Lieutenant Jakobsson followed the ritual laid down in his instruction book. He was holding a hymnal. The crew mumbled out the hymn. Jakobsson had a loud voice, but he sang out of tune. Tobiasson-Svartman only moved his lips. The seagulls circling the ship joined in the singing. After the hymn, Jakobsson read the prescribed prayer over the dead body, then the plank was tilted and the body slid over the rail and entered the water with a muffled splash.
The ship’s foghorn sounded eerily. Jakobsson kept the crew to attention for a full minute. When they dispersed there was no sign of the body.
Jakobsson invited Tobiasson-Svartman to a glass of aquavit in the mess. They toasted each other and the lieutenant asked: ‘How long do you think it took for the body to sink down to the mud or sand or whatever there is at the bottom just there?’
‘It’s mud,’ said Tobiasson-Svartman. ‘It’s always mud in the Baltic.’
He made a rapid calculation in his head.
‘Let’s assume the body and the metal weigh a hundred kilos and the distance to the bottom is 160 metres. That would mean it would take two to three seconds for it to sink one metre. And so it will have taken the body about six minutes to reach the bottom.’
Jakobsson thought that over for a while.
‘That ought to be enough to save my crew from worrying if he’ll be coming back up to the surface again. Sailors can be as superstitious as hell. But the same applies to commanding officers if things are really bad.’
He poured himself another drink, and Tobiasson-Svartman did not say no.
‘I shall spend a lot of time wondering about why he drowned,’ Jakobsson said. ‘I know I’ll never know the answer, but I won’t be able to forget him. Our meeting was brief. He lay on the deck of my ship under a piece of grey tarpaulin. Then he departed again. Even so, he will be with me for the rest of my life.’
‘What will happen to his belongings? The miniature, the picture of the dog? His pay book?’
‘I’ll send them to Stockholm together with my report. I assume they’ll eventually be sent to Germany. Sooner or later Frau Richter will find out what happened to her son. I know of no civilised nation where the procedures for dealing with dead soldiers and sailors are not meticulously observed.’
Tobiasson-Svartman stood up to prepare for resuming work. Lieutenant Jakobsson raised a hand to indicate that he had something more to say.
‘I have a brother who’s an engineer,’ he said. ‘He has been working for a number of years at the German naval yards in Gotenhafen and Kiel. He tells me that the German shipbuilders are considering making incredibly big vessels. With a deadweight of getting on for 50,000 tonnes, half of which is accounted for by the armour-plating. In some places that will be thirty-five centimetres thick. These ships will have crews comprising two thousand men and more, they’ll be floating towns with access to everything you can think of. Presumably there’ll be an undertaker or two on board as well. I suppose one of these days ships like that will come into being. I wonder what will happen to the human race, though. We could never have skin thirty-five centimetres thick, a skin that could withstand the biggest shells. Will the human race survive? Or will we end up fighting wars that never end, with nobody able to remember how they started, and nobody able to envisage them ending?’
Jakobsson poured himself another drink.
‘The war that’s being fought now could be the beginning of what I’m talking about. Millions of soldiers are going to die simply because one man was murdered in Sarajevo. Some insignificant Crown prince. Does that make any sense? Of course it doesn’t. The bottom line is that war is always a mistake. Or the result of absurd assumptions and conclusions.’
Jakobsson did not appear to expect any comment. He replaced the bottle in its cupboard, then left the mess.
Just as he stepped out on to the deck he swayed and stumbled. But he did not turn round.
Tobiasson-Svartman remained in the mess, thinking over what he had just heard.
How thick was his own skin? How big a shell would it be able to resist?
What did he know about Kristina Tacker’s skin, apart from the fact that it was fragrant?
For a moment he was overcome by utter panic. He was transfixed, as if poison were spreading all over his body. Then he got a grip on himself, took a deep breath and went on deck.
Chapter 37
They started work again and managed to complete eighty soundings before dusk.
That evening they were served baked flounder, potatoes and a thin, tasteless sauce. Lieutenant Jakobsson was very subdued and did no more than poke at his food.
Tobiasson-Svartman copied the day’s notes into the main record book. When he had finished he felt restless and went on deck.
Once again it seemed to him that there was something glinting on Halsskär. As before, he put it down to his imagination.
That night he slept clutching his sounding lead. He cleaned it thoroughly every day, but he thought it smelled of mud from the bottom of the sea.
Chapter 38
He woke up with a start. It was dark in the cabin. The lead was next to his left arm. Water was lapping gently against the hull as the ship slowly rolled. He could hear the nightwatchman coughing on deck. It did not sound good, it had a rattling quality. The man’s footsteps faded away as he moved aft.
He had been dreaming. There had been horses, and men whipping them. He had tried to intervene, but they ignored him. Then he understood that he was about to be whipped himself. At that point he woke up.
He checked his watch, hanging by the side of his bunk. A quarter past five. Not yet dawn.
He thought about the flash he thought he had seen on two occasions now. But surely Halsskär was just a barren rock? There could not be any kind of light there.
He lit the paraffin lamp, dressed, took a deep breath and examined his face in the mirror. It was still his own.
When he was a child — all the time he was growing up, in fact — he had looked like his mother. Now, as he grew older, his face had begun to change and he thought he could see more of his father every time he looked in a mirror.
Was there yet another face within him?
Would he ever be able to feel that he looked like himself and nobody else?
Chapter 39
It was hazy over the sea when he came out on deck.
The watchman with the hacking cough was sitting on the capstan, smoking. He jumped up when he heard footsteps. Hid his fag behind his back. Then he succumbed to a violent coughing fit. Scraping and rasping noises seemed to be tearing his chest.
Tobiasson-Svartman clambered into one of the tenders and untied the painter. The watchman, who had recovered from his coughing fit, asked breathlessly if the officer required an oarsman. Tobiasson-Svartman declined the offer.
The sun had not risen over the horizon as he rowed towards Halsskär. The rowlocks squeaked forlornly. In order to get to the skerry as directly as possible he lined his tender up with the starboard wing of the bridge, and did not need to change course at all. He rowed with powerful strokes and beached the boat at the same place as last time.
Halsskär gave the impression of having been crushed by a giant’s hand. There were deep ravines and hollows, muddy soil had accumulated in depressions and provided a footing for moss campion and occasional clumps of wormwood. Lichens were creeping over the rocks, and sparse red heather.
He followed the shore northwards. Here and there he had to move inland when the cliffs became too steep. The terrain was in constant conflict with him, cliffs turned into precipices, rocks were slippery, every obstacle he overcame gave way to a new one.