Sail of Stone (16 page)

Winter understood what he meant. Osvald was a man of faith.

But he also wanted to be king, a worldly king. To keep being a king at sea. Winter wondered to himself what Osvald was prepared to do to be able to keep his kingdom, and the big trawler that was his throne. Winter considered the risks again. How far would Osvald go? Was there anything that could stop him?

“Think of the contrast with the forest,” continued Osvald. “My brother-in-law has a clearing way down in the forest, inland, and when you’re there, far under the trees, you’re the
smallest
of everything there.”

“Yes,” said Winter, “it makes one humble somehow, I suppose.”

“Humble … mmhmm … yes, humble. Don’t get me wrong, twenty-five years on the North Sea make you humble, it leaves its mark. All year round, all day long … you are cocky about some things, but you’re not cocky about everything. You are very humble about some things.”

Winter nodded. Osvald was serious. It was suddenly as though Winter weren’t standing there in front of him. Osvald was speaking to the sea. Winter understood that this was a man who seldom spoke this much, but who sometimes longed to be able to do so, like now. But Osvald spoke in his own way and followed his own logic.

If I keep going with this, the disappearance is a logic that I will also have to follow. Winter felt the wind pick up in his face. This logic, these thoughts, they come from a different world than the one on land. Life in this world is what means something here. And things that are larger than life. That’s what Osvald is talking about.

“There’s a higher power,” said Osvald, as though he had read Winter’s thoughts. “Besides the coast guard,” he said with a laugh, but he was immediately serious again. “If there isn’t a higher power, everything is meaningless.”

Winter turned around and saw the community, the big houses, the smaller ones, the narrow roads, the flatbed mopeds, which were the vehicles of the southern archipelago. He saw the crosses. The mission hall. He remembered now that the Osvald family were members of the Mission Covenant Church.

“You said that you were higher than everything out there,” said Winter. “Is that like saying that you live near the heavens?”

“Well, which heaven are you talking about?”

“The one you were just talking about.”

“The higher one?” Osvald seemed to smile at his words, as though he were joking. The high heaven, the higher one above. “No. Religion has nothing to do with fishing.”

“It doesn’t?”

Osvald shook his head.

“But don’t they have to go together?” said Winter.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the church is so important here. It’s everywhere.”

“Mmhmm.”

Winter didn’t know if Osvald would say anything more. But he knew that this was important. Religion was an important subject here.

“No one from here thinks that it’s strange to go to church if you go into a foreign harbor in a storm, for instance,” said Osvald after a bit. “No fisherman from the west coast would hesitate to.”

Winter nodded.

“All fishermen from the west coast believe in God,” said Osvald.

“Does that mean there’s a God-fearing atmosphere on board?” asked Winter.

“All of us fear God,” said Osvald.

“And no one does anything evil on board?” said Winter.

Osvald didn’t answer.

“No one swears on board a fishing boat,” said Johanna Osvald as they sat in her house. Her brother nodded. It had grown dark. Winter was going to take the
Skarven
back to Saltholmen at 7:02.

“Not even when they slam their fingers in something?” said Winter.

“Not even then,” said Erik Osvald. “I have to say that you really react if you hear someone swear on the radio or something. If it happens, it must be fishermen from the east coast or Denmark.”

“Do you have a lot to do with Denmark?”

“We bring our fish on land in Denmark,” said Osvald. “In Hanstholm in Jutland. It’s on the west side of Jammer Bay. Across from Hirtshals.”

“West of Blokhus?” asked Winter.

“Exactly. Blokhus is farther into the bay.”

Blokhus was familiar to Winter. Several years ago he’d found some of
the answers in a case he’d worked on there. A murdered woman couldn’t be identified, and the old clues had led him to Denmark and Jammer Bay. There the past had cast its long shadows into the future, which was the present.

“The
Magdalena
is never here in the Donsö harbor,” said Osvald.

“No?”

“No, no, she’s just here for an overhaul now. Usually we change off in Hanstholm.”

