Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,101

was deft. Like a seamstress or a hunter or a gardener who could make things grow in hollows in the rock with hardly any soil. She had been so successful in many cases considered to be hopeless, that a doctor from Stockholm had once visited Kråkmarö in order to interview her, and although she was getting on for seventy and there were younger midwives to turn to, most people asked for her.

He moored the boat in the creek and walked up the hill to the village. The villagers were out in the fields and pointed the way. He knocked on Angel's door and she answered immediately. He had never set eyes on her before, but even so, it was as if he knew her. He went into her low-ceilinged kitchen and said where he had come from. She smiled.

'Sara Fredrika's baby,' she said. 'I assume it's yours as well?'

He could not bring himself to reply, and she did not worry about it.

'Children would no doubt like to choose their parents,' she said. 'Maybe they do, did we but know it. But there's some time to go yet for Sara Fredrika. What's the matter with her?'

He tried to explain, saying what Sara Fredrika had told him to say. Spasmodic tension, difficulties in moving, pains in her pelvis.

Angel asked a few questions.

'Has she had a fall?'

'No.'

'And you haven't hit her?'

'Why on earth would I want to do that?'

'Because men hit their women when things go wrong. Does she have a fever? Has she been carrying heavy things?'

'She spends most of her time resting.'

'And when you left things had got a bit better?'

'Yes.'

"Then you must go back to her. Sara Fredrika hasn't had much happiness in this life. I'm not sure that you have brought her any either. But you must look after her well. Then you might be able to become the man she needs.'

'She wants me to take her away from there.'

'Why should she stay there on that barren rock, after all the terrible things she's had to go through? It's eating her up, that inhospitable skerry is scraping her to the bone.'

She went with him down the hill to the sailing dinghy.

'You haven't even said what you're called. Don't you have a name?'

'I'm Lars.'

'I don't care where you come from. Rumour says that you're in the navy. But there's something else that's more important than that. You are wearing Nils Persson's clothes. You are reconciled to the fact that there was somebody else before you.'

'What shall I tell her?'

"That it's not time yet. And that I shall come, as long as you fetch me.'

He got into the boat and she untied the painter. There was no wind in the creek, so he prepared the oars.

'Stay until the baby's been born. Then you should take her away. The youngster won't survive out there. So many young children have died on that barren skerry over the years, too many to keep count of.'

He started rowing.

'Tell her I'll come,' she shouted. 'We'll get the baby born and it will survive all right, as long as you all get away from there.'

He kept on rowing until he found some wind. Then he raised the sail and headed for the open sea.

He felt ashamed when he thought about how close he had come to running away. He would have stolen her boat like a pirate, and abandoned her. Now he was sailing as fast as possible so that she would not start to think that he had headed out to sea after all.

He was in a hurry. And the sea was still carrying him to his destiny.

CHAPTER 175

August was drawing to a close, it was unusually windy, persistent westerly winds. An autumnal thunderstorm passed over them, and a stroke of lightning felled a tree on Armnö.

He speculated that memory and forgetting shared the same key. Perhaps anger shared the same door? Kristina Tacker and the baby drifted away. But where was he himself?

The longest distance I have had to relate to is the distance to myself. No matter where I stand, the compass inside me pulls me in different directions. All my life I have crept around trying to avoid bumping into myself. I have no idea who I am, and I do not want to know either.

CHAPTER 176

Sara Fredrika could feel that her body was calm. She talked all the time about the journey they would make once the baby was delivered.

Sometimes the conversations became unbearable. The skerry began to be a heavy weight,