Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  His head was expanding and shrinking, his brain was a lung. Expanding and contracting quickly, panting. His consciousness was gasping for air as if it was drowning, the lung close to bursting point.

  There was a creaking sound as Simon got up and came to sit beside him, eased him away from the rail and placed his head on his knee. Anders curled up and put his arms around Simon’s waist, resting his head on Simon’s thighs. Simon’s cold hand caressed his hair.

  ‘There now, little Anders,’ said Simon. ‘Everything will be all right. Everything’s fine. It’ll all work out, Anders.’

  Simon’s hand went on gently stroking his hair, and it was like oxygen. He stopped panting inside, the panic subsided and he relaxed. He might have fallen asleep for a few seconds. If he did fall asleep, the worst was over when he woke up. Simon’s hand was resting on the back of his head.

  ‘Simon,’ said Anders, without raising his head.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you remember saying…that we can never become another person, do you remember that? That however close we get, we can never become the other person.’

  ‘Yes, I did say that. But it seems as if I was wrong.’

  ‘It isn’t just Elin. It’s me as well. I’m turning into Maja.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  There was in fact a word for what was happening to him. It wasn’t the right word, it had the wrong kind of associations. Demons and devils. And yet it was the only word there was.

  ‘I’m possessed. I’m turning into someone else. I’m turning into Maja.’

  Anders pulled himself up into a sitting position and moved over to sit opposite Simon. Then he told the story again, in the light of his new insight. How he could sometimes hear her voice inside his head, his fear of the GB-man, the Bamse comics, her bed, the writing on the table and the bead tile.

  Simon didn’t ask any questions, didn’t raise any objections. He simply listened and said ‘Hmm’ from time to time, and it was as if the strong hand that had been squeezing Anders’ mind more and more tightly loosened its grip a little more.

  ‘So I think…I know,’ said Anders eventually, ‘that she’s doing all this through me. She’s the one who’s making a picture with the beads and reading about Bamse, but she’s using my fingers and my eyes to do it and I don’t know…I don’t understand what I ought to do.’

  The sun had now risen so high that it had some heat. During his long narrative Anders had started to sweat in his warm clothes. He took off his hat and dipped his hand in the water, scooped up a handful and bathed his eyes. Simon was gazing towards Nåten, where the first tender of the morning was just setting off from the jetty. He asked, ‘So what does she want?’

  ‘You…believe me?’

  Simon wagged his head from side to side, ‘Let me put it like this: it isn’t the strangest thing I’ve heard. Recently.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Simon sighed. ‘I think we’ll leave that for now.’ When he noticed that Anders was frowning, he added, ‘I need to talk to Anna-Greta. Is it OK if I tell her what you’ve told me?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, but…’

  ‘Speaking of Anna-Greta, I think we’d better head for home. She’s probably getting worried by now.’

  Anders nodded and gazed over the rail. Elin was lying on the seabed by now, perhaps fifty metres beneath them. He imagined the fish nudging at the new arrival, the eels crawling up from the mud as they caught the smell of food…

  He cut off the thought before it started wallowing in physical details.

  ‘Simon?’ he asked. ‘Did we do the right thing?’

  ‘Yes. I think so. And if we did the wrong thing…’ Simon looked down at the surface of the water, ‘…there’s not much we can do about it now.’

  Anders got up and went to the prow, curled up on the seat as well as he could as Simon started the engine and turned the boat, heading for home. For a long time Anders sat there trying to keep his eyes fixed on the spot where they had let Elin go. There should have been something there. A buoy or a flag, some kind of memorial. Something to mark the fact that there was a person down there. But there was only the constant shifting of the water, and Elin belonged to those who have disappeared into the sea.

  They parted in silence at Simon’s jetty, and Anders dragged himself back to the Shack. If someone had leapt out of the bushes and pointed a shotgun at him, he would have been incapable of reacting. He would simply have shuffled on, perhaps looking forward to the burning sensation in his back.