Osvald explained. The routine went like this: The
Magdalena
was out for six days fishing for cod and haddock and went into Hanstholm on the seventh day at five in the morning with the fish cleaned, “gutted,” as he said, weighed and sorted and packaged in six different sizes for the cod and four for the haddock. Fifteen to twenty tons of fish. The fish auction took place at seven, the same time all along the North Sea and North Atlantic. During the morning, the four of them worked on maintenance and taking supplies on board. The four relief shift workers came at noon and went right out with the
Magdalena.
The four who had been relieved got into the relief shift’s car and drove across Jutland to the ferry in Frederikshavn.

“What happens to the fish?” asked Winter.

“Fish and chips in Scotland,” said Osvald.

“Really?”

“The haddock should be just over minimum size, as it’s called. So the meat isn’t tough. And small cod can also become fish and chips. And it goes by truck on a ferry to Scotland. It’s a little strange, isn’t it? We sit off Scotland and catch fish that eventually go by truck to Scotland. There’s a ferry that goes directly from Hanstholm to Thurso, by the way.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Winter.

“It’s not much to know,” said Osvald.

Winter wasn’t sure he was right. There was something in what Osvald had said that Winter listened for. Something Winter didn’t understand then.

Later, when the wind started to become audible out there against the mess, Winter asked, “What’s the worst part about being out?”

“Well …,” said Osvald, looking at his sister. She hadn’t said much for the last half hour. But Winter knew that he would speak with her more.

“Well, the storms have never been able to break us, of course,” continued Osvald. “And not wrecks, injuries … nothing like that, ever. You just have to grit your teeth and you’ll get past it.”

“The silence,” said Johanna suddenly.

Her brother gave a start. Then he nodded.

“What silence?” asked Winter.

“The silence among the crew,” said Johanna. “Or what do you think, Erik?”

He nodded again but didn’t say anything. Suddenly it was as though he had become a part of the silence Johanna was talking about. As though he had suddenly become an example. He looked up.

“That can break you,” he said now. “Or, it does break you. Discord on board, a bad atmosphere. It breaks you fast.”

Winter nodded.

“Then you can easily end up alone as a skipper.”

“Sorry?”

“Then you can easily end up alone,” repeated Osvald.

“As a skipper?”

“As a skipper, yes.”

Winter thought about that. Erik Osvald was a skipper.

His young grandfather, John Osvald—had he also been a skipper?

“Was John Osvald the skipper on the
Marino
?” he asked.

Osvald looked again at his sister, who didn’t look back.

“Not at first,” he said.

“Not at first? What do you mean by that?”

“Something happened one time … it was right before … I don’t know … but Grandpa was skipper when they sailed for Scotland.”

“Happened? What was it that happened?”

“No idea,” said Osvald.

“The ones who came home after the accident in Scotland. Didn’t they say what had happened?”

“We didn’t hear anything,” said Osvald.

“Did anyone ask?” said Winter.

“Yes,” answered Osvald, but Winter didn’t think it sounded convincing.

“But no answer?”

Osvald shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“It sounds almost like mutiny to my ears,” said Winter.

“We actually don’t know,” said Johanna as she followed him to the
Skarven,
which was on its way in from Vrångö. “Is it significant?”

“I don’t know,” said Winter. And significant in what way, he thought.

“Your father left the industry,” he said.

“But he was ready to retire anyway, as he put it. He was ready to be put in the Maritime Museum.”

“Which section?”

She smiled.

“But he can’t leave the sea entirely,” she said.

“How so?”

“He worries all the time. About those who are out at sea. About Erik and his crew. He listens to all the Danish weather too, and he starts at six in the morning and ends with the last report at quarter to eleven at night. But he never calls out to the boat.”

Winter noticed that she was speaking of her father in the present tense, as though he were sitting next to a radio right now and listening attentively to a monotonous voice repeating numbers, vital numbers.

“Where do they usually fish?” asked Winter.

“Oh, west of Stavanger, maybe, sixty or seventy nautical miles west. They sometimes come near the derricks, which are about fifty nautical miles east of Scotland.”

