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

rustled faintly in the wind, and to anyone else the figure probably looked even more unpleasant now. But it had stopped looking. He had shut off its eyes.

‘I am not afraid.’

He said it out loud into the darkness. He said it again. Beneath the plastic the GB-man whispered: You haven’t even got the nerve to go and fetch the axe. But no, you’re quite right. You’re brave and strong. Always.

Anders got angry. He went back into the hallway, pulled on his jacket, checked that there was still some wine left in the bottle in his pocket, grabbed the torch and went out again. He went and stood in front of the GB-man’s indistinct outline beneath the sack, raised the bottle and said, ‘Cheers, you ugly bastard’; he took a long drink, then switched on the torch and set off towards the track.

He wanted to check what the siren had been for. It had sounded a bit like an air-raid siren, but that was hardly likely to be the case.

As long as the Russians haven’t come back.

The beam of the torch moved ahead of him along the path and he played with it, throwing it up the trees and down into the ditch, pretending it was an eager little animal investigating its surroundings. Snuffling through the bushes, running through the grass. An eager animal made of light, which no one could catch. To test himself, he switched off the torch.

The October darkness closed around him. He waited for the horror of the dream to seize him, but it didn’t come. He listened to the sound of his own breathing. He wasn’t under water. Nothing was chasing him. He tipped his head back and saw that the sky was full of stars.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘There’s no danger.’

He switched the torch back on and set off once more. He pulledout the bottle and had another drink to celebrate. His body was still a little dehydrated following the day’s hard work, and his muscles were aching, so he took another swig. The bottle was almost empty.

The street lamps started by the ramblers’ hostel. A light mist lay in the air and the glow of the lamps had taken hold, forming hovering enclosures of light around themselves. He switched off the torch and looked along the row of lights. It was reassuring. It led between people’s houses and told him that nothing bad could happen, despite the autumn darkness and dampness.

The hostel lay in silence and darkness. He remembered when he was little he used to feel sorry for the people who had to live there. Those who didn’t have a proper house. Even if the hostel was quite a stylish building, there were just so many of them who came to stay there. The ramblers. They would arrive by boat and stay for a day or two, then they would be off again, presumably to the next hostel.

But there’s someone sitting there.

Anders switched on the torch and shone it on the hostel steps. There was indeed someone sitting there, the head drooping towards the knees. Anders swept the beam of the torch to either side to check if there was a moped nearby. There wasn’t. But still he approached carefully.

‘Hello? Are you all right?’

The woman raised her head, and at first Anders didn’t recognise Elin. Her face had altered even more since he last saw her, it had become…older. She screwed her eyes up against the light and pulled back, as if she were afraid. Anders turned the torch on to his own face.

‘It’s me, Anders. What’s happened?’

He directed the beam of the torch a metre to the right of Elin to avoid dazzling her, and saw that she had relaxed. He went over and sat down on the step below her, then switched off the torch.

Elin was hunched over, her arms tightly wrapped around her knees. He placed a hand on her shin, and she was trembling. ‘What’s the matter?’

Elin’s hand seized his and held it tight. ‘Anders. Henrik and Björn have burned down my house.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, Elin. They’re dead.’

Elin’s head was moving slowly back and forth. ‘I saw them. On that fucking platform moped. They burned down my house.’

Anders closed his mouth around the words he had been about to say.

The platform moped.

But then there were lots of platform mopeds on Domarö. Practically every other person had one. That didn’t prove anything. On the other hand: the GB-man. Henrik and Björn’s favourite hobby had been moving stuff around. Taking someone’s water butt and putting it in a garden on the other side of the island, or sneaking into someone’s woodshed, stealing the chainsaw and putting it in the neighbour’s woodshed.

It all made sense. But there was a major problem with this line of reasoning.

‘But they drowned. Fifteen years ago. Didn’t they?’

Elin shook her head. ‘They didn’t drown. They disappeared.’

Hubba and Bubba

Every gang has them. The ones who don’t fit in. Maybe at one stage they tried to belong properly, but after a while they realise it’s never going to work and they begin to work on their outsider status, making it a badge of honour.

They. They can count themselves lucky if there are two of them. Usually it’s just the one. They are not necessarily relentlessly victimised or bullied. Sometimes, yes; but often their role is to be the one against whom the gang measures itself, so to speak. The gang is a gang by not being the outsider.

These individuals are tolerated for that very reason. As ayardstick, or as an audience. It’s often a sad story. If a gang is a royal court, then this person is its fool—thrown a few crumbs of friendship or temptation occasionally so it will jingle its bells or say something stupid that can be brought up later. Over and over again.

Such is the role of the fool. It is disagreeable, but can work quite well as long as the quasi-outcast is aware of his limits. It is when he tries to