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

The wind was holding its breath, and everything was still.

Here I am.

A sudden and unexpected happiness rose up through his body. Simon looked around, close to tears. He experienced a bubbling gratitude for the fact that he existed at all. For the fact that he could walk under a tree in the autumn and a leaf could fall and land on his hand. It was like a message from the leaf, a reminder: You exist. I fell and you were there. I am not lying on the ground. Therefore, you exist.

No, the leaf was not lying on the ground and Simon wasn’t lying dead beneath the apple tree or dead among the reeds. Their paths had crossed, and here they stood. Simon was perhaps a little oversensitive after everything that had happened, but it seemed to him like a miracle.

He no longer wanted to go home. He changed direction and headed up to Anna-Greta’s house with the leaf in his hand, as some lines by Evert Taube played in his head.

Who has given you your sight, your senses? The ears that hear the waves come rushing, the voice you lift in song.

The autumn world was beautiful around him, and he walked with careful steps to avoid disturbing it. Gently he opened Anna-Greta’s door and crept into the hallway, lingering in the feeling that the world was a holy place and every sensory perception a gift. He could smell the aroma of her house, he could hear her voice. Soon he would see her.

‘No,’ said Anna-Greta in the kitchen. ‘I just think we have to talk about the whole thing. Something has changed, and we don’t know what that means.’

Simon frowned. He didn’t know who Anna-Greta was talking to or what she was talking about, and it made him feel as if he were eavesdropping. He was turning to close the door and thus announce his presence when Anna-Greta said, ‘Sigrid is the only case I know, and I have no idea what it means.’

Simon hesitated, then grabbed the door handle. Just before the door slammed shut he heard Anna-Greta say, ‘The day after tomorrow, then?’

The door closed behind him and Simon walked through the hallway, making sure he could be heard. He reached the kitchen just in time to hear Anna-Greta say, ‘Fine. I’ll see you then.’ She put the phone down.

‘Who was that?’ asked Simon.

‘Only Elof,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘Coffee?’

Simon turned the leaf between his fingers and tried to sound unconcerned as he asked, ‘So what were you talking about?’

Anna-Greta got up, fetched the cups, brought the coffee pot over from the stove. Simon had asked his question so quietly that she might not have heard it. But he thought she had. He twisted the leaf and felt like a small child as he asked again, ‘What were you talking about?’

Anna-Greta put down the coffee pot and snorted, as if the question amused her. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’

‘Come and sit down. Would you like a biscuit?’

The joy that had been bubbling through Simon withdrew, leaving behind a dry riverbed in his stomach. Stones and thorny bushes. Something was wrong, and the worst thing was that he had experienced this before, on a couple of occasions. Anna-Greta had been away, and when he asked her where she had been, she avoided his questions until he gave up.

This time he had no intention of giving up. He sat down at the table and put a hand over his cup when Anna-Greta tried to pour him some coffee. When she raised her eyes to meet his, he said, ‘Anna-Greta. I want to know what you and Elof were talking about.’

She tried a smile. When it found no response whatsoever in Simon’s face, it died away. She looked at him and for a second something…dangerous crossed her expression. Simon waited. Anna-Greta shook her head. ‘This and that. I don’t understand why you’re so interested.’

‘I’m interested,’ said Simon, ‘because I didn’t know that you and Elof had that kind of relationship.’ Anna-Greta opened her mouth to give some kind of answer, but Simon carried on, ‘I’m interested because I heard you talking about Sigrid. About the fact that something has changed.’

Anna-Greta abandoned the attempt to keep the conversation on an everyday level. She put down the coffee pot, sat up straight and folded her arms. ‘You were listening.’

‘I just happened to hear.’

‘In that case,’ said Anna-Greta, ‘I think you should forget that you just happened to hear. And leave this alone.’

‘Why?’

Anna-Greta sucked in her cheeks as if she had something sour in her mouth that she was just about to spit out. Then her whole posture softened and she sank down a fraction. She said, ‘Because I’m asking you to.’

‘But this is crazy. What is it that’s so secret?’

That hint of danger, of something alien, appeared in Anna-Greta’s eyes once again. She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table and said calmly and reasonably, ‘Regardless of what you say. However disappointed you might be. I have no intention of discussing it. End of story.’

Nothing more was said. A minute later Simon was standing on Anna-Greta’s porch. He still had the maple leaf in his hand. He looked at it and could hardly remember what he had thought was so special about it, what had made him come here. He threw it away and walked down towards his house.

‘End of story,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘End of story.’

Old Acquaintances

Way back in the Bible

our nursery teachers

had made a note of our real origin:

floated ashore out of the shadows.

ANNA STÅBI—FLUX

About the sea

Land and sea.

We may think of them as opposites; as complements. But there is a difference in how we think of them: the sea, and the land.

If we are walking around in a forest, a meadow or a town, we see our surroundings as being made up of individual elements. There are this many different kinds of trees in varying