life. He could go to her place and get drunk at six in the morning if he wanted to. She was still young, this merry widow, and he never ceased to be surprised by her gleaming white teeth.
Sally was standing among her cups and beer mugs and saw him coming.
'I haven't seen you for ages. You must have just returned from a long voyage,' she said, wiping down the corner table where he usually sat. 'Can you tell me why the navy employs such wretched cooks?'
'What makes you say that?'
'You are too thin. A ship's master can't be as thin as that. One of these days the wind will blow right through you. You'll be seagull meat.'
'The cook was good. But the sea wears you down. You don't grow thinner, you get worn down by all the salt and the constant motion of the sea.'
She laughed, flicked at the arm of a chair with her cloth and served him his usual glass of aquavit with a beer chaser.
A couple of years back, in May 1912, after a lengthy mission checking the depths of the secret channels around the north of Gotland and Fårön, he had drunk far too much when he got back home. He was very drunk by ten in the morning and started talking non-stop. He had lost control of himself, and Sally Andersson saved him from making a fool of himself. When he started saying things about the naval chiefs of staff that he would later regret, she piloted him to a room behind the kitchen and laid him down on a wooden bench. Although she employed two waitresses, Sally always served him herself. Nobody else was allowed to come near him, recharge his glass, wipe up when he was drunk and started spilling beer. She gave him what he needed to drink, never more than that, and she was always the one who would eventually tell him he had had enough.
'You've come back,' she would say. 'You can go home now.'
He had never questioned her judgement, simply settled his bill, and left.
CHAPTER 72
She gave him watered-down aquavit and beer that morning, and made him eat some sandwiches with lots of butter and thick slices of ham.
He drank quickly. He was merry after only half an hour. Sally sat down at his table and looked hard at him. Her white teeth glistened. They were like seashells. Straight, polished seashells in a row, stuck down in dark red sand.
'How close is the war?' she wanted to know.
He searched in his befuddled brain for an answer.
'Firelight,' he said eventually. 'In the distance, over the sea. A terrible silence.'
'I asked how close the war was, not what it looks like.'
He pointed to his forehead.
'Inside here,' he said. 'That's how close the war is.'
'How can a clever man like you talk such a lot of crap?' she said.
He emptied his glass, but she shook her head when he asked for more.
'If you have any more now, you'll pass the limit.'
'What limit?'
'The limit where a woman no longer recognises the man she married.'
He put what he owed her on the table. There was a strong smell of old leather and wet wool as he left the room and its tobacco-laden fug. He stumbled, emerging into the street. He walked round the block and stopped at his front door in Wallingatan. The man who was supposed to be guarding his luggage had fallen asleep, propped up against one of the wheels. Tobiasson-Svartman gave him a kick. The man jumped to his feet and unloaded the cases.
He opened the door. He left everything that had happened in the bright light of the street. In the darkness of the stairwell he had the feeling that he had docked at the Wallingatan quay.
CHAPTER 73
Kristina Tacker was waiting for him in the dim hall.
That made him feel insecure, it went against his plans. He had not sent her a telegram, nobody else would have had a reason for letting her know when he was due. She noticed his confusion, also of course that he was a bit drunk.
'I saw the wheelbarrow with your luggage. I could almost smell it from the flat window. But I was beginning to wonder when you were going to appear.'
'I went for a walk round the block to shake off the spray and the seaweed and the smell of mud. Leaving a ship is a complicated process.'
He embraced her, sucked in all her fragrances, the wine, her perfume with the hint of