of people were they? Those women hiding their eyes under their hats? I didn't like them. And tails are for animals, not for people.'
'It was just make-believe. A devil jumping around, that's all.'
'What were they doing here?'
They had started to walk back to the cottage. He was holding on to her, making sure she did not slip.
'Just think of them as driftwood. Something that happened to have been washed ashore here. Then the wind turned and they drifted away again. Driftwood that wasn't even fit for firewood.'
'Tails are for animals,' she said again. 'Tails are not for people.'
CHAPTER 172
In the afternoon he went to the highest point of the skerry, telescope in hand. The Goeben had left. He scanned the horizon but could find no sign of it.
The cameraman had seen right through him. He tried to work out if that implied danger.
He could not see any.
CHAPTER 173
One night she woke him up out of a dream.
Kristina Tacker had been standing in front of him, she had been saying something, but he had not been able to work out what it was.
He gave a start and sat up.
'I think the baby is on its way. It's moving, it's tensing its body.'
'But there's a long time to go yet.'
'I have no control over that.'
'What do you want me to do?'
'Stay awake. I've been on my own for long enough in my life.'
'I'm here, even if I'm asleep.'
'What do I know about your dreams?'
It's just like the man with the camera, he thought. She sees straight through me. But she does not know.
'I rarely dream,' he said. 'My sleep is empty, it's black, it doesn't even have any colours. I sometimes think I've been dreaming about flowers, but they are always grey. I've only ever dreamed about dead flowers, never about living ones.'
They stayed awake until dawn. The oyster-catchers were calling to one another, the gulls, the terns.
At about six they decided that he would sail to Kråkmarö and fetch the midwife. Even if the baby was not ready to pop out, they ought to make sure that everything was prepared.
He set sail in the easterly wind, three or four metres per second.
A thought struck him. Perhaps he should seize the moment and make a run for it, head north or south, or even east towards Gotland, and the Gulf of Riga beyond.
But he set sail in a westerly direction, to the midwife. The dinghy sped through the water, Halsskär faded into the horizon behind him.
The August day was like a buoy, he thought. Clean and white in the sunlight.
The sea was carrying him to his destiny.
CHAPTER 174
Angel was her name, the midwife.
She was not baptised Angel, of course: in the registers and on her midwifery certificate she was called Angela Wester. But everybody said Angel. That's what her mother had wanted to call her, she had had a dream about it the night before she gave birth. But the vicar refused. He pointed to the parish register and maintained that nobody was allowed to be called Angel, it would be little short of blasphemy. Her father, the ship's master Fredrik Wester, did not believe in gods but in compasses, and suggested with a growl that they should call the girl Angel even so. The vicar could not dictate what happened out in the archipelago. And so she became Angel. She never had any brothers or sisters, nor did she find a husband as she was cross-eyed and could hardly be called pretty. When her parents died she sold the house in the village and the little cargo boat that was half submerged in the creek, and moved into a crofter's cottage. She had trained as a midwife in Norrköping, and devoted her life to other people's children. She smiled a lot, had a beautiful voice, and was not afraid of mending the roof of her cottage herself if necessary. She could be ill-humoured and would sometimes set out on her own in her sailing dinghy, and everybody in the village would worry in case she never came back again. But she always did come back, and would sail her boat into the creek under cover of darkness when her depression had blown away.
Most of all, Angel was a good midwife. She was good at extracting babies that had got stuck. She had magic hands. There were a lot of midwives and old ladies who knew how to do the job of a midwife. They were all good, of course, but Angel