Gerlof remembered — the political disputes had been a good reason to stay at sea, where the talk was of wind and weather and cargo rates.
‘Thanks for your help, Sonja. Enjoy your holiday.’
He hung up and went into the bedroom, where the gravedigger’s postcard album lay on the bookshelf. He sat down and found the black-and-white postcard from Aron Fredh. Read the brief message once more, then gazed at the picture on the front. The white ship, SS Kastelholm, at the quayside in Gothenburg. Sweden’s gateway to America.
His eyesight was better than his hearing, and he took a closer look at the picture. Not so much at the ship, but at the quayside and the surroundings. The background was blurred and unfamiliar; a grey morning mist hovered over the water, and the only other vessel in the harbour was a steamship on its way out to sea, with deciduous trees and stone buildings beyond. No derricks, which was a little strange, since his own recollection of Gothenburg in the thirties was of an entire forest of derricks...
Suddenly, he recognized the port with a strange sense of déjà vu, because all at once what had seemed so unfamiliar was very well-known; he had been there many times.
He picked up the phone again.
‘John, have you finished your evening rounds at the campsite?’
‘Yes. Anders has gone off to do some work on the gig; I thought I might give him a hand.’
‘I’ll come with you if you can pick me up,’ Gerlof said.
‘Of course.’
Gerlof rang off, then made another call. To the National Maritime Museum.
John arrived fifteen minutes later, but Gerlof couldn’t wait; he had something to tell his friend before they set off, and drew him on to the veranda.
‘I’ve found something out, John.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Sven Fredh, Aron’s stepfather, was a communist.’
John blinked, his expression vacant. The word ‘communist’ was no longer so loaded these days.
‘Don’t you understand?’ Gerlof went on. ‘Sven was a revolutionary; he was hardly likely to travel to America. Communists weren’t exactly popular there. Immigrants from Europe weren’t really welcome anyway after the Wall Street Crash, least of all troublemakers and “Bolsheviks”.’
‘No, but he could have kept quiet about his views when they got to immigration control in New York.’
‘They never got to New York,’ Gerlof said. He held out the postcard from Aron. ‘This isn’t Gothenburg docks. That’s Stockholm in the background.’
‘Stockholm?’
Gerlof nodded.
‘It’s not easy to recognize the ship’s surroundings, but this evening I suddenly realized it was Skeppsbron in Stockholm. And what was the destination of ships sailing from Skeppsbron in the thirties? Was it America?’
‘No,’ John said. ‘It was Finland. We used to go there sometimes before the war, and we saw them loading.’
‘Exactly, but there were also ships that went further... SS Kastelholm, for example.’
‘She went to America. It says so on the postcard.’
Gerlof shook his head.
‘The Kastelholm was owned by the Swedish-American Line, but they also had European routes. I rang the Maritime Museum in Stockholm just before you arrived, and one of the curators looked up the Kastelholm on their computer database. She sailed the Baltic in the early thirties... all the way to Leningrad.’
John was listening, but looked puzzled.
‘Aron and Sven didn’t go to America,’ Gerlof continued. ‘They went in the opposite direction, to the country that no longer exists... the Soviet Union.’
John stared at him. He was beginning to understand.
‘So the new country wasn’t in the west... but in the east?’
‘Yes. For some Swedes that was the case... for those who dreamed of the revolution and a classless society.’
‘But what happened to them out there?’
‘I don’t know. Those were troubled times in the Soviet Union, and Stalin became increasingly paranoid, so anything could have happened... What do you think became of Aron?’
John didn’t say anything, so Gerlof went on. ‘He certainly didn’t end up working for Al Capone, at any rate.’
High Summer
I am not saying that life is good I would rather say that it is bad but I am not saying that either. I need only three tools: a set square, a pair of scissors and a knife so that I can measure and cut what can be measured and what can be cut.
The rest the night can measure And the creatures that emerge at that time of the day.
The New Country, October 1934
Aron’s boots leak; they are always wet. He is standing in the soft mud outside the row of grey huts that seem to cower beneath the fir trees. He is staring at Sven, who has finally told him the truth.
‘So we’re not in America?’
‘No.’
‘Then where are we?’ asks Aron, afraid of the answer.
‘We’re in a different country,’ Sven explains. ‘The ship brought us across the Baltic, to a city called Leningrad, and we have travelled north from the coast.’
Aron is aware of that; there is no sea here. Only forest. But there is a great deal he doesn’t understand.
‘So Hibinogorsk isn’t in America?’
Sven shakes his head. ‘It’s in northern Russia, by a mountain called Hibina.’
Aron is still staring at him, and Sven goes on. ‘Russia is part of a union, just like America, but this one is known as the Soviet Union.’
Aron has heard of Russia, and he vaguely remembers the word ‘Soviet’ from some lesson at school, but it means nothing to him.
‘But you said...’
‘I said we were going to the new country. That’s where we are now: in the east, where the sun rises. The sun and the wealth that comes with abundance.’
Aron says nothing, but he is thinking about the fact that he had nothing but a piece of black bread for breakfast. One small piece. He looks around the mining town, at the grey huts and the muddy streets.
‘America is not the Promised Land,’ Sven says. ‘It is the kingdom of evil. The poor and the blacks are hunted down like dogs in America. They are captured and hanged from trees so that the rich white folk can use them for target practice, just for fun. Do you really want to go there?’
Aron doesn’t reply.
‘No, you don’t. I can see it in your face. You want to stay here, where everyone works side by side.’
‘I want to go home,’ Aron says eventually. ‘Back to Rödtorp. I wrote and told Mum we were coming home.’
‘She doesn’t know that.’
‘She does.’
‘She knows nothing,’ Sven says, shuffling unsteadily to one side. ‘I never posted the letters.’
Aron can’t believe his ears.
‘In any case, we can’t leave the Soviet Union at the moment,’ Sven says quietly. ‘We can’t afford it. We will leave this country and go home... but not yet.’
Aron has been listening to the same thing for the past three years. The same empty promises. As far as he is concerned, his stepfather, the proud Swedish worker, has begun to shrink.
The Soviet Union? Aron tries to find out more about this country. He has started to understand the language now, the Russian language that he thought was American, and he can hold a conversation of sorts with the workers in the camp.