Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  ‘We have also had a number of other problems recently. People suddenly being odd or even…wicked. People who don’t seem to be themselves, if you see what I mean.’

  There were nods of agreement here and there. They could go along with that too. Before long he would probably mention that the cod had been fished out as well, another tedious but incontrovertible fact.

  ‘What I wanted to say,’ said Simon, ‘is that I’ve worked out that these two things are connected. This…illness or whatever we ought to call it, affects those who have salt water in their wells. So…those of you who have salt water in your well, don’t drink it!’

  If Simon had hoped for gasps of amazement and recognition from his audience, he was disappointed. Most of them were looking at him with expressions ranging from scepticism to incomprehension. Simon flung his arms wide and raised his voice.

  ‘That’s how the sea gets in! Don’t you understand? They’re in the sea and they…find their way in through the water in the wells. If we drink it they get inside us and we…change.’

  When Simon still didn’t get the reaction he was looking for, he sighed and said in a more resigned tone of voice, ‘I’m just asking you to believe what I say. Don’t drink water that has become salty. Let’s say it’s poisonous, just for simplicity’s sake. Don’t drink it.’

  Simon slumped back down on his chair and there was a long silence. Gradually murmured conversations sprang up around the table. Anna-Greta leaned over to Simon and said something. Lisa and Gerda still had their arms folded, and looked as if they were waiting for the next instalment.

  And Anders…

  It was as if he had heard only snatches of a melody until now. Sometimes faintly, as if it was coming through the wall from another room. Sometimes louder but quickly fading, as if from a passing car with its stereo turned to full volume. Sometimes just a note or two in the soughing of the trees and the dripping of the water during the night.

  With Simon’s words, the entire orchestra stepped forward out of the darkness and crashed into life, deafening him and silencing his whole body.

  The water. Of course. The drinking water.

  Despite the perception that Maja was running through his body, it had never occurred to him that that was actually the way it was. He had been going around knocking back wine from plastic bottles, sometimes several litres per day. Wine diluted with water from the tap. He had woken feeling thirsty and hungover, and had drunk lots and lots of water.

  And what really made him almost slide off his chair as he sank further and further into the music: Maja had not left him at all. He just hadn’t been drinking water. During the whole of the previous day he had drunk only undiluted wine and wormwood concentrate. It was only when he got to Anna-Greta’s house that he had taken in liquid in the form of water. And their water wasn’t…infected.

  Anders felt a hand on his back and Simon leaned over him. ‘Do you understand?’ he whispered.

  Anders nodded vaguely as the music of all the connections continued to reverberate in his head. The eternal sea, always one and the same, that could work its way into every crack, could spread and extend but always returned to itself. One vast body with billions of limbs, from thundering waves to rivulets as thin as a spider’s leg that found their way in, found their way through. The sea. And those who existed within it.

  Simon pulled at his arm and Anders got up and followed him as if he were in a trance.

  No one has such long fingers.

  In his mind’s eye he could see the sea groping its way across the rocks on the islands, through fissures in the bedrock, down into the ground, into the wells, and it was like a mantra running through his head as Simon led him outside: No one has such long fingers. No one has such long fingers.

  ‘Anders, are you still with us?’

  Simon waved a hand in front of his eyes, and with an effort Anders managed to bring himself back, to discover that he was standing on the porch of the community centre. His right hand was resting on the cold iron railing; he gripped it tightly, holding himself firmly in place.

  ‘How did you work it out?’ he asked.

  ‘When I was looking for water for Göran,’ said Simon, ‘and I felt all the brackish water coursing through the rock—’

  ‘Felt?’

  ‘Yes.’ Simon pulled the matchbox out of his pocket and showed it to Anders, then put it away again. Anders nodded. He did actually remember that part of the story.

