Sail of Stone

by Ake Edwardson

  Johanna Osvald called as Winter was making a double espresso in order to have the energy to think. It was better and cheaper than amphetamines. Coltrane was blowing “Compassion” in the living room, along with another great tenor saxophonist, Pharoah Sanders. It was music for wild thoughts, asymmetrical, tones for his own head. Coltrane’s instrument wandered like a lost spirit, on its way through black and white dreams, through sparse halls. Elsa had gotten used to falling asleep to extremely free-form jazz. Winter wondered what that might lead to.

  What drew him to jazz first and foremost was the individual expressions of the music. The best thing about jazz was that it gave the jazz musician the chance to be himself. To be his own self. It was music that first of all stood for expression, for immediate reflection, not interpretation. It was all about improvisation, but not in an irresponsible way. Quite the opposite. In improvising, the musician took on a responsibility, and the result depended on talent and his own resources, and experience. Emotional experience. It was music for emotions, from emotions.

  Angela had gone out to think as well, a round trip to Avenyn.

  “It’s him,” said Johanna into the phone. “It’s my dad.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Winter.

  “They’ve taken good care of me,” she said formally. It was a slightly strange comment. Perhaps she was in shock. There was a sharp edge to her voice. “This policeman Craig has helped with everything.”

  “There’s nothing you need?” Winter asked.

  “Noth … nothing you can help with,” she said, and he thought she started to cry. It sounded like it, but it could have been the line.

  I’m not sure, thought Winter. Maybe we can help. Maybe when it comes to answers.

  “Have you spoken with a doctor about your father?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t say anything.

  “What did he say?”

  “That it was a heart attack that … that killed him. He had extreme hypothermia.” Winter heard her breathing. “It’s cold up here. I went out for a minute to think, and it was cold and raw.”

  “Are they going to do more tests?” asked Winter. He didn’t want to say the word “autopsy.” She knew what he meant anyway.

  “If they need to,” she said. “If there’s something they need to do to come up with a … cause, they can do as many tests as they …” She stopped talking. “What is that horrible noise in the background?” she said.

  “Where?” said Winter.

  “On your end. What is that racket?”

  “Just a second,” Winter said, walking into the living room and turning the music off in the middle of “Consequences.” “It was a record,” he said into the phone when he came back.

  She didn’t comment.

  “So, what are you going to do now?” he asked.

  “I’m … I’m going back to this medical center tomorrow and then there’s some paperwork and I hope to be able to fly home with Dad as soon as I can.”

  “Yes.”

  “He has to come home,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  There was a sudden whistle on the phone, like a wind through the line, which must have run across the North Sea, from Inverness to Aberdeen to Gothenburg. Aberdeen and Gothenburg were at exactly the same latitude on the map. Or maybe it was Donsö and Aberdeen.

  “I just spoke with Erik,” she said.

  “Where is he?” asked Winter.

  “Out at sea,” she said. “They’re on the way down to Hanstholm with their catch.” He heard her blow her nose. “He’s coming right home after that. He’ll be there when I … we … arrive.”

  “Good,” said Winter.

  “I think something happened up here,” she said, suddenly and quickly. “Something that caused this. Something … awful.”

  “I think so too,” said Winter.

  “Something that has to do with Grandpa.”

  “Yes. I think so too.”

  He didn’t tell her about his visit to the elderly Algotsson siblings.

  Angela came back with redder cheeks and damp hair. She smelled like blue autumn evening and salty wind and black mud and gasoline fumes, which together made up this city’s perfume. It was a blue evening. Vasaplatsen was a blue address. Kind of blue.

  “I’ve thought about it,” she said, pulling off her long scarf.

  “What do you say, then?”

  “Well …”

  “Is that a summary?”

  “I don’t know if we can work things out with Elsa. If she wants to. If it will work.”

  They had talked about letting Lotta have Elsa for a few days. His sister had nagged and nagged. Bim and Kristina had nagged. Maybe it could be worked out. He and Angela had done things without Elsa during these four years, and at those times Elsa had stayed with Lotta. It had worked. There were no grandparents in Gothenburg for Elsa, but Aunt Lotta was there, and her cousins Bim and Kristina.

  “We’ve never gone abroad alone,” said Angela. “Without Elsa.”

  “We can take different planes.”

  “Is this something to joke about?”

  I might not be joking, he thought.

  “And of course Siv is expecting us.”

  “Nueva Andalucía will always be there, and she will too,” said Winter.

  “Don’t be too sure of that.”

  “She can always move home,” said Winter.

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Angela. Her voice seemed to change.

  “Do you know something I don’t?” He pushed the chair back a few inches. “I’m talking to you as Dr. Hoffman now.”

  “Nothing serious, from what I understand,” said Angela.

  “Do you two keep secrets from me?”

  “She’s a little tired, Erik. I’m sure that’s all.”

  “Tired? Tired of what?”

  “She’s not exactly young anymore,” said Angela.

  “I don’t think it’s good to be in one-hundred-degree weather half the year,” he said.

  “That’s mostly a question of drinking,” said Angela, “of getting liquids.”

  “And there’s the next risk factor,” he said.

