Celia has gone walkabout!
Janne the Post, our very own Hermes in his orange Lada, spread the news at the same time as delivering letters and other remittances to the people of Fagerö on Tuesday morning. Celia has gone walkabout! There was no need to say more. Four words were enough. The people of Fagerö immediately understood the significance of the news and took a breath before they started humming and hawing and oh dear, oh dearing.
Oh dear, oh dear! What else was there to say?
People immediately forgot the debacle that had occurred at the funeral of the unknown young man a couple of days before, though it could hardly be seen as over and done with. But in spite of the shambles no one had been hurt, and the fact that several of the island’s most prominent citizens had taken a tumble was, on the whole, quite exhilarating. But Celia was a different matter. Her situation was the kind of thing that could only be talked about in a low voice, with much sighing, tutting, shaking of the head and frequent exclamations of things like “Lord Above!” “Sweet Jesus!” “How Dreadful!” and “What Times We Live In!” In the midst of all this sighing, people experienced a warm feeling in their hearts, that special feeling of satisfaction that is induced by the misfortunes of others. And in their silent thoughts, people did not fail to thank God and all the higher powers for consistently ensuring that things are worse for others than for themselves.
Celia has gone walkabout! The last time was years ago. The news gave the islanders a welcome opportunity to bring the story of Celia down from the attic of their memory, dust it off and put it on public display again.
Celia’s wedding was the talk of the islands. Well, that’s how silver-tongued storytellers usually introduce one of the most common, though not necessarily most trustworthy, versions of the sad story of Celia and her great misfortune.
Celia was just nineteen when she married. As to the bridegroom, the less said about him the better. He came from the mainland or, to be precise, from one of the big islands in the inner archipelago. To the minds of Fagerö people they amount to the same thing: anywhere the other side of Norrfjärden and Örsund counts as the mainland.
The bridegroom is also reckoned to have been considerably older than Celia.
Young girls are like driftwood on the wide blue waters of life and there is no telling where wind and waves will take them. If the worst comes to the worst, they may find themselves cast up on a dark and cruel shore. That was to be Celia’s unhappy fate.
But she was given a grand island wedding. Nearly a hundred guests had been invited and their boats were packed gunwale to gunwale in Kungshamn harbour so there wasn’t space left for a dinghy. Helmi from Gloskär, the most celebrated cook and caterer in all the south-western islands, had come to Grannas a day in advance with her assistants and her pots and pans and ladles and laid on a feast of such abundance that it would have fed three times the number of guests. They produced cold fillets of pickled Baltic herring, buckling shining like brass and sweetly juniper-scented, Baltic herring of other varieties (sweet pickled herring, glazier’s herring, herring salad), sardines in tins carrying a picture of the Norwegian king, salmon (poached, smoked and gravlax), salted whitefish sliced so thin as to be translucent, beetroot salad, aspic jelly trembling expectantly in its mould, home-made liver pâté, meatballs, chipolata sausages, hot-smoked ham, roast elk as dark red in colour as the finest Honduran mahogany, tomato salad, salted gherkins, fresh radishes, Swiss cheese, Emmenthal cheese and aquavit cheese. They even provided some of the finest delicacies of traditional island cuisine: blood pudding, roast seabirds, preserved seal flippers. Among the hot dishes served were pot roast, beef stew and boiled fresh flounder, with the traditional stewed prunes as dessert.
Oh, how your scribe’s mouth waters and his belly rumbles after writing that list! And he’s thirsty too!
Not that the guests at Celia’s wedding had reason to be thirsty for long. You could choose between lemonade and juice and beer and red wine – and there was an army of waiters ready to pour schnapps and aquavit as soon as anyone banged a glass down on the table.
As they walked back to the reception after the ceremony in the church, dozens of shotguns were fired off to salute the bridal couple: that’s the custom on Fagerö and with guns banging and cracking every inch of the way you’d have thought the Russians had invaded. The bridal toasts were drunk out in the yard, the newlyweds were celebrated with poems and the telegrams were read out. Meanwhile a couple of fiddlers kept their bows busy.
