Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

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-full 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.”

“Where’s Kristina?”

“Taken into custody by the authorities.”

“I chose the wrong time for a visit,” he said.

“You picked the wrong time to come.”

Winter placed one leg over the other. He was used to bantering with his sister, but this was a little worse, a little bigger.

“Do you know who that is? Who I was quoting?”

“What?”

“Picked the wrong time-it’s Dylan. It’s what you’re listening to right now. It’s this song, actually. ‘Highlands.’ Can you hear?”

He heard Dylan mumble, “Well my heart’s in the Highlands… blue-bells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow.”

Well. That was a little odd. Aberdeen. A remarkable sign, and he knew better than to look at it as something that just happened, that didn’t mean anything. There were coincidences everywhere, and the important thing was to accept them. To sometimes let yourself be guided by the coincidences.

Everything has a purpose. Yes.

There is a higher power.

Dylan mumbled, on the way to his destruction in a city that was made of ruins and empty of life.

“Music to make you happy,” said Winter.

She laughed, actually laughed.

“When did you go over to the happy genre?” she said. “Feel-good music?”

“Do you still have a phone?” he asked. “Or have the authorities disconnected it?”

“Why?”

“If we’re having a party, Angela and Elsa can come.”

“I’m glad you came, Erik,” said Lotta.

He nodded. He had called. Angela and Elsa weren’t going to come. Elsa was sleeping. Angela was wondering. I’m not a bitch, she had said. But one begins to wonder. Is it strange if I’m wondering?

He was going to go home in a few minutes.

“I don’t know what it is,” said his sister. “I have to pull myself together. It’s suddenly as though nothing means anything anymore.”

She looked tired in the ugly hall lighting, tired and sad.

“You know that it does,” said Winter. “You have a lot of things that mean something.” He could hear how empty that sounded.

“But that’s not what it feels like. Not now.”

“Come to my house.”

“Now? What, I don’t know…”

“Come to my house tonight. Kristina is already in custody, right?”

She smiled.

“She’s out in the islands, actually, at a friend’s house. On Brännö.”

“Aha.”

“Well…”

“Come along. You don’t even need to finish your drink. I have lots of bottles at home, wine and enough rum for fifteen men.”

Lotta made Winter call home first. A nice surprise, Angela had said. Of course she should come. Absolutely.

“If only we had something special to offer you,” she said when they came.

“Erik promised me fifteen barrels of rum,” said Lotta.

She went home when it was almost dawn.

“What we can’t do during the day we do at night,” said Angela, who was standing at the window watching the taxi disappear into Allén.

“There is no day, there is no night,” said Winter.

“No?”

“That’s how it is.”

“I don’t know if what you’re saying is positive or negative,” said Angela.

“It’s a state of being. At sea.”

“I don’t think I want to hear more about the sea right now, Erik.”

“Soon you’ll be living a stone’s throw from it.”

She didn’t say anything; she kept standing at the window. There was a faint glow in the east. The sun was coming up but it wasn’t above the sea.

“I don’t know,” she said.

He waited, but she didn’t say anything more.

“I really don’t know,” she said after that.

“What don’t you know?”