Harbour (10 page)

The wind was howling around the walls, and Anders shivered. He suddenly felt
exposed
. Like an unwanted child left out in the forest. Exposed. His fragile little house stood alone, exposed on the point. The deep sea was forcing its way upward, reaching out its arms. The wind was curling itself around the house, flexing its muscles and trying to find a way in.

Something bad is coming. It's after me.

What ‘it' was, he had no idea. Just that it was big and strong, and it was after him. That his fortifications were inadequate.

The old wine tasted like rotten fruit in his mouth; he drank half a litre of water straight from the tap to rinse away the taste. The water wasn't much better. Salt water had probably got into the well—the tap water had a thick, metallic taste. Anders rinsed his face and dried it with a tea towel.

Without thinking about it, he went into the bedroom and fetched the bucket of plastic beads, then sat down at the kitchen table and started picking them out, pushing them together. First of all he made a heart in red. Then a blue heart outside the red one. Then a yellow one, and so on. Like a Russian doll, the hearts surrounding one another. When he got to the edge he got up and put some more wood in the stove.

The beads he had taken to make his heart design hadn't made any noticeable difference to the level in the bucket. He had plenty of beads and plenty of tiles. He would really have liked a bigger tile. So that he could make an entire picture.

If you stick them together…

He dug a hacksaw out of his toolbox and set to work. When he had sawn the edges off nine tiles, he smoothed them down with sandpaper to make an even surface for the glue to stick to. The work took up all of his attention and he didn't even notice as the dawn came creeping across the sea.

Only when all the edges were smooth and he got up to look for the unopened tube of araldite that he knew should be somewhere did he glance out of the window and realise that the morning sun had leached the brightness from the beam of the North Point lighthouse.

Morning. Coffee.

He washed away the worst of the limescale from the pot and poured water into the coffee machine. In the larder there was an open packet of coffee, which had doubtless lost all its flavour. He compensated by using twice as much as usual, and switched on the machine.

He found the glue and spent another half-hour smoothing down any slight imperfections and sticking the tiles together. The morning sun was slanting in through the kitchen window as he stood back to admire his work.

Nine tiles with room for four hundred beads on each one, all stuck together. A white, knobbly surface just waiting for three thousand six hundred coloured dots. Anders nodded. He was pleased with himself. He could get going now.

But what shall I make?

As he smoked a cigarette and sipped at the warm liquid, which did indeed taste more like the ghost of a cup of coffee, he contemplated the white surface and tried to come up with a picture that he would create there.

One of Strindberg's wild sea paintings in beads. Yes. But there probably weren't enough nuances for that. Something more naïve, like a child's picture. Cows and horses, a house with a chimney. No, that was no challenge.

A child's picture…

He glowered at the lighthouse on North Point and searched his memory. Then he pushed away his coffee cup and started rummaging in drawers. He hadn't a clue what had become of the camera.

He found it in the junk drawer, where everything that might just be worth keeping ended up. The counter showed that twelve pictures had been taken. He used the point of a pencil to push in the rewind button, and the motor began to turn, slowly and with much complaining. The batteries were more or less dead. There was a click and the motor speeded up: nothing more to rewind. Anders removed the roll of film and sat down at the kitchen table again.

He closed his hand around the small metal cylinder; it felt cool after lying in the drawer. They were in there. The last pictures of a family. He warmed it in his hand, warmed the tiny people on the ice who would soon be struck by something dreadful.

He took the roll of film between his thumb and index finger, studying it as if he might be able to see something of what was inside. An impulse told him to leave it alone, to let that family stay in there, forever unaware of what was to come. Not to let it out to trample in the sludge that life had become. To let that family stay in its little time capsule.

Someone hates us

With the morning's first cup of coffee by his side, Simon was sitting at the kitchen table staring down into the half-open matchbox. The black larva lay there motionless, but Simon knew it was alive.

