Harbour (9 page)

He was absolutely certain it had not been closed when he and Cecilia left here for the last time, exhausted, empty, all cried out.

Calm down. Simon has closed it.

But why would he have done that? There were no other signs that anyone had been in the house. Why would Simon have come in just to close the bedroom door?

So the door must have been closed when they left. He must have got it wrong.

But I haven't.

He remembered all too clearly. How Cecilia had gone out to the car with the last thing, a case containing Maja's summer clothes. How he had stood there looking back into the house for one last time before he closed and locked the front door. He had known he was saying goodbye, that none of the things they had imagined were ever going to happen, that he might never see this place again. The image had been seared into his brain.

And the door to the bedroom had been open.

He reached out for the handle. It was cold. His heart was pounding in his chest. Carefully he pushed down the handle and pulled. The door swung open. Despite the chill pouring out from the bedroom, he felt a drop of sweat trickle from his armpit.

Nothing.

There was nothing, of course. The beam of the lighthouse flashed across the double bed opposite the door. Everything was as it should be. And yet he groped for the switch and put the light on before he went in.

The double bed was made, the white satin quilt cover shone and spread light across the pale blue wood-panelled walls, the cheap painting of a ship in danger on a stormy sea above the bed.

He walked over to the window. The lighthouse at North Point was flashing out across the bay. A single floodlight in the harbour illuminated the steamboat jetty and the boats bobbing by the jetties. There wasn't a soul out there. In the brief intervals of darkness he could see short flashes from GÃ¥vasten, the hated lighthouse at GÃ¥vasten.

He could see the opposite wall reflected in the dark window pane. The wardrobe, Maja's bed. It was unmade, the way they had left it. Neither he nor Cecilia could bring themselves to smooth out the quilt and eradicate the last traces of the child who used to lie there. Anders shuddered. The chaotic covers looked as if they might be hiding a body. He turned around.

A bed. An unmade bed. Nothing else. A small, unmade bed. The pillowcase with its picture of Bamse the Bear carrying a pile of jars of honey. She had had a subscription, and the comics had kept on coming. He had read them. Read them aloud, the way he used to, even though no one was listening.

He went and sat down on her bed, gazed around the room. He curled up. Curled up a little more. He had a pain in his chest, a lump was growing. He saw the room through her eyes, the way she had seen it.

There's the big bed, that's where Mummy and Daddy sleep, I can go over there if I'm scared. This is my beautiful bed, there's Bamse. I am six years old. My name is Maja. I know that I am loved.

‘Maja…Maja…'

The lump in his chest was so big it couldn't be dissolved with tears, and he was being sucked down towards it. He had no grave to visit, nothing that meant Maja. Except for this. This place. He hadn't understood that until now. He was sitting on her grave, her resting place. His head was drawn down towards the floor, down between his knees.

Strewn across the floor by the bed were a number of her plastic beads. Twenty or thirty of them. She had made necklaces, bead pictures, it had been her favourite pastime. She had had a whole bucketful of beads in every colour you could think of, and it was under her bed.

Except for those that were strewn across the floor.

Anders picked up a few of the beads, looked at them as they lay there in the palm of his hand. One red, one yellow, three blue.

Another memory from the last day, kneeling beside her bed, leaning his head on the mattress, searching for the smell of her in the sheets and finding it, the fabric soaking up his tears.

He had been on his knees. He had moved around the bed on his knees, searching for the smell of her. Yes. But there had been no beads under his knees then. He had forgotten much of his life in the years that followed, much lay in a fog, but that last day out here burned brightly. Clearly. No beads pressing into his skin.

Are you sure?

Yes. I'm sure.

He slid down on to the floor and looked under the bed. The transparent bucket that held the beads was near the edge. It was two-thirds full. He pushed his hand in and allowed it to be surrounded by beads, stirred it around. When he pulled out his hand, a number of beads were stuck to his skin.

