Harbor Read online

  Perhaps it was something that everyone experienced, no matter how close they were, but he didn’t really think so. This was something more. Something along the lines of…Spiritus. He had never told her what he had in the matchbox. So in some ways he was a stranger to her.

  Why haven’t I told her?

  He didn’t know. Something had told him not to. Presumably it was all connected.

  Simon sighed deeply and rolled towards the edge of the bed, hauling himself up into a sitting position with some difficulty. If his body somehow shed thirty years when they were making love, it piled an extra thirty on again afterwards. Muscles and joints creaked and complained, and he felt ready for his coffin.

  I don’t suppose there will be many more times.

  He managed to put on his socks, underpants and trousers. In recent years he had thought the same thing every time after they had made love. But when it was time, the machinery would no doubt rumble into life once again. For as long as it lasted.

  He dug out his vest and shirt, blew out the candle and crept out of the room. With the help of the banister he made his way slowly and carefully down the stairs, one step at a time. The wind was whistling around the house, and the wood in the old place was complaining more loudly than his own body. The force of the wind had increased to a real storm, and he ought to go down and see to the boat.

  And what if it’s broken away from its mooring?

  Nothing he could do about that. He couldn’t cope with that kind of manoeuvre. But at least he would know what the situation was. He grabbed a sweater that was lying on a chair in the kitchen, pulled it over his head and opened the outside door.

  The wind seized the door and he had to fight for a few seconds before he managed to close it without a crash. Then he wrapped his arms around his body and shuffled rather than walked down towards his house.

  It was a magnificent storm, but it was difficult to enjoy it. The huge birch trees were swaying menacingly over the house, and if one of them came down in the wrong direction the damage would be extensive. As always when it was windy, Simon thought that he ought to cut them down, and as always when the wind subsided he would manage to forget about it, because it was too much work.

  He turned his face to the sea and the north wind grabbed him with its full power. The lighthouse at Gåvasten flashed far away in the distance, and the sea…

  …the sea…

  Something came away inside him. Part of what he needed fell off.

  …the sea…

  He groped for support and got hold of a branch of the apple tree. A lingering apple was shaken free and fell to the ground with a barely audible thud.

  …comes away…falls…

  The branch gave way when he put too much weight on it, and he sank down on the grass. The branch slipped from his grasp and whipped across his cheek as it sprang back. He felt a stinging pain and fell on his back, his eyes wide open. The thing that had come away was floating around inside him and he felt ill. And weak. Weak.

  The branches of the apple tree where whipping back and forth as if the tree wanted to erase the starry sky, and Simon lay there motionless, staring. The stars twinkled through the remaining leaves and the strength trickled out of Simon’s limbs.

  I have no strength. I’m dying.

  He lay there like that for a long time waiting for the lights to go out, and he had plenty of opportunity to think. But the stars continued to shine and the wind continued to roar. He tried to move his arm, and it obeyed. His hand closed around a fallen apple and he let it rest there for a while. The exhaustion was diminishing slightly, but he was still weak.

  He got to his knees and then to his feet, stood there swaying like a poplar sapling in the wind. One hand felt peculiar, and when he looked he saw that he was still holding the apple. He dropped it. He set off for his house again, his feet dragging.

  Something happened.

  When he eventually reached his door he peered down at the jetty. It was difficult to see in the faint light from the lighthouse and the stars, but it looked as if the boat was exactly where it should be. The stone jetty was absorbing the worst of it. Not that he would have been able to do anything, particularly not now, but it was good that he still had a boat.

  He got himself inside and switched on the light, sat down at the kitchen table breathing in weak bursts, trying to get used to the idea that he was still alive. He had been convinced that he was going to die; he had even managed to reconcile himself to that conviction. To collapse beneath Anna-Greta’s apple tree and be swept away by the storm. It could have been worse, much worse.

  But it didn’t turn out that way.

  A thought had taken root in his mind during his painfully slow trek home, a suspicion. He took the matchbox out of the kitchen drawer and opened it. Despite the fact that it was as he suspected, he couldn’t help gasping out loud.

  The larva was grey. The skin which had been so shiny and black had shrunk and dried, acquired an ash-grey colour. Simon shook the box carefully. The larva squirmed slightly and Simon breathed out. He gathered saliva and let it fall. The larva moved when the saliva landed on it, but not much. It was weak; it seemed to be fading away.

  Like me.

  The storm was rattling the window panes. Simon sat there staring down into the box, trying to understand. Was it he or Spiritus that came first? Did he influence the larva, or vice versa? Who was to blame—either of them?

  Or some third party. Who influences both of us.

  He looked out of the window and blinked. Gåvasten lighthouse blinked back.

  Communication

  Anders woke up because he was freezing cold. The storm was raging around the Shack and inside the house there was a light-to-moderate wind. The curtains were billowing, and cold air swept across his face. He got up with the blanket around his shoulders and went over to the window.

