Harbour

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  And so the inevitable happened. One Saturday in the middle of September Erik went across to Nåten. He and his fiancée Anna-Greta were going to go into Norrtälje to look at wedding rings. They were planning to marry in the spring, and the young couple hadn't seen much of each other during the summer, as Erik had been so busy working on the house. The idea was that he and his wife-to-be would move into the completed house after the wedding.

  Once Erik's boat had disappeared from view around the southern point, his father sneaked down to the building site with a plumb line and a spirit level.

  He came out onto the cliffs and stopped to look at the wooden framework. It looked reasonable, but weren't the gaps between the upright posts for the walls a little too wide? He knew that the pine tree outside the front door grew at an angle of exactly ninety degrees to the ground. He crouched down, closed one eye and squinted. Either the tree had started to grow crooked during the summer, or...

  He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach as he took out his folding rule and measured the distance between the posts. They were too far apart, and there wasn't even the same distance between them everywhere. In some places it was seventy centimetres, in others a little over eighty. He always went for fifty, sixty at the most. And there weren't enough horizontal supports.

  He went to look at the stock of wood. It was as he had suspected: there wasn't a single whole piece of timber left. Erik had scrimped on the wood.

  The bad feeling in his stomach moved up to his chest as he went around the building with the plumb line and spirit level. The foundations inclined slightly towards the east, and the framework inclined more strongly towards the west. Presumably Erik had realised that he hadn't got the foundations right, and had tried to compensate by making the house lean in the opposite direction.

  Torgny walked around the foundations tapping them with a stone. It wasn't a disaster, but in places it sounded hollow. Erik had got air bubbles in the mortar. And there were no air vents either. If Erik put a slate roof on the crooked frame, it was only a question of whether the damp from underneath or the weight from above would wreck the house first.

  Torgny slumped down on the threshold and noted in passing that the door measurements were wrong. And he was the first person to think what so many people would say in the future: What a bloody shack.

  What could he do?

  If it had been in his power, he would have pulled the whole lot down immediately and put up a new framework before Erik came home, confronting him with a fait accompli. He did actually consider for a moment whether he could keep Erik away from home for a week on some wild pretext, get together every single person he knew and do just that. But it wasn't that simple. Just to redo the foundations...

  He teetered across the sparse floor joists and inspected the internal layout of the house. That was peculiar as well. A long, narrow hall ran through the house, with the incorrectly proportioned bedrooms and kitchen scattered along its edges. It was as if Erik had started with the living room, which did actually appear to be normal, then added each of the other rooms as they occurred to him, until he ran out of wood.

  Torgny stood with his legs apart, balancing on two joists in the middle of what would be the living room. And he was ashamed. It wasn't so much that it was his son who had built this, but more that he would have to spend the rest of his days with this monstrosity close by, on his property. That it would, so to speak, become a part of the family.

  Torgny gathered up his things and left Erik's house without looking back. Once he was home, he put a decent slug of spirits in his coffee and a great gloom settled over him as he sat out on his balcony in the autumn sunshine.

  His wife Maja came out and sat beside him with a pail of apples to be peeled and pureed.

  'How was it?' she asked, as she produced a serpentine curl of peel from the first apple.

  'How was what?'

  'The house. Erik's house.'

  'Well, let's hope it'll keep the wind off them.'

  Maja's knife slipped and the serpent fell to the ground before she made it to the end. 'Is it that bad?'

  Torgny nodded and gazed into the dregs of his coffee. He thought he could see the Tower of Babel, crashing down on to the screaming crowd. You didn't have to be clairvoyant to understand what that meant.

  'Isn't there anything you can do?'

  Torgny shook his cup so that the tower disappeared, and shrugged his shoulders.

  'I could go up there with a can of kerosene and a match, of course, but.. .he might take it the wrong way.'

  Erik came home that evening in an excellent mood. He and Anna- Greta were agreed on plain, simple rings, so that matter had been more or less a formality. But they had had a lovely day in Norrtälje, sitting by the canal and professing their love for each other while planning their wedding.

  Torgny was sitting at the kitchen table mending nets; he listened to his son's unusual talkativeness, nodding and making the right noises as he agreed that Erik had got himself a fine girl there.

  Maja stood at the stove stirring the apple puree, making little contribution to the conversation. After a while, Erik noticed that something was wrong. He looked from one to the other.

  'Has something happened?'

  Torgny looped the yarn through a hole, pulled it tight and knotted it; he didn't look up from his work as he asked, 'What were you thinking of doing about the slates?'

  'What slates?'

  'For your.. .house.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I'm allowed to ask a question.'