  He looked at his feet, and they were moving without his co-operation or input. He was being drawn. Just as an animal hunted beyond endurance, with no strength left, still creeps towards its lair out of instinct or a blind sense of self-preservation, so he kept on moving homeward, homeward.

  He walked in, pulled off his clothes, lay down on Maja’s bed and pulled the covers over him. Then he lay there staring at the window, too tired to close his eyelids. He was lying in the same place and the light was roughly the same as on those mornings when he had gone back to bed after going fishing with his father.

  He thought he was the same person, the same child. That time moved in circles, and soon it would be time for him to get up and load the wheelbarrow, set off for the shop.

  That was a fine catch this morning…

  Perhaps he fell asleep with his eyes open.

  Pulling power

  He had written the sign himself, ‘FRESH HERRING 6KR A KILO’, because his father was dyslexic and besides, his handwriting was atrocious. The sign stood beside him on the bench outside the shop as he sat there waiting for the morning’s first customers.

  It was nine o’clock and the shop had just opened. Two people who had gone inside had said they wanted to buy some herring once they had done the rest of their shopping.

  This seemed promising. Despite the enormous catch Anders hadn’t lowered the price, mainly because he hadn’t had time to alter the sign. He had slept for an unusually long time, right up until quarter to nine. It had been a rush to get a box loaded on to the wheelbarrow and push it up to the shop before they opened.

  The first customer came out, an elderly lady Anders had seen every summer for as long as he could remember, although he didn’t know her name or where she lived. She would always say hello when they met, and Anders would return the greeting without any idea who he was saying hello to.

  The lady came over and said, ‘I’ll have one kilo, please.’

  Anders had a stroke of genius. ‘We’re having a sale today,’ he said. ‘Two kilos for ten kronor.’

  The lady raised her eyebrows and bent over the herring, as if to check whether there was something wrong with them. ‘How come?’

  Anders realised the best thing would be to tell the truth. ‘We caught a huge amount, and we need to get rid of it.’

  ‘But what am I going to do with all that extra?’

  ‘Pickle it. Freeze it. There might not be any more herring this summer. This could be the last.’

  The lady laughed and Anders steeled himself for what might come next: the ruffling of his hair. That was the kind of thing you just had to put up with. But the lady just laughed and said, ‘What a businessman! OK then, I’ll take two kilos. Since there’s a sale on.’

  Anders slipped a plastic bag over his hand and counted forty-two herring into another bag, added a couple extra to be on the safe side, tied a knot in the top and handed it over, and accepted the payment just as the second customer emerged from the shop. A middle-aged man who was probably a yachtsman, judging by his outfit.

  The lady held up her well-filled bag and said to him, ‘There’s a sale on.’

  The jocular way she said it made Anders suspect that sale might not be the right word. That suggested you were selling off something that had been left over, which wasn’t appropriate in the context of fresh herring. He decided to say special offer from now on.

  It wasn’t the success he had hoped for when he got the idea, but r
oughly every fourth customer could be tempted to take an extra kilo. Perhaps more to help him out than because they wanted to snap up a bargain. Anders didn’t think two kronor here or there meant a great deal to most adults.

  However, there were more customers than usual, and Anders went back to fetch another box in time for the eleven o’clock boat, since the first box was more or less empty. There was a bit of a rush with the eleven o’clock boat, and he only just had enough fish. A small queue formed in front of the box; Anders stopped adding a couple of extra fish, and put only eighteen or nineteen in a bag if the customer was someone he didn’t recognise, who was only over for the day.

  By twelve o’clock he was ready for the third box. The boat was moored by the jetty and his father, who was on holiday from work, was back from the shipyard where he had obviously got rid of the fourth box.

  It was looking more than promising. Even if sales slowed down now, it wasn’t out of the question that Anders would manage to sell the contents of the third box as well. Despite the special offer this would mean that he was home and dry, that the radio-controlled boat would soon be surging through the waters of the inlet.