After a short interval to digest the meal and a break for people to follow the demands of nature, the pastor bade them farewell and the dancing started. A temporary floor had been laid in the courtyard at Grannas and a band – the Tip-Tops – had been brought over from the mainland to provide music. Still wearing her sparkling bridal crown, Celia blushed bright red when her new husband led her out for the bridal waltz to the cheers, whistles and applause of onlookers.
In no time at all the dance floor was swarming with bodies circling like a drift net full of herring, all flowery dresses and black jackets, red faces and smiling mouths and stamping feet. The Tip-Tops played waltzes and foxtrots, slowfox and tango: “The Lily of the Valley’s Farewell”, “Red Sails in the Sunset”, “Besame mucho”, “T’was on the Isle of Capri that I Found Her”, “Tango Jalousie”. The respectable matrons of Fagerö delivered themselves into the safe and strong arms of their husbands; big boys invited giggling girls; patriarchs – their vision dimmed by cataracts and limbs stiff with rheumatism – took grey-haired grannies by the waist and stepped out on to the floor, for those who can still walk can still dance, even though things may not go with the same verve as in the days of their youth.
Excited children shrieked and scuttled around like birch leaves in autumn. Men slipped away surreptitiously to consult the hip flasks they had brought with them. Two youths came to blows behind the woodshed – it’s not clear why – but fortunately they were separated before any serious blood was spilled. While going to the privy in a state of inebriated confusion one wedding guest, whose name we’ll refrain from mentioning, managed to drop his wallet into the latrine pit and on attempting to rescue it came close to falling in completely. He was taken down to the shore and cleaned up as far as possible. One of the storm lanterns that had been hung up to illuminate the dance floor crashed to the ground, the petrol caught fire and the dancing had to be interrupted for the short while it took to put the fire out.
In other words, everything went as it should at a good island wedding.
Just after midnight the bride’s father encountered a stranger at the gate.
It was, of course, traditional for uninvited visitors to appear outside the house at the height of the party and call for a viewing of the bride. And so Celia’s father, Ruben Dahlström, assumed at first that this was such a visitor and was about to invite him to join the dance – that, too, was a tradition.
As Ruben started to go down the porch steps a strange shudder ran along his spine and his skin tingled with gooseflesh. It was the same kind of feeling as you get on a warm summer’s day when passing the Dragon’s Hole on the road between Söder Karlby and Storby – all at once you become aware of the wintry breath of the chill water from that spring.
On the bottom step Ruben hesitated.
The Tip-Tops were playing “Kotka’s Rose”. The vocalist’s voice sounded distant and toneless.
Ruben Dahlström had a half-century and more under his belt. In his youth as a seaman he had seen his fair share of the world, and travellers, as we know, often encounter strange things. Even on his home patch he had experienced things that cannot easily be explained away by reason alone. On two occasions, for instance, he had met an undine – both times were at Torskharun, but with a ten-year interval between – and each time she had warned him of approaching storms. And when he was out at the Pålgrundet herring fishing in autumn he had often heard the seamen drowned in the wreck of the schooner Ajatar humming their monotonous laments. He had met a witch’s familiar in his own woodshed one bitterly cold February night twenty years ago – a little fellow who glared at him with evil yellow eyes and gave a shrill scream. As a result of experiences of this kind, Ruben Dahlström had come to the conclusion that there are a good many inexplicable phenomena between heaven and earth, and people need to be on their guard against them. Premonitions of evil should certainly not be dismissed out of hand. With these thoughts in mind he walked down to the gate to take a closer look at the stranger.
It has to be admitted that he walked more slowly and took shorter strides than he usually did.
Ruben did not recognise the man and he couldn’t actually see much of the fellow’s face since it was largely concealed by a broad-brimmed slouch hat. It was, moreover, quite a dark night, it being well into the month of July by this point. The only features that Ruben could pick out were two gleaming eyes and a full black beard. The stranger was wearing a long grey coat and he gave off a slight but clearly perceptible smell of something bitter, rather reminiscent of wormwood.
“Good evening,” Ruben Dahlström greeted him cautiously.
“I em hier to tanz mit te bride,” the stranger said with a strong accent that reminded Ruben of an old bosun from Reval he had sailed with on a Swedish freighter.
