Harbour (22 page)

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 circle 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.

‘I see,' said Cecilia. ‘So why are you happy?'

It didn't sound as if she was genuinely interested, but he supposed he could understand that, so he took a deep breath and said, ‘Maja has contacted me.'

He heard the rustle of bedclothes at the other end as Cecilia sat up. ‘What are you talking about?'

Anders told her what had happened. He left out the detail about Elin and all the wine, just said he had fallen asleep and then woken up during the night, found the message on the kitchen table. As he was talking he ran his fingers over the letters on the table, over the beads.

When he had finished there was a long silence. Anders cleared his throat and said, ‘What do you think?'

From the sounds at the other end he gathered that Cecilia was lying down again.

‘Anders. I've met someone else.'

‘Right. Yes.'

‘So…there's not much I can do for you. Not anymore.'

‘But…this isn't about that.'

‘Then what is it about?'

‘It's about…about…Cecilia, this really
is
what's happened. Honestly. It's true, what I told you.'

‘What do you want me to do?'

What had been so simple suddenly became difficult. Anders looked around the table as if he were searching for a clue. His gaze landed once again on the seven spindly letters.

‘I don't know. I just wanted…to tell you.'

‘Anders. The time we had together…even though it ended the way it did…if you need help. If you really,
really
need help. Then I'll help you. But not otherwise. I can't. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, I understand. But…but…'

The words got stuck just inside his lips. He heard what he'd said, how the conversation had gone. And he realised that she couldn't have said anything other than exactly what she had said.

What would I have said?

He thought about it. He would have fallen on the chance, been ready to believe just about anything. Wouldn't he? After all, he had resisted the miracle himself. But he still wouldn't have responded the way Cecilia did. He would have believed her, just so that he had an excuse to be with her. He felt a stabbing pain in his chest and he coughed.

Cecilia let him finish coughing before she said, ‘Good night, Anders.'

‘Wait! Just one thing. What could it mean?'

‘What?'

‘Carry me. What could it mean?'

Cecilia breathed out; it wasn't quite a sigh, because there was a little sound with it, a fragment of a whimper. She could have been on the point of saying something else, but what she actually said was, ‘I don't know, Anders. I don't know. Good night.'

‘Good night.' After a breath he added, ‘Sorry,' but the line was dead and she didn't hear him. Anders put the phone down and rested his forehead on the table.

Someone else.

Only now did he realise how much he had hoped, in some corner of his pissed-up heart, that somehow, somewhere, they might…

Someone else. Had he been there, had he been listening? No. It hadn't felt as if there was another person there. Cecilia hadn't talked as if someone else was listening.

So they're not living together yet. Maybe…

He banged his head against the table. Hard. White pain surged through his skull. Tangled thoughts rose to the surface, were washed away.

Give up. Give up.

He raised his head and the pain was a liquid that altered the situation, was washed from his brow to the back of his head and stayed there. He looked around the kitchen with clear eyes and said, ‘There's only you and me.'

The sea embraced the pebbles on the beach, relinquished and embraced them once again. Back and forth, back and forth. The same movement for all eternity. Take hold and let go, begin again.

He was tired now, he hadn't the strength to cope with anything else.

With his headache in place and quiet, he got up and walked through the living room, ignored the glass on the floor and the firelighter dust that had been blown around and crunched beneath his feet. He carried on to the bedroom. Without switching on the light or getting undressed, he slid into Maja's bed and pulled her blanket over him.

There now. Everything's all right now.

He looked at the double bed in the middle of the room, faintly illuminated by the moonlight shining through the window.

There's the double bed. I can go over there if I get frightened.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep in seconds.

A discovery by the shore

When someone knocked on his door at eight-thirty in the morning, Simon had been asleep for only a couple of hours. The wind and premonitions of evil had kept him awake until the first light of dawn broke through his bedroom window. By that time the wind had dropped and he had finally relaxed and given himself up to a light sleep. His body was stiff and heavy. He felt as if he was moving underwater as he got out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown and stumbled to the door.

Elof Lundberg looked as if he had woken up just as Simon was falling asleep. Wide-awake and bright eyed, his cap firmly in place. He looked Simon up and down and pulled a face.

‘Are you still in bed?'

‘No,' said Simon, twisting his head to relieve the stiffness in his neck. ‘Not anymore.'

He glowered challengingly at Elof, encouraging him to spit out whatever it was he wanted. He wasn't in the mood for small talk. Not now. And not with Elof. Elof sensed the atmosphere and became truculent. His lower lip jutted out and he raised his eyebrows. ‘I just wanted to tell you that your boat has come away from its mooring. If you're interested.'

Simon sighed. ‘I am, yes. Thank you very much.'

Elof couldn't help making the most of this opportunity. He had come here with the best of intentions, and was met with a rebuff. He said, ‘Of course, there are some people who prefer it that way. With just one rope. But the engine just keeps scraping all the time. And that might not be such a good thing.'

‘No, it isn't. Thank you.'

Elof was standing there as if he was waiting for some kind of reward, but Simon knew that wasn't it. He just wanted to help out with the boat, then be invited in for coffee so that he could sit and chat about what could happen when boats broke free, and so on. About how things should be taken care of in the proper way, between neighbours.

But Simon wasn't in the mood, so when Elof had been standing there nodding for a while and Simon hadn't said the right thing, he rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Right then. That's that then', and stomped off, every fibre of his body signalling that he had been treated most unfairly. Simon closed the door and lit a fire in the kitchen stove.

If the boat's been like that all night, it can stay like that for a while longer.

He and Elof had got on well until Maja disappeared. When Anders and Cecilia went back to the city, Simon had called on Elof to ask what he had meant when they were standing on the veranda: when he told Simon to ring Anders and tell him to come home.

‘Why did you say that?' he had asked.

Elof had become extremely busy with the fry-up he was preparing, and hadn't even looked up from the chopping board when he replied, ‘It just occurred to me, that's all.'

‘What did you mean?'

Elof was dicing boiled potatoes with exaggerated care. He didn't want to look Simon in the eye.

‘Nothing in particular. It just occurred to me that maybe it wasn't a good thing. For them to be out there.'

Simon sat down on a chair and stared at Elof until he had finished with the potatoes and had no choice but to meet Simon's gaze.

‘Elof. Do you know something I don't know?'

Elof stood up and turned his back on Simon, started busying himself with the frying pan and butter. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Like what?'

In the end Simon had given up and gone home, leaving Elof with his potato and his chopped bacon. After that day the relationship between them had soured. Simon couldn't begin to guess what it was that Elof knew, but there was something, and he couldn't come to terms with the fact that Elof was refusing to tell him. It was Simon's grandchild they were dealing with here, after all. As good as his grandchild.