Harbour

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  A weekly magazine had done an at-home-with feature on the couple, and the photographer had found it very difficult to stop taking pictures of Marita—posed beside the armchair, next to the gramophone; holding a lid and gazing ecstatically down into the saucepan.

  And so everything should have been wonderful, but it wasn't. Simon was frankly unhappy and, as so often happens the same thing lay at the root of both his success and his unhappiness: Marita.

  Simon had a tendency to brood. This could be very useful when it came to getting to the bottom of something, for example dissecting a conjuring trick so that he could work out how to improve it. Among other things, he was the first to saw the lady in half using a chainsaw. Most illusionists made a big thing of spinning the separated sections around on the stage. Simon had thought it through, and come to the conclusion that it wasn't the separate parts that were interesting, but the separation itself.

  The huge handsaw that was normally used looked like a stage prop. But the raw physicality of a chainsaw, set against his own elegant appearance and Marita's feather-light frailty—that might possibly achieve the desired effect.

  And indeed it was. At one performance a couple of people fainted when Simon started up the big chainsaw. Fortunately there was a reporter in the audience, and it proved to be excellent publicity. This was the result of Simon's brooding on the question of sawing the lady in half.

  Marita was cut from a different cloth. When Simon met her in the mid-1940s, she had been a bright, energetic woman with ambitions to be a dancer, and she moved through the nightclubs of Stockholm like a wisp of smoke.

  It was not until a year or so after they joined forces that Simon discovered her secret box. A shoebox containing some twenty Benzedrine inhalers. Simon assumed she was using it as an aid to slimming, and didn't mention the matter.

  But he became vigilant, and soon he could see what she was doing. They might be having a drink, spirits or wine, and he would notice her fiddling with something in her handbag. Eventually one night he grabbed her hand, pulled it out of her bag and found.. .a strip of paper. He didn't understand.

  By this stage Marita was quite drunk. She began to sneer at him in front of their companions at the table. How blind and stupid he was, and above all how boring. As Marita staggered off in the direction of the ladies' toilets, someone explained it to Simon: his wife was a drug user.

  The strip of paper was what you found if you broke open an inhaler. It was impregnated with Benzedrine, a kind of amphetamine. All you had to do was roll up the strip of paper and swallow it: suddenly you had a spring in your step.

  Simon left before Marita came back from the toilet. He went straight home and threw her destructive metal tubes down the rubbish chute. Marita went crazy when she found out what he'd done, but soon calmed down. Far too soon. Simon suspected she was confident she could replace the stash he had thrown away.

  It took a few weeks for him to track down her supplier, a former boyfriend who had been a quartermaster in the army. He had stolen from the stores a huge quantity of inhalers meant to keep fatigue at bay during long watches. He had initiated Marita in the use of the drug and its effect on the central nervous system, and had carried on supplying her after their love affair ended.

  Simon issued what threats he could muster. The police, a beating, public humiliation. He didn't know if it would have any effect, but he did his best.

  The effect was that Marita's underhand ways took more dramatic forms. She could disappear for days on end, and refuse to say where she had been. She made it clear to Simon that he could sit and rot in their apartment if he wanted to, but she had a life to live.

  She never missed a performance, though. Her disappearances always coincided with a gap between engagements. When it was time for her entrance she was there, sparkling as she always had, tripping lightly on to the stage. It was partly for this reason that Simon tried to keep their calendar as full as possible.

  But he wasn't happy.

  He needed Marita. She was his partner and the other half of his act—without her he would probably be no more than a competent conjuror. And she was his wife. He still loved her, in some ways. But he wasn't happy.

  And so in the spring of 1953 Simon was at the peak of his career, leafing through their booking schedule with a feeling of unease in the pit of his stomach. The engagement at the Chinese Theatre lay ahead, and the summer was looking good. But the way things had turned out, there were three completely blank weeks in July. June and August were more or less full, but those weeks in July were bothering him.

  He could see himself sitting there in the summer heat in Stockholm with a great lump of fear in his chest, while Marita was out enjoying herself God knows where or how. He didn't want that. He definitely didn't want that.

  However, there was one possibility. Perhaps it was finally time to take action? He picked up the daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, and turned to the ads for accommodation. Under the heading 'Summer Cottages' he read:

  'Well-maintained house on the island of Domarö in southern Roslagen. Sea frontage with own jetty. Hire boat available. 80 square metres. Large garden. Rented on an annual basis. Contact: Anna- Greta Ivarsson.'

  Domarö.

  Hopefully it really was an island, without a direct link to the mainland. If he could get Marita away from the destructive influence of Stockholm, then perhaps things would work out. And it wouldn't do any harm to have a place to get away to when life was moving too fast.

  He made the call.

