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

‘No, but I’m still sorry. I apologise.’

When the initial shock had faded they began to talk hesitantly about what had happened. The conversation continued during the afternoon and later up at Anna-Greta and Johan’s house, where they ate a simple dinner. Towards nine o’clock a different kind of silence took over, a fundamental exhaustion of speech. They just couldn’t bear to listen to the sound of their own voices any longer, and Simon went back down to his cottage.

He sat down at the kitchen table with the crossword in order to distract his mind, and for once he cut it out, filled in his name and address and put it in an envelope. The summer evening was still lilac outside his window when he had finished, and he regretted turning down the invitation to sleep on the kitchen sofa up in the big house. The day’s events were turning over and over in his mind. Until today the future had been dismal but predictable, he had been able to see himself plodding on through the years. Now he couldn’t see anything anymore.

Just as the recoil from the gun had thrown him backwards, so he had been thrown outside himself at the moment he fired the shot. It wasn’t the action itself that frightened him—that had been born of panic and necessity—but what had happened inside him.

He had seen Rolf’s head explode as he pressed the trigger, in fact he had fully intended to blow Rolf’s head to bits. When Anna-Gretahad pointed to the gun afterwards and Simon had realised that there was one cartridge left, his immediate impulse had been to shoot Marita as well. To execute her. Blow her head off. Get rid of her.

He hadn’t done any of those things. But he had thought it, and had experienced a wild desire to do it. Perhaps he would have, if there hadn’t been any witnesses. He had been hurled into a different version of himself, someone who wanted to kill whatever stood in his way. It was not a pleasant thought, yet at the same time it was a very pleasant thought: he could be someone different from now on, if he wanted to be.

But who? Who am I? Who will I become?

His thoughts continued to go around and around after he had gone to bed. He was ashamed of himself. For what he had done and what he had not done, for what he thought and who he was. He tried to make himself think about the forthcoming performances in Nåten, how he was going to get through them with a broken finger, but the images were washed away and replaced by others.

After a few hours he fell into an uneasy sleep, which after a short while was disturbed by banging, thumping, knocking. Just knocking. He got up quickly and looked around the room. Somebody had been knocking. Somebody wanted to come in. There was still a hint of light in the sky, and he could see the silhouette of a head outside the bedroom window.

He breathed out and opened the window. Anna-Greta was standing outside with her hands clasped over her breast. She was wearing a white nightdress.

‘Anna-Greta?’

‘May I come in? For a while?’

Simon instinctively reached out to help her over the windowsill, but realised how stupidly he was behaving.

‘I’ll open the door,’ he said.

Anna-Greta went around the side of the house and Simon opened the front door to let her in.

Driftwood

The dream about Elin

For a good two hours Simon and Anna-Greta had taken it in turns to tell their story. Anders’ knees creaked as he got to his feet and stretched his arms up towards the ceiling. Outside the window the weather was neither worse nor better. Small raindrops caressed the pane, and the wind whispered among the trees without any great hurry. A walk seemed possible, and he needed some exercise.

Simon took the tray out into the kitchen and Anna-Greta brushed crumbs off the table. Anders looked at her wrinkled hands, imagining them holding the shotgun. ‘What a story.’

‘Yes,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘But it’s only a story.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Exactly what I say.’ Anna-Greta straightened up with the crumbs in her hand. ‘We can never know anything about what has happened in the past, because it has turned into stories. Even for those who are involved.’

‘So…it didn’t happen like that?’

Anna-Greta shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Not any more.’

Anders followed her into the kitchen where Simon was carefully stacking the best china in the dishwasher. Anna-Greta brushed thecrumbs off her hands into the bin and got out the dishwasher powder. They moved around each other with a manifest ease. The dance of everyday life, worn smooth over the years. Anders looked at them in a kind of double exposure.

The smuggler king’s daughter and the magician. Loading the dishwasher.

Whether their story was true or not, it had stirred things up in his mind. New associations must be made, new sequences of images must be put together. He felt a physical weariness as the synapses prepared the way for all these new connections.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said.

Anna-Greta gestured towards the fridge. ‘Aren’t you going to take some food with you?’

‘Later. Thanks for the coffee. And the story.’

Anders stepped out on to the porch, lit a cigarette and strolled down the garden path. He passed the path to Simon’s house and stopped, taking a deep drag.

My dad ran along here with his air gun. And without his air gun.

The gun was still around in a cupboard at the Shack, and he’d tried it once or twice when he was little. But the barrel was loose and the pressure was so poor that the pellet often got stuck in the bore. He’d wondered why his father kept it. Now he knew.

Leaves were rustling or falling all around him, and a light drizzle was dampening his hair as he carried on up towards the shop. The tender was just reversing away from the jetty