The tears had left dried salt behind on the beard stubble on my cheeks. The salt made my skin stiff and dry.

I passed my tongue over my lips. They tasted of salt too. I was salty from tears, salty from sweat.

Salt.

It dried me out until I started to crack. Until it woke me up.

Salt was perhaps the only thing I knew anything about.

I placed my feet on the deck and went into the saloon.

The only thing I knew anything about.

I opened the map table and found a bundle of maps. I turned them over. The backs of the maps were blank.

On the table I also found a chewed-down pencil with an eraser on the tip. And then I started to draw.

A pump. I needed a pump. Maybe I could use the water pump on board, in some way or another hook the machine up to it.

A container. I would have to search the surrounding farms. Somewhere there had to be something I could use.

And a cylinder. A pipe. The cigar, Thomas called it.

I tried to remember everything he had taught me about reverse osmosis.

And then I sketched it as quickly as I could.

The water was supposed to go into the cigar, where it would be channeled through a spiral-wound module. The water with the finest molecules would be pressed into the core. This water would be completely desalinated. The rest of the water, what he called the concentrate, would stay on the outside. And be sent out into the ocean again.

It was an eight-to-twenty ratio—twenty liters of clean water for every eight liters of concentrate.

He had shown me the cylinder. Inside was a pipe with holes. It should be possible to build one. Between the layers in the pipe lay the feed spacer. It resembled chicken wire. That shouldn’t be so hard to find.

But the membrane . . . My pencil stopped drawing on the paper.

I needed something that was almost impervious. A fabric. With a weave so dense it seemed to be watertight. But nonetheless, the finest water molecules should be able to pass through it.

I stood up. Hurriedly, I climbed down off the boat.

I rushed through the forest and up to the house.

I went into the bedrooms, opening cupboards and drawers, but I didn’t find anything I could use.

Sweaters, socks, T-shirts. Everything smelled old, as if it had been in storage for a long time.

I walked down the hallway. Along the wall hung a row of outdoor garments.

I lifted the jackets. In the back I found a yellow raincoat. An oilskin, the old kind.

Rain gear. There had been a time when we needed rain gear.

I tugged at the material. It was solid. Completely waterproof. Maybe it could . . .

“Hi.”

I turned around.

It was Lou. I hadn’t heard her coming. She was holding my drawing in her hands.