  The woman who answered explained politely that no one else had expressed an interest, so all he had to do was come out and take a look. The rent was one thousand kronor per year, and that was non- negotiable. Would he like her to tell him how to get there?

  'Yes please,' said Simon. 'But there was one other thing I was wondering about. Is it an island?'

  'You're asking me if it's an island?'

  'Yes, is there...is there water all around it?'

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. Then the woman cleared her throat and said, 'Yes, it is an island. With water all around it. Rather a lot of water, in fact.'

  Simon closed his eyes as if he were in pain. 'I was just wondering.'

  'Oh, we've just got a telephone link to the mainland, if that's what you were thinking?'

  'No, it was just...so how do people get there?'

  'There's a tender. From Nåten, which is on a bus route. Would you like more details?'

  'Yes.. .please.'

  Simon made a note of the numbers of buses to and from Norrtälje, and said that he would ring in advance and come over one day. When he hung up he was sweating profusely. He had made himself sound ridiculous and felt very uncomfortable. Her voice alone had been enough to make him realise he didn't want to look ridiculous in front of this woman. Anna-Greta.

  Marita made no comment on his plans for the summer, but he had to go out and take a look at the place by himself. One day at the end of April, Simon followed Anna-Greta's instructions, and after two and a half hours travelling by bus and by boat, he was standing by the waiting room on the steamboat jetty on Domarö.

  The woman who came to meet him was wearing a knitted hat, with two long, dark brown plaits emerging from underneath it. Her hand was small, her handshake firm.

  'Welcome,' she said.

  'Thank you.'

  'Good journey?'

  'Fine, thank you.'

  Anna-Greta waved in the direction of the sea.

  'There's...rather a lot of water here, as you can see.'

  As Simon followed Anna-Greta up from the harbour, he tried to imagine it: that this would be the place. That this was the first of countless times he would walk up this path, see the things he could see now: the jetties, the boathouses, the gravel track, the diesel tank, the alarm bell. The smell of the sea and the particular quality of light in the sky.

  He tried to see himself in two years, five years, ten. As an old man, walking along the same path
. Could he imagine that?

  Yes. I can imagine that.

  When they reached the top of the path, Simon kept his fingers crossed that it would be that house. The white one with a little glass veranda looking out over a grassy slope down to the jetty. It didn't look much on a cloudy day like this with not a scrap of green in sight, but he could just picture how it would look in summer.

  A boy of about thirteen was standing in the garden with his hands pushed deep in the pockets of a leather jacket. He was slim with short hair, and there was something mischievous in the look he gave Simon, weighing him up.

  'Johan,' said Anna-Greta to the boy, 'could you fetch the key for Seaview Cottage, please?'

  The boy shrugged his shoulders and ambled off towards a two- storey house a hundred metres away. Simon glanced around the plot, which also seemed to include a cottage on the other side of the inlet. Anna-Greta followed his eyes and said, 'The Shack. There's nobody living there at the moment.'

  'Do you live here alone?'

  'Well, there's me and Johan. Aren't you going to inspect the property?'

  Simon did as he was told and took a random stroll around. Looked at the lid of the well, the lawn, the jetty. It was completely pointless. He had already decided. When Johan came back with the key and Simon saw inside the house, he was even more certain. When they got back outside he said, 'I'll take it.'

  Papers were signed and Simon paid the deposit. Anna-Greta offered him a cup of coffee, as it would be an hour before the tender went back. Simon learned that Anna-Greta had inherited her house from her parents-in-law, who had both died a couple of years earlier. Johan answered his questions politely, but said no more than was necessary.

  When it was time for Simon to think about leaving, Johan suddenly asked, 'What's your job?'

  Anna-Greta said, 'Johan...'

  'It's a natural thing to ask,' said Simon, 'if we're going to be neighbours. I'm a magician.'

  Johan looked at him with a sceptical expression. 'What do you mean, a magician?'

  'People pay to come and watch me do magic tricks.'

  'Really?'

  'Yes. Really. Well, the tricks aren't real, it's just—'

  'I know that. But you're an illusionist, then?'

  Simon smiled. Not many people outside magicians' circles would use that term. 'You're very well informed.'

  Johan didn't answer. Instead he sat there nodding to himself for a couple of seconds, then he burst out, 'I thought you were just some boring bloke.'

  Anna-Greta brought her hand down on the table. 'Johan! That's not the way to speak to a guest!'

  Simon got to his feet. 'I am just some boring bloke. As well.' He held Johan's gaze for a few seconds, and something happened between them. Simon sensed that he had just made a friend. 'I'd better be on my way.'

  At the beginning of July, Simon hired their usual driver to take him and Marita to Nåten with all their luggage. Marita loved the place, and Simon was able to relax. For five days. Perhaps the abstinence got too much for her, or possibly the isolation, but on the morning of the sixth day Marita declared that she had to go into Stockholm.

