Harbour (18 page)

‘Drop the knife,' said Anna-Greta.

Rolf shook his head. Then he very carefully folded up the knife and put it in his pocket. The gun barrels shook as Anna-Greta waved them in the direction of the steamboat jetty.

‘Get out of here! Now!'

Only now did it occur to Simon that he was actually present. That he could take an active role in what was going on. His arm was numb and when he had pulled it towards him he had some difficulty in getting up. He had only got as far as a sitting position when the lawn started moving from side to side like the deck of a boat.

Rolf took a step towards Anna-Greta, and she moved backwards, raising and lowering the gun at the same time.

‘Stop! I'll shoot you!'

‘No,' said Rolf quite simply, and reached for the gun. Anna-Greta backed away still further and the battle was lost. When Rolf once again made a grab for the barrels, she moved them to one side instead of pressing the trigger. Rolf quickly stepped forward and slapped her across the side of the head with the flat of his hand. Anna-Greta fell sideways. The shotgun flew into the hazel bushes and Anna-Greta collapsed in a heap on the grass, whimpering as she pressed a hand to her ear.

As Simon attempted to get to his feet, he heard Marita's voice. ‘Isn't he just incredible?'

Anna-Greta was lying a few metres away, with Rolf leaning over her. Simon's brain wasn't working properly, he couldn't decide whether to try and grab the spade or just hurl himself forwards.

Before had finished thinking it through, he heard a buzzing noise behind him, like some huge insect. There was a click and Rolf went down. Simon got to his feet and saw Johan standing by the lilac arbour with his air rifle in his hands. He was just lowering the gun, and was biting his lower lip.

Rolf got up. A dark spot had appeared on his temple, and a small amount of blood was oozing out. His eyes were crazy and he no longer hesitated, he didn't require any thinking time now. He took out his knife and opened it as he moved towards Johan.

Simon was right behind him, but instead of trying to stop him, he dived into the hazel bushes and grabbed the shotgun. Before he had even got hold of it properly he yelled, ‘Stop, you bastard!' but Rolf took no notice.

Johan had dropped his air gun, which was useless after firing its single shot, and was running up towards the house. Rolf was after him, with the knife in his hand. With a grimace of pain Simon lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, just as Rolf disappeared behind the lilac hedge fifteen metres away.

Simon had never fired a shotgun before, but he knew that the whole point of them was that the shot covers a wide area. He aimed at the lilac hedge and pulled the trigger.

Then a number of things happened in less than a second. There was a deafening bang and the recoil hit Simon so hard that he fell backwards into the hazel bushes, but before he had even begun to fall a hole opened up in the lilac hedge and fragments of leaves flew up like a flock of frightened butterflies. The first hazel twigs were just scratching Simon's back through his shirt as Rolf began to roar.

Simon was still pressing the stock of the shotgun to his shoulder as the branches closed around him and he fell into shimmering greenery. Rolf carried on bellowing. The thicker branches further in stopped Simon falling any further, and he could feel blood on the skin of his back. He clutched the wooden stock and breathed; he stayed where he was and one thought went through his mind in time with his panting breath, in and out:

I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.

It was only a few seconds later, when he had disentangled himself from the branches and saw Anna-Greta sitting with her hands covering her mouth and Marita rocking back and forth that other thoughts began to force their way through:

If I've killed him, if I…

Rolf had stopped roaring. Simon swallowed, but without any saliva.

Thirsty. So bloody thirsty.

A drop of sweat trickled down into his eye, obscuring his vision. He wiped it away and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, Anna-Greta was standing next to him. She was squinting, and looked as if she were in pain. She pointed at the hand holding the butt of the gun and tried to say something, but no words came.

Simon looked at the shotgun. Only now did he discover that there were two triggers one behind the other, one for each barrel. He had only pressed the outer trigger. There was one cartridge left. Anna-Greta nodded and put her hand over her ear. She walked towards the lilac hedge and Simon followed her with the shotgun raised.

