Nederström started to pedal and no sound emerged from the organ, she would know that it was Joel who was responsible. Joel Gustafson, who wasn’t sitting at his desk.
Oh, hell! Joel thought. Why did I have to be ill today of all days?
Then he tried to think it through, totally calm. He had left no traces. Nobody could know that he’dbeen responsible. The bellows could have become disconnected as a result of normal wear and tear.
Joel tried to convince himself that maybe it wasn’t all that bad. He also hoped that he wasn’t the only one to feel ill that morning.
He felt tired. And as Samuel had said, he had a bit of a temperature.
He pulled the covers up to his chin.
He was soon fast asleep.
When he woke up, it was ten o’clock. He swallowed. It still hurt, but he felt better even so. He didn’t feel quite as hot as he had been. Perhaps the mat at the bottom of his bed had helped after all? You could never be certain about things that sailors bought in mysterious shops in foreign ports.
Joel sat up, emptied his glass of water and noted that he didn’t feel hungry. He propped up the cushion behind his back and started thinking. Or maybe he was just dreaming? Very often he wasn’t at all sure what the difference was. Thoughts and dreams came from the same place. From somewhere inside yourself, from an underground cave system deep down in your head. Thinking was harder than dreaming. You had to make an effort in order to think. Dreaming was the opposite. You couldn’t do it if you made an effort. Just now his instinct was to let dreams have the upper hand. If he started to think, he would soon start worrying about whether Miss Nederström had realized that it was Joel who had disconnected the bellows from the pedals.And perhaps, despite everything, he had left some traces behind to prove that he’d been in the classroom in the middle of the night? Perhaps drops of water had dripped from his boots and formed the word
Joel
on the floor?
So, it was all down to dreaming. Joel chose between the dreams he used to have while he was awake. He couldn’t pick and choose between the dreams he had when he was asleep, but he could when he was awake.
The ship, he thought. The brig
Three Lilies
. The sister ship of the
Celestine
, resplendent in its showcase. Captain Gustafson is confined to his cabin, suffering badly from some tropical fever or other. But he hasn’t yet given up the ghost. He’s still in command of his ship….
They hadn’t set eyes on land for more than fifty days. The sails were drooping down round the masts. Supplies of fresh water had almost run out. All they had left to eat was moldy ship’s biscuits. It was becoming difficult to keep the crew under control. They wanted to turn back. Ahead was the abyss: the ship would be hurled over the edge of the world, and sink down to the very bottom of an unknown ocean. Soon there would be no fresh water left to drink. But Captain Gustafson had a map inside his head that revealed itself to him every night. He knew as a result that they would soon strike land. An unknown continent. And they would step ashore in paradise itself
.
They were there now. After sixty-four days at sea. A tropical island. Parrots were chattering in the trees
.
Captain Gustafson is still ill, and is carried ashore
.
Somebody comes to greet him. At first he can’t make out who it is. Then he sees that it is a naked woman. He seems to recognize her. Where has he seen her before? And then it dawns on him. The woman walking towards him along the sand, the naked woman, is somebody he’s seen in one of the magazines Otto hands round behind the bicycle sheds during the breaks
.
Joel woke up with a start. This had never happened to him before. A naked woman coming towards him in a dream. Not as unexpectedly as this, in any case. Before, he’d always been able to dictate who turned up in his dreams. But not this time; she’d come of her own accord.
There was something else that was
Michelle Fox, Gwen Knight
Antonio Centeno, Geoffrey Cubbage, Anthony Tan, Ted Slampyak