It was not until dawn when the vibrations had lessened and the ship was in the inshore channel of the Stockholm archipelago that he managed to fall asleep. But the vibrations followed him into his dream.
He was in an engine room. The heat was unbearable, he was surrounded by groaning and screaming stokers with black faces, backs covered in oil, and he knew everything would soon be over. Then he noticed that one of the sweating stokers was the dead German sailor. He had a shovel in his hand, but his eyes were missing, there were only two bloody sockets.
At that moment he managed to kick himself free of the dream and rise to the surface.
He was very tired, but he got dressed and went on deck. The sea was grey, the dark, rocky skerries came and went through the mist. His exhaustion led to his eyes playing tricks. Sea and sky merged to form vague points of light, an interplay of light and shade.
The temperature had fallen during the night. He moved to the spot where nobody could see him. He stayed there until they had passed Oxdjupet. Then he returned to his cabin, closed his suitcases and examined his face in the mirror.
His father was more evident now, the wrinkles drawing his eyebrows closer together, a feature that made him look bitter and had always frightened him as a boy. Against his will he was on the way to inheriting his father’s tortured face. His father was trying to reclaim the power he used to have, to resurrect himself in his son’s face.
He breathed on the mirror until it misted over, and the face disappeared.
I am drawing a line under this journey, he thought. It is over now. I fulfilled my mission. I have done what was expected of me. I will not get much thanks for it, that is hardly the done thing at Naval Headquarters. But I shall be given new jobs to do, more responsibility, and sooner or later I shall be promoted. I am proceeding up life’s invisible staircase.
He checked his suitcases, made sure he had not forgotten anything and left the cabin. It was lighter now, the archipelago stepped forward out of the mist. Corves full of fish in little cargo boats sailing towards Stockholm to unload their catches. Grey men hunched over tillers and leaning against masts.
He had a quick breakfast in the officers’ mess. Without joining in, he listened to a heated discussion between a lieutenant and an engineer officer. The lieutenant, who was red-haired and pale, insisted in a shrill voice that the outcome of the war was obvious. Germany would win, since that nation was driven by a fury that the English had lost. The first engineer maintained that the Germans and Russians were arrogant, they wore ‘Napoleon’s boots’, he claimed, which meant they would be punished and defeated.
Tobiasson-Svartman left the mess and went on deck. What kind of boots am I wearing? he wondered. They were now approaching Djurgården. He remembered his dream. What did it mean? The German sailor who had returned from the bottom of the sea off Sandsänkan, what did he want?
A warning, he thought. Don’t proceed too quickly, don’t forget too quickly.
That was as far as he got. His thoughts got in each other’s way, short-circuited his power to reason.
Chapter 70
The Svea had docked. Captain Rake bade him farewell. A rating had already carried his suitcases down to the quay, where he was hailing a man with a wheelbarrow.
Rake looked hard at Tobiasson-Svartman. The dawn light was very bright.
‘You look pale,’ he said. ‘Paler than you did.’
‘Perhaps exhaustion is taking its toll.’
Rake nodded thoughtfully. ‘Like when there’s been a battle at sea,’ he said. ‘While it’s happening you notice nothing. Doctors have maintained that it’s a purely physical process. Something they call “adrenalin” is pumped around the body. A chemical or biological name for human bloodthirstiness. When the battle is over you are either dead or alive. If you are dead the bloodthirstiness was pumped round in vain. If you are alive you are overcome by exhaustion. Whether you have won or lost is of no great significance. Or rather, if you have survived you have won, even if you are on the losing side.’ He stopped abruptly, as if he had realised he was uttering something inappropriate. ‘I talk too much sometimes,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘I often tell people around about me to hold their tongues, but I don’t always practise what I preach.’
He stood erect, saluted and shook hands.
‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you.’
Tobiasson-Svartman walked off the gangway. He turned, but there was no sign of the captain. He took a few hesitant steps, almost stumbled. He had experienced the same dizziness each time he landed on Halsskär. On board ship he had to work actively to keep his balance, whereas on dry land it was up to the earth or the stones under his feet to prevent him from falling.
The rating saluted and returned to the ship. The man with the wheelbarrow full of luggage was old and toothless. His cheeks were hollow, he wheezed when he breathed. Tobiasson-Svartman had to help him to get the wheelbarrow on the move.
Stockholm was all hustle and bustle. It seemed to him rusty, covered in mud and dirt, all these houses, trees, streets and people that suddenly surrounded him. The city gushed all over him, unexpectedly; perhaps it was frightening, perhaps beautiful.
Chapter 71
He did not go directly home.
He had in him something of the sluggishness of a large ship, the need to reduce speed slowly, to yaw without excessive impetuosity. He could not walk through the door of his flat in Wallingatan too soon. That would be like losing control and crashing your bows into the quay.
The first time he had been away on a mission after marrying Kristina Tacker he sent a telegram saying when he expected to be home. That was the only time. He had never repeated the mistake.
He parked the toothless man outside the building in Wallingatan and went to a modest licensed café in the next block. It was early in the day, but he knew the owner, the widow of a sailmaker who had spent his life working for the Crown. Her name was Sally Andersson and she was full of 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.