The photograph had been taken on her sixth birthday, two weeks before she disappeared. She had a mask pushed up on her forehead; she had made it at nursery, and called it the devil troll. He had caught her just as she had pushed up the mask and was looking at him with expectant eyes to see what effect her ‘scary face’ had had.
The dimples in her cheeks showed up beautifully, her thin brown hair was pushed back by the mask revealing her ears, which stuck out slightly. Her eyes, which were actually unusually small, were wide open and staring straight into his.
He knew the picture by heart, every minute particle that had got stuck to the lens and remained as a white dot, every downy hair on her upper lip. He could take it out whenever he wanted.
‘Maja,’ he said. ‘I can’t do this any more. Here. Look.’
He turned the photograph so that Maja’s eyes were looking at the fern.
‘Enough.’
He put the photo down next to the fern and opened the window. His apartment was on the fourth floor, and when he leaned out he could see over towards Haninge Centrum, the station for the commuter trains. He looked down. It was about ten metres to the tarmac of the car park, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
He picked the photograph up again, pressed it to his heart. Curls of smoke found their way out into the sunlight, drifting upwards.
‘I’ve had enough.’
He grabbed the edge of the pot and lifted the fern out of the window. Then he let go. A second later he heard the distant crash as the pot shattered on the ground. He turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes.
‘This has to stop.’
The anchor
Beside the shore in the churchyard at Nåten there is an anchor. A huge anchor made of cast iron, with a stock of tarred wood. It is bigger than any gravestone, bigger than anything else in the churchyard, with the exception of the church itself. Almost all those who visit the churchyard come to the anchor sooner or later; they stop and look at it for a while before moving on.
At eye level on the anchor-stock is a plaque. It says, ‘In memory of those lost at sea.’ The anchor, then, is a memorial to those whose bodies could not be interred in the ground, whose ashes could not be scattered beneath the trees. Those who went out and never came home.
The anchor is four and a half metres long, and weighs approximately nine hundred kilos.
Just imagine the ship it came from! Where is it now?
Perhaps an invisible chain runs from the anchor in the churchyard at Nåten. It goes up into the sky, down into the ground or out to sea. And there, at the other end of the chain, we will find the ship. The passengers and crew are those who have disappeared. They wander around on deck, gazing out at the empty horizon.
They are waiting for someone to find them. The sound of a diesel engine, or the top of a mast far away in the distance. A pair of eyes that will come along and see them.
They want to continue their journey, to arrive at last, they want to go down into the grave, they want to burn. But they are fastened to the earth by an invisible chain, and can only stare out across a desolate sea, forever becalmed.
Back
As the tender reversed away from the jetty, Anders raised a hand in farewell to Roger in the driving seat. They were almost the same age, but had never hung out together. They always said hello, however, as everyone on the island did when they met. Except perhaps for some of the summer visitors.
He sat down on his suitcase and watched the tender as it moved backwards, turned and set its course for the southern point on its way back to Nåten. He unbuttoned his jacket. It was a couple of degrees warmer here than in the city; the sea water still retained some of the heat of summer.
For him, arriving on Domarö had always been associated with a particular smell: a mixture of salt water, seaweed, pine trees and diesel from the tank by the steamboat jetty. He breathed in deeply through his nose. He could smell virtually nothing. Two years of heavy smoking had sabotaged his mucous membranes. He pulled a packet of Marlboros out of his pocket, lit a cigarette and watched the tender as it rounded North Point, looking to the untrained eye as if it were dangerously close.
He hadn’t been here since Maja disappeared, and he still didn’t know whether it was a mistake to come back. So far he felt only the quiet, melancholy pleasure of coming home. To a place where you know the location of every single stone.
The thicket of sea buckthorn next to the jetty looked just the same as it always had, neither bigger nor smaller. Like everything else on the island, the sea buckthorn was eternal, it had always been there. He’d used the thicket as a hiding place when they were playing hide and seek, and later as a place to stash booze from the Åland ferry when he didn’t want his father to see it.
Anders picked up his suitcase and walked down on to the southern village road. The buildings in the area around the harbour consisted mainly of old pilots’ houses, now renovated or rebuilt. Pilot boats had formed the basis of Domarö’s relative prosperity during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Anders didn’t want to meet anyone so he took the short cut along the cliffs up towards the ramblers’ hostel, which was closed for the season. The track narrowed and split in two. The left-hand fork led to his grandmother’s house and to Simon’s house, the right fork to the Shack. After some consideration he took the left fork.
