Harbour (19 page)

It should have been you.

He had given up teacher training when Maja disappeared, and it was just as well. He would never be able to work with children, not when his feelings were so divided. His first impulse was to love and embrace them all, his second was to loathe them because they were still alive.

There were already a number of bags hanging on hooks on the wall of the shop, along with the odd new or old mailbox and a couple of buckets with lids, with the box numbers marked in ink. Anders made a mental note to put something there in a day or two, before the photos came back.

The steamboat jetty lay empty and the white geese were running across the sea without taking off, the wind was tearing at the plastic bags on the wall of the shop. There was an irregular squeaking noise. Anders listened hard to try and identify the sound. It was coming from the steps leading up to the shop, or behind them.

He went over and when he saw the source of the noise he couldn't understand why he suddenly felt so afraid. He took a step backwards, gasping for breath, the hair on his arms standing on end. The GB ice cream man was standing there.

The GB-man was a plastic figure mounted on springs on a block of cement, and the wind made him swing backwards and forwards, squeaking. He usually stood outside the shop, but had been put away for the season. Anders looked at his grinning face and his pulse rate shot up, his breathing ragged. He cupped his hands over his mouth and tried to take deep breaths.

It's only the GB-man. He isn't dangerous.

That's what he'd said. To Maja. It was Maja who had been afraid of the GB-man, not him.

It had started as a joke. Maja had been afraid of swans. Not the swans on the sea, which might have been natural. Even Anders had a certain respect for them. No, she was afraid that a swan would come in through the door or the window when she was in bed.

Since Maja was always pleased to see the GB-man—which meant there might be an ice cream in the offing—Anders tried to make a joke of the whole thing by saying, ‘Swans aren't dangerous, they're nothing to be afraid of. They're no more dangerous than…the GB-man. And you're not lying here worrying that the GB-man might come in, are you?'

Maja continued to be afraid of swans, but she became even more afraid of the GB-man. It had never occurred to her before: the fact that the GB-man might be lying under her bed, or come creeping in through a chink in the door with that smile plastered on his face. Anders came to regret that he had ever mentioned it. After that night he always had to open her window to check that the GB-man wasn't standing outside. Maja's bed was very low, there wasn't really room for a lion under there. But there was room for the GB-man, since he was completely flat.

The GB-man was everywhere. He was in the sea when she wanted to go for a swim, he was hiding in the shadows. He was fear incarnate.

Now he was standing here squeaking behind the steps to the shop, and Anders was filled with a horror he couldn't pin down. He forced himself to stare the GB-man in the eye, despite the fact that he was so scared he just wanted to run away.

Home. Wine.

But presumably alcohol was to blame for the whole thing. His nerves were shot. Oversensitive. Could suddenly feel scared of just about anything. But he steeled himself. Wasn't going to go home and start drinking. Was going to stare at the GB-man until the bastard looked away or didn't seem dangerous any more.

The GB-man was swinging to and fro as if getting ready to pounce. Anders didn't take his eyes off him. They weighed each other up. A shudder ran down Anders' spine.

Someone is watching me.

He spun around and took a couple of steps so that he wouldn't be standing too close to the swinging plastic figure behind his back. The enemy came from all directions. Anders quickly glanced over the jetty, the boathouses, the gravelled area, the sea. A lone gull was struggling with the air currents, seemingly incapable of forcing its way down to the surface of the water. There was no sign of anyone.

But someone is watching me.

Someone had been watching him as he stood there shaking in front of the GB-man, someone was still watching him. The only thing missing was a pair of eyes, or more than one pair. But they were nowhere to be found.

Someone with no eyes is watching me.

With his heart pounding he left the shop and set off along the track to Kattudden. The feeling faded as he got further away. He could still hear the squeaking of the GB-man in the distance, but the sense of being watched had gone. Anders walked on quickly, passing the closed-down school, the mission house, which was as good as closed down, and the alarm bell in its white wooden tower.

After a few hundred metres his heart was still pounding, but by now it was because he was so unfit, not because he was afraid. He slowed down. Once he got in among the fir trees he stopped at the foot of the narrow path leading up to the rock, the erratic boulder. His hands were still shaking as he took out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep, greedy drag.

What was that?

A strong sense of something unpleasant remained in his body, and he wished he had some wine with which to wash it away. The cigarette in his damp fingers tasted mouldy; he stubbed it out among the fir needles strewn across the track. He didn't feel well. Something was shifting inside his body, and not in a good way.

He took a step towards the path up to the rock, then changed his mind. He didn't want to go up there. The path belonged to him and Cecilia, and he and Cecilia no longer existed, so…

Memories. Bloody memories.

Everything on Domarö was steeped in memories. If not his memories, someone else's. If only it were possible to get rid of all the memories. The path wound its way into the forest like a whispered promise of something else. Another place or another time.

I need to get away from here.

Anders followed the route of the path with his finger, drifting into a wave, a farewell.

I need to be here. And I need to get away.

He could see it with perfect clarity. That was the whole problem, in all its impossible simplicity. As he set off towards Kattudden again, a solution came to him. A practical solution for conquering his constant fear and anxiety.

Anders continued through the forest and passed Holger's house, which lay there brooding in the darkness. He worked out the details of his plan for the future, and there was nothing left unaccounted for, nothing that couldn't be solved. When he emerged from the forest his planning was complete, and he was breathing more easily.

Kattudden was desolate at this time of year. The houses were not insulated against the winter weather, and in most cases they were intolerably small without the access to the great outdoors that you had in summer.

Anders had spent a large part of his summers at Kattudden. Almost all his friends had been the children of summer visitors, and it was in rooms or cottages here that he had drunk spirits for the first time, watched forbidden horror films and listened to Madonna. Among other things.

