He put it in his pocket.
About the Shack
For such steeds find life difficult, those who cannot tolerate
either the spur or the whip. With every pain that befalls them,
they take fright and flee in terror towards the gaping abyss.
Selma Lagerlof -The Story of Gösta Berling
The fern (October 2006)
It was the fern that clinched it.
Anders had been sitting and staring at it for twenty minutes, during which time he had smoked two cigarettes. He was looking at the fern through a veil of smoke and dust particles, drifting around in grubby sunlight. The window had not been cleaned for a long time, and its surface was marked with uneven greasy patches, a legacy of all those evenings when Anders had stood with his forehead resting on the glass, gazing down into the car park and waiting for something to happen, something that could change things. Something, anything, a miracle.
The fern was on the windowsill above the radiator. A long frond waved in the rising heat. The leaves were small and brown, withered.
Anders lit another cigarette to sharpen his thoughts, or perhaps as reward for the fact that he had had a real thought, a clear thought. The smoke made his eyes smart, he coughed and kept looking at the fern.
It's dead.
Most of its fronds were plastered against the side of the pot, pale brown against the red. The compost in which it had been planted was so dry it was almost white. Anders took a deep drag and tried to remember: how long had the fern looked like that, how long had it been dead?
He searched his memory for days and evenings in the past when he had sat on the sofa or wandered around the apartment or stood by the window. They drifted together to form a fog, and he couldn't see a wilting fern through the mist. When he thought about it more closely, he couldn't even remember when he had acquired the fern, why he had ever got the idea of buying a living plant.
Had someone given it to him?
Possibly.
He got up from the sofa, and his legs wouldn't carry him properly. He thought about filling a bottle with water and giving it to the fern, but he knew there were so many dishes in the sink that he wouldn't be able to get the bottle under the tap. In the bathroom it was impossible to get the bottle at the right angle for the water to run in. So he would have to unscrew the shower head and…
It's dead anyway.
Besides which, he just didn't have the strength.
In the pot he found eight cigarette stubs. Some were half-pushed down into the hard compost. So he must have stood here smoking. He didn't remember that. As he ran his fingers over the dry fronds, some of the leaves came off and drifted down to the floor.
Where did you come from?
He got the idea that the plant had simply tumbled into the material world in the same way as Maja had tumbled out of it. Through a gap in time and space it had suddenly been there, just as his daughter had suddenly not been there. Gone.
"What was it Simon used to say when he was doing tricks for them?
Nothing here, nothing there…then he would point to his head… and absolutely nothing here.
Anders smiled as he remembered the look on Maja's face the first time Simon had done some magic tricks for her, just a couple of months before she disappeared. A rubber ball in one hand went up in smoke, and the ball Maja had just been holding suddenly became two. Maja had carried on looking at Simon with the same expectant expression: OK, what's next?
Magic is not the same miracle when you're five years old. It's more like something natural.
Anders stubbed out his cigarette in the pot, making the eight cigarette ends nine, and at the same moment he remembered: Mum.
It was his mother who had brought the plant when she came to visit him four months earlier. She had cleaned the apartment for him and placed the fern there. He had been in the middle of a period of apathy, and had just lain on the bed watching her. Then she had disappeared, back to her own life in Gothenburg.
The fern had not been among the things he needed, and so he had forgotten it, paying it no more heed than a mark on the wallpaper.
But he was seeing it now. He was looking at it. He was thinking the thought once again.
That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen.
Yes. That was what had occurred to him when he finally caught sight of it. The lonely, dead fern on the dusty windowsill against a background of dirty sunlight through an unwashed window. That it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen.
For once the thought didn't stop there, but continued and swept across the life that could end up producing such a monster, and it was an ugly life.
He could cope with that, the idea that his life was ugly. He knew that, he had arranged things that way, he had got used to it and was ready to die within a few years as a result of his ugly life.
But the fern…
The fern was too much. It was intolerable.
Anders coughed and dragged himself into the bedroom. It felt as if his lungs had shrunk to the size of a fist. A tightly clenched fist. From the bedside table he picked up the photograph of Maja and took it over to the window.
The photograph had been taken on her sixth birthday, two weeks before she disappeared. She had a mask pushed up on her forehead; she had made it at nursery, and called it the devil troll. He had caught her just as she had pushed up the mask and was looking at him with expectant eyes to see what effect her 'scary face' had had.
The dimples in her cheeks showed up beautifully, her thin brown hair was pushed back by the mask revealing her ears, which stuck out slightly. Her eyes, which were actually unusually small, were wide open and staring straight into his.
He knew the picture by heart, every minute particle that had got stuck to the lens and remained as a white dot, every downy hair on her upper lip. He could take it out whenever he wanted.
'Maja,' he said. 'I can't do this any more. Here. Look.'
He turned the photograph so that Maja's eyes were looking at the fern.
'Enough.'
He put the photo down next to the fern and opened the window. His apartment was on the fourth floor, and when he leaned out he could see over towards Haninge Centrum, the station for the commuter trains. He looked down. It was about ten metres to the tarmac of the car park, there wasn't a soul in sight.
He picked the photograph up again, pressed it to his heart. Curls of smoke found their way out into the sunlight, drifting upwards.
'I've had enough.'
He grabbed the edge of the pot and lifted the fern out of the window. Then he let go. A second later he heard the distant crash as the pot shattered on the ground. He turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes.
'This has to stop.'
The anchor
Beside the shore in the churchyard at Nåten there is an anchor. A huge anchor made of cast iron, with a stock of tarred wood. It is bigger than any gravestone, bigger than anything else in the churchyard, with the exception of the church itself. Almost all those who visit the churchyard come to the anchor sooner or later; they stop and look at it for a while before moving on.
At eye level on the anchor-stock is a plaque. It says, 'In memory of those lost at sea.' The anchor, then, is a memorial to those whose bodies could not be interred in the ground, whose ashes could not be scattered beneath the trees. Those who went out and never came home.
The anchor is four and a half metres long, and weighs approximately nine hundred kilos.
Just imagine the ship it came from! Where is it now?
Perhaps an invisible chain runs from the anchor in the churchyard at Nåten. It goes up into the sky, down into the ground or out to sea. And there, at the other end of the chain, we will find the ship. The passengers and crew are those who have disappeared. They wander around on deck, gazing out at the empty horizon.