The stranger tried to push his way in through the gate. Ruben noticed that he walked with a limp – his left leg wasn’t like a normal human leg in that it didn’t have a proper foot. The shin visible below his trouser leg was covered in hair like the feathering above a horse’s hoof. By this point Ruben Dahlström had a fair idea who he was dealing with.
Throughout the south-west archipelago there are stories of a stranger who comes to any farm celebrating a wedding and asks to dance with the bride. The hospitable and unsuspecting hosts invite the stranger in. He walks with a limp, but no one is bothered by that. At the stranger’s request the musicians strike up a breathless schottische. He dances with the bride and the dance becomes faster and faster. His lame foot strikes the floor with a thunderous echo and then, at last, the wedding guests realise who the stranger is and they are terror-stricken.
Ruben Dahlström had heard this story many times and he also knew how it ends.
He suddenly felt cold sweat breaking out on his forehead; his mouth was dry as an ash bucket and his knees gave way.
“Are you goink to ask me to the tanz oder nicht?” the stranger asked, his voice sounding like chalk scraping across glass.
We don’t know where Ruben Dahlström found the courage to act as he did because none of those involved in what followed would ever say a word about it. It seems likely that Ruben’s paternal love conquered his fear, for love can drive a man, however meek, to undreamt-of deeds. Perhaps in his mind’s eye at that moment he saw his daughter dancing the bridal waltz, her face flushed, her eyes shining and her black hair gleaming like the spring plumage of the scoter.
Celia was his youngest child and he loved her with all his heart.
Ruben Dahlström took a deep breath and stepped in front of the stranger. He knew that the stranger had to be expressly invited before he could pass through the gate, but he also knew that he would be in great danger himself unless he invited the stranger in.
In desperation Ruben Dahlström sought some way out of his difficulty. He raised his eyes to the deep blue of the heavens but all he saw there were the stars, white, cold and distant. From deep in the stranger’s throat came a growl like that of an old dog. There is a saying that necessity teaches a naked woman to weave, and now an idea suddenly came to Ruben.
“Well now …” he started, but his voice creaked and jammed like a rusty winding handle on a well and he was forced to start again. “Well now … we couldn’t ask a fine gentleman like you to dance without having a drink first.”
“So gib me a trink!”
“No doubt a gentleman like you is a true connoisseur. Schnapps won’t do – brandy is the drink for you!”
The stranger gestured impatiently: “Ja gut – but don’t waste time!”
“Wait here a moment,” Ruben said, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible.
With trembling legs he ran up the track and practically fell into the kitchen at Bengfols. His brothers Axel and Vilhelm were sitting at the table along with Isaksson, Leander Karlsson and various other worthies, all enjoying some peace and quiet and savouring their coffee with a dram. They were astonished to see Ruben charge past into the parlour where the master of the house kept his drinks cupboard. He returned with several bottles of brandy tucked under his arm and grabbed a couple of glasses from the draining board in passing. He looked at the men wild-eyed.
“You must come with me! It’s a matter of life and death – and not just for Celia!”
That’s all he said before charging out through the door like a man in urgent need of a pee.
The group around the kitchen table looked at one another in bemusement. Praise the Lord that there is no such thing as a true islander who ever says no to a drink, particularly when the drink on offer is the best sort of smuggled German brandy. The men rose to their feet and, as one, tramped out after Ruben. The latter had already reached the gate, where he pulled the cork out of the first bottle of brandy, shoved a glass into the stranger’s hand and poured generous nips for both of them.
“Skål!” Ruben said, emptying his glass in one. The stranger followed suit.
“Right, now iss time to …” the stranger began.
Ruben interrupted him: “No, no, not so fast, sir! You need one for the other leg, too, if you’re going to join the dance.”
Ruben refilled the glasses and they drank.
“And now one for the third leg!”
By the ninth or tenth leg the brandy seemed to be having some small effect on the stranger, but Ruben was swaying like a buoy in a heavy sea and clearly couldn’t be counted on any longer. So his brother Vilhelm, who had soon recognised what was at stake, moved in. He stepped in front of the stranger with an unopened bottle of brandy and announced: “Now the bride’s uncle wants to drink a toast with you!”
The stranger had no choice but to join in.
