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

or because he’d managed to convince them, it didn’t matter. Anna-Greta sold all her gloves. Despite their initial resistance, the men seemed very pleased with themselves as they tramped off towards the bus stop.

The lieutenant lingered behind. He removed his right glove and extended his hand as if they were meeting for the first time. Anna-Greta took it.

‘My name is Folke.’

‘Anna-Greta. Still.’

Folke looked down into the empty basket and pinched his nose. ‘Have you considered socks? Pullovers, maybe?’

‘Is there a shortage of those?’

‘Well, not exactly. We do have them, but perhaps they weren’t made for a winter like this, if you know what I mean.’

‘In that case, thank you for the tip.’

Folke put his glove back on and saluted. When he had gone a few steps towards the bus stop he turned around and said, ‘I’m on leave again in three weeks, anyway. If there’s a pullover for sale, I’m…an interested party.’

When Anna-Greta got back home, she tipped the coins out on to the table and counted them. Twenty-four kronor, earned in the very best way, through her own work and her own idea. When she tried to share the money with Maja, her mother-in-law wouldn’t hear of it. However, she might be interested in coming in on the deal if demand grew too high.

And it did. By the very next Saturday the word had spread about Anna-Greta’s gloves, and she didn’t have enough stock to satisfy everyone who wanted to buy for themselves, or for comrades who were still out on the islands. Maja took over the gloves while Anna-Greta concentrated on socks. And a pullover, of course.

If someone’s alert, it only takes a hint to sniff the possibility of love. And that’s what happened. At least on Folke’s part. Once he had his pullover, he wanted socks as well. But they must be striped, so she had to make a pair especially for him. And then he needed a hat, of course.

Anna-Greta was bright enough to understand what was going on. Folke was kind and decent, and she did search her heart for signs of love, but found not a trace. There was nothing she could do about it. She played along as well as she could, but veered away from his tentative invitations.

Spring came and her belly expanded. The demand for warm clothing ceased, and Anna-Greta had to look around for something else. One day in April, a month before her due date, her father hove to at the jetty in a fishing boat she hadn’t seen before.

After patting her stomach and inquiring after her health, he explained why he was really there. He had become acquainted with a Russian sea captain, and there was the chance of a good deal if he could just sail out to the three-mile limit and collect a load.

‘But it’s a bit…difficult for me in these waters, as you’re perhaps aware.’

Oh yes, Anna-Greta knew. If a customs boat caught so much as a glimpse of her father, he would be searched immediately.

‘So I was thinking that maybe if you could go, that would reduce the risk significantly. And they don’t know this boat.’

Anna-Greta weighed up the pros and cons. It wasn’t the risk of getting caught that bothered her as much as the purely moral step involved in moving over to criminal activity. On the other hand, there were already people who looked at her sideways because of her father. She might as well fulfil their expectations.

‘How much would I get?’ she asked.

Her father glanced at her protruding stomach and made an expansive gesture.

‘Let’s say half of the profit. Seeing as it’s you.’

‘Which is?’

‘Two thousand, more or less.’

‘Done.’

The whole thing went without a hitch. Although the glory days of smuggling liquor were long gone, there was still the matter of rationing and housekeeping, and a thousand litres of Russian vodka could always find throats to slip down.

The transportation was taken care of in the old way. The cases were loaded into a torpedo that was towed behind the boat. If customs turned up, you simply cut the rope and the cargo sank, taking with it a little floating buoy and a bag of salt heavy enough to keep the buoy submerged. After a few days the salt would dissolve and the buoy rose to the surface. Then all you had to do was salvage the cargo.

Anna-Greta sat in the stern with the rudder in her hand, waving goodbye to the Russian captain. She turned her gaze to the prow, where her father was crouching, then lifted her eyes to the horizon. The child kicked in her stomach and a feeling of dizziness came overher. It felt a bit like fear, but when she thought about it she realised what it was: freedom.

She gazed out at the archipelago far away in the distance, where the soldiers were keeping watch in their defence posts and people were getting on with this and that in their cottages. All those people, sitting still and keeping watch over what was theirs. She tightened her grip on the rudder and lifted her face to the wind.

I am free. I can do anything.

The child was born in the middle of April, a healthy boy she named Johan. In the summer, Anna-Greta invested a thousand kronor of the money she had earned in a fishing boat of her own.

Ulla Billqvist was on the radio singing about the boys in blue, but the truth was the boys in blue were bored to death on their islands. The Russians hadn’t so much as dipped a finger in Swedish territorial waters, and Sweden’s defenders were sitting in their barracks playing cards, glowering at the gulls and being as bored as it is humanly possible to be.

Anna-Greta had spoken to quite a lot of people, and had identified a need. During the winter it had been warmth that was lacking, during the summer it was some kind of diversion. Anna-Greta set to work.

By various methods, some of them entirely legal,