‘I see,’ said Cecilia. ‘So why are you happy?’
It didn’t sound as if she was genuinely interested, but he supposed he could understand that, so he took a deep breath and said, ‘Maja has contacted me.’
He heard the rustle of bedclothes at the other end as Cecilia sat up. ‘What are you talking about?’
Anders told her what had happened. He left out the detail about Elin and all the wine, just said he had fallen asleep and then woken up during the night, found the message on the kitchen table. As he was talking he ran his fingers over the letters on the table, over the beads.
When he had finished there was a long silence. Anders cleared his throat and said, ‘What do you think?’
From the sounds at the other end he gathered that Cecilia was lying down again.
‘Anders. I’ve met someone else.’
‘Right. Yes.’
‘So…there’s not much I can do for you. Not anymore.’
‘But…this isn’t about that.’
‘Then what is it about?’
‘It’s about…about…Cecilia, this really is what’s happened. Honestly. It’s true, what I told you.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
What had been so simple suddenly became difficult. Anders looked around the table as if he were searching for a clue. His gaze landed once again on the seven spindly letters.
‘I don’t know. I just wanted…to tell you.’
‘Anders. The time we had together…even though it ended the way it did…if you need help. If you really, really need help. Then I’ll help you. But not otherwise. I can’t. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I understand. But…but…’
The words got stuck just inside his lips. He heard what he’d said, how the conversation had gone. And he realised that she couldn’t have said anything other than exactly what she had said.
What would I have said?
He thought about it. He would have fallen on the chance, been ready to believe just about anything. Wouldn’t he? After all, he had resisted the miracle himself. But he still wouldn’t have responded the way Cecilia did. He would have believed her, just so that he had an excuse to be with her. He felt a stabbing pain in his chest and he coughed.
Cecilia let him finish coughing before she said, ‘Good night, Anders.’
‘Wait! Just one thing. What could it mean?’
‘What?’
‘Carry me. What could it mean?’
Cecilia breathed out; it wasn’t quite a sigh, because there was a little sound with it, a fragment of a whimper. She could have been on the point of saying something else, but what she actually said was, ‘I don’t know, Anders. I don’t know. Good night.’
‘Good night.’ After a breath he added, ‘Sorry,’ but the line was dead and she didn’t hear him. Anders put the phone down and rested his forehead on the table.
Someone else.
Only now did he realise how much he had hoped, in some corner of his pissed-up heart, that somehow, somewhere, they might…
Someone else. Had he been there, had he been listening? No. It hadn’t felt as if there was another person there. Cecilia hadn’t talked as if someone else was listening.
So they’re not living together yet. Maybe…
He banged his head against the table. Hard. White pain surged through his skull. Tangled thoughts rose to the surface, were washed away.
Give up. Give up.
He raised his head and the pain was a liquid that altered the situation, was washed from his brow to the back of his head and stayed there. He looked around the kitchen with clear eyes and said, ‘There’s only you and me.’
The sea embraced the pebbles on the beach, relinquished and embraced them once again. Back and forth, back and forth. The same movement for all eternity. Take hold and let go, begin again.
He was tired now, he hadn’t the strength to cope with anything else.
With his headache in place and quiet, he got up and walked through the living room, ignored the glass on the floor and the firelighter dust that had been blown around and crunched beneath his feet. He carried on to the bedroom. Without switching on the light or getting undressed, he slid into Maja’s bed and pulled her blanket over him.
There now. Everything’s all right now.
He looked at the double bed in the middle of the room, faintly illuminated by the moonlight shining through the window.
There’s the double bed. I can go over there if I get frightened.
He closed his eyes and fell asleep in seconds.
A discovery by the shore
When someone knocked on his door at eight-thirty in the morning, Simon had been asleep for only a couple of hours. The wind and premonitions of evil had kept him awake until the first light of dawn broke through his bedroom window. By that time the wind had dropped and he had finally relaxed and given himself up to a light sleep. His body was stiff and heavy. He felt as if he was moving underwater as he got out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown and stumbled to the door.
Elof Lundberg looked as if he had woken up just as Simon was falling asleep. Wide-awake and bright eyed, his cap firmly in place. He looked Simon up and down and pulled a face.
‘Are you still in bed?’
‘No,’ said Simon, twisting his head to relieve the stiffness in his neck. ‘Not anymore.’
He glowered challengingly at Elof, encouraging him to spit out whatever it was he wanted. He wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Not now. And not with Elof. Elof sensed the atmosphere and became truculent. His lower lip jutted out and he raised his eyebrows. ‘I just wanted to tell you that your boat has come away from its mooring. If you’re interested.’
Simon sighed. ‘I am, yes. Thank you very much.’
Elof couldn’t help making the most of this opportunity. He had come here with the best of intentions, and was met with a rebuff. He said, ‘Of course, there are some people who prefer it that way. With just one rope. But the engine just keeps scraping all the time. And that might not be such a good thing.’
‘No, it isn’t. Thank you.’
