Harbor Read online

  Despite the fact that Anders hadn’t drunk all that much, his head was spinning, and it felt three times as heavy as it usually did.

  They ought to open the door.

  He opened his mouth to say so, but just didn’t have the strength. He looked down at the table where the others were sitting. Joel was the one who had lost most, but Henrik, Björn and Elin weren’t far behind. Henrik and Björn were down to their underpants, and even though Elin’s lower half was concealed by the shadows under the table, Anders could see that she had sacrificed her pants before her bra.

  He could hear from Cecilia’s breathing that she was asleep. He placed a hand on her hip and tore his gaze away from the short strands of hair poking out from between Elin’s crossed legs, trying to be faithful even in his thoughts.

  The spirit was willing but the eyes were weak. He tried to focus on a couple of half-ripe pimples on Henrik’s back, but his eyes refused to co-operate, sliding to the right and moving from the shadow between Elin’s thighs to the sheen of sweat on the top of her breasts. The base of his penis was beginning to get hot, and he rolled over on to his back, staring up at the ceiling which was only half a metre from the tip of his nose.

  I have to get out of here. Get some air.

  The cards clicked as they were dealt out, the voices were slurred. He hoped Joel would lose so that it would be over, so that they could all go out into the fresh air and become human beings again.

  It was Henrik who lost. Anders heard the sound of fabric against skin, and a rustle as the pile of clothes grew a little higher. Nobody seemed all that bothered. Henrik’s nakedness was not something anyone wished to see, it was just a blip along the way. The cards were dealt again. Karolina sighed on the bottom bunk. This wasn’t quite how she’d imagined the evening.

  The sweat prickled in Anders’ eyes, and he felt unpleasantly itchy beneath his clothes. He wished it had just been him and Cecilia here. He would have woken her and asked her if she wanted to go for a swim in the moonlight. In the current situation all he could do was lie there staring up at the ceiling, which was increasingly beginning to resemble the lid of a coffin. Which, judging by the warmth, had just been slid into the oven.

  ‘What the fuck!’ he heard Elin shout from down below. ‘But I’ve got three pairs as well!’

  ‘Yes, but look…’ said Martin, who seemed to be finding it difficult to express himself. ‘Look…you can see Frida’s got…her top card is higher than yours. So that means hers is higher. It’s higher.’

  A murmur of agreement was heard; Elin tried a couple of lame protests, but then a reverent silence fell. There was a faint metallic click, and a piece of clothing landed on the pile. A chair was pushed back and Joel said, ‘Where are you going, you’re supposed to sit here now and…’

  ‘Fuck that,’ said Elin. ‘I can do the same as you.’

  There was the sound of naked feet crossing the wooden floor, several of the boys whistled and Anders carried on staring up at the ceiling. Then his eyes took control again and he glanced at the door just in time to see Elin disappearing outside.

  Someone turned up the music and A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’ blasted through the room, dispelling the darkness a little and lightening the air. Or perhaps it was just that the door opening had let in a little oxygen.

  Everyone at the table sang along with the chorus. Cecilia woke up and turned sleepily towards Anders. He stroked her cheek and skin stuck to skin. Cecilia blinked and rubbed her eyes. ‘God, it’s hot in here.’

  Anders put his arms around her. ‘Shall we go outside?’

  She pressed herself against him and said, ‘In a minute.’ Over her shoulder Anders saw Henrik get up from the table and walk over to the door. Then Cecilia’s lips found his and he sank down into the soft, sticky warmth.

  They kissed until ‘Take On Me’ faded away in a shimmer of harmonies and drum machines. There was a moment’s silence, then they heard a scream. It came from outside, and it was Elin who was screaming. Like an adrenaline shock to a heart that has stopped, a jolt ran through the room. Skin stuck to skin was torn apart, chairs scraped as they were pushed back or fell over to the opening bars of ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.

  Joel and Martin were first out through the door, and the others who had been sitting around the table followed, with Björn bringing up the rear. Cecilia climbed down from the top bunk and Anders followed her, but almost fell over Karolina, who was getting up with a groan, like an old woman.