Rolf clearly wasn't dead, because he was moving. Quite a lot, in fact. He was hurling himself back and forth on the ground as if he were trying to shake off some invisible nightmare. His jacket was ripped and covered in blood from the left shoulder to halfway down his back on one side. Only some of the shot had hit him. If Simon had fired half a second later, Rolf would probably have been lying completely still right now.

Johan came back hesitantly, approaching the man on the ground as if he were an injured wild animal that might leap up and attack at any moment. Then he walked a long way around the thrashing body and fell into Anna-Greta's arms. She stroked his hair and they stood there in silence just hugging each other for a long time. Then Anna-Greta said, ‘Take your bike and go and fetch Dr Holmström. And Göran.'

Johan nodded and ran off. After thirty seconds he rattled past along the track on his bike. Rolf had settled down and was just lying there clenching and unclenching one fist. Simon still had the shotgun pointing at him, with his index finger resting on the trigger. He felt sick.

This isn't me. This can't be happening to me.

After twenty minutes both the doctor and the police had arrived. Rolf's injuries were not life threatening, just extremely painful. Some fifteen shotgun pellets had penetrated the muscles and tissue in his left shoulder and upper arm around the shoulderblade. He was bandaged provisionally just to stop the bleeding, and the doctor rang for transport. Göran wrote a report that would need to be completed at the police station in Norrtälje. Simon's little finger was put in a splint.

True to form, Marita had vanished, and they later found out that she had managed to catch the tender before anyone started seriously looking for her. Rolf was transported to Norrtälje, and both Göran and Dr Holmström went home, after establishing that they would go to the police station together the following day.

Simon, Anna-Greta and Johan sat in silence in the lilac arbour. The torn leaves in the hedge were the only sign that darkness had abused their hospitality just a couple of hours ago. Just as the slight movement of a finger can release a devastating hail of shot, so an event that lasted no more than five minutes can send its repercussions through days and years to come. It is impossible to ignore the consequences, there is too much to say, and the result would be silence.

Johan was drinking Pommac, Simon was drinking beer and Anna-Greta was drinking nothing. They had all saved each other at different points in the complex web created by one simple act of violence; gratitude and embarrassment were mixed up together, and words were difficult.

Simon fiddled with his bandage and said quietly, ‘I'm sorry. That you both got dragged into all this.'

‘Don't be,' said Anna-Greta. ‘It can't be helped.'

‘No, but I'm still sorry. I apologise.'

When the initial shock had faded they began to talk hesitantly about what had happened. The conversation continued during the afternoon and later up at Anna-Greta and Johan's house, where they ate a simple dinner. Towards nine o'clock a different kind of silence took over, a fundamental exhaustion of speech. They just couldn't bear to listen to the sound of their own voices any longer, and Simon went back down to his cottage.

He sat down at the kitchen table with the crossword in order to distract his mind, and for once he cut it out, filled in his name and address and put it in an envelope. The summer evening was still lilac outside his window when he had finished, and he regretted turning down the invitation to sleep on the kitchen sofa up in the big house. The day's events were turning over and over in his mind. Until today the future had been dismal but predictable, he had been able to see himself plodding on through the years. Now he couldn't see anything anymore.

Just as the recoil from the gun had thrown him backwards, so he had been thrown outside himself at the moment he fired the shot. It wasn't the action itself that frightened him—that had been born of panic and necessity—but what had happened inside him.

He had seen Rolf's head explode as he pressed the trigger, in fact he had fully intended to blow Rolf's head to bits. When Anna-Greta had pointed to the gun afterwards and Simon had realised that there was one cartridge left, his immediate impulse had been to shoot Marita as well. To execute her. Blow her head off. Get rid of her.

He hadn't done any of those things. But he had thought it, and had experienced a wild desire to do it. Perhaps he would have, if there hadn't been any witnesses. He had been hurled into a different version of himself, someone who wanted to kill whatever stood in his way. It was not a pleasant thought, yet at the same time it was a very pleasant thought: he could be someone different from now on, if he wanted to be.

