what could have happened?
He was afraid. Somehow she knew now that he was married, that no woman and no daughter had fallen over a cliff.
He slid out of bed cautiously, but she woke up.
'Where are you going?'
'I just need to go out for a moment.'
'My back's hurting.'
'Go back to sleep. It's only just getting light.'
'How shall I be able to give birth here?'
'I'll sail for help when the time comes.'
The storm had subsided. The sparse grass was wet, water was running down the rocks. The cat emerged from a crack in the rock underneath the cottage and followed him down to the inlet, where he plucked a little flounder from the corf. He threw it to the cat.
Could she have found out something about him despite everything? He tried to go back over all the many things that had happened since they first met, but he could not hit upon anything.
It occurred to him that the deserter might have floated up to the surface or been caught in one of her nets. But that could not have been the case. The body could not have reappeared, the sinker was securely fastened. Besides, she did not have any nets that would go as deep as that.
He walked round the island with the cat the single member of his retinue. He climbed to the highest point, and was reminded of Lieutenant Jakobsson, peeing over the rail. Distant memories, he thought. Like dreams.
He wondered if it would be possible to sink his sounding lead through the darkness that exists below the surface of all dreams.
On the far horizon he caught a glimpse of a ship heading north. He did not have his telescope with him and could not make out if it was a warship.
The cat suddenly vanished.
Still he could not understand what had happened.
CHAPTER 166
The heatwave continued.
Sara Fredrika had difficulty in moving, her back ached and she complained that she could not keep cool. He went fishing and did whatever had to be done. When he was busy with the nets, cleaning fish or carrying water he was able to feel totally relaxed, the walls around him were constantly there. Occasionally he would see Kristina Tacker and the newly born baby in his mind's eye. Did she know what he had done, that he had denied her existence to another woman? Yet how could she know?
Early one morning in the middle of August when he was on the way to Jungfrugrunden to take up some nets, he stopped rowing. There was no wind, just a gentle swell.
He realised that he was near the spot where the two German sailors were lying at the bottom of the sea. He could row there, tie the rope in the stern of the boat round the sinker beside it, throw it and himself overboard, and it would all be over at last.
Perhaps that was the only bottomless depth he could hope to find? Sinking towards death, unaware of what happened to him after his lungs had filled with seawater?
He took tight hold of the oars and started rowing again.
The net he pulled aboard contained a lot of fish. Any thoughts about death vanished immediately.
Sara Fredrika came down to the shore to help him gut the catch. She moved with difficulty, and the pain in her back made her pull faces.
They did not say much to each other.
CHAPTER 167
The next day he cleaned his sounding lead and started measuring the depths around Halsskär. He would record the reading in a notebook then lower his lead once again.
It was as if he were listening to two voices, a never-ending conversation between sea and land. Every wave or swell brought with it a fragment of a story, every slab of rock made its contribution.
He put the sounding lead on the floor of the boat. Before, he had always thought there was a never-ending struggle between the sea and the rocks. Now he realised that was incorrect. It was an embrace that never lost its element of lust. A slowly increasing intimacy, he thought. The elevation of the land progresses invisibly, the rocks and the sea rely on each other.
He turned his back on Halsskär and gazed out to sea. The horizon was empty. He had the vague impression that there was something missing, something that ought to be there had vanished.
CHAPTER 168
When he reached home she was sitting outside the cottage, waiting.
Her eyes were blazing.
He stopped, not wanting to get too close to her.
She threw two wooden sticks that