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.
It isn’t until he is standing and panting in the alcove that he realizes how dead tired he is. Soaked, limp, and heavy as lead, he is barely able to climb up into bed. He is even too exhausted to open the sliding door to the room and the alcove with the closed shutter. Nevertheless, beneath his extreme exhaustion is a lump of happiness. Because he is glad to have been saved. So he doesn’t need anything else to make him happy. And when the fiancée leans out of her bed, and up to his, and says in a whisper, I’ll be better tomorrow, he can only manage to sigh an incomprehensible word, a single little word. Then he falls asleep. Berit does not sleep.
They are quite happy on Midsummer Eve. People are almost always happy on Midsummer Eve, even they who have no reason to be. They eat and go swimming. Even Berit swims to show Bengt that she is well. Otherwise, she is afraid of swimming, she doesn’t swim well, and she freezes in the water. But she swims all the same. They row into the tall, brazen waves, away from the boats that rattle or glide past them by motor or wind. They row so close to the mainland that they can see all the flags waving in the yards. The four of them are together the whole day, for each one of them knows that it’s dangerous not to be together. At night, each one of them has felt it, whether consciously or in their dreams.
They put the record player on the table outside on the porch. There’s also wine, glasses, and flowers that the women picked from a skerry. It is late and beautiful, and they hang a kerosene lamp by a nail to illuminate all the beauty. Then they dance underneath the light. That is, only three of them dance—Bengt does not. He can’t dance. Well, maybe a little foxtrot. Besides, he doesn’t even want to, at least not with Gun. Because then he would be forced to touch her, but after last night he knows that isn’t possible. Besides, they are only playing hambo and old-time waltzes. Bengt doesn’t watch when the father dances with Gun. He just drinks. But he does look when the father dances with Berit, and he drinks some more. After so much wine he becomes rather tipsy. Gun has been drinking, too, but only enough to make her carefree. They are all drinking wine, but none so much as he.
The stack of records gets smaller and smaller. Gun is glowing and happy. She is wearing her bathing suit and a black skirt over it. The father dances mostly with her and is therefore able to dance faster. He has to dance slowly with Berit or else she gets a headache. And maybe she already has one, because she is pallid under the light of the lamp. At last, the bottles are empty. Bengt grips the table as Berit strokes his arm. Excited, Gun and the father are standing by the rail and watching the sea. Boats with lights and music onboard glide by in the distance. Suddenly, a rocket shoots up from the low island. They cheer in awe as a dazzling shower of blue and green sparks flutters down. They wait for another one, but nothing comes. Then they get cold and want to go to bed. But Berit, who is standing next to Bengt, is flipping through the records. She finally finds a foxtrot and puts it on. She wants to dance with Bengt. He knows he’s a clumsy dancer, but when he dances with Berit, he only does it to show the two others he can, but that he didn’t want to before. Because Berit also dances pretty badly, they are already dissatisfied with each other before the song is over. When they finish, the father says: