Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  ‘Like what?’

  Anna-Greta nodded towards his jacket pocket. ‘With the box.’

  The movement of the forefinger became more frantic, and the palm of his hand started to hurt. Simon looked out of the window and saw that the rocky islets had become islands. They had just passed Söderarm. In an hour or so they would arrive in Kappellskär. The finger stopped rubbing and he placed his hands on the table, palms down.

  ‘Well, you see…I gave it to Anders.’

  ‘Gave?’

  ‘Yes, or…handed it over. Passed it on.’

  Anna-Greta frowned and shook her head. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because…’

  Why? Why? Because I’m a coward, because I’m scared, because I’m brave, because Anders…

  ‘Because I thought he might need it.’

  Anna-Greta’s eyes were fixed firmly on his. ‘For what?’

  ‘For…for what he had to do.’

  As Simon had feared, Anna-Greta was lost for words. Her hands dropped to her knees and she gazed open-mouthed out of the window at the islands, which seemed to be spooling past on a slow film. Simon picked up his fork and put a small amount of scrambled egg in his mouth. It tasted of ash. He put down the fork again just as the ship gave a jolt and the egg lurched towards the middle of the plate like an amoeba.

  Anna-Greta looked at him. Simon’s eyes darted away. The ship jolted again, more sharply this time, and when he finally made the supreme effort to look into Anna-Greta’s eyes, he found something else there.

  They looked at each other. The engine’s revs increased and all around them they could hear clinking and clattering as glasses and cutlery trembled and collided. A faint lurch ran through the entire ship; Simon was pushed forward slightly, but didn’t take his eyes off Anna-Greta.

  The engines roared and everything shook. Raised voices from the tables around tried to make themselves heard above the rattling and roaring. There was a more powerful jolt and Simon’s stomach hit the table. Anna-Greta was almost tipped backwards off her chair, but managed to save herself by grabbing hold of the windowsill. They had stopped.

  Their eye contact had been broken during the ship’s last convulsion, and they both looked out of the window. Simon thought he could just make out Ledinge and Gåvasten in the distance, in a sea that had frozen solid. The ship was trapped in a thick layer of ice, and Simon was intelligent enough to understand.

  What have I done? What have I done?

  People had got up from their tables and were conducting loud conversations as they ran to the windows to see what was going on. A man and a woman pushed in at their window, obscuring the view and exclaiming incredulously, ‘This is just ridiculous…this just can’t be happening…how can this happen, we were in open water a few minutes ago…’

  Anna-Greta caught his gaze once more. She nodded slowly and said, ‘So there we are. Whatever will be, will be.’

  She reached out and placed her hand on the table between them, palm upwards. Simon grabbed it and squeezed it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do anything else.’

  ‘No, I realise that,’ said Anna-Greta. She let go of his hand and looked at it as it lay there open on the table. With her forefinger she traced the lines on his palm. ‘I realise that. My husband.’

  A better world

  The screams, the racket of the gulls had become part of normality by the time Anders set foot on the rocks of Gåvasten for the third time in his life. He hardly noticed them, they were merely a carpet of sound, a part of the place, now that he no longer feared them.

  He climbed up from a sea covered in ice on to an islet where it was still autumn. Where there was no snow, and where odd bushes still had leaves, and the tufts of grass in the crevices were green.

  The place he was heading for was on the eastern side of the island. He had seen it the last time he was here, and it was just visible in the background in the photographs, but he hadn’t noticed it until now, hadn’t dared to formulate the thought.

  Standing on the rocks on the eastern side, he couldn’t understand how he had been so blind. Maja had tried to show him with the beads, with the lines in the Bamse comic, and it had been right there in front of him all the time: the flat rocks on the eastern side led steeply down into the sea in a broken step formation.

  But it wasn’t a step formation. It was a flight of steps.

  From where he was standing, the top four steps were clearly visible, disappearing down beneath the ice. He recognised them from the dream-like vision when he had been Maja. They were just about three metres wide, and each step was more than half a metre deep. They were so worn down by the water and wind that you could be forgiven if you didn’t see immediately what they were.

  But it was a flight of steps. Steps leading downwards. Once upon a time, many hundreds of years ago, they must have been completely underwater, but the land elevation had brought them up into the light. Or perhaps they had been there before the ice pressed down the land. Anders stood with his arms wrapped around him and looked down the steps.

  Who goes there?

  He had to use his hands to help him clamber down the first step. These steps had not been built for human beings, or even by human beings, in all likelihood. Who could possibly have carried out this work in prehistoric times under water?

  He moved down another step. It was perhaps slightly less deep than the first one.

  Who?

  Someone or something beyond the scope of his imagination. Once upon a time, long long ago, it had used this route to make its way up and down, but then stopped because it had grown too old or too weak. Or too big. Now only the route remained.

  Another step. And another.

  Anders was standing on the ice at the foot of the visible section of the flight of steps. The sky was teeming with white birds on the edge of his field of vision. He pushed his hand into his trouser pocket and took out the box. Then he sat down on the step above with his feet dangling just above the ice.