  'But we've only just got here,' said Simon. 'Try to relax a little. Rest.'

  'I have rested. It's wonderful here, and I'm going crazy. Do you know what I did last night? I sat out in the garden staring up at the sky and prayed to God that a plane might appear, so that at least something was happening. I can't handle it. I'll be back tomorrow.'

  She didn't come back the following day, nor the day after that. When she turned up on the third day, she dragged herself up the hill from the steamboat jetty. She had dark circles under her eyes and she immediately fell into bed and went out like a light.

  When Simon went through her overnight bag, he didn't find any inhalers. He was just about to close the bag and thank providence for that small dispensation when he noticed the lining bulging oddly. He pushed his fingers inside and found a slender case containing a syringe and a small tin of white powder.

  It was a glorious summer's day. There was a stillness everywhere; only the buzzing of the insects created any movement in the air at all. A pair of swans were teaching their young to look for food in the inlet. Simon sat in the lilac arbour beside the path as if he were in a trance, with a tin and a case in his hand. Yes, they fitted into his hand. Two innocent, trivial-looking objects that contained an army of devils. He didn't know what to do, couldn't summon up the energy to do anything.

  When Anna-Greta walked by, there must have been something in his vacant gaze that made her stop.

  'How are you?' she asked.

  Simon was still sitting there with his hand open and outstretched, as if he had a present he wanted to give her. He had no strength left for lies.

  'My wife is a drug addict,' he said.

  Anna-Greta looked at the objects in his hand. 'What's that?'

  'I don't know. Amphetamine, I think.'

  Simon was on the verge of tears, but managed to pull himself together. If Anna-Greta did know anything about amphetamines, it wasn't appropriate to discuss it with her. Johan would sometimes come over for a chat, and Anna-Greta would hardly want her son to be spending time with drug addicts. Perhaps she might not even want to rent the house to him any longer.

  Simon cleared his throat and said, 'But it's under control.'

  Anna-Greta gazed at him incredulously. 'But how can it be?' When Simon didn't respond, she asked, 'So what are you going to do with that?'

  'I don't know. I thought I might...bury it.'

  'Don't do that. She'll just force you to tell her where you've hidden it. I've seen how alcoholics behave. I don't think there can be much difference. Throw it in the sea instead.'

  Simon looked out towards the jetty, which seemed to be floating on the sparkling water. He didn't want to besmirch the place where he went down to swim every morning. 'Here?' he asked, as if seeking permission.

  Anna-Greta also looked at the jetty and seemed to have the same thought. She shook her head.

  'I was just going to go over to Nåten. If you come with me, you can...dump the rubbish on the way.'

  Simone walked down to the jetty with her and stood there at something of a loss as she started up the engine with a practised hand, cast off and told him to climb aboard. Once they had set off he stole a glance at her as she sat by the tiller, gazing out to sea with her eyes narrowed against the sunlight.

  She was no great beauty, her cheekbones were far too prominent and her eyes a little too deep-set for that. But she was arresting, and Simon caught himself following a chain of thought like the one he had followed when he came to Domarö for the first time.

  Five years, ten years, a lifetime. Would I?

  Yes.

  He had seen enough of ephemeral beauty in the theatrical world to know that Anna-Greta's looks were the kind that lasted. One of those blessed individuals who actually grow more beautiful with the passing years.

  Anna-Greta caught his eye and Simon blushed slightly, pushing the thought away. She had given no indication that she might have the slightest interest in him in that way, not with a gesture or a word. Besides which he was married, for God's sake. He had absolutely no right to be thinking like this.

  Anna-Greta slowed the engine and nodded towards the water. Simon got to his feet unsteadily and held the case and the tin out over the side. 'It feels as if I ought to sing something.'

  'Like what?'

  'I don't know.'

  He threw the objects into the sea and sat down again. Anna-Greta picked up speed. It felt as if they had just gone through some kind of ritual together, which was why he had got the idea about the song. He didn't know what kind of ritual it was, or what it meant. No song came into his mind. Just an emptiness and a sense of dread that grew and grew while they were in Nåten, developing into sheer terror by the time they moored at the jetty back home and said goodbye.

  He was afraid of what was going to happen to Marita and he was afraid of Marita. Of what would happe
n now the mask was off and everything was out in the open.

  Life with a junkie. The episodes are so tedious, and you've heard it all before. Let's just say that after this Marita made no effort to hide her addiction. She didn't spend many more days on Domarö that summer.

  She held it together during the autumn, and her performances at the Chinese Theatre were stunning. Then things went downhill. Simon would go looking for her at addresses of ill-repute and would manage to get her into some kind of treatment for a short period. Then she would disappear again. She missed a couple of shows and was nowhere to be found, until Simon got a call from Copenhagen and went over there.