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

And so on. They cultivated their outsider status, and knew they had a friend in the pale young man from Manchester. Someone who knew what it was like to grow up in a place where nothing happens. A brother in exile.

That winter Anders paid only a short visit to Domarö, and heavoided Henrik and Björn. They called him in the spring when they were about to embark on their pilgrimage to Stockholm to buy The Queen Is Dead, and wondered if they could stay over, but Anders said he was going to dinner with Cecilia’s mother. Which he was, but not until the following week.

By the summer when everything got blown apart, Henrik and Björn’s interest had escalated to unhealthy proportions. They dressed like Morrissey, both had acquired rockabilly haircuts, and when it turned out that Björn’s eyesight was so bad he needed glasses, he was absolutely delighted, because it gave him a reason to get mottled grey frames like the army-issue ones, and even more like…well, you get the picture.

Close study of Smiths’ lyrics made them more proficient in English than anyone else on Domarö, and when Wilde, Keats and Yeats were mentioned in ‘Cemetery Gates’, they made a point of ordering their stories and poems in the original at the library in Norrtälje, then spent the dirty grey spring deciphering the books with the help of dictionaries.

They could have been happy.

They didn’t try to fit in, because they knew it was impossible, and they regarded the others with ill-concealed contempt, tying leather cords around their wrists and listening to bands with a ‘z’ in the name. They peppered their conversation with oblique references to Smiths’ songs, translated into Swedish, with particular emphasis on the riches of the poor.

But that line came from the song ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’, and therein lay the problem. It would have been OK to have Henrik and Björn as a couple of oddballs on the fringes of the gang, if only they had known their place. If only they hadn’t reached out for what they couldn’t have.

Summer 1986. Olof Palme was dead, and the blueberry bushes on the south side of Domarö were regarded with suspicion as they stood there sucking up water from rain clouds moving in from the east.Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice was a style icon, and everything was pastel colours on the one hand, Black Celebration on the other. And Anders stuck with Depêche Mode, despite the fact that Tracks was playing ‘A Question of Lust’ to death.

Henrik and Björn dismissed more or less the whole lot as dickheads. The only thing that found favour in their eyes was I, Claudius, a fairly old production by the BBC. From England, from London. Björn could do an excellent imitation of the stammering emperor, but unfortunately this was as pearls before swine, since nobody apart from him and Henrik wanted to watch ‘a load of old men wearing sheets and talking funny’.

Enough said. Some people remember how it was, and the rest will have to make do with these daubs—pastel splashes on a black background. Summer 1986. Mortal fear and white teeth, Armageddon and workouts. Enough said.

For the gang, that was the summer when they started to drink alcohol. It had started with the odd sneaky drink from their parents’ supply the previous year, but in the summer of 1986 they started taking the ferry to Åland.

Martin was tall and well-built. He even had the start of a decent beard, which he made sure he cultivated a few days before they made a couple of trips in Joel’s boat to transport the whole gang to Kapellskär, where they caught the ferry. Martin bought the booze in the duty-free shop, then they would slur their way around Mariehamn drinking as much as they dared.

Henrik and Björn weren’t always included when the booze was doled out, and during the third trip that summer, at the beginning of August, they took the matter into their own hands. They were quieter than usual during the trip home, and only went into the duty-free shop to buy some sweets.

The reason for their secretive behaviour became clear when they had disembarked in Kapellskär, and were safe. They opened their jackets. In the waistband of their trousers and in their pockets they had stuffed twelve half-litre bottles of Bacardi. Everybody thoughtthey were fucking crazy, and they were rewarded with pats on the back and places on the first run home in Joel’s boat.

There was usually a litre or two of booze left over after a day in Mariehamn. Now they suddenly had a stash, and not only that, it was free. They decided the bottles should be hidden underneath the old boathouse on Kattholmen. Henrik and Björn were of course included in all these discussions—they were the heroes of the hour.

But by the following day it was all forgotten, and their incomprehensible comments and strange manner—a mixture of submissiveness and a maddening superciliousness—became the objects of the usual ridicule. But they were the ones who had nicked the bottles, there was no getting away from that fact.

And so when the time came for the final party of the summer, they were included from the start. Otherwise Henrik and Björn usually just turned up at parties without being invited, then sat on the sidelines making remarks that only they laughed at, while everybody else laughed at the gibes against Henrik and Björn.

But in that way they fulfilled their particular function. They consolidated the group and the language of the group by sitting outside and speaking a different language. Nobody would have admitted it or even realised it, but a good party needed Henrik and Björn sitting there like a couple of aliens in order to create the right atmosphere.

The evening had arrived. Sausages and charcoal, chips and drink were transported over to Kattholmen, and everyone was there. Joel and Martin, Elin and Malin, Anders and Cecilia. Frida’s mother had said she