Free Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist Page B

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 had 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.
    Time passed.
    He lay on the sofa with his eyes open or his eyes closed, and realised he was freezing. But it was merely a fact, it was unimportant. He looked at the blank television screen, the soot-covered doors of the Roslagen stove.
    He recognised everything, and everything was unfamiliar to him. He had thought there would be some sense of homecoming, a sense of returning to something that still belonged to him. There wasn’t. He felt like a burglar in someone else’s memories. All this belonged to a stranger, someone he had been a long time ago and no longer knew.
    It had grown darker outside the window and the sea was lapping against the rocks. He crawled off the sofa and fetched a tin, which he filled with chimney-cleaning fluid; he placed it in the open hearth and lit it to get rid of the cold air in the chimney. Then he lit a fire and went to