Simon was the only person with whom he had kept in regular touch over the last few years, the only one he had felt able to ring even when there was nothing to say. Anders’ grandmother rang sometimes, his mother less often, but Simon was the only one whose number Anders would key in himself when he needed to hear another person’s voice.
Simon was digging his patch ready for the autumn, and he didn’t appear to have aged noticeably since Anders last saw him, the winter when Maja disappeared. He was probably at the age when it no longer matters. Besides, he had always seemed to Anders to be the same age, which is to say really, really old. It was only when he looked at photographs from his childhood, where Simon was around sixty, that he could see the difference twenty years had made.
Simon put his arms around him and rubbed his back.
‘Welcome home, Anders.’
The medium-length white hair that was Simon’s pride and joy tickled Anders’ forehead as he rested his cheek on Simon’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Those brief moments when you don’t have to be a responsible, grown-up person. You have to make the most of them.
They went into the house and Simon put the coffee on. Not much had changed in the kitchen since Anders used to sit there during the summer when he was a little boy. A water heater had been installed above the sink, and a microwave oven. But the fire in the cast iron stove was crackling as it had always done, spreading its warmth over the same wallpaper, the same furniture. Anders’ shoulders dropped slightly, relaxing. He had a history and a home. They hadn’t disappeared just because everything else had gone to hell. Perhaps his memories gave him a licence, permission to exist here.
Simon placed a plastic box of biscuits on the table and poured the coffee. Anders picked up his cup.
‘I remember when you…what was it you did? You had three of these and a piece of paper that moved back and forth. Then in the end…there was a toffee under each cup. Which I got. How did you do that?’
Simon shook his head and pushed back his hair. ‘Practice, practice and more practice.’
Nothing had changed there either. Simon had never revealed any of his secrets. He had, however, recommended a book called Magic as a Hobby. Anders had read it when he was ten years old, and hadn’t really understood any of it. It did describe how to do different tricks, and Anders tried a couple of them. But it wasn’t the same as what Simon did. That was magic.
Simon sighed. ‘I wouldn’t be able to do that today.’ He held up his fingers, stiff and crooked as they held the coffee spoon. ‘I only have the simple things left now.’
He pressed his hands together and rubbed them against each other b
efore opening them again. The coffee spoon was gone.
Anders smiled and Simon, who had appeared on the world’s greatest stages, performed for kings and queens, leaned back on his chair and looked insufferably pleased with himself. Anders looked at Simon’s hands, on the table, on the floor.
‘So where is it, then?’
When he looked up, Simon was already sitting there stirring his coffee with the spoon. Anders snorted. ‘Misdirection, I presume?’
‘Indeed. Misdirection.’
That was the only important thing he had learned from the book. That a great deal of magic was a question of misdirection. Pointing in the wrong direction. Getting the observer to look where it isn’t happening, getting them to look back when it’s already happened. Like the business with the coffee spoon. But it was merely a theoretical knowledge. It didn’t help Anders. He took a sip of his coffee and listened to the crackling of the stove. Simon rested his arms on the table. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
Anders looked down into his coffee. The light from the window was reflected as a bobbing rectangle. He looked at it and waited for it to stop. When the rectangle was completely still he said, ‘I’ve decided to live. After all. I thought I wanted to disappear as well. But…it turned out that isn’t the case. So now I intend to try…I’m at rock bottom. I’ve reached the lowest point and…that’s when it becomes possible to move on. Upwards.’
‘Hmm,’ said Simon, and waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, he asked, ‘Are you still drinking as much?’
‘Why?’
‘I just thought…it can be difficult to stop.’
A muscle twitched in Anders’ cheek. He wasn’t keen on discussing this. He and Cecilia had drunk in moderation when they had Maja. One wine cask a week, approximately. After Maja’s disappearance Cecilia had stopped altogether; she said that even one glass of wine messed up her head. Anders had drunk enough for both of them, and then some. Silent evenings in front of the TV. Glass after glass of wine, and then spirits. To avoid thinking at all.
He didn’t know how much his drinking had to do with the fact that after six months she had said she couldn’t cope any more, that their relationship was like a lead weight around her feet, dragging her deeper and deeper into the darkness.
After that, the drinking had become central to his life. He had set a boundary for himself: not to start before eight o’clock in the evening. After a week, he had moved the boundary to seven. And so on. In the end he was drinking whenever he felt like it, which was almost all the time.
