Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Exhausted, he blinked at the bright light up above and decided to wait a while after all. It was beautiful anyway. There was nothing to hope for, but…

  The gulls.

  Where had the gulls gone? His field of vision was limited, but at least one bird should have been visible. But nothing was moving across the sky except thin veils of cloud, and he could hear nothing of the birds.

  He got to his feet and climbed up the next step. And the next. He had to heave himself up the last step, and once again he was standing on the rocks of Gåvasten.

  It was late spring.

  The air was pleasantly mild, and flowers were growing in every crevice. Mayweed and chives danced in a gentle breeze coming off the sea. The lighthouse glowed chalk-white beneath an afternoon sun that was just warm enough. A wonderful day.

  Anders looked around. No gulls on the water, no gulls in the sky. Not a single bird as far as the eye could see. His woolly jumper was making him itchy in the warmth, and he pulled it off and knotted it around his waist, over the top of Maja’s snowsuit.

  He wandered dumbstruck over the rocks. When he caught sight of Simon’s boat, neatly pulled up on to the shore instead of lying abandoned out at sea, he sat down and rested his chin on his hands.

  Where am I? When am I?

  He squinted into the sun, sparkling on the sea, and studied the boat. It didn’t look the same, somehow. It looked newer, or…healthier. There were no scratches or cracks in the hull, and the engine cowling shone. Anders was seized by a sudden sense of unease, and turned his head to the south.

  Domarö was exactly where it should be. A tangled thickening of the horizon, a brushstroke of fir trees against the pale sky. But it was just the same as with the boat, it somehow looked more…newly made. Healthier. Stronger.

  He felt a movement in his stomach, like the first perceptible movements of a foetus. He stuck his hand inside his shirt, placed it over his stomach and, with a feeling of disgust, realised that the black larva in there was living its own life. They had moved apart and were no longer one and the same. He was Anders, and an insect was crawling around inside his stomach.

  He stood up and walked down to the boat. The mooring rope lay neatly coiled up on the prow; the freshly varnished oars shone. He pushed off and the boat slipped easily off the pebbles as he climbed in.

  He pulled the string and coolant sprayed out through the little hole beneath the cowling. He felt the engine. It was vibrating. It was running. It just wasn’t making any noise. He engaged the gear lever and the boat moved smoothly forward. He accelerated and the boat moved more quickly, still without a sound.

  He turned the prow towards Domarö and picked up speed. The mild air should have been cold against his face as he moved faster, but it maintained exactly the same pleasant temperature whether he increased his speed or slowed down. Everything was perfect, and the fear inside him grew stronger and stronger.

  The trip across to Domarö passed with incomprehensible speed, as if the distance had contracted while he was travelling. After no more than a minute he swung in alongside one of the smaller jetties next to the steamboat jetty, tied up the boat with the soft, white cotton rope and climbed out.

  The boathouses were prettily painted Falun red, and looked as if they were made of velvet in the soft afternoon light. Anders looked around and noticed someone up on the steamboat jetty, with their back turned towards him.

  He walked along the shoreline and when he looked up in the direction of the village he could see that the shop was open and the pennants advertising ice cream were fluttering gently. Giant Cornet, Pear Split. Neither of those was available nowadays, as far as he knew. Someone was standing up there studying the advertising posters.

  MINCE 7.95/KG, GHERKINS 2.95/KG.

  I know what this is, thought Anders, as he climbed up on to the steamboat jetty and went over to the person standing with his back to him. I know where I am.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Anders, and thought he had uttered the words only in his mind, as they didn’t come out of his mouth. The person in front of him was a man dressed in blue jeans and a checked shirt, not unlike the one he himself was wearing. The man did not react to the inaudible words. Anders moved closer.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Anders felt at his lips, licked his index finger. Yes, his mouth was there, his tongue was there. It was so quiet here. Not a sound from machines or voices, no birdsong from the trees.

  When the man still showed no sign of hearing, Anders walked around so that he would be able to look him in the eye or give him a shake. He passed the man’s side and his stomach flipped over, everything flickered before his eyes as the whole thing turned into its opposite.

  Anders was standing where the man had just been standing, staring at the man’s back as he began to walk up towards the shop. Anders ran up to the man and around him, and the same thing happened again. Something switched over in his head, and he was following a man on his way down to the jetty, once again able to see only the man’s back and the back of his head.

  He stopped. The man resumed his previous position down on the jetty, gazing out to sea. Anders turned around and walked up to the shop. He half-expected to see his own herring box up there, his own hand-written sign.

  Because it was that day. The day when a man had walked out into the water, and Cecilia had given him a lift on her bike. The best moment of his life. The same weather, the same signs, the same feeling. Apart from the fear bubbling inside him.

  You want me to stay. You want me here. You’re showing me what you think I want to see. My heaven. That’s what you’re doing.

  The man who had been looking at the adverts was just walking away. On the village road to the south, a woman in an old-fashioned summer dress was also walking away. A woman in a skirt made of rough homespun fabric with a scarf around her head was standing on a slope picking lily-of-the-valley, facing away from him.