  He opened the box and tipped Spiritus into his hand, closing his fingers around the insect in a gentle fist. The knowledge of the water flowed through him, and with it came a fresh insight. He opened his hand again, looked at the black insect, now as thick as his middle finger, writhing around on his palm.

  You belong here.

  The wound in his throat was chafing, and Anders scratched it cautiously as he stared down at the semi-transparent layer of ice. Spiritus was tickling his palm as it sleepily moved around in circles.

  This is where you come from.

  The insect was a part of what was beneath the ice, at the bottom of the steps. Why else would it have turned up on Domarö, a godforsaken—in the true meaning of the word—a godforsaken island in the southern Roslagen archipelago? Because this was where it came from, of course.

  He raised his hand to eye level and studied the black, shining skin, the vestigial segmentation of the body that was like a single small, dark muscle. He breathed on it.

  ‘Are you mine?’ he whispered, but there was no reply. He kept his mouth close to the insect and breathed warm air over it. ‘Are you mine?’

  He allowed a thick blob of saliva to drop, and the insect rolled around, hugging itself like a contented cat in the viscous liquid until its skin shone.

  I know nothing.

  But still he shuffled off the step so that he was standing on the ice once again. He crouched down and touched it with his fingertips, asked it to melt. A layer of water formed on the surface, and the next moment he sank through ten centimetres and was standing on rock.

  The water seeped into his boots, chilling his feet. A semi-circle of open water extended two metres from where he was standing. Through the clear water he was able to glimpse three more steps, disappearing down into the darkness.

  The ice was easily a metre thick at the edge, and Anders’ chest contracted. The power that must be required to cover an entire sea with such thick ice. He felt as if his chest were being compressed b
y strong hands, and he could hardly breathe. He looked up at the sky.

  The birds were going crazy. It seemed as if every single bird was desperate to occupy the space directly above his head, and it was barely possible to distinguish individual bodies among the flapping, screaming lid of feathers and flesh hovering above him.

  He closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the tuft on Bamse’s hat, the tuft Maja used to suck on as she lay there listening to her tapes. The deep sea lay beneath his feet, the birds screamed and yelled above his head. He was standing on the brink of something, and as a little man he was incapable of grasping its proportions.

  Where’s the little man? No sign! Not there! Blood will flow, ho ho ho…

  Ronia the Robber’s Daughter had been on TV and by mistake Maja had happened to see just as the wicked fairies arrived. She had run sobbing out of the room.

  Anders grasped the tuft on Bamse’s hat in his left and, closed his right hand around Spiritus and asked the water to part.

  There was a swell and a slapping around his feet. The water spurted over the edge of the ice in cascades, cold water spattered his face. A V-shaped wedge formed diagonally below him, as if the water had been sucked down into a hole rather than being forced over the edges. However, the wedge was not deep enough to free the next step.

  Part!

  The power from Spiritus flowed like a low-voltage current through his body, down into his feet and out into the water, but nothing happened. He tightened his hand around Spiritus as much as he dared. He knew that the power to achieve what he wanted was there. He just couldn’t quite manage to pass it on. Expelling a breath he let the prayer go, and the water swirled over his feet once more.

  A blob of bird shit plopped on to his head and ran down his forehead. His left arm had been hit too, and a milky white stream of excrement was working its way along his ribbed sleeve. He shook his arm before the shit reached Bamse, wiped his forehead, tipped his head back and yelled, ‘So what am I supposed to do? Tell me, instead of shitting on me! Tell me what to do!’

  The gulls had no answer for him. They tumbled towards each other in a rustle of feathers, still screaming at the top of their little lungs and dropping strands of slimy waste into the water, on to the ice.

  Disgusting. It’s disgusting.

  Anders looked at Spiritus. The insect resembled a lump of excrement as well.

  It should be beautiful. But it’s just revolting.

  The feeling of physical revulsion sank its claws into him, because he knew what the next step was. What he could do to provide the power source with a better connection, create a stronger contact between himself and…the battery.

  It’s a battery. I am a machine and it is a battery. Nothing else.

  His stomach did not accept this argument and curled up, twisting away as if from a threatening blow as Anders moved his right hand towards his mouth. A wave of resistance rose from his frozen feet and up through his body, aiming to stop him, prevent it from happening, protect itself.

  Anders screwed his eyes tight shut and opened his mouth wide, slapped his right hand to his mouth as if he were terrified. Spiritus flew into his mouth and crawled over his tongue. Before he had time to change his mind, before his body had time to come up with any further resistance, he swallowed.

  Making a decision is one thing, seeing it through is something else entirely. The fat, slippery body got stuck before it had gone very far, and his throat closed up, refused to let it go down. Anders swallowed again as Spiritus’ movements tickled his soft palate, threatening to trigger the vomiting that was lying in wait.

  He cupped his hands and scooped up a handful of sea water, tipped it into his mouth and swallowed again. The pressure in his throat eased, and Spiritus slipped down.

  He stood with his arms dangling by his sides and breathed deeply in and out several times. All the sounds around him slowly quietened, and the world in front of his eyes stratified and flickered, as if he were looking at it through layers of cobwebs.