Elof was standing there as if he was waiting for some kind of reward, but Simon knew that wasn’t it. He just wanted to help out with the boat, then be invited in for coffee so that he could sit and chat about what could happen when boats broke free, and so on. About how things should be taken care of in the proper way, between neighbours.
But Simon wasn’t in the mood, so when Elof had been standing there nodding for a while and Simon hadn’t said the right thing, he rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Right then. That’s that then’, and stomped off, every fibre of his body signalling that he had been treated most unfairly. Simon closed the door and lit a fire in the kitchen stove.
If the boat’s been like that all night, it can stay like that for a while longer.
He and Elof had got on well until Maja disappeared. When Anders and Cecilia went back to the city, Simon had called on Elof to ask what he had meant when they were standing on the veranda: when he told Simon to ring Anders and tell him to come home.
‘Why did you say that?’ he had asked.
Elof had become extremely busy with the fry-up he was preparing, and hadn’t even looked up from the chopping board when he replied, ‘It just occurred to me, that’s all.’
‘What did you mean?’
Elof was dicing boiled potatoes with exaggerated care. He didn’t want to look Simon in the eye.
‘Nothing in particular. It just occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t a good thing. For them to be out there.’
Simon sat down on a chair and stared at Elof until he had finished with the potatoes and had no choice but to meet Simon’s gaze.
‘Elof. Do you know something I don’t know?’
Elof stood up and turned his back on Simon, started busying himself with the frying pan and butter. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Like what?’
In the end Simon had given up and gone home, leaving Elof with his pota
to and his chopped bacon. After that day the relationship between them had soured. Simon couldn’t begin to guess what it was that Elof knew, but there was something, and he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Elof was refusing to tell him. It was Simon’s grandchild they were dealing with here, after all. As good as his grandchild.
When he told Anna-Greta she had more or less taken Elof’s part. Said it was probably just something that had come into his head, nothing worth bothering about. What else could it be?
Simon had let the matter rest. But he hadn’t forgotten.
The fire in the kitchen stove refused to catch. After the storm during the night the wind had exhausted its strength. There was barely a breath of wind, and the chimney wasn’t drawing well. Simon sprayed liquid firelighter on the little flame that was there, and the fire burst into life with a puff of surprise.
He gave an enormous yawn and pulled a chair up close. He had carelessly left the matchbox out on the kitchen table. When he opened it he could see that the larva seemed to have recovered slightly. The skin was no longer grey, but pale black, if such a shade existed. However, it was not shiny, not even after he had given it some saliva. It no longer looked as if it was dying, but it didn’t look healthy either.
Spiritus had been in his possession for ten years now. He had given it saliva every day, and changed matchboxes when the old one grew too worn. And yet he had never done what he did now: he turned the box over and tipped the insect into his hand.
Something had happened during the night. After regarding Spiritus with a mixture of respect and disgust for all these years, his feelings had changed when he saw it looking pitiful, moribund. Sympathy was not the right word, it was more a kind of shared fate. They were subject to the same conditions.
The skin of the larva met his, and he bit his tongue gently. It is always slightly repulsive to hold an insect. The faint movement, the little life that exists independently of one’s own.
But not in this case.
Nothing happened, and Simon relaxed. He sat with the larva on his open palm, and it was warm. Warmer than he was, since he was aware of it. Only a few degrees, but enough for him to perceive it as a warm spot on his hand.
Cautiously he closed his fingers around it and shut his eyes. Gently, gently the larva moved inside his loosely closed hand, and the tickling sensation on his skin ran up his arm, passed through his heart and continued up into his head, where it moved around like a weak electric current, making his scalp tingle.
Simon looked out of the window. The morning dew was shining on the grass and he felt as if he could see every single drop, could touch every single drop with his thoughts. In the trunks of the trees he could see the hidden vessels, the water being sucked up by the capillary action, out into the thin veins in the leaves. As if he were in a trance he walked to the outside door and out on to the porch, his hand still closed around the larva.
It was a shock.
All the water…all the water…
He saw all the water. The moisture in the earth and how it was constituted. The rainwater in the barrel, a living body wrapped around dead insects and old leaves. Through the lawn he saw the underground veins running through the bedrock. And he saw how everything, everything that lived and was green or yellow or red… how it consisted almost entirely of water.
He carried on down towards the jetty and he saw the sea.
Broken.
It was a wordless knowledge, not a clearly formulated thought: the sea was broken. There was something wrong with it. He walked out on to the jetty and he was walking over water. Broken water.
With an effort of will he managed to superimpose his own thoughts over the all-encompassing knowledge that had taken possession of him. The old cotton rope attached to the stern of the boat had broken, and the boat was pointing away from the jetty.
In the past he had needed to be in contact with the water for things to happen. Now he simply asked for a wave to give the boat a push so that it would drift towards the jetty. The wave came and the boat turned on its own axis until the stern bumped into a bollard.