  ‘And then I thought about what your water is like,’ Simon went on, ‘and above all what Elin’s water was like. After the fire I was by her well, there was something that drew me to it, there was something there. I didn’t pick up on it at the time, but I tasted the water and it was salty. More salty than yours. Since then that thought has been in the back of my mind and…today I caught sight of it.’ Simon sighed and glanced at the closed door of the community centre. ‘Although I don’t really think I managed to convince anybody.’

  ‘Why were you so late?’

  Simon shrugged his shoulders. ‘I had to check. Karl-Erik’s well and the Bergwalls’ well. It was the same there. Salt in the water. When they were sawing they probably had flasks of water with them, and drank as they worked. I think it reaches some kind of critical point and then…it breaks out. The other person.’

  Anders leaned on the railing and looked down towards the harbour. It was an hour until the next tender crossed the sea. Was permitted to cross the sea.

  No one has such long fingers. No one has such strong fingers.

  Unannounced, a memory popped into his head. He was perhaps ten years old when his father put out a hoop net for fun and caught one solitary eel. Anders had stood on the jetty watching his father trying to grab hold of the eel to get it out of the boat. It had been impossible.

  Eventually his father managed to push the eel into a plastic bag. It slithered out. He got the eel into the bag once again and held the top closed with both hands as he climbed out of the boat with great difficulty.

  When he got up on to the jetty he stopped and stared at the bag and laughed out loud. Despite the fact that his hands were strong and he was clutching the bag as tightly as he could, the eel had still managed to brace itself against the bottom of the bag and was slowly and inexorably forcing its way past his clenched fists and out of the bag. It fell on to the jetty, hurled its body forward and slid into the water.

  ‘Well, there’s a thing,’ said his father with a kind of admiration in his voice. ‘That one certainly wanted to live.’

  Afterwards they had laughed about it. His father so big and strong, the eel so small and tough. And yet the eel had won.

  No one has such long, such strong fingers.

  And yet it is still possible to slither through. If you just want to live enough.

  Come in

  At half-past six the tender moored at the jetty on Domarö, and a man who no longer wanted to die left the group of cheerful people getting off. He ran to the west. When he drew level with the ramblers’ hostel he had to slow down, since a renewed desire to live does not bring with it new lungs.

  Anders jogged to the point where the track divided in two. He was forced to walk the last stretch because his windpipe was whistling and he felt as if he was breathing through a straw. He passed the straight pine tree, pulled open the door of the Shack and went straight into the kitchen without taking off his shoes. He leaned over the sink, turned on the tap and drank like a man who has walked across the desert. He panted, breathed in deeply, drank again. Straightened up, panted, drank again.

  He drank until his stomach was distended and the cold water was threatening to come back up through his throat. Then he lay down on the floor. When he rocked from side to side he could hear the water lapping in his stomach.

  Come in. I will carry you.

  He closed his eyes and listened, checked what he was feeling.

  He had promised Simon and Anna-Greta that he would go back up to Anna-Greta’s house as soon as he had done w
hat he had to do at home. But still he lay there on the floor, waiting as the water in his stomach gradually ceased to be a cold, separate clump, as its temperature rose to body heat and became a part of him.

  Are you there?

  There was no answer, and doubt sank its claws into him. What if Simon had been wrong? What if Simon had been right, but it still didn’t mean that Maja was on his side? The snowsuit. How had Henrik and Björn actually got hold of the snowsuit?

  This was the last chance. He was balancing on the edge of a precipice, and only a touch as light as a feather, the right touch, could save him. If it didn’t come, there was nothing but the downward plunge and the darkness.

  Come. Touch me.

  Inside his body was a hollow space that was much bigger than his body. A summer breeze off the sea wafted through the room, bringing with it a single fluffy dandelion seed that floated around on the air currents until it finally landed on the inside of his skin. It tickled and settled down. That was what it felt like. So faint. But he knew.

  You are here.

  After that first, microscopic touch it grew stronger. What the water had carried with it spread through his blood, into his muscles, and the tickle became a soft caress and a greater presence, as if the downy seed really had brought with it other seeds that had now taken root in his flesh, causing small dandelions to bloom. He couldn’t see them, but beneath the horizon they lit up his world, and his eyes filled with tears.

