A few days after Sara Fredrika had given birth, Tobiasson-Svartman found something extraordinary next to the rocks on a headland at the extreme eastern edge of Halsskär.
He could see something bobbing up and down close to the edge of the rocks. When he clambered down to the water he saw that it was a collection of military-issue boots, tied together to form a chain. He tried to find some marking or other that would reveal if they were German or Russian boots, but there was nothing.
There were nine boots in all, four left ones and five right. They had been in the water for a long time. Somebody had tied them together and sent them drifting over the sea.
He threw them up on to the rocks.
He had the feeling that once again he had been surprised and challenged by the dead.
Their daughter cried a lot and kept them awake at night.
For Tobiasson-Svartman it was like being exposed to an agonising pain. He cut pieces of cork and stuck them in his ears when Laura was crying at her loudest, but nothing seemed to help. Sara Fredrika was immune to all noise, and he observed her love with envy. As for him, he had difficulty in feeling any connection with the child.
But with Sara Fredrika, it was as if he had finally understood what love was. For the first time in his life he felt terrified of being abandoned. He was scared by the thought of what would happen if one of these days it dawned on Sara Fredrika that there was no plan to leave the skerry. That the only things in existence were the barren island and all the new reports that had to be written for a secret committee.
Sara Fredrika took every opportunity to talk about leaving.
Her questions now made him feel profoundly desperate. He wanted to be left in peace, he did not want to talk about the future.
'I'm scared,' she said. 'I dream about water, about the depths that you measure. But I don't want to see that. I want to see Laura growing up, I want to get away from this hellish skerry.'
"We shall. Soon. Not just yet.'
It was early one morning. Their daughter was asleep. It was raining. She looked long and hard at him.
'I never see you touching your child,' she said. 'Not even with your fingertips.'
'I daren't,' he said simply. 'I'm afraid that my fingers will leave a mark.'
She said no more. He continued to balance on the invisible borderline between her worry and her trust.
At the beginning of October Tobiasson-Svartman could see that Sara Fredrika's patience was close to breaking point. She did not believe him when he said that soon, not just yet, but soon he would have finished writing his reports.
One night she started hitting him while he was asleep. He defended himself, but she kept on hitting.
'Why can't we go away? Why do you never finish?'
'I'm nearly finished. There's not much left. Then we can go.'
He got out of bed and went outside.
A few days later. Drizzle, no wind.
He walked round the skerry. He suddenly had a flash of insight. All these rocks formed a sort of archive. Like books in a library with infinite holdings. Or faces that will eventually be picked out and examined by future generations.
An archive or a museum, he could not be quite specific about his insight. But autumn was creeping in. Soon this archive or museum would close down for the winter.
Nights now brought frost with them. As day broke on 9 October, the baby started to cry.
That same day Angel Wester sailed out to the skerry to check up on Sara Fredrika and the baby. She was satisfied, the baby was growing and developing as it should.
He accompanied her down to the inlet when her visit was over.
'Sara Fredrika is a good mother,' she said. 'She is strong, and she has plenty of milk. And she seems to be happy as well. I can see that you are looking after her properly. I think she has forgotten her husband, the one that drowned.'
'She will never forget him.'
'There comes a day when the dead turn their backs on us,' she said. 'It happens when a new being enters our lives. Make the most of the opportunity. Don't let there be a distance between you and the baby.'
He pushed the boat out as she raised the sail.
'Will you be staying here over the winter?' she asked.
'Yes,' he said. 'Maybe not.'
'What kind of an answer is that? Yes and no, and maybe something in between?'
'We haven't decided yet.'
'Autumn has hit us early this year, as the old men say when they see the clouds and feel the winds. Early autumn, long winter, rainy spring. Don't wait too long before leaving.'
He watched the dinghy disappearing round the headland. He could hear his daughter crying in the distance.
Angel's words had hit him with full force. All his life he had been keeping things at a distance. But distance did not matter, it was closeness that was significant.
He realised that he would have to tell Sara Fredrika the truth, that he had belonged to somebody else, that he had been kicked out of the Swedish Navy and one of these days would be penniless. Only then could they start again from the beginning, only then could they really make plans to leave.
With great effort he had built walls around Halsskär. Now he would have to demolish them, in order to get out.
He was overcome by a strong sensation. Surprised and confused, he said to himself: I think my sounding lead has reached the bottom.
He was in the habit of rounding off the day by taking his telescope and climbing up to the highest point on the skerry. There was a north-easterly wind, fresh and squally. He pulled his jacket more tightly round him and gazed out towards the mainland.
