closed his eyes and whispered, 'I'm so tired, Simon. I just can't cope any more.'
His head was expanding and shrinking, his brain was a lung. Expanding and contracting quickly, panting. His consciousness was gasping for air as if it was drowning, the lung close to bursting point.
There was a creaking sound as Simon got up and came to sit beside him, eased him away from the rail and placed his head on his knee. Anders curled up and put his arms around Simon's waist, resting his head on Simon's thighs. Simon's cold hand caressed his hair.
'There now, little Anders,' said Simon. 'Everything will be all right. Everything's fine. It'll all work out, Anders.'
Simon's hand went on gently stroking his hair, and it was like oxygen. He stopped panting inside, the panic subsided and he relaxed. He might have fallen asleep for a few seconds. If he did fall asleep, the worst was over when he woke up. Simon's hand was resting on the back of his head.
'Simon,' said Anders, without raising his head.
'Yes?'
'Do you remember saying…that we can never become another person, do you remember that? That however close we get, we can never become the other person.'
'Yes, I did say that. But it seems as if I was wrong.'
'It isn't just Elin. It's me as well. I'm turning into Maja.'
'What do you mean?'
There was in fact a word for what was happening to him. It wasn't the right word, it had the wrong kind of associations. Demons and devils. And yet it was the only word there was.
'I'm possessed. I'm turning into someone else. I'm turning into Maja.'
Anders pulled himself up into a sitting position and moved over to sit opposite Simon. Then he told the story again, in the light of his new insight. How he could sometimes hear her voice inside his head, his fear of the GB- man, the Bamse comics, her bed, the writing on the table and the bead tile.
Simon didn't ask any questions, didn't raise any objections. He simply listened and said 'Hmm' from time to time, and it was as if the strong hand that had been squeezing Anders' mind more and more tightly loosened its grip a little more.
'So I think…I know,' said Anders eventually, 'that she's doing all this through me. She's the one who's making a picture with the beads and reading about Bamse, but she's using my fingers and my eyes to do it and I don't know…1 don't understand what I ought to do.'
The sun had now risen so high that it had some heat. During his long narrative Anders had started to sweat in his warm clothes. He took off his hat and dipped his hand in the water, scooped up a handful and bathed his eyes. Simon was gazing towards Naten, where the first tender of the morning was just setting off from the jetty. He asked, 'So what does she want?'
'You…believe me?'
Simon wagged his head from side to side, 'Let me put it like this: it isn't the strangest thing I've heard. Recently.'
'What do you mean?'
Simon sighed. 'I think we'll leave that for now.' When he noticed that Anders was frowning, he added, 'I need to talk to Anna-Greta. Is it OK if I tell her what you've told me?'
'Yes, I suppose so, but…'
'Speaking of Anna-Greta, I think we'd better head for home. She's probably getting worried by now.'
Anders nodded and gazed over the rail. Elin was lying on the seabed by now, perhaps fifty metres beneath them. He imagined the fish nudging at the new arrival, the eels crawling up from the mud as they caught the smell of food…
He cut off the thought before it started wallowing in physical details.
'Simon?' he asked. 'Did we do the right thing?'
'Yes. I think so. And if we did the wrong thing…' Simon looked down at the surface of the water,'…there's not much we can do about it now.'
Anders got up and went to the prow, curled up on the seat as well as he could as Simon started the engine and turned the boat, heading for home. For a long time Anders sat there trying to keep his eyes fixed on the spot where they had let Elin go. There should have been something there. A buoy or a flag, some kind of memorial. Something to mark the fact that there was a person down there. But there was only the constant shifting of the water, and Elin belonged to those who have disappeared into the sea.
They parted in silence at Simon's jetty, and Anders dragged himself back to the Shack. If someone had leapt out of the bushes and pointed a shotgun at him, he would have been incapable of reacting. He would simply have shuffled on, perhaps looking forward to the burning sensation in his back.
He looked at his feet, and they were moving without his cooperation or input. He was being drawn. Just as an animal hunted beyond endurance, with no strength left, still creeps towards its lair out of instinct or a blind sense of self-preservation, so he kept on moving homeward, homeward.
He walked in, pulled off his clothes, lay down on Maja's bed and pulled the covers over him. Then he lay there staring at the window, too tired to close his eyelids. He was lying in the same place and the light was roughly the same as on those mornings when he had gone back to bed after going fishing with his father.
He thought he was the same person, the same child. That time moved in circles, and soon it would be time for him to get up and load the wheelbarrow, set off for the shop.
Perhaps he fell asleep with his eyes open.
Pulling power
He had written the sign himself, 'FRESH HERRING 6KR A KILO', because his father was dyslexic and besides, his handwriting was atrocious. The sign stood beside him on the bench outside the shop as he sat there waiting for the morning's first customers.
It was nine o'clock and the shop had just opened. Two people who had gone inside had said they wanted to buy some herring once they had done the rest of their shopping.
This seemed promising. Despite the enormous catch Anders hadn't lowered the price, mainly because he hadn't had time to alter the sign. He had slept for an unusually long time, right up until quarter to nine. It had been a rush to get a box loaded on to the wheelbarrow and push it up to the shop before they opened.
The first customer came out, an elderly lady Anders had seen every summer for as long as he could remember, although he didn't know her name or where she lived. She would always say hello when they met, and Anders would return the greeting without any idea who he was saying hello to.
The lady came over and said, 'I'll have one kilo, please.'
Anders had a stroke of genius. 'We're having a sale today,' he said. 'Two kilos for ten kronor.'
The lady raised her eyebrows and bent over the herring, as if to check whether there was something wrong with them. 'How come?'
Anders realised the best thing would be to tell the truth. 'We caught a huge amount, and we need to get rid of it.'
'But what am I going to do with all that extra?'
'Pickle it. Freeze it. There might not be any more herring this summer. This could be the last.'
The lady laughed and Anders steeled himself for what might come next: the ruffling of his hair. That was the kind of thing you just had to put up with. But the lady just laughed and said, 'What a businessman! OK then, I'll take two kilos. Since there's a sale on.'
Anders slipped a plastic bag over his hand and counted forty-two herring into another bag, added a couple extra to be on the safe side, tied a knot in the top and handed it over, and accepted the payment just as the second customer emerged from the shop. A middle-aged man who was probably a yachtsman, judging by his outfit.
The lady held up her well-filled bag and said to him, 'There's a sale on.'
