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

his ears, as if he could stop the memory of her voice from finding its way in. Her thin little voice as she sat next to the tree singing…

‘I saw Daddy killing Santa Claus, I…’

All children do that sort of thing!

Anders tore open the door of the larder and found one last wine cask, which he ripped open and drank so greedily that it ran down the sides of his mouth.

It was a wonderful life, I loved her so much…

‘Stupid stupid idiots! I hate you!’

He spun around and caught sight of the bottle of wormwood, took a swig and swilled down the burning nausea with more wine. His stomach churned in protest and he ran to the toilet to throw up, but when he leaned over the bowl he could manage nothing more than a couple of sour belches. He sat down on the floor with his back against the warm radiator.

It wasn’t true that Maja was horrible. Yes, she got annoyed easily. Yes, she had a lively imagination. But she wasn’t horrible.

Anders jerked his head and hit the back of his neck on the edge of the radiator; shades of red flickered before his eyes. He staggered into the kitchen and pulled the photographs towards him again, looking at his family. Cecilia’s warm, kind eyes gazing into his. His lower lip trembled as he picked up the phone and keyed in her number. She answered on the second signal.

‘Hi, it’s me,’ he said.

He heard a faint sigh at the other end of the line. ‘What do you want?’

Anders dragged his hand through his hair a couple of times, rubbed at his scalp. ‘I have to ask you something. I have to say something. Maja wasn’t horrible, was she?’

There was no reply, and Anders scratched at his scalp so hard that he drew blood.

‘That’s what they’re saying,’ he went on. ‘That’s what they think. But you and I…we know that’s not true, don’t we?’

With every second that passed without a word from Cecilia, something was growing inside his head, something that was so big and hurt so much that he could have ripped off his entire skull.

‘Anders,’ said Cecilia at last. ‘Afterwards…you turned her into something else. Something different from what she was.’

Anders’ voice sank to a whisper. ‘What are you saying? She was wonderful. She was just…wonderful.’

‘Yes, she was. That too. But—’

‘I never thought anything else. I thought she was terrific. All the time.’

Cecilia cleared her throat, and when she spoke again there was a sharp impatience in her voice. ‘If that’s the way you want it. But that’s not the way it was, Anders.’

‘How was it, then? I always thought she was…the best you could imagine.’

‘You made that up afterwards. You couldn’t cope with her. You once joked about swapping her for—’

Anders slammed the phone down. It was dark outside the window now. He was so cold he was shaking. He sank to his knees and crawled to the bathroom, where he sat down with his back to the radiator again, staring into the washbasin and gnawing on his lips until there was a metallic taste in his mouth.

His hands lay loosely, the backs resting on the floor. There was a faint smell of piss and his mouth was sticky after a day without any liquid apart from wine and wormwood. He was a dried-up little nothing, the shrivelled remains of something that had perhaps not even existed.

‘I am nothing.’

He said it out loud to himself in the darkness and there was consolation in those words, so he said them again, ‘I am nothing.’

The fact that his life had been shit for the past few years wasn’t exactly news. He knew that. But at least he had believed he had his memories of a life lived in the light, those precious years together with Cecilia and Maja.

But that wasn’t true either. Not even that.

He sniggered. He sniggered a little more. Then he lay down flat on his stomach and licked the floor around the toilet, carried on up the pedestal. It tasted salty. Odd hairs stuck to his tongue, but he went on licking. He cleaned along the edges, licked off the coating on the seat and finished off by swallowing the gooey mess that had gathered in his mouth.

So. That was that. So.

He hauled himself to his feet, took a couple of deep breaths and said it again, ‘I am nothing.’

There, he’d said it. All done. On steadier legs he went and sat down at the kitchen table again, looked over at Gåvasten which had begun to send its signals out into the night. He was floating on a sea in a state of dead calm. No waves of expectation or false memories obscured his view.

You have left me.

Yes. He had not been able to put his finger on the feeling when it was there, but now it had left him he felt its absence. Maja was no longer within him. He had driven her out. She had left him.

Nothing.

He sat for half an hour with his head resting on his arms, chilled to the bone as he accepted the way things had been. Maja had been dreadful. He had often wished they had never had her. He had said it out loud several times: that he wished she would just disappear. That they could swap her for a dog, a well-behaved dog.

I wanted her to disappear. And she disappeared.

She wept and screamed and kicked as soon as she didn’t get her own way. She immediately smashed things that didn’t behave in the way she wanted. She had no boundaries. They didn’t dare let her watch children’s programs after she threw a vase at the screen when a cartoon character said something stupid. How many hours had they spent sweeping up beads after Maja had tipped them on the floor, how many hours dealing with ripped-up drawing pads and comics?

That was the way it was. That was the way it had been. Like having a monster