He could drink all right, no doubt about that, but the Fagerö men weren’t exactly novices, either. And they had the advantage that there were a lot of them. When – after a very respectable number of skols – Vilhelm had to fall out, his brother Axel took over. And after Axel came Leander and after Leander came Isaksson. The stranger’s slow progress was marked by a line of empty bottles along the side of the track, and eventually the brandy took its inevitable toll even on him.
“Ach … enough … nicht more …” he slurred with the glass halfway to his lips.
His mouth fell open and a string of spittle hung from his black beard.
He tried to take a step forward, staggered and collapsed on the sandy track.
A sharp smell of wormwood rose from him. The men could see that he had a black hoof like a horse where his left foot should have been.
“Lord Jesus!” Ruben Dahlström whispered, suddenly sober. Leander, meanwhile, was vomiting noisily in a flower bed by the porch.
“Wha … wha … what we going to do with him?” Axel wondered.
Ruben thought carefully.
“We’ll take him down to Stjitsten and throw him in the sea. It’s really deep there,” he said finally.
They heaved the unconscious stranger up on to a wheelbarrow and pushed him to Stjitsten. Just to be on the safe side they filled his coat pockets with rocks before throwing him in the sea, where he sank like a lump of cast iron.
Neither Ruben Dahlström nor any of the others involved ever said a word about what they had done that night. And Ruben never went near Stjitsten again as long as he lived.
Celia never knew anything about her salvation. She went to the mainland with her husband to be with him in sickness and in health – and to obey him, as the apostle Paul commands women to do.
And now the great wheel of the year turned on its axle, and then it turned again. Back at Grannas they didn’t hear from Celia very often, nor did she come to visit, not even at Christmas. What everyone thought was, well, she doesn’t have time, it can’t be easy coming to a big farm on the mainland as a young wife and not knowing any of the people around you.
It was in her third year away that Celia wrote and said she had given birth to a child, a healthy boy who was to be called Albert after his father. The people at Grannas hadn’t even known she was pregnant. They waited for invitations to the christening party, but no invitations arrived.
The wheel of the year turned almost a full circle again to the very worst and darkest time of the year, just before snow cloaks the skerries and ice locks the sea.
That was when Celia returned to Fagerö with her child in her arms. She was carrying nothing else.
“I can’t take any more,” she said.
Celia had sailed into marriage like a proud new-rigged ketch and now, storm-damaged, demasted and with shattered timbers, she was coming home. She had left her youth back on the mainland, along with the light in her eyes and the glow on her cheeks. Grey hairs streaked the black and she was wasting away so that her collarbone protruded bonily like an old woman’s.
Celia would not tell anyone what she had been through. When her father asked she shook her head and said: “I’ll never talk about it this side of the grave.”
She asked them to light the sauna for her. She went there alone, carefully closed the door after her and stayed there a long time. She used a lot of water.
She would let no one touch her child. When Ruben Dahlström wanted to hold him she would scream and clutch the child to her breast. She would look at her father with eyes that made him recoil. And yet she knew – of course, she knew – that no man could be kinder and love children more than her father.
Whatever it was that went on during Celia’s short marriage remains a mystery. Ruben Dahlström wanted to report it to the police. He was even prepared to go over to the mainland himself and call her husband to account. Celia pleaded with her father not to take action. She pleaded so persistently that he couldn’t help wondering whether, in spite of everything, she still had feelings for her husband.
The issue never came to a head anyway, because Celia’s husband chose to forestall both the police and Ruben Dahlström.
The night before Christmas he went into the woods, taking a strong hempen rope with him. He must have gone deep into the woods because he wasn’t found until Holy Innocents’ Day on the 28th, after soldiers from the nearby barracks had been called in to help with the search. When Celia heard the news she muttered, “The Devil took his own sooner than expected.”
She spoke so quietly that no one but Ruben Dahlström heard her. He felt as if he had been struck between his shoulder blades with an oar.
As a daughter of the house Celia carried on living at Grannas. Rumours and talk surrounded her just as a beast in the field is surrounded by buzzing flies and biting midges. It was inevitable that her case would come up before the court of Fagerö moralists, and opinions were divided. There were those who argued that Celia herself bore part of the blame for the way things had turned out. It’s rarely just one person’s fault when two people fall out, and an abused woman isn’t always the innocent party. And even if her husband isn’t good to her, she has no right to walk out of the marriage. Didn’t Jesus Christ himself say, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder?”