  Erik looked at his mother, who was stirring the apple with great concentration, keeping her back to both of them. His father still had his eyes entangled in the torn mesh of the net. After a short silence Erik asked, 'Isn't it right?' When his father didn't reply, he added, 'So what's wrong with it, then?'

  Torgny cut off the loose ends with his penknife and rolled them into a little ball.

  'Well, if I can put it like this...you ought to consider using sheet metal. If you're planning on having people actually living in that house.' Erik just stared at him. He went on, 'If we could just go through it together, there are a few things I think need taking care of, and perhaps we could...'

  Erik interrupted him. 'You think I ought to pull it down, don't you? The whole thing?' Torgny opened his mouth to reply, but Erik slammed his hand down on the table and yelled, 'Fuck you!'

  Maja spun around from the stove so quickly that a few drops of apple puree flew off the wooden spoon in her hand and landed on the front of Erik's shirt as he got up from the table.

  'Erik!' she said. 'That's no way to speak to your father!'

  Erik glared at her as if he were thinking of hitting her, then his gaze dropped to the warm amber drops on his chest.

  'Two things,' said Torgny as Erik stood there with his head down. 'Two things. Then you can go wherever you want, and you can get as angry as you want. You are not putting slates on that roof. And you will put air vents in the foundations. After that you can do what you like.'

  Torgny cut a piece of yarn to begin darning the next tear. But his hands were shaking and he cut his thumb. It wasn't a deep gash, but a few drops of blood oozed out.

  He looked at the blood. Erik looked at the blobs of apple puree on his shirt. Maja was still standing there with the wooden spoon half-raised. A couple of seconds went by and something that was not a house collapsed between them, there was the sound of splintering wood, the squeal of protest as nails were ripped out.

  Then Erik walked out of the kitchen. They heard his footsteps thundering up the stairs, the door of his room slamming behind him. Torgny sucked the blood off his thumb. Maja stirred the pan a few times.

  Something had collapsed.

  After that evening Erik lost all his enthusiasm. He carried on with his carpentry during the autumn and had the panels finished before the winter came, and he fitted a metal roof. He drilled air vents that were misshapen and ugly, but at least they let some air into the founda
tions.

  He did all of this, but he did it without pleasure, without energy. He ate his dinner in silence and gave monosyllabic answers to his parents' questions. Sometimes he went to Nåten to meet Anna-Greta, and he must have made a bit of an effort on those occasions, because the wedding was still on.

  Torgny never went to the house again while it was being built. When people asked how the lad was getting on with his house, he said he wasn't interfering at all, it was Erik's business. He had said his piece, had saved what could be saved. He could do no more.

  Winter came late. Apart from the usual cold snap at the beginning of November, it was mild with no sign of snow until well into January. Erik had put the windows in and was now spending the afternoons and evenings in his house. A large kerosene lamp spread its light across the cliffs, and from a distance it looked really cosy.

  In the middle of January, Erik moved his bed and basic household equipment down to the house. Torgny and Maja stood at the kitchen window secretly watching as he carried his bed on his back down the hill. Maja placed her hand on Torgny's shoulder.

  'Our boy is leaving home.'

  'Yes,' said Torgny, turning away as tears began to prick at his eyes. He sat down at the kitchen table and filled his pipe. Maja stayed at the window, watching Erik as he disappeared behind Seaview Cottage.

  'He's got a mind of his own, anyway,' she said. 'Nobody can take that away from him.'

  The house was finished at the beginning of May. The wedding took place two weeks later. The ceremony was to take place outdoors, on the cliffs at North Point, and afterwards everyone was invited to a combined wedding reception and topping-out ceremony in Erik's house on the point.

  It was a windy day. People had to hold on to their hats, and when the bride threw her bouquet it was swept out to sea before anyone had the chance to catch it. The party made its way to the couple's house with their clothes flapping and tears in their eyes due to both the wind and the emotion of the occasion.

  Anna-Greta thought Erik was holding her hand far too tightly as they passed the harbour and continued towards his home, leading the procession. He was probably just nervous and excited. She herself had butterflies in her stomach, because Erik had yet to show her the house where they were to live together as a married couple, for better or worse, till death did them part. However, his grip was actually so tight that she couldn't give his hand a consoling squeeze in return; she couldn't move her hand at all.

  Erik's mother and her friends had set up the tables outside that morning, but when the wind got up an hour before the wedding, they had moved everything inside. The tables were already laid when the guests walked in, and Maja and her helpers immediately started setting out the food.

  Erik let go of Anna-Greta's hand and gave a short speech welcoming everyone. This gave her the opportunity to look around. It all looked lovely, but there was one detail she couldn't help noticing: in spite of the fact that the windows were closed, the curtains were billowing out. And...

  What is it? There's something...

