Harbour (40 page)

Say it once, twice, a thousand times. Eventually you might believe it.

He was finding it difficult to breathe, because the bowling ball was in the way, pressing on his lungs. Stiffly he swept the torch over the walls of the shed, and caught sight of the plastic bottle.

Wormwood…

He unscrewed the top, raised the bottle to his mouth and took two swigs. If there was a thought in his head it was
burn away
. What was to be burned away he had no idea. Maybe it was the ball, maybe it was he himself. The liquid coursed down his throat and he waited for the fire, but the fire did not come.

This wormwood was not dissolved in alcohol but in something else, and the substance running down into Anders' stomach had a thick, slippery consistency. Like oil. Only when he had finished swallowing did the taste come. It didn't explode on his palate as it had at Anna-Greta's, but came creeping along and squeezed his tongue, his palate, his throat, his chest.

Anders sank down into a crouching position as the upper part of his body was turned inside out. He lost all feeling in his fingers, and his breathing stopped.

Cramp. Cramp in my lungs. I'm going to die.

Poison. Not the instantaneous shock of a toxin that compels the body to spit it out immediately, but the treacherous effect of something that slips down and takes root, spreads through the bloodstream and kills.

Anders pressed his hands to his temples and his brain crackled with discharging electricity. He took a deep breath, and discovered that he could do it. His lungs were not paralysed, he had actually been holding his breath. The air he inhaled brought his tastebuds to life, and he was wormwood. It tasted so vile that it wasn't a taste at all, it was a state of being. He grabbed hold of the workbench and pulled himself to his feet.

I am wormwood.

The ball in his chest was gone. The revolting taste had encased it, and it had shrunk and disappeared. He blinked and blinked again, trying to focus his gaze. He fixed on a piece of rope with a frayed end. He shone the torch on it and he could see every single fibre. There were fifty-seven threads.

Fifty-seven. The same age as Dad was when he died. The same number of screws and plugs as there were in the cupboard Cecilia and I bought from IKEA for the bedroom. The same number of centimetres as Maja's height when she was two months old. The same…

The outlines of everything perceived by the eye of the torch were blurred, yet at the same time all too clear. He wasn't seeing the objects, he was seeing what they
were
. He reached out for the roll of plastic sacks and knew there were eight sacks left on the roll and together they would hold one thousand six hundred litres.

One thousand six hundred litres of things. Leaves, twigs, toys, tins of paint, tools, gramophones, pairs of glasses, pine cones, microwave ovens. One thousand six hundred litres of things…
As he picked up the roll he found a still point inside his head, a rock in the river where he could stand and think clearly as everything flowed past and around him.

Take the bags. Go to the house.

That was what he did. As the world continued to come adrift, dissolve and pour through him, he stood on the rock and watched his hands helping Simon to dress Elin's body in plastic for this final journey. Then the perception grew weaker and he began to shiver.

Anders crouched down in the prow, as far away from the plastic bundle as possible. Simon had to sit with his feet pushed underneath Elin's thighs in order to fit in the driving seat.

How can he do this.

Simon's lips were clamped together and his forehead was furrowed, as if he were concentrating hard the whole time. But he was doing it. Anders realised he ought to be grateful, but he had no room for any such emotions. The world had frayed like the rope in the shed.

Simon started the engine and they set off from Domarö, rounded North Point and set their course for the bay between Kattholmen and Ledinge. There was a light breeze, and Anders fixed his gaze on the horizon as the rising sun warmed his cheek.

A dozen or so metres ahead of the boat a gull took off from the surface of the water and soared away with a scream. Anders followed it with his eyes, saw it cross the disc of the sun and disappear in the direction of GÃ¥vasten.

Daddy…

How many early mornings had Anders lain in the prow of his father's boat as the sun rose, on their way to the fishing grounds to lift their nets? Forty? Fifty?

Daddy…

He hadn't thought properly about his father for a long time. With the fleeing gull and the rising sun, it all came back. Including that time.

