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.
That was a fine catch this morning…
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.'
The jocular way she said it made Anders suspect that sale might not be the right word. That suggested you were selling off something that had been left over, which wasn't appropriate in the context of fresh herring. He decided to say special offer from now on.
It wasn't the success he had hoped for when he got the idea, but roughly every fourth customer could be tempted to take an extra kilo. Perhaps more to help him out than because they wanted to snap up a bargain. Anders didn't think two kronor here or there meant a great deal to most adults.
However, there were more customers than usual, and Anders went back to fetch another box in time for the eleven o'clock boat, since the first box was more or less empty. There was a bit of a rush with the eleven o'clock boat, and he only just had enough fish. A small queue formed in front of the box; Anders stopped adding a couple of extra fish, and put only eighteen or nineteen in a bag if the customer was someone he didn't recognise, who was only over for the day.
By twelve o'clock he was ready for the third box. The boat was moored by the jetty and his father, who was on holiday from work, was back from the shipyard where he had obviously got rid of the fourth box.
It was looking more than promising. Even if sales slowed down now, it wasn't out of the question that Anders would manage to sell the contents of the third box as well. Despite the special offer this would mean that he was home and dry, that the radio-controlled boat would soon be surging through the waters of the inlet.
Buoyed up by this thought he carted the third box off to the shop and found a customer waiting by the sign. When he managed to sell two kilos once again, Anders decided to celebrate with an ice cream. He went into the shop and bought a Pear Split, then sat back down at his post.
He blew into the paper to loosen it from the ice cream, read the funny story on the collectable card, then sucked on the ice cream while counting the boats out in the bay. He could see his own radio- controlled boat storming past the lot of them, its engine roaring.
He had just got to the best part of the Pear Split, where the ice shell was beginning to melt on his tongue and its sweeter flavour blended with the vanilla ice cream inside, when a man came walking along the track from Kattudden.
The man's eyes looked strange. As if he were drunk. Anders' father sometimes had the same purposeful walk when he'd had too much to drink, as if nothing existed but the goal before his eyes, as if life were merely a question of getting the body to the place it had to be.
Anders recognised him. He was the son of someone his grandmother knew-perhaps he used to live on the mainland and now he'd moved back to the island, Anders couldn't remember. He was a bad-tempered individual. He had once shouted at Anders because his wheelbarrow was in the way outside the shop, and since then Anders had never asked him if he wanted to buy any herring.
He was wearing blue jeans and a checked shirt, like most of the permanent residents. He had wooden clogs on his feet and was marching determinedly towards the jetty.
Marching, yes. That was the word. The man was moving in a way that brooked no interference. If anything got in his way, he would ignore it or walk straight through it rather than give way. Perfectly consistent, bearing in mind how angry he had been when Anders got in his way.
When the man got near the jetty he turned off towards the thicket of sea buckthorn on the right. Anders was so fascinated by his behaviour that he forgot about his ice cream, and the sticky, melting stuff trickled down the stick and over his fingers.
The man disappeared from view behind the sea buckthorn, and Anders took the opportunity to lick the sticky sweetness off his fingers. Then he spotted the man again. He had reached the shoreline, and was on his way out into the water. He hadn't even taken off his clogs.
Only now did Anders start to feel there was something unpleasant about the whole thing. The man slipped on the wet stones and fell, but immediately got up and carried on walking. Anders looked around, searching for some adult who could explain the situation to him, or simply indicate with a calm glance that everything was as it should be.
There were no adults in the vicinity. Nor anybody else, for that matter. Only Anders and the man who was now up to his waist in the water, forging ahead with heavier and heavier strides, heading straight for Gåvasten as if there were a secret track leading out there, a track you could only use if you had the right attitude.
When the water reached the man's chest, he started swimming. Anders stood up, not knowing what he ought to do. He sucked on the lolly, took a couple of bites and saw the man's head slowly moving further and further away from the steamboat jetty. He didn't seem to be an accomplished swimmer, he was splashing about and making strange movements.
Perhaps it's because he's wearing clothes.
When he'd finished the ice cream and the man was showing no sign of turning back, Anders threw the stick in the bin and went into the shop.