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

that odd curls of smoke were still rising from the devastation, there was no risk that the fire would catch hold again; the whole area was too wet.

Many people had gone home, but Simon was still standing in the sour-smelling ashes, contemplating the ruins and meditating on the transience of all things.

You have a house. Then you don’t have a house.

Just one little match or a spark in the wrong place. That’s all it took for everything you had walked around in for so many years, everything you had made beautiful and kept secure, to go up in smoke. A careless word or a glimpse of something you shouldn’t have seen, and the web of life you had taken for granted was ripped up and scattered in pieces before your eyes.

The rug is pulled from under your feet.

You really can see it: the oblong rag rug you are walking on, but what’s that figure down there at the end? Is it a devil or an angel? Or just a little old man in a grey suit, a tiresome individual who has been waiting for his chance? At any rate, he’s holding the end of the rug in his hands. And he is patient, very patient. He can wait.

But if you lose your balance, if for some reason you are found wanting, then he gives the rug a quick tug. It’s pure magic as your feet leave the ground and for a brief moment you hover, horizontal, the tips of your toes in line with your nose. Then the ground comes up to meet you with a crash and it hurts.

Simon pushed his hands deep in his trouser pockets and walked over to the remains of the house. There was a squelching sound from underfoot, and the smell of ash was suffocating. He had no particular relationship with the house that had burnt down, had never even been inside it. And yet it was as if it meant something.

He had had a confusing day and perhaps he was feeling oversensitive, but he had definitely had enough of looking at things that happened on Domarö as isolated incidents with no internal connection, he’d been deceived—

Yes. Deceived.

—for long enough. The sooty sludge beneath his feet squelched and slurped around his feet as he waded through. The firemen had said that the way the fire had started definitely sounded suspicious, but it wasn’t their job to investigate. The police would take over when it was daylight.

Despite the risk that he might be destroying important clues, Simon carried on ploughing through the mess until it thinned out and stopped a couple of metres before he reached the well. That was where he’d been heading, although he hadn’t been aware of it.

It was an old well. A circular wall a metre high, made of stones cemented together, with the well itself covered by a wooden lid. The older construction with its winding mechanism, chain and bucket was still there for decoration. A thick plastic hose emerged from a hole in the lid, and presumably had been attached to a pump inside the house. Now the hose was burnt off a few metres from the well.

Simon moved the lid slightly and looked down into the darkness.

What am I doing?

He didn’t know. Just as he didn’t know why he’d come here at all. There was just something…drawing him. He closed one hand around the matchbox and waited.

Nothing. It’s nothing.

He felt something, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. It was just a feeling, a breath of something vanished, the ripples onthe water after a fish has surfaced, but the fish itself is already far away.

But still he unhooked the bucket and used the chain to lower it into the well. After perhaps five metres it reached the surface down below. When he hauled it up it was half full of clear water. He cupped his hands and drank a mouthful, first cleaning the cut on his hand which had already begun to heal.

Salt.

It wasn’t unusual for a certain amount of salt to find its way into wells so close to the sea. If they’d asked him he wouldn’t have advised them to dig just here, but there was nothing to be done about that now. He hung the bucket back in its place. The feeling grew neither stronger nor weaker, it was simply there like a faint aroma, and he didn’t know what it was.

He took a step back and looked at the well.

What a pity.

What a pity that such a fine old well would no longer have a house to belong to. He turned to look at the devastation once again and caught sight of a person standing where he had been standing a little while ago. The starlight was not bright enough to see who it was, so he raised an arm in greeting. The greeting was returned.

When he got closer he could see that it was Anna-Greta, standing waiting for him. His body stiffened, he replaced his apologetic expression with one of rebuff, and squelched with the greatest possible dignity the last few metres through the ash porridge.

Anna-Greta looked amused. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing. I was just thirsty, that’s all.’

Anna-Greta pointed to the public tap at the crossroads a dozen metres away. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to…?’

‘Never thought about it,’ said Simon, walking past her. He carried on towards home as quickly as he could, but Anna-Greta’s legs were considerably more sprightly and she had no difficulty in catching up with him. She appeared by his side and switched on her torch to light the way for them both.

‘Are you angry?’ she asked.

‘No. Disappointed, mostly.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’

They reached the track between the fir trees and Simon was forced to slow down. His heart didn’t want to run away from Anna-Greta. His physical heart, for heaven’s sake. He didn’t know where he was with the other one. But it was certainly an insight worth acquiring at death’s door: he couldn’t