‘Don’t you dare lay your hands on me. I don’t know what’s going on here, I’m hearing things that I refuse to believe. Don’t you dare touch me, and don’t touch her either.’
Sara Fredrika squatted down by Kristina Tacker’s side. Kristina Tacker was wrestling with the thorn bushes.
Tobiasson-Svartman looked at his wife. She was like a wounded animal. He was the one who had pulled the trigger, but he had not been able to give her the coup de grâce, he had only wounded her. Sara Fredrika pulled her away from the thorn bushes. Kristina Tacker did not resist. Despite the darkness he could see the blood running down her face from where the thorns had pierced her skin. She was hanging like a dead body in Sara Fredrika’s powerful arms.
He was motionless. The cat was still observing proceedings from a distance. Four metres, he thought. The shadows make it hard to be precise about the centimetres. But the cat is sitting four metres away from me. Kristina Tacker and Sara Fredrika and the baby are a few metres further away. But in fact the distance between me and them is infinite, and it is growing all the time. The lines have been cut and the current and the wind are propelling us in different directions.
He was reminded of the ice. The open channels, people falling in and meeting their fate in the black cold of winter.
But most of all he was reminded of the drift net he had seen the previous summer, when the sun’s rays were beating down on the water, the drift net with all the dead ducks and fish. At that time he had interpreted it as a symbol of freedom. But he was not the net, he was one of the dead fish. What he had seen then was his own downfall.
He started running along the path, running away. He stumbled and hit his face on a rock, cutting his lips. It seemed as if the whole skerry had made him its enemy and was attacking him.
The sailing dinghy was at anchor in the inlet. He waded into the cold water and scrambled aboard. But the sail was furled tightly round the mast and a locked chain prevented him from unfurling it. The tiller was also locked: she had prepared for all eventualities, she knew him far too well to leave anything to chance. She had cut off his escape route even before they had started shouting at each other in the freezing cold water. He tried to break the chain with a hammer he found in one of the pigeonholes in the cockpit. But it refused to yield, and he could see that he would break the tiller if he kept on trying. He threw the hammer into the sea and slumped on to the seat in the cockpit. Everything was still on all sides.
Beneath him, underneath Kristina Tacker’s sailing dinghy, the depth was two and a quarter metres.
Chapter 189
He spent the night in the cockpit.
Loneliness was the walls that encircled him. He had exchanged his wet clothes for hers that he had found in the cabin. He was waiting for the conclusion to all this while dressed in his wife’s underclothes. As the long night drew to a close and light started to creep in, the rocks looked to him like stones waiting to be used for the building of a mighty cathedral.
He had dozed off at one point during the night. He had dreamed about flotsam and jetsam. He had been walking along a beach, searching. The kelp seemed to be transparent, and the smell of mud very strong. Eventually he found what he was looking for, a splinter of wood from a stern. He was that splinter of wood, wrenched out of his context, drifting out of control.
The first thought that occurred to him when he woke up was that the seabed inside him had slowly started to transform itself into an infinite, unmeasurable depth.
I know how to set up a lie, he thought. But I cannot cope with living in the world that lies create. The impostor lives a life, but the deceit involved lives a different life.
Chapter 190
He heard footsteps on the path. It was Sara Fredrika.
It was still only half-light, and he felt very cold sitting there in the cockpit.
‘Come ashore,’ she shouted.
He neither answered nor moved.
‘She’s ill. If she stays here she’ll die. I don’t care what you’ve done, but she must have help.’
He waded ashore with his half-dry clothes over his head. The cold water made him gasp for breath. He started sobbing, but she merely shook her head dismissively at his tears. Her hair was tousled, like it had been the first time he had observed her in secret.
She kept him at a distance all the time.
‘I know everything,’ she said. ‘She’s told me all. I can cope with that even if I ought to tie a sinker round your neck and send you down to the deepest part of the seabed. I can cope. But she can’t. The baby was too much. I have just one question before I run out of words. How could you give both your daughters the same name?’
He did not answer.
‘It’s hard to imagine that so much shit can come out of a little man like you. It just comes pouring out. But for the moment we are not important, she is. I think she’s going out of her mind.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Help me to get her to the boat. I can’t take her in the dinghy, if she starts getting violent she could throw herself overboard. I can’t tie her up either. I can’t take a tied-up person ashore.’
‘Can she cope with seeing me?’
‘I don’t think you exist any more as far as she is concerned. When she saw our baby, when she heard its name, something snapped. I could hear it inside me, the sound of a branch snapping. That branch was her life.’
She looked at the sailing boat.
‘I’ve never sailed a boat as big as this, but I dare say I’ll manage. How many sails does it have?’
‘Two.’
‘I’ll be able to sail it, even if it is big.’
‘Where do you intend to take her?’
‘I’ll make sure she gets back home.’
‘You can’t sail her to Stockholm. It’s a long way, you’ll never find your way.’
‘If I could find you I’ll no doubt be able to find the way to Stockholm as well. I’ll take the baby with me, of course. But you will stay here. When I come back we’ll leave. I don’t forgive you for all your deceit, all the falsehoods you have surrounded yourself with. But there must be something genuine somewhere inside you.’
He touched against her arm. She gave a start.
‘Don’t come too close. If I weren’t so hardened I’d be as mad as she is. All you really deserve is a sinker attached to you. But I can’t bear the thought of losing another husband. Even if he does act as if he has no guts and had evil intentions when he first came to this skerry with all his kind words and smiles.’
They walked up to the cottage. He shrank back when he saw Kristina Tacker. Her face was covered in scratches from thorns and branches, her clothes were torn and covered in vomit. She was sitting on the stool, swaying backwards and forwards. Sara Fredrika squatted down in front of her.
‘Let’s go now. There’s not much wind, but enough to get us away from here.’
Kristina Tacker did not react. Sara Fredrika had prepared a basket of food, and another one with clothes. The baby was lying on the bed, wrapped up in a fur.
‘You carry the baskets,’ she said. ‘She and the baby are mine.’
Sara Fredrika led the way, carrying the baby and supporting Kristina Tacker.
Behind them walked Tobiasson-Svartman, carrying the heavy baskets.
Once again he had the feeling he was in a procession. Behind him were other marchers that he could not see.
Chapter 191
They waded out to the boat.
It was a cold, clear autumn morning. There was a south-easterly breeze. Kristina Tacker said nothing, allowed herself to be led out into the water as if she were to be baptised. Sara Fredrika laid her down in the cockpit together with the baby. He stood by, up to his waist in water. Using a key she had found in one of Kristina Tacker’s pockets, Sara Fredrika first unlocked the chain round the sails, then the one securing the tiller.