  Kylie Minogue was singing about the lack of complication in her imagination, but was drowned out by Elin’s hysterical screams outside the boathouse.

  ‘You disgusting bastard…fucking disgusting…’

  Anders got outside just in time to see Joel place a hand on Elin’s shoulder. She had tied a fishing net around herself and was hitting out at Henrik, who was trying to protect his face. The full moon over the water gave their bodies a white glow.

  ‘What’s the matter, what’s the matter?’ asked Joel.

  Elin was still hitting out at Henrik, who was moving backwards towards the shoreline as she yelled, ‘This disgusting bastard tried to rape me, he came at me with his disgusting fucking cock and tried… tried to rape me!’

  Henrik held up his hands as if to show that he was unarmed and said, ‘I didn’t, I just…’ but even if the crime could not be proved, the weapon was clearly visible. It was sticking out from Henrik’s body, angled upwards, and it refused to go down even though Henrik’s eyes were bright with fear.

  Joel took a couple of steps towards Henrik and punched him in the stomach. The air went out of Henrik with a puff and he bent double. Joel grabbed the back of his neck and dragged him towards the glowing embers of the fire, yelling, ‘You just don’t do that, get it? I’m going to make sure you get it, I’m going to make sure you understand…’

  It’s hard to imagine a more serious test of Henrik and Björn’s friendship, but Björn passed with flying colours. As Joel dragged Henrik, coughing and waving helplessly, towards the embers, Björn ran forward and grabbed him, slowing him down.

  ‘Pack it in, you mad bastard, let him go!’

  With his free hand Joel hit out at Björn, who had grabbed hold of his shoulders. When he couldn’t manage to shake him off, he shouted to Martin, ‘For fuck’s sake, come and give me a hand!’

  Martin rushed forward and used his considerably greater weight to pull Björn away and force him down on to the ground on his stomach. Henrik was still coughing after the vicious blow to his stomach, gasping for breath between coughs. Joel hit him on the head and shook him as he hissed, ‘You want to fuck, do you? In that case I think you ought to fuck somebody who wants to be fucked, you bastard.’

  He hurled Henrik down on top of Björn. Martin stood on Björn’s hands so that he couldn’t move.

  ‘There you go, now you can fuck,’ screamed Joel; he stood astride Henrik’s body, grabbed his hips and pulled backwards, then pushed down again. Henrik tried to wriggle free, but Joel got hold of a stone the size of an egg, and using its extra weight he slammed his fist into the back of Henrik’s head.

  ‘Enjoying yourself, are you? Maybe you haven’t got it all the way in yet…’

  Henrik lay helpless on top of Björn, who was now weeping, and Joel groped around his pale backside to direct him the right way.

  ‘Pack it in Joel, pack it in for fuck’s sake!’

  Anders let go of Cecilia and went over to the naked bodies, twisted around each other. He said it again. ‘Joel, pack it in! That’s enough!’

  When he was a step away, Joel turned his face to him. Saliva was dribbling from the corners of his mouth. His eyes were inhuman and expressed only one simple emotion: Touch me and I’ll kill you. Joel raised the hand holding the stone ready to strike, and Anders backed down. The nausea rose from his stomach he stepped back. And turned away.

  The others stood as if paralysed, following the drama with eyes wide open. Only Elin’s face betrayed anything other than incredulous horror. She was
smiling. A stiff smile curled her lips, and her eyes were…avid. Behind him Anders could hear Joel struggling with Henrik, unable to achieve the result he desired. Perhaps the humiliation had finally forced the guilty erection to subside.

  Björn was weeping in despair, howling like a whipped animal. Joel panted and swore, but finally gave up. He turned away from the bodies on the ground and spat. As he walked past the remains of the fire he kicked a few glowing embers over Henrik’s back with his bare foot.

  Henrik jerked and rolled off Björn. Joel went into the boathouse, and after a few seconds he was back with a bottle of Bacardi. His eyes were still hazy, flickering with excitement, and Anders noticed that the fight and the punishment had given him a hard-on. The scrap of fishing net was draped over his cock as if it had been hung out to dry.