That time…

Fishing for herring

The summer Anders turned twelve he was saving up for a radio-controlled boat. He had seen it in the toy shop in Norrtälje, and had been seduced by the fantastic picture on the box. The white hull racing across the water, the blue go-faster stripes along the side. It cost three hundred and fifty kronor, and it would be his before the summer was over.

It wasn't impossible. He and his father would lay their net twice a week, then Anders would sell the fish outside the shop. Six kronor a kilo, and he got half. So the boat represented one hundred and seventeen kilos of herring, he had worked out. With one krona left over.

He was no Uncle Scrooge, saving every krona he earned, but he had managed to put away one hundred and ninety kronor. Every catch brought between thirty and forty kilos, but by the time it got towards the end of June and the herring were beginning to move further out to sea, each catch was slightly smaller. He still needed to sell fifty kilos of fish, and they were unlikely to put the net out more than twice before the end of the season.

So that was the first thing Anders thought about when he woke up that morning:
fifty kilos.

He got out of bed and dug his fishing clothes out of the bottom drawer. The smell alone would have given his mother palpitations. Both his jeans and pullover were covered in old scales and dried roe, and had approximately the same aroma as the dried pieces of fish you give to dogs.

Finally he put on his cap. It was a cap with a logo from the shipyard in NÃ¥ten where his father worked, and it too was so full of scales and solidified herring gunge that a dog could probably have eaten it just as it was.

Anders liked his outfit. When he put it on he was no longer Anders-nobody-in-particular, he was Anders the fisher boy. This was not something he could share with his friends from the city, and he made sure he changed his clothes before he sat down outside the shop. But in the mornings when they were all still sleeping, he was just his father's son, the fisher boy, and he liked that.

It was a fine morning. Anders and his father sat opposite each other at the kitchen table with a cup of hot chocolate and a cup of coffee respectively, looking out towards the bay, which was dead calm. The reflector in GÃ¥vasten lighthouse was bouncing back the first rays of the sun. The odd cloud drifted across the sky like swansdown on a puddle.

They each ate a sandwich and finished their drinks. Then they put on their lifejackets and went down to the boat. Dad cranked up the compression ignition engine, and it started first time. At the beginning of the summer Anders had asked to have a go, and had been frightened by the recoil in the crank handle when the engine didn't fire. He left it to Dad after that.

Fine weather. The engine started straight away. Good omens. Fifty kilos.

He knew they wouldn't get fifty kilos
today
, that had only happened to him once, last summer, and that had been right at the beginning of June. But thirty. Thirty would do. From now on he was going to save every single krona.

They rounded North Point and came out into the sunlit stretch of Ledinge Bay, where a slight breeze was blowing from the east.

The low-lying sun had just freed itself from the tops of the pine trees on Ryssholmen, and was celebrating by spreading its light across the rippling surface of the sea. Anders sat by the gunwale, trailing his fingers in the water. It was already warm enough to swim, varying between seventeen and nineteen degrees depending on the wind.

He moved into the prow and lay down full length on the wood warmed by the sun, gazing towards the spot where they had laid their net, in the narrow inlet between Ledinge and the Ledinge skerry. When he screwed up his eyes he thought he could make out the flag marking the location of the net.

The gentle chugging of the engine was making him sleepy, so he rubbed his eyes and thought about the radio-controlled boat. How far could it go before it lost contact with the remote control? Fifty metres? A hundred? How fast did it go?
Probably faster than Dad's boat at any rate,
he thought as they glided towards the inlet.

Anders was still lost in boy-racer fantasies when his father slowed the engine. The chugging changed to a knocking sound, with longer and longer intervals between strokes. The flag was getting closer. Anders started moving just as his father shouted, ‘Action stations, captain!' and put the engine in neutral.