  “I was talking about water,” Angela said, raising an eyebrow and smiling slightly.

  “I was talking about gin,” he said.

  “Gin and tonic,” said Angela, “don’t forget that water. But seriously, Erik, you know that she hardly drinks at all since Bengt passed away.”

  “And her consumption before that?”

  “It’s probably not a problem,” Angela said.

  “Maybe we should ask her to come home for a while,” said Winter.

  “Maybe now,” said Angela.

  “You mean now, if we go over to Scotland?”

  “Yes. But we have to talk to Lotta first. And Siv might not think it’s a good idea. And we have to talk to Elsa.”

  Angela came back from the bathroom. Winter was staring straight up at the ceiling from the bed. He had undressed only halfway.

  “You’ve never met Steve’s wife,” he said.

  “So does she think this is a good idea?”

  “I don’t know,” said Winter. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “For the same reason you just gave me, only the other way around.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I suspect that we’ll be left on our own quite a bit. And we don’t know each other. If you and Steve are going to investigate this strange story.”

  “Just a few days, max,” said Winter. “Maybe not at all.”

  “Where are we going to stay, then? On Steve’s farm?”

  “Hell, no. There are nice hotels in Inverness. I have Steve’s word on that.”

  “I want to see a few of the options.”

  “Of course.” Winter lay on his side, facing her. “Steve’s sister works in Inverness too, you know, as a lawyer.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be really happy to take care of us. Welcome to my w
orld.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Erik. This can’t be solely on your terms.”

  “Is it? I’m just trying to look on the plus side here. We’ll do things together and Steve and I might go off for a bit to … well, I don’t know. But suddenly I felt like we could see each other again and that we could do it all together. That everything was sort of falling into place.”

  “Have you met his wife? Sarah?”

  “No.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Exactly forty,” said Winter. “Like you.”

  “Is this a vision of the future?” said the thirty-five-year-old Angela, tossing a pillow.

  “We’re living in the future,” he said. “We’re on our way,” he said, slinging a pillow in her direction; it intercepted her throw.

  “I thought this whole story was about the past,” she said, throwing the pillow back again, and Winter ducked and the pillow knocked over the alarm clock, which thudded onto the varnished pine floor.

  “Now you’ve ruined the floor,” Winter said, firing off his last pillow.

  Angela seemed preoccupied by something, and she took it right in the face. Winter turned around to see what she was looking at.

  “What are you doing?” asked Elsa, who was standing in the door with the clock in her hands.

  “I have to talk to her first,” Angela said as they were lying in bed. It was dim and quiet. “Steve’s wife. It’s important. I imagine she thinks so too.”

  “Of course.”

  “And then there’s Lotta and Siv and the—”

  “I know. This is assuming that all the ifs disappear.”

  “In which case, it’s not a bad idea,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Light was coming in from the hall, where there was a nightlight under the table that the telephone was on. He could hear a soft whirring from the fridge.

  “I have one more question,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “This thing you’re trying to get some clarity about, what you’re going to do …” He saw her silhouette come closer. “It isn’t dangerous at all, right, Erik?”

  32

  The espresso was doubly useful. Winter could not sleep, and he could think. At three o’clock he slid out of bed and walked through the hall and looked in on Elsa, who was sleeping on her back with her eyes half open. He could tell because he was holding his face four inches from hers. He could barely hear her breathing, so he listened for a long time. At that moment Elsa let out a snore, only one, and turned onto her side, and Winter tiptoed out.

  He sat down in the living room, in the dark, which would last for another several hours. The usual blue light came in through the window. The streetcars hadn’t yet begun to rumble by down there. He could hear the sound of a lost car on the way to some blue address. Suddenly he heard a cry from up by the kiosk at Vasaplatsen, which had a functionalist-style neon sign that glowed just as it had during the record years.

  All of these sounds and lights would be inconceivable and just plain threatening in the house by the sea. Silence could be heard from the sea. Was that what he was afraid of? Was he even afraid?

  Had Arne Algotsson been afraid? Or his sister? Or both of them?

  Winter got up from the easy chair and walked over to the balcony door and opened it enough so that he could go out. He had stepped into his slippers, which were always next to the door. There was no wind out there, but there was a faint chill that smelled like autumn. A different moisture in the air, an acid scent that actually meant everything he could see growing down there was dying for now, but he seldom thought that way. He thought of the acid, and of the salt that you could sometimes smell when the wind came from the northwest. A pinch of salt.

  Arne Algotsson had looked as though he had rubbed his face with salt; there was a gray film on it, like a crust of old salt that had solidified and formed a mask that had started to crack a long time ago. His eyes were deep set. There was a light in them, but Winter couldn’t see where it came from, not then, not as he was sitting across from the old man and trying to ask his questions along with Ringmar.

  His sister’s name, Ella, had been mentioned early on. Ella. She had been sitting next to her brother.

  “Yes, tha’s right, I have a sester called Ella,” he had said, turning to Ella Algotsson. “D’ya know her?”

  She had looked at Winter and Ringmar as though to say, See, my brother is as demented as a trawl door. Or a broken trawl. Everything just falls right through. You just have to look at him, and listen to him.