A sailing dinghy was approaching. The sail was straining hard, but the boat was sitting well in the water. He did not recognise it, he did not need the telescope to tell him that. It was longer than the boats used by the fishermen in the archipelago.
He aimed his telescope and focused it.
There was a woman at the helm and she was steering straight for Halsskär.
The woman was Kristina Tacker, his wife.
He thought it was an optical illusion.
But the boat was real. Kristina Tacker was sailing resolutely, the sail straining in the wind. She was heading for Halsskär because she knew that was where he was hiding.
He searched for a way of escape. But there was none. He had nowhere to escape to.
He set off in a hurry for the inlet when he saw her turning the boat into the wind. All the time he was trying to find an explanation. Could he have left a trail by way of his sea charts? He had never imagined that she would start to interpret them. Or had somebody given him away, somebody who knew where he was?
He could not find an answer. There wasn't one.
By the time he reached the shore the boat was inside the inlet. Kristina Tacker had already dropped anchor when she noticed him, stood up and started yelling. In order to shut her up he waded out into the cold water until it was chest-deep.
'Stop shouting,' he said. 'Everything can be explained.'
'Nothing can be explained!' she screamed. 'Why do you keep lying to me? Why are you hiding here? How can you explain that away?'
She had moved into the bows and started hitting him over the head with a piece of rope. He tried to defend himself, but she went on hitting him, he would never have imagined her capable of such fury. This was not the wife he knew, this was somebody else, somebody who smashed china figurines every time she moved them around on their shelves.
The only way he could shut her up was to pull her out of the boat. He took hold of her and dragged her into the water. She resisted, but he kept hold of her, pushed her down under the surface. Every time she came back up again she continued shouting at him. He smacked her face, once, twice, harder. She went quiet in the end. Her wet hair was sticking to her cheeks. He could no longer smell her fragrance, nothing of the wine nor the subtle perfume.
'I can explain everything,' he said. 'Provided you stop shouting.'
He had never felt as scared as he felt at this moment. If Sara Fredrika were to turn up now all the walls would crumble around him. Nothing would survive.
Kristina Tacker looked at him in disgust.
'Behind a secret there can be another secret,' he said.
She lurched at him and scratched his face. She did it perfectly calmly, without taking her eyes off him.
Blood ran down his cheek.
'I don't want to hear any lies about what you are doing and why you are here,' she said. 'I just want you to explain the only thing that is important. Why did Laura have to die? That's all I want to know.'
He took a step backwards, stumbled over a piece of rock and fell. She grabbed hold of his arm.
'Don't you try and run away again. You're never going to do that again. I'll find you no matter where you hide. All your lies leave a clear trail that I can follow, wherever you go.'
He was punch-drunk. It felt as if the cold water was penetrating his skin and making his body swell up.
'We can't stand in the water like this,' he said. 'It's too cold.'
'This is only water. Death is cold. Laura is cold, not this water.'
'What happened?'
She took hold of his head and pulled it towards her. She had tears in her eyes, he recognised her now. There were glimpses of the woman he was married to behind all the wet hair.
'After you went off I stayed in hospital for a few weeks. Laura grew as she ought to do. She grew bigger and stronger. But then one night I was woken up by her screaming. It wasn't the usual sort of scream, it was something different. Dr Edman came. He thought it was colic and would die down of its own accord. But it didn't die down, it wasn't colic, it was ileus, an obstruction of the intestine. Laura died in terrible agony. There was nothing I could do, and where were you? I thought you were on an important mission, I thought that you were with me in spirit, I thought about all the sorrow we would have to bear together. But the baby's death exposed all your lies, that was the terrible price I had to pay in order to discover who you really are.'
She leaned even further forward into his face.
'Was it you who attacked my father?'
'Of course it wasn't. But will you stop shouting, I can't bear such loud noises.'
She slapped the water with her hand so that it splashed into his face.
'What do you know about noises? You have no idea what a dying baby sounds like. Do you want to hear? I can imitate exactly what she sounded like just before she died.'
He shook his head.
'I'm devastated,' he said. 'I don't understand what you're saying. Is Laura dead?'
'On 22 August at 4.35 in the afternoon Dr Edman said that he could only express his sympathy. She is dead. But you are alive. What can't you understand?'
He did not answer. He tried to picture the dead child, but all he could see was a black hole.
'We can't stay in the water like this. It's too cold.'
She started to hit his face again.
'Can't you hear what I'm saying? My daughter is dead.'
'She was my daughter as well.'
'She wasn't your daughter. You were never there, you reacted to her by telling lies to get away from her and from me and from yourself and from everything I've ever believed in.'
