had just married and were on their honeymoon in Kristiania. The struggle over the 'to be or not to be' of the Swedish-Norwegian union was at its most troubled stage and he had made the naive mistake of going out for a walk with his wife along Karl Johan wearing his Swedish naval uniform. Just as they were passing the university somebody had shouted at him, and even in his dream he could hear that hot-tempered voice: 'Swedish bastard, go home.' He turned round, but there was no obvious culprit, just a crowd of people who looked the other way or smiled and looked down at the ground. They were staying at the Grand Hotel, and went back there immediately. Kristina Tacker had been fearful and wanted to leave right away, but he had refused. He changed into civilian clothes, they went out again and nobody had shouted at them. No one was hostile when they went to the Blom restaurant or the Grand Hotel's veranda, nor when they visited the newly built National Theatre. They saw Johanne Dybwad as Mrs Alving in a production of Ibsen's Ghosts, which his wife thought was disgusting. He agreed with her, to be polite, but in fact he had been disturbed and moved because the play reminded him of his own childhood and resurrected uncomfortable memories of pain and ignominy.
Thus far his dream was clear, a walk down memory lane. But then everything became chaotic. They become separated in a crowd at Bygdøy and soon afterwards he sees her with another man. He tries to pull the man away from her, but he is dead and his body is already decaying, the stink is something awful. Then suddenly everything is back at the beginning again. They walk along Karl Johan, stop at the entrance to the Blom restaurant and examine the menu, they talk about everyday things, she squeezes his arm and then the picture goes white, featureless, without content or meaning.
When he woke up he tried to interpret the dream. He had let it finish in nothing but whiteness. He had rubbed Kristina Tacker out.
His pocket watch showed three minutes to five. No thin light yet. He lay with his eyes open, and in the darkness – the opposite of the whiteness of the dream – he decided to row to Halsskär that morning.
He had to. That was all there was to it. He had no choice.
The watchman was pacing up and down the deck.
Tobiasson-Svartman stretched out a hand and touched his sound, which lay on the floor next to his bunk.
CHAPTER 44
The sea was wreathed in fog when he rowed over to Halsskär.
About halfway there the Blenda had faded away like a dark shadow amid all the white.
He wondered if the whiteness in his dream had presaged the fog. A fish broke the surface of the water alongside the boat with a plop. That's what pike do, he thought, but would a pike really be as far out to sea as this?
He rested on his oars and listened. The fog magnified the noises from the invisible ship. Some of the ratings had been ordered to scrape away rust. The blows of hammers and chisels bounced through the fog and reached his ears. There was no risk of his getting lost, he could navigate on the basis of the noises. He counted his strokes and when he looked ahead he saw he was close to land. He beached the tender as before, having considered rowing a bit further and tying up in the little inlet where the sailing dinghy was moored. That would save him having to clamber over the slippery rocks, but the inlet was not his, and he did not want to intrude.
He made his way to the protected natural harbour and paused to observe the dinghy. It was in the same place as last time, but the sail was not furled round the mast, it was flapping gently in the slight breeze. The nets were hanging as before, but as he approached he could smell fish. There were the remains of cod and a few flounders in the water next to the boat He was surprised that the gulls had not already been there and eaten the lot. He walked on over the slippery rocks, slipped and cut his hand on a sharp stone. He had a handkerchief in one of his pockets, Kristina Tacker had embroidered his initials into one corner. He pressed it against his hand until