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

Anders pressed his hands to his temples and his brain crackled with discharging electricity. He took a deep breath, and discovered that he could do it. His lungs were not paralysed, he had actually been holding his breath. The air he inhaled brought his tastebuds to life, and he was wormwood. It tasted so vile that it wasn’t a taste at all, it was a state of being. He grabbed hold of the workbench and pulled himself to his feet.

I am wormwood.

The ball in his chest was gone. The revolting taste had encased it, and it had shrunk and disappeared. He blinked and blinked again, trying to focus his gaze. He fixed on a piece of rope with a frayed end. He shone the torch on it and he could see every single fibre. There were fifty-seven threads.

Fifty-seven. The same age as Dad was when he died. The same number of screws and plugs as there were in the cupboard Cecilia and I bought from IKEA for the bedroom. The same number of centimetres as Maja’s height when she was two months old. The same…

The outlines of everything perceived by the eye of the torch were blurred, yet at the same time all too clear. He wasn’t seeing the objects,he was seeing what they were. He reached out for the roll of plastic sacks and knew there were eight sacks left on the roll and together they would hold one thousand six hundred litres.

One thousand six hundred litres of things. Leaves, twigs, toys, tins of paint, tools, gramophones, pairs of glasses, pine cones, microwave ovens. One thousand six hundred litres of things…

As he picked up the roll he found a still point inside his head, a rock in the river where he could stand and think clearly as everything flowed past and around him.

Take the bags. Go to the house.

That was what he did. As the world continued to come adrift, dissolve and pour through him, he stood on the rock and watched his hands helping Simon to dress Elin’s body in plastic for this final journey. Then the perception grew weaker and he began to shiver.

Anders crouched down in the prow, as far away from the plastic bundle as possible. Simon had to sit with his feet pushed underneath Elin’s thighs in order to fit in the driving seat.

How can he do this.

Simon’s lips were clamped together and his forehead was furrowed, as if he were concentrating hard the whole time. But he was doing it. Anders realised he ought to be grateful, but he had no room for any such emotions. The world had frayed like the rope in the shed.

Simon started the engine and they set off from Domarö, rounded North Point and set their course for the bay between Kattholmen and Ledinge. There was a light breeze, and Anders fixed his gaze on the horizon as the rising sun warmed his cheek.

A dozen or so metres ahead of the boat a gull took off from the surface of the water and soared away with a scream. Anders followed it with his eyes, saw it cross the disc of the sun and disappear in the direction of Gåvasten.

Daddy…

How many early mornings had Anders lain in the prow of hisfather’s boat as the sun rose, on their way to the fishing grounds to lift their nets? Forty? Fifty?

Daddy…

He hadn’t thought properly about his father for a long time. With the fleeing gull and the rising sun, it all came back. Including that time.

That time…

Fishing for herring

The summer Anders turned twelve he was saving up for a radio-controlled boat. He had seen it in the toy shop in Norrtälje, and had been seduced by the fantastic picture on the box. The white hull racing across the water, the blue go-faster stripes along the side. It cost three hundred and fifty kronor, and it would be his before the summer was over.

It wasn’t impossible. He and his father would lay their net twice a week, then Anders would sell the fish outside the shop. Six kronor a kilo, and he got half. So the boat represented one hundred and seventeen kilos of herring, he had worked out. With one krona left over.

He was no Uncle Scrooge, saving every krona he earned, but he had managed to put away one hundred and ninety kronor. Every catch brought between thirty and forty kilos, but by the time it got towards the end of June and the herring were beginning to move further out to sea, each catch was slightly smaller. He still needed to sell fifty kilos of fish, and they were unlikely to put the net out more than twice before the end of the season.

So that was the first thing Anders thought about when he woke up that morning: fifty kilos.

He got out of bed and dug his fishing clothes out of the bottom drawer. The smell alone would have given his mother palpitations. Both his jeans and pullover were covered in old scales and dried roe,and had approximately the same aroma as the dried pieces of fish you give to dogs.

Finally he put on his cap. It was a cap with a logo from the shipyard in Nåten where his father worked, and it too was so full of scales and solidified herring gunge that a dog could probably have eaten it just as it was.

Anders liked his outfit. When he put it on he was no longer Anders-nobody-in-particular, he was Anders the fisher boy. This was not something he could share with his friends from the city, and he made sure he changed his clothes before he sat down outside the shop. But in the mornings when they were all still sleeping, he was just his father’s son, the fisher boy, and he liked that.

It was a fine morning. Anders and his father sat opposite each other at the kitchen table with a cup of hot chocolate and a cup of coffee respectively, looking out