Harbor by John Lindqvist (classic novels for teens txt) 📕

‘You…believe me?’

Simon wagged his head from side to side, ‘Let me put it like this: it isn’t the strangest thing I’ve heard. Recently.’

‘What do you mean?’

Simon sighed. ‘I think we’ll leave that for now.’ When he noticed that Anders was frowning, he added, ‘I need to talk to Anna-Greta. Is it OK if I tell her what you’ve told me?’

‘Yes, I suppose so, but…’

‘Speaking of Anna-Greta, I think we’d better head for home. She’s probably getting worried by now.’

Anders nodded and gazed over the rail. Elin was lying on the seabed by now, perhaps fifty metres beneath them. He imagined the fish nudging at the new arrival, the eels crawling up from the mud as they caught the smell of food…

He cut off the thought before it started wallowing in physical details.

‘Simon?’ he asked. ‘Did we do the right thing?’

‘Yes. I think so. And if we did the wrong thing…’ Simon looked down at the surface of the water, ‘…there’s not much we can do about it now.’

Anders got up and went to the prow, curled up on the seat as well as he could as Simon started the engine and turned the boat, heading for home. For a long time Anders sat there trying to keep his eyes fixed on the spot where they had let Elin go. There should have been something there. A buoy or a flag, some kind of memorial. Somethingto mark the fact that there was a person down there. But there was only the constant shifting of the water, and Elin belonged to those who have disappeared into the sea.

They parted in silence at Simon’s jetty, and Anders dragged himself back to the Shack. If someone had leapt out of the bushes and pointed a shotgun at him, he would have been incapable of reacting. He would simply have shuffled on, perhaps looking forward to the burning sensation in his back.

He looked at his feet, and they were moving without his co-operation or input. He was being drawn. Just as an animal hunted beyond endurance, with no strength left, still creeps towards its lair out of instinct or a blind sense of self-preservation, so he kept on moving homeward, homeward.

He walked in, pulled off his clothes, lay down on Maja’s bed and pulled the covers over him. Then he lay there staring at the window, too tired to close his eyelids. He was lying in the same place and the light was roughly the same as on those mornings when he had gone back to bed after going fishing with his father.

He thought he was the same person, the same child. That time moved in circles, and soon it would be time for him to get up and load the wheelbarrow, set off for the shop.

That was a fine catch this morning…

Perhaps he fell asleep with his eyes open.

Pulling power

He had written the sign himself, ‘FRESH HERRING 6KR A KILO’, because his father was dyslexic and besides, his handwriting was atrocious. The sign stood beside him on the bench outside the shop as he sat there waiting for the morning’s first customers.

It was nine o’clock and the shop had just opened. Two people whohad gone inside had said they wanted to buy some herring once they had done the rest of their shopping.

This seemed promising. Despite the enormous catch Anders hadn’t lowered the price, mainly because he hadn’t had time to alter the sign. He had slept for an unusually long time, right up until quarter to nine. It had been a rush to get a box loaded on to the wheelbarrow and push it up to the shop before they opened.

The first customer came out, an elderly lady Anders had seen every summer for as long as he could remember, although he didn’t know her name or where she lived. She would always say hello when they met, and Anders would return the greeting without any idea who he was saying hello to.

The lady came over and said, ‘I’ll have one kilo, please.’

Anders had a stroke of genius. ‘We’re having a sale today,’ he said. ‘Two kilos for ten kronor.’

The lady raised her eyebrows and bent over the herring, as if to check whether there was something wrong with them. ‘How come?’

Anders realised the best thing would be to tell the truth. ‘We caught a huge amount, and we need to get rid of it.’

‘But what am I going to do with all that extra?’

‘Pickle it. Freeze it. There might not be any more herring this summer. This could be the last.’

The lady laughed and Anders steeled himself for what might come next: the ruffling of his hair. That was the kind of thing you just had to put up with. But the lady just laughed and said, ‘What a businessman! OK then, I’ll take two kilos. Since there’s a sale on.’

Anders slipped a plastic bag over his hand and counted forty-two herring into another bag, added a couple extra to be on the safe side, tied a knot in the top and handed it over, and accepted the payment just as the second customer emerged from the shop. A middle-aged man who was probably a yachtsman, judging by his outfit.

The lady held up her well-filled bag and said to him, ‘There’s a sale on.’

The jocular way she said it made Anders suspect that sale mightnot be the right word. That suggested you were selling off something that had been left over, which wasn’t appropriate in the context of fresh herring. He decided to say special offer from now on.

It wasn’t the success he had hoped for when he got the idea, but roughly every fourth customer could be tempted to take an extra kilo. Perhaps more to help him out than because they wanted to snap up a bargain. Anders didn’t think two kronor here or there meant a great deal to most adults.

However, there were more customers than usual, and Anders went back to fetch