  The sea was in turmoil, the waves hurling themselves forward furiously in the moonlight. Stray drops were actually reaching right up to the window, which was creaking ominously under the pressure of the storm. The old windows with their secondary double-glazing were a poor defence against the fury of nature. Plus a couple of windows were already cracked from before.

  What will I do if something breaks?

  He would just have to see what happened. He put the kitchen light on and drank a couple of glasses of water, lit a cigarette. The clock on the wall showed half-past two. The smoke from his cigarette whirled around in the draughts slicing through the house. He sat down at the table and tried to blow smoke rings, but without success.

  Fifty or so blue beads and five white ones were pushed down in one corner of the bead tile. The white ones were in a little clump, surrounded by the blue ones. He rubbed his eyes and tried to remember when he had put them there. He had come home feeling quite tipsy, and had pushed in a few beads at random. After that he couldn’t remember a thing until he lay down on the sofa and listened to the wind until he fell asleep.

  The pattern formed by the blue and white beads was meaningless and not particularly attractive. He cleared his throat as the smoke formed a viscous lump there, and looked around for a knife or something similar with which he could ease the beads off. There was a pencil lying next to the tile and he picked it up before realising that it wouldn’t do.

  Then he caught sight of the letters.

  The pencil had been lying on some letters, written directly on the surface of the table with so much pressure that they had made grooves in the old wood. Anders leaned forward and read. It said:

  He stared at the letters, ran his finger over the faint indentations they had made.

  Carry mf?

  It was as if his eyes were glued to the sprawling letters and he didn’t dare to look either to the right or left. A shudder ran down his back.

  There’s someone here.

  Someone was watching him. He tensed the muscles in his legs, swallowed hard and without warning he shot up from his chair with such speed that it fell over backwar
ds. He looked quickly around the kitchen, in all the corners and shadows. There was no one there.

  He looked out of the kitchen window, but although he cupped his hands around his eyes, the pine trees obscured the moonlight so that it was impossible to see if there was anyone out there. Anyone watching him.

  He crossed his arms over his chest as if to keep his racing heart in its place. Someone had been in here and formed the letters. Presumably the same person who was watching him. He gave a start and ran over to the outside door. It wasn’t locked. He opened it and saw the swing being hurled in the air, spinning around and slamming into the tree trunks. Nothing else.

  He went back to the kitchen and sluiced his face with cold water, dried himself with a tea towel and tried to calm down. It didn’t work. He was horribly afraid, without knowing what he was afraid of. An extra-powerful gust of wind made the house shake, and there was a creaking sound.

  The next moment one of the windows in the living room shattered, and Anders screamed out loud. Glass came rattling in across the floor, and Anders kept screaming. The wind raced into the house, grabbed hold of anything that was light and loose, threw it around, whistled up the chimney, howled in every hollow and Anders howled along with it. His hair was flapping and damp air poured over him as he stood there screaming, his arms locked around his body. He didn’t stop until his throat began to hurt.

  His arms released their grip and he relaxed slightly, breathing slowly through his open mouth.

  No one came. It’s only the wind. The wind broke a window. Nothing else.

  He closed the kitchen door. The wind retreated, withdrawing to the living room where Anders could hear it fighting with old newspapers and magazines. He sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. The letters were still there. The wind hadn’t taken them.

  He pressed his hands over his ears and closed his eyes tightly. Everything went dark red in front of his eyes, but he couldn’t escape. The letters appeared in bright yellow, disappeared and were written once more on his retinas.

  Suddenly he took his hands away, got up and looked around. No. The drawings weren’t here. He reached the kitchen door in a couple of rapid strides, pulled it open and passed the living room without a thought for the wind that grabbed at the blanket he was wearing like a coat.

  He went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him, dropped to his knees next to Maja’s bed and groped around with his arm until he found what he was looking for. The plastic folder containing Maja’s drawings. With shaking hands he managed to pull off the elastic band and spread the drawings out on the bed.

  Most of them had no writing, and on those that did it said, ‘To Mummy’, ‘To Daddy’.

  But there was one…

  He turned over the various drawings of trees, houses and flowers to check the back of each one, and at last he found it. On the back of a drawing of four sunflowers and something that could be either a horse or a dog, Maja had written:

  It had taken her ten minutes and two outbursts of rage before she was satisfied with what she had written. Earlier versions were angrily rubbed out. The drawing had been for Anna-Greta’s birthday, and for some reason had never been handed over. It said, ‘To Great Grandma Anna-Greta’.

  The letter R was the wrong way round just as it was in the words on the table, but what made Anders press his hand against his mouth as the tears sprang to his eyes was a more unusual error: in both cases the bottom stroke of the letter E was missing.

  Of course he had known all along what was written on the kitchen table. He had refused to accept it. The handwriting was exactly the same as on the drawing, and it said:

  ‘Carry me’.

  It was quarter-past three and Anders knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. The storm had abated somewhat and the sensible thing would be to try and sort out the mess in the living room, if possible board up the window somehow.

