where there was no bottom.
CHAPTER 117
The next morning he left the flat at about nine.
He forced himself to walk quickly, so as to shake off his tiredness.
He had not slept a wink all night. When Kristina Tacker had fallen asleep he breathed in the smell of her skin, then carefully got out of bed. He wandered around the flat, trying to understand what was happening. He was losing his grip on his surroundings. This had never happened to him before. His instrument no longer worked.
He stood with one of her china figurines in his hand, just before dawn, when time seems to stand still. He thought aloud and whispered to the china figurine with its naively painted face that in fact he was the one who no longer worked. He had no right to blame his instrument.
He was out of breath by the time he came to Skeppsholmen. He waited until his pulse rate was normal before going in through the high doors.
CHAPTER 118
Tobiasson-Svartman walked down the echoing corridors and reported to a lieutenant by the name of Berg.
Lieutenant Berg looked at him in surprise.
'Nobody told us you were coming.'
'I'm doing that now. I don't expect to be interviewed today, I've only come to report that I'm back in Stockholm.'
The lieutenant asked him to take a seat while he finished writing an urgent message. Tobiasson-Svartman sat down to wait. The clock on the wall was two minutes slow. He could not resist standing up, opening the glass case and adjusting the minute hand. Lieutenant Berg raised his head, saw what he was doing then continued writing. His pen made a rasping sound. When the letter was finished he put it in an envelope, sealed it and summoned an adjutant by ringing a hand bell on his desk. The adjutant looked strangely pale, almost as if he were made up. He left the room after giving a half-hearted salute.
'You know that man's brother,' said Berg, rising to his feet.
Tobiasson-Svartman did his usual assessment. The man towering up in front of him was two metres tall, give or take two centimetres, depending on what kind of shoes or boots he was wearing.
Lieutenant Berg stood behind his desk, as if remaining within a fortress.
'Or rather, you did know his brother. He is no longer with us.'
He paused to allow Tobiasson-Svartman time to consider his own mortality.
'Lieutenant Jakobsson,' he said. 'Your superior officer last autumn. The man who died at his post. Adjutant Eugene Jakobsson is his younger brother. Just between you and me, he's not going to go very far. The notion of his being in command of a ship is unthinkable. He's an excellent adjutant, but a very limited person, and frankly a bit stupid.'
'I didn't know Lieutenant Jakobsson had a brother.'
'He has another three brothers and two sisters. It's very rare for us to know anything about the private circumstances of our fellow officers. Unless they become personal friends, of course.'
Berg sat down again.
'How did your mission go?' he said. 'I know about it.'
'The errors have been corrected.'
'But you don't have your charts with you?'
'As I said, I didn't expect to be interviewed immediately.'
Berg consulted the fat ledger on the desk in front of him.
'The committee is due to have its regular meeting on 7 March. You can be interviewed then. Bring the charts with you. Prepare your presentation scrupulously, your time will be limited. The admirals are nervous.'
Berg stood up.
'I have another request,' Tobiasson-Svartman said.
Berg didn't sit down. Time was short.
'I'd like two months' leave. Starting immediately. On the grounds of utter exhaustion.'
'Every poor devil is exhausted nowadays,' Lieutenant Berg said. 'The admirals chew their moustaches, the commodores get heart attacks, bosuns get drunk and fall into the sea, and the gunboat crews can't aim properly. Who the hell isn't exhausted?'
'I don't want to be a burden on the navy by going on sick leave. I'd rather take unpaid leave.'
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