Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

Her father had been sitting across from her, and he had observed the Frenchman like an African who can see farther than the end of time. Her father was no longer a European, not a Swede; all of that was gone when he traveled back, never to return. He no longer practiced medicine. Aren’t you going to open a small practice? she had said. There are only three hundred doctors here. God knows you’re needed. Which one of them? he had answered, and she realized that it wasn’t a joke. She had realized so much about her father, and about her mother, when she returned. Her father’s gods had been many, and they still were. They waited out there in the light and the dark, during the horribly hot days and the dreadfully cold nights. He spoke with the gods, sometimes with the spirits, but the difference between gods and spirits seemed to be gratuitous.

Some spirits were strong and powerful, like a lion that kills.

Others were weaker, more diffuse, like the spirits of trees.

Everything we encounter has power, her father had said. A lion, a snake, lightning, a river. All of them can kill people, and therefore they must be inhabited by strong spirits.

The sea can kill people, she suddenly thought now. Why did she think of that? There was no sea around Burkina Faso.

Her father had spoken about language. The most important art form in Africa was the art of speaking. In each language there are more than one thousand sayings, he had said.

Dear God, she had thought on the Air France plane home, where do I come from? Where do I come from? Who am I?

What will I become?

She took another little sip of the wine, which was heavy, with a scent of oak and leather.

What will I become?

I am over thirty, and black as sin. There are other people like me in this white, innocent country. The people are white, and it’s white on the ground. Mom would have wanted to see me together with a nice black man. She did get to for a little while, but not as long as she wanted. Now none of that is interesting anymore.

She thought of the dinner in the hotel restaurant again, the last one she and Dad had had together. The colonial clatter in the big room. The sand that refused to leave, despite determined appeals from the staff and guests. The wind that came in through the openings in the gigantic wooden blinds in the ridiculously big windows; ridiculously big because they offered no protection.

The gods know that you are needed, Aneta, her father had said, and he had had a smile that only his daughter could see. Competent detectives are important in a modern country. Haven’t people had enough of police in this country? she’d asked. Those aren’t real police, he answered, and he knew everything about that while she knew nothing. Those aren’t good police. A proper society needs good police; then it will be a society that contains goodness.

Had he been joking? It hadn’t sounded like it. What did it mean? In recent years, even before he returned, his speech and thoughts had begun to resemble aphorisms and riddles, as though he could see something no one else could see, or remembered things that were no longer to be found in anyone else. She had found it fascinating, and frightening. Her mother had found it crazy. Or pretended that it was not worth listening to.

A proper society needs good police; then it will be a society that contains goodness. Suck on that, Aneta. Perhaps she would make a motion to the police conference suggesting that the sentence be engraved in gold or silver, maybe on their caps, even the ones on exhibit in the police building: a sentence everyone could rally around. Goodness. We all strived for it, and we caught those who didn’t in our arms and took them to a better place.

That’s what our duty here in this world amounts to. She took another sip of wine. It’s nothing to joke about, nothing to become cynical about. And still it looks silly as hell in print, and sounds even worse out loud. Goodness looks sillier than evil in print and out loud.

Evil is you and I. That’s what she thought now. It was a true thought, and it was her own.

At night she dreamed of doors that closed and never opened. She saw faces with one side that laughed while the other cried. Faces became icons. Someone spoke to her and said that she couldn’t trust anyone. Not even you? she asked, because she was feeling secure at that point in the dream.

Her father said to her that there were gods that no one knew about in the desert. How can they be gods, then? she asked. That shut him up for a second.

She flew over Kortedala on Air France and had a stopover in all the seasons without leaving the plane.

She flew in a castle that was also a house.

She dreamed all her thoughts and experiences from the past few days, and she understood everything as she dreamed, as though she were simultaneously devoting herself to dream analysis.

Then she dreamed something she didn’t understand, and her own scream woke her up.

When he felt the wind in his face, the memories came. It was always like that. It could be light or dark. The memories. Out there, there was no day, no night. The sea was its own world. His work revolved around the trawling, the winches, the work deck, up and down, every five hours, seldom at night, at first, but he had wanted it to be otherwise. It was still hell to try to sleep up in the forecastle along with seven others, everything sour, wet, always nights without sleep. The work ached like a shadow in his body. No warmth, no feeling of dry skin. He would dream about it during the weeks out there. The dry skin.

The wind changed on the night when Frans went off the back with the trawl net. He never heard the scream; no one did. Frans was gone without a scream. Yet another gray stone on its way to the bottom, but not really. Whatever fell into the North Sea here, between Stavanger and Peterhead, came ashore again up in northern Norway. A lonely journey through the black currents. Frans.

Was that what had happened?

They prayed during their journeys back, and they went directly to the pub from the harbor. He remembered when he walked in, but never when he walked out. He had had so many similar nights there; all those nights ended without memories.

At sea it was never possible to wash away the tiredness, and when they came ashore again he did his best to get it to pass.

The evening he got caught by the trawl door could have been his last. He became more careful with the drink after that, for a while.

He sat outside his house. He could see the old church from there. He saw cars on their way to and from the church, and to and from the golf course that was on the point behind the church. The idiots hit their balls into the water and didn’t understand why.

The westernmost viaduct ran in from the left, in his field of vision, and became part of the church, or maybe it was the church that became part of the viaduct. He had studied this image many times. They belonged together. The viaducts were cathedrals of another time, the time that came after, and it was natural that they should converge with the churches.

He spit toward the church. He regretted it. He dried his mouth and got up. He walked on the street that didn’t have a name. A child passed but didn’t look up at him. He was invisible to the child, too.

When children don’t see the invisible, there is no longer any hope.

A middle-aged couple came down the stairs, and they didn’t see him. He stepped aside so that they wouldn’t pass right through him. He heard their voices but didn’t understand the language, or maybe he didn’t hear it over the wind.

He ordered his ale at the Three Kings. He sat for a long time in front of the glass that no one else could see. He signaled to the woman behind the bar, and she looked in the other direction. He had spoken with her on other days, he knew it.