As he came to the skerry he threw the last bit of wood out into the fog.
She was gutting cod, and now and then a bass, up by the cottage. She knew right away that something had happened. She dropped her knife and sat down, not on the stool behind her but on the ground.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Don’t beat about the bush, tell me now.’
‘There’s been an accident.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes, he’s dead.’
‘Did the ice give way?’
‘He must have drilled holes so as to create a potential trapdoor when he was alone on the ice. He stepped on the weakened patch and just disappeared.’
She shook her head.
‘He took his own life,’ Tobiasson-Svartman said. ‘I was taken completely by surprise. He didn’t say a word. He just appeared out of the fog, walked up to where he must have drilled the holes and stepped straight on to it. He didn’t hesitate. He can only have wanted to die.’
‘No. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live.’
She was adamant. She bit hard on her hair. He had the impression that she was in a hole in the ice, hanging on by her own hair.
‘He was scared. He was surrounded by fog, but even so he was alert to pursuers. When he was asleep, he tossed and turned and looked to see if there was somebody behind him. There’s a limit to what can be endured by a person who is being hunted down even in his dreams.’
‘He didn’t want to die.’
She put out a hand to the cottage wall and stood up. When he tried to help her she pushed him away. She flopped down on to the stool. The fog had started to lift. The sun glinted on the layer of ice covering the roof ridge.
‘I don’t understand this,’ she said. ‘He wanted to live. Didn’t you see his eyes? I’ve never seen anything like them.’
‘They were full of fear.’
‘They were self-contained. He had eyes that made sense, that could see there was something you could reach if only you could get away from what was causing you pain.’
‘You must have been mistaken. He was so scared that, in the end, he couldn’t deal with it. He had evidently thought it all out, drilled the holes in the right places, filled his pockets with stones. He stepped into the water just as you would step on to the dance floor, or into a warm room out of a cold one. He did what he wanted to do. When he stepped into the water, he wasn’t frightened any more.’
‘I thought I heard a scream.’
‘It must have been a bird crying through the fog.’
The ice on the roof had started dripping. He stood up, stretched his legs and thought that Dorflinger had never really existed: he was just a figment of the imagination.
‘Why didn’t he kill himself when he first drilled the holes to create the trapdoor in the ice? Why did he wait?’
‘If you’ve decided you’re going to die, there’s no hurry. Perhaps he wanted to be properly prepared.’
‘When he touched me he wasn’t scared. There was no hint of suicide in his hands.’
He winced when she mentioned the sailor’s hand. He tried not to think about it. I should tell her the truth, he thought. That I killed him, and that now she has to make up her mind: stay here or go away with me.
‘He had accepted the fact that he could not go on,’ he said. ‘He had seen the war, he had run away from it and he was being eaten up inside by his pursuers. I might well have done the same in his situation.’
She ran away down the path to the inlet. He followed slowly after.
She was sitting on the upturned boat, crying.
He felt sorry for her, but mostly he felt sorry for himself. Did she not understand? She was the one who had forced him to kill the deserter because she had put her cottage and her bed at his disposal.
The clouds had dispersed, and the fog. He returned to the cottage and sat down to wait.
She took her time. But when she did come, it was to him, and to nobody else.
Chapter 108
They shared her bed that night. For the second time.
For one brief, giddy moment he thought he could smell the fragrance of Kristina Tacker’s body, hear her panting breath.
Then he was back to reality. Sara Fredrika’s long hair imprisoned him, as if he had been woven into a net and was being pulled towards a point where he felt like bursting. Afterwards they were calm, still. He could not tell if she was awake or asleep. But she was there. He was there. It was not like sharing a bed with Kristina Tacker, with each of them heading off in different directions all the time.
He was woken up at dawn by her looking at him. Her face was very close.
‘I shall soon have to leave you,’ he said. ‘But I’ll come back. I’ll come and take you away from here.’
‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I have to have something to believe in. Otherwise I couldn’t go on.’
Otherwise I couldn’t go on. What would happen then?
Chapter 109
He left her early in the morning of 27 February.
He had made preparations for starting to walk back to the mainland. She went with him to the edge of the ice.
‘The cat,’ he said when they were saying goodbye. ‘I saw a cat once, here on the island. But you said there wasn’t one?’
‘I don’t know why I lied. Of course there is a cat. But I don’t know where it’s got to.’
‘I thought you would want to know. Dorflinger killed it with a stone and threw it on to the ice. He killed the cat in a spasm of violent rage. I don’t know why. But I thought you would like to know.’
She did not reply.
Their leave-taking was awkward, a handshake, no more.
He counted to two hundred paces. Then he turned round. She had gone. She was left behind.
Part VII
Capture
Chapter 110
The train came to a halt between stations. They had just passed through Åby. The station had been in darkness, but a fire was burning next to the line. It was evening, with a wind blowing from Bråviken. Tobiasson-Svartman was in the carriage next to the engine. He was sharing a compartment with a man fast asleep in a corner, his head buried in a moth-eaten fur coat. He listened to the sighing noise coming from the steam engine, and was overcome by a feeling of unreality: he would be stuck here, the train would never start moving again. There were no rails ahead of him, only an endless vacuum and sighs from the engine.
It was the second day after he had left Halsskär and started his trek to the mainland. He had spent the night in the boathouse on Armnö, but he had been unable to sleep and as soon as dawn broke he went on walking over the ice towards Gryt.
Round about Kättilö he had heard rifle shots, first one, then another. Apart from that all was silent: the ice, the islands, solitary birds.
When he came to Gryt, walking up the hill towards the church, he had a stroke of luck. A car approached and they gave him a lift as far as Valdemarsvik. The driver said not a word all the twenty-kilometre journey. There were big rust holes in the car, and Tobiasson-Svartman could see the road beneath his feet.
On the back seat was the body of a child, a little girl, wrapped in a blanket Only when they reached Valdemarsvik did he ask what had happened.
The man replied wearily: ‘She scalded herself. Knocked over a bowl of boiling water. She was soaked in it from her stomach downwards. She screamed something awful before she died. But her face wasn’t burned.’
The girl was lying with her face turned towards him.