  He walked up to Elin, grabbed her hand and said, ‘You and I are going to have a little chat.’

  Elin went with him. The half-finished fishing net sarong trailed after her like a bridal veil as they went around the corner of the boathouse and disappeared into the forest.

  There was silence now. Martin had stepped off Björn’s hands a long time ago, and now looked guilty as he stood there gazing down at the huddled, weeping boy. He glanced around as if he hoped someone might tell him why he had done it. Everyone was avoiding each other’s eyes.

  Cecilia went into the boathouse and dug out Henrik and Björn’s clothes. By that stage they could hear noises from the forest, where Joel was either taking or being given his reward. From the sounds Elin was making, it sounded as though it was more a case of the latter. Samuel went inside and turned up the music.

  The tape had gone back to the beginning, and Henrik and Björn were slowly pulling on their clothes to the sound of the fanfare from ‘The Final Countdown’. Anders would never be able to hear that song again without a flush of guilt.

  He saw Björn’s face, wet with tears, his slender, trembling hands pulling on the ugly underpants, he remembered the snow fortresses they had built together and the chocolate Björn’s mother had given them, the children’s programs they had watched and the things they had laughed at. He wished he had picked up a bigger stone and thrown it at Joel’s head.

  But he hadn’t, and now Björn was weeping even more violently as he discovered that his Morrissey-glasses were snapped in the middle.

  Anders went over to him, crouched down and said, ‘Are you OK?’

  Björn’s hand shot out and hit him on the forehead. Not hard, but enough to make the point. He didn’t want anyone to look at him or speak to him. After a couple of minutes Henrik and Björn were dressed and set off along the shoreline, past the boats.

  Later on Anders found out they had swum across to Kattudden.

  The final week of that summer passed in a state not unlike a hangover. Once the real hangover after the party in the boathouse had gone, everyone still talked more quietly than usual, laughed less often, and went around with a gnawing little pain. Except for Joel and Elin.

  They had finally found each other seriously, and wanted to show off that fact. They crashed about paying no heed to anyone else, and gathered people together mainly so that they could have an audience as they groped each other. This might possibly have been their way of dealing with their feelings of guilt, but nobody took it that way. It was hard work, mostly. A couple of times Joel gave Elin a slap as a kind of joke, and it is possible that his later career as an abuser of women started that very summer.

  Nothing was heard of Henrik and Björn, nor did anyone seek them out. Their exclusion from the gang was something that had been coming for several years, and now it was a fact. It hadn’t really been a banishment as such, it was more that the gang had spat them out. It was a shame, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  The day before Anders was due to go back to the city, he went over to Henrik’s cottage anyway. As he approached the door he could hear the music from inside, ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’. He knocked.

  The music was turned off and Henrik opened the door. He looked just the same as always, except that he had more pimples than before. Anders could see a pile of chocolate biscuit wrappers on the floor inside. Henrik made no move to let him in.

  ‘Hi,’ said Anders. ‘I just…I’m going home tomorrow, so I…I just thought I’d say goodbye.’

  A bitter smile distorted Henrik’s mouth. When Anders didn’t say or do anything else, the smile disappeared, and for a couple of seconds Henrik’s face was naked.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘Just so you know. I didn’t do it. I just… it was nothing. I brushed against her. And she started screaming.’ Henrik fixed his naked gaze on Anders’ eyes. ‘Do you believe me?’

  Anders nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Henrik’s face closed down again, that smile came back. He said, ‘In the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more.’

  Anders realised this was a quote, but couldn’t place it, so he simply said, ‘Mm.’

  ‘Bye then,’ said Henrik, and closed the door.

  The following summer the gang had begun to break up from the inside. Someone had gone on an InterRail trip, some had got summer jobs. Henrik and Björn could be seen riding around on the moped, and Anders was the only one who acknowledged them with a nod, but they never stopped to talk.