He sat with his lips clamped firmly together, gathering saliva in his mouth. When he had enough he allowed it to trickle out between his lips and down into the box. The larva moved slightly when the spit landed on its shiny skin, as if it were sleepy; Simon watched as the saliva was slowly absorbed and disappeared.

It was a morning ritual that was every bit as necessary as going for a pee and having a cup of coffee, he had come to realise.

A week or so after Spiritus came into his care, he had left the box in the kitchen drawer one morning without spitting into it, and taken the boat over to the mainland to do some shopping. As he set off in the boat he already had the taste in his mouth. It grew stronger during the crossing. The taste of old wood, of rancid nuts, expanded out of his mouth, into his blood and through his muscles.

As he was slowing down ready to moor the boat by the jetty in NÃ¥ten, he threw up all over the floor. He knew the reason, but refused to give in and carried on towards the jetty, moving as slowly as possible. When the boat hit a post, it was as if his body was being wrenched inside out. He threw up until there was nothing left but bile.

This was a nausea much greater than the body itself can produce, a septic shock similar to acute poisoning. Simon curled up in the stern as his stomach contorted in cramps, and managed to swing the boat around so that it was heading back to Domarö.

He was convinced that he was going to die, and all the way back he remained curled up in the foetal position as deep, wet belches forced their way out of him and his body rotted.

He didn't manage to moor the boat properly, but ran it up on the shoreline and crawled on his knees through the shallow water, across the pebbles on the shore, the lawn and into the house. By the time he got the matchbox out of the drawer, his mouth was so dry from all the vomiting that it took him a couple of minutes to collect enough saliva to enable him to give Spiritus what Spiritus craved. It took several days before he was fully recovered, before his body felt strong once again.

Since then he had been careful to spit into the matchbox every morning. He didn't know what was waiting at the end of this pact he had entered into, but he knew he had to fulfil its terms for as long as he lived.

And then?

He didn't know. But he feared the worst, in some form. And he regretted the fact that he hadn't swept Spiritus off the jetty that day. Down into the sea where it belonged. He regretted that. But it was too late now.

He took a sip of his coffee and looked out of the window. The sky was high and clear, the way it looks only in the autumn, with a few yellow birch leaves drifting down. There was nothing to indicate that a storm was on its way, which Simon knew it was, just as he knew many other things. Where to find water under the ground, when the ice would form, how much rain would fall.

When he had finished his coffee and rinsed the cup, Simon put on his knee-high boots and went out. This was one of the islanders' habits that he had adopted: knee-high boots in every situation. You never knew what you might end up squelching through, and it was best to be prepared.

Perhaps the post and newspapers might have arrived on the early boat today, and if they hadn't there were always some old men by the mailboxes who, like Simon, had nothing better to do than to go and see if the post had come on the early boat. Which it almost never had.

On the way up to the mailboxes he glanced along the track to the Shack. There was plenty to do there, and perhaps that was a good thing for Anders. Something to occupy the hands is an excellent cure for gloomy thoughts, he knew that from personal experience. During the worst periods with Marita, his first wife, it was practising with packs of cards, handkerchiefs and other things that had stood between him and panic-stricken terror.

With Anna-Greta things were very different, of course. In that relationship it was mostly melancholy he had driven away with sleight of hand and miscalculations.

As far as he knew, Anders had no particular hobby to occupy his mind, so undergrowth that needed clearing, flaking paint and wood that needed chopping could well do him some good.

From a distance of a hundred metres away, he could already see that today's conversation group by the mailboxes consisted of Holger and Göran. They were instantly recognisable. Holger stooped and miserable from disappointments that had started when he was only young, Göran still straight-backed after forty years in the police service.

But what the…?

The two men were deep in an intense discussion. Holger was shaking his head and waving one arm in the direction of the sea, while Göran was kicking at the ground as if he were annoyed. But that wasn't what was peculiar.

The mailboxes were gone.

