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

annoyed that he hadn’t spotted it long ago, as soon as the contours of Domarö began to form.

It was a revelation, along the lines of: at last the pieces fell into place, the penny dropped, the veil was swept aside. The discovery made Anders feel quite intoxicated, and he clapped his hands in pure delight, but stopped in the middle of a clap. He stared at the beads.

It’s a maritime chart. Right. So?

What he had in front of him was a rudimentary chart showingDomarö, Kattholmen and Gåvasten, with Ledinge gradually emerging.

So?

It looked just like an ordinary chart, but executed less skilfully. An ordinary chart that he already had on the bookshelf. What was he supposed to do with this one? What could it tell him that he didn’t already know?

‘Why are you doing this? Why have you made this…messy chart?’

He was suddenly furious, and was seized by a powerful urge to throw the whole fucking thing away, had even reached out for the tile with both hands before he managed to stop himself. He looked at his hands, got hold of one hand with the other and shook it.

One of his own plays on words popped into his head. It hadn’t gone down very well with Maja, but he’d thought it was funny. Swapping the word ‘hand’ for ‘hound’ in different expressions. Holding someone by the hound. Give me your hound, I am your right hound. And then there was his favourite. He looked at his hands and said it out loud, ‘One hound doesn’t know what the other is doing.’

That’s it.

He sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. The sudden rage had not been his, it was Maja who could be so unreasonably angry over little things. Like her socks the day she disappeared. She had just got angry with the chart, through him. Just as she had been so happy when she saw that it was a chart showing the sea and the islands.

No. Yes.

He leaned over the bead tile again. If she was the one who had made the chart, then she couldn’t be delighted at the discovery that it was a chart. And besides…how on earth could Maja build a maritime chart with beads? He had probably shown her the chart at some point when they were out in the boat, but there was no possibility that she would be able to make an…image of it.

He was the only one who could do that. Therefore, he was the one who had made the chart without knowing, and she was the one who had…

He put his head in his hands.

One hound doesn’t know what the other is doing.

If she wanted to communicate with him, why do it in this complex, time-consuming way? Why not just write or say what needed to be said?

Because one hound doesn’t know what the other is doing.

And besides…

Anders took a deep breath and held it, listened inside himself and outside. There was nothing there. Nobody was watching him, nobody was after him. For the moment. But they did exist.

You can’t be here either, little Maja. We’ll take you too, in time.

It was a question of being careful. If you showed yourself too much, they would spot you. That was what had happened to Elin. Perhaps. So you had to be careful. Take a little bit at a time and avoid discovery.

Maja had been good at hide and seek. Almost too good. She could stay hidden for a long, long time if she found a good hiding place. She wouldn’t even come out when they gave up and shouted to her. They always had to find her.

That last summer they had played hide and seek outside, and it was the same as always. She could be extremely impatient in other contexts, but when it came to games, her patience was endless. She would remain hidden far away until the person who was supposed to find her dropped their guard and set off in the opposite direction. Then she would come running out. She could wait for as long as it took.

Anders poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it slowly and methodically, visualising the hot, slightly poisonous liquid running through his body, once again cleansing the channels. His brain was beginning to feel clogged up again, and he didn’t want that to happen.

He looked at the sea, the sky, the gulls, and concentrated on the warmth in his throat, his chest, his stomach.

It worked, to some extent, and with reasonably clear eyes he looked at the bead tile again. If it was as he thought, if Maja wasplaying some kind of hide and seek where the important thing was to avoid discovery, then there should still be some kind of clue.

He went and fetched the real chart, compared it with the bead tile. The distances and proportions were accurate, by and large. The shape of the islands was too square, but more or less correct. There was no noticeable deviation that stood out from the original.

He put down the chart and rubbed his eyes. When he looked again he spotted something that didn’t stand out, quite the opposite.

There’s something missing here…

He bent over the tile and studied the patch of white beads representing Gåvasten. At the top there was a narrow corridor where no beads had been fixed, a band of emptiness.

What does that mean? Does it mean anything?

He got the photographs out of the kitchen drawer and spread them out on the table. He concentrated on Maja’s face, Maja’s eyes. Yes, it was just as he had thought. Her attention was drawn to something over in the east, by that empty band.

Daddy, what’s that?

Anders looked out of the window. Beyond the carpet of gulls covering the bay he could just see the tiny white lighthouse. No more than a glint in the morning light, a dot on the sky.

Ten minutes later he had pulled on his outdoor clothes, fetched his tools and mounted the outboard engine on the plank of