Depths

by Mankell Henning

  She reached for the cork float, stood up, braced herself and started pulling.

  The net snagged immediately.

  'Hang on,' she said. 'We've got snarled up in something.'

  She tweaked and pulled. The net started to come in. But it was heavy.

  'What is it?' he asked.

  'If it's a fish, it's a big one. If it's crap from the seabed, it's pretty heavy.'

  She hauled in most of the net, but it was almost empty, just the odd bullhead, an occasional cod. He leaned over the side to see better. Just then she let go of the net and screamed. She slumped down on the stern seat and buried her head in her hands. Caught up in the net were the skeletal remains of a human being and something that might have been a piece of leather from a jackboot. He didn't need to ask what it was. He knew without asking. She had caught her dead husband in her net.

  PART VIII

  Measuring Lighthouse Beams

  CHAPTER 135

  It sounded as if she was howling. An animal in distress.

  The net with the bits of skeleton had been snagged by the rail. She stood up and tugged at it as if fighting with a big fish. But she didn't want to have it on board, she wanted the net to sink back down to the bottom of the sea.

  He sat motionless, holding the oars. What was happening was beyond his control. The net came loose and started to sink down to the bottom.

  'Row,' she screamed. 'Let's get away from here.'

  She flung herself at him and started to row herself. He could see her fear, feel the power in the strokes.

  They were a long way from the spot where they had caught the bones when she slumped back on to the stern seat.

  'Turn,' she said.

  'Turn to where?'

  'I was wrong. I must bring him up. I must bury my husband.'

  Her fear had now become despair.

  'There's no sign of the net,' he said. 'But I know where the place is.'

  'How can you know when there's nothing to see?'

  'I know,' he said. 'That's my special skill. I can read the sea, see what isn't visible.'

  He turned the boat round, rowed nineteen strokes, then changed direction slightly to port and rowed twenty-two more strokes.

  They had a little drag anchor in the boat. He knew that the depth here was between fifty-five and sixty metres. The anchor rope was only thirty metres long.

  'It's here,' he said. 'But the rope is too short. I can't reach the bottom.'

  'I must get him up.'

  'I know where it is. We can come back to this very spot. You have a length of rope in the inlet and we can tie it to the anchor rope. That would give another forty metres, which would make it long enough.'

  He didn't wait for her to answer but started rowing back to Halsskär. She sat quietly on the stern seat, hunched up, as if she'd just been exerting herself.

  When they got to the inlet he fetched the rope and put it in the dinghy.

  'Let me do it,' he said. 'Let me bring the net up. You don't need to be there.'

  She said nothing. When he rowed out again she stood watching him.

  CHAPTER 136

  He let the anchor sink to the seabed.

  He felt something at the fourth attempt. He stood up and pulled in the rope. The net reappeared, and in it the bits of bone and the piece of leather. It was part of a jackboot, with a rusty stud still attached to it. He pulled the net on board. There were fish wriggling away in it, a sign of life amid all the death. He removed the fish and the seaweed, and threw the net back into the water.

  He was reminded of the piece of drift net he'd seen that morning on board the Blenda. The soundless, lifeless movements, the freedom that meant always being on the move. Now another net had achieved freedom.

  He examined the pieces of bone. There was part of a forearm, a broken rib and the remains of a left foot.

  The foot upset him. There was something shameless about this well-preserved section of a man's skeleton, the only thing to remind an observer so vividly that this person had drowned in a state of inconceivable terror and loneliness.

  He rowed back to Halsskär. At one point he stopped rowing and felt his forehead to feel if he had a temperature. His forehead was cool.

  When he got back to the cottage he found it empty. He put the bones down, walked back to the spring and drank deep. Then he went to look for her. She must be there somewhere. Even so, he suddenly felt all alone on the skerry.

  CHAPTER 137

  He found her at the far north end of the island. She had crawled into a crevice, pressed herself down into the heather, lay with her eyes wide open but seeing nothing. He sat down beside her.

  There is nothing so easy as taking control of suffering people, he thought. People totally lacking in resistance. He remembered his mother, weeping, alone in one of the dark rooms that comprised his childhood home.

