Harbor Read online

  Anna-Greta stroked Johan’s back and he nodded, without taking his eyes off Simon. It wasn’t surprising that he was tense; Anna-Greta had read what it said on the poster:

  CAN ANYONE ENDURE THIS???

  To be fettered hand and foot

  with chains and handcuffs?

  To be sealed in a sack and

  cast into the sea?

  To cheat death as the sack

  sinks to the bottom?

  On Saturday July 15th El Simon will

  attempt all this at the Domarö jetty.

  WILL HE SURVIVE???

  Johan was bright enough to realise that all this was for effect, but the very fact that the words ‘drowning’ and ‘fettered’ are on the same page as the name of someone you are fond of is quite enough to make you swallow a little harder. Anna-Greta had no particular feelings for Simon, he was pleasant company and a good tenant, nothing more. And yet she still had to clench her fists in her pockets to stop herself chewing at her nails.

  Simon went over to one of the boathouses, undid the latch and went inside. When he came out he was carrying a bundle, which he carried over to the spectators. There was a rattling noise as he threw the bundle on the ground and announced in a loud voice:

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen! It’s wonderful to see so many of you here. In front of me on the ground I have a set of chains, ropes and padlocks. I would like to invite two strong gentlemen from the audience to come up and use these items to bind and chain me to the best of their ability, until they are convinced that I cannot escape.’

  Simon let his bathrobe fall to the ground. He was wearing only a pair of dark blue swimming trunks, and looked alarmingly thin and frail.

  Ragnar Pettersson stepped forward, which was only to be expected. He was renowned for having single-handedly pulled out one of his cows that had got stuck in the bog down by the shore of the inlet. Nobody could work out how he had done it, but ever since then he had been generally regarded as a strongman.

  He was followed by a man who worked at the shipyard in Nåten, but Anna-Greta didn’t know his name. The short-sleeved shirt he was wearing looked as if it was a size too small. It strained over his muscles, and perhaps that was exactly the effect he was aiming for.

  The two men got to work straight away, and something happened to their movements, their eyes. As soon as they had the chains and ropes in their hands, they ceased to regard Simon as a person. He was a nut to be cracked, a problem to be solved, nothing more or less. Beyond that there was nothing to be taken into account.

  Anna-Greta gritted her teeth as the man from Nåten wound and pulled at the chains so hard that Simon’s skin puckered and turned red. It looked as if it was painful, but Simon simply stood there with his eyes closed, his hands folded over his midriff. A couple of times his lips twitched when one of the men braced himself and gave the chains an extra tug before fastening the padlocks.

  Finally they were satisfied. Both wiped the sweat from their foreheads and nodded to each other. There must have been thirty kilos of chains wound around Simon, secured in different places with four padlocks. They had hardly used the ropes, except in two places where they had brought them in as an afterthought, just to tighten the chains.

  The men took a couple of steps back and contemplated their handiwork. They were quite satisfied, and you could see why. It looked utterly impossible to escape from the web of metal they had created.

  Simon opened his eyes and Anna-Greta’s stomach contracted. Around the fettered man was an empty circle perhaps twenty metres deep.

  Alone.

  Anna-Greta thought: Alone. Simon looked so horribly alone in that moment. Someone who had been ejected from the community, utterly disarmed. And now they were going to throw him in the sea. There was a powerful element of degradation about the whole thing: an individual allowing other people to do this to him. A second after Simon opened his eyes, it was as if he had caught a glimpse of that very thing. It was that expression that made Anna-Greta’s stomach contract, before it disappeared and Simon looked from one man to the other and said, ‘Are you satisfied? Are you convinced that I can’t escape?’

  Ragnar grabbed hold of one of the chains and pulled at it, then shrugged and said, ‘Well, I certainly couldn’t do it.’

  Someone in the crowd shouted, ‘You want to do that with your cows, Ragnar, then they won’t go running off!’