Rats. Mice.

He buried both hands in the bucket, filled his cupped hands with beads and allowed them to pour back in. No droppings. Mice couldn't even walk through a kitchen cupboard without leaving droppings behind.

He pushed the bucket back under the bed and looked around the floor. The twenty or thirty beads were all close to the bed. He crawled across the floor, looked in the corners, along the edges. No beads. Under the double bed there were big balls of fluff, nothing else.

Just a minute…

He moved back to Maja's bed and looked underneath.

A box with no lid containing Duplo Lego was behind the bucket of beads, next to Bamse. He pulled it out. A layer of dust covered the multi-coloured blocks. He couldn't check because he had moved his hands around in the bucket, but had there been any dust on the beads?

He sat on the floor with his back against Maja's bed. His eyes focused on the wardrobe. It was a clumsy object fixed to the wall, built by Anders' grandfather with the same lack of skill that characterised the rest of the house. It was approximately a metre wide, made from rough left-over wood. The key was in the lock.

His heart began palpitating once again, and a cold sweat broke out on his palms. He knew the wardrobe had a handle on the inside. Maja liked to sit inside underneath the clothes and pretend she…

Stop it. Stop it right now.

He clamped his lips together, stopped breathing. Listened. There was not a sound apart from the rushing of the sea against the rocks, the wind soughing through the pine trees, his own heart pounding in his ears. He looked at the wardrobe door, at the key. It was moving.

Anders leapt to his feet and pressed his hands against his temples. His lower jaw had begun to tremble.

The key was not moving. Of course it wasn't moving.

Stop it. Stop it.

Without looking back he walked out of the room, turned the light off and closed the door. His fingers were ice-cold, his teeth chattering. He placed a few logs on the fire, then sat for a long time warming his hands, his body.

When he felt calmer he opened his suitcase and took out one of the litre casks of red wine, tore it open and knocked back a third of the contents. He looked at the bedroom door. He was still just as frightened.

The fire in the kitchen stove had gone out. He didn't bother with it, he just picked up his cigarettes and a glass and went back to the safe circle of warmth by the fire, where he finished off the wine cask. When it was empty he threw it on the fire and fetched another.

The wine did its job. The knots in his muscles loosened and his thoughts drifted off aimlessly without alighting anywhere in particular. Halfway through the second box he got up and looked out across the sea, glass in hand. The lighthouse at GÃ¥vasten was flashing in the distance.

‘Cheers, you bastard. Cheers, you fucking bastard.'

He emptied the glass and began to sway in time with the flashing light.

The sea. And us poor bastards with our little flashing lights.

Something bad is coming

At half-past three Anders was woken by someone banging on the door. He opened his eyes and lay motionless on the sofa, pulling the blanket more tightly around him. The room was in darkness. The beam of the lighthouse swept through and the floor swayed. His head felt heavy.

He lay there with his eyes wide open wondering if he had misheard, if it had been a dream. The lighthouse beam swept by once again. This time the floor remained still. Behind him he could hear that the wind was getting up. The sea was hurling itself against the rocks and a cold draught whistled through the gaps in the house.

He had just closed his eyes to try and go back to sleep when the pounding started again. Three powerful blows on the outside door. He sat up quickly on the sofa and looked around instinctively for a weapon. There was something horrible about those short, hard blows.

As if…as if…
As if someone had come to get him. Someone following an order.

Someone who had the right to take him. His legs were ready for flight as he slipped off the sofa, shuffled across to the fire and seized the poker.

He stood there with the poker held aloft, waiting for the pounding to come again. There was no sound apart from the growing fury of the sea, the creaking as a half-broken branch twisted in the wind.

Calm down. Perhaps it's just…

Just what? An accident, someone needing help? Yes, that was probably the most likely scenario, and here he was looking as if he was expecting an alien invasion. He took a few steps towards the outside door, still holding the poker in his hand.

