Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  I’m going to kill him.

  He’d been sitting there for a long time, weighing up different ways of killing his father, when he heard footsteps behind him on the jetty. He thought about jumping in the water, but stayed where he was. Then he heard Cecilia’s voice.

  ‘Anders?’

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to talk, he wasn’t here, he wasn’t Anders. There was a faint rustle of fabric from Cecilia’s shorts as she sat down behind him on the jetty. He didn’t want her to console him or to say something nice, something to smooth over the situation. He wouldn’t believe it anyway. He wanted her to go away and leave him alone.

  They sat like that for a while. Then Cecilia said, ‘My mother’s the same.’

  Anders shook his head again.

  ‘She is,’ said Cecilia. ‘Well, not quite as bad. But almost.’ When Anders didn’t say anything, she went on, ‘She drinks a lot and then… she does the stupidest things. She chucked my cat off the balcony.’

  Anders half turned around. ‘Did it die?’

  ‘No. We live on the first floor. But it was scared after that. Of practically everything.’

  They sat in silence. Anders pictured the cat being hurled off the balcony on the first floor. So Cecilia lived in an apartment. He turned so that he could see her out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting cross-legged on the jetty, resting her chin on her hands. He asked, ‘Do you just live with your mum?’

  ‘Yes. When she’s like that I usually go over to my grandmother’s. She’s great. She lets me sleep over and stuff.’

  Anders had seen Cecilia’s mother a couple of times, and she hadn’t been drunk then. But when he thought about it now, she did have that look. Something strained about the face, something wet in the eyes. Maybe she had been drunk, but he hadn’t been able to see it as clearly as in his own father.

  They went on talking, and after a while the conversation moved on to other topics. It turned out that Cecilia enjoyed baking as well, and that she read books too, mostly by Maria Gripe. Anders had read only one story by her, but Cecilia told him about some of her other books, and they sounded good.

  With hindsight Anders could see that that day had mostly brought good things. It wasn’t until the following summer that he and Cecilia had kissed each other and become a couple up on the big rock.

  But it all started on that day.

  Homeward bound

  The engine started first time and Anders roared away from Gåvasten. The speed made him feel safe, he didn’t think a gull could manage fifteen knots. When he had travelled a few hundred metres he looked back. The gulls had reverted to circling around the lighthouse.

  He picked up the plastic bottle and waggled it back and forth in his free hand. The liquid was cloudy, opaque. The same painful clarity of vision that had affected him when he drank the poison had been in his father’s eyes as he looked at Anders and Cecilia that day.

  Love one another. Just be careful of the sea.

  That was probably the story of Anders’ life since that day, in brief. But why had his father drunk the poison in the first place? After all, it wasn’t the sea that got him in the end.

  Or was it?

  Anders was twenty-two years old when it happened. By that time his father had taken early retirement, because he had ‘lapses’. He would turn up to work at the shipyard feeling groggy, then he wouldn’t turn up at all for a couple of days, then he’d come back, work normally for a week, then disappear again. It couldn’t go on, and they managed to work out an early-retirement package.

  However, he was still well liked, and if they needed an extra pair of hands they would ring him and see how things were. If he felt OK he would go along and pitch in wherever he was needed; he was paid in cash, no questions asked.

  Among other things, he made a significant contribution to the building of the new shed for the storage of summer visitors’ boats. When the topping-out party was being planned, he was naturally invited. The building wasn’t completely finished, but the frame and the roof were in place, and it was a long time since they had thrown a party, so a party it was.

  They drank and chatted, and it grew late. Towards the small hours Johan said goodnight and staggered down to the harbour to sail his boat home. There was nothing strange about that, everybody knew he could sail to Domarö blindfolded if need be.

  So they said Good night and Safe journey and Try not to crash into any elks, and they never saw him again.

  Nobody knew exactly what happened, but it was thought that when Johan got down to the harbour in the darkness, he was overcome by tiredness, or decided not to sail home. Instead he dragged a few tarpaulins together and made himself a bed. A few tarpaulins to serve as a mattress, and a few to cover himself up.

  He was still lying there at seven o’clock in the morning when a lorry carrying sand backed down into the harbour area. Torbjörn, the driver, had been at the party and it had been a late night. When he saw the pile of old tarpaulins in his rear-view mirror he couldn’t be bothered to get out and shift them, so instead he reversed straight over them.

  The back wheel went over something, and he kept on going. The front wheel went over something smaller, and he kept on going. Only when he had gone a couple of metres further did he glance back at the pile of tarpaulins. He could see something trickling out from underneath them. Then he stopped and got out.

  Afterwards Torbjörn would curse himself for failing to notice that Johan’s boat was still in the harbour. If he had, he might perhaps have suspected something, because Johan did have a tendency to fall asleep just about anywhere. But he hadn’t thought about it, and instead he had reversed over him with five tons of sand. What Torbjörn saw when he pulled back the tarpaulins would never leave him.

  Something had been mentioned about a bottle of schnapps found beside Johan’s body. Anders knew better now.