  People from Domarö laughed, the rest didn’t get the joke. Simon asked the two men to carry him to the edge of the jetty, which they did. Anna-Greta and Johan moved back to make room, and Simon ended up only a metre or so away from them. Simon’s eyes met Anna-Greta’s, and a smile flitted across his lips. Anna-Greta tried to smile back, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  ‘And now,’ said Simon, ‘I would like to ask a third person to pull the sack up around me and secure the top.’

  Before anyone had time to step forward, someone further back shouted, ‘What about the handcuffs, then? What’s happening with them?’

  Suddenly Simon looked a little bit scared. He closed his eyes without speaking. Then he nodded to Göran, who stepped forward with the handcuffs and asked, ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘No,’ said Simon. ‘But I suppose I’ll have to give it a try.’

  Göran scratched the back of his neck and looked as if he couldn’t quite decide what to do. Situations like this had presumably not formed part of his training at the police academy. In the end he fed the handcuffs through the chains and locked them around Simon’s wrists.

  By this stage Anna-Greta had folded her arms tightly across her chest to stop herself from chewing at her nails. She examined Simon’s face, trying to gauge how much of this latest turn of events was merely theatre, part of the show, or if Simon really wasn’t sure if he could do it. It was impossible to tell.

  The photographer took some pictures of Simon as he stood there out on the edge of the jetty. A man Anna-Greta had never seen before—a Stockholmer, judging by his slender hands—stepped forward and declared himself willing to tie the sack. Simon turned to Johan and said, ‘Would you like to check one last time?’

  Johan pulled at the chains, and as he did so Anna-Greta saw Simon lean forward and whisper something to him. Then Johan took a step back and nodded. The Stockholmer pulled the sack up around Simon and tied the top with a piece of rope.

  It looked horrible. The brown sack right on the edge. It was a point of darkness, of finality. People seemed to sense this; the banter and the jokes had died away, and there was absolute silence now.

  ‘Throw me in,’ said Simon’s voice from inside the sack.

  Five seconds passed. Then ten. Still there was silence, and no one volunteered. It wasn’t irrevocable yet. They could open the sack, undo the chains. But once the sack was in the water, there wasn’t much anyone could do. The sea was six metres deep off the jetty.

  If Simon failed, the person who had pushed the sack into the water would be responsible. People looked at each other, but no one stepped forward. Simon was moving inside the sack, they could hear the chains squeaking slightly as the links rubbed against one another. A couple of cameras clicked. Still no one.

  ‘Throw me in the sea.’

  Presumably it would have been easier if Simon had said something ordinary and amusing, such as ‘Am I supposed to stand here all day?’ or ‘The chains are starting to get rusty in here’, but obviously he wasn’t interested in relieving the dramatic tension.

  And yet it seemed he might have to. After a minute, still no one had come forward. People were beginning to feel uncomfortable. Perhaps this was how it felt when Jesus told the person who was without sin to cast the first stone.

  Suddenly the muscular man from Nåten cleared his throat, and without further ado he stepped forward and shoved the sack. It hit the water with a dull splash, and a collective gasp ran through the crowd. People pushed forward to look, and Anna-Greta had to fight to avoid being nudged into the water by the surge.

  There wasn’
t much to see. A stream of bubbles rose from the sack as it sank, but after thirty seconds the last bubble had burst on the surface, and there was only the dark water to be seen. Those who had been hoping to see something of Simon’s struggle were disappointed; it was impossible to see beyond a depth of three metres.

  When one minute had passed, people began muttering to each other: did anyone know how long a person could actually hold their breath? Would it be possible to bring the man up if he didn’t succeed? Did anyone have the keys to those padlocks?

  Another minute passed, and now a large number of people were becoming anxious. Why hadn’t anyone attached a safety line to the sack, why hadn’t a time limit been set, after which they should try to rescue the man, why…?

  The man who had pushed the sack into the water appeared to be the most anxious of all. He was staring down into the water, and the body that had been so confident in its strength and authority now seemed to have sunk in on itself; his movements were jerky, his eyes were flicking here and there, his hands constantly rubbing against each other.