Those who came to Celia’s defence, however, countered with the fact that the mainland is not like the islands, and mainlanders are a strange and peculiar breed among whom there are many criminals, hooligans and lunatics – you only have to read the papers to see that. Celia had a responsibility both for herself and for her son and if she had only had the sense to marry a decent island boy, none of this would have happened.
This discussion raged for a time like the sea in autumn, but in the end the arguments on both sides became so tired and overused that any further deliberations were pointless. The case was shelved for lack of proof.
But a case dropped is not the same as a not-guilty verdict. Celia had to accept being something of an outsider. People greeted her just a touch more distantly than they greeted others and people talked to her just that much less.
That didn’t bother Celia at all. She had Albert, her son.
She kept him close, too close in the opinion of many. She was still giving him the breast until he was five and he slept with her until he was almost old enough for confirmation. She would feed him from her own plate and she sang him to sleep with old folk songs – the girl who lay with men in the field and the wind that blows and the ship that sailed away and others. She taught him the rhymes and ditties she remembered from her own childhood and she told him the stories of the boy and the giant, of Kattburga Castle and of the Bemböle people who were stupid enough to sow salt in their field. Whenever he started crying, she would cuddle him and comfort him even before the first tears had time to roll down his plump cheeks. If he coughed she would immediately check whether his forehead was hot and then she would give him warm milk flavoured with butter and onion. When he went out he was accompanied by her warnings to be careful and not to go too close to the shore, and if he was away too long Celia would drop whatever she was doing and go and look for him.
Celia’s anxiety was, for the most part, exaggerated. Albert was a healthy and strong child who grew and developed quite normally, made friends and joined in all the games with gusto. When he was with his friends he forgot all his mother’s warnings and liked to be best. He wanted to climb higher, dive deeper and walk farther out on the first creaking ice of autumn than any of the other boys dared. An angel of the Lord must have constantly been at his side because he never fell from a tree or broke through the ice. And Celia neither saw nor heard of his disobedience: her motherly love blinded her eyes and filled her ears with wax. Her Albert was a nice quiet boy who revered his mother.
When he was small he occasionally asked about his father – without receiving an answer. Those were the only times Celia turned her back on her son. Her back was like a high wall without doors or windows or even a little opening for him to crawl through. Then he realised how small he was and he stopped asking after his father.
But it’s strange and wonderful how quickly the wheel of life can turn. In no time at all the little bundle you were carrying in your arms a short while before is now a big strong tall fellow, educated, confirmed, with down on his upper lip and a voice that has broken. Why, O Lord, do the years pass so quickly?
Albert began to tug at the traces. No longer satisfied with being reined in by Celia, he wanted out. It was in any case high time for him to find work since there was neither space nor work at Grannas for a youth soon to be a man. And there was not a great deal of choice for someone like Albert.
He said he wanted to go to sea.
Celia said that was out of the question.
He tugged at the traces harder, became more impatient. Celia hung on stubbornly.
Then Albert ran away. He was seventeen years old.
He managed to sign on as a deckhand on the little tramp steamer SS Oihonna of Fagerö by showing the unsuspecting captain a certificate on which he had skilfully forged Celia’s signature. It was only after the Oihonna had departed for Felixstowe with a load of pit props that Celia heard Albert was on board.
The information reached her in a strange way.
When Albert didn’t arrive home one evening Celia went out to look for him. She searched all night, going from farm to farm and asking after Albert. Dawn found her on the road down to Tunnhamn where she was stopped by a stranger, a man. The stranger was wearing a long grey coat, had a black beard and limped with his left leg. He also gave off a peculiar pungent smell.
Celia was initially rather anxious, especially since she was alone with this stranger. But her anxiety turned to anger when the stranger told her his news.
“No! You must be mistaken! My Albert wouldn’t do something like that! Goodbye!” she snapped sharply.
