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

It couldn’t be helped, all that drinking had made him desperate for a pee. Presumably all the fluid that left his body, tears, sweat, urine, somehow made what was in the water…evaporate from him, but there it was. He would just have to drink some more afterwards.

On the way to the toilet he passed the closed door to the hidey-hole, and through the wall he waved goodbye to the shotgun inside. He made a mental note to take out the cartridge when he had the opportunity, so that nobody would come to grief.

He emptied his bladder while contemplating the framed picture above the toilet. A classic motif: a little girl with a basket over her arm is walking along a narrow footbridge across a ravine. Beside her hovers an angel with great big wings and outstretched arms, as if to catch the girl if she should fall. The girl is completely oblivious to both the danger and the presence of the angel, she is simply the roses in her cheeks and the sunshine in her eyes.

That’s what it’s like, thought Anders, that’s exactly what it’s like.

He had no idea what he meant, what this particular picture had to do with his story, but one thing he did know: the great stories were true, the timeless pictures portraying need, beauty, danger and grace were meaningful.

Everything is possible.

When he got back to the kitchen Anna-Greta was busy lighting a fire. Simon was still staring at the bottle as if he were gazing into a crystal ball, where a glimpse of something might appear at any moment. Anders sat down opposite him.

‘Simon,’ he said. ‘What happened with Holger’s wife? With Sigrid?’

Simon looked up from the bottle. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that too.’

‘What have you come up with?’

‘Don’t you remember what happened?’

Anders grabbed the bottle and drank deeply. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s so much that I…a lot of things have just disappeared. Those first days here on the island are very…foggy.’ Anders smiled and had another drink. ‘And I probably haven’t…been myself, not really. If you know what I mean.’

‘How does it feel now?’

Anders ran his hand over his chest. ‘It feels…warm. And less lonely. What about Sigrid?’

Anna-Greta placed a steaming pot of coffee on the table and sat down between them.

‘I have to say one thing,’ she said, looking from Anders to Simon, then back at Anders. ‘Bearing in mind what we know and what has happened, this might sound…harsh. But what I want to say is…don’t try to do anything. Don’t try to…challenge the sea. It’s dangerous. It could go wrong. It could go very, very badly wrong. Much worse than we can imagine.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Simon.

‘I just mean that…it’s bigger than us. Infinitely bigger. It can crush us. Just like that. It’s happened before. And this is notjust about us. Other people live here too.’

Anders thought about what Anna-Greta had said, and it certainly made sense, but there was one thing he didn’t understand.

‘Why are you saying this now?’ he asked.

Anna-Greta’s hand was unsteady as she poured coffee into her saucer and reached for a sugar lump. ‘I thought it might be appropriate,’ she said. ‘To remind you.’ She pushed the sugar lump into her mouth and slurped a little of the boiling-hot coffee.

‘Sigrid hadn’t been in the water for very long when I found her,’ said Simon. ‘Just a few hours. Despite the fact that it was a year since she disappeared.’

‘But she was dead, wasn’t she?’ said Anders.

‘Oh yes,’ said Simon. ‘Then she was dead.’

Anna-Greta held the coffee pot out to Anders, and he waved it away impatiently. She put it back on the tablemat, ran her hand over her forehead and closed her eyes.

‘What are you saying?’ said Anders. ‘I thought she’d…been dead for a year, but only in the water for a few hours. That was the odd thing about it.’

‘No,’ said Simon. ‘She’d been gone for a year. But she’d died from drowning just a few hours before I found her.’

Anders looked at his grandmother, who was still sitting with her eyes closed as if in pain, a deep furrow of anxiety between her eyebrows. He shook his head violently and said, ‘So where was she, then? All that time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Simon. ‘But she was somewhere.’

Anders sat motionless as goose bumps covered his entire body. He twitched. Stared straight ahead. Saw the picture. Twitched again.

‘And that’s where Maja is now,’ he whispered. ‘Without her snowsuit.’

Nobody said anything for a long time. Anna-Greta pushed away her saucer and looked anywhere but at Anders. Simon sat there fiddling with his matchbox. Outside and around them the sea breathed,apparently asleep. Anders sat still, twitching from time to time as yet another horrible picture pierced his breast like a cold blade.

Something inside him had known this. Perhaps he had actually remembered what had happened with Sigrid, somewhere right at the back of his mind. Or perhaps he simply knew. That a part of Maja existed inside him, and another part existed…somewhere else. Somewhere where she couldn’t reach him and he couldn’t reach her.

Anna-Greta broke the silence. She turned to Anders and said, ‘When your great-grandfather was little, there was a man in the western part of the village who lost his wife to the sea. He would never talk about how it had happened. But he never stopped searching for her.’

Anna-Greta pointed to the east.

‘Do you know about the wreck? On the rocks on Ledinge? There were bits left when I was young, but it’s all gone now. That was his boat. I don’t know what he did to…annoy it. But at any rate his boat was found there eventually. Way inland, up on a hill. Smashed to pieces.’

‘Sorry,’ said Simon. ‘Did you say he was from the western part of the village?’

‘Yes,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘That’s what I’m getting at. His house and all the houses around it…disappeared. A storm came from the west. And as you know perfectly well: