The sea, the elevation of the land, all these incomprehensible phenomena, they are like the slow progress from childhood to adulthood and death. An elevation of the land takes place inside every human being. All our memories come from the sea.
The sea is a dream that never sells its skin.
He smiled. My wife does not want me to see her crying. Perhaps that is for the same reasons, whatever they are, that I do not want her to see who I am when I am alone with the sea?
He returned to his sheltered spot. A freezing cold sailor emptied a bucket of waste food over the stern. Seagulls were following in the wake of the ship like a watchful rearguard. The deck was deserted again. He continued to contemplate the rocks. It was getting lighter.
These reefs and rocks are not only animals, he thought. They are also stones that are breaking free from the sea. There is no such thing as freedom without effort. But these stones are also time. Stones rising slowly out of the sea, which never lets go of them.
He tried to work out where they were. It was eleven hours since they had left Stockholm. He estimated the speed again and adjusted his previous conclusion to nine knots. They must be somewhere in the northern Östergötland archipelago, south of Landsort, north of the Häradskär lighthouse, to the south or east of Fällbådarna.
He went back to his cabin. Apart from the rating on deck he had not set eyes on a single member of the ship’s large crew. Nobody could very well have seen him either, nor his hiding place.
He closed his cabin door and sat down on his bunk. In half an hour he would take breakfast in the officers’ mess. At half past nine he was due to meet the ship’s captain in his quarters. Captain Hans Rake would hand over the secret instructions presently locked in the ship’s safe.
Chapter 12
He wondered why he so seldom laughed.
What was he missing? Why did he so often think he must be fashioned out of faulty clay?
Chapter 13
He sat on the edge of his bunk and let his eyes wander slowly around the cabin.
It was three metres square, like a prison cell with a round, brass-framed porthole. On the deck immediately below it was a corridor linking the various sections of the vessel. According to the plans, which he had memorised in minute detail, there were also two watertight, vertical bulkheads to the left of his cabin but two metres lower down in the ship. Above his head was the companionway leading to the starboard midships gun.
He thought: The cabin is a point. I am in the middle of that point at this very moment. One of these days there will be measuring instruments so precise that it will be possible to establish the exact location of this cabin in terms of latitude and longitude at any given moment. Its position will be capable of being fixed on a map of the world down to a fraction of a second. When that happens there will no longer be a place for gods. Who needs a god when the precise location of every human being can be established, when a person’s inner location will coincide exactly with his external location? People making a living out of speculating about superstition and religion will have to find something else to live off. Charlatans and hydrographic engineers stand irrevocably on different sides of the crucial dividing line. Not the date line or the prime meridian line, but the line that separates the measurable from what cannot be measured and hence doesn’t exist.
He gave a start. Something in that thought confused him. But he could not put his finger on what it was.
He took his shaving mirror from the sponge bag Kristina Tacker had embroidered with his initials and a childishly formed rose.
Each time he looked at his reflection he took a deep breath. As if he were preparing himself for descending into a chasm. He imagined being confronted by a face he did not recognise in the mirror.
Chapter 14
He always felt a strong sense of relief to encounter those eyes, his furrowed brow and the scar over his left eye.
He examined his face and thought about who he was. A man who had made his career in the Swedish Navy, whose ambition was one day to become chiefly responsible for mapping the secret naval channels that were a key part of the Swedish defences.
Was he anything more?
A person who constantly measured distances and depths, both in external reality and in the oceans inside him that were as yet uncharted.
Chapter 15
He stroked his cheeks and replaced the mirror in his sponge bag. He was also a man who had changed his surname. His father had died at the beginning of March 1912. A few weeks before the Olympic Games were due to be opened in the newly built stadium in Stockholm, he applied to the Royal Patents and Registrations Office with a request to change his name. To distance himself from his dead father, he had decided to insert his mother’s maiden name between his Christian name and his surname, Svartman. His mother had always tried to protect him from his moody and perpetually irascible father. His father was dead now, but dead people can also be a threat. The protective wall his mother had thrown up would be extended into his name.
He put away his sponge bag and opened the lid of a wooden box he had placed on the low table with raised edges to stop items falling off in stormy seas. It contained four watches. Three of them showed exactly the same time. They were a check on one another. The hands on the fourth, which he had inherited from his father, were still. In that one, time had stopped.
He closed the lid again. Three of the watches told him the time, the fourth represented death.
Chapter 16
Three officers got to their feet and eyed him with interest as he entered the mess. He recognised one of them, the short-sighted first mate who had welcomed him by the gangplank the previous evening. Höckert introduced his two colleagues.
‘May I introduce you to Lieutenant Sundfeldt and Artillery Captain von Sidenbahn?’
The latter was tall and slim, and smelled strongly of either aftershave or gin.
‘No doubt you are wondering what an artillery captain is doing on board a ship,’ he said. ‘We are usually more at home and more effective on dry land, but sometimes an artillery captain can be of use on board a warship. Especially when guns have to be broken in and adjusted and there is a shortage of officers.’
They sat down. A waiter served coffee. Nobody asked any questions. Captain Rake had naturally informed his officers that they would be accompanied on their voyage to the outer edge of the Östergötland archipelago by an officer on a secret mission.
Sundfeldt and von Sidenbahn left the mess.
‘Have you met the ship’s captain yet?’ said Höckert.
He spoke with a pronounced accent, possibly a Småland dialect, or perhaps he came from Halland or Bohuslän.
‘No,’ said Tobiasson-Svartman. ‘I know Captain Rake only by reputation so far.’
‘Reputations are generally misleading or exaggerated. But there is always a grain of truth in what is said. The truth about Rake is that he’s very competent. Possibly a bit on the lazy side, but aren’t we all?’
Höckert stood up, clicked his heels and gave an apology of a salute. Tobiasson-Svartman finished his breakfast alone. He could hear Lieutenant Sundfeldt’s angry tones from the deck, but could not make out what had upset him.