The man stopped and turned round.
‘Maybe you would be a good story for a film? An escaped criminal, somebody running away from his debts. How should I know?’
He did not wait for an answer. The first rowing boat was already on its way back to the yacht. The women in white were laughing, there was a clinking of bottles.
Tobiasson-Svartman went back to Sara Fredrika.
‘What kind of people were they? Those women hiding their eyes under their hats? I didn’t like them. And tails are for animals, not for people.’
‘It was just make-believe. A devil jumping around, that’s all.’
‘What were they doing here?’
They had started to walk back to the cottage. He was holding on to her, making sure she did not slip.
‘Just think of them as driftwood. Something that happened to have been washed ashore here. Then the wind turned and they drifted away again. Driftwood that wasn’t even fit for firewood.’
‘Tails are for animals,’ she said again. ‘Tails are not for people.’
Chapter 172
In the afternoon he went to the highest point of the skerry, telescope in hand. The Goeben had left. He scanned the horizon but could find no sign of it.
The cameraman had seen right through him. He tried to work out if that implied danger.
He could not see any.
Chapter 173
One night she woke him up out of a dream.
Kristina Tacker had been standing in front of him, she had been saying something, but he had not been able to work out what it was.
He gave a start and sat up.
‘I think the baby is on its way. It’s moving, it’s tensing its body.’
‘But there’s a long time to go yet.’
‘I have no control over that.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Stay awake. I’ve been on my own for long enough in my life.’
‘I’m here, even if I’m asleep.’
‘What do I know about your dreams?’
It’s just like the man with the camera, he thought. She sees straight through me. But she does not know.
‘I rarely dream,’ he said. ‘My sleep is empty, it’s black, it doesn’t even have any colours. I sometimes think I’ve been dreaming about flowers, but they are always grey. I’ve only ever dreamed about dead flowers, never about living ones.’
They stayed awake until dawn. The oyster-catchers were calling to one another, the gulls, the terns.
At about six they decided that he would sail to Kråkmarö and fetch the midwife. Even if the baby was not ready to pop out, they ought to make sure that everything was prepared.
He set sail in the easterly wind, three or four metres per second.
A thought struck him. Perhaps he should seize the moment and make a run for it, head north or south, or even east towards Gotland, and the Gulf of Riga beyond.
But he set sail in a westerly direction, to the midwife. The dinghy sped through the water, Halsskär faded into the horizon behind him.
The August day was like a buoy, he thought. Clean and white in the sunlight.
The sea was carrying him to his destiny.
Chapter 174
Angel was her name, the midwife.
She was not baptised Angel, of course: in the registers and on her midwifery certificate she was called Angela Wester. But everybody said Angel. That’s what her mother had wanted to call her, she had had a dream about it the night before she gave birth. But the vicar refused. He pointed to the parish register and maintained that nobody was allowed to be called Angel, it would be little short of blasphemy. Her father, the ship’s master Fredrik Wester, did not believe in gods but in compasses, and suggested with a growl that they should call the girl Angel even so. The vicar could not dictate what happened out in the archipelago. And so she became Angel. She never had any brothers or sisters, nor did she find a husband as she was cross-eyed and could hardly be called pretty. When her parents died she sold the house in the village and the little cargo boat that was half submerged in the creek, and moved into a crofter’s cottage. She had trained as a midwife in Norrköping, and devoted her life to other people’s children. She smiled a lot, had a beautiful voice, and was not afraid of mending the roof of her cottage herself if necessary. She could be ill-humoured and would sometimes set out on her own in her sailing dinghy, and everybody in the village would worry in case she never came back again. But she always did come back, and would sail her boat into the creek under cover of darkness when her depression had blown away.
Most of all, Angel was a good midwife. She was good at extracting babies that had got stuck. She had magic hands. There were a lot of midwives and old ladies who knew how to do the job of a midwife. They were all good, of course, but Angel was deft. Like a seamstress or a hunter or a gardener who could make things grow in hollows in the rock with hardly any soil. She had been so successful in many cases considered to be hopeless, that a doctor from Stockholm had once visited Kråkmarö in order to interview her, and although she was getting on for seventy and there were younger midwives to turn to, most people asked for her.
He moored the boat in the creek and walked up the hill to the village. The villagers were out in the fields and pointed the way. He knocked on Angel’s door and she answered immediately. He had never set eyes on her before, but even so, it was as if he knew her. He went into her low-ceilinged kitchen and said where he had come from. She smiled.
‘Sara Fredrika’s baby,’ she said. ‘I assume it’s yours as well?’
He could not bring himself to reply, and she did not worry about it.
‘Children would no doubt like to choose their parents,’ she said. ‘Maybe they do, did we but know it. But there’s some time to go yet for Sara Fredrika. What’s the matter with her?’
He tried to explain, saying what Sara Fredrika had told him to say. Spasmodic tension, difficulties in moving, pains in her pelvis.
Angel asked a few questions.
‘Has she had a fall?’
‘No.’
‘And you haven’t hit her?’
‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’
‘Because men hit their women when things go wrong. Does she have a fever? Has she been carrying heavy things?’
‘She spends most of her time resting.’
‘And when you left things had got a bit better?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you must go back to her. Sara Fredrika hasn’t had much happiness in this life. I’m not sure that you have brought her any either. But you must look after her well. Then you might be able to become the man she needs.’
‘She wants me to take her away from there.’
‘Why should she stay there on that barren rock, after all the terrible things she’s had to go through? It’s eating her up, that inhospitable skerry is scraping her to the bone.’
She went with him down the hill to the sailing dinghy.
‘You haven’t even said what you’re called. Don’t you have a name?’
‘I’m Lars.’
‘I don’t care where you come from. Rumour says that you’re in the navy. But there’s something else that’s more important than that. You are wearing Nils Persson’s clothes. You are reconciled to the fact that there was somebody else before you.’
‘What shall I tell her?’
‘That it’s not time yet. And that I shall come, as long as you fetch me.’
He got into the boat and she untied the painter. There was no wind in the creek, so he prepared the oars.