What happened the furthest back was that he had something to do with boats. Perhaps he had been, in his tender youth, a cabin boy on board a three-master sailing with bulging cloth the trade routes between continents, perhaps particularly towards the Orient and there from one island to the following, mornings when the sun in an aureola broke through the fogbanks above the oil-grey sea or else came to dip the tips of slender palm trees in bloody luminosity; evenings when a baked wind from the land propelled the hint of spices, particularly cloves, over the waves, and also the rancid stench of villages which as yet knew nothing of modern drainage systems. Hamlets on mouldy stilts, their roots in the rotting. Perhaps he had been a galley slave on one of the Phoenician longboats in the Mare Anticum, and perhaps they travelled all along the vague coast of North Africa where the sea, in places, is light green and very shallow with sandbanks, and under these ridges some skeletons and cuirass pieces remain preserved, with the drum beats in his ear like the heart’s nibbling in his chest and the lashes of a whip over shoulders and back. Perhaps he jumped without outer garment from a dhow to dive for coral in the Red Sea and slapped his hands on the water to scare off the sharks. Or perhaps he trawled for sardines with his mates while the sea was very stormy and blue-black like the fear of an ink-fish, and ice, several centimetres thick, blossomed on the boat deck and the handrails; but once the catch flip-flopped over the planks like handfuls of living coins, then they could return to Björnholm or one of the other Baltic islands where grey winds eddy in the shrieking of mews to drown a fortnight’s cares and joys in drink.
However and wherever it might have been, a feeling of betrayal clings to the memory. Something like a blue line. A blue line over salt-encrusted planks. But also over the people. Or in him too? Shipwreck? He doesn’t think so. He had a rank taste in the mouth. The faces of fellow travellers by the lantern’s light, bobbing shadows over nose-bridges and cheekbones, and shards or sparks in the suspicious and furious eyes? He sat leaning his back against the wooden ribs and could sense the sea lapping at that creaking partition against his spine. And a blue beam. The other men talked about it.
Later he was on a beach at low tide. At ebb the sea withdraws a long way, like a huge thirst, and exposes an area of black sand. The force of the currents and spring tide along these parts washes benches and ridges in the sand so that fingers of water shine in all directions over the laid-bare territory. In places there are naked rocks which, with different tides, would be covered by water and foam. There is a stench — the damp sand, the gullies, the rocks — as strings of seaweed and bamboo, half-digested crabs, putrid prawns, debris and floatage of every kind and origin are strewn all over. Also many empty plastic bags, containers, condoms. The cloacae of a nearby town probably run into the water here. Although a wind is gathering speed it in no way upsets the gnats and the sandflies hovering over the waste and the oozing rubbish. They are vibrating questions in the air, questions which will strip everything bare if only they were given time and tide to do so.
He is here with the prince. Off to one side of the beach, just about where it runs into a steep rock cliff, he finds three hats which, miraculously, are brand new and still dry. The wind is slightly cut off here but when it capriciously grabs hold of one of the headgear to send it spinning like a wheel over the sand, the booty is very nearly lost. But then he succeeds in retrieving and keeping all three. From far away the prince espies the loot and comes running with pale ankles to claim his share, the part of a prince, this, the best hat which with smooth fur is practically a mirror in the sun.
He is enraged but obliged to satisfy his lordship. He has to content himself with the smallest hat, a brownish porker with a very narrow brim, limp and with not even a feather. He pulls the little hat right down to his ears so that the crown may fit deep and tight over his hair. Then he sees how the prince, Albert, drops his watch in the dark sand and vengefully he puts his foot over it to push it even deeper into the stickiness so that just the glass over the dial protrudes like the one eye of a pair of glasses squinting into the sun. Albert stands at the foot of the rock barrier, crying with one hand fisted before his eyes and with the other holding down his new hat, crying because of the watch he lost. Through his tears Albert sobs that he wishes to return home.
Now he pities Albert; and besides, he is afraid of what might happen if the prince were to start sulking angrily. Thus he runs back to the hidden watch and digs it up with long finger and index. He holds it up in one hand, swinging by the strap, nearly a tacked-on wrist, and jumps up and down. Shouts against the wind at Albert standing diminutive by the rocks: “Look what I found! I have it! I have it!” In the immediate vicinity he discovers four more timepieces which he stuffs in his pocket although not one of them ticks as swanky as the prince’s; in fact, two are pumping rather irregularly with little spastic leaps. He also finds, partially silted up under a stone, something which at first he doesn’t recognize. Upon closer inspection it turns out to be a long string of jewels, little ones with in-between sapphires as big as beetles with light bulbs in the bowels. Then he realizes that it must be a rosary since a small image dangles at one end, carved most likely from ivory, of the Christ with pulled-up legs on the cross. The nails gave him cramps. No bigger than a locust and just as leggy. The legs so twisted that they might be artificial, and the cross a wee crutch. He thinks that the carving will fit well in his slightly cupped palm, like a dead locust. The string too he surreptitiously pockets with the intention of cleaning it later and then giving it to his wife as a present. Findings keepings. Spoliatus ante omnia restituenda est. Then he jogs to where the prince waits. Long trails of a blubbery substance of dubious origin lie in all shapes on the banks of the furrows washed in the sand. A stickiness clings to his feet. When running he rouses swarms of seabirds — gulls and sandplovers and cormorants — like tatters and tears they wail and call names above his head.