He didn’t want to mention his name, it was easier to think of him as the despicable deserter, the man who had abandoned his duty and got in the way.
Chapter 98
He returned over the ice.
Where the dead cat had been was only the patch of dried blood. He forced his way through the bushes growing by the shore and made his way towards the cottage.
Gunfire could be heard from out to sea. Then came the shock wave. Then another shot and another shock wave. Then all was silent again. Perhaps it was a warning signal. Perhaps the deserter was surrounded, perhaps the whole German Fleet was moving towards them at the edge of the ice? He sat down on a ledge to the north of the cottage. From there he could keep watch on it. A solitary bird flew over his head, its wings flapping madly. He imagined it to be a projectile, aimed at nobody.
Sara Fredrika came out, followed by the deserter. He had taken off his tunic and replaced it with an old jacket that must have belonged to her husband.
Jealousy.
He thought about the revolver locked away in a cupboard in Stockholm. If he had had it with him, he could easily have killed them both.
She pointed towards the inlet, they set off. The deserter suddenly stopped, took hold of her arm and pulled her towards him. She let it happen. At first the jealousy had been minor, creeping and not especially worrying. Now it had grown into something intolerable.
Then came fury.
His father had once spoken to guests at dinner about the importance of people learning to act like snakes. Cold blood, endless patience and poisonous fangs that struck at exactly the right instant. He had not been at the table, it was a dinner for grown-ups and he was only a child. But he had listened from behind the door.
Afterwards he had played snakes. He had dressed in brown, painted a stripe on his tongue so that it seemed to be forked, and tried to wriggle his way forward, wait patiently in the shade cast by a tree, stretch himself out on some rocks. He had even taught himself to spit thin squirts of saliva through his front teeth.
When he was eight he had forced himself to endure the ultimate snake test. He had caught a mouse in a trap, still alive, and bitten it and killed it. He had not been able to eat it, though.
Now here he was confronted by the unexpected. A deserter had got in his way. I shall kill him, he thought. And I’ll cut off her hair that he has touched.
He lay motionless on the ledge until they were out of sight. Then he went to the cottage, found the deserter’s papers in his tunic pocket and studied them. Stefan Dorflinger, born in Siegburg on 12 September 1888. Parents, Karl, regular seaman, bugler, and Elfriede Dorflinger. Signed on as a rating in the gunnery section of the cruiser Weinshorn in November 1912. A number of regular appraisal reports were positive. There was also a photograph of his parents. Karl Dorflinger had a prominent moustache; a friendly seeming, smiling man, but on the stout side. Elfriede Dorflinger was also large, her head seemed to rest on her shoulders with no neck. A bugler and a housewife pictured at a pavement café in a park. A shadowy, blurred waitress was walking by in the background with a tray of empty beer glasses. They were holding hands.
He studied the photograph at length. Two fat people holding hands.
He thought about the pictures that existed of him and Kristina Tacker. They used to go to the photographer’s studio at least once a year. But there was not a single picture in which they made physical contact with each other, no holding hands, not even a hand on the other’s shoulder.
He replaced the documents and picked up his telescope from on top of his rucksack. He opened the door and put the telescope to his eye.
The image was blurred. She had used it.
Chapter 99
He was standing with the telescope in his hand when he heard them approaching. He put it down on the ground, closed the door and sat down in the sun, his back resting against the house wall.
They were running. Both of them were out of breath.
‘There are people on the ice,’ she said.
‘Did they see you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Presumably hunters. But you can never be sure.’
He thought for a moment.
‘Did they get a good view of you, or just sufficient to see that there were two of you?’
‘They are a long way away, in among the little reefs at Händelsöarna.’
The Händelsöarna islands were more than a kilometre away from Halsskär. Unless the hunters had a telescope they couldn’t possibly have been able to identify the people they had seen.
‘If they come here we can say that it was me and you they saw. Will they be sleeping here?’
‘They can build huts on the ice. They all know that I don’t allow strange men to sleep in my cottage. Unless there’s a storm or they’ve been in an accident.’
‘He’ll have to hide himself outside.’
He explained rapidly in German. The deserter seemed to trust him now and did not hesitate when they went out on to the rocks shortly afterwards. Tobiasson-Svartman led him to a crevice big enough for him to curl up in.
‘Why are you doing this for me?’
‘I would have done the same as you, and I would have hoped to meet somebody who was prepared to give me the same help.’
‘I would never have survived if Sara Fredrika hadn’t taken care of me.’
The deserter had lain down in the crevice and looked up at him. He had a scarf round his head, and the mad fox’s pelt wound round his neck.
‘I love her,’ he said. ‘I shall never forget her. One day when the war is over I shall come back here.’
‘Does she know that?’
‘We can’t talk to each other. But I think she knows.’
Tobiasson-Svartman nodded slowly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am sure you’re right. No doubt she does know.’
He returned to the cottage and explained where the deserter was hiding. She had tied up her hair and was wearing a shawl.
She shrank back when he touched her.
‘I promise to help him,’ he said. ‘But does he want to be helped? I’m afraid that one of these days he’ll simply wander off over the ice.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘He has been through something that nobody can put up with. It’s important that we keep an eye on him. I’ll let him come with me when I’m working on the ice. He can be of assistance.’
She stood by the window. ‘I remember the first time you came here,’ she said. ‘I thought you were a man I could never trust. Now I’m ashamed when I recall that.’
‘Why did you think you couldn’t trust me?’
‘I thought you were lustful and up to no good. Now I know I was wrong.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You were wrong.’
‘I keep thinking about your dead wife and your dead daughter.’
‘That’s something we have in common,’ he said quietly. ‘The dead.’
Chapter 100
The men were from the inner archipelago. They carried shotguns and were going to hunt seabirds that were overwintering in the area. They were father and son, the father thin with sunken eyes, the son tall with a stutter. The father had a gold ring in one ear — perhaps he had been a seafarer who believed that the ring would save him from drowning, or at least pay for his funeral. Sara Fredrika had seen them before. They would call in now and then every winter, asking for nothing more than to know if she had seen any seabirds. They had decoys in baskets which they carried on their backs, and Tobiasson-Svartman noticed that the father smelled of strong drink.