  A flock of crows was cawing somewhere in the distance. The sound died away. He waited. Thirty-two minutes passed. Then she stood up and hastened away. She walked back to the cottage. He was about to follow her in when she came out and hurried down towards the inlet.

  He stood quite still. Should he allow her to be on her own? There was nowhere she could disappear to, there were no hidden doors in the rocks that could open up.

  Then he saw smoke and could smell tar. When he got there he found she had set fire to a tar barrel and was stuffing nets and eel traps into the flames.

  'You can burn yourself!' he yelled. 'You can get burning tar all over you!'

  He pulled at her, but she refused to budge. So he smacked her, hard, in the face. When she stood up he hit her again.

  This time she stayed sitting on the ground. He knocked the barrel over and kicked it into the water. The barrel sizzled, the smoke stank. She was lying on the ground now, stained with tar and blood, her skirt pulled up way above her stomach. He reminded himself that there was a baby inside there, a baby that existed even if it couldn't be seen.

  The burning tar slowly went out. There was a thin layer of smoking grease on the surface of the water. He helped her up.

  'I must get away,' she said. 'I can't stay here.'

  'We'll leave the island. Soon. But not yet.'

  'Why do we have to stay here? Why not now?'

  'I haven't finished my task.'

  She examined her tar-stained hands.

  'I salvaged the bones and cut off the floats,' he said. 'The net has gone.'

  'It'll come floating up again.'

  'It will be driven by the currents down deep in the water. It will never come up to the surface again. Not here at least.'

  She looked around.

  "The bones are in the cottage.'

  'I have to bury him.'

  She set off. When they got to the door he took hold of her again.

  'I found something else.'

  'His head! God, I can't take this.'

  'Not his head. But a foot.'

  'They were big and dirty. His feet were only important for him, not for me.'

  She collected the remains on the ground in front of her and squatted down. She was murmuring, conducting a whispered conversation between herself and the bones. He leaned towards her to hear what she was saying, but he could not make out any words.

  Then she stood up and fetched the fur from the mad fox. She rolled up the bones and the piece of leather inside it, and asked him to bring a spade.

  The grave was a shallow hollow in one of the rocky ledges towards the west of the island. She did the digging, would not allow him to do it for her. When the spade struck rock she put the pelt in the hole and covered it with the soil. That evening she took the pipe and threw it into the fire. It seemed to Tobiasson-Svartman that she did that for his sake, removing the last trace of her husband. That night she clung tightly to his body. Her hands made it clear to him that she never intended to let go.

  CHAPTER 138

  The next day, in the evening, he told her that Halsskär was a sort of haven. A remote outpost in the
sea for people with nowhere to go.

  'It's like a church,' he said.

  She had no idea what he meant by that.

  'This skerry from Hell? A church?'

  'Nobody commits a crime in a church. Nobody sticks an axe into his enemy's head in a church. It's a haven. In the old days outlaws were able to seek sanctuary in a church. Perhaps Halsskär was that kind of place for you and your husband? Without your realising it?'

  She looked at him in a way he did not recognise. It was as if her eyes were turning away.

  'How did you know about her?' she asked.

  'Know about who?'

  'The woman who sought sanctuary on this island. The goddess. I heard about her once from Helge. A storm had blown up and I let him stay overnight. That was when he told me about the winter's night in 1843. You can't always believe what Helge says, but he tells lovely stories. He has many words, just as many as you have. It was a severe winter that year, the ice was so thick that they say it roared like a wild animal when it formed pack ice. But there was an open channel from the sea way out near Gotska Sandön, and a woman came floating along in that channel, she must have been a goddess because there was a sort of halo all around her body. She had been thrown overboard by a drunken sailor. She was transparent and freezing cold and the open channel froze over once she had passed through it. But she reached here, and she hid herself on the skerry. The following year a dead sailor drifted ashore, he had cut his own throat. It was the sailor who had thrown her overboard, and now it was his turn to be washed up here. Helge had heard the story from his father. I sometimes think that she and I are the same person.'

  She snuggled down under the covers. He sat down on the floor next to the bed, she stroked his hair.

