Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

The old man nodded, as if it were obvious.

“Of course,” he said. “My name is Ernst Adolfsson. I live over there.” He pointed behind him, diagonally toward the north. “Gerlof and I know each other. We have a chat from time to time.”

Then Julia remembered. This was Ernst, the stonemason. He’d been walking around the village rather like some kind of museum exhibit even when she was young.

“Is the quarry open now?” she asked.

Ernst lowered his eyes and shook his head.

“No. No, there’s no work there now. People come and fetch the reject stone sometimes... but nothing new is quarried anymore.”

“But you work there?” asked Julia.

“I do craft work in stone,” said Ernst. “You’re welcome to come and have a look, see if you want to buy anything... I’ve got a visitor this evening, but tomorrow is fine.”

“Okay. I might do that,” said Julia.

She probably couldn’t afford to buy anything, but she could always go and have a look.

Ernst nodded and turned away slowly with small, unsteady steps. Julia didn’t realize the conversation was over until he’d completely turned his back on her. But she hadn’t finished, so she took a deep breath:

“Ernst,” she said, “you must have lived in Stenvik twenty years ago?”

The man stopped and turned back toward her, but only halfway.

“I’ve lived here for fifty years,” he said.

“I was just thinking...”

Julia stopped speaking; she hadn’t been thinking at all. She wanted to ask a question, but didn’t know which one to choose.

“My child disappeared at that time,” she went on with an enormous effort, as if she were ashamed of her grief. “My son Jens... do you remember that?”

“Of course.” Ernst nodded briefly, without emotion. “And we’re working on it. Gerlof and I, we’re working on it.”

“But...”

“If you see your father, tell him something from me,” said Ernst.

“What?”

“Tell him it’s the thumb that’s most important,” said Ernst. “Not just the hand.”

Julia stared at him, bewildered, but Ernst went on:

“This will be solved. It’s an old story, it goes right back to the war... But it will be solved.”

Then he turned away again, with short unsteady steps.

“The war?” said Julia behind him. “Which war?”

But Ernst Adolfsson left without replying.

When the horse-drawn cart has been unloaded for the last time down on the shore, it is hauled back up to the quarry and the men can begin to load the newly cut and polished limestone onto the boats. This is the heaviest work, and for the past six months it has been done by hand, since the two trucks belonging to the quarry have been requisitioned by the state and are being used as military vehicles.

There’s a world war on, but on Öland the everyday work must continue as usual. The stone has to be quarried and taken to the cargo ships.

“Load up!” yells Lass-Jan Augustsson, the foreman of the stevedores.

He is directing the work from the deck of the cargo ship Wind, gesturing to the men loading her with his broad hands, dry and cracked from the rough blocks of stone. Beside him the stevedores are waiting to take the stone on board.

Wind is lying at anchor a hundred yards or so out in the water, at a safe distance from the shore in case a storm should suddenly blow up along the Öland coast. In Stenvik there is no pier in the harbor behind which a ship can shelter, and close to the shore the shallow, rocky seabed is waiting to smash any boat if it gets the opportunity.

The blocks being loaded on board are ferried out in two open rowboats. In one of them the starboard oar is manned by boatman Johan Almqvist, who is seventeen and has been working as a quarryman and oarsman for a couple of years.

The oar on the port side is manned by Nils Kant, who is new to the job. He’s fifteen now, almost fully grown.

His mother gave Nils a job at the family quarry after he failed his examinations at school. Vera Kant has decided that he is to be a boatman despite his tender age, and Nils knows that he will gradually take over the responsibility for the whole quarry from his uncle. He knows he will one day set his mark deep in the hillside. He would like to excavate the whole of Stenvik.

Sometimes Nils dreams of sinking down through black water at night, but during the day he rarely thinks of his drowning brother Axel. It wasn’t murder, whatever the gossips in the village say. It was an accident. Axel’s body has never been found; it was dragged down to the bottom of the sound, as is the case with so many who drown, and it never came up again. An accident.

The only memory of Axel is a framed picture of him on his mother’s desk. Vera and Nils have grown much closer to each other since Axel drowned. Vera often says Nils is all she has left, which makes Nils realize how important he is.

The rowboats are lying waiting for their load beside a temporary wooden jetty extending a dozen or so yards out into the sea; the carts arrive on the shore, piled high, and the stones are then carried out onto the jetty in an endless cycle — youngsters, women, older men, and those few men in their prime who have not yet been called up for military service. Girls too; Nils can see Maja Nyman walking around in a red-checked dress out there on the jetty. He knows that she knows he watches her sometimes.

The war hangs like a shadow over Öland. Norway and Denmark were invaded by the Germans a month or so earlier without presenting any particular difficulty. There are extra news bulletins on the radio every day. Is Sweden really equipped to repel an attack? Foreign warships have been spotted out in the sound, and several times it has been rumored in Stenvik that southern Öland has been invaded.

If the Germans do come, the islanders know they will have to fend for themselves, because help has never come in time from the mainland when enemy forces have landed on Öland in centuries gone by. Never.

People say the army intends to put parts of northern Öland underwater in order to prevent an invasion of the island, which would be a bitter irony now that the serious spring floods out on the alvar have finally begun to evaporate in the sun.

When the sound of a distant engine was heard across the water earlier that morning, the unloading of the stones stopped, and everyone gazed anxiously at the overcast skies. Everyone except Nils, who wonders what a real bombardment by a plane looks like. Are there whistling bombs that turn into balls of fire and smoke and tears and screams and chaos?

But no plane appeared over the island, and the work resumed.

Nils hates rowing. Hauling stones might not be much better, but the tedious process of rowing gives him a headache right from the start. He can’t think when he has to steer the heavily laden boat with his oar, and he’s being watched the whole time. Lass-Jan follows the progress of the boats with his peaked cap pulled right down to his eyebrows, directing the work with his voice.

“Let’s have some effort, Kant!” he roars across the water once the last stone has been loaded at the jetty.

“Slow down, Kant, look out for the jetty!” he yells as soon as Nils pulls on the oar too hard once the boat has been unloaded and is easy to row back.

“Get a move on, Kant!” Lass-Jan shouts.

Nils glares at him all the way out to the cargo ship. Nils owns the quarry. Or to be more accurate, his mother and uncle own it, but even so Lass-Jan has treated him like a slave right from the start.

“Load up!” yells Lass-Jan.

In the morning people chatted and laughed with each other when they began unloading, there was almost a party atmosphere, but the stone has mercilessly subdued them with its silent weight and its hard edges. Now people are carrying it doggedly, with their backs bent, their footsteps dragging, and their clothes powdered with white limestone dust.