Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  ‘Yes,’ replied Simon, glancing at Göran who was standing with his hands in his trouser pockets staring at the ground.

  ‘Where does he live?’

  Simon pointed towards Kattudden and was just about to give directions when Göran said, ‘I can deal with that. I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Is that OK?’

  Göran smiled. ‘It’s less awful. I think you might find Holger a bit…difficult to talk to.’

  The police officer looked at his watch. He clearly had better things to do than talk to difficult people.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But you ought to warn him that we might have some questions later. When she’s been examined.’

  ‘He’s not going to run away.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The same as you, I presume.’

  They looked each other in the eye and nodded in a moment of professional accord.

  The officer jerked his thumb in the direction of the inlet and said, ‘I mean, she can’t have been lying in the water for a year, can she?’

  ‘No,’ said Göran. ‘Hardly.’

  When the young man had gone back to the police launch, Göran and Simon remained on the jetty gazing out across the almost dead calm sea. Apart from the furrow ploughed by the police launch as it headed for the mainland, the water was a gigantic mirror, reflecting the sky and hiding its own secrets.

  ‘Something is happening,’ said Simon.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Something to do with the sea. Something’s happening to it.’

  Out of the corner of his eye Simon saw Göran turn to look at him, but he kept on gazing out over the cold, bright blue surface.

  ‘In what way?’ asked Göran.

  There were no words to formulate what Simon knew. The closest he could get was the perception that the sea was broken. He couldn’t say that, so he said, ‘It’s changing. It’s getting…worse.’

  A very small event

  Perhaps everything would have been different and this story would have followed a completely different course if a leaf had not fallen. The leaf in question was on the large maple tree that stood twenty or so metres inland from Simon’s jetty. Only that morning Simon had glanced at that very leaf as he sat on his porch, liberated from the heightened sensory awareness evoked by Spiritus.

  Since it was the middle of October, the maple had lost many of its leaves during the storm, and those that remained were only loosely attached to their branches, in shifting shades of dying. However, it looked as if most of them would cling on for today. The afternoon was dead calm and only, very occasionally, the odd leaf drifted down to join the dry heaps already on the ground.

  Who can really say how decisions are made, how emotions change, how ideas arise? We talk about inspiration; about a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, but perhaps everything is just as simple and just as infinitely complex as the processes that make a particular leaf fall at a particular moment. That point has been reached, that’s all. It has to happen, and it does happen.

  The leaf in question requires no more detailed description. It was an ordinary maple leaf in the autumn. As big as a coffee saucer, some black and dark red patches on a yellow and orange background. Very beautiful and absolutely unremarkable. The cellulose threads that had kept the stalk attached to a branch halfway up the tree had dried out, gravity gained the upper hand. The leaf came away and fell towards the ground.

  After Göran had gone to talk to Holger, Simon stayed on the jetty for a long time, staring out across the water. He was searching for something that was impossible to see, the way it is impossible to see land in thick fog, but it was worse than that: he didn’t even know what he was searching for.

  He gave up and turned inland, intending to go inside and have a cup of coffee. As he left the jetty, his arms swinging and his gaze lost in contemplation, he saw a flickering movement. A second later he felt a caress on his hand. He stopped.

  There was a maple leaf on the palm of his hand; it looked exactly as if it were stuck there. He raised his eyes and looked up at the crown of the tree. No more leaves fell. Just this one leaf had fallen, the leaf that he was holding in his hand through no effort of his own; it had drifted down and landed on his hand at the exact moment when he was passing the tree.

  He lifted his hand and studied the veins on the leaf as if trying to decipher unfamiliar writing. There was nothing there, and the leaf had no message to give him. The wind was holding its breath, and everything was still.

  Here I am.

  A sudden and unexpected happiness rose up through his body. Simon looked around, close to tears. He experienced a bubbling gratitude for the fact that he existed at all. For the fact that he could walk under a tree in the autumn and a leaf could fall and land on his hand. It was like a message from the leaf, a reminder: You exist. I fell and you were there. I am not lying on the ground. Therefore, you exist.

  No, the leaf was not lying on the ground and Simon wasn’t lying dead beneath the apple tree or dead among the reeds. Their paths had crossed, and here they stood. Simon was perhaps a little oversensitive after everything that had happened, but it seemed to him like a miracle.

  He no longer wanted to go home. He changed direction and headed up to Anna-Greta’s house with the leaf in his hand, as some lines by Evert Taube played in his head.

  Who has given you your sight, your senses? The ears that hear the waves come rushing, the voice you lift in song.

  The autumn world was beautiful around him, and he walked with careful steps to avoid disturbing it. Gently he opened Anna-Greta’s door and crept into the hallway, lingering in the feeling that the world was a holy place and every sensory perception a gift. He could smell the aroma of her house, he could hear her voice. Soon he would see her.

  ‘No,’ said Anna-Greta in the kitchen. ‘I just think we have to talk about the whole thing. Something has changed, and we don’t know what that means.’

