At Gusum the engine began coughing and it was not possible to go any further when they reached Valdemarsvik.
He decided to stay there overnight, paid the driver and booked into a guest house on a hill beyond the big tannery on the shore of the bay. The wind was from the east and blew the smell away. The landlord, who spoke a dialect very difficult to understand, promised to arrange transport the next day.
Having installed his luggage in his room he walked down to the harbour and examined the ice. It was thick and did not give when he stood on it. He approached a man who was busy chiselling ice off a fishing boat and asked what conditions were like out in the archipelago, but he did not know.
‘If it’s as cold out there among the skerries, the sea will no doubt be frozen there as well. But I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.’
He had dinner at the guest house, avoided answering anything more than yes or no to the questions asked by the inquisitive landlord and his wife, and went early to bed.
He snuggled down deep into his pillow and tried to imagine that he did not exist.
Chapter 89
The Gryt jetty was deserted, a few boats frozen into the ice, a locked boathouse, a battered slipway. The driver lifted out the two rucksacks and took his payment. There was a thin layer of snow on the ice, but the only footprints were those of an occasional crow or magpie.
‘Nobody’s gone from here,’ said the driver. ‘And nobody’s come neither. No boats’ll be coming here until the ice melts in March or April. Are you really sure this is where you wanted to come to?’
‘Yes,’ Tobiasson-Svartman said. ‘This is where I wanted to come to.’
The driver nodded slowly and asked no more questions. The black car disappeared up the hill from the jetty. Tobiasson-Svartman stood motionless until the sound of the engine had died away. Then he took out his sea chart. Panic was ticking deep inside him. I cannot go back, he thought. There is nothing behind me, perhaps nothing in front of me either, but I must do what I have set myself to do.
There was an easterly breeze blowing. It would take him three days to get to Halsskär, assuming the weather did not take a turn for the worse, and that there really was ice in the outer archipelago. He decided to walk as far as Armnö in the central part of the archipelago this first day. There ought to be a boathouse there where he could spend the night and be comparatively warm.
He strapped on his two rucksacks after fixing crampons to his leather boots and hanging his ice prods round his neck. It was ten minutes past ten when he took his first step out on to the ice. His route would take him round the south end of Fågelö and then he would head towards Höga Svedsholmen. He estimated the distance to Armnö to be eight kilometres, which meant that he ought to be there before dusk.
He set off. The thin layer of snow had been blown away in some places, exposing the dark ice beneath. It felt like balancing on the edge of a precipice that could give way at any moment. The archipelago was empty. He would occasionally pause and listen. Sometimes an invisible bird would call, but apart from that it was totally silent. When he had passed Fågelö he stopped, unstrapped his rucksacks and made a hole through the ice with his knife. It was fourteen centimetres thick. It would not crack under his weight.
He walked at twenty-five metres per minute. He did not want to run the risk of sweating and then freezing. He paused at Höga Svedsholmen and broke off a branch to use as a walking stick. He drank some water and ate some of the sandwiches provided by the guest house. Then he rested for twenty minutes.
When he left Höga Svedsholmen he tried pulling his rucksacks behind him, as if they were on runners. He fastened a rope around his waist and started pulling. The rucksacks slid easily on the ice and thin snow. But before he was even halfway to Gråholmarna the small of his back started to ache. He stopped and tried to think of another way of doing it. He made a harness out of the rope, so that the weight was shared by his back and shoulders. When he began walking again he could feel that there was less of a strain.
At Gråholmarna he made a fire between some stones. Nowhere could he see any smoke rising above the tree-tops, nowhere was there any sign of human life. A whole world had disappeared from view.
While he was waiting for the coffee water to boil he stood on a rock and shouted over the ice-covered bay. The sound was tossed about, returned as a distant echo, then all was silent again. From there he could see Kråkmarö and Armnö through his telescope.
He found an unlocked boathouse by the Armnö Sound. There was a fireplace inside, and no sign of any footprints around the building. There were nets, decoys and a strong smell of tar in the boathouse. He opened a tin of American meat and snuggled down in his sleeping bag. He fell asleep with a feeling of being inaccessible.
Chapter 90
The next day he walked ten kilometres.
That took him over Bockskärsdjupet and as far as Hökbådan, where he set up camp.
He had intended to head straight for Halsskär, but a channel had opened up near Harstena and so he was forced to make a detour to the north. Hökbådan proved to be no more than a collection of bare rocks with no boathouses. Before darkness fell he managed to make a shelter of branches and moss over a crack in the rocks where he intended to spend the night. He made a fire and opened another tin of American meat. The wind was still no more than a gentle breeze when he eased himself into his sleeping bag. It had grown noticeably less cold during the day. He estimated the temperature at minus three degrees. When darkness fell and his fire died he lay listening to the sea. Was that open water he could hear lapping against the ice? Or would the thick ice stretch as far as Halsskär? He could not make up his mind what he could hear, whether it was the sea or the silence inside his head.
Several times he thought he could hear gunfire, first a distant thud and then a shock wave passing through the darkness.
Nobody knows where I am, he thought. In the middle of winter, in the cold world of the ice, I have found a hiding place that nobody could possibly imagine.
Chapter 91
He lit a fire as day broke. The wind was still no more than a breeze, the temperature minus one. He ate his remaining sandwiches, drank coffee, then prepared to walk the ten kilometres to Halsskär. The clouds were motionless above his head, the ice with its thin covering of snow was no longer broken by rocks and skerries. Now he was heading towards the open sea. He could see Halsskär and the Sandsänkan lighthouse through his telescope. He could still not see whether the ice stretched all the way, though.
He pulled his rucksacks behind him, the harness had chafed his left shoulder, but it was not painful enough to stop him walking for one more day.
He saw no animal tracks. He was walking eastwards and gave himself no time to rest. Every half-hour he scanned the horizon with his telescope.
He had passed Krokbåden to his right before he could be confident that there was ice all the way. There was no open water forming a barrier between him and the island. The ice extended as far as Halsskär and perhaps even to the Sandsänkan lighthouse.
He scanned Halsskär with his telescope. Eventually he was able to make out a narrow wisp of smoke rising from the skerry.
She was still there. But she was not expecting him.