Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

“Maybe there will be another time,” Bergenhem had said.

“Maybe,” Peters had said.

Peters turned his back to Bergenhem and went into the apartment. Bergenhem followed Peters, who sat down on his dark gray sofa. Magazines lay on a low glass table. Three glasses and a bottle stood to the right of the magazines. Bergenhem sat in an easy chair that had the same covering as the sofa.

“How are things?” said Peters.

“Not so good,” said Bergenhem.

“Do you feel like you need someone to talk to?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” said Peters.

“Everything is so confusing,” said Bergenhem.

It was still daylight on Donsö. Winter stood on the Magdalena ’s quarterdeck. The sun was starting to burn low over the sea. It would soon disappear. Does the sun go out when it goes down in the water? Elsa had asked last summer, when they had been swimming down in Vallda Sandö and lingered there for a long time. It was a good question.

“There must be a lot of sunsets like that out at sea,” Winter said to Erik Osvald, standing beside him.

“Well, we don’t exactly sit there applauding a sunset,” answered Osvald.

“But you must see the beauty in it.”

“Yes…,” answered Osvald, and Winter understood that the weather and sun and rain and hours of the day and nature’s beauty were something different for Osvald than they were for him, for everyone who lived on land.

Osvald watched the sun, which was in the process of sinking.

“Soon it will be a season when you can miss the light,” he said in the twilight. “Soon we’ll have to have lights on from three in the afternoon to ten in the morning.” He looked at Winter. “And in the summer we complain that the sun stings our eyes at four in the morning.”

Winter nodded. Everything must be so much sharper out there.

“But there’s really no day at sea, and no night.”

Winter waited for him to continue. The sun was gone.

“There’s no day, there’s no night,” repeated Osvald.

It sounded like poetry. Maybe it was poetry. Work and everyday life make up poetry because everything unessential has been scrubbed away.

Osvald looked at him again, back in the reality of his job.

“We never really have any morning or any night like this out there, you know. Days and nights go on; every five or six hours the trawl has to come up.”

“No matter the weather?” asked Winter.

Osvald squinted at him. He had fine lines all over his face; none were longer or wider than the others. He had a tan that would never disappear when it was dark between three and ten. The slits of his eyes were blue. At that moment, Winter wondered what Osvald thought about when he was out on the lonely sea. What did he think in a storm?

“The weather isn’t a big problem for us these days,” said Osvald, nodding as though to emphasize his words. “Before, boats went under in storms.” He looked out across the sea again. “Or were blown up by mines…,” he said, as though to himself. He gave Winter a quick glance again. “Last fall we had very bad weather, but there were only two nights we didn’t fish because of a storm. If the wind is over forty-five miles per hour we don’t put out the trawl.” He gave Winter a smile. “At least not if the bottom is bad. It’s not so good if it gets caught when it’s forty-five miles an hour.”

He turned around to see if his sister was standing there. But Johanna had excused herself for a second and climbed down the ladder off the boat and gone in among the houses, which came almost up to the quay.

“We’re a little split on the weather, of course,” said Osvald. “If it’s bad weather it’s good pay. There might not be any others who will risk going out. And there’s no fisherman yet who lost by betting on a storm! Prices go up after a storm. And the storm stirs up the stew on the bottom, too. Storms are good for the sea.”

The storm stirs up the stew, thought Winter. That’s true. Everything is moved around, comes up, is turned over, stones are turned over, everything old is new, everything new is old, round, round, up and down.

That’s how it was with his work. That’s how he wanted it to be. The past didn’t exist as a past; it was no more than an abstraction. It was always there in reality, present in the same manner as the present, a parallel state that no one could sail away from.

He looked at Osvald. This man was at home here, in his own harbor, or rather he was at home out at sea, but the sea was nearby.

“What’s the best part out there?” asked Winter. “Out at sea?”

Osvald seemed not to hear. Winter repeated his question. Osvald kept looking out across the water, as though he were waiting for company, as though a ship would become visible on the horizon, like a replacement for the sun that had gone down there. A pillar of smoke. A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.

“Man is king,” said Osvald suddenly. He let out a laugh. “If you stand up on the bridge and look around you’re higher than everything. As far as you can see, you’re higher. In a lot of ways, spiritually, too.”

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.”