  Strange things had begun to happen in the village. Things disappeared and turned up somewhere else. The notice board outside the shop was pulled down, and one morning a summer visitor who was going for a swim made a horrible discovery. From the lower branch of the pine tree next to the changing room a swan was dangling, hanged by the neck with a steel wire.

  Another summer visitor who had three rabbits in a large hutch came out one morning and found them all dead. The only living thing inside the hutch was a neighbour’s famously bad-tempered bulldog. There was nothing to indicate that the dog had dug its way in. It had been taken off its leash and placed inside the hutch.

  Suspicion soon fell on Henrik and Björn. They rode around the village generally behaving oddly and negatively. Viciously, you could even say. They were taken to task here and there, but simply denied everything. Since nothing could be proved, nothing could be done. But people started to lock up their possessions and their animals.

  The winter came, and The Smiths split up. When Anders was out on Domarö in the week between Christmas and New Year, he saw that Henrik and Björn were going around dressed in mourning, but he didn’t meet them or speak to them.

  The following summer he and Cecilia went interrailing for a month, and for the rest of the time Anders worked in a supermarket warehouse. During his winter week that year he didn’t see Henrik and Björn. However, he learned via his father that they had made themselves completely impossible. They didn’t talk to anyone and although they had had a few sessions with the youth psychology team, the vandalism and the nasty little events continued, if on a smaller scale.

  When Anders rang his father in February, he heard that Henrik and Björn had drowned. They had set off across the ice on the moped and had fallen through. Neither of them had been wearing a lifejacket, and it had probably happened very quickly.

  The village could breathe a sigh of relief. The final expulsion of Hubba and Bubba had taken place. Their parents left the island soon after, and disappeared from the general consciousness. It’s always very sad when young people die, but…

  It was finally over.

  Nobody loves us

  If you exist

  In the light of the lamp above the kitchen table, it was easier to see what had happened to Elin, what she had done to herself now. The stitches were still there, and parts of her face were swollen with healing scar tissue, but it was still possible to see what the latest operation aimed to achieve.

  Two deep grooves lined with livid scars ran from the outer edge of her nostrils down to the corners of her mouth. Beneath her eyes, which were now deep-set, were angry red patches criss-crossed by a number of thin lin
es that continued out towards her temples. She had had her wrinkles emphasised. The operations she underwent had the opposite aim of normal plastic surgery. She was making herself older, cruder, uglier.

  She had declined the offer of coffee, as she had some difficulty using her mouth, and had wine in a tumbler instead. Anders couldn’t find a straw, so he cut off a piece of thin rubber tubing and gave her that. She sucked down half the glass in one go, and Anders looked at her.

  Pitiful.

  The mention of Henrik and Björn had reminded him even more powerfully of what Elin had done, who she had been. Now she sat here eighteen years later with trembling hands, her face in bits, sucking wine through a rubber tube.

  Perhaps there is a kind of justice in the world, after all.

  Since it was difficult to look at her for any length of time, his gaze wandered across the table, and he noticed that the number of beads on the tile had increased considerably. Another patch of white beads had been added, and a good sixth of the surface was now covered in beads.

  Elin sucked up the last of the wine with a loud slurping noise. It was impossible to read her emotions from her face. Anders was on the point of asking about Henrik and Björn, but Elin got there first. Since her lips weren’t working properly, all the consonants were weak and her tone was monotonous.

  ‘I have this dream,’ she said. ‘A recurring dream. I don’t sleep very well, because I have this dream all the time. I haven’t slept properly for several weeks.’

  She poured herself more wine, and Anders fetched himself a glass to keep her company. Once again Elin sucked down half the glass, coughed, and went on:

  ‘There’s a man lying in a boat. A skiff, an old skiff. He’s lying in the bottom of the boat with his head up by the side, and he’s dead. His eyes are open. And around him…there’s a net in the boat as well, with fish in it. And some of the fish are loose, jumping around. Floundering and jumping. And the fish in the net are moving too. There are lots of fish, and they’re alive. But the man is lying there dead. Do you understand? The fish are alive, even though they’re in the boat, but he’s dead.’