During the three weeks that had passed since the incident with the fern, he had once again set the boundary at eight o’clock, with an enormous effort of will, and had managed to stick to it. His face and eyes had regained at least some of their normal colour, after a year of being red from burst blood vessels.
Anders ran his hand over his face and said, ‘I’ve got it under control.’
‘Have you?’
‘Yes. What the hell do you want me to say?’
Simon didn’t move a muscle in response to this outburst. Anders blinked a couple of times, feeling ashamed of himself, and said, ‘I’m working on it. I really am.’
Silence fell once more. Anders had nothing to add. The problem was his, and his alone. Part of the idea of returning to Domarö had been to get away from the destructive routines he had fallen into. He could only hope it would work. There was nothing more to say.
Simon asked if he had heard anything from Cecilia, and Anders shrugged.
‘Haven’t heard from her in six months. Strange, isn’t it? You share everything, and then…pouff. Gone. But I suppose that’s just the way it is.’
He felt the bitterness come creeping in. That wasn’t good. If he sat here for a while longer he would probably start crying. Not good. It wasn’t a question of suppressing his emotions, he’d wept bucketfuls.
Bucketfuls?
Well. One bucketful, perhaps. An entire fucking ten-litre bucket full of tears. Absorbed by tissues, sleeves, dripping on to the sofa, on to the sheets, rising like steam from his face during the night. Salt in his mouth, snot in his nose. A bucket. A blue plastic bucket filled with tears. He had cried.
But he wasn’t going to cry now. He had no intention of starting his new life bemoaning everything that had vanished.
He finished his coffee and stood up.
‘Thank you. I’ll go down and see if the house is still standing.’
‘It is,’ said Simon. ‘Oddly enough. You’ll call and see Anna-Greta, won’t you?’
‘Tomorrow. Definitely.’
When Anders got back to the point where the track forked in two different directions, he thought: A new life? There’s no such thing.
It was only in the magazine headlines that people got a new life. Stopped drinking or taking drugs, found a new love. But the same life.
Anders looked along the track towards the Shack. He could buy new furniture, paint it blue and change the windows. It would still be the same horrible house, the same poor basic construction. He could of course tear the whole thing down and build a new house, but how do you do that with a life?
Can’t be done. When it comes to a life, all you can change is the equivalent of furniture, paint and windows. Doors, maybe. Change the things that are in too bad a state and hope the core holds. Despite everything.
Anders gripped the handle of his suitcase firmly and set off along the track to the Shack.
The Shack
A curious name. The Shack. Not the sort of thing you put up on a poker-work sign, like Sjösala or Fridlunda.
But then the Shack wasn’t the name its builder had given it, or the name on the insurance documents. It was actually called Rock Cottage. But the Shack was what everybody on Domarö called it, even Anders, because it was a shack.
Anders’ great-great-grandfather had been the last pilot in the Ivarsson family. When his son Torgny inherited the pilot’s cottage, he extended it and made it into a fine two-storey house. Inspired by his success, he also built Seaview Cottage, the house Simon now rented on a permanent basis.
When the first summer visitors arrived on the Vaxholm ferries at the beginning of the twentieth century, several of the islanders wanted to add extensions to their houses, or rebuild them completely. The brothers fitted out old hen houses as small summer cottages, extended and re-roofed boathouses, even built new properties in some instances. The building that later became the ramblers’ hostel was built to order for a textile factory owner from Stockholm.
When the son, Anders’ grandfather Erik, needed a place of his own in the mid-1930s, he was allocated the empty plot out on the cliffs. People probably had their doubts. Erik had accompanied his father on various building projects, lending a hand and carrying out some of the simpler work. He showed no particular talent. But he knew the basics.
His father offered to help, but Erik was determined to build the house himself. He was a hot-headed boy who couldn’t bear to be contradicted; he swung between periods of intense activity and gloomy introspection. Building the house was to be the proof that he could stand on his own two feet and make his own way in the world.
Timber was transported from a forestry company on the mainland; it was cut at the sawmill in Nåten and shipped across to Domarö. So far, everything was going well. In the summer of 1938, Erik began to lay the foundations. With autumn approaching he had finished the joists and the roof ridges, and the roof trusses were in place. He never once asked his father for advice, and wouldn’t even allow him to visit the site.
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.
Harbor Page 5