  “Did you know John Osvald?” Winter had asked.

  “John’s a fisherman,” Algotsson had said from inside his world. “He was the skipper later.”

  “What do you mean? You said he was ‘the skipper later’?”

  “Shall we eat?” Algotsson had said.

  Winter had looked at Ella Algotsson.

  “We just ate,” she had said, leaning forward and laying her hand on his arm, and he had started. She had seen that they noticed his sudden movement.

  “It’s his old injuries,” she had said.

  “Sorry?” Ringmar had said.

  “His old fishing injuries. Thay always got eczema out on the boats before. Thay always had the rabber clothes on. Thay got complaitly scraped up. Arne still has the marks on his arms. Thay never go away, the marks.”

  “Rabber clothes,” her brother had echoed.

  They, that is to say Ringmar, had had a necessary conversation with Ella Algotsson before this. Her brother had looked at Ringmar and Winter as they came in, but then he seemed to forget. He had stared through the window, into the cliffs that floated like soft waves behind the house. There were no sharp edges there.

  “You can’t get anything sensible out of him about that time now,” she had said.

  “But then?” Ringmar had asked.

  “Then? When?”

  “When he came home from Scotland. The last time. What did he have to say then?”

  “Not much.” She had cast a glance at her brother, who was sitting with his face illuminated by the daylight outside. A pillar of salt.

  “He did talk about the accident, of course, but there wasn’t so much thay knew.”

  “What did they know, then?”

  “You know too, don’t you? It was that thay had come down from Iceland and the boat sank.”

  “It wasn’t so far from land, from what I understand,” Ringmar had said.

  “The boat couldn’t be seen from land, in any case,” she had said.

  “Where was Arne, then?” Ringmar had asked.

  “On land,” she had said.

  “Yes, but where?”

  “In one of those towns where they stayed. I dunno. I don’t remember what thay’re called.”

  “Aberdeen?” Ringmar had asked.

  “No. That’s where thay were first. It wasn’t there.”

  Ringmar had looked to Winter for help.

  “Was it Peterhead?” Winter had asked.

  She hadn’t answered and hadn’t looked at him.

  “Peterhead?” Ringmar had repeated.

  “FISHERMEN’S MISSION TO FISHERMEN’S VISION TO DEEP SEA NATIONAL MISSION,” Arne Algotsson had suddenly uttered from the armchair next to the window, in a loud, wooden old man’s voice. He hadn’t moved his head, but he must have been listening.

  “He repeats that sometimes,” Ella Algotsson had said.

  “What is it?” Ringmar had said.

  “Didn’t you hear?”

  “I didn’t understand it.”

  “Me neither.” A sad smile had come to the old face, which was thin but strong. “He’s said it sometimes recently, now.”

  “Recently?”

  “Yes. In recent … years.”

  “Since he became ill?”

  “Yes.”

  Ringmar had looked once more at Arne Algotsson, who had been looking at the waves of stone outside.

  “Peterhead,” Winter ha
d said in a loud voice.

  “FISHERMEN’S MISSION TO FISHERMEN’S VISION TO DEEP SEA NATIONAL MISSION,” Algotsson had chanted.

  “Other than that he never speaks English,” Ella Algotsson had said. “He’s forgot that. Too.”

  “We said PETERHEAD,” Ringmar had said.

  “FISHERMEN’S MISSION …” Algotsson repeated it, like a parrot. It had an uncanny effect, but a funny one at the same time, inappropriately funny. Winter had felt ashamed somehow, as though they were using the old man and his sister.

  “Well, it’s clearly a name that means something to him,” Ringmar had said.

  Ella Algotsson had looked like she was thinking about something else.

  “But he was in another city when it happened,” she had said. “I remember it.”

  “Fraserburgh,” Winter had said, looking at Arne Algotsson at the same time. But he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t moved.

  Then Ella Algotsson had looked at Winter.

  “What was that?”

  “Fraserburgh,” Winter had said. “Was the city called Fraserburgh?”

  “Fras … yes, I think so.”

  “Did Arne come right home afterward?”

  “No. He wasn’t there the whole war but he was there for a little longer.”

  “How long?”

  “A year, I think. He came home with a fishing boat. Thay were brothers from Öckerö who dared to come home again. Thay were crazy.”

  “From Öckerö?” Ringmar had asked.

  “Thay’re dead,” she had said.

  Winter had thought he had seen Arne Algotsson nod, slightly, as though he concurred with what his sister said.

  “Who else sailed home with Arne?” Ringmar had asked.

  “Bertil,” she had answered. “John’s brother. But he’s dead, him too.”

  Ringmar had nodded.

  “Another brother disappeared in the accident too, right?” Ringmar had said.

  “Egon,” she had said. Nothing more.

  “Was anyone else from here on the boat when it went under?” Ringmar had asked.

  She hadn’t answered, not directly. She had sent a quick look at her brother, to see if he was listening. Or maybe it was something else.

  To make sure he didn’t answer?

  “There was one more,” she said after a moment that seemed long. Her eyes had changed, as though they had clouded over. They couldn’t see.