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

He just wanted to help out with the boat, then be invited in for coffee so that he could sit and chat about what could happen when boats broke free, and so on. About how things should be taken care of in the proper way, between neighbours.

But Simon wasn’t in the mood, so when Elof had been standing there nodding for a while and Simon hadn’t said the right thing, he rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Right then. That’s that then’, and stomped off, every fibre of his body signalling that he had been treated most unfairly. Simon closed the door and lit a fire in the kitchen stove.

If the boat’s been like that all night, it can stay like that for a while longer.

He and Elof had got on well until Maja disappeared. When Anders and Cecilia went back to the city, Simon had called on Elof to ask what he had meant when they were standing on the veranda: when he told Simon to ring Anders and tell him to come home.

‘Why did you say that?’ he had asked.

Elof had become extremely busy with the fry-up he was preparing, and hadn’t even looked up from the chopping board when he replied, ‘It just occurred to me, that’s all.’

‘What did you mean?’

Elof was dicing boiled potatoes with exaggerated care. He didn’t want to look Simon in the eye.

‘Nothing in particular. It just occurred to me that maybe itwasn’t a good thing. For them to be out there.’

Simon sat down on a chair and stared at Elof until he had finished with the potatoes and had no choice but to meet Simon’s gaze.

‘Elof. Do you know something I don’t know?’

Elof stood up and turned his back on Simon, started busying himself with the frying pan and butter. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Like what?’

In the end Simon had given up and gone home, leaving Elof with his potato and his chopped bacon. After that day the relationship between them had soured. Simon couldn’t begin to guess what it was that Elof knew, but there was something, and he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Elof was refusing to tell him. It was Simon’s grandchild they were dealing with here, after all. As good as his grandchild.

When he told Anna-Greta she had more or less taken Elof’s part. Said it was probably just something that had come into his head, nothing worth bothering about. What else could it be?

Simon had let the matter rest. But he hadn’t forgotten.

The fire in the kitchen stove refused to catch. After the storm during the night the wind had exhausted its strength. There was barely a breath of wind, and the chimney wasn’t drawing well. Simon sprayed liquid firelighter on the little flame that was there, and the fire burst into life with a puff of surprise.

He gave an enormous yawn and pulled a chair up close. He had carelessly left the matchbox out on the kitchen table. When he opened it he could see that the larva seemed to have recovered slightly. The skin was no longer grey, but pale black, if such a shade existed. However, it was not shiny, not even after he had given it some saliva. It no longer looked as if it was dying, but it didn’t look healthy either.

Spiritus had been in his possession for ten years now. He had given it saliva every day, and changed matchboxes when the old one grew too worn. And yet he had never done what he did now: he turned the box over and tipped the insect into his hand.

Something had happened during the night. After regarding Spiritus with a mixture of respect and disgust for all these years, his feelings had changed when he saw it looking pitiful, moribund. Sympathy was not the right word, it was more a kind of shared fate. They were subject to the same conditions.

The skin of the larva met his, and he bit his tongue gently. It is always slightly repulsive to hold an insect. The faint movement, the little life that exists independently of one’s own.

But not in this case.

Nothing happened, and Simon relaxed. He sat with the larva on his open palm, and it was warm. Warmer than he was, since he was aware of it. Only a few degrees, but enough for him to perceive it as a warm spot on his hand.

Cautiously he closed his fingers around it and shut his eyes. Gently, gently the larva moved inside his loosely closed hand, and the tickling sensation on his skin ran up his arm, passed through his heart and continued up into his head, where it moved around like a weak electric current, making his scalp tingle.

Simon looked out of the window. The morning dew was shining on the grass and he felt as if he could see every single drop, could touch every single drop with his thoughts. In the trunks of the trees he could see the hidden vessels, the water being sucked up by the capillary action, out into the thin veins in the leaves. As if he were in a trance he walked to the outside door and out on to the porch, his hand still closed around the larva.

It was a shock.

All the water…all the water…

He saw all the water. The moisture in the earth and how it was constituted. The rainwater in the barrel, a living body wrapped around dead insects and old leaves. Through the lawn he saw the underground veins running through the bedrock. And he saw how everything, everything that lived and was green or yellow or red… how it consisted almost entirely of water.

He carried on down towards the jetty and he saw the sea.

Broken.

It was a wordless knowledge, not a clearly formulated thought: the sea was broken. There was something wrong with it. He walked out on to the jetty and he was walking over water. Broken water.

With an effort of will he managed to superimpose his