  That night, faced with the sea, with the depths he must travel across, his father had suddenly been afraid. He had fetched the bottle of wormwood from his boat and tried to give himself courage, tried to protect himself.

  Whether it was down to poisoning or a fear that would not pass, he had curled up under the tarpaulins. Like a child.

  Like me.

  Curled up under the covers, hoping it would go away and leave him alone.

  Anders could see it in his mind all too clearly. The sea, the night, the fear. Leaving the lights and the people behind and suddenly being overwhelmed by the fear with which there can be no negotiation and for which there is only one cure: Hide! Don’t let it see you!

  ‘Oh, Dad…poor Dad…’

  The fishing spear

  Simon was sitting up straight at the kitchen table, his hands neatly folded on his knee as Anna-Greta rummaged around in the hidey-hole. She was in the process of selecting her bridal gown, and he was waiting to be shown the shortlist.

  The morning had been dedicated to preparations for the following day. They had rung around and invited the people they wanted to invite, the community hall had been booked for a small reception and a buffet had been ordered from a caterer in Norrtälje. In the morning, before the wedding, Anna-Greta would travel across to a friend in Nåten who used to work as a hairdresser, and still knew a fair bit about how to make a person look their best.

  ‘So what shall I do, then?’ Simon asked.

  Anna-Greta had laughed. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better make the most of your last few hours of freedom. Practise doing up your bow tie.’

  Simon had called Göran to invite him and they had also decided that Simon would make use of his time to come over and sort out Göran’s well at last. He had to do something, otherwise he would just end up wandering around and getting nervous.

  Despite the way Anna-Greta had fast-tracked the whole process, as if she just wanted it out of the way, things had changed when it was clear it was really going to happen. First of all there was the reception, then the buffet and the invitations. Then this idea that she needed to go and get hersel
f done up beforehand. And now the dress.

  This sudden burst of activity was not without its effect on Simon. He was sitting here now worrying about whether or not he should wear patent-leather shoes, and whether they still fitted. And even if he should use pomade in his hair.

  Everything went quiet out in the hidey-hole as Anna-Greta gathered things together. Then she emerged. Simon straightened his back. To be honest, he thought the whole thing was quite amusing. The wedding and everything surrounding it had brought out a new side of Anna-Greta, more feminine than her everyday persona. He liked it, as long as it didn’t go too far.

  She came into the kitchen with a pile of dresses over her arm and something in her hand, which she put down on the worktop. She held the dresses up in front of her one by one, and Simon expressed a preference for a beige one in a heavyish fabric, embroidered with white flowers. It turned out that this was Anna-Greta’s favourite too, and so the matter was settled. When Anna-Greta had put away the rejected dresses, she picked up the item from the worktop and placed it on the table in front of Simon.

  ‘Do you remember this? I found it out there.’

  The object lying on the table was a small fishing spear made of metal. Simon picked it up and turned it over in his fingers.

  Oh yes, he remembered it all right.

  When Johan was eighteen, he and Simon had worked together to dig a herb bed next to Anna-Greta’s house. While he was digging Johan had found the fishing spear. They had borrowed books to check it out, and had come to the conclusion that it was at least a thousand years old.

  The find aroused Johan’s interest, and during that summer he borrowed more books and read up on the subject. What fascinated him most was that their patch of land, the place where their house stood, had once been under water. Deep under water.

  He had read about land elevation in school, of course, learned that the islands were rising out of the sea by about half a centimetre per year. But the spear made it real and concrete. A person in a boat, someone who was out spearing fish, had passed directly over their garden a thousand years ago, and dropped their spear. It was a thought that wouldn’t let Johan be.

  Reading had never been a passion for him, but all that summer he studied the history of the archipelago in general and of Domarö in particular. It went so far that he even considered applying to university to study geology or something similar, but when the autumn came he managed to get a place as an apprentice at the shipyard in Nåten, and his plans for higher education were abandoned.

  The fishing spear was forgotten, and finally ended up in the hidey-hole.

  Simon balanced the spear on his index and middle fingers. It weighed about half a kilo, and had probably been attached to a stick, which had rotted away long ago. The fish had been speared, lifted out of the water and eaten. The person who had been hunting the fish had probably made a new spear, hunted more fish and eaten them, but to no purpose. He too had eventually fallen to the bottom of the sea or on to the ground and rotted away. Only the spear still existed.

  ‘Anna-Greta?’ asked Simon. ‘What actually happened to Johan?’

  Anna-Greta folded the bridal gown carefully and placed it in a plastic bag to protect it. Simon didn’t know if it was a stupid question, but in a way she had brought the topic up herself by bringing him the spear.

  He had begun to think he wasn’t going to get an answer when Anna-Greta laid the plastic bag on the kitchen sofa and said, ‘Have you heard of something called Gunnilsöra?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘It’s that island you can only see sometimes. The one that appears and disappears. Why?’

  ‘What do you think about it?’

  Simon didn’t understand where the conversation was going, but replied as best he could. ‘I don’t know that I think anything about it, really. I know it’s been interpreted as everything from the shores of Paradise to the dwelling of the Evil One. But it’s some kind of optical phenomenon, surely? Something to do with the weather.’

  Anna-Greta ran her finger over the spear, which was clean and smooth after Johan had cleaned it. ‘It called to him. He caught something he shouldn’t have caught.’

  ‘Called to him? What called to him?’

  ‘He said it was an island over towards Gåvasten. But that it wasn’t Gåvasten. That it kept moving. One night it was just off the Shack, he said. And it was calling to him. Don’t you remember how frightened he was, Simon? How frightened he was all the time?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon. He remembered both the enthusiastic boy who had dug up the spear, and the increasingly confused and distant man the boy had become. ‘But this sounds crazy. An island? Hunting a person?’

  Anna-Greta leaned towards him and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Haven’t you heard the sea? Heard it calling?’

  Only a week ago Simon would have been concerned about Anna-Greta’s mental health if she had asked him a question like that with such quivering earnestness. A week ago he hadn’t seen the depths, hadn’t sunk a body into those same depths.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Maybe. Have you heard it?’

  Anna-Greta looked out of the window and her gaze reached far into the distance, to the outermost shipping lanes. ‘Have I told you about Gustav Jansson?’ she asked. ‘The lighthouse keeper? On Stora Korset?’

  ‘Yes. You knew him, didn’t you?’

  Anna-Greta nodded. ‘It all started with him. For me.’

  The keeper

  Stora Korset is the last outpost facing the Åland Sea. The island is so remote that the lighthouse keeper there receives what is known as an isolation supplement in addition to his normal pay. A little bonus for enduring the loneliness.

  From the end of the 1930s to the beginning of the 1950s, it was Gustav Jansson who ran the whole show out there. He originally came from Domarö, but found it difficult to get on with people, and when the post of lighthouse keeper became available he took it as an opportunity to be left in peace at last. Then he spent thirteen years there with four hens as his only company.

  He did not like the war. The din of practice firing and drift mines that had to be rendered harmless was one thing, but the worst thing was that visitors came to the island. Military personnel knocking on his door and asking questions about this and that, boats mooring at his jetty on reconnaissance missions. For a while there was talk of some kind of fortification on Stora Korset, but fortunately the plan came to nothing.

  How terrible would that have looked! A tower with a gun emplacement down on the rocks below, soldiers stomping around smoking and frightening the hens. No, if that had happened he would have demanded to leave forthwith.

  However, the war did bring one good thing.

  Gustav Jansson had never been married. Not because he had anything in particular against women, no, he disliked men just as much. He was a solitary soul by nature and not suited to the companionship of marriage.

  However, the war brought a woman he was able to tolerate. Not that he would have married her even if the possibility had existed, but he could tolerate her company and gradually found himself looking forward to the days she came to the island with snuff and newspapers.

  He was enough of a man to appreciate female beauty in spite of everything, but what he liked most about Anna-Greta was that she didn’t talk unnecessarily. Gustav’s taciturnity made other people nervous, and they would chat away even more as if there were some kind of quota that had to be filled.

  Not Anna-Greta. It was only after they had been acquainted for a year or so that they said any more than was absolutely necessary to carry out their transactions. At that time Gustav had bought a jigsaw puzzle from Anna-Greta. When he had done that one he wanted to buy a new one, which led to a certain amount of discussion. What kind of picture, how many pieces?

  He ended up being a subscriber, and was particularly fond of puzzles with a sea motif. Since he had neither the space nor the inclination to keep the puzzles once he had completed them, he would place the pieces carefull
y, then when he had finished he would take the puzzle apart and put the pieces back in the box. Once a month Anna-Greta would come and replace the completed puzzle with a new one. At half price, because she could sell the old one again.

  Over the years they had the odd conversation that was unrelated to their business dealings. A certain level of intimacy grew between them.

  A couple of years after the end of the war, the general view was that Gustav Jansson had lost his mind. He did his job as lighthouse keeper extremely well, there were no complaints on that score, but you just couldn’t talk to the man. He had spent too much time reading the Bible.

  Anna-Greta knew better. It was true that reading the Bible was Gustav’s only diversion apart from jigsaw puzzles out on his little island. He knew it inside out, and would even conduct conversations with himself, where one party was an austere prophet and the other a free-thinker.

  But he wasn’t mad. Gustav had simply realised that the surest way of frightening away unwelcome visitors was to preach at them. People became strangely uncomfortable when they heard the word of the Lord being intoned as they were tying up their boats at Gustav’s jetty, and visits were kept short. Gustav was left in peace with his lighthouse and his God.

  One afternoon at the beginning of the 1950s, Anna-Greta arrived later than usual for her monthly visit. With the north wind blowing at twelve metres per second, Gustav was surprised to see her at all. As Anna-Greta unpacked Gustav’s purchases in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, the wind picked up even more. Some gusts made the wind gauge shoot up to twenty.

  It looked as if Anna-Greta was going to have to stay on Stora Korset overnight. Gustav managed to get in touch with Nåten via short-wave radio, and they promised to make sure that Torgny, Maja and Johan would be informed that Anna-Greta was fine and was waiting for better weather conditions before setting off for home.