  Hello, sweetheart. I’m sorry I…forgive me. For everything.

  He looked in cupboards and drawers and got out every bottle he could find, then filled them from the kitchen tap. He ended up with about ten litres of water in large and small bottles, which he stuffed into two carrier bags. He found room for the bottle of wormwood too.

  Finally he fetched some Bamse comics from the bedroom and slipped the photographs from Gåvasten into his pocket. Then he left the house. Before he even got to Anna-Greta’s house he fished out one of the bottles and took a couple of swigs.

  The newlyweds were sitting in the kitchen, and had changed into their everyday clothes. Everything was as usual, and everything was different. New bonds had been formed without anything changing on the surface. When Simon caught sight of the carrier bags, he asked, ‘Is that…water?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I have a look at one of the bottles?’

  Anders dug out one of the bottles and placed it on the table in front of Simon. It was an old plastic bottle; the label had fallen off, and the slightly cloudy water was clearly visible through the plastic. All three of them gathered around the bottle as if it were a relic, a sacred object.

  There was nothing special to see, Anders had already established that when he was filling the bottles. The water in the Shack had always been cloudy because of methane gas or chemical deposits, it had always had that misty, slightly ghostly appearance; it needed to stand in an open container for a while before it cleared.

  Simon pulled a glass towards him, looked at Anders and asked, ‘May I…?’

  A pang of…a protective instinct ran through Anders, but before he could open his mouth Anna-Greta had said what he was about to say, ‘You’re not going to drink that?’

  ‘I’ve drunk it before,’ said Simon. ‘But this time I was only intending to pour it out. Is that OK?’

  Anders nodded, finding the situation slightly absurd. Simon was asking for permission to pour water out of a bottle. But it wasn’t absurd. Not anymore.

  Anders felt uncomfortable as Simon unscrewed the cap and poured the water. Maja was in that water, and Simon knew that, which was why he had asked for permission. It was like handling someone’s ashes. The relatives must be consulted.

  She isn’t dead. She isn’t gone. She…

  Anders suddenly thought of something Simon had told him a long time ago, or was it just a few days ago? Time had lost its meaning as days and nights, hope and powerlessness slipped in and out of each other in strange ways.

  He was about to ask, but Simon’s experiment caught his attention. Simon had picked up the matchbox and tipped the insect into his left hand. He now moved his right hand towards the glass, glanced at Anders, then dipped his index and middle finger in the water. Closed his eyes.

  There wasn’t a sound in the kitchen as Simon waited. Thirty seconds passed. Then Simon removed his fingers from the glass and shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There is something there. Particularly now that I know. But it’s too faint.’

  For a moment Simon didn’t know what to do with his wet fingers. He was about to dry them on his trousers purely as a reflex action, but stopped himself and allowed them to dry on their own. Anders raised the glass to his lips and drank the water.

  ‘Do you really think that’s a good idea?’ asked Anna-Greta.

  ‘Grandma,’ said Anders. ‘You have no idea how good it is.’

  It couldn’t be helped, all that drinking had made him desperate for a pee. Presumably all the fluid that left his body, tears, sweat, urine, somehow made what was in the water…evaporate from him, but there it was. He would just have to drink some more afterwards.

  On the way to the toilet he passed the closed door to the hidey-hole, and through the wall he waved goodbye to the shotgun inside. He made a mental note to take out the cartridge when he had the opportunity, so that nobody would come to grief.

  He emptied his bladder while contemplating the framed picture above the toilet. A classic motif: a little girl with a basket over her arm is walking along a narrow footbridge across a ravine. Beside her hovers an angel with great big wings and outstretched arms, as if to catch the girl if she should fall. The girl is completely oblivious to both the danger and the presence of the angel, she is simply the roses in her cheeks and the sunshine in her eyes.

