They had a candlelit dinner.
The heat from the tiled stove spread all round the room. Tobiasson-Svartman would have dearly liked to find peace, and for everything that had happened around the Sandsänkan lighthouse to slip out of his memory. Then there would be no truths or lies, just the navigable channel he had redefined.
He drank wine with the dinner and afterwards port. Kristina sat in the low light embroidering a tablecloth. He could feel that he was not yet ready for bed.
She stood up soon after ten. He waited until he heard her settling down in bed, then he drank two glasses of cognac, washed, drank two more glasses of cognac, brushed his teeth and went into the dark bedroom. The alcohol made his desire stronger than his insecurity.
When it was over, the act that had taken place in total silence, it seemed to him that their love was a bit like running for your life. What he felt most was relief. He tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing.
He lay awake for a long time, knowing that she had not gone to sleep either. He wondered if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep. It was a distance he was not able to assess, using any of the measuring instruments at his disposal.
It was almost three before he was sure that she was asleep.
She was breathing deeply, snoring slightly. He got out of bed, put on his dressing gown and left the room. He took a pair of white gloves out of a cupboard.
He poured himself a glass of cognac and went over to her escritoire. He listened to be sure she had not woken up, carefully turned the key and took out her diary. It seemed to him that the white gloves would lessen the gravity of his intrusion, not touching the pages with his hands.
She had made an entry every day since he left. She had not recorded her sudden unwillingness to accompany him to the quay. It just gave the time, the weather, and said:
Lars has left.
He leafed through the pages, listening all the time for her padding footsteps. In the street outside a drunken man gave vent to his anger and cursed God.
Her notes were usually short, non-committal.
I have had a letter from Lars.
But nothing about the contents, nothing of her reaction to what he had written. Her life is like a slow sinking process, he thought. One day she will drag me down into the depths with her. One day she will no longer be the lid over the abyss on whose edge I am balancing.
When he came to 14 November he found something that broke the pattern. She had recorded the temperature, the wind direction,
a light snowfall at about nine that soon passed over,
but then something more, the first personal comments.
She described a dream she had had that night. It had woken her up and she had immediately got out of bed and written down what she could remember. She concluded with the words:
Some nights the silence is cold and unresponsive, other nights it is soft and inviting. Tonight the silence has gone away.
After that the entries reverted to the previous pattern. Falling temperatures, gusts of wind, having a new water pipe installed in the kitchen.
During the night of 27 November she had another dream:
I wake up with a start. In the dark bedroom I think I can detect the presence of some person, but when I sit up there is nobody there, only the white glint of the moon on the door. I remain sitting up, and I know the dream is important. Suddenly I find myself standing in a street in an unknown town, I have no idea how I got there or where I am going. Nor do I recognise the town. The people all around me are speaking a foreign language I cannot understand. I start walking down the street, the traffic is lively, it's very hot and I have a thick black veil over my face. I come to a big open square where there is a cathedral. People are bustling back and forth over the square, they are all blind, but they are playing a violent game, bumping into one another, crashing into the cathedral walls or the fountain in the middle of the square and drawing blood. So as not to be in the way I go into the cathedral. It is cold and dark inside there. The floor is covered in newly fallen snow, individual flakes are still drifting down from the high-vaulted ceiling. It is a gigantic church, like a vast expanse of ice. A few people are sitting in the pews. I walk down the centre aisle and sit in a pew. I don't say any prayers, just sit there; I still don't know what town I'm in, but I'm not afraid. That surprises me because I'm always made anxious by unfamiliar things, I can never bring myself to travel alone but must always have a companion. I sit in the pew, it's still cold, snow is swirling around over the stone floor, then somebody sits down in front of me. I can tell it is a woman, but am unable to see what she looks like. She turns round, and I see that it is in fact me sitting there. She whispers something I can't understand. Who am I, if that really is me sitting in front of me? Then I wake up. I have some idea of what the dream means, of course, perhaps I am unsure about what is the real me. But the most important thing is that I wasn't afraid in the dream
That was the end of the entry, there wasn't even a full stop.