He crouched down, but couldn’t reach the stump of rope trailing behind the boat, so he asked the water to throw it to him. A movement from the seabed broke the surface and the rope was thrown up on to the jetty in a cascade of water. Simon was thoroughly soaked, and the end of the rope slipped back into the water before he managed to grab hold of it.
He wiped the water off his face and looked at the rope as it sank towards the bottom; he could see that it had soaked up water in its fibres, so instead he asked the water in the rope to come to him. Like a snake rising from a basket the rope obediently rose up from the surface and slipped into his outstretched hand. He made a simple knot with the short length of rope that was left, and the boat was safely moored once again.
He was frozen in his soaked dressing gown, and as he walked back to the house he asked the water in the fabric to get a little warmer, and the water obeyed. He didn’t want to ask it to leave him, because it would probably look rather peculiar if anyone saw him. Walking up from the jetty in a cloud of steam.
The trembling from Spiritus was still running through his body as if his blood had begun to simmer, and he could still see all the water around him with overwhelming clarity. It was like a fever, and he was beginning to feel exhausted. It was overload: unsuitable for humans.
Once he was inside and had placed Spiritus in its box, he tried to complete his last thought.
Unsuitable for humans.
That was the way of it. He had something in his possession that was unsuitable for humans. Perhaps that was why he had kept it a secret: because he wasn’t meant to have it. It belonged to someone else. Something else.
Eventually he got dressed and went outside. With Spiritus back in its box in his pocket, the perception of the water’s presence had slipped back into its usual place: as a consciousness and a sense, nothing more. He sat down on the seat on the porch and tried to take in the beautiful autumn day without unnaturally heightened senses.
He couldn’t quite do it. A pair of jays were rooting around among the bright red rowan berries and he saw only birds. The morning light was slanting across the maple leaves in a thousand nuances between red and yellow, but he saw only a tree. The clouds in the sky were clouds and the sky behind them a vast emptiness.
Everything was in its place, but with no mutual connection. He saw everything that his eyes saw, but the totality escaped him. From a quivering seismograph needle, he had become a rigid stick. He shook his head and patted his pocket.
You’re dangerous, you are. I think a person could develop an addiction.
Liberated from his gift of second sight he gazed around his little kingdom on earth: the lawn, the garden, the jetty, the stony shore, the clump of reeds in the inlet. Everything was quiet and nondescript. But there was something in among the reeds. He narrowed his eyes against the glittering surface of the water, and stood up to see better.
It looked like a log. Perhaps a jetty somewhere had been broken up during the night, and strewn across the archipelago. If that was the case, there was probably more driftwood to be collected in the inlet. He straightened up with a groan and walked along the shoreline. When he got closer he could see that it wasn’t a log, unless of course someone had decided to dress a log in a skirt and cardigan.
It’s a person. A woman.
The character of his footsteps changed. As he waded out into the water his gait was cautious, respectful. The thing he was approaching was a dead person, and he also thought he recognised the clothes.
Sigrid. Holger’s wife.
The water was almost up to the tops of his boots when he was a metre away from the person he was now certain was Sigrid. She was floating on her stomach, but there was no doubt. The grey cardigan and the thick, brown skirt were the clothes she had always worn in the village and at sea, day in and day out.
Sigrid. He stopped. Her medium-length grey hair was floating outwards aro
und her skull as if a big jellyfish was hovering over the back of her head. She was lying a couple of metres into the reeds, and had broken or bent a number of stems under her body on the way in. Simon didn’t want to see what her face looked like. With the help of Spiritus he could easily have turned her over, even lifted her ashore, but it was pointless. She had definitely drowned. She had been lying motionless in the calm water all the time he had been moving towards her.
How long has she been lying here?
It must have happened during the night. She had been gone for almost a year, and now the movement of the sea had brought her up, dragged her towards the shore.
A year?
One of Sigrid’s arms was stretched out, and he could see a white hand. Simon studied the fingers, and jumped when he thought he saw them move. But it was only the lapping of the water, the shifting sunlight. Nevertheless, he took a step back and rubbed his hand over his face.
Shouldn’t she be…a skeleton by this time?
He didn’t really know about these things, but he didn’t think a person who had been lying in the water for almost a year should still have their fingers intact. There are many hungry creatures in the depths.
Only now did he see himself, standing here with water almost up to his knees looking at a corpse. It was as if there was a bubble around them, an unpleasant spell that was difficult to break. He could remain standing here for a long time.
Göran.
That’s what he had to do. He would wade back to the shore and contact Göran. That was it. Slowly he began to back away from the floating body. He didn’t want to turn his back on it. Once he reached the shore he finally dared to turn around, and lumbered up to his house as quickly as possible. A couple of times he glanced back over his shoulder just to check.
That she isn’t following me.
Fortunately Göran was at home and knew what had to be done. He telephoned the appropriate authorities and an hour later the lifeboat service had retrieved Sigrid’s body and transported her over to Nåten. A young police officer asked Simon some questions about the details of his discovery. When he had finished he closed his notebook and asked, ‘There’s a husband, isn’t there?’
Harbor Page 17
