Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

All of these sounds and lights would be inconceivable and just plain threatening in the house by the sea. Silence could be heard from the sea. Was that what he was afraid of? Was he even afraid?

Had Arne Algotsson been afraid? Or his sister? Or both of them?

Winter got up from the easy chair and walked over to the balcony door and opened it enough so that he could go out. He had stepped into his slippers, which were always next to the door. There was no wind out there, but there was a faint chill that smelled like autumn. A different moisture in the air, an acid scent that actually meant everything he could see growing down there was dying for now, but he seldom thought that way. He thought of the acid, and of the salt that you could sometimes smell when the wind came from the northwest. A pinch of salt.

Arne Algotsson had looked as though he had rubbed his face with salt; there was a gray film on it, like a crust of old salt that had solidified and formed a mask that had started to crack a long time ago. His eyes were deep set. There was a light in them, but Winter couldn’t see where it came from, not then, not as he was sitting across from the old man and trying to ask his questions along with Ringmar.

His sister’s name, Ella, had been mentioned early on. Ella. She had been sitting next to her brother.

“Yes, tha’s right, I have a sester called Ella,” he had said, turning to Ella Algotsson. “D’ya know her?”

She had looked at Winter and Ringmar as though to say, See, my brother is as demented as a trawl door. Or a broken trawl. Everything just falls right through. You just have to look at him, and listen to him.

“Did you know John Osvald?” Winter had asked.

“John’s a fisherman,” Algotsson had said from inside his world. “He was the skipper later.”

“What do you mean? You said he was ‘the skipper later’?”

“Shall we eat?” Algotsson had said.

Winter had looked at Ella Algotsson.

“We just ate,” she had said, leaning forward and laying her hand on his arm, and he had started. She had seen that they noticed his sudden movement.

“It’s his old injuries,” she had said.

“Sorry?” Ringmar had said.

“His old fishing injuries. Thay always got eczema out on the boats before. Thay always had the rabber clothes on. Thay got complaitly scraped up. Arne still has the marks on his arms. Thay never go away, the marks.”

“Rabber clothes,” her brother had echoed.

They, that is to say Ringmar, had had a necessary conversation with Ella Algotsson before this. Her brother had looked at Ringmar and Winter as they came in, but then he seemed to forget. He had stared through the window, into the cliffs that floated like soft waves behind the house. There were no sharp edges there.

“You can’t get anything sensible out of him about that time now,” she had said.

“But then?” Ringmar had asked.

“Then? When?”

“When he came home from Scotland. The last time. What did he have to say then?”

“Not much.” She had cast a glance at her brother, who was sitting with his face illuminated by the daylight outside. A pillar of salt.

“He did talk about the accident, of course, but there wasn’t so much thay knew.”

“What did they know, then?”

“You know too, don’t you? It was that thay had come down from Iceland and the boat sank.”

“It wasn’t so far from land, from what I understand,” Ringmar had said.

“The boat couldn’t be seen from land, in any case,” she had said.

“Where was Arne, then?” Ringmar had asked.

“On land,” she had said.

“Yes, but where?”

“In one of those towns where they stayed. I dunno. I don’t remember what thay’re called.”

“Aberdeen?” Ringmar had asked.

“No. That’s where thay were first. It wasn’t there.”

Ringmar had looked to Winter for help.

“Was it Peterhead?” Winter had asked.

She hadn’t answered and hadn’t looked at him.

“Peterhead?” Ringmar had repeated.

“FISHERMEN’S MISSION TO FISHERMEN’S VISION TO DEEP SEA NATIONAL MISSION,” Arne Algotsson had suddenly uttered from the armchair next to the window, in a loud, wooden old man’s voice. He hadn’t moved his head, but he must have been listening.

“He repeats that sometimes,” Ella Algotsson had said.

“What is it?” Ringmar had said.

“Didn’t you hear?”

“I didn’t understand it.”

“Me neither.” A sad smile had come to the old face, which was thin but strong. “He’s said it sometimes recently, now.”

“Recently?”

“Yes. In recent… years.”

“Since he became ill?”

“Yes.”

Ringmar had looked once more at Arne Algotsson, who had been looking at the waves of stone outside.

“Peterhead,” Winter had said in a loud voice.

“FISHERMEN’S MISSION TO FISHERMEN’S VISION TO DEEP SEA NATIONAL MISSION,” Algotsson had chanted.

“Other than that he never speaks English,” Ella Algotsson had said. “He’s forgot that. Too.”

“We said PETERHEAD,” Ringmar had said.

“FISHERMEN’S MISSION…” Algotsson repeated it, like a parrot. It had an uncanny effect, but a funny one at the same time, inappropriately funny. Winter had felt ashamed somehow, as though they were using the old man and his sister.

“Well, it’s clearly a name that means something to him,” Ringmar had said.

Ella Algotsson had looked like she was thinking about something else.

“But he was in another city when it happened,” she had said. “I remember it.”

“Fraserburgh,” Winter had said, looking at Arne Algotsson at the same time. But he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t moved.

Then Ella Algotsson had looked at Winter.

“What was that?”

“Fraserburgh,” Winter had said. “Was the city called Fraserburgh?”

“Fras… yes, I think so.”

“Did Arne come right home afterward?”

“No. He wasn’t there the whole war but he was there for a little longer.”

“How long?”

“A year, I think. He came home with a fishing boat. Thay were brothers from Öckerö who dared to come home again. Thay were crazy.”

“From Öckerö?” Ringmar had asked.

“Thay’re dead,” she had said.

Winter had thought he had seen Arne Algotsson nod, slightly, as though he concurred with what his sister said.

“Who else sailed home with Arne?” Ringmar had asked.

“Bertil,” she had answered. “John’s brother. But he’s dead, him too.”

Ringmar had nodded.

“Another brother disappeared in the accident too, right?” Ringmar had said.

“Egon,” she had said. Nothing more.

“Was anyone else from here on the boat when it went under?” Ringmar had asked.

She hadn’t answered, not directly. She had sent a quick look at her brother, to see if he was listening. Or maybe it was something else.

To make sure he didn’t answer?

“There was one more,” she said after a moment that seemed long. Her eyes had changed, as though they had clouded over. They couldn’t see.

“Another person from here?” Ringmar had asked.

She had nodded.

“What was his name?”

“Frans.” She had looked up again, with the strange fog in her eyes. “Frans Karlsson. My Frans.”

Winter saw that face before him again when he came back into the room.

She had looked so infinitely sad when she said that. My Frans. She had told them in very few words that Frans Karlsson was hers, that they were betrothed and that he never came home and she had waited, and she was still waiting. Like the seaman’s wife she never became. Like a living memorial to the men of the sea who didn’t return. He thought of the Seaman’s Wife down by the Maritime Museum. But she was made of stone. Ella Algotsson was not made of stone.