Harbour (61 page)

I am…sinking…

The only heat that existed was coming from the burning, agonising wound in his throat. The warm wound remained on the surface, while he sank down into the coolness of the earth and it grew dark around him. He lost contact with his body and fell.

Sing me to sleep…

He no longer knew what was up or down, he was in freefall, unaware of anything beneath him or any approaching conclusion. He was floating. He was in dark waters, and he was drowning.

His lungs contracted as he tried to breathe in air that did not exist. He had only seconds left to live. But the seconds passed and still his consciousness drifted in the formless darkness, refusing to die away and thinking:
I have been here before. I know what happens next.

The horror of what was to come made a heart begin to beat more quickly somewhere out in the darkness. It could be his own heart, but such distinctions were meaningless here. There was a heart beating in fear, and there was something coming closer.

It's coming…

The darkness grew thicker, a shadow began to form inside a shadow. He was nothing against this shadow and he was being sucked towards it like krill about to be strained through the baleen plate of a whale. It wasn't interested in him, it was too immense to bother about him, but he was in its way and he was being drawn into it.

Come with me…come with me…

A hand crept into his, a little hand. It tugged and pulled. Maja's hand.

You have to come now!

No. I am Maja. Daddy's hand is so big. When we go for a walk I just hold on to his forefinger. His forefinger is in my hand. Why doesn't he come?

Daddy, come on!

Her hand is in mine, it's so tiny and slender, it's as if I'm holding a finger, come on Daddy, now Daddy, we have to go!

I'm coming.

He followed the hand that was pulling him, he pulled on the finger that was following him and the darkness shifted in shades of aluminium as the finger and the hand turned into an insect and the salt-laden sea air was drawn into his lungs in a single deep breath.

I'm coming.

He was able to see once again. He was able to breathe. His body was lying on a grassy slope. The wind sluiced across his face. Beside him lay wet clothes, as if laid out to dry in the moonlight. Judging by the position of the moon in the sky, he had been gone for a long time, perhaps several hours. Ten metres away from him lay the boat, pulled up on the shoreline.

I can't do it.

He saw before him the effort required to push the boat out into the water, to get the engine started. He didn't think he could do it. He wanted to carry on sleeping, but without dreams.

Come on!

‘Yes, yes…' mumbled Anders, getting unsteadily to his feet and tottering over to the boat. The wind had picked up and was helping him. The little waves had been working on the boat, and had started to draw it towards them. In a little while longer it would probably have drifted away. He only had to give it a gentle nudge, and it was floating out on the water, then he followed it, scrambled up and fell over the rail.

He tried to open the hand holding Spiritus, but his fingers were locked. With the help of the other hand's slightly more flexible fingers, he managed to force the hand open and tip Spiritus back into the matchbox. He stared at the engine.

One pull. I can manage that.

He was on the point of giving up again when the engine didn't start first time, but he gritted his teeth, prayed a wordless prayer and tried again. The engine started. Before he grabbed the controls he checked that he still had the snowsuit inside his jacket.

To no purpose.

Slumped on the seat in the prow so that he could barely see over the rail, he left Kattholmen and headed for Domarö. He knew what he must do, but he had to rest first, regain a little of his strength.

He was almost unconscious when he reached his jetty and it wasn't until he was halfway up to the Shack that he caught sight of himself for a brief moment and asked himself a question:

Did you make the boat fast?

He didn't know, he couldn't remember, and he didn't even have the strength to turn around and check. If he
hadn't
tied the boat up, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway. A while later he was vaguely aware of opening the outside door, closing it behind him, finding a bottle of diluted wine on the bureau and knocking it back. Then he collapsed on the floor and knew no more.

The first

Anders will be the last. Let him sleep and rest. He will need it. Meanwhile, let us listen to the tale of the first one.

It is a kind of fairy tale, and as in all fairy tales, the details have drifted away on the tide of time and we are left behind on the shore with at best part of a keel, a ship's figurehead or a log book damaged by the water.

Something happened. It happened at some point. That is all we need to know. At the time when the inhabitants of Domarö made their living from herring fishing and an unholy alliance with the powers of the deep, the tale may have been better known. Now only fragments remain, and we must let our imagination build the ship.

Because the story is about a ship. Or rather the wreckage of a ship. It might have been a small cog, that is of no importance. The ship had been transporting salt, presumably between Estonia and Sweden, following some route or other.

The crew could have been Swedish or Estonian, but in any case we have only one survivor to take into account. We will assume he is Swedish, and we will call him Magnus.

We find him on the Åland Sea. His ship has drifted off course and has foundered in an unusually thick October fog. Terrified and frozen to the marrow, Magnus has managed to scramble up on to part of the stern, which has broken away. He calls to his shipmates, but there is no reply. The fog lies like a blanket around him, preventing him from even seeing the size of the piece of wreckage that is carrying him.

But he is floating. He has been lucky in the midst of the disaster. The piece of the ship on which he finds himself is shaped in such a way that no part of his body is in the water. He has been lucky. If only he were not so dreadfully cold!

We do not know how long Magnus drifts in this way. It could be days, but it is probably only hours, since the fog does not lift. He is floating through a milk-white world and he cannot hear anything, apart from the sounds he himself makes when he changes position or cries for help out into the emptiness.

The first thing he becomes aware of is not a visual impression or a sound. It is a smell. And the smell alone, the aroma is enough for him to feel that warmth is beginning to seep into his body. It is the smell of animals.

Once before he got lost in the fog at sea. On that occasion they reefed the sails and waited for the mists to disperse. But before that happened they made contact with the land through that smell. Manure, animals' bodies, land! Animals mean people, and rescue. They rowed in the direction of the smell and found their way into the harbour.

