Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,114

bare rock and stared up at the clouds.

They were scudding, flying, towards the south-west.

CHAPTER 201

He stood up when he heard Angel coming out of the cottage.

He had no idea how much time had passed.

'I've read the letter,' he said.

'She asked me to stay until you said that. I don't know what's in it, of course.'

They walked down to the inlet.

'The clouds are restless,' she said. 'The November weather is as restless as an animal kicking in its stall. I think it's going to be a long winter with lots of ice.'

He did not answer. Angel looked at him.

'I never got to know you,' she said, 'but I delivered your child. Now Sara Fredrika and the baby have left. I have a strong feeling that they will never come back. I can't know that for sure and it's none of my business. But I have to ask you even so: What are you going to do? Are you going to stay here on the skerry? Will you survive here? It's not that you can't feed yourself from the sea, you can no doubt manage that. But the isolation? You come from a big city, will you be able to survive the isolation when the storms really set in?'

'I don't know.'

'You ought to go away.'

He nodded. She waited for him to say something more, but he just stared ahead in silence.

'Well, I'll be off,' she said. 'You ought to go away. I don't think you could cope with life out here. The stones will eat you up.'

He watched her strike anchor and shake off the mud clinging to it. When she set sail, he turned and walked away.

CHAPTER 202

One day the two farm labourers from Kättilö sailed into the inlet.

The rumour that Sara Fredrika had left and taken the baby with her, leaving him behind, had gone round the islands. Somebody had seen an unfamiliar sailing boat approaching Halsskär with a woman on board. But nobody knew what had happened on the skerry. All they knew was that the hydrographic engineer was wandering about the skerry like a moth-eaten animal.

Somebody maintained that he had even started to walk on all fours.

The farmhands sailed out one Sunday, taking a bottle of aquavit with them. It was pure curiosity. But he merely shook his head when they offered him a drink. He did not answer their questions.

When they got back home they reported that he had definitely started walking on all fours the moment they turned their backs.

CHAPTER 203

A few days before Christmas he scratched his name into one of the rocks on the north side of the skerry, a rock that was submerged at high tide. There was a thin layer of snow over the archipelago, the temperature was now more or less constantly below zero. He had wrapped himself up in a shaggy blanket held in place by a rope round his body. He lived on with one question, the only one he still had the strength to worry about. How could she have known what happened out on the ice the day the German deserter died? He sought in vain for an answer.

He kept walking round the skerry, and feeding the cat, which was growing more and more shy, with small fish. Once every day he went to check that the mine was still at its mooring.

After Angel's visit he had stopped measuring distances altogether. He had fallen headlong into the abyss inside himself. Down there in the darkness Kristina Tacker was by his side. He tried to climb up out of the depths, but the walls were slippery, he kept sliding back down, his strength faded and eventually vanished altogether.

In the end there was nothing left.

CHAPTER 204

There were moments when his thoughts were crystal clear. Then he realised that he could never have grown close to another human being because he had an irrational fear of losing himself. There were also other moments when he wanted to tear off all his clothes, wash himself, and drag himself out of his degradation.

One day he sailed through a bitter winter wind to Valdemarsvik and bought some newspapers. He read about the war, how the sea battles had been replaced by long-drawn-out fighting in the muddy fields of Flanders. He had the strong impression that life was the same for everybody, and he sank back down into his abyss, unable to raise the strength to resist.

It was clear to him that most things in his life had been based on a lunatic idea.