Sail of Stone by Åke Edwardson Page B

not John Coltrane, and he didn’t pretend to be, either. But Springsteen’s melodies were filled with pain and a melancholy light that Winter appreciated. There was almost always death there, just like in his life. Springsteen sang nakedly:
    Well now, everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.
    Fact. Dead. That is my job. Sometimes in that order, most often the opposite.
    But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
    Not always as you’d like. But death comes back in a new cloak. But is it life, then?
    Everything floated up, returned in a new guise. Nothing could be hidden.
    Sooner or later.
    Even secrets that lie on the bottom of the sea don’t stay. He drove past the swimming beach. All the parking lots were empty and there were no bikes. He caught a glimpse of the sea, but it was empty too, rolling in toward the end of the season. Not even on the bottom of the sea. He dialed Johanna Osvald’s number again. No answer. That didn’t ease his worry, not enough to forget it. He felt that he had betrayed something or someone when he hadn’t answered, hadn’t answered the first time. At first it had felt good, but now it didn’t feel good. What had he betrayed? His duty? Himself?
    For Christ’s sake, you don’t need to chase after adventure.
    The mystery will come to you when it’s become a mystery.
    Do you chase after crime? Are you calling because you want affirmation?
    What’s the next step? Are you going to take out an ad in the paper?
    Wanted: crime. Contact the eager inspector.
    The obsessed inspector.
    Everybody’s got a hungry heart.
    No, no. Come on.
    He turned off the impassioned Springsteen on his way from one relationship to the potential other one. He had arrived. The sea rolled gently and heavily like before. He got out of the car, left it in the stand of trees. The grass was still equally green on both sides of the path he and Angela and Elsa had recently made. They had trampled it down as though it would always be there.
    He stood at the edge of the beach. He took off his shoes and walked into the water, which was cold but became warm. He turned around and looked across the field. He closed his eyes and saw the house; it could be standing there within a year, maybe even sooner. Would he be happy there? Here. What would it involve, living a life so close to the sea? Could it involve anything other than something positive?
    He turned toward the water again. He thought of the conversation he’d had in his office with Johanna Osvald. She had lived close to the sea, much closer than he would ever get. Her entire family. Not just close to the sea, on the sea. The sea had been their life, was their life. Life and death. Death was real in a different way for fishing families; he thought he understood that much. A working life of hazards, a life of worry for those who stayed home.
    It must have been very dangerous before. The war. The mine barriers, the U-boats, the destroyers, the coast guard. The storms, the waves, the collisions, the crush injuries, the pressure from all directions. It must have been a very great pressure. How did they handle it?
    The colleagues. What sort of life did they live together?
    He had listened to Johanna Osvald and he started to understand what she had really been talking about. Behind her words there was an unease that he had not been able to understand but that he thought of now. A fear that had been passed down from generation to generation to generation.
    He sat down in the sand, which was still warm after the summer. He heard two seagulls laughing at some inside joke. He could see them now, on approach to his land, soon to be his land. Were they part of the deal? Was that what they were having such a damn good time about? Now they were laughing again, belly-landing elegantly on the path, taking off again, rattling out another laugh in his direction, returning to the winds in the bay and gliding out toward the sea. He followed them with his gaze until they disappeared and