Stig Dagerman - A Burnt Child

Meanwhile, Berit is staring at the sea and the distant coastline. Because she is in good spirits, she thinks the ocean is beautiful. It is quiet and pristine and the sails are becalmed.

The sea isn’t cold today, she says, almost whispering. When the water is cold, it quakes and makes breakers, and children are told that the sea is wicked. But the sea isn’t wicked—it’s just cold.

Bengt flattens the sand over the buried footprint. He makes the mound hard, very hard, and he’s also hard on her. Harshly, he says:

I don’t want to be your child.

What do you want to be, then? she whispers, still very happy. Your lover, he says. He is still harsh.

Then she lies down, spreading the blanket over her face. He looks at the blanket to see if it will start quivering, but it doesn’t.

After a moment, he quietly gets up and begins exploring the island. A long time has passed, but the boat hasn’t returned. Not a cry was heard, not a splash of the oar, not even a whistle. He is walking very fast, and he is very upset. Maybe they rowed out far. It’s dangerous to row out so far when the boat is so small. But when he reaches the cliff facing the sea, the boat is there and very close to the shore. It is anchored and rocking in the swell. He cannot see them, so they are probably lying at the bottom. To scare them, he throws a rock pretty close to the boat, but only playfully. They don’t seem to hear the splash. In any case, neither of them looks over the gunwale, so he wants to scare them even more. He manages to slip silently into the water even though it’s even colder on this side. After about thirty long and quiet strokes, he glides underneath the boat’s thin shadow. Then he actually thinks about shouting, a high and playful yell, full of laughter and recklessness. But after swimming, he is now too strained to do anything but pant, so he’s content with only grabbing the edge and rocking the boat harder than the waves are able to do. As he rocks it, he doesn’t hear a single sound from the boat. And it feels suspiciously light. So when he heaves himself over the edge, it’s naturally empty.

Furiously, he swims back. He can’t help it, and he knows it’s absurd, but he feels betrayed. He is panting and thirsty when he reaches the shore. His mouth is full of saltwater and it burns. His rage subsides a little, but his thirst is unbearable. To get to the drinking water faster, he decides to climb over the porch and go straight to the kitchen, where the can is. One of the shutters is closed. When he climbs over the rail, the floor of the porch is damp from wet footprints. When he tugs at the kitchen door, it is locked. And when he runs around the cottage and tries to open the front door, it is locked, too. So he shakes it, pounds on it with clenched fists, and kicks it—what he wouldn’t do to quench his thirst. When the father comes and opens the door, he looks scared and pretends he was asleep.

Why have you locked all the doors? Bengt yells.

What do you want? the father asks.

A drink of water, the son answers.

When he walks into the room with the open fireplace, he notices that the curtain covering the alcove is trembling as if someone is standing behind it, someone who is panting. He drinks some water in the kitchen, and when he’s done, he drinks some more. But he never quenches his thirst.

They eat dinner late. Bengt has no appetite. Berit hardly eats anything either. And Bengt doesn’t give her anything to drink, because he has no desire to make her happy. The father picks at his food and tries to come up with something to say that will make them all laugh, but they finish before he can think of anything. As Gun gathers up the dishes, she asks whether they want to go out rowing. Nobody wants to.

But a little while after they have all gone to bed, Bengt slowly and silently escapes through the window. He pushes the boat out into the deep water, rows around the island and then straight into the ocean. A little ways out, the swell is rougher, beating against the plank, like whips. The wind is more acrid, scratching his face with its nails. It gets harder and harder to row. But the harder it gets, the more he enjoys it. And the deeper the island sinks into the sea, the more he likes that, too. He wants to row until the island completely disappears, as far into the sea as the boat can take him. He wants to row straight into the night. Until the last of the darkness ultimately swallows him up. After a while, the waves develop white crests and shower the boat with dazzling water. It is still fairly light, but darkness is beginning to descend over the coast. Finally, he is completely surrounded by water, nothing but water. But when he rows past a skerry, which is nearly black except for where it is mottled with white specks of birds, he notices how terribly slow he is going. So he lunges with the oars so powerfully that they start to bend. What gives him so much power is a vision, a vision that has compelled him to take the boat out in the middle of the night. In the vision, it is morning and bright. Gun steps onto the stairs in her red bathing suit. Just as she’s about to head into the water, she notices that the boat is gone. Terrified, she runs up to the house. Where’s Bengt?! she shouts to Berit. Then they feel around for him in his bed, but it’s cold and empty. She runs to the father’s room. Knut! she screams, Bengt is gone and so is the boat! So they run around the island, peer into the sea, and look back at the land. The most they can hope for is that he only rowed to the mainland and that he’ll come back as soon as he has calmed down. That is when Berit suddenly discovers the boat, the rowboat, floating bottom up and coming toward them—black, like a coffin. Finally, they realize he is dead, that he has avenged himself for all the pain they have caused him.

The vision is so vivid and so real that he suddenly starts crying. There were many times before in his life when he contemplated suicide, but he has never enjoyed it like he does now. In reality, he is so thoroughly riveted by his vision that he doesn’t know what he’s doing at all, where he is, or into what danger he is drifting. He could row all the way to Finland without realizing it. Not until he hit Finnish soil would he know that he was sitting in a boat and that he had rowed it across the ocean.

However, for anyone who could row to Finland, something always manages to wake him from his dream. For Bengt, it’s that his boat abruptly hits a rock. The impact makes him fall flat on his face, almost breaking one of the oars, but he barely manages to let go of it. As he struggles to get up, he sees that he’s on top of a modest yet sharp submerged rock. A ghostly green shines underneath the black water. That is when he, to his horror, realizes where he is. The faint darkness floats like a black and ominous fog between the sea and the sky. Invisible birds are squawking. They must be horribly massive since they can’t be seen. And the water surges high and gloomy all around him, threatening to flip his boat over at any moment. He is freezing down to the marrow, and with a fear that’s absurd for someone who is going to die, he breaks an oar loose and repeatedly beats the rock until the boat is free. With violent exertion, he gets the boat around it. The sea is high. Every wave that approaches seems ready to leap into the boat and fill it to the brim. With eyes wide open, he looks the sea in the eye. Then he rows the way people row when they’re terrified and utterly alone: short, wild strokes of the oar and oarlocks screeching. Canted and jerky, the boat drifts slowly onward. He doesn’t dare turn around until much later. Then the island is lopsided in the sea’s right-hand corner, lopsided but very near. It’s his vision that has tricked him into thinking he was gone so infinitely long. And it’s his fear that fed the lie.