Anders jumped down and edged towards the helm as his father moved towards the prow. They crossed on either side of the engine. They had done this before. His father smiled and said, ‘Take it slowly and carefully now'. Anders pulled a face that said
Have I done this before, or what?
and sat down at the helm.

His father got hold of the flag, hauled it in and grabbed the rope. Anders edged the boat gently into reverse, until it was completely motionless. As his father began to haul in the net, he edged forward so that the boat was following the line of the net. This was the time he loved best during their morning trips. When he was the one in charge. He could race the engine, slam the boat into reverse and turn the rudder if he so wished—but did he?

Of course not.

Slowly and carefully he adjusted the steering and the speed to make it as easy as possible for his father to lift the net. Anders was good at this. He was the captain.

He leaned over the rail and looked down into the dark water. It was usually possible to glimpse enough of the shining silver on its way to the surface to get some idea of how big the catch was likely to be. Anders looked down and frowned.

What's that? Can it be…
What he could see moving upwards was not the scattered, metallic shimmer of this many or that many herring, no, it looked more as if they had caught one single, gigantic herring in the net this morning, a compact mass being pulled slowly towards the boat.

His father had stopped hauling the net and was now standing motionless in the prow, staring down into the water. Anders peered down and he could now see that the apparently solid body did in fact consist of individual herring. It was a record catch beyond all expectation. His heart began to beat faster.

There's fifty kilos there, at least. Maybe more. Will I be able to sell that much?

He waited for the catch to get closer to the surface so that he would be able to see better, but nothing happened. His father was still standing in the prow, the rope dangling from his hands.

‘What's the matter?' asked Anders. ‘It's a massive catch!'

His father turned to face him with an expression Anders didn't understand. He looked…frightened. Frightened and worried. Anders shook his head.

‘Aren't you going to bring them up, then?'

‘I think…maybe we shouldn't.'

‘But why? I mean, it's a record! There's loads of them!'

His father let go of the rope with one hand and pointed at the surface. ‘Feel the water.'

Anders did as he said and dipped his hand in the water. He yanked it back quickly. The water was ice cold. He blinked and cautiously slipped his hand in once again. It nipped at the tips of his fingers, and the water was so cold it was on the point of freezing.

How can it be like that?

He looked enquiringly at his father, who was staring down into the water as if he were searching for something. Anders looked around. There was nothing to indicate that winter was suddenly on the way. The only explanation was an unusually cold and strong current. Wasn't it?

‘Why is it like that?'

His father sighed deeply. The rope began to slip out of his hands.

‘Dad!'

The rope stopped. ‘Yes?'

‘We have to land this catch, don't we?'

His father turned his head towards the broad strip of sunlight and said quietly, ‘Why?'

The question confused Anders and frightened him a little. He babbled, ‘Because…because there's such a lot and you know that boat I'm saving up for, this is…and…it won't do any good if we leave it, will it?'

His father turned to Anders once again, nodded slowly and said, ‘No, I don't suppose it will. You're probably right.'

He started hauling on the net again, the muscles in his jaw working as if he were chewing on something he was never going to be able to swallow. Anders didn't know what had happened, what he'd said, but he was relieved it had worked. The catch would be brought in.

Apart from the problem that Anders didn't understand, it was very difficult for his father to lift such an enormous catch. Anders moved the boat as helpfully as he could, but the net his father was hauling into the prow was not a net full of individual fish, but rather a thick cable of silver enclosed in mesh.

When the whole of the net was in the boat and the anchor had been raised, his father went over to the engine without a word and put his hands on the cylinder head gasket.

‘What are you doing?' asked Anders. If his father's behaviour during the later part of their trip had been strange, this was yet another new thing.

His father gave a wan smile. ‘Warming my hands.'

Anders nodded. Of course. That was understandable, at least. The water was cold—his hands had got cold. He left the helm and went to have a look at the catch. He was no expert, but surely this was a good bit more than fifty kilos? Seventy? Eighty? When he looked at the massive pile of fish ensnared in the net, he noticed something else unusual.