But who? Who am I? Who will I become?

His thoughts continued to go around and around after he had gone to bed. He was ashamed of himself. For what he had done and what he had not done, for what he thought and who he was. He tried to make himself think about the forthcoming performances in NÃ¥ten, how he was going to get through them with a broken finger, but the images were washed away and replaced by others.

After a few hours he fell into an uneasy sleep, which after a short while was disturbed by banging, thumping, knocking. Just knocking. He got up quickly and looked around the room. Somebody had been knocking. Somebody wanted to come in. There was still a hint of light in the sky, and he could see the silhouette of a head outside the bedroom window.

He breathed out and opened the window. Anna-Greta was standing outside with her hands clasped over her breast. She was wearing a white nightdress.

‘Anna-Greta?'

‘May I come in? For a while?'

Simon instinctively reached out to help her over the windowsill, but realised how stupidly he was behaving.

‘I'll open the door,' he said.

Anna-Greta went around the side of the house and Simon opened the front door to let her in.

Driftwood

The dream about Elin

For a good two hours Simon and Anna-Greta had taken it in turns to tell their story. Anders' knees creaked as he got to his feet and stretched his arms up towards the ceiling. Outside the window the weather was neither worse nor better. Small raindrops caressed the pane, and the wind whispered among the trees without any great hurry. A walk seemed possible, and he needed some exercise.

Simon took the tray out into the kitchen and Anna-Greta brushed crumbs off the table. Anders looked at her wrinkled hands, imagining them holding the shotgun. ‘What a story.'

‘Yes,' said Anna-Greta. ‘But it's only a story.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Exactly what I say.' Anna-Greta straightened up with the crumbs in her hand. ‘We can never know anything about what has happened in the past, because it has turned into stories. Even for those who are involved.'

‘So…it didn't happen like that?'

Anna-Greta shrugged. ‘I don't know. Not any more.'

Anders followed her into the kitchen where Simon was carefully stacking the best china in the dishwasher. Anna-Greta brushed the crumbs off her hands into the bin and got out the dishwasher powder. They moved around each other with a manifest ease. The dance of everyday life, worn smooth over the years. Anders looked at them in a kind of double exposure.

The smuggler king's daughter and the magician. Loading the dishwasher.

Whether their story was true or not, it had stirred things up in his mind. New associations must be made, new sequences of images must be put together. He felt a physical weariness as the synapses prepared the way for all these new connections.

‘I'm going for a walk,' he said.

Anna-Greta gestured towards the fridge. ‘Aren't you going to take some food with you?'

‘Later. Thanks for the coffee. And the story.'

Anders stepped out on to the porch, lit a cigarette and strolled down the garden path. He passed the path to Simon's house and stopped, taking a deep drag.

My dad ran along here with his air gun. And without his air gun.

The gun was still around in a cupboard at the Shack, and he'd tried it once or twice when he was little. But the barrel was loose and the pressure was so poor that the pellet often got stuck in the bore. He'd wondered why his father kept it. Now he knew.

Leaves were rustling or falling all around him, and a light drizzle was dampening his hair as he carried on up towards the shop. The tender was just reversing away from the jetty after dropping off a small group of schoolchildren. A little girl of about seven came running along the track towards him, her school bag cheerfully thudding against her back. It was Maja—

not Maja

—who had come back at long last—

it isn't Maja.

—and he had to restrain himself from dropping to his knees and scooping her up in his arms.

Because it could have been Maja. Every child aged around seven or eight could have been Maja. The thought had ground him down into despair during the first six months after her disappearance. All the children who could have been Maja, but weren't. Thousands of eager, happy or sad faces, small bodies on the move, and not one of them was
the right one
. His little girl, and only his little girl, had been removed. No longer existed.

He had loved her so much. It should have been someone else who disappeared. Someone who wasn't loved. The girl ran past him and he turned, watched her rucksack with its picture of Bamse the Bear grow smaller as she headed for the southern part of the village.