  But he just didn’t have the strength. He felt exhausted and wide-awake at the same time, his brain working feverishly. The only thing he could do was to sit at the kitchen table twisting his fingers around each other as he looked at the message from his daughter.

  Carry me.

  Where was he to carry her from? Where was he to collect her? Where was he to carry her to? How?

  ‘Maja? Maja darling, if you can hear me…say something else. Explain. I don’t understand what I have to do.’

  There was no reply. The anxiety was wearing him away, he was about to dissolve into ghostly form. If she was a ghost. If she hadn’t actually been here and…

  But in that case why did she go away again?

  He got up and walked around, unable to settle. He spotted some empty half-litre bottles of Imsdal, the water they had taken with them on outings sometimes. He still couldn’t do anything, he was getting nowhere. He might as well put his plan into action.

  From the larder he took the six one-litre cartons of Spanish wine he had brought with him to Domarö. He filled the four Imsdal bottles about one-third full. Then he topped up one of them with tap water and drank some of the mixture. It didn’t taste good. More like flavoured tap water than diluted wine.

  Right at the back of the larder he found two small packs of grape juice. He squeezed some into one of the bottles, on top of the wine. Then he added water. It didn’t taste watery now, just like really weak wine. Four and half per cent alcohol maybe, about the same as beer.

  He put the top back on and pulled up the cap so that he could suck at the liquid, then sucked down a good mouthful.

  His plan to escape the constant urge to drink himself into a stupor was very simple: he would drink constantly, but he would drink less. Maintain a reasonable level of drunkenness from morning till night. He hoped that with this plan both the lacerating, tearing desire and the sharp edges of the world would be softened and made manageable.

  He prepared the remaining four bottles in the same way. When he had finished he still had five cartons and a pack of grape juice left. He would use these to fill up the four bottles when they were empty.

  Carry me.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture the scene. Maja coming into the kitchen, picking up the pencil, writing those letters and then… then…arranging some beads on the tile before leaving. She was still wearing the red snowsuit and it was soaking wet, she was dripping as she walked and her eye sockets were empty. Greedy fish had…

  Stop it!

  He opened his eyes and shook his head, took a drink from the bottle. The picture was still there. The small body, her round face, the soaking wet snowsuit…

  He examined the floor to see if there was any trace of water. Nothing.

  It’s me who wrote it. It’s me who put the beads on the tile.

  That could be what had happened. In which case he was actually going mad. But it was just a memory lapse, surely? It was during that missing period that he…

  No.

  He had thought he’d had a memory lapse when he saw the beads, since he couldn’t remember putting them there. Now, of course, there was another explanation.

  Carry me.

  He banged the table with his fists.

  ‘Show yourself! Say something else! Don’t do this!’

  He couldn’t believe he was quite this crazy. The only explanation was that somebody was playing a really sick joke on him, or…that it was exactly what it appeared to be. That Maja existed in the world, somehow, and was trying to communicate with him.

  He placed his palms on the table. Breathed in and out a couple of times, calmly and deliberately.

  Yes. All right, so be it. I’m making the decision. I choose to believe it.

  He carried on nodding, had another drink of wine and lit a cigarette. He felt better now. Now that he had accepted the situation. He took a deep drag, held it in his lungs, leaned back in his chair and slowly let the smoke out. The storm had died down, so that the smoke reached the ceiling without dispersing.

  I believe. You exist.

  The circl
e of light cast by the lamp expanded and turned into a warm feeling that grew in his chest until it radiated a pure, clean happiness.

  You exist!

  He threw the cigarette in the bin, got up and spun round and round in the middle of the kitchen floor, his arms spread wide. He attempted a few clumsy dance steps, jumped up and down and whirled around until he felt dizzy, started coughing and had to sit down. The happiness was still there. It was crackling and gushing, it wanted to find a way out somehow.

  Without thinking he pulled the telephone towards him and keyed in Cecilia’s number. He could still remember it, because she had taken over her parents’ apartment in Uppsala when they moved into a house. She had the same number as when they were teenagers, spending hours on the phone to each other and longing for their next meeting. If she was still living there.

  The phone rang three times. Anders pressed the receiver firmly to his ear, looked at the clock and grimaced. It was just after four. It occurred to him belatedly that this might not be the best time to call. He took a swig from the bottle as the fifth tone rang out.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was Cecilia, and she sounded exactly as you might expect—as if she’d just woken up. Anders swallowed the wine in his mouth and said, ‘Hi, it’s me. Anders.’

  There was silence for a few seconds, then Cecilia said, ‘You’re not to ring here when you’re drunk. I’ve told you that.’

  ‘I’m not drunk.’

  ‘What are you, then?’

  Anders thought it over. The answer was simple.

  ‘Happy. I’m happy. And I thought I ought to…to ring and tell you. Why.’

  Cecilia sighed, and Anders remembered. He had called her like this several times. After they had separated he had called her sometimes to say…what had he said? He’d been drunk and he couldn’t remember. But he had never called and been happy. Well, he didn’t think so anyway.