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

Getting the observer to look where it isn’t happening, getting them to look back when it’s already happened. Like the business with the coffee spoon. But it was merely a theoretical knowledge. It didn’t help Anders. He took a sip of his coffeeand listened to the crackling of the stove. Simon rested his arms on the table. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Anders looked down into his coffee. The light from the window was reflected as a bobbing rectangle. He looked at it and waited for it to stop. When the rectangle was completely still he said, ‘I’ve decided to live. After all. I thought I wanted to disappear as well. But…it turned out that isn’t the case. So now I intend to try…I’m at rock bottom. I’ve reached the lowest point and…that’s when it becomes possible to move on. Upwards.’

‘Hmm,’ said Simon, and waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, he asked, ‘Are you still drinking as much?’

‘Why?’

‘I just thought…it can be difficult to stop.’

A muscle twitched in Anders’ cheek. He wasn’t keen on discussing this. He and Cecilia had drunk in moderation when they had Maja. One wine cask a week, approximately. After Maja’s disappearance Cecilia had stopped altogether; she said that even one glass of wine messed up her head. Anders had drunk enough for both of them, and then some. Silent evenings in front of the TV. Glass after glass of wine, and then spirits. To avoid thinking at all.

He didn’t know how much his drinking had to do with the fact that after six months she had said she couldn’t cope any more, that their relationship was like a lead weight around her feet, dragging her deeper and deeper into the darkness.

After that, the drinking had become central to his life. He had set a boundary for himself: not to start before eight o’clock in the evening. After a week, he had moved the boundary to seven. And so on. In the end he was drinking whenever he felt like it, which was almost all the time.

During the three weeks that had passed since the incident with the fern, he had once again set the boundary at eight o’clock, with an enormous effort of will, and had managed to stick to it. His face andeyes had regained at least some of their normal colour, after a year of being red from burst blood vessels.

Anders ran his hand over his face and said, ‘I’ve got it under control.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes. What the hell do you want me to say?’

Simon didn’t move a muscle in response to this outburst. Anders blinked a couple of times, feeling ashamed of himself, and said, ‘I’m working on it. I really am.’

Silence fell once more. Anders had nothing to add. The problem was his, and his alone. Part of the idea of returning to Domarö had been to get away from the destructive routines he had fallen into. He could only hope it would work. There was nothing more to say.

Simon asked if he had heard anything from Cecilia, and Anders shrugged.

‘Haven’t heard from her in six months. Strange, isn’t it? You share everything, and then…pouff. Gone. But I suppose that’s just the way it is.’

He felt the bitterness come creeping in. That wasn’t good. If he sat here for a while longer he would probably start crying. Not good. It wasn’t a question of suppressing his emotions, he’d wept bucketfuls.

Bucketfuls?

Well. One bucketful, perhaps. An entire fucking ten-litre bucket full of tears. Absorbed by tissues, sleeves, dripping on to the sofa, on to the sheets, rising like steam from his face during the night. Salt in his mouth, snot in his nose. A bucket. A blue plastic bucket filled with tears. He had cried.

But he wasn’t going to cry now. He had no intention of starting his new life bemoaning everything that had vanished.

He finished his coffee and stood up.

‘Thank you. I’ll go down and see if the house is still standing.’

‘It is,’ said Simon. ‘Oddly enough. You’ll call and see Anna-Greta, won’t you?’

‘Tomorrow. Definitely.’

When Anders got back to the point where the track forked in two different directions, he thought: A new life? There’s no such thing.

It was only in the magazine headlines that people got a new life. Stopped drinking or taking drugs, found a new love. But the same life.

Anders looked along the track towards the Shack. He could buy new furniture, paint it blue and change the windows. It would still be the same horrible house, the same poor basic construction. He could of course tear the whole thing down and build a new house, but how do you do that with a life?

Can’t be done. When it comes to a life, all you can change is the equivalent of furniture, paint and windows. Doors, maybe. Change the things that are in too bad a state and hope the core holds. Despite everything.

Anders gripped the handle of his suitcase firmly and set off along the track to the Shack.

The Shack

A curious name. The Shack. Not the sort of thing you put up on a poker-work sign, like Sjösala or Fridlunda.

But then the Shack wasn’t the name its builder had given it, or the name on the insurance documents. It was actually called Rock Cottage. But the Shack was what everybody on Domarö called it, even Anders, because it was a shack.

Anders’ great-great-grandfather had been the last pilot in the Ivarsson family. When his son Torgny inherited the pilot’s cottage, he extended it and made it into a fine two-storey house. Inspired by his success, he also built Seaview Cottage, the house Simon now rented on a permanent basis.

When the first summer visitors arrived on the Vaxholm ferries at the beginning of the twentieth century, several of the islanders wanted to add extensions to their houses, or rebuild them completely.The brothers fitted out old hen houses as small summer cottages, extended and re-roofed boathouses, even built new properties in some instances. The building that later became the ramblers’ hostel was built to