  No one is seeing the same thing.

  The woman picking flowers belonged neither to this century nor the last one. Presumably she couldn’t see a shop, and she certainly couldn’t see any adverts for ice cream. She might possibly be seeing the bakery that Anders knew had once stood on the spot where the shop was nowadays. In her eyes the steamboat jetty was probably no more than a fairly small wooden structure.

  Nowadays. What is nowadays? Where are we?

  Anders closed his eyes and rubbed them so hard that he squashed the eyeballs back into his head. When he opened them, he saw the same thing as before. A beautiful landscape, a beautiful day, and people moving away or with their backs turned towards him.

  He kicked at the gravel and little stones rolled away without making a sound. He took a deep breath and yelled ‘Maja!’, but didn’t. The air came out of him, his vocal cords vibrated, but nothing could be heard. The silence was so dense that it deafened him, as if he were deep under water.

  Which is exactly where I am.

  He turned on to the southern village road and walked towards the ramblers’ hostel. Like all the buildings on this version of Domarö, it was lovelier than ever. It wasn’t that it looked newly built. Brand new buildings are seldom particularly attractive. No, it was more the fact that everything was so perfectly aged that it merely emphasised the beauty of the building.

  Skansen. The Swedish folk museum.

  Something along those lines. Every building, every object, every plant looked as if it was part of an exhibition. As if they represented something rather than actually being something. Themselves. Lifesize models.

  A woman in a white dress with black spots and a man in trousers, a waistcoat and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up were playing croquet in the hostel garden.

  The mallets hit the wooden balls silently, inaudibly, and they rolled through the hoops or past the hoops. Apart from the lack of sounds, the only strange thing about this scene was that the man and woman never looked at each other and were never facing him. The match continued until the woman’s ball hit the wooden pe
g at the end of the course.

  The man and the woman picked up their balls without attempting to say anything to one another, and turned back towards the hostel as if in a choreographed pantomime, where the only requirement was that their eyes must never meet.

  Just as the man’s body turned towards the hostel, towards Anders, he felt that powerful surge in his chest and found himself standing at the bottom of the steps watching the man and woman walk up them, open the door and disappear inside the building.

  It’s just me.

  Everyone else on board this unreal island was caught up in the pantomime, and was behaving exactly as they should. Only he was a deviation, a disturbance that Anders had to be moved around with force so that the dance would not be interrupted, or collapse.

  It must be that way.

  If all the people who were walking around here really were seeing different things, different worlds, then it was also essential that they never looked at each other, because then they would see something different, and the illusion that was being presented only to them would shatter.

  The narrow gravel track leading down to the Shack was edged with lily-of-the-valley. Anders crouched down and grabbed a bunch, stuck his nose into them. Nothing. There were no smells here either. He put one of the poisonous berries in his mouth and chewed. Nothing. He could feel the berry on his tongue, so that sense was still intact, but there was no taste.

  He came out onto the rocks and there stood the Shack, just as in the other world.

  No…

  Anders closed one eye and looked along the length of the straight pine tree. The house was no longer crooked and warped. He had always thought the house looked ugly with its uneven slant, wished he could do something about it. Now he had his wish. The house was straight, and of all the things he had seen so far, this frightened him the most. The fact that the Shack was no longer the Shack. It was a well-constructed summer cottage situated in the most beautiful location.

  Cautiously he walked up to the door and opened it. A colony of fly pupae hatched in his chest and began to fly around, searching for a way out and making his chest quiver inside. It was no longer the day when Cecilia had given him a lift. The interior of the Shack came from the time when he and Cecilia had lived here and been happier than ever.

  Because that’s what I want it to be.

  Trembling, he walked across the rag rug Cecilia had bought for ten kronor at an auction, or the image of it. Everything he could see was taken from inside his own head. He walked into the living room, and as he noticed that the door leading to the bedroom was ajar, there came the first sound he had heard in this place: an irregular ticking that seemed to be coming from inside his ears.

  He put his hand over his mouth and realised his teeth were chattering. Not even this silence could swallow internal sounds. He crept across the floor of the living room, even though creeping was meaningless here.

  The ticking changed to an agitated knocking as he reached the door and looked in.

  There she was.

  On the floor next to her bed sat Maja, digging into the bucket of beads. In front of her lay small piles of different coloured beads which she was busy sorting. He heard her humming to herself without actually hearing it. He knew she always hummed when she was preoccupied with something.

  A few strands of her thin brown hair lay across the back of her neck, some were tucked behind her slightly protruding ears. She was barefoot, and had on the blue velour tracksuit she had been wearing under her red snowsuit.

  Anders’ legs gave way and he fell silently and helplessly to the floor. The back of his head hit the thick floorboards, and flashes of white seared his retinas. Before the flower of pain had time to come to full bloom, he raised his head so that he could carry on looking, afraid that the image would be ripped from his grasp, torn away from his eyes if he lost concentration for even a second.

