Harbor by John Lindqvist (no david read aloud TXT) 📗

Table of Contents

Title Page

I - Banished

The sea has given and the sea has taken away

Sea buckthorn

Two small people and a large rock (July 1984)

Gåvasten (February 2004)

Domarö and time

What the cat dragged in (May 1996)

About the Shack

The fern (October 2006)

The anchor

Back

The Shack

Plastic beads

Something bad is coming

Someone hates us

Holger’s thesis

Anna-Greta

Love in the archipelago

The story of the story

The smuggler king’s daughter

The magician

Escape

The uninvited guest

Driftwood

The dream about Elin

Suspicions

Communication

A discovery by the shore

A very small event

Old Acquaintances

About the sea

Whispers in your ear

Meeting

Gåvasten

Call-out

Who’s that knocking on your door?

Hubba and Bubba

Nobody loves us

If you exist

After the fire

What are you looking at?

Major and minor questions

Bloody tourists go home

The enemy of the water

2 - Possessed

Bodies in the water

Taking care of business

Fishing for herring

Weight

Pulling power

Find the one you love

Instead of Las Vegas

Duel

In Norrtälje

Hide and seek

Horrid children

Back to Gåvasten

Wormwood

Homeward bound

The fishing spear

The keeper

Correction

The way it was

Heaven

Home visit

Strange Ways

Another one to the sea

Left

Divining rod

Old lead

Proof of eligibility

Let love come

The water

Come in

The handover (we are secret)

Those Who Have Turned Away

Maja

The moped

Back to the old place

The first

Time to start a fight

The honeymoon

A better world

Also by

Copyright Page

To my father

Ingemar Pettersson (1938–1998)

He gave me the sea

The sea took him from me

Welcome to Domarö.

It’s a place you won’t find on any maritime chart, unless you look really carefully. It lies just about two nautical miles east of Refsnäs in the archipelago in southern Roslagen, a considerable distance in from Söderarm and Tjärven.

You will need to move some of the islands out of the way, create empty expanses of water between them in order to catch sight of Domarö. Then you will also be able to see the lighthouse at Gåvasten, and all the other landmarks that arise in this story.

Arise, yes. That’s the right word. We will be in a place that is new to people. For tens of thousands of years it has been lying beneath the water. But then the islands rise up and to the islands come the people, and with the people come the stories.

Let us begin.

I

Banished

Where the waves thunder and the storms cry.

Where the breakers crash and the salt water whirls,

that is where the place that is ours rises from the sea.

The legacy that passes from father to son.

LENNART ALBINSSON—RÅDMANSÖ

The sea has given and the sea has taken away

Who flies there in the feather-harbour, who climbs up there out of the black, shining waters?

GUNNAR EKELÖF—TJÄRVEN

Sea buckthorn

Three thousand years ago, Domarö was nothing but a large, flat rock sticking up out of the water, crowned by an erratic boulder the ice had left behind. One nautical mile to the east it was possible to glimpse the round shape that would later rise out of the sea and be given the name Gåvasten. Apart from that, there was nothing. It would be another thousand years before the surrounding islets and islands dared to poke their heads above the water, beginning the formation of the archipelago that goes under the name of Domarö archipelago today.

By that time the sea buckthorn had already arrived on Domarö.

Down below the enormous block left by the ice, a shoreline had formed. There in the scree the sea buckthorn worked its way along with its creeping roots, the hardy shrub finding nourishment in the rotting seaweed, growing where there was nothing to grow in, clinging to the rocks. Sea buckthorn. Toughest of the tough.

And the sea buckthorn produced new roots, crept up over thewater’s edge and grew on the slopes until a metallic-green border surrounded the uninhabited shores of Domarö like a fringe. Birds snatched the fiery yellow berries that tasted of bitter oranges and flew with them to other islands, spreading the gospel of the sea buckthorn to new shores, and within a few hundred years the green fringe could be seen in all directions.

But the sea buckthorn was preparing its own destruction.

The humus formed by its rotting leaves was richer than anything the stony shores could offer, and the alder saw its chance. It set its seeds in the mulch left by the sea buckthorn, and it grew stronger and stronger. The sea buckthorn was unable to tolerate either the nitrogen-rich soil produced by the alder, or the shade from its leaves, and it withdrew down towards the water.

With the alder came other plants that needed a higher level of nutrition, competing for the available space. The sea buckthorn was relegated to a shoreline that grew far too slowly, just half a metre in a hundred years. Despite the fact that it had given birth to the other plants, the sea buckthorn was displaced and set aside.

And so it sits there at the edge of the shore, biding its time. Beneath the slender, silky green leaves there are thorns. Big thorns.

Two small people and a large rock (July 1984)

They were holding hands.

He was thirteen and she was twelve. If anyone in the gang caught sight of them, they would just die right there on the spot. They crept through the fir trees, alert to every sound and every movement as if they were on some secret mission. In a way they were: they were going to be together, but they didn’t know that yet.

It was almost ten o’clock at night, but there was still enough light in the sky for them to see each other’s arms and legs as pale movements over the carpet of grass and earth still holding the warmthof the day. They