Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman

out of the window.
    The sunlight was bright over the Klöppen; he could hardly keep his eyes on the water. Before he left, he had to go to the privy down by the trees on the shore. The planking was silver-grey and faintly green, covered with a thin coat of decay. Insects were clicking inside and it smelt of rot. He began to read an old magazine, the paper yellow round the edges. It was difficult to find anything he hadn’t read before.
    There was a serial he had ignored before, thinking it was about love, but now he found it was a political story – though with love in it. A weeping wife who was an alcoholic. The husband had got drunk and the pretty young girl he was out with in his car had been killed. The worst thing would be if her brother found out. And the newspapers.
    Chappaquiddick.
    The word popped up in his head, meaningless at first, then he remembered, Edward Kennedy. He started shuffling through the heap of magazines to find some more episodes of the serial.
    Yes, it was the story of the president’s brother, though they had changed all the names. The beginning and the end were missing, but he read what he could find.
    Outrageous, really.
    Edward Kennedy was still around and active. He had only gone a little too far. But it had worked out.
    Things always worked out for them.
    His revulsion rose like the smell of shit from the torn paper. He ripped out a page with a picture of the president’s sister-in-law on it – tears, staling eyes, pearl necklace, a red mouth that had yellowed – and rubbed it soft before wiping himself with it. Shitting had made him even hungrier.
     
    The lake looked peculiar, oily in the stillness, as if the water were sticky. He could see no one on the other side and was pleased, though it didn’t matter. Soon he would be up at the Strömgren homestead and would meet people on the road. They would wonder what he had in the pail.
    Then he noticed the canoe, a light metal one glinting in a willow thicket.
    What actually happens when you decide?
    Afterwards, Johan reckoned he never had decided, not when he fetched the paddle from the cookhouse, nor when he picked the lock on the chain. He had thought it would be good not to have to walk, that’s all. He would come out by Röbäck if he paddled down the length of the lake. Then he could hitch home. That was better than trudging on sore feet all the way from the homestead carrying a pail.
    The water enveloped the slim body of the canoe. As he dipped the paddle in and took a stroke, it seemed to him that muscles were trembling under the skin of the water.
    Christ, how fast it goes. A puff of wind brought the smell of resin and grass, and the water smelt of water as the paddle broke it up.
     
    I am kept away by Norway’s mountains
    from the King’s war and my dear home.
     
    as Grandmother used to read. All those things in that old head. Listen to the soughing in the trees. She had been to Östersund twice in her life, but never further.
    Suppose people were forced to travel like the eel to mate. In an involuntary eternal arabesque. Go to Sargasso. The wide Sargasso Sea. Go to Sargasso.
    He was sitting like innards inside the shiny shell. He had always felt at one with a canoe. Torsten went fishing with as many as thirty nets in October storms howling with ice and mist, and he said it was a bloody silly craft. But had he ever dared get into one? That tower of muscle? That great lump of fat?
    He had to think. The lake narrowed down towards the Röbäck and the headland thrust out its arm. The canoe glided the last bit, the blade of the paddle dripping. As he was about to pull the canoe up on the grass, it occurred to him they would find it down there below the sawmill in Röbäck. Gudrun would chase around asking of course.
    He must have decided then. He grabbed the canoe and shoved it with full force out into the water, flinging the paddle after it, regretting it almost at once. The canoe would dance down to the sawmill and lie banging