Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,37

it was sheer luck that they did not have any nets out. They soon learned their lesson, and every day as night closed in they would keep a close eye on the sea, and try to identify signs indicating that dangerous winds might be approaching.

In November one of the sheep – they had two, but no cow – slipped from a rock and broke its leg. Then the surviving one died, and they were even more isolated, if that were possible.

On the morning of Christmas Day, six months after they had settled on the skerry, catastrophe struck. They had laid out nets a few days earlier when the weather was cold and clear with virtually no wind, just a gentle breeze from the south. The nets were in two shallows and did not need too many heavy stones to anchor them. They had experienced good catches there ever since early December. As the shallows had no name, Nils Ferdinand christened one of them Sara Rocks and the other Fredrika Shallows.

The storm came late on Christmas Eve. It attacked from the south, charging towards them with a dense blizzard as the first line of assault. When dawn came it was obvious that if they were not to lose their nets they would have to go out and take them in. The winds were storm force, but that couldn't be helped, they had no choice. They launched the boat and managed to haul in one of the nets. Then came a colossal wave that crashed into the starboard side of the boat and capsized it.

When she managed to get out of the floating coffin she saw her husband. He had become enmeshed in the net he had been trying to take in, and it was writhing around him like a sea monster. He fought and screamed, but was dragged down and she was unable to do anything except cling to an oar and the stern seat that had broken loose, struggle back to land and crawl to the cottage, half frozen.

That was her story. She had hewn it from deep inside her as if sculpting a block of stone with violent blows from a chisel. A block of stone, a headstone for her husband.

She said no more. It was getting dark when she finished. The shadows were lengthening.

He sat on his stool and watched while she made a soup. They ate in silence.

Tobiasson-Svartman thought: It must be like staring straight into Hell, watching somebody you love die screaming.

CHAPTER 60

That night he lay on the floor close to the fire.

His 'bed' comprised the pelt of the mad fox, some rag mats and sealskins. His 'pillow' was some logs of wood covered by his sweater. He spread the oilskin coat over him and worried that the draught would make him ill.

She had offered him the bunk. For one intoxicating moment he had thought she was inviting him to share it with her. Did she suspect what he was thinking? He could not be sure. She stroked her hair away from her face and asked him again. He shook his head, he could sleep on the floor.

She wrapped herself up in a thick quilt that he assumed was stuffed with feathers from the birds she had shot. She turned her back to him. Her breathing became deeper. She was asleep. When he adjusted the logs under his head he could hear that she had woken up, listened, then gone back to sleep.

I am not a danger as far as she is concerned, he thought. I'm not a temptation, I'm nothing.

The embers in the fire died down. He opened his pocket watch and managed with difficulty to make out the hands. It was half past nine. The cold from the floor had already started to penetrate through the skins.

The storm was still raging. The wind came and went in powerful gusts.

CHAPTER 61

His thoughts wandered to his wife moving around in their warm flat in Wallingatan. No doubt she was still awake. Last thing at night she would usually walk around from room to room, smoothing the heavy curtains in the windows, adjusting cloths and covers, straightening out a crease in a carpet.

He worked out distances, lived by checking where he was in relation to others. His wife looked for irregularities, in order to put them right. Before shutting the bedroom door behind her she would check that the flat's front door was locked and that the maid had put the light out in her room behind