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

she had done to her face was incomprehensible. She was thirty-six, like him, but was starting to look like a sixty-year-old who’d had a difficult life.

‘I’m going to check the post,’ said Anders.

He hurried out of the kitchen and pulled on his Helly Hansen top, fleeing the agonising desolation that lay like a fog around Elin.

Down below the porch stood the GB-man, wrapped in the plastic sack. He couldn’t understand why it had frightened him so much. He picked it up and carried it over to the woodpile, where he kicked it and made it fall over.

‘Not so fucking tough now, are you?’ he said to the prone figure, which had nothing to say in its defence.

The air was clear and cold, the demons of the night were dispersing. He looked with satisfaction at the well-filled wood store, pushed his hands into his pockets and set off towards the village. It was as if he had two different states. One which was comparatively clear and lucid and could chop wood, think sensible thoughts, and was on the way up. And then there was the other, the night side, which was in the process of getting lost in a labyrinthine darkness of fear and speculation, and was on the way down.

At least it’s a fight, he thought. In the city there was nothing but apathy.

That’s how he chose to see it at the moment, at any rate, as he approached the shop with his work-worn hands in his pockets. When the rays of the sun broke through the cloud cover at irregular intervals and made the sea sparkle, when he was in the light of the new day. When the night came no doubt everything would look very different.

He opened the old mailbox he had been given by Simon, expectingto find nothing as usual, but today there was a yellow envelope in the box. The films. The pictures had been developed.

He weighed the envelope in his hand. It was thinner and lighter than usual, because he had only taken a few pictures before his photography stopped for good. But they were in there. The last pictures. He picked at the flap of the envelope and looked around. Not a soul in sight. He ripped it open.

He didn’t want to go home because Elin was there, he wanted to be in peace with this moment. He sat down on the steps of the shop and pulled the smaller folder out of the envelope, weighing that in his hand as well. How many pictures were there? Ten? Eleven? He couldn’t remember. He took a deep breath and carefully fished out the little bundle of photographs.

My darling…

First of all a couple of bad pictures of the Shack, and then there they were, on the way up to the lighthouse. Maja in her red suit, ploughing ahead through the snow, Cecilia right behind her, straight-backed despite the difficult terrain underfoot. There they were in front of the lighthouse, side by side with rosy cheeks. Cecilia’s hand on Maja’s shoulder, Maja pulling away, off somewhere else as usual.

More photographs of the two of them in front of the lighthouse, the two people he had cared about most in all the world, both gone. Different degrees of zoom, the hands in different positions. Pictures from a distance, head and shoulders, close-ups. Maja up by the reflector.

A lump formed in Anders’ throat, and he found it difficult to breathe. How could they be gone? How could they have ceased to exist for him, when he was sitting here holding them in his hands? How could that be?

The tears began to fall; a screw was boring its way through his chest. He lowered the pictures and let it happen. He wrapped his arms around himself and thought: If there was a way…

If there was a way, a machine, a method of releasing people from photographs. Of capturing those frozen moments and thawing them out, making them real and bringing them back into the world. Henodded to himself as the tears continued to flow and the screw was twisted around and around.

‘It ought to be possible,’ he mumbled. ‘It ought to be possible…’

He sat like that until the pain began to subside and the tears had dried. Then he looked at the photographs one by one, running his finger over the two-dimensional faces that would never be his again.

That’s funny…

He flicked back and forth through the pile. Maja wasn’t looking into the camera in one single picture. Cecilia was gazing obediently into the lens every time, in one she had even managed a beaming smile. But Maja…

Her eyes were looking away, and in a couple of pictures it wasn’t only her eyes. Her whole face was turned to the left. To the east.

Anders studied the pictures more closely and could see that in every picture her eyes seemed to be fixed on a particular point. Even when she was directly facing the camera, in the close-up for example, her pupils were drawn to the left.

He lowered the bundle of photographs and stared straight ahead, open-mouthed. He remembered. Up in the lighthouse. How she had pointed and…

Daddy, what’s that?

What do you mean?

There. On the ice.

Far away in the distance Gåvasten was no more than a diffuse elevation in the grey-blue sea. With his index fingers and thumbs Anders made a small diamond-shaped hole, and looked through it to sharpen his focus. The contours of Gåvasten became slightly clearer, but he couldn’t see anything in particular.

What was it she saw?

He got up from the steps, pushed the photographs in his pocket, and strode purposefully home. He had a job to do.

Anders walked around the upturned boat, looking at it from a more pragmatic point of view. Yes, it looked scruffy, but could it serve itspurpose: to stay afloat, and to carry an engine that would get him to Gåvasten?

The weakest element from a practical point of view was the mounting for the engine. The metal plate in the stern had virtually