  Simon frowned. He didn’t know who Anna-Greta was talking to or what she was talking about, and it made him feel as if he were eavesdropping. He was turning to close the door and thus announce his presence when Anna-Greta said, ‘Sigrid is the only case I know, and I have no idea what it means.’

  Simon hesitated, then grabbed the door handle. Just before the door slammed shut he heard Anna-Greta say, ‘The day after tomorrow, then?’

  The door closed behind him and Simon walked through the hallway, making sure he could be heard. He reached the kitchen just in time to hear Anna-Greta say, ‘Fine. I’ll see you then.’ She put the phone down.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Only Elof,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘Coffee?’

  Simon turned the leaf between his fingers and tried to sound unconcerned as he asked, ‘So what were you talking about?’

  Anna-Greta got up, fetched the cups, brought the coffee pot over from the stove. Simon had asked his question so quietly that she might not have heard it. But he thought she had. He twisted the leaf and felt like a small child as he asked again, ‘What were you talking about?’

  Anna-Greta put down the coffee pot and snorted, as if the question amused her. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’

  ‘Come and sit down. Would you like a biscuit?’

  The joy that had been bubbling through Simon withdrew, leaving behind a dry riverbed in his stomach. Stones and thorny bushes. Something was wrong, and the worst thing was that he had experienced this before, on a couple of occasions. Anna-Greta had been away, and when he asked her where she had been, she avoided his questions until he gave up.

  This time he had no intention of giving up. He sat down at the table and put a hand over his cup when Anna-Greta tried to pour him some coffee. When she raised her eyes to meet his, he said, ‘Anna-Greta. I want to know what you and Elof were talking about.’

  She tried a smile. When it found no response whatsoever in Simon’s face, it died away. She looked at him and for a seco
nd something…dangerous crossed her expression. Simon waited. Anna-Greta shook her head. ‘This and that. I don’t understand why you’re so interested.’

  ‘I’m interested,’ said Simon, ‘because I didn’t know that you and Elof had that kind of relationship.’ Anna-Greta opened her mouth to give some kind of answer, but Simon carried on, ‘I’m interested because I heard you talking about Sigrid. About the fact that something has changed.’

  Anna-Greta abandoned the attempt to keep the conversation on an everyday level. She put down the coffee pot, sat up straight and folded her arms. ‘You were listening.’

  ‘I just happened to hear.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Anna-Greta, ‘I think you should forget that you just happened to hear. And leave this alone.’

  ‘Why?’

  Anna-Greta sucked in her cheeks as if she had something sour in her mouth that she was just about to spit out. Then her whole posture softened and she sank down a fraction. She said, ‘Because I’m asking you to.’

  ‘But this is crazy. What is it that’s so secret?’

  That hint of danger, of something alien, appeared in Anna-Greta’s eyes once again. She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table and said calmly and reasonably, ‘Regardless of what you say. However disappointed you might be. I have no intention of discussing it. End of story.’

  Nothing more was said. A minute later Simon was standing on Anna-Greta’s porch. He still had the maple leaf in his hand. He looked at it and could hardly remember what he had thought was so special about it, what had made him come here. He threw it away and walked down towards his house.

  ‘End of story,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘End of story.’

  Old Acquaintances

  Way back in the Bible

  our nursery teachers

  had made a note of our real origin:

  floated ashore out of the shadows.

  ANNA STÅBI—FLUX

  About the sea

  Land and sea.

  We may think of them as opposites; as complements. But there is a difference in how we think of them: the sea, and the land.

  If we are walking around in a forest, a meadow or a town, we see our surroundings as being made up of individual elements. There are this many different kinds of trees in varying sizes, those buildings, these streets. The meadow, the flowers, the bushes. Our gaze lingers on details, and if we are standing in a forest in the autumn, we become tongue-tied if we try to describe the richness around us. All this exists on land.

  But the sea. The sea is something completely different. The sea is one.

  We may note the shifting moods of the sea. What the sea looks like when the wind is blowing, how the sea plays with the light, how it rises and falls. But still it is always the sea we are talking about. We have given different parts of the sea different names for navigation and identification, but if we are standing before the sea, there is only one whole. The sea.

  If we are taken so far out in a small boat that no land is visible in any direction, we may catch sight of the sea. It is not a pleasant experience. The sea is a god, an unseeing, unhearing deity that surrounds us and has all imaginable power over us, yet does not even know we exist. We mean less than a grain of sand on an elephant’s back, and if the sea wants us, it will take us. That’s just the way it is. The sea knows no limits, makes no concessions. It has given us everything and it can take everything away from us.

  To other gods we send our prayer: Protect us from the sea.

  Whispers in your ear

  Two days after the storm, Anders was standing down in the wormwood meadow inspecting his boat. It was upside down on blocks, and it was a depressing sight. There were good reasons why he had got it for nothing five years ago.

