The Pearlkillers Read online

  The other diners looked curiously at the three of them laughing helplessly and enjoying themselves so much more loudly than was usual. Some people were obviously approving, others didn’t seem to be sure, nor did the waiters. If they had been in another place, Anders suspected, a much larger city, people might assume that he was a rich man out with two fashionable girls he’d bought for the day, and that they’d go to a room somewhere afterwards. That was what they’d be thinking in Paris. Or Vienna. But no – anyone who really knew about those things could tell how innocent the girls were. His daughters were too fresh, too natural; they wore no paints or powders, no showy clothes or cheap jewellery.

  They laughed inordinately at the play, a translation of an imported farce; the jokes depended on an initial mistake in identity, which occurred when army recruiting officers came to the door for a husband and found the wife having breakfast with her lover. The lover then had to pretend to be the husband and go in his place. Anders laughed so hard that his voice boomed over the rest of the audience. His daughters screamed with joy on either side of him. It was the first farce he had seen that didn’t fill him with a sense of uneasiness and exasperation, and what he believed was probably a fear of madness – of a life that consisted in being constantly mistaken for other people.

  *

  The buds on the trees came out, at first black, then whitish, then suddenly, in two days of sunshine, green. All the land around the house, straight back to the dark boughs of the woods, was in bud. In the evening when the light dimmed and the outlines of objects grew indistinct, the trees seemed to form a series of delicate green veils. No one wanted to stay indoors now for very long.

  Anders turned up at the boathouse one afternoon to find, for the first time, that Erika had a guest with her, a young man named Phillip Harding. While she was settling Anders in a chair, two more men arrived in company with an older woman dressed in grey; Erika called her Natalia and introduced her as Madame-Something – a French name: but as he drank his coffee and listened to the general conversation, one of the men with her addressed her as ‘Countess’. Anders left as soon as he’d taken the last sip from his cup. He could see that Erika must have gathered the group for a meeting. He gave the excuse that if he didn’t get to the gardeners soon, his wife and sister would start planting the coastline.

  Erika didn’t take her evening meal at the house. ‘She’s off with her friends,’ Elsie said.

  ‘Which friends are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Heaven knows. She’s got so many.’

  ‘I met a boy named Harding.’

  ‘Phillip, yes. I’m afraid he’s the one she likes best. As you can guess, he’s not a very respectable young man. Hardly a boy, either – he must be close to thirty. Money enough in the family, but he’s racketed around the continent doing nothing for years. I don’t know what he calls himself – some sort of pamphleteer.’

  The next morning, he strolled by the boathouse but didn’t go in. A few minutes later Erika came out and ran after him.

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she said. ‘They came at short notice.’

  ‘Has there been a revolution in Russia?’

  ‘What?’ She looked appalled, almost terrified.

  ‘Countess Natalia looked to me like one of those types I’ve seen before. What are they – Anarchists?’

  ‘They’re just people, Anders.’

  ‘Ah. So are we all. But with political groups, you never know. They always want something for others. All they need for themselves is the central business of controlling the rest of the population. It’s like the Church.’

  ‘It’s exactly the opposite.’

  ‘Mr Harding looked fairly well mesmerized. Your mother doesn’t think much of him.’

  ‘He has qualities she doesn’t know about.’

  ‘Oh, most men have those,’ he said, without particularly meaning anything by it. Erika blushed, so immediately and startlingly that it was as if she’d been hit in the face. He laughed. She took his arm and said, ‘I think you’re beginning to know too much about me.’

  ‘Impossible. I just don’t want you to get yourself into something you can’t get out of. Something dangerous.’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about. And anyway, you should be the one in the family to understand politics. You believe that it’s a good thing for people to want to change the world.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Of course. To seek out new knowledge, to explore one’s thoughts, to change people’s minds.’

  ‘Yes. I’m not so enthusiastic about throwing bombs into a café to gain a paragraph in the papers. That’s what they’re doing now.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of a post in the Cabinet?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘I think you should. You have a good reputation; the family’s an old, traditional family. You’ve got the means now. And the government always needs good men.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ he said flatly. ‘Never.’

  ‘Why not? Lina would love it, you know.’

  ‘Not even for her. And don’t suggest it to her.’

  ‘You’d be good at it, Anders.’

  ‘It isn’t a question of that. It’s because my life wouldn’t stand scrutiny. I haven’t always been truthful.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about every single peccadillo in your life.’

  ‘The truth is often sordid, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, never,’ she said.

  ‘And sometimes – much worse – it’s simply unacceptable.’

  ‘No, no. It’s the lies that are unacceptable.’

  ‘On the contrary. It’s only through lying and prevarication that we’re able to live with each other at all.’

  ‘You’re talking about compromise?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, as long as you haven’t committed gross crimes. The expedition would be a great help in capturing the public’s imagination.’

