Free Depths by Henning Mankell Page B

previous course of the navigable channel they would start sounding again.
    He calculated how long it would take. Provided nothing unforeseen happened, they should be finished by 1 December even so.
    He put the main record book away, turned down the flame and stretched out on his bunk. There was a faint creaking from the hull. He could hear the watchman walking over the deck. Somebody coughed. He thought how there always seemed to be a coughing epidemic on board a naval vessel. It rattled like an echo through the collective chest of ships. When on board a warship you could be certain that the wind and the sound of the engines would always be accompanied by somebody coughing.
    He pictured the crew of a big battleship, perhaps two thousand men, standing on parade and coughing in unison while their superiors looked on.
    He thought about the sailor he had struck. What did he know about him? He was nineteen, came from inland, Vimmerby, and was called Mats Lindegren. That was all. The lad spoke an almost incomprehensible dialect, often smelled of sweat and gave the appearance of being frightened. He was an insignificant person with a pale, pimply face, and unnaturally thin to boot. There was something vague and elusive about him. It was incomprehensible that he should have joined the navy, even if he was not among the worst when it came to being seasick. He knew as much from Lieutenant Jakobsson, who always had people keeping a check on which members of the crew – himself included – became incapable of working during a bad storm. Mats Lindegren was one of those not affected. He was not sick, nor did he become dizzy.
    There in the darkness Tobiasson-Svartman suddenly realised why he had been unable to control himself. The yawning sailor with the snotty nose had reminded him of the dead man Richter, the one who had been pulled out of the sea a few weeks ago. The similarity of their appearance, that and the fact that, they had stumbled upon a big underwater ridge had shattered all his best-laid plans, had made him lose control.
    * * *
    He closed his eyes and thought about his wife. She was walking towards him through the darkness; he felt wholly calm deep down; the cabin was filled with a sweetish scent, and finally he managed to fall asleep.

CHAPTER 43
    She followed him into his dreams.
    It was 1905, they had just married and were on their honeymoon in Kristiania. The struggle over the 'to be or not to be' of the Swedish-Norwegian union was at its most troubled stage and he had made the naive mistake of going out for a walk with his wife along Karl Johan wearing his Swedish naval uniform. Just as they were passing the university somebody had shouted at him, and even in his dream he could hear that hot-tempered voice: 'Swedish bastard, go home.' He turned round, but there was no obvious culprit, just a crowd of people who looked the other way or smiled and looked down at the ground. They were staying at the Grand Hotel, and went back there immediately. Kristina Tacker had been fearful and wanted to leave right away, but he had refused. He changed into civilian clothes, they went out again and nobody had shouted at them. No one was hostile when they went to the Blom restaurant or the Grand Hotel's veranda, nor when they visited the newly built National Theatre. They saw Johanne Dybwad as Mrs Alving in a production of Ibsen's Ghosts, which his wife thought was disgusting. He agreed with her, to be polite, but in fact he had been disturbed and moved because the play reminded him of his own childhood and resurrected uncomfortable memories of pain and ignominy.
    Thus far his dream was clear, a walk down memory lane. But then everything became chaotic. They become separated in a crowd at Bygdøy and soon afterwards he sees her with another man. He tries to pull the man away from her, but he is dead and his body is already decaying, the stink is something awful. Then suddenly everything is back at the beginning again. They walk along Karl