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

pain in his chest, a lump was growing. He saw the room through her eyes, the way she had seen it.

There’s the big bed, that’s where Mummy and Daddy sleep, I can go over there if I’m scared. This is my beautiful bed, there’s Bamse. I am six years old. My name is Maja. I know that I am loved.

‘Maja…Maja…’

The lump in his chest was so big it couldn’t be dissolved with tears, and he was being sucked down towards it. He had no grave to visit, nothing that meant Maja. Except for this. This place. He hadn’tunderstood that until now. He was sitting on her grave, her resting place. His head was drawn down towards the floor, down between his knees.

Strewn across the floor by the bed were a number of her plastic beads. Twenty or thirty of them. She had made necklaces, bead pictures, it had been her favourite pastime. She had had a whole bucketful of beads in every colour you could think of, and it was under her bed.

Except for those that were strewn across the floor.

Anders picked up a few of the beads, looked at them as they lay there in the palm of his hand. One red, one yellow, three blue.

Another memory from the last day, kneeling beside her bed, leaning his head on the mattress, searching for the smell of her in the sheets and finding it, the fabric soaking up his tears.

He had been on his knees. He had moved around the bed on his knees, searching for the smell of her. Yes. But there had been no beads under his knees then. He had forgotten much of his life in the years that followed, much lay in a fog, but that last day out here burned brightly. Clearly. No beads pressing into his skin.

Are you sure?

Yes. I’m sure.

He slid down on to the floor and looked under the bed. The transparent bucket that held the beads was near the edge. It was two-thirds full. He pushed his hand in and allowed it to be surrounded by beads, stirred it around. When he pulled out his hand, a number of beads were stuck to his skin.

Rats. Mice.

He buried both hands in the bucket, filled his cupped hands with beads and allowed them to pour back in. No droppings. Mice couldn’t even walk through a kitchen cupboard without leaving droppings behind.

He pushed the bucket back under the bed and looked around the floor. The twenty or thirty beads were all close to the bed. He crawled across the floor, looked in the corners, along the edges. No beads.Under the double bed there were big balls of fluff, nothing else.

Just a minute…

He moved back to Maja’s bed and looked underneath.

A box with no lid containing Duplo Lego was behind the bucket of beads, next to Bamse. He pulled it out. A layer of dust covered the multi-coloured blocks. He couldn’t check because he had moved his hands around in the bucket, but had there been any dust on the beads?

He sat on the floor with his back against Maja’s bed. His eyes focused on the wardrobe. It was a clumsy object fixed to the wall, built by Anders’ grandfather with the same lack of skill that characterised the rest of the house. It was approximately a metre wide, made from rough left-over wood. The key was in the lock.

His heart began palpitating once again, and a cold sweat broke out on his palms. He knew the wardrobe had a handle on the inside. Maja liked to sit inside underneath the clothes and pretend she…

Stop it. Stop it right now.

He clamped his lips together, stopped breathing. Listened. There was not a sound apart from the rushing of the sea against the rocks, the wind soughing through the pine trees, his own heart pounding in his ears. He looked at the wardrobe door, at the key. It was moving.

Anders leapt to his feet and pressed his hands against his temples. His lower jaw had begun to tremble.

The key was not moving. Of course it wasn’t moving.

Stop it. Stop it.

Without looking back he walked out of the room, turned the light off and closed the door. His fingers were ice-cold, his teeth chattering. He placed a few logs on the fire, then sat for a long time warming his hands, his body.

When he felt calmer he opened his suitcase and took out one of the litre casks of red wine, tore it open and knocked back a third of the contents. He looked at the bedroom door. He was still just as frightened.

The fire in the kitchen stove had gone out. He didn’t bother withit, he just picked up his cigarettes and a glass and went back to the safe circle of warmth by the fire, where he finished off the wine cask. When it was empty he threw it on the fire and fetched another.

The wine did its job. The knots in his muscles loosened and his thoughts drifted off aimlessly without alighting anywhere in particular. Halfway through the second box he got up and looked out across the sea, glass in hand. The lighthouse at Gåvasten was flashing in the distance.

‘Cheers, you bastard. Cheers, you fucking bastard.’

He emptied the glass and began to sway in time with the flashing light.

The sea. And us poor bastards with our little flashing lights.

Something bad is coming

At half-past three Anders was woken by someone banging on the door. He opened his eyes and lay motionless on the sofa, pulling the blanket more tightly around him. The room was in darkness. The beam of the lighthouse swept through and the floor swayed. His head felt heavy.

He lay there with his eyes wide open wondering if he had misheard, if it had been a dream. The lighthouse beam swept by once again. This time the floor remained still. Behind him he could hear that the wind was getting up. The sea was hurling itself against the rocks and a cold