  Her eyes moved from the hallway to the kitchen and living room. The windows, the doors, the ceiling. Something was making her feel slightly seasick, as if a weight were shifting in her stomach. There was no time to reflect on the matter. Erik had finished speaking, and the guests were taking their seats. She put the whole thing down to her own nervousness.

  Erik grew more and more morose as the afternoon and evening progressed. There were discussions about fishing and summer visitors, about Hitler and the possible occupation of Aland, but in the corners and barely out of earshot people were tapping on the walls and pointing at corners and angles. Heads were shaken, and certain comments reached Erik's ears.

  Anna-Greta noticed that Erik was pouring himself generous measures of schnapps. She tried to distract his attention from the alcohol, but once Erik had passed a certain point, it was as if he became nothing more than a pair of listening ears and a drinking mouth. Later in the evening, when several of the guests were talking quite openly about things they had only whispered earlier, she found him sitting on a chair, staring at one of the walls.

  Three of the children were playing a game. They had some hard-boiled eggs left over from the meal, and they were having a competition to see who could get their egg to roll the furthest, simply by putting it down on the floor and letting go of it.

  Suddenly Erik stood up and cleared his throat loudly. There was a party atmosphere in the funny house, and only a few conversations were broken off. Erik didn't seem to care. He leaned against the back of the chair so that he wouldn't fall over, and said loudly, 'There's been a lot of talk one way and another, so I thought it was time / said what I think about this Hitler bloke.'

  He gave a highly inflammatory speech, but a very strange one. His argument was muddled and vaguely incomprehensible. At any rate, the main thrust was that people like Hitler should be eradicated from the face of the earth, and why? Well, because they poked their noses into other people's business and crushed the freedom of others with their authority. Hitler was one of those people who always thought he knew best, and therefore other people were crushed beneath his feet.

  Erik ended by saying, 'We can bloody well do without these know-alls. That's what I think, anyway.'

  It was only when Torgny stood up a little while later, made his excuses and took Maja with him, that Anna-Greta realised the speech had been about something else entirely.

  No, it wasn't exactly a successful wedding reception. Nor was the wedding night, for that matter. Erik was too drunk to do anything at all, and towards morning Anna-Greta went out and sought consolation with the gulls, who had begun to circle above the cliffs.

  What kind of life was it going to be, here in this house?

  Plastic beads

  The pine tree was still standing by the porch, as tall and straight as ever. Anders put his case down beside it and contemplated the Shack. The sheet metal roof had been changed to corrugated tin, and its corrugations were full of pine needles. The gutters were probably blocked.

  The rickety jetty extended out into the water from the wormwood meadow on the shoreline. Anders' grandmother had brought a plant with her from Stora Korset many years earlier, and it had spread, very slowly, until the swaying blanket of leaves and naked stems surrounded the old plastic-hulled boat lying upturned on a couple of blocks of wood.

  He took a walk around the outside of the house. On the side facing inland it looked OK, but on the side facing out to sea the red paint had faded, and some of the planks of wood in the walls had split. The TV aerial had disappeared. When he went up on to the patio he could see the antenna lying there like an injured spider.

  He was in pain all the time. All the time there was a weight on his chest and pain that felt like a scream. As he made his way around the corner of the house he caught sight of something red among the dog roses. Maja's little boat. A cheap inflatable thing they had played with together that last summer. He and Maja and Cecilia.

  Now it was lying there, torn and deflated among the rose bushes. He remembered telling Maja not to drag it across any sharp stones, not to.. .now it was impaled on hundreds of thorns and everything was gone and it was too late.

  It was because of the boat he hadn't come back to Domarö for almost three years. Because of the boat and other memories like it, other traces of the past. Things that contemptuously continued to exist, despite the fact that they should no longer be here because the significance they'd held was gone.

  He had expected this. He had steeled himself. He didn't cry. He could see the red glow of the boat from the corner of his eye as he carried on around the house on legs that were moving only because he told them to move. He turned the corner and found his way to the table in the garden, slumped down on the bench. He was finding it difficult to breathe, small hands were squeezing his windpipe and black dots danced before his eyes.

  What the hell did I come here for ?

  When the worst of the cramps in his throat ha
d passed, he got up and kicked away the stone by the gooseberry bush. A few woodlice scuttled over the plastic bag containing the door key. He waited until they had gone, then bent down and picked up the bag. As he straightened up he suddenly felt dizzy. He went over to the front door as if he were drunk, unlocked it, dragged himself to the bathroom and drank several gulps of rusty-tasting water straight from the tap. Breathed, took a few more gulps. The dizziness was still there.

  The door from the hallway into the living room was open, and the light from the sea and sky cast a white lustre over the sofa under the window. He saw it through a tunnel, staggered over and collapsed on to it.