The wall of the shop, closed for the season, was completely empty. Only the yellow box for outgoing post was still hanging there, and that looked odd as well.

Have they stopped the postal service?

As Simon got closer he realised that wasn't the problem. Ten metres away from the shop he stood on the first splinters. Splinters of plastic and splinters of wood, bits of the mailboxes that had been hanging on the wall only yesterday. The yellow metal box for outgoing post was dented and crooked.

Holger caught sight of him and burst out, ‘Oh, here comes the Stockholmer. We're not likely to get much sympathy there.'

Simon stepped into the mosaic of shattered, multi-coloured plastic. ‘What's happened?'

‘What's happened?' said Holger. ‘I'll tell you what's happened. Last night when we were fast asleep some bastards from Stockholm came over here in a boat and smashed our mailboxes for the hell of it.'

‘Why?'

Holger looked as if he couldn't believe his ears. That was his normal reaction to anything he perceived as a challenge to his theories, and as usual he embarked on his reply by repeating the question, just to show how completely stupid it was.

‘Why? Do you think they actually need a
reason
? Maybe they couldn't get a mooring in the harbour, maybe they weren't happy with the number of hours of sunshine last summer, or maybe they just think the most fun you can have is destroying something, and if you ask me I'd go for the last option. It makes me so bloody furious.'

Holger turned on his heel and limped down to the steamboat jetty, where Simon could see Mats, the owner of the shop, waiting for the tender.

Simon turned to Göran and asked, ‘Is that what you think?'

Göran looked at the devastation around them and shook his head. ‘I think we have no idea who did this. Could be anybody.'

‘Someone on the island?'

‘No one I can think of. But you never know.'

‘Did nobody hear anything?'

Göran nodded in the direction of the jetty. ‘Mats heard something, and then he heard an engine start up. But he didn't know if it was an outboard motor or a moped. The wind was in the wrong direction.'

‘They must have made…a hell of a noise.'

‘I don't know,' said Göran, scooping up some green and grey pieces and showing them to Simon. ‘Look at these. What do you think?'

The pieces in Göran's hand, shark fins and rhomboids, all had sharp edges where they had broken off. The pieces on the ground were quite big too. No little bits.

‘It doesn't look as if they were smashed.'

‘No, it doesn't, does it? More as if they've been
cut
. With a box cutter or something. And look at this.'

Göran pointed at the metal box. It was dented and crooked, but the dents had sharp angles in the middle where the bare metal showed through. It was not blows that had created the dents, but a stabbing action. Someone had stood there stabbing at the mailbox with a big knife.

Simons shook his head. ‘Why would someone do that?'

Göran hesitated before replying, as if he wanted to be sure that he was choosing the right words. Eventually he said, ‘My experience of this sort of thing…is that people do this because they feel hate.'

‘And what is it they—or he—hate in cases like this?'

‘Us.'

Simon looked at the debris on the ground again, at the dented metal box. Rage. All the mailboxes represented the people on the island. Every box was an extension of the person to whom it belonged. A name.

Göran shrugged. ‘Or else it's the simple urge to destroy things. How should I know. Sometimes that's what it is. But usually it isn't. So what are we going to do about this lot?'

Any kind of outrage or violent deviation from the norm has a tendency to create gaps in the chain of responsibility: no one guilty, no one responsible. In which case two old men who just happened to be passing can easily end up clearing up the mess. Göran crouched down and started picking up pieces, Simon fetched the rubbish bin from the steps leading to the shop. Then they worked together to gather up the wreckage. When the bin was full, Göran went down to the harbour for an empty barrel, while Simon sat down on the steps and wiped the sweat from his brow.

So bloody unnecessary. All this trouble just because someone… hates.

He pulled a face and rubbed his eyes.

Ha. There's no end to how much trouble there can be if someone hates hard enough. In fact, we ought to be grateful if it stops at mailboxes.