round again a few days later. He had been talking to a police superintendent or maybe it was a parish constable from round here who said he thought you were on a skerry at the far edge of the archipelago.
'I sailed into the archipelago then turned south. Somewhere round about Landsort I was becalmed, I had plenty of time to think. And I still ask myself: Why did you marry me if your only intention was to hurt me, to lie to me? Why do you hate me?'
He gave a start. A shadow had moved on a high rocky ledge, but it wasn't Sara Fredrika. It was a bird, a crow that soared up and flew off northwards over the island. There wasn't much time. He needed to drive her along in front of himself instead of cowering in the face of her accusations.
'The fact that I was dismissed from the navy is due entirely to a misunderstanding, which was due in turn to the fact that I was disgracefully slandered by Welander. I tried to protect him when he hit the bottle. Everything else is a pack of lies. He is getting his revenge for having shown me his weakness, because I saw his humiliation. He was lying on deck in a pool of vomit and had to be carried away. I couldn't tell you that I had been dismissed, that was too shameful, too much of a disgrace. I came here to think out a way of telling you about it. Not everything I have told you has been entirely correct, but there has always been a kernel of truth.'
And what would that be?'
'My love for you. I came here in solitude to punish myself for not being able to tell you exactly how things were. I needed time, time to think, time to summon up courage.'
'But the letters? The inventions, the fantasies?'
"The same thing: shame, disgrace.'
'How can I possibly believe you?'
'Look me in the eye.'
She did as he asked. He could feel that he was starting to regain control, was able to regulate the distances.
'What do you see?'
'A person I don't know.'
'You know me. We have been married for nearly ten years. We have been intimate.'
'If I come too close to you I'm frightened of getting burned. You give off a corrosive acid, all those untrue –'
She broke off without completing the sentence.
'What I understand least of all is why you tried to kill my father.'
He felt an overwhelming urge to tell her the truth, that it was all those accursed Christmas dinners, his father-in-law's contempt for the naval commander who had married his daughter. But there was no place for the truth yet.
'It wasn't me who attacked your father. I would never turn to violence.'
'You hit me, not long ago.'
'That was only because I had to stop you screaming.'
'Can't you tell the truth for once? Can't you try? Your lies are wrapping themselves round my legs like heavy weights.'
'I have told you the truth. I hid myself away here in order to think things over.'
Fear was being batted back and forth between them, like the ebb and flow of never-ending waves. Occasionally he would glance up at the path. He knew his time was limited, and that sooner or later Sara Fredrika would wonder where he had got to.
'I want you to go back home,' he said. 'I've been ordered to terminate my mission.'
'But you haven't got a mission. I heard the admiral say so himself: you are no longer a member of the Swedish Navy, you have no unfinished missions. I heard that with my own ears. Are you incapable of telling the truth?'
'You must understand that secrecy doesn't only apply to me. He wasn't able to say that I am still working on a task.'
'What are you doing on this skerry? I've been sailing all round these grey, barren islands, I've hardly set eyes on a single soul, here by the open sea everything is dead.'
'I'll tell you, even though I shouldn't. I have a wireless transmitter here, one of the inspired inventions of the engineer Marconi and Admiral Henry Jackson, for communications between ships and land, or from one ship's captain to another. We are conducting top-secret tests of a Swedish system, a variation of the ones the warring parties are using.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Invisible waves that travel through the air, that can be captured and interpreted. A secret language that will transform all aspects of war as it has