He put the diary back and locked the escritoire. He stood in a window and looked down at the street. A rat ran along the bottom of the house wall and disappeared through a basement window. He thought about the dream his wife had described in her diary. A dream that got the better of her comfort, he thought. It takes a lot to make her get up once she's in bed, unless she really has to. She leads a very lazy life. But a dream about visiting a cathedral, an unexpected mirror image of her own face, makes her get out of bed and make an effort.
He paused on the words. His wife had
made an effort.
How often had she done that? When she dusted and polished her china figurines. But other than that?
He tried to interpret the dream. It was like breaking and entering her in secret. He sat in a rocking chair, cognac in hand, and rehearsed the dream in his head. But he could not find a way in. The moment she stepped inside the snow-filled cathedral, the dream closed its doors.
He drank another glass of cognac, realised he was becoming very drunk but continued walking around the apartment. He paused to listen outside the maid's door. He could hear her snoring. Very gently he opened the door and peered inside. The girl was sleeping on her back with her mouth wide open. The quilt was pulled right up to her neck. For a moment he was tempted to lift it up and see if she was sleeping naked. He closed the door and went to the room where his wife kept her china figurines. He overcame his urge to smash one of them. What an awful indictment, he thought – I am jealous of a collection of lifeless, mostly badly made china figurines.
Their lifeless eyes stared at him in the pale light seeping in through the windows.
On the morning of 17 December the city was covered by thick fog, the temperature was a few degrees above zero. He felt nervous in advance of the meeting he had to attend at Naval Headquarters. The measurements he had carried out had been conducted and reported in exemplary fashion, and he had no reason to think that they would not be pleased with his work. Even so, he was on edge.
The invisible torpedo was still hurtling towards him.
He went for a long walk through the town, having left home before six without waking his wife. Nor had he roused the maid, but made his own coffee. She had pressed his uniform the day before, supervised by Kristina Tacker. He strolled up the hills to Brunkebergstorg where the coachmen had set up braziers to keep warm, as usual. He crossed the bridge at Strömbron and continued through the alleys of the Old Town, where shadowy figures scuttled in all directions. He was going through everything that had happened at the Sandsänkan lighthouse. It was all there: Captain Rake, Lieutenant Jakobsson, Welander with his vodka bottles, the sailor Richter with no eyes.
The only thing missing was Sara Fredrika.
The woman who, day after day, dreaded catching her own husband in her nets.
At eight o'clock he walked through the main entrance to the Swedish Navy Headquarters on Skeppsholmen. An adjutant invited him to sit down and wait as not everybody on the committee had arrived. A vice admiral who lived out at Djursholm had telegraphed to say that he would be late.
Tobiasson-Svartman shuddered in the cold corridor. He listened to some bugle calls drifting in through the window, followed by the dull thud of a single artillery shot.
After half an hour or so the adjutant informed him that the committee was ready to receive him. He entered a room with previous Admirals of the Fleet staring down at him from the walls. The committee comprised two vice admirals, a captain and a lieutenant whose job it was to keep the minutes. A chair had been placed in readiness for him, in front of the committee who were sitting in a row behind a table covered in a green baize.
Vice Admiral Lars H:son-Lydenfeldt was the chairman. For many years he had been the driving force behind efforts to increase the Swedish Navy's operating capabilities. He had a reputation of being impatient and arrogant, and dominated all those around him by means of sudden outbursts of fury. He invited Tobiasson-Svartman to sit down.
'Your work is impressive,' he said. 'You seem to have that rare thing, a passion for secret military navigable channels. Is that true?'
'I just try to do my job to the best of my ability.'
The vice admiral shook his head impatiently.
'Every single member of the Swedish Navy does his job to the best of his ability. Or at least one can assume that there are not too many idlers and layabouts. I'm talking about something different. Passion. Do you understand?'
'I understand.'
'Then perhaps you would be kind enough to answer my question?'
Tobiasson-Svartman thought about his dream of finding a depth too deep to measure.
'It is exciting to record things that cannot immediately be taken in and comprehended.'
The vice admiral looked doubtfully at him, but decided to accept the answer.
'What you say is understandable. I thought something similar myself in my younger days. But what you thought in your youth, you forget in your manhood and only recall it in your old age.'
The vice admiral sat up straight and held up a chart.