  Then it came.

  Earlier he had felt as if his hand were a remote control; now that feeling spread throughout his whole body. And it wasn’t just that he could exercise control. He was whatever he controlled. When he looked down at the surface of the water, he no longer saw water, he saw what he himself was made of, what he was a part of.

  He ran his hand over his face. It was still there. He pinched his cheek. The skin resisted and it smarted a little. He was a person made of flesh and blood, but a different person. Someone whose body was a space he inhabited. Outside that space he could hear the screaming of the birds, through the windows of his eyes he saw himself, and he was the sea.

  He asked for safe passage for his carrier, and began to make his way down the steps. No water foamed over the edges, it was as if the sea were actually parting, gathering on either side of him, and he walked down the steps between two shimmering walls of water.

  The steps were slippery with seaweed, and the bladder-wrack bubbles popped quietly as he cautiously moved downwards. He slipped and grabbed the step above to save himself.

  It isn’t meant for humans…

  The feeling of being the sea remained, but his former consciousness came to the fore and began to talk through the ease with which he was walking down a flight of steps into the depths.

  It isn’t meant for humans. You’re going to die.

  Yes. But he’d already accepted that, hadn’t he? He didn’t even have enough fuel to take him back to the normal world, he no longer needed fuel. He was going to go down these steps and see where they led. Then there was nothing more.

  Maja.

  He was going to see Maja.

  He had walked down six steps. His left hand closed around the tuft at his hip and brought him even closer to his human body and consciousness. There was the sound of flapping and fighting above his head, and almost all the light disappeared. He turned around.

  Only faint dots of light from the sky penetrated through the furiously fighting block of birds that had crowded down into the passageway to follow him. The flapping of their wings fanned air across his face, and as if the birds’ lungs were being compressed, or the acoustics had altered, all he could hear was whistling and croaking from their throats as they struggled to keep their distance from him, while still following.

  The odd gull was forced out along the edges, passed through the walls of water and was sucked up to the surface. An injured bird dropped two steps away from him, hit the rock and lay still.

  This is impossible…

  Anders asked the water to close slowly around the gulls. The passageway shrank, and the birds hurled themselves up over the edges or dived out into the water, swam a short distance and then rose to the surface. Silence fell. Anders was standing on the sixth step in a bubble of air, and it was as dark as late twilight. He could sense the next step, but nothing more.

  He carried on downwards.

  After seven more steps it was almost completely dark around him. The seaweed and bladder wrack thinned out and disappeared. If he raised his head he could still see the surface up above, dark blue like a summer night sky, but hardly any light penetrated. He kept on going.

  The steps became shallower the deeper he went. When he had covered thirty or forty metres in total darkness, they had the same dimensions as a normal staircase. He had no concept of time or space, he was merely a body moving downwards. To avoid losing contact with himself and being swallowed up by the darkness, he began to count the steps.

  He conjured up the numbers in yellow against the graffiti wall of the darkness. He embellished them with flowery touches and had little animals hopping around them, to fend off the final separation from the essence of himself, a thinking being. He walked. He walked.

  Seventy-nine…eighty…eighty-one…eighty-two…

  He was so busy creating flourishes and colours around his numbers, asserting his humanity in the great darkness, that he didn’t notice when it happened. He was just considering whether t
o have a squirrel or a magpie on the branch sticking out from step eighty-two when he noticed that the steps were no longer heading downwards, but upwards.

  He stopped. Looked around. Pointlessly. He was in total darkness. He could swear he hadn’t reached any kind of landing, any place where the steps leading down had stopped and the steps leading up had begun. At some point the flight of steps had just…changed direction.

  He tried to picture it, to see how such a construction might be possible. He couldn’t do it. The only idea that came close was a flight of steps that turned itself inside out, becoming an upside-down mirror image of itself.

  There is no way back. There are only steps. And they don’t work.

  These were Maja’s words from the dream. Now he understood them. The steps didn’t work. They were all wrong. But he kept on going. Upwards.

  After twenty more steps he could just make out the summer night sky above him. Ten more and it became an ordinary sky, seen through water. The steps had become deep once more, and when he tried to climb up on to the next one he stumbled and banged his knee on the edge.

  He sat down and looked up at the sky. The air in his bubble was beginning to run out, and he asked the water to part all the way up to the surface. The passageway opened up as if he had used unnaturally long arms to draw back a pair of curtains. What he saw made him lower his head in despair.

  No, no, no! All this, and now…

  The windows of Gåvasten lighthouse were glittering in the sunlight far above him. Now he understood what the impossible behaviour of the steps meant. He had been led back to his starting point. Spiritus had allowed him to slip through, but he was not allowed to slip inside. The only thing he had got for his efforts was a sore knee.

  He leaned back against the next step and pulled up his trouser leg. The jagged edge of the step had gashed his skin, and a small amount of blood was seeping out. He grinned scornfully at it and tipped his head back. The sky was clear, and what he could see of the lighthouse over the edge of the rock was shining white. He wondered what would happen if he simply asked the water to close around him. Presumably he wouldn’t die, but there was always that possibility.