I walked round the island. There was a pungent smell of sea and soil. Lively oystercatchers were scurrying about at the water’s edge, pecking away with their red beaks. I felt as if I were walking round a prison yard a few days before I was due to emerge through the front gates and become a free man again. But would I do that? Where could I go to? What kind of a life would be in store for me?
I sat down under one of the oaks in the Quarrel. It dawned on me that I was in a hurry. There was no time to waste.
That evening I rowed out to Starrudden. The sea bottom was smooth there. I laid out a flounder net, but didn’t have much hope of catching anything — maybe the odd flounder or a perch that would be appreciated by the cat. The net would be clogged up by the sticky algae that now proliferates in the Baltic.
Perhaps this sea stretching out before me on these beautiful evenings is in fact slowly deteriorating into a marsh?
Later that evening I did something I shall never be able to understand. I fetched a spade, and opened up my dog’s grave. I dug up the whole cadaver. Maggots had already eaten away the mucous membranes around its mouth, eyes and ears, and opened up its stomach. There was a white clump of them clustered around its anus. I put down the spade, and fetched the cat that was fast asleep on the kitchen sofa. I carried her to the grave and set her down next to the dead dog. She jumped high into the air, as if she’d been bitten by an adder, and ran away as far as the corner of the house, where she paused, wondering whether to continue her flight. I gathered a handful of the fat maggots and wondered whether I ought to eat them — or would the nausea be too much for me? Then I threw them back on to the dog’s body, and filled in the grave as fast as I could.
It made no sense. Was I preparing the way for opening up a similar grave inside myself? In order to summon up enough courage to face in cold blood all the things I’d been burdened with for so long?
I spent ages scrubbing my hands under the kitchen taps. I felt sick at what I’d done.
At about eleven I phoned Harriet and Louise again. Still no answer.
Early the next morning I took in the net. There were two thin flounders and a dead perch. As I had feared, the net was clogged up with mud and algae. It took me over an hour to get it somewhere near clean and hang it up on the boathouse wall. I was glad that my grandfather hadn’t lived to see the sea he loved being choked to death. Then I went back to scraping the boat. I was working half naked and tried to make peace with my cat, who was wary after the previous night’s meeting with the dead dog. She wasn’t interested in the flounders, but took the perch to a hollow in the rocks and chewed away.
At ten o’clock I went in and phoned again. Still no answer. There wouldn’t be any postal delivery today either. There was nothing I could do.
I boiled a couple of eggs for lunch and leafed through an old brochure advertising paints suitable for a wooden boat. The brochure was eight years old.
After the meal I lay down on the kitchen sofa for a rest. I was worn out and soon fell asleep.
It was almost one o’clock when I was woken up with a start. Through the open kitchen window I could hear the sound of an old compression-ignition engine. It sounded like Jansson’s boat, but he wasn’t due today. I got up, stuck my feet into my cut-down wellington boots and went outside. The noise was getting louder. I had no doubt now that it was Jansson’s boat. It makes an uneven noise because the exhaust pipe sometimes dips down under the surface of the water. I went down to the jetty to wait. The prow eventually appeared from behind the rocks furthest away. I was surprised to note that he was only travelling at half-throttle, and the boat was moving very slowly.
Then I understood why. Jansson was towing another craft, an old cow ferry tied to the stern of his boat. When I was a child I had watched ferries like this one taking cows to islands with summer pasture. I hadn’t seen a single ferry like this during all the twelve years I’d lived on the island.
On the deck of the cow ferry was Louise’s caravan. She was standing in the open door, exactly as I remembered seeing her the first time I met her. Then I noticed another person standing by the rail. It was Harriet, with her walker.
If it had been possible, I’d have jumped into the water and swum away. But there was no escape. Jansson slowed down and untied the tow rope, giving the ferry a push to ensure that it glided in towards the shallowest part of the inlet. I stood there as if paralysed, watching it beach itself. Jansson moored his boat at the jetty.
‘I never thought I’d have a use for this old ferry again. The last time I had it out was to take a couple of horses to Rökskär. But that must have been twenty-five years ago, if not more,’ he said.
‘You could have phoned,’ I said. ‘You could have warned me.’
Jansson looked surprised.
‘I thought you knew they were coming. Louise said you were expecting them. We’ll be able to tow the caravan up with your tractor. It’s a good job it’s high tide, otherwise we’d have had to pull it through the water.’
This explained why nobody had answered my telephone calls. Louise helped Harriet ashore with her walker. I noticed that Harriet was even thinner and much weaker now than when I’d left them so abruptly in the caravan.
I clambered down on to the shore. Louise was holding Harriet by the arm.
‘It’s pretty here,’ said Louise. ‘I prefer the forest. But it’s pretty.’
‘I suppose I ought to say “welcome”,’ I said.
Harriet raised her head. Her face was covered in sweat.
‘I’ll fall if I let go,’ she said. ‘I’d like to lie down on the bed among the ants again.’
We helped her up to the house. I asked Jansson to see if he could start my old tractor. Harriet lay down on the bed. She was breathing heavily and seemed to be in pain. Louise gave her a pill and fetched a glass of water. Harriet swallowed the pill with great difficulty. Then she looked at me.
‘I haven’t got much longer to live,’ she said. ‘Hold my hand.’
I took her warm hand.
‘I want to lie here and listen to the sea and have you two close to me. That’s all. The old lady promises not to give you any unnecessary trouble. I shan’t even scream when the pain becomes too much to bear. When that happens, I shall take my tablets or Louise will give me an injection.’
She closed her eyes. We stood watching her. She soon fell asleep. Louise walked round the table, contemplating the expanding anthill.
‘How many ants are there?’ she whispered.
‘A million, perhaps more.’
‘How long have you had it?’
‘This is the eleventh year.’
We left the room.
‘You could have rung,’ I said.
She stood in front of me and took a firm hold of my shoulders.
‘If I had you’d have said no. I didn’t want that to happen. Now we are here. You owe it to my mum and me, especially to her. If she wants to lie listening to the sea instead of to hooting motor cars when she dies, that’s what she’s going to do. And so you can be grateful that I won’t need to harass you for the rest of your life complaining about what you did.’
She turned on her heel and went outside. Jansson had managed to start the tractor. Just as I had suspected all these years, he was pretty good at starting difficult engines.
We tied a few ropes to the caravan and managed to unload it from the cow ferry. Jansson was in charge of the tractor.
‘Where do you want it to stand?’ he shouted.
‘Here,’ said Louise, pointing to a patch of grass beyond the narrow strip of sand on the other side of the boathouse. ‘I want a beach of my own,’ she went on. ‘I’ve always dreamed of that.’