She could not find any more words. She stood in the water screaming in despair.
He could picture the shelves with the china figurines slowly falling down one after another, each one smashing to smithereens.
He led her carefully out of the water.
He was appalled by her bitterness, but shaken most of all by the boundless sorrow he had caused her. For the first time he felt utterly defenceless when facing her. This time he would not be able to wriggle off the hook. And Sara Fredrika would not be able to rescue him. Her presence would only compound the catastrophe.
'Do you remember our holiday in Oslo?' she asked. 'That day when we went to Bygdøy, the beach, the young boys bathing naked in the water, a bunch of balloons climbing up into the sky?'
He remembered, but decided to deny it.
'Of course you remember. Above all you must remember the cross we drew in the sand, and said that the most important thing in our lives would always be telling the truth. Good Lord, I believed it, I really did believe that I had met a man who was as good as his word.'
A quick gust of cold wind made them shiver.
'Who are you?' she said. 'I try to understand, but I can't. I simply can't pin you down, my image of you cracks and breaks up, you become an incomprehensible creature that seems to thrive on deceiving others.'
'I can explain,' he said.
Her response came with no hesitation at all.
'If there is one thing you can never do it is to explain. I have followed in your footsteps and it has been like climbing down into a well where the stench at the bottom gets more and more putrid. I have realised that I am married to a man who doesn't exist, a shadow with a circulatory system and a brain that is nothing more than an invention, a figment of the imagination. It is intolerable to think that my child had a figment of the imagination for a father. Can you make me understand? You are driving me mad.'
'I have to know how you found me.'
'I come here and tell you that Laura is dead. You don't react, you say you feel sorrow, but all you ask about is how I found you.'
'You can think whatever you like. But I mourn the death of my child.'
'You ought to mourn the fact that you are who you are. It was my father who helped me. When Laura died he contacted Naval Headquarters and told them what had happened. He forced his way through all the barriers, I can hear his voice inside my head:
A baby has died, my granddaughter. Her father is on a secret mission, but of course he has to be told about the tragedy that has befallen him.
There was silence. My father said that everybody seemed to be astonished. Jaws dropped on the faces of the entire Swedish high command. In the end a vice admiral informed my father that you no longer held a commission in the Swedish Navy. Then they became secretive, they couldn't go into details about why, they could only say that you were no longer enlisted. My father insisted that I personally should be given an explanation. The following day I went with him to Skeppsholmen. The vice admiral was there, and several other people, I can't remember who they were. They expressed their condolences. But when I asked them for an address so that I could send you a letter, they said that they didn't have one. My father was with me, he was standing behind my chair and put his hand on my shoulder when he heard that you were no longer in the navy. There was no mission, they knew as little about where you were as my father and I did. How do you think that felt? First I lost my baby, then I found out that I was married to a man who didn't exist. How do you think that felt?'
He said nothing. He was searching feverishly for a way of escape. It must have been Welander, he thought. There's no other possibility. Perhaps he suspected that I would head for here.
'I went home, and my father came with me. I was numb, but I was kept going by his fury. Especially after I gathered that he suspected it was you who had tried to kill him.'
'That's not true.'
'I would put nothing past you, Lars.'
She used his first name. It felt as if she were using it to hit him.
I can hit back, he thought. That is the ultimate escape route. I can kill her.
He asked a question to give himself a breathing space.
'Whose is the boat?'
'Does it matter? It belongs to one of my father's friends.'
'I didn't know you could sail.'
'I learned when I was a child. When I realised where you might be hiding I decided to get a boat and come here. My father protested, but I paid no attention to him.'
'Was it Welander who told you where you could find me?'
'He came a few days after I'd been to Skeppsholmen. I didn't want to let him in at first, but he said he'd heard rumours about your disappearance, and that you had lied to the admirals about him. He also said he knew where you might be, that you used to row to a skerry when you were working together.
'I didn't want to know at first, I never wanted to see you again. The first night after I realised what kind of a man you were I gathered together all your clothes, your overcoats, uniforms, shoes, and piled them up on the floor. The next day Anna fetched a rag-and-bone man who took the lot. I didn't even accept any money. I wanted you to cease to exist.
'But my father talked me round. He said that you shouldn't be allowed to die in sin. He contacted Welander, who came round again a few days later. He had been talking to a police superintendent or maybe it was a parish constable from round here who said he thought you were on a skerry at the far edge of the archipelago.
'I sailed into the archipelago then turned south. Somewhere round about Landsort I was becalmed, I had plenty of time to think. And I still ask myself: Why did you marry me if your only intention was to hurt me, to lie to me? Why do you hate me?'
He gave a start. A shadow had moved on a high rocky ledge, but it wasn't Sara Fredrika. It was a bird, a crow that soared up and flew off northwards over the island. There wasn't much time. He needed to drive her along in front of himself instead of cowering in the face of her accusations.
'The fact that I was dismissed from the navy is due entirely to a misunderstanding, which was due in turn to the fact that I was disgracefully slandered by Welander. I tried to protect him when he hit the bottle. Everything else is a pack of lies. He is getting his revenge for having shown me his weakness, because I saw his humiliation. He was lying on deck in a pool of vomit and had to be carried away. I couldn't tell you that I had been dismissed, that was too shameful, too much of a disgrace. I came here to think out a way of telling you about it. Not everything I have told you has been entirely correct, but there has always been a kernel of truth.'
And what would that be?'
'My love for you. I came here in solitude to punish myself for not being able to tell you exactly how things were. I needed time, time to think, time to summon up courage.'
'But the letters? The inventions, the fantasies?'
"The same thing: shame, disgrace.'
'How can I possibly believe you?'
'Look me in the eye.'
She did as he asked. He could feel that he was starting to regain control, was able to regulate the distances.
'What do you see?'
'A person I don't know.'
'You know me. We have been married for nearly ten years. We have been intimate.'
'If I come too close to you I'm frightened of getting burned. You give off a corrosive acid, all those untrue –'
She broke off without completing the sentence.
'What I understand least of all is why you tried to kill my father.'
He felt an overwhelming urge to tell her the truth, that it was all those accursed Christmas dinners, his father-in-law's contempt for the naval commander who had married his daughter. But there was no place for the truth yet.
'It wasn't me who attacked your father. I would never turn to violence.'
'You hit me, not long ago.'
'That was only because I had to stop you screaming.'
'Can't you tell the truth for once? Can't you try? Your lies are wrapping themselves round my legs like heavy weights.'
'I have told you the truth. I hid myself away here in order to think things over.'
Fear was being batted back and forth between them, like the ebb and flow of never-ending waves. Occasionally he would glance up at the path. He knew his time was limited, and that sooner or later Sara Fredrika would wonder where he had got to.
'I want you to go back home,' he said. 'I've been ordered to terminate my mission.'
'But you haven't got a mission. I heard the admiral say so himself: you are no longer a member of the Swedish Navy, you have no unfinished missions. I heard that with my own ears. Are you incapable of telling the truth?'
'You must understand that secrecy doesn't only apply to me. He wasn't able to say that I am still working on a task.'
'What are you doing on this skerry? I've been sailing all round these grey, barren islands, I've hardly set eyes on a single soul, here by the open sea everything is dead.'
'I'll tell you, even though I shouldn't. I have a wireless transmitter here, one of the inspired inventions of the engineer Marconi and Admiral Henry Jackson, for communications between ships and land, or from one ship's captain to another. We are conducting top-secret tests of a Swedish system, a variation of the ones the warring parties are using.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Invisible waves that travel through the air, that can be captured and interpreted. A secret language that will transform all aspects of war as it has been known until now. Every day at certain times I have to be stationed by the wireless in order to receive and transmit.'
She considered what he had said.
'Perhaps that is true,' she said. 'Show me round this island that you have made your home, show me these invisible waves that are dancing around in the air here. Show me something that is true. Show me where you live, in a cave or a hut.'
'You are right,' he said. 'One hut to live in, and another for my measuring equipment. I'll show you.'
He racked his brains for a way out of this desperate situation. It was becoming clearer to him where he really belonged. It was on Halsskär with Sara Fredrika and Laura, that was where he was at home. For the first time in his life there was something he did not want to lose. He was a stranger to Kristina Tacker and her china figurines, in the cold and warm rooms in Stockholm. All the years he had lived with her had ceased to exist. That was the biggest lie, he thought, I could never understand or control that. We had nothing in common, we just came together in a fantasy of love.
But not even that is true, he thought. I can only speak for myself. She must have felt something different. She has come here, not merely to expose a lie, but also to understand how she could have given me so much love.
She aimed her light at a cold cliff face. It never became warm. I tried to tame her all the years we lived together.
I failed. She stayed wild. The china figurines deceived me. She had more sides to her than I had ever suspected. Hidden behind her calm, almost apathetic exterior was something else.
He recalled the Christmas market when she had intervened to stop a man hitting his child. He had not drawn the right conclusions from that. He ought to have realised even then that she was in fact a stronger individual than he was.