  Then he started to tell her about another goddess, the one who stood guard on the edge of the great city in the west, far away over the sea, and bade welcome to everyone who went there seeking sanctuary.

  'I'll take you there,' he said. 'It's time for me to make a new start as well. You have your dead husband, I have my dead family.'

  'I want to go to somewhere far away from the sea. I don't want to see it, or hear it, or smell it.'

  'There are towns surrounded by desert. It's a long way to the sea from there.'

  'What would you do there? In the middle of a desert? With your sounding leads and your sailor's book and your navigable channels?'

  'There are things to measure in deserts as well. I could explore the depth of the sand. I could keep track of how it keeps moving.'

  'But what about the water?'

  'If I started to long for it, I could no doubt find a sea out there to start sounding out.'

  She fell asleep. He lay close to her, felt her warmth.

  That night he dreamed about a ship sailing backwards across the horizon. It felt like somebody being taken to be executed.

  CHAPTER 139

  One night in the middle of May she woke him up and put his hand on her stomach. The baby was kicking.

  The cry of a bird rang out through the night.

  They said nothing, just the hand, the baby kicking, the cry of a bird.

  He tried to conjure up the baby. Sara Fredrika's baby. Kristina Tacker's baby.

  Kristina Tacker's had a face, it was his own.

  Sara Fredrika's looked like the skeleton of a foot.

  When she fell asleep again he got up and went out. It was a bright spring night, damp, with a breeze blowing over the rocks. He went to the highest point of the skerry and looked out to the sea.

  He was overcome by his helplessness. All his lust and desire had gone. All he could envisage was dirt and misery.

  I have to get away from here, he thought. Without her. I have to find a way of following her from a distance. Of seeing her without her seeing me.

  I will have to enjoy my child from a distance. I cannot stay here.

  CHAPTER 140

  Although it was now May, it was still on the cold side.

  A short but devastating storm demolished the cottage's chimney. He climbed on to the roof and repaired the damage. He could hear Sara Fredrika talking to herself inside the cottage.

  As he was about to climb down he noticed a sailing dinghy approaching the island along the narrow Lindöfjärden channel. It was making good progress, its sail positively bulging.

  He jumped down from the roof, and told Sara Fredrika about the dinghy.

  'It will be Helge,' she said. 'You must remember him, and his son.'

  He prepared to receive the dinghy.

  'I want to talk to him in private,' she said. 'But I'm not going to say a word about my husband's foot in the net.'

  He went into the cottage, lay down on the bed and went to sleep. When he woke up again it was already evening. He walked down to the inlet. Sara's dinghy was still there. But there was no sign of the visiting boat.

  Nor was there any sign of Sara Fredrika.

  He shouted for her all over the skerry. No response. It was only when he came to the steep north edge of the island that he found her, where the breakers were rolling in to the battered rocks.

  She was asleep. Beside her among the rocks was a broken bottle.

  CHAPTER 141

  She woke with a start and sat up.

  She started coughing, the smell of strong drink slapped him in the face. When she tried to stand up she stumbled and grazed her cheek on a rock. He stretched out a hand, but she pushed it away with a laugh.

  'I'm drunk. Helge realised that I needed something to drink. He always has aquavit in the boat. It doesn't happen often. I'll be back to normal tomorrow.'

  'You can't spend the night out here.'

  'I shan't freeze to death. No birds are going to come and peck at me. I have to lie here in order to gather strength to stand up again.'

  She stretched, pulled up her skirt and straightened her legs.

  'You won't be able to get me to the cottage tonight. But you can stay here with me if you like.'

  She grabbed hold of his leg and almost succeeded in pulling him over. She was strong, her hands were like monkey wrenches. When he tried to pull himself free she laughed even more and tightened her grip.

  'Haven't you got it? I'm not going to let go of the man who's going to take me away from here.'

  'I've gathered that.'

  She let go and curled up in the hollow.

  I have to get away, he thought. One of these days she'll stick an axe into my head when she finds out that I'm not the person who's going to rescue her. It had dawned on him that he was afraid of her. He could not control her, whether she was drunk or sober. She tore some moss off a rock and covered her face with it.

  'Leave me alone now,' she said. 'Everything will be back to normal by tomorrow.'