Now it was no more than a deserted holiday village in the autumn gloom, and a pretty ugly one at that. Most of the houses were section-built. Ready-made packages delivered from the mainland on Kalle Gripenberg's barge. Up with the walls, on with the roof, in with the windows and doors and then off to the cottage to have fun! The kind of houses that tend to age without dignity—although most of them were still better built than the Shack.

Anders strolled along the track down to the jetties, looking at the abandoned traces of summer, the covered garden furniture. In one garden he saw a half-finished game of Jenga just standing there, as if the owners had suddenly realised they had to set off for the city immediately, and had simply dropped what they were doing.

There was a light on in one of the houses closest to the jetties. Anders had been inside that house many times. Elin's house. It must be ten years since he had actually seen Elin, almost twenty since they had stopped hanging out together. Until a few years ago he had seen her frequently on television and in the press, as had half the population of Sweden. Since then, nothing.

The house was one of the better ones in the area, with its own well and its own jetty. Unlike most of the others it had been built on-site, and Anders remembered how the hollow sound present in all the other houses was missing from Elin's. The door he was knocking on now was quite solid, with a doorknocker and everything.

He waited. When nothing happened he knocked again. He heard footsteps inside, and a voice said, ‘Who is it?'

It could hardly be Elin's voice, this one belonged to an older person, so Anders said, ‘My name is Anders. I was looking for Elin. Elin Grönwall.'

It was only when he said her name out loud that he remembered.
Why
they had stopped hanging out. Why they had all stopped hanging out, why the summers and their childhood had ended.

Elin. Joel.

He had managed to forget. An impulse had made him knock on the door, but now he was grateful that Elin wasn't at home, that he didn't have to see her. He was just about to leave when the door opened. Anders attempted a smile, but it died away the moment he saw the person who opened the door.

If it hadn't been for the more recent magazine covers and the pictures on the gossip pages, he would never have recognised the woman who had been his friend long ago, and if he hadn't known her since she was a child, he would never have recognised the woman from the magazine covers.

What have they done to her?

He didn't know who ‘they' were, but it was impossible to imagine that anyone would have done this to their appearance voluntarily. Anders managed to hitch up the corners of his mouth a fraction.

‘Hi.'

‘Hi.'

Even Elin's voice had changed. When she was seventeen she had adopted a babyish voice that had appealed to certain boys at the time, and which had later been ridiculed in the press. Now her voice sounded deeper and rougher. The voice of an older person, and that particular change was actually an improvement.

Anders couldn't say what he was thinking, so he said, ‘I was just passing and I saw the light was on, and I thought…'

‘Come in.'

The house smelled almost exactly the same as it had done when he was young. It didn't feel as if there was anyone else there. Anders had expected the person who had Elin under their thumb would be around.

‘Can I get you anything?' she asked. ‘Coffee? Wine?'

‘Wine would be nice, thank you.'

Anders looked up as he answered, but immediately looked down again. It was difficult to look at her. He concentrated on undoing his shoelaces and Elin disappeared into the kitchen.

What has she done?

She had been pretty when she was young, she'd had her pick of the boys. In between
Big Brother
and the centrefolds, she had had surgery on her breasts and her lips, turning herself into a classic bimbo. One of those individuals who circulate between photo opportunities and parties and scandals. A night on the town followed by the full story; another relationship break-up followed by the full story. Slap the make-up on a bit thicker each time it all goes south.

It's easy to see how it takes its toll, how the person behind the mask slowly becomes hardened—the smile grows rigid, the skin grows stiff and numb—until all that remains is a shining, fossilised shell surrounding an empty space. How glamour loses out to gravity.

But this still didn't explain Elin's transformation. She hadn't just aged, she had
remodelled herself
into something far worse than anything time could create. In some way, for some reason she had made herself ugly.

The picture window in the kitchen looked out over Kattholmen, and despite the cloud both the tiles and stainless steel worktops were bathed in light from the sky and the sea. Everything was as clear as in a photograph. Anders sat down with his back to the window while Elin filled his glass with Gato Negro from a cask. They raised their glasses to each other and drank. Anders made an effort not to gulp.

‘How are you?' he asked.

Elin ran her finger over the cat on the wine cask. ‘We used to spend whole evenings sitting here, didn't we? When Mum and Dad were out.'

‘Yes. And nights too. Later on.'

Elin nodded, still following the contours of the cat with her finger. As she wasn't looking at him, Anders plucked up the courage to study her face.

Her nose, which had been slender and straight, was now twice as big and flattened. Her chin, which had been firm, quite prominent and somewhat square, was now pointed and receding, so that it became part of her throat. Her high cheekbones and dimples had disappeared, and her lips…

Those lips that had pouted in so many close-ups, topless glamour shots and full-length shots, and which had been desirable even before the silicon implants, had now been compressed into two narrow lines that did no more than mark where her mouth began and ended, if that.

She had bags under her eyes that would have looked unnatural on a woman twenty years older, and the baffling thing was that in the clinical brightness of the kitchen Anders could see the marks of badly healed scars beneath her eyes. As if she had had surgery on the bags. As if they had been worse at some point.

He took a large gulp of his wine, almost half the glass, and when he realised what he was doing it was too late, he could hardly spit it out, so he swallowed it. Elin was looking at him, and he couldn't interpret her expression. It was impossible to read her, just as it would be impossible to read a book that had been torn to pieces.

Time for small talk.

Time for him to pick up the thread and chat about all the times they had sat here, everything they had done all those years ago, and he wouldn't mention her face or the boathouse on Kattholmen where everything had come to an end.