  Buoyed up by this thought he carted the third box off to the shop and found a customer waiting by the sign. When he managed to sell two kilos once again, Anders decided to celebrate with an ice cream. He went into the shop and bought a Pear Split, then sat back down at his post.

  He blew into the paper to loosen it from the ice cream, read the funny story on the collectable card, then sucked on the ice cream while counting the boats out in the bay. He could see his own radio-controlled boat storming past the lot of them, its engine roaring.

  He had just got to the best part of the Pear Split, where the ice shell was beginning to melt on his tongue and its sweeter flavour blended with the vanilla ice cream inside, when a man came walking along the track from Kattudden.

  The man’s eyes looked strange. As if he were drunk. Anders’ father sometimes had the same purposeful walk when he’d had too much to drink, as if nothing existed but the goal before his eyes, as if life were merely a question of getting the body to the place it had to be.

  Anders recognised him. He was the son of someone his grandmother knew—perhaps he used to live on the mainland and now he’d moved back to the island, Anders couldn’t remember. He was a bad-tempered individual. He had once shouted at Anders because his wheelbarrow was in the way outside the shop, and since then Anders had never asked him if he wanted to buy any herring.

  He was wearing blue jeans and a checked shirt, like most of the permanent residents. He had wooden clogs on his feet and was marching determinedly towards the jetty.

  Marching, yes. That was the word. The man was moving in a way that brooked no interference. If anything got in his way, he would ignore it or walk straight through it rather than give way. Perfectly consistent, bearing in mind how angry he had been when Anders got in his way.

  When the man got near the jetty he turned off towards the thicket of sea buckthorn on the right. Anders was so fascinated by his behaviour that he forgot about his ice cream, and the sticky, melting stuff trickled down the stick and over his fingers.

  The man disappeared from view behind the sea buckthorn, and Anders took the opportunity to lick the sticky sweetness off his fingers. Then he spotted the man again. He had reached the shoreline, and was on his way out into the water. He hadn’t even taken off his clogs.

  Only now did Anders start to feel there was something unpleasant about the whole thing. The man slipped on the wet stones and fell, but immediately got up and carried on walking. Anders looked around, searching for some adult who could explain the situation to him, or simply indicate with a calm glance that everything was as it should be.

  There were no adults in the vicinity. Nor anybody else, for that matter. Only Anders and the man who was now up to his waist in the water, forging ahead with heavier and heavier strides, heading straight for Gåvasten as if there were a secret track leading out there, a track you could only use if you had the right attitude.

  When the water reached the man’s chest, he started swimming. Anders stood up, not knowing what he ought to do. He sucked on the lolly, took a couple of bites and saw the man’s head slowly moving further and further away from the steamboat jetty. He didn’t seem to be an accomplished swimmer, he was splashing about and making strange movements.

  Perhaps it’s because he’s wearing clothes.

  When he’d finished the ice cream and the man was showing no sign of turning back, Anders threw the stick in the bin and went into the shop.

  There was nobody in there either, thanks to the midday lull. Anders found Ove, the owner, in the fridge behind the dairy cupboard, filling up the milk.

  ‘So how’s business?’ asked Ove without looking up from his work.

  ‘Good, thanks,’ said Anders.

  ‘Same here. Plenty of people about today.’

  ‘Yes.’ Anders began to feel unsure of himself. He had never spoken to Ove like this before, and he was a frightening figure, with his huge stomach and gigantic eyebrows. Anders rubbed one arm and said, ‘There’s a man swimming out there.’

  Ove put the last carton of milk on the shelf and straightened up. ‘I’m not surprised. It’s hot today.’

  ‘Mm. But he’s still got his clothes on and…’ Anders didn’t know how to describe the feeling of foreboding that had come over him as the man walked down to the jetty, ‘…and there was something kind of strange about him.’

  ‘Strange in what way?’

  ‘Well…the fact that he didn’t take off his clothes. He just walked out into the water…and he was walking in an odd way too.’