  The pain filled his skull, but Maja was still there. His head throbbed as he turned over so that he was lying on his stomach, with his face only two metres from her back. The small fingers picked out the beads, sorting them neatly one by one into the right pile.

  I am here. She is here. I am home.

  For a long time he just lay there looking at her as the headache eased. His teeth were no longer chattering. He had travelled such a long way to see exactly this. And now she was sitting there, two metres away from him.

  And he couldn’t reach her.

  ‘Maja?’ he said. There was no sound. She didn’t react.

  He wriggled across the floor, over the threshold until he was right next to her, he could see the milk stain on the knee of her tracksuit. He sat up and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  He felt the soft curve beneath the fabric, not much bigger than an egg. He stroked her shoulder, enjoying the sensation in his hand, and squeezed gently as silent tears poured down his face. He stroked her upper arm, and the tears ran into his mouth. They tasted of salt. They were coming from him.

  But she didn’t turn around. She didn’t know he was there. He was just a pair of mute, weeping eyes, watching her.

  ‘Sweetheart. Maja, sweetheart, little one, I’m here now. Daddy’s here. I’m with you. You’re not on your own anymore.’

  He hugged her back, rested his cheek on the back of her neck and carried on weeping. She should have turned around, she should have complained: Daddy, your stubble’s all scratchy and I’m getting wet, but nothing happened. As far as she was concerned he didn’t exist.

  He sat like that until the tears dried up, until he could weep no more. He let go of her and shuffled half a metre backwards, letting his gaze roam over her back, the contours of her spine protruding beneath the material.

  I will sit here forever. When she gets up, I will follow her. Like a ghost. I am with her, as she was with me.

  He closed his eyes. He felt brave enough to close his eyes now.

  Would she experience it the same way? Like the vague, elusive presence of another person, following her wherever she went? Would it frighten her? Could she be frightened? Could he have any effect on her at all?

  With his eyes still closed he reached out and touched her back. It was there. The feel of the soft velour against the palm of his hand was there, even though he had his eyes closed.

  Can I…

  He shuffled forward and to the right as his hand slid over her back, over her shoulder. He moved around her on his knees, still with his eyes closed, felt her collarbone beneath his fingertips. He sat directly in front of her and followed the line of her throat up to her face. There it was. Her face. The round cheeks, the snub nose, the lips that moved as she hummed.

  He opened his eyes.

  His hand was resting on the back of Maja’s head, and he was sitting exactly where he had been sitting before he started shuffling around. He had run his fingers over her lips and she hadn’t noticed a thing. He didn’t exist. He wasn’t even a ghost to her.

  He leaned back, stretched out on the floor and looked up at the ceiling, which was not stained with smoke or marked by cobwebs, but was a beautiful white ceiling of carefully laid tongue and groove. Exactly the kind of ceiling he liked best.

  He could sit next to Maja, he could look at her and touch her, but he couldn’t reach her. Their worlds were not permitted to meet.

  But she came to me. I knew she was there. She came to me. Through the water.

  Everything within him became still. The disappointment and frustration faded away. He tried to see it, tried to think.

  She came to me…

  He raised his head and looked at the little blue figure next to the bed who had now picked up a heart-shaped bead tile and was busy pressing beads into place. Maja.

  But this was not Maja. The person who was Maja, who had memories and pictures and who could talk, had come to him, had somehow managed to escape into the sea. What was sitting by the bed was only her body, or that part of her that was necessary to enable him to see what he wanted to see.

  Maja?r />
  There was a point where both worlds collided and mingled together. That point was himself, since she existed within him. He closed his eyes and searched for her.

  We’re not playing hide and seek any more, little one. You can come out. Out you come! The game is over, it’s safe now.

  He concentrated on what had happened with Elin. The thing that had been in the bucket, that had been forced out of her and had to be returned to the sea. Somewhere inside him was something similar. He called to it now, searched in the darkness of his own body.

  Where are you…where are you…

  Like the silvery flash of a fish in the net far below the surface, he caught sight of it. It was dispersed throughout his entire body, but he approached it from all directions at the same time and made it come together, gather into a formless, hovering mass that he could take hold of and localise with his consciousness. It was in his stomach now, circling around the insect down there that was floundering and thrashing about in a panic.

  Everything around him was gone, was unreal. His strength and his thoughts were focused on one single thing: holding on to something intangible. As he moved towards Maja’s body on the floor, his eyes closed, he had to divert a minute amount of his attention to his own movements, and the other thing threatened to slip from his grasp like the eel had slipped through his father’s fingers.

  He pushed away the eel, couldn’t think about the eel, couldn’t think about his own knees as they slid across the floor, couldn’t hope or wish for anything as his fingers once again moved over Maja’s body until he was sitting right in front of her. He still hadn’t lost his grip, she was still there in the darkness in his hands, in his mind as he leaned forward and placed his mouth over hers.

  Come. Out.

  He pushed it in front of him, up from his stomach, up through his throat, and he really could feel it like a little body, a stream of silky liquid sliding over his tongue, out through his lips and into her mouth.