The
Skarven
docked at the Donsö pier with a soft thud. It would leave again in four minutes.

“Do you worry when Erik is out?” asked Winter.

“Naturally.”

Winter started to walk toward the boat.

“But now I’m worried about Dad,” she said.

“I will do what I can. We will.”

“Something has happened,” she said. “Something dangerous.”

“It would be good if you try to remember everything he said before he left. What he did. Who he talked to. If he wrote anything down and left it. If anyone called. If another letter came. Everything.”

“He prayed to God,” she said, looking at him. “My father always prays to God.” She nodded at the boat. “You should get on now.”

She gave him a quick hug.

She kept standing there as the
Skarven
rushed across to Styrsö Skäret. Winter thought of all the women who had stood there throughout the centuries, looking out over the sea and waiting with anxious hearts. That’s how it was with Johanna now; once again it was so. He remembered that she had talked about it, briefly, when they were young. Her mother’s anxiousness, her own. Her brother’s. Winter looked over toward the
Magdalena,
which had two spotlights lit above the quarterdeck. He saw figures in oilcloth moving around the deck. He saw a face outside the pilothouse, which was highest up, the highest one in the harbor. He saw that Erik Osvald was watching him. He felt a cold wind and went in from the deck.

A glow came from the sheltered houses in Långedrag. Winter swung off into the familiar Hagen crossing and continued north among even more sheltered houses. He parked in front of one of them. He knew the house, knew it well. He had spent a great deal of his childhood and all of his teenage years here.

His older sister had stayed here, in this house, first with her husband and children and then, since a long, long time ago, alone with her girls, Bim and Kristina.

But Bim and Kristina were big now. Bim didn’t even live at home. Kristina was on her way out. Lotta Winter had watched all of this happen, and she tried to deal with it in a rational way, but it wasn’t something that could be dealt with rationally. You’ll see for yourself, she had said. See what? See how fucking easy it is. The separation? The separation,
yes;
come back when Elsa says bye-bye. You make it sound so final, Lotta. Well, isn’t it? she had said. You know what I mean, he had said. Yeah, yeah, she had said. Forgive me. But it’s … the quiet. Suddenly it’s so quiet. Quiet.

He rang the doorbell. The ring was the same. The same ring for thirty years. She should change it, change it now. Something new and happy and lively, energetic. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

She opened the door after four rings.

“Well, well.”

“I came by,” he said.

“I see that.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

She backed into the hall.

He hung up his coat. He always hung his things on
his
hook.

“Well, it’s calm and peaceful and quiet here,” she said.

“That’s nice,” he said.

“Like hell it is,” she said.

“You’ve started to curse more in your old age,” he said.

“Thanks a fucking lot. For that last bit.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why do I have such rough and salty language? I think it’s because of the salty and rough winds from the sea that’s only five minutes from here by Mercedes.”

“They never swear there.”

“Sorry?”

“There are no salty fishermen from the west coast who curse.”

“How do you know?”

He told her.

They were sitting in the living room. The view was the same. He could see the playhouse where he used to hide sometimes.

“Actually, I salt my language because the children can’t hear me anymore,” she said. “It’s my way of going back to the way I was.”

“Mmhmm.”

“What does Angela say about you being gone on a Saturday night?”

He looked at the clock.

“I didn’t mean for it to be so late.”

“So you come here and surprise me in the middle of my loneliness on this Saturday night.” She nodded toward the half-f wineglass that stood on the table. “And catch me in the act of drinking.”

“Please, Lotta.”

“Maybe I’m like Mom? Maybe I have an alcoholic inside? Who’s just been waiting for the right moment.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“You see.”

“Joking aside, Lotta. Maybe you need someone. A new husband.”

“Get remarried? Hahahahahahahahaha.”

“Well …”

“
You
get married. Do it and then come here and lecture me about it.”

“How much have you actually had to drink?”

“Only four bottles of wine and a barrel of rum.”