The man had placed his cine camera on a stand. The ladies in white were running around on the rocks when suddenly a man with an amazingly long moustache and a white-painted face jumped out from behind a slab of rock and rushed towards the women.
Sara Fredrika dug her nails into Tobiasson-Svartman’s arm.
‘He’s got a tail,’ she hissed. ‘There’s a tail sticking out of his trousers.’
She was right. The man with black rings round his eyes had an artificial tail. The women looked as if they were praying and begging for mercy, their faces twitching. The man behind the camera was winding away at full speed, the women were screaming, but without making a sound. Sara Fredrika stood up. Her scream was like a foghorn. She bellowed and started throwing stones at the man with the tail. Tobiasson-Svartman tried to hold her back.
‘It’s not real,’ he said. ‘It’s not real life, it’s not actually happening.’
He snatched a stone from out of her hand and gave her a shake.
‘They’re only acting,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s going to get hurt.’
Sara Fredrika calmed down. The man behind the camera had stopped winding and turned his cap the right way round. The ladies were staring in astonishment at the pair who had materialised from the rocks. The man had removed the tail and was holding it in his hand like a piece of rope. There was a flash of light from the yacht which was bobbing up and down in the swell. Somebody was watching them through a telescope.
Tobiasson-Svartman told Sara Fredrika to wait, and went over to the film-makers. The women were young and strikingly pretty. The man with the tail had a face he thought he recognised. When he held his hand out in greeting, he remembered having seen the man in a play at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. His name was Valfrid Mertsgren, the play was called The Wedding at Ulfåsa.
Mertsgren ignored his outstretched hand and eyed him up and down in annoyance.
‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘We were told this skerry was uninhabited. They said there was a ruin of an old cottage that we could use.’
‘I live here with my wife.’
‘For hell’s sake, you can’t live here. What do you live on?’
‘Fishing.’
‘Plundering wrecks?’
‘If somebody gets into difficulties we help them. We don’t plunder.’
‘Everybody does,’ said Mertsgren. ‘People are greedy. They’d steal their neighbour’s heart if they had the chance.’
The cameraman and the two women in white had gathered round him.
‘Can you really live here?’ asked one of the women. ‘What do you do in the winter?’
‘Where there’s the sea, there’s food.’
‘Can’t we include him and the fat woman in the film?’ said the other woman, with a shrill laugh.
‘She’s not fat,’ Tobiasson-Svartman said.
The woman who had made the suggestion stared at him. He hated her intensely.
‘She’s not fat,’ he said again. ‘She’s pregnant.’
‘In any case, you can’t be in the film,’ Mertsgren said. ‘We can’t have a woman with a bun in the oven. This is a romantic adventure, pretty tableaux alternating with scary ones. We don’t want any cows with one up the spout.’
Tobiasson-Svartman was on the point of punching him. But he controlled himself, spoke slowly in an attempt to disguise his feelings.
‘Why make a film on Halsskär?’ he asked in a friendly tone. ‘Why here of all places?’
‘That’s a good question,’ Mertsgren said. ‘I really don’t know why we’re filming here.’
He turned his back on the others.
‘There’s a bloodhound by the name of Hultman on the boat,’ he snarled. ‘He’s a wholesale dealer, and he’s put some money into this incredible mish-mash of a manuscript we’re supposed to be filming. Maybe he’s got nothing better to waste his money on. He’s earning vast amounts from the war, churning out nails and explosives. Can you see what the boat’s called?’
To his surprise Tobiasson-Svartman discovered that the yacht had the name Goeben on its bows. The same name as the German battleship he had a picture of on his desk, the ship he had never actually seen but had admired even so.
A yacht and a battleship with the same name! Women in white with large hats and dying sailors trapped inside their burning ships, a war and a man earning big money.
‘I understand,’ he said.
‘Understand what?’ Mertsgren asked.
‘That Mr Hultman likes the war and death.’
‘I don’t know if he likes death. He likes watching women bathing through his telescope. He keeps far enough away not to be seen, nobody realises he’s there, but then he aims his telescope at the woman or the part of her body he fancies.’
‘But likes the war and death for the sake of his nails.’
‘He certainly likes the Germans, at least. They’re like his nails, he says. Straight, austere, all the same. He likes the German orderliness, hopes the Kaiser will win the war, curses Sweden for keeping its mouth shut and hiding behind switched-off lighthouses. While he sits in his yacht watching ladies through his telescope.’
Mertsgren leaned forward and whispered in Tobiasson-Svartman’s ear.
‘He’s also enthusiastic about anything to do with erotic jokes. You’re a fisherman, so he would have told you that he only sticks his rod into Thigh Bay.’
He contemplated the tail he had in his hand.
‘In all the appalling and degrading roles I’ve had to play in my life, I’ve never had to wear a tail before. Not until now. Hamlet doesn’t have a tail, nor does Lear, nor the malade imaginaire. But a man will do anything for a thousand kronor. That’s what he’s paying. For a week’s work, plus fancy dinners and barrels of booze.’
He waved to Sara Fredrika.
‘I understand why she got upset,’ he said. ‘Give her my compliments and tell her I apologise. We’ll leave you in peace. I’ll tell Hultman that the skerry was already booked.’
Mertsgren took the two ladies by the arm and returned to the rowing boats. The man with the camera was busy winding leather straps round his stand. Tobiasson-Svartman looked hard at the camera. The man nodded.
‘A miracle,’ he said. ‘Something for the priests to envy us for.’ He rested the stand on his shoulder. ‘Are you wondering what on earth I’m on about?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have the mystery of life in my hand. I turn the handle and decide the speed of people’s movements. With the camera we can expose secrets that even the eye cannot see. A galloping horse has all four hooves in the air at the same time, that’s something the camera has been able to establish. We can see more than the eye does. But we also control what we allow others to see.’
He picked up the camera and looked from Sara Fredrika to Tobiasson-Svartman. He smiled.
‘I don’t really know how I got mixed up in all this,’ he said. ‘I was a photographer to start with, with my own little studio. Then Hultman happened to hear about me, and now I’m standing here on a rock with a cine camera and some crazy idea about a tableau the Nail Master has decided should be called The Devil on Holiday by the Sea. But it has sharpened my eyes, I have to admit that.’
‘How do you mean?’
The man put his head on one side, a shadow fell over his smile.
‘Well, for example, I can see that you are not a fisherman. I don’t know who you are nor what you do. But a fisherman? Never.’
He set off tentatively towards the water, carrying his equipment. Tobiasson-Svartman had the impression that the stand was part of a cross the cameraman was having to bear.