‘Hello?' he shouted. ‘Who's there?'

His heart was pounding and it felt as if something was tightening around his head.

There's something wrong with me.

Someone had run aground in their boat, their engine had failed in the strong wind and they had made their way up the rocks to his door, perhaps they were standing there now, soaked to the skin and freezing.

But why are they hammering on the door like that?

Without switching on any of the lights that might dazzle him, Anders crept over to the hall window and peeped out. Nobody was standing on the porch, as far as he could see. He switched on the outside light. There was nobody there. He opened the door and looked out.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?'

Maja's swing was flying wildly to and fro in the wind, dry leaves whirled around the yard. He put the door on the latch and stepped out on to the porch, closed the door behind him and glanced around, listening intently.

He thought he could hear the sound of an engine from the direction of the village. A small outboard motor or a chainsaw. But who would take a boat out at this hour, who would be cutting trees in the middle of the night? It could be a moped, of course, but the same question applied.

Maja's swing was disconcerting. The way it was moving it looked as if someone was sitting on it and swinging, someone he couldn't see. A cold blast of wind swept across his chest and stomach as he took a few steps away from the door and called ‘Maja?' out into the empty air.

No reply. No change in the frantic movement of the swing. He lowered the poker and ran his free hand over his face. He was still drunk. Drunk and wide awake. The sound of the engine—if that's what it was—had stopped. All he could hear was the creaking of the broken branch.

He went back to the door and examined the outside. No damage from the knocking. The corners of his mouth twitched.

I know what this means.

His grandmother had told him about one occasion when her father had spent the night in a hut on one of the little islands out in the archipelago. He had been on ‘an errand', which at the time was the euphemism for smuggling spirits. He had probably arranged to meet some Estonian cargo boat outside the three-mile limit towards dawn, and had decided it would be safest to spend the night out in the archipelago.

In the middle of the night he is woken by the sound of hammering on the door. It's a simple cottage door, and the heavy blows are making the latch jump. He thinks it's customs that are on his trail, but this time they have made their move too early. He has nothing they can confiscate, and he is perfectly happy to explain why he is spending the night here—he has brought his fowling piece with him for appearance's sake. He is quite happy to open the door.

No one is there. There is not a soul in sight, and only his own fishing boat is moored by the jetty. However, to be on the safe side he picks up the money he is going to use to pay for the contraband and takes a walk around the island with the gun in his hand. He manages to frighten a couple of eider ducks out of a clump of reeds, but nothing else.

As dawn breaks he sets off for the meeting place. After a few nautical miles he catches sight of the cargo ship at anchor just beyond the limit.

Then he hears an explosion.

At first he thinks it might be his own compression ignition engine, but he realises that the resonance of the explosion is too deep, that it has come from outside his boat. He picks up the telescope and looks over at the cargo boat he is to meet.

Something has happened to it. At first he can't make out what it is, but as he gets closer he can see that it is listing and beginning to sink. By the time he reaches it there is no longer anything to reach. He scans the surface of the sea with the telescope, but there is nothing to be seen.

‘Four men and at least a thousand litres of schnapps went down that day,' his grandmother's father told her later. ‘That was what it wanted to tell me, whatever was banging on the door. That something bad was coming.'

Anders' grandmother had retold the story using exactly the same words, and ever since it had been an expression that came into his mind from time to time when he wanted to describe something. It came to him now, as he examined the door and found not a trace of whoever had been hammering on it.

Something bad is coming.

He looked up at the pine trees, their swaying tops invisible in the darkness outside the circle of light from the outdoor lamp. A loose piece of metal on the woodshed banged once, as if to underline the point.

Something bad is coming.

It was impossible to go back to sleep. Anders lit the kitchen stove, then sat at the kitchen table staring at the wall. His head felt as if it were full of lukewarm porridge, enclosed in a perverse membrane of clarity. He was able to think clearly, but not deeply.