Harbor John Lindqvist (grave mercy TXT) 📖

in the house, you had to be wary of every step, constantly on the alert to avoid provoking its fury. They had been to the clinic, they had seen a child psychiatrist, but nothing helped. Their only hope was that it would pass as she got older.

Anders’ teeth were chattering, and he pulled the blanket more tightly around him.

This was the reason behind his enormous burden of guilt, the one he had tried to get rid of by drinking, then managed to suppress with patient effort: the fact that it was all his fault. He had wished she would disappear, simply disappear, and that was exactly what had happened. He had made it happen.

‘All parents blame themselves when something happens to their children,’ the family therapist had said when Cecilia forced him to go along with her.

No doubt that was true. But presumably those parents were able to arrive eventually at the conclusion that it wasn’t their fault their child had been run over, developed cancer or got lost in the woods. At least they hadn’t wished for it to happen. And if they had wished for it to happen, then at least their child had disappeared in a natural way, insofar as such a thing exists.

Maja had ceased to exist as if she had never been there, as if she had been…wished away. That couldn’t happen, and therefore the explanation that Anders had wished her away was just as reasonable as any other, and that was the one he was sticking to. Whichever way he looked at it, he always came to the same conclusion: he had killed his own child.

It was only when Cecilia had left him and he had drunk himself into oblivion that a last glimmer of hope had appeared in the darkness: he began reshaping his memories. Through drunken days and nights he crafted a new past. One where Maja had been wonderful all the time and he had just loved her, pure and simple.

He had never had a bad thought about her, and therefore her disappearance was incomprehensible. It was a great tragedy that hadnothing to do with him, he who had loved his daughter more than anything else in the world.

That’s how his past had looked. Until now.

Anders gave a start as the telephone rang. He couldn’t cope with answering it, and after six signals it fell silent once more. He couldn’t talk to anyone. He didn’t exist, he was nothing.

He rested his head in his hands again and listed to the emptiness. A new thought occurred to him.

So if I wanted to get rid of her…why was it so terrible when she disappeared? I mean, I should have been…pleased. In the end. What I wished for happened.

He got up from his chair. His stiff, frozen knees creaked as he took a turn around the floor.

The answer was obvious: deep down, right down inside he had never wanted that to happen. However difficult she was there were better times, good times. And they had started to become more frequent, last for longer. The change they had hoped for was on the way. That last day, the trip to Gåvasten was an example. She had almost behaved like a normal child for several hours.

And he had loved that child, that questioning, intense, living child, he had been prepared to wait for her through the hysterical outbursts and the smashed possessions. Things had been heading in the right direction. Then she disappeared, and he could remember only his bad thoughts, until it tipped over in the opposite direction.

I never knew her.

No. As he stood here now in the middle of the kitchen floor with the blanket around him, he realised the heart of the matter could be expressed in those terms: he had never known who Maja was. There had been too much wheeling and dealing. If children can be horrible, was Maja horrible, really? He had no idea. He didn’t know her.

And now she had left him.

Heaven

‘Daddy? What happens when you’re dead?’

‘Well, there’s…’

‘I think you go to heaven, don’t you think so?’

‘…well yes.’

‘So what’s it like there? Are there angels and clouds and so on?’

‘Is that what’d you’d like?’

‘No. I hate angels. They’re horrible and ugly and they look stupid. I don’t want to be with them.’

‘So where do you want to be?’

‘Here. But in heaven.’

‘Then I expect that’s what will happen.’

‘No it won’t! It’s God who decides what happens!’

‘In that case I expect God can decide that everybody can have things the way they want them to be.’

‘But that’s impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Because then everybody would have their own heaven, and God wouldn’t like that.’

‘Don’t you think so?’

‘No. Because God is an idiot. He’s made everything bad.’

Home visit

It was getting towards eight o’clock and Anders was still sitting at the kitchen table with the fragments of his former life spread out before him, trying to piece together something that might help him to get up, when he heard the moped.

They’re coming.

He had almost managed to forget Henrik and Björn. After his long sleep they had been reduced to a distant dream, something thathad happened long ago and had nothing to do with him. But here they were. The saddest boys in the world who had decided to carry out the bidding of the sea. Now they were coming to get him.

Come on then.

The moped’s engine was racing, as if it were stuck in first gear. Perhaps he’d managed to damage it with the fire. The roaring engine drew closer to the house, and he waited for it to be switched off and the outside door to be opened. He was resigned, and placed one hand on top of the other on the table, waiting for whatever was going to happen.

The engine didn’t stop when it reached the house, but carried on along the outside wall and across the rocks until the revs slowed and it stopped outside the kitchen window, rumbling to itself. They were waiting for him. He leaned on the table and