Hence the spark of hope in Magnus's terrified guts. He grabs hold of a loose plank of wood and paddles in the direction he thinks the smell is coming from. He must be heading in the right direction, because the smell grows stronger.

He can hear a cow lowing. The fog begins to dissolve into veils and separate sections. The cold diminishes, and the light breeze carrying the smell is warm, a summer breeze, no less.

Presumably Magnus is a believer. Presumably Magnus is praising God as the fog lifts and he can see land at last. But he can hardly believe what his eyes are seeing.

Paradise.

It is the only possible explanation. That he has drifted so far off course that he has ended up in paradise. He has heard that the Garden of Eden could well have been on an island. It seems as if he has found that island.

A few more strokes with his improvised paddle bring him to a beach with fine, pale sand. Where the beach ends, a meadow of lush grass takes over. A number of well-fed cows are grazing there. On a slope he sees sturdily built houses, surrounded by fruit trees in blossom.

And it is warm, pleasantly warm. For a long time Magnus does nothing but sit on his piece of wreckage, staring open-mouthed. He hardly dare step ashore, he is afraid that this paradise will melt away like the fog if he touches it with his feet.

There is a freshness about everything. Everything is sparkling and gleaming as if it were new, created just for him. Yes, that is exactly how it feels. There is a film of moisture over everything and water drips from the leaves of the trees, as if this island has risen from the sea just to meet him.

Tentatively he lowers his foot into the water and discovers that the sandy seabed is firm. He wades ashore, he walks across the beach, up towards the meadow and the houses. He disappears from history, never to be heard of again.

Time to start a fight

When morning came, Anders no longer had a body. He had a wound. All his limbs were aching after a night on the hard floor, his head hurt, and his throat was pulling and throbbing. His fingers were stiff and his bladder made its presence felt, joining in the chorus of pain.

When he opened his eyes, which had managed to gum themselves shut during the night, he felt the pain deep inside the pupil itself as the daylight stabbed its way in. He lay still, looking over towards the toilet door and trying to find one part of him that wasn't hurting. He flicked his tongue around inside his mouth and discovered that his tongue was uninjured, that neither the inside of his mouth nor his teeth had been damaged over the past few days. It felt sticky in there, and it tasted disgusting. But it didn't hurt.

He rubbed his eyes and bits of dried blood came away, colouring the tips of his fingers pale red. He had lost all feeling in the ear that had been pressed against the rag rug during the hours of the night. He sneezed, and snot mixed with blood shot out of his nose.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

He managed to sit up, and grabbed hold of the door handle. Using the handle for support, he got to his feet and staggered to the toilet, where he drank from the tap until he could drink no more. White spots were dancing in front of his eyes, and he had to sit down to pee. He sat there for a long time with his head in his hands.

When the worst of the dizziness had passed, he stood up and pulled out Maja's snowsuit. It was no longer wet, but it was blotchy with patches of dark, dried-in blood. He threw it out on to the hall floor and got undressed.

The Helly Hansen top was stiff, and his jeans and T-shirt were stuck fast to his skin. He pulled them off and felt a searing pain as the cut on his right thigh opened up again and began to bleed. A smell of putrefaction rose from his body, and he didn't dare look at himself in the mirror.

The boiler wasn't much good, and he turned up the heat on the shower to maximum. Then he stood beneath the running, lukewarm water with his face upturned. From time to time he drank a couple of gulps. The blood that had flowed out of his body must be replaced. When the water began to cool he soaped himself and carefully cleaned the gash in his thigh.

He closed his eyes and moved his soapy fingers to the wound in his throat. The skin was split in a gash half a centimetre wide, and the flesh was sore when he touched it. He could feel his pulse beneath his fingertips. The artery had repaired itself during the night, but was almost exposed in the absence of protective skin. He cleaned the area carefully and rinsed it with clean water, which was now almost cold.

He stood there until the water was ice cold, letting it sluice over his face, and drank and drank. He turned off the shower and when he had rubbed and patted himself dry with a hand towel, he found that the white spots had disappeared, that he could see clearly.

The bathroom mirror had steamed up; he cleared a patch with his hand and inspected the wound in his throat. It didn't look too bad, but he could see the artery moving beneath the connective tissue like a small fish in a net. He found a couple of pressure bandages and some surgical tape, and dressed his wounds as well as he could. His throat really needed stitches, but to go all the way to Norrtälje, wait in the Emergency Department, try to explain to a doctor…it just wasn't going to happen.

And besides…

When he was fighting with Henrik and Björn, and afterwards when he was wading through the water to get into the boat, he had acquired a kind of knowledge. It could be down to his own traumatised state, but he didn't think so, and Simon had said something along the same lines: it was weakened.

There was a weakness in the sea. That was why Sigrid had floated ashore, and that was why some element of the people who had disappeared had managed to escape and penetrate the wells. There was a tiredness, a lack of attention, and he intended to make the most of it. If he could. If it was there at all.

He walked through the hallway naked, picked the snowsuit up off the floor and continued into the bedroom. The cold was giving him goose bumps, and he put on some clean clothes out of the suitcase he had brought from the city. Underwear, a pair of black corduroy trousers and a blue and white checked shirt. In the wardrobe he found his father's thick green woolly jumper, and pulled it carefully over his head. The polo neck made his throat itch, but it was good because it held the dressing in place.

He felt as if he were getting dressed up, smartening himself up for his own execution, and it was a good feeling. That was the point he had reached. He ought to have cleaned the house as well, left it tidy, but he had neither the time nor the energy.

He examined Maja's snowsuit and decided that the stains wouldn't come off without washing it, and he had no time for that either. He wound it around his stomach and managed to knot the sleeves and tuck in the legs so that it ended up like a very large waist bag.