  ‘That depends on how you look at it. The expedition was a failure. And the moment I stepped into the public light, Mr Petersen would have a great deal to say about that. Can’t you picture to yourself what it would be like? He’d be writing letters everywhere, asking if the country wanted a man in office who’d lead it to disaster just as he’d led his own ill-fated expedition.’

  ‘We’d fight it, Anders. We’d fight it.’

  ‘My dear Erika, I’m a tired man. I’ve had too many adventures already. Let the others fight. And you – be careful. High ideals can lead people into some very dirty business.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like that.’

  ‘The danger of it is constant.’

  *

  The ducks were back in the ponds and the swans on the lake. Long before the leaves were out, Louise announced that she and Oscar couldn’t wait till the autumn, or even the summer. They wanted to get married now: immediately, as soon as possible. The house was thrown into pandemonium.

  Elsie took charge. Louise did some supervising in the kitchens, but she seemed to feel that she had fulfilled most of her duties by deciding to get married in the first place.

  Anders escorted Lina to town on a trip that was intended to be like the one to which he’d treated their daughters. But in the balmy air and new sunshine of the spring, it turned into a second honeymoon. They walked together hand in hand, arm in arm. They whispered secrets to each other, went back to their hotel in the afternoons, retired early at night. During the daytime, standing in front of famous paintings or incomprehensible new sculptures, they talked and talked, clinging together.

  She wept at the wedding, which took place in a small, whitewashed church packed with family, friends, neighbours and people who had happened to see the procession heading towards the building. The weather was flawless. Louise looked happy and her bridegroom stood up to the test with a surprising degree of dignity.

  The reception at the house was a great success; after the main crowd had been fed and dispe
rsed, the celebrations went on for hours. There was music and dancing far into the night, and breakfast for the ones who were still awake as dawn approached.

  They were two days clearing everything up again. Elsie said she was certain some items were missing from the house, though it was nearly always the same when you had to hire extra help, even in that part of the world, where everyone used to be so honest.

  Over the weekend there was a rainstorm, a sudden flourishing of leafy growth hard upon it, and the countryside was reborn. Inside the house everything returned to normal. Anders sat at his desk with the french windows open on to the terrace. He started to flip through books he’d always meant to get to some day. As he read, he smiled. Every once in a while he’d look up to gaze out at the gardens and parkland. The whole world was lovely now.

  He finished a novel and began a book of poetry, the pages of which had never been cut. It wasn’t one of his own books, nor did it look like the kind of thing his father would have bought. Perhaps one of his father’s cousins, or an uncle, had brought it into the house and found a space for it in the library. The poems were odd, haunting and melancholy, with complicated rhyme-schemes. He was intrigued by them.

  When he’d taken his afternoon walk, slept a little, written off to ask about the horse sales and drunk tea with the family, he returned to his study. Soon, sometime in the next two weeks, he’d start to plan the coming year. He wanted to see about hiring an overseer or bailiff of some kind – someone who would really look after the woods. Perhaps he’d put that off till the summer. He knew that the preliminary stages of such a transaction would call for long evenings eating and drinking with men who knew other men who could recommend someone’s friend or brother. It would mean submerging himself in the world of local gossip. So far, he had dealt only with the bankers and lawyers and city officials. Of course, he’d been invited by everyone. He’d even been asked, in a roundabout fashion, to become a member of a club that seemed similar to the Masons. But he had held back. ‘I’m still recovering,’ he’d say, or, sometimes, ‘My family comes first.’ Eventually there would be no way out of it: he’d have to join in everything. He’d be expected to.

  He picked up the book of verse again and became immersed in a long poem about a girl who had been changed into a swan. When he looked up, the light was fading. A soft greyness had come into the air as if it had been falling slowly from the sky. The quiet gardens were like Paradise. But there, at the end of the terrace and apparently looking intently at him, was a strange figure: a stooped and wizened bald man of about sixty, or perhaps a great deal older; as Anders looked, he raised his hand in greeting and began to shuffle towards the open door.

  Anders stood up. Long before he recognized the man, he felt that there was something repulsive about him. He didn’t want his delightful study invaded by such a creature. He walked out of the door, on to the terrace.

  The man came forward in a clumsy, crablike gait, although fairly fast and purposefully. If there had been a gardener or a groom nearby, Anders would have said, ‘See what that person wants.’

  They advanced towards each other until they stood barely twelve feet apart. Anders stopped. The other man, using his stick, continued on, his head a little to one side, his body bent. He carried a knapsack or satchel of some sort slung over his left shoulder. He looked like a troll: his eyes bloodshot, and the colour of the skull-face yellowish; it reminded Anders of the death’s head that had been carved on the front of his father’s favourite meerschaum pipe. The man didn’t belong on his terrace, near his house, yet he kept coming forward. Anders suddenly had the impression that he wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

  ‘Good evening, Anders,’ the man said.

  He knew the voice. He knew the voice very well. And all at once he knew the man. If I shut my eyes for a moment, he thought. If I just shut my eyes. The earth might go backwards and it would never have happened.

  *

  At the turn of the tide they moved. The crowd went mad. The ship glided forward, slow and dreamlike at first and then swiftly, racing away. The crowd was a toy, a speck, gone altogether. And the coastline went after it.

  The weather held until well after Anders, Martin, Ib and Johann had decided that Gustav was impossible to deal with and that if he insisted on bringing his tame valet to the table, they could both eat down below with the crew.

  ‘I shouldn’t dream of subjecting Sten to such an experience,’ Gustav said.

  ‘You gave us the impression that the boy could sew,’ Martin told him.

  ‘I said he knew about clothes. That’s an entirely different thing.’

  ‘Well, now he’s here, he can bunk in with the sailmaker and help out there.’

  ‘Anders –’ Gustav began.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Anders decided. ‘I won’t feed him if he doesn’t work. It isn’t fair to the other men. And if I tried to favour him, they wouldn’t stand for it, you know that. What did you think you were doing, bringing a pet lapdog along on a voyage like this?’

  ‘He’s my friend,’ Gustav asserted.

  ‘We don’t doubt that,’ Martin said, ‘but he’ll have to be a friend that knows how to work.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him,’ Anders said. When he had a spare moment he took Sten aside and talked to him.

  The boy’s handsome, dark face grew tense. ‘I know nothing about this,’ he said.

  ‘Gustav should have explained it to you. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. The work is hard, but if you go at it with a good will, the men will respect you for it. We all have our work here and it’s a fairly democratic life. No one simply stands back and twiddles his thumbs. Can’t you see how much that would cause you to be disliked – and ridiculed?’

  ‘But I’m not a sailor.’

  ‘You can learn. I’ve spoken to Olaf. He says he’ll teach you. All right?’

  ‘What will happen if Gustav wants me?’

  ‘We’ll come to that later,’ Anders said. ‘Gustav isn’t running this ship. I am, and I can’t afford to carry passengers.’

  Sten scowled. He looked resentful and unpleasant, but when Anders put a hand on his shoulder in a friendly way and smiled encouragingly, he said he’d try.

  Gustav was the only one on board who was piqued by the change. ‘It takes me weeks of complaining and wheedling and presents’, he said, ‘to get him to do anything at all, and there he is: working like a born deckhand just because you asked him. How did you do it?’

  ‘I told him,’ Anders said. ‘And he saw the sense of it. He seems to be a naturally bright boy, despite your attempts to spoil him.’

  ‘Me? I was the innocent one, I can assure you. He looks so young, but the fellow must be nearly our age, if not older. Look at him carefully some day. He’s got a light build, that’s all. He’s strong, too. Did I tell you he was an acrobat?’

  ‘If he starts to cause trouble, he’s going to need to be strong. That’s a rough crew.’

  ‘Sten can take care of himself,’ Gustav said irritably. ‘You’ll see. He always comes out laughing.’

  They zigzagged down the coastline and headed towards the open sea. The weather broke, the wind rose, the waters thrashed themselves into a frenzy. Everyone on board was soaked to the skin for hours on end, day and night. The ship would rise to the top of a wave, stagger, and plunge into the trough below. Two men were washed overboard despite the safety lines.

  They lost a mast, they shipped water, they were hit again and again. Pieces of planking flew across the decks. The ship stood on its beam ends, snapped back and started to roll. It could all have happened at any time – the special design need not necessarily have been to blame; there was no reason why the combination of techniques, and of the old and new, should not have ridden out many different seas and weather conditions. But Anders knew; Gustav had chosen the builders. On the outside everything looked perfect; that was almost Gustav’s trademark. And Anders had not supervised every step of the construction: that hadn’t been his job. He was
the master.

  He was too tired to be angry about the possibility of a defect in the fabric. Like everyone else on board, he needed sleep. They couldn’t have slept, even if they had been able to spare men from the work; every particle of the ship was shaking and tossing from side to side as it reared and prepared to dive again. The boat heaved itself to the crests, hesitated, and lunged downward. After the third man went over the side, Anders began to wonder if they were ever going to get out of the storm.

  He said nothing. The noise was so tremendous that no one could have heard anyway. Orders were signalled by hand or screamed into the ear. But when the sky lightened, everyone on board could see that the ocean was an immense, apparently endless battlefield of flailing, boisterous, mountainlike waves. And, from the distance, something they had never seen before but had heard about and always imagined to be a tall story made up by other seamen to impress the people back home: a freak wave, riding many hundreds of levels up above the others, was headed towards them.

  ‘Think she’ll hit?’ Martin shouted up against his face. ‘Or go over the top?’

  Anders shook his head. The craft struggled to the tip of the next wave and Johann threw an arm around him, screaming, ‘Look, another one!’

  They turned to stare. A second wave, exactly and improbably as monstrous as the first but on a course perpendicular to it, was also driving towards them; one from the front, one from the left.

  Anders yelled out the order to man the boats. And get ready to go under, he thought. It looked unavoidable. All the remedies he could think of were laughable against it. The wave ahead was bigger than they were; so was its double. This was going to be the end.