She hurried away quickly, but when she had gone a little way she began to wonder how someone who was clearly a stranger on Fagerö could possibly know she was Albert’s mother and that she was out looking for him? On an impulse she turned round to shout a question back to the stranger.
But he was gone, swallowed up by the earth. The road behind her was empty and deserted.
The human mind is a funny thing, fickle and unpredictable. It’s like the deep sea: no one can be sure what is happening down in its depths. When they eventually managed to convince Celia that Albert really had run away to sea, she felt a kind of relief. She immediately forgave him for having gone behind her back and began waiting for his return home.
Waiting is a pleasure in itself, a kind of advance on joy to come. Celia talked about Albert’s homecoming as if it was going to be next week rather than in several months’ time when the Oihonna was expected back in her home port at the end of the sailing season. She boasted about how much he would have grown and how manly he would have become, and she talked eagerly about the mutton soup and cod dumplings she was going to make for him – two of his favourite dishes.
So Celia set about waiting for Albert with a sort of impatient patience. “It won’t be long now,” she said two or three times a day, usually to herself.
But Albert never did return to Fagerö.
Instead Abrahamsson from Busö – the father of the present Abrahamsson and owner of SS Oihonna – came to Bengfols one day. The sea was pounding, dull, heavy and autumn grey; the bare outlines of the birch trees stood out like clean-picked fish bones; flocks of greylag were beating their way south below low boiling clouds. For a long time Abrahamsson stood in the parlour of Grannas Farm hesitating and chewing his moustache, for the words he had come to say weighed as heavy as ballast stone and he needed all his will and strength to bring them forth. Abrahamsson stood there big and black, nervously fingering his hat and collecting his thoughts. His bald head gleamed like a varnished spar. He cleared his throat, as if tuning his voice, and then finally the dread words emerged slowly and reluctantly from his mouth.
“It’s your son, Albert. I have the sad duty to inform you that he went overboard at the Dogger Bank and is feared to have drowned.”
Celia looked at him, her face as calm and smooth as the sea when the wind has dropped for the day.
“I’m sorry, truly sorry,” Abrahamsson said wearily.
But Celia gently shook her head. Unbelievably she almost seemed to be smiling.
“You’re mistaken. It wasn’t Albert. He’s coming home soon.”
Abrahamsson from Busö investigated the accident to find an explanation. The deck cargo had shifted in heavy weather and the only thing they could do was throw it overboard in order to correct Oihonna’s list. Ignoring the warnings of his fellows Albert climbed up on the pit props to cut through the ropes securing them. Suddenly a stanchion gave way without warning, the cables snapped and the whole load went overboard. Albert had no chance of reaching safety and was carried over with it.
The captain immediately stopped the engines and they tried to launch a lifeboat into the heavy seas, but all their efforts had been in vain.
But Celia just shook her head.
“You’re mistaken. It wasn’t Albert,” she said again.
And now Celia began her walkabouts. What drove her wasn’t grief but the absence of grief. Grief is a seamstress who brings sharp needles and strong thread to the task of mending the rents death has torn in the human soul. It’s true that she may be a harsh seamstress who works slowly with needles that prick and stab, but when she finally bites off the last thread the patches she has stitched more or less cover the tears, though the stitches will always be visible. The seamstress of grief, however, has her vanity and she demands that we bend the knee to her before she will open her sewing case and thread her needle. Celia refused to bend the knee. She could reconcile herself to Albert having run away, but not that he was gone forever out there on the Dogger Bank.
She started walking down to Tunnhamn regularly to ask after Albert. She walked along the shore seeking him and she approached the people she met in the village and asked them whether they had seen her Albert.
At first they let her get on with it. Given time, they thought, she will come to her senses. But Celia did not come to her senses. Instead, she became obsessed, possessed, and she could be heard down by the sea calling Albert’s name for hours on end. She looked for him in boathouses and woodsheds, and she would burst in on people at the most awkward hours of day or night with pressing questions about her son. Worst of all was the uproar she caused when the then pastor Joel Lökström came to talk to her about a memorial service for Albert – Ruben had felt he had no choice but to lock her in the attic so as not to have shame brought upon the house.