  Anna-Greta stood there motionless, hugging herself. Hard. All around her people were looking from their watches to the surface of the water, back and forth, but Anna-Greta had fixed her gaze on Gåvasten lighthouse, far away in the distance. She stared at the lighthouse and waited. Waited for the splash as Simon’s body broke the surface, the sudden intake of breath.

  But it didn’t come.

  When three minutes had passed, someone shouted out, ‘But he’s going to die!’ A murmur of agreement was heard, but still no one did anything. Anna-Greta tore her gaze away from the lighthouse, and couldn’t help herself from looking down at the surface of the water. It was black and empty. Nothing was moving.

  Come on. Come on now, Simon.

  She could see it right in front of her, she could see right through the water, past the limit of normal visibility, right down to the bottom where Simon lay battling among the mud and rusty bits of metal. She saw him escape, saw the sack open and saw him push away from the seabed, up towards the light.

  But that wasn’t what happened. What did actually happen took place inside Anna-Greta. Something that had been sunken and thrown away freed itself down there in the darkness, broke the chain she had wound around it and swam towards the surface. It rose up through her body and fastened in her throat in a lump. She wanted to cry.

  I love this bloody man.

  She started to tremble.

  Love. Don’t disappear.

  Her eyes filled with tears when someone behind her shouted, ‘Four minutes!’ and she clamped her hands together, pressed them against her heart and cursed herself because it was already too late, it was going to happen again, it was going to…

  Then she felt a hand on her arm. Her vision was blurred as she looked up and saw that the hand belonged to Johan. He winked and nodded. She didn’t understand what he meant, how he could be so calm.

  The man who had pushed Simon in pulled off his shirt and dived into the water. Anna-Greta squeezed Johan’s hand as the crowd surged forward once again. The man broke the surface of the water. He shook his head, took a deep breath and dived once more.

  Then they heard a voice from inland.

  ‘Is it me you’re looking for?’

  There was a rustling noise as fabric rubbed against fabric and the whole crowd turned around as one. Over by the boathouse stood Simon. A pattern of red lines left by the chains criss-crossed his body. He walked over to Göran and gave him the locked handcuffs.

  ‘I thought you might want these back.’

  Simon pulled on his bathrobe, and someone next to Anna-Greta shouted to the man from Nåten, who had popped up again, ‘Kalle, he’s here! You can stop looking!’

  ‘What the hell!’ shouted Kalle from down in the water, and a collective paralysis was broken. First came laughter, and then the applause broke out. It echoed across the whole area like the beating wings of a flock of birds lifting from the surface of the water, and it seemed as if it would never end.

  People came forward and patted Simon as if he were their greatest treasure, rescued at long last from the bottom of the sea. Kalle’s attitude was somewhat less positive as he hauled himself up on to the jetty with his teeth chattering. Simon had obviously foreseen this situation, because he brought a bottle of decent schnapps out of the boathouse and offered Kalle a drink or two to help him thaw out, which he gratefully accepted. After quarter of an hour he was the most enthusiastic admirer of Simon’s feat.

  People stood around the boathouse where the two men were sitting side by side on the steps. They laughed at Kalle, who was tipsy from the schnapps and the rollercoaster of emotions he had gone through in such quick succession, as he flung his arms out in Simon’s direction and shouted, ‘This man was bloody well trussed up like… like I don’t know what, and I did it myself! Maybe I’m sitting here with a ghost!’ He grabbed hold of Simon’s shoulder. ‘How the hell did you do that?’

  Simon said ‘Boo!’ and everyone laughed again.

  Anna-Greta was still standing out on the jetty with Johan. A lifetime of trade had taught her the art of manipulating people’s emotions, but it seemed as if she had met her match. Simon’s humiliation as he stood there in chains on the jetty had been transferred to Kalle, when he jumped into the sea in a misguided attempt at heroism. Then Simon had skilfully restored the balance by drawing Kalle into the glow of his achievement. Now there was only joy.