  ‘So where is he now, then?’

  ‘Still swimming.’

  Ove closed the door on the milk, wiped his hands on his apron and said, ‘We’d better take a look, then.’

  When Anders got outside the shop a couple of steps behind Ove, he saw that it was as he feared. The man was no longer anywhere in sight.

  ‘Where is he, then?’ asked Ove.

  Anders felt a faint blush creeping over his cheeks. ‘He was there just now.’

  Ove looked at him suspiciously, as if he were trying to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why Anders would have made this up. Evidently he couldn’t come up with anything, since he walked quickly down to the jetty with Anders following in his wake.

  There was no sign of anyone when they got down to the jetty either, and Ove shook his head.

  ‘Well, young Anders. There doesn’t seem to be anyone here.’

  Anders gazed out across the water and spotted a couple of ducks bobbing on the surface ten metres off the jetty. But they weren’t ducks. They were two clogs. He pointed them out to Ove, and then the circus got under way.

  Ove rang and people came. They went out in boats and the coastguard was called out from Nåten. Anders had to describe the man who had walked out into the water, and everyone agreed it must be Torgny Ek, the son of Kristoffer and Astrid Ek who lived just a few houses past the shop.

  Curious tourists from Kattudden and the ramblers’ hostel came to see what all the fuss was about. Soon everyone knew the story of what the poor little boy—Anders—had witnessed, and how could they best show their goodwill towards the unfortunate child? By buying his herring, of course.

  To tell the truth, Anders didn’t feel particularly badly affected or upset by what had happened, but realised it was best to adopt a serious expression as the herring flowed out of his hands and the money flowed into his pockets. He even had the sense to avoid mentioning the special offer, which would obviously be inappropriate.

  By the time the box was empty there were still a lot of people standing around the harbour waiting to see what the divers might find, and Anders pushed the wheelbarrow towards home for the third time that day. As he approached the Shack he saw a column of smoke rising up into the sky.

  His father was crouching by the smoker, pushing juniper branches
into the fire. The last box of herring was by his side, but he hadn’t started threading the fish yet. He looked surprised when he caught sight of Anders.

  ‘Back already?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anders, tilting the wheelbarrow to show him the empty box. ‘All gone.’

  His father got to his feet and looked. First at the box, then at Anders. ‘You’ve sold…sixty kilos?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘How come?’

  Anders told him about Torgny Ek. How he had come walking along, how he had swum out to sea. All the people who had gathered in the harbour. His voice became more and more tentative as the story went on, since he noticed that his father was very upset by the whole thing, for some reason. He was sitting on the bench by the smoker, staring at the ground.

  ‘And then the coastguard arrived…’ Anders’ voice died away and silence fell. There was only the crackling of burning juniper branches from inside the smoker. ‘Three hundred and twenty kronor. That’s how much I’ve taken. It’s a bit less because I did a special offer.’

  His father nodded heavily. ‘Well done.’

  Anders picked up a metal skewer and threaded a couple of herring on to it. His father made a slow, dismissive gesture. ‘You can leave that. I don’t think we’ll do any smoking today.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, you’ve…sold such a lot.’

  The heavy feeling in his stomach came back, and Anders was drawn down towards the ground. He lowered the skewer he’d started. ‘But…it’s always good to have buckling.’

  His father slowly got to his feet, and said, ‘I’m just not in the mood.’ He made an effort and drew the corners of his mouth up into a kind of smile. ‘It’s really good that you’ve sold such a lot. Now you can afford that boat. Take it easy for a while.’

  Without saying any more he went towards the house, his shoulders drooping. Anders waggled the skewer in his hand. The two herring hung there, threaded through the eyes. The eyes themselves were dangling from their heads, attached by thin membranes. Anders pushed the herring right to the end of the skewer, drew back his arm, flicked his wrist. The herring flew off in a wide arch, landing in the sawdust by the woodpile.