'Our commander-in-chief will receive the chart with the new stretches of channel at Sandsänkan in the new year. A couple of our frigates will test them out during night manoeuvres in differing weather conditions.'
He reached for another chart.
'Gamlebyviken,' he said. 'The approach to the narrow bay. Cramped, existing depth soundings doubtful, constant silting up that hasn't been checked since the 1840s. Well, Commander Svartman, have you been informed that we are counting on you to undertake this mission in the new year?'
'Yes, I have been informed.'
'In our judgement this mission is important and will be given priority. Other measuring operations will be postponed for the time being, since the war means that vessels are needed for other duties.'
'I am ready to start at once.'
'Excellent. You will receive your instructions immediately after Christmas.'
The vice admiral glanced at the lieutenant who was keeping the minutes.
'On 27 December, 08.45 hours,' the lieutenant said.
The vice admiral nodded.
'So, that's that. Has any member of the committee any questions?'
Captain Hansson, who was the oldest person present, with experience dating from the age of sailing ships and always overlooked when it came to promotion, raised his hand.
'You seem to be surrounding yourself with a series of peculiar deaths,' he said. 'It's not exactly commonplace for dead sailors to be fished up out of the sea, for regular bosuns to pass away and ships' captains to fall down dead on deck.'
'I didn't catch the question,' Tobiasson-Svartman said.
'It wasn't a question,' Hansson said. 'It was just a comment that doesn't need to be recorded in the minutes.'
'Can I declare the meeting dosed, then?' Vice Admiral H:son-Lydenfeldt inquired.
Tobiasson-Svartman raised his hand.
'I have a question. There will probably be a layer of ice at the approach to Gamlebyviken in January. Is it the intention that I should make soundings through boreholes?'
'All your work will be concentrated in an area less than half of a nautical mile,' the vice admiral answered. 'Which means that boring holes through the ice will be a satisfactory method of proceeding.'
Tobiasson-Svartman nodded. The vice admiral smiled.
'I've bored holes through the ice myself in my time,' he said. 'I remember when we were sounding a channel in the far north of the Gulf of Bothnia. The ice was a metre thick. It was so cold that the lines froze stiff in the boreholes. It's strenuous work, but you can console yourself with the thought that your task will only take three to four weeks at the most'
The meeting was over. Everyone stood up. Tobiasson-Svartman saluted and left the room. The adjutant handed him his black overcoat. He left through the front door of the headquarters building and felt mightily relieved.
But Captain Hansson's words gnawed away inside him. Was it mere coincidence that he had been surrounded by so many peculiar deaths? Or was there a message involved? A warning?
Stockholm was still enveloped in fog.
Something strange happened on the Sunday before Christmas. Tobiasson-Svartman was bewildered by it, and also by Kristina Tacker's reaction.
It was as if, out of the blue, she had leapt ahead and left him far behind her.
They had gone for a walk to the traditional Christmas market in Stortorget. They left home late in the afternoon, as it was rapidly getting dark. It was mild, a week of freezing cold weather had been followed by a thaw. They left their flat in Wallingatan even though the streets and pavements were slippery and covered in slush. Kristina Tacker insisted, they needed some exercise and he did not want to disappoint her even though he would have preferred to take the tram or a cab.
In the Old Town the square and all the alleys were swarming with people. They examined the goods for sale at the various stalls, his wife bought a little goat made of straw, and after strolling around for an hour they decided to make for home.
When they came to Slottsbacken they suddenly heard a little girl screaming. In the shadow of the royal palace, a man was smacking his daughter. He raised his heavy hand time and time again and smacked her. Kristina Tacker ran up to the man and dragged him away from the girl. She was yelling something neither the man nor her husband could make out, and wrapped her arms round the girl who was howling in pain and fear. She let go of the girl only when the man had promised faithfully not to beat his daughter any more.
The whole incident, from the moment his wife had run ahead of him until the man and the girl disappeared down Skeppsbron, lasted for four minutes and thirty seconds. He had switched on his inbuilt timer then stopped it when she came back to him, out of breath and trembling.
They continued walking home without exchanging a word.
They made no reference to what had happened later that evening either. But Tobiasson-Svartman wondered why it was his wife who had reacted and not him.