  Nice, thought Anna-Greta. Polished.

  She was relieved, she was confused, she was angry. Mostly angry. She’d been conned. Simon had made her behave like a fool in front of all these people. Not that anyone appeared to have noticed, but she knew. She had lost control. Hypothetically speaking, she could have screamed. She hadn’t, fortunately. But the barb was there, and she was annoyed.

  ‘Wasn’t that brilliant?’ said Johan.

  Anna-Greta nodded curtly and Johan ran a hand through his hair, looking over in Simon’s direction. ‘I think he’s absolutely incredible.’

  ‘Yes, but there are plenty of people who can do that sort of thing,’ said Anna-Greta. When Johan looked reproachfully at her, she asked, ‘Anyway, what did he say to you? Before?’

  Johan smiled secretively and pulled a face. ‘Oh…I don’t really know.’

  Anna-Greta slapped him gently on the shoulder. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I’m just wondering.’

  Johan looked across at the boathouses, where Kalle had embarked on a new tirade, claiming that he would personally throw in the sea anyone who didn’t go and see Simon’s shows at the local community theatre. Johan shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘He said I shouldn’t worry. That he was going to keep out of the way for a couple of minutes for effect.’

  ‘Why did he say that?’

  Johan looked at Anna-Greta as if she were making fun of him.

  ‘So that I wouldn’t be worried, obviously.’ He looked at Anna-Greta and added, ‘Like you were.’

  She didn’t even bother to protest. Johan knew her, and his eyes were sharp. Instead she said, ‘Anyway, I think I’ve had enough of this now. Are you coming home?’

  Johan shook his head and looked down into the water. ‘No, I want to stay for a while.’

  Anna-Greta pulled her cardigan more tightly around her and left the jetty and the crowd. When she was halfway to her house she turned and looked down at the harbour. She couldn’t recall ever having seen so many people down by the jetty, not even on Midsummer’s Eve.

  Johan wasn’t there anymore, no doubt he had joined the circle of admirers.

  Oh well, she thought. I suppose it was good that he said what he did to Johan. It was considerate of him.

  She continued on up towards the house, and although she barely allowed herself to think the thought, she could feel it: But he didn’t say anything to me.

  That same evening Simon was sitting at the table in his garden with a glass of
cognac. The last tender had arrived and there was still no word from Marita. A few youngsters were swimming down by the steamboat jetty.

  His whole body was hurting; the worst pain was in his shoulder joints, which he had had to twist almost completely out of their sockets in order to free himself from the chains. It hadn’t been a particularly difficult escape because very little rope had been used, but the chains had been unusually tightly pulled, and it had taken him almost a whole minute underwater to get out of them. If he hadn’t had that extra minute before the sack was pushed in, he would have had to go straight up to the surface when he was done.

  But he had had an extra minute, and he had used it to swim along the bottom to the furthest jetty and climb out, hidden by the boats. He had achieved the desired effect, and he thought the forthcoming shows would be well attended.

  Simon raised the glass to his lips and grimaced as he felt a tightness across his chest. He couldn’t carry on like this for much longer. It put too much of a strain on his body. He had once ended up with a broken rib when a man had been absolutely determined to chain him up as tightly as possible. After that occasion he had stopped offering a reward to anyone who could do it successfully. People were energetic enough as it was.

  The lighthouse at Gåvasten flashed in the light summer’s evening; the lamp was only a dot, casting no beams across the water.

  I ought to be enjoying this.

  The performance had been a great success, it was a beautiful evening, and the cognac was spreading its warmth through his stiff body. He ought to be enjoying it all.

  But it was often like this. After a successful publicity stunt with all guns blazing, the emptiness afterwards was all the greater. Besides which, Marita had disappeared again, and Simon had already drunk one glass more than he usually did. He didn’t want to go the same way as so many of his colleagues, tumbling down into a sea of booze, never to surface again. But on this particular evening he thought he’d earned it.