  Since there was no system for the disposal of worn-out plastic boats, they were either left lying around, or given away to someone in need. The last resort, if you were really determined to get rid of the wretched thing, was to tow the boat out into the bay, drill holes in it and let it sink. Anders’ boat looked as if it might be ready for that final journey.

  There were cracks all over the hull, and the engine mounting was split. The fibreglass around the rowlocks was so brittle that it would probably splinter if you attempted to row. Anders did actually have an engine, an old ten-horsepower Johnson up in the shed, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get it started.

  The boat was really beyond repair, it was just a matter of having some kind of vessel, something to put in the water so he didn’t have to borrow Simon’s boat when he wanted to stock up on supplies.

  He walked out on to the jetty, mainly to see if it was strong enough to bear his weight. Oh yes. Some of the planks were rotten and a log had come loose from the lower section, but the jetty would probably last for another couple of years at least.

  A light breeze was blowing from the south-west, and he had to cup his hand around his lighter in order to light a cigarette. He blew smoke into the wind, pulled out the plastic bottle of diluted wine, took a couple of swigs and listened to the sighing of the wind in the reeds in the inlet. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but he was already pleasantly mellow, able to contemplate without a trace of anxiety the green reeds rippling in the breeze.

  Without the wine he would probably have started imagining things. Sigrid’s body had been found in the reeds a couple of days earlier. There was no end to what he might have been able to come up with to scare himself witless. Simon had told him it was as he suspected. Sigrid had been lying in the water for less than twenty-four hours when he found her. Where she had been lying before that, no one knew.

  A couple of forensic technicians in waders had prodded around in the reeds. Anders had stood at the bedroom window watching them, but it hadn’t looked as if they had found anything that might solve the mystery. They had left trampled reeds behind them and returned to the mainland.

  After checking the piece of chipboard he had nailed over the broken window, Anders went inside, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The number of beads on the tile had now reached a good hundred. Apart from the very first ones, he hadn’t put one single bead there himself. It happened at night, after he had gone to bed.

  He was still waiting for a message, and the beads gave him nothing. Apart from the white patch, only blue beads were used.

  He could feel Maja’s presence in the house more strongly with each passing day, but she refused to give him a clear indication. He was no longer afraid, but rather comforted by the certainty that something of his daughter lingered on in the world. He had her with him, he talked to her. The constant level of slight intoxication prevented him from gathering his thoughts, made him receptive.

  There was a knock at the door. After three seconds it opened, and Anders could tell from the footsteps that it was Simon.

  ‘Anyone home?’

  ‘In the kitchen. Come in.’

  Anders glanced around quickly to make sure he hadn’t left any wine bottles out. All clear. Just a carton of grape juice, standing innocently on the worktop.

  Simon walked into the kitchen and sat down without ceremony. ‘Have you got any coffee?’

  Anders got up, poured a cup and put it down in front of Simon, who was sitting contemplating the bead tile.

  ‘New hobby?’

  Anders made a dismissive gesture and caught his own cup, which wobbled but didn’t tip over. Simon didn’t notice. His gaze was turned inward, and it was obvious he had something on his mind. He sat there for a while running his finger over the surface of the table, drawing invisible shapes, then asked, ‘Do you think you can know another person? Really know another person?’

  Anders smiled. ‘You ought to be the expert in that field.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think I’m not.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you can never become another person. However much you might sometimes imagine you can. Have you ever been in the situation where yo
u’re so close to someone that sometimes…just for a moment…when you look at that person, you get the impression, just in passing, that…that’s me. A kind of confusion, a vacuum where you don’t know who is thinking the thought. If this other person is me. And then you realise. That you were wrong. That I am me, after all. Has that happened to you?’

  Anders had never heard Simon talk like this, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. Simon was supposed to be uncomplicated and stable—Anders had enough existential uncertainty of his own. However, he said, ‘Yes. I think so. I know what you mean, anyway. But why? Is it something to do with Gran?’

  ‘Among other things. It’s strange, isn’t it? You can spend your whole life with another person. And yet you can’t know. Not really. Because you can’t become that person. Can you?’

  Anders didn’t understand what Simon was getting at. ‘But I mean, this is obvious. We know all this.’

  Simon tapped his index finger on the table. Quickly, crossly. ‘That’s the point. I don’t think we do know it. We take ourselves as the starting point, and we imagine a whole lot of things. And just because we understand what the other person is saying, we think we know who she is. But we have no idea. No idea. Because we can’t be that other person.’

  When Simon had gone, Anders lay on Maja’s bed for a long time, looking up at the ceiling where the cobwebs floated outwards like dirty lines. He had made up a new bottle, and at irregular intervals he sucked away at it. He thought about what Simon had said.

  We can’t become another person. But we think we can.

  Wasn’t that what had driven him to ring Cecilia? The fact that he had assumed she would understand, that she would be able to see what he could see, because they had been a part of each other for so many years. Become the same person, almost.