Ruben Dahlström was a kind-hearted and patient man. He did not desert his daughter. He sat with her in her room entreating and talking to her quietly and persistently. “Dear Celia, you will have to accept that Albert has gone forever,” he told her time after time. “There is no life for you if you cannot accept that.”
There is an old saying that dripping water hollows out stone. Ruben Dahlström wanted his words to be the drops that wore down Celia’s stubbornness, not so much by force as by frequency. It seemed to him that his persistence did give results in the end. That, at least, is what he tried to convince himself.
“Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right,” Celia said at last. She wasn’t talking to her father but to her hands resting in her apron. He eyes were as dry as the pebbles on a dusty road. She promised her father that she would stop asking after Albert. She promised to stop calling out his name down on the shore.
But she didn’t stop looking for him.
It is now more than forty years since Albert disappeared, but Celia is still seeking him. Faithful to her promise to her father she no longer asks people about Albert and she no longer calls his name out over the waves. She goes out at night for the most part and if she meets anyone she quickly slips away like a dormouse among last year’s leaves.
Celia still lives at Grannas, in the cottage that Klas-Åke, the present owner, fixed up for her. She looks after herself. Ruben Dahlström passed away one winter many years ago after going through the ice when he was checking his fixed lines in Skedholmssundet. It got to his lungs, but he might well have survived if they hadn’t made the mistake of calling the doctor. Several of the people present at his funeral noticed a stranger standing outside the cemetery wall. He was wearing a grey coat and seemed to walk with a limp. He had disappeared by the end of the ceremony. Everyone in Bengfols is familiar with Celia’s strange obsession and they keep an eye on her. These days they usually find her quite soon because she doesn’t go far when she is on one of her walkabouts. People take her gently by the arm and she is happy to go with them. She doesn’t say anything, just looks down at the ground in front of her feet.
Celia has gone walkabout.
She walks quickly along the road through Söder Karlby, past Norrgrannas, Mex, Andelslaget, the post office and Simon’s place. She is moving surprisingly quickly in spite of being an old woman bent under the immense burden she has imposed upon herself.
It’s a long time since Celia has gone walkabout – the year before last according to Janne the Post and he should know. Klas-Åke and Inger at Grannas Farm had begun to hope that she was at last finding peace with herself when it came to Albert. That’s probably why it didn’t occur to Inger that Celia seemed unusually happy when she popped into the cottage to see her earlier that evening: that has often been a sure sign that Celia will soon be going on one of her walkabouts.
The night sky is a white reflection in the windows of Simon’s place. The ash trees in the yard rise black and still, as if they are wrought iron. The nightingale is singing in the thicket down at Kungshamn. There is the hum of midges.
Celia turns off the road and her narrow bent back disappears into the green darkness beneath the spruce trees.
On this particular night she walks out to Sorrow, a small rocky headland that got its name because a brother and sister from Norrgrannas or Mix – no one is sure which – are said to have drowned there. The sea is shining, slumbering, rising and falling in the long deep breaths of sleep. It sighs, laps and splashes softly. High, feathery, violet-grey clouds streak the sky to the south, an omen of a change in the weather, perhaps.
The gleaming green eye of the navigation beacon on the island of Busö opens, stares at her for a moment before closing again.
She scans the sea, right out to the horizon where there is still a touch of red. She stands there motionless, bent, as stunted as the juniper bushes on the hillock behind her. Her lips move though nothing can be heard. Perhaps she is silently forming Albert’s name inside her mouth – yes, that’s what she is doing. The beacon opens its eye again and closes it. The sea is breathing deeply.
Then all of a sudden she notices a slow movement in the water a little way out from the shore, a dark shadow that moves in time with the almost imperceptible motion of the sea. She screws up her eyes to see better and she goes out over the gently sloping rocks, out to the water’s edge. And there she stands, crooked and bent as a question mark at the end of a long sentence. She sees that it’s a body floating there and rocking gently on the smooth flat surface of the water. Her eyes light up. Her bent back begins to grow straight and she changes from a question mark to an exclamation mark. It is many years since she last stood upright and firm. Her eyes are full of tears, but she is smiling.
Now she is down in the sea. She wades across the slippery rocks, water up to her thighs.
“Albert!” Celia calls again after more than forty years, her voice echoing far out across the silent sea. “Albert!”