Harbour (57 page)

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.'

Anna-Greta pointed to the east.

‘Do you know about the wreck? On the rocks on Ledinge? There were bits left when I was young, but it's all gone now. That was his boat. I don't know what he did to…annoy it. But at any rate his boat was found there eventually. Way inland, up on a hill. Smashed to pieces.'

‘Sorry,' said Simon. ‘Did you say he was from the
western
part of the village?'

‘Yes,' said Anna-Greta. ‘That's what I'm getting at. His house and all the houses around it…disappeared. A storm came from the west. And as you know perfectly well: storms don't come from the west, from the mainland. It's not possible. But this one did. It came in the night, blew up to hurricane force in a moment. Eight houses were… smashed to kindling. Five people died. Three of them were children who didn't get away in time.'

She uttered the last sentences with her gaze firmly fixed on Anders. ‘Plus the man who set out in the first place. The one who started it all.' When Anders didn't say anything she added, ‘And you know what happened to Domarö even further back in the past. We told you that yesterday.'

Anders grabbed the bottle and took another couple of swigs. He didn't respond. Anna-Greta's face was distorted into an expression somewhere between sympathy and rage—more of a grimace, really.

‘I understand how you feel,' she said. ‘Or at least…I can guess. But it's dangerous. Not only for you. For everyone who lives here.' She reached across the table and placed her hand on the back of Anders' hand, which was ice cold. ‘I know this sounds terrible, but…I saw you standing looking at the anchor yesterday. In Nåten. There
are
many people who have drowned, who have disappeared…naturally, if I can put it like that. Maja could have been one of them. You
could
look at it like that. And forgive me for saying this, but…you
have
to look at like that. For your own sake. And everyone else's.'

The handover (we are secret)

Anders was sitting on the edge of the bed in the guest room. Among all the pictures that had flashed through his mind during the course of the evening, there was one that wouldn't go away, that left him no peace.

She hasn't got her snowsuit.

He had brought it up from the kitchen and hung it carefully over the back of the wooden chair by the window. Now he had it in his arms as he rocked back and forth.

She'll be freezing, wherever she is.

If he could only dress her in her snowsuit, if he could only do that. He caressed the slightly worn fabric, the patch with Bamse and the jars of honey.

Simon and Anna-Greta had gone to bed an hour ago. Anders had offered to sleep on the sofa downstairs if they…wanted to be alone on their wedding night, if they didn't want anyone nearby. The offer had been met with an assurance that it was absolutely fine to have someone nearby, that as far as the wedding night was concerned, this was a night like any other. A quiet night.

Anders hugged the snowsuit, torn between two worlds. A normal world, where his daughter had drowned two years ago and become one of those lost at sea, a world where you could talk about sleeping on the sofa and receive an indulgent reply, where people got married and put on a buffet.

And then there was the other world. The one where Domarö lay in the arms of dark forces that held the island in an iron grip. Where you had to watch every step and be prepared to be torn away from relationships at any moment. So that not everything will disappear.

Bamse, Bamse, Bamse…

That was probably why Maja had always liked the stories about Bamse so much. There were problems, there were baddies and there were those who were stupid. But it was never
really
dangerous. There was never any real doubt about how you ought to behave. Everybody knew. Even Croesus Vole. He was a baddie because he was a baddie, not because he was splintered and anxious.

And Bamse. Always on the side of good. Protector of the weak, unfailingly honest.

But he really loves fighting…

Anders snorted. Bamse was much more interesting in Maja's version. A bear who means well, but can't help getting into a fight as soon as he gets the chance.

Just like Maja.

Yes, perhaps. Perhaps it was because she broke the songs that she broke things as well. They had to become splintered, to become like her. But more interesting.

Anders took out one of the Bamse comics he had brought with him and found that the story was ridiculously appropriate for what was going on. Little Leap wins a holiday in a ski resort. The hotel turns out to be haunted. The ghost seems to be after Little Leap, but Shellman understands, as always.

He builds a machine that makes a Little Leap costume drop down over the invisible ghost. The ghost sees himself in the mirror and stops being horrible. He wasn't after Little Leap at all. He just wanted to be like him.

Anders felt something switch off inside his head while he was reading the story; he came back to himself only when he put the comic down.

I am the costume. The apparition.

He wanted to sleep. He wanted Maja to take over and give him some kind of guidance. Before he undressed he placed the chair next to the bed. On the chair he placed a pen and an open notepad. Then he drank three gulps of water, got undressed, climbed into bed and snapped his eyes shut.

It didn't take many minutes of keeping his eyes screwed tightly shut to realise that he was wide awake. There was absolutely no chance of falling asleep, however much he wanted to. He sat up and leaned back against the wall.

What shall I do? What can I do?

The paper on the chair glowed white, and his eyes were drawn towards it. The clarity of his vision shifted. He was seeing in a different way. For a fraction of a second he managed to think:
I am seeing through my eyes
, and then he was no longer a part of himself.

A creaking sound brought him back to his body. He didn't know how much time had passed, but he found himself sitting on the floor with the Bamse comic in front of him and the pen in his hand. The quilt was in a heap on the bed.

The comic was open at a short story, just two pages, which was called ‘Brumma's Secret Friends'. Brumma hid in the cupboard under the sink and made friends with the brush and shovel. When Mummy shouted for Brumma, the brush was terrified; it said, ‘We are secret, secret', and turned back into an ordinary brush.

There were drawings on the pages. Lines and shapes on every available surface. No letters. The only thing Anders could in any way interpret as meaningful was a zigzag line across several frames, which looked more like a temple than anything else.

Was there a reason why this particular story had been chosen, or was it just a coincidence, like the story of the haunted hotel? Had Maja just been reading and drawing, as she used to do sometimes?

The creaking sound came again, this time just outside the door. Anders gave a start and pulled the quilt towards him, threw it over his head and curled up, lay as still as still could be. The handle was pushed down tentatively and the door opened. Anders stuck his thumb in his mouth.

‘Anders?' Simon's voice was no more than a whisper. The door closed behind him. ‘What are you doing?'

Simon was standing in front of him in his dressing gown as Anders crawled out from under the quilt. ‘I was scared.'