The Hand That Trembles E-Book

Kjell Eriksson

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Inspector Ann Lindell
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 555

Beschreibung

A Swedish county commissioner walks out of a high-level meeting and disappears. Many years later, one of the town's natives is convinced that he's caught a glimpse of the missing man while traveling in Bangalore, India. When the rumors reach his hometown, a veteran police officer stumbles across a seemingly unrelated case. Ann Lindell must investigate a severed female foot found where a striking number of inhabitants are single men. But the owner of the house where the victim believed to have lived is no longer able to answer any questions . . .

Leseprobe

 

THE HAND THAT TREMBLES

KJELL ERIKSSON

Translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg

Contents

Title Page

December 1956

November 1993

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

FIFTY

FIFTY-ONE

FIFTY-TWO

FIFTY-THREE

FIFTY-FOUR

FIFTY-FIVE

About the Author

By Kjell Eriksson

Copyright

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The Hand that Trembles

December 1956

He had been sent to get more firewood. His mission was of the utmost importance. It was bitingly cold; the snow in the garden sparkled and smoke rose like a grey-white genie above the cottage tucked in the hollow.

Suddenly a shadow darkened the bark-and sawdust-covered earthen floor. Sven-Arne had just added a split log to the others he carried in his arms. The piece wobbled, then slid out of his grasp along with most of the rest of the load.

‘Shall we do it together?’

Sven-Arne dropped the few remaining pieces.

‘Did I frighten you?’

He shook his head, too annoyed to say anything. Ante stepped into the shed and looked around at the stacked wood.

‘Well, someone’s been busy,’ he said, and smiled unexpectedly.

He bent down and grasped a couple of logs.

‘Hold out your arms,’ he said, