Drowned by Therese Bohman

in salads,” she says.
    I wrinkle my nose, she smiles.
    The water in the lake is still and dark. Stella doesn’t want to swim by the little sandy beach, but by some rocks a little farther on, it’s nicer getting in there, you avoid that feeling that the ground is giving way beneath your feet. She has wound up her hair in a shiny knot on top of her head, and in her strapless swimsuit she looks like a film star, timeless, elegant. I feel clumsy beside her but I forget that as soon as the water envelops me, it feels fresher today, it’s warm enough to be pleasant from the start, but yet it’s cooling, I lie on my back, close my eyes, the surface of the water is almost body temperature. I feel so drowsy I’m afraid of nodding off, I can feel my head sinking farther beneath the surface the more I relax, the sounds around me become muted, slow. The water is the same color as syrup, or resin, I run my finger across the surface, it looks almost viscous, as if it has thickened, is in the process of setting. If the temperature were to drop suddenly Stella and I would end up like insects caught in a piece of amber, I think, like the people in Pompeii, trapped inside the syrup-coloredfrozen water of the lake instead of ash. The archaeologists could hack us out of the yellow ice one day, study us, the thought makes me smile.
    A short distance away Stella’s head is bobbing up and down, she swims out to the middle of the lake, turns and swims back, repeats this several times, I lose count of her lengths. Her strokes look slightly awkward, as if she is not entirely comfortable with them, but her expression is determined. Suddenly she is beside me, treading water, breathing heavily.
    “This is fantastic exercise,” she says between breaths. “You really do use your entire body.”
    I nod. Her movements produce small eddies of cooler water around us, I feel the gooseflesh on my arms, then a few seconds later they are smooth again as the blazing sun quickly warms up this new water too. Stella gazes over toward the shore on the far side of the lake, screws up her eyes, and points.
    “Have you seen them?” she says. “I told you the water lilies would be flowering now.”
    I turn my head and there they are, a host of water lilies, like a floral cover on the surface of the water, it seems almost unbelievable that I didn’t see them when I was here on my own. They move gently, even though the water looks completely still, perhaps there are currents down below tugging at their stems, they look indolent, majestic, like torches that have beenslowly brought to the surface, up toward the light, blooming quietly and with dignity among the green pattern of their leaves.
    “Can you pick them?” I say. “Take them home and put them in a vase?”
    “Not in a vase, maybe. But it ought to be possible to put them in a bowl of water. Shall I go and get one?”
    It’s a long way to swim to the other side, perhaps she’s overestimating her ability. I shake my head.
    “I find them slightly revolting.”
    Stella laughs, pushes back a strand of hair that has escaped from the knot and fallen down over one eyebrow. Then she turns and swims back toward the rocks. A short distance out there is a large rock hidden just beneath the surface, the water swirling around it as a kind of warning. Stella heaves herself up onto it, waves to me, it looks weird, as if she’s actually sitting on the water. I laugh, wave back, swim toward her.
    “You look like the little mermaid,” I say.
    She laughs too, slips back into the water, we swim back to the shore together.
    When we have dried ourselves with our faded towels we spread them on the rocks and sit down side by side. The stone is smooth and pleasant, like in the archipelago. I fiddle vaguely with some alder cones, Stella drinks water directly from an old juice bottleshe has brought with her, swallowing great big gulps, then she takes a deep breath.
    “I think I’m going to start swimming in the fall,”