  That’s what it’s like, thought Anders, that’s exactly what it’s like.

  He had no idea what he meant, what this particular picture had to do with his story, but one thing he did know: the great stories were true, the timeless pictures portraying need, beauty, danger and grace were meaningful.

  Everything is possible.

  When he got back to the kitchen Anna-Greta was busy lighting a fire. Simon was still staring at the bottle as if he were gazing into a crystal ball, where a glimpse of something might appear at any moment. Anders sat down opposite him.

  ‘Simon,’ he said. ‘What happened with Holger’s wife? With Sigrid?’

  Simon looked up from the bottle. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that too.’

  ‘What have you come up with?’

  ‘Don’t you remember what happened?’

  Anders grabbed the bottle and drank deeply. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s so much that I…a lot of things have just disappeared. Those first days here on the island are very…foggy.’ Anders smiled and had another drink. ‘And I probably haven’t…been myself, not really. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘How does it feel now?’

  Anders ran his hand over his chest. ‘It feels…warm. And less lonely. What about Sigrid?’

  Anna-Greta placed a steaming pot of coffee on the table and sat down between them.

  ‘I have to say one thing,’ she said, looking from Anders to Simon, then back at Anders. ‘Bearing in mind what we know and what has happened, this might sound…harsh. But what I want to say is…don’t try to do anything. Don’t try to…challenge the sea. It’s dangerous. It could go wrong. It could go very, very badly wrong. Much worse than we can imagine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Simon.

  ‘I just mean that…it’s bigger than us. Infinitely bigger. It can crush us. Just like that. It’s happened before. And this is not just about us. Other people live here too.’

  Anders thought about what Anna-Greta had said, and it certainly made sense, but there was one thing he didn’t understand.

  ‘Why are you saying this now?’ he asked.

  Anna-Greta’s hand was unsteady as she poured
coffee into her saucer and reached for a sugar lump. ‘I thought it might be appropriate,’ she said. ‘To remind you.’ She pushed the sugar lump into her mouth and slurped a little of the boiling-hot coffee.

  ‘Sigrid hadn’t been in the water for very long when I found her,’ said Simon. ‘Just a few hours. Despite the fact that it was a year since she disappeared.’

  ‘But she was dead, wasn’t she?’ said Anders.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Simon. ‘Then she was dead.’

  Anna-Greta held the coffee pot out to Anders, and he waved it away impatiently. She put it back on the tablemat, ran her hand over her forehead and closed her eyes.

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Anders. ‘I thought she’d…been dead for a year, but only in the water for a few hours. That was the odd thing about it.’

  ‘No,’ said Simon. ‘She’d been gone for a year. But she’d died from drowning just a few hours before I found her.’

  Anders looked at his grandmother, who was still sitting with her eyes closed as if in pain, a deep furrow of anxiety between her eyebrows. He shook his head violently and said, ‘So where was she, then? All that time?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Simon. ‘But she was somewhere.’

  Anders sat motionless as goose bumps covered his entire body. He twitched. Stared straight ahead. Saw the picture. Twitched again.

  ‘And that’s where Maja is now,’ he whispered. ‘Without her snowsuit.’

  Nobody said anything for a long time. Anna-Greta pushed away her saucer and looked anywhere but at Anders. Simon sat there fiddling with his matchbox. Outside and around them the sea breathed, apparently asleep. Anders sat still, twitching from time to time as yet another horrible picture pierced his breast like a cold blade.

  Something inside him had known this. Perhaps he had actually remembered what had happened with Sigrid, somewhere right at the back of his mind. Or perhaps he simply knew. That a part of Maja existed inside him, and another part existed…somewhere else. Somewhere where she couldn’t reach him and he couldn’t reach her.

  Anna-Greta broke the silence. She turned to Anders and said, ‘When your great-grandfather was little, there was a man in the western part of the village who lost his wife to the sea. He would never talk about how it had happened. But he never stopped searching for her.’