Room had been made for Johan and Anna-Greta right at the front when they came down to the jetty. After all, they were involved, in a sense. Someone nudged Anna-Greta.
'You might need to look for another tenant after this!'
Anna-Greta smiled. 'Well, we'll see.'
She wasn't in the habit of exposing her feelings for general consumption, and as she stood there on the edge of the jetty with her hands pushed deep into the pockets of her cardigan, her face gave away no hint of emotional turmoil.
But to tell the truth, even she was a little anxious. She knew that Marita had disappeared almost a week ago, and that Simon wasn't feeling well. And the water was cold. Nine degrees. She had checked it herself that morning.
It wasn't easy to impress Anna-Greta. The number of people who had turned up didn't surprise her, people would gather for anything, as long as it was a novelty. When someone asked her how she thought Simon did it, she replied, 'I expect it's something to do with his joints.'
The person who had asked smiled indulgently: obviously Anna-Greta hadn't learned anything from Simon. But she had, in a roundabout way. When he walked around his garden without his shirt on, she had noticed that there was something strange about his frame: the bones stuck out at odd angles, as if the joints weren't quite in place.
She had come to the conclusion that his escapology had created that body, or that he had got into escapology because he was made that way. When she was young she had seen a contortionist at the circus, and he had looked very similar. Whatever it was that held the bones together was more flexible than in normal people.
From this she had concluded that some kind of manoeuvring lay behind the ability to free himself from chains and ropes. She didn't want to say any more: Simon's secrets were his own affair. Besides which, she didn't see how you could manoeuvre your way out of handcuffs. But there must be ways of doing that as well-at least, she hoped so.
As Simon approached the jetty dressed in his bathrobe, the crowd began to applaud. Anna-Greta joined in, glancing at Johan. He was clapping too, but his face was tense and his eyes were fixed on Simon, who was strolling along as if he were just on his way down to take a dip.
Anna-Greta knew that Johan was fond of Simon. Even the previous summer he would disappear for a couple of hours, then come home and show off some trick Simon had taught him. Simple things, according to Simon, but Anna-Greta certainly couldn't see how Johan did it when he smacked a salt-cellar straight through the table.
Anna-Greta stroked Johan's back and he nodded, without taking his eyes off Simon. It wasn't surprising that he was tense; Anna-Greta had read what it said on the poster:
CAN ANYONE ENDURE THIS???
On Saturday July 15th El Simon will attempt all this at the Domaro jetty.
WILL HE SURVIVE???
Johan was bright enough to realise that all this was for effect, but the very fact that the words 'drowning' and 'fettered' are on the same page as the name of someone you are fond of is quite enough to make you swallow a little harder. Anna-Greta had no particular feelings for Simon, he was pleasant company and a good tenant, nothing more.
And yet she still had to clench her fists in her pockets to stop herself chewing at her nails.
Simon went over to one of the boathouses, undid the latch and went inside. When he came out he was carrying a bundle, which he carried over to the spectators. There was a rattling noise as he threw the bundle on the ground and announced in a loud voice:
'Ladies and gentlemen! It's wonderful to see so many of you here. In front of me on the ground I have a set of chains, ropes and padlocks. I would like to invite two strong gentlemen from the audience to come up and use these items to bind and chain me to the best of their ability, until they are convinced that I cannot escape.'
Simon let his bathrobe fall to the ground. He was wearing only a pair of dark blue swimming trunks, and looked alarmingly thin and frail.
Ragnar Pettersson stepped forward, which was only to be expected. He was renowned for having single- handedly pulled out one of his cows that had got stuck in the bog down by the shore of the inlet. Nobody could work out how he had done it, but ever since then he had been generally regarded as a strongman.
He was followed by a man who worked at the shipyard in Naten, but Anna-Greta didn't know his name. The short-sleeved shirt he was wearing looked as if it was a size too small. It strained over his muscles, and perhaps that was exactly the effect he was aiming for.
The two men got to work straight away, and something happened to their movements, their eyes. As soon as they had the chains and ropes in their hands, they ceased to regard Simon as a person. He was a nut to be cracked, a problem to be solved, nothing more or less. Beyond that there was nothing to be taken into account.
Anna-Greta gritted her teeth as the man from Naten wound and pulled at the chains so hard that Simon's skin puckered and turned red. It looked as if it was painful, but Simon simply stood there with his eyes closed, his hands folded over his midriff. A couple of times his lips twitched when one of the men braced himself and gave the chains an extra tug before fastening the padlocks.
Finally they were satisfied. Both wiped the sweat from their foreheads and nodded to each other. There must have been thirty kilos of chains wound around Simon, secured in different places with four padlocks. They had hardly used the ropes, except in two places where they had brought them in as an afterthought, just to tighten the chains.
The men took a couple of steps back and contemplated their handiwork. They were quite satisfied, and you could see why. It looked utterly impossible to escape from the web of metal they had created.
Simon opened his eyes and Anna-Greta's stomach contracted. Around the fettered man was an empty circle perhaps twenty metres deep.
Anna-Greta thought: Alone. Simon looked so horribly alone in that moment. Someone who had been ejected from the community, utterly disarmed. And now they were going to throw him in the sea. There was a powerful element of degradation about the whole thing: an individual allowing other people to do this to him. A second after Simon opened his eyes, it was as if he had caught a glimpse of that very thing. It was that expression that made Anna-Greta's stomach contract, before it disappeared and Simon looked from one man to the other and said, Are you satisfied? Are you convinced that I can't escape?'
Ragnar grabbed hold of one of the chains and pulled at it, then shrugged and said, 'Well, I certainly couldn't do it.'
Someone in the crowd shouted, 'You want to do that with your cows, Ragnar, then they won't go running off!'
People from Domaro laughed, the rest didn't get the joke. Simon asked the two men to carry him to the edge of the jetty, which they did. Anna-Greta and Johan moved back to make room, and Simon ended up only a metre or so away from them. Simon's eyes met Anna- Greta's, and a smile flitted across his lips. Anna-Greta tried to smile back, but couldn't quite manage it.
'And now,' said Simon, 'I would like to ask a third person to pull the sack up around me and secure the top.'
Before anyone had time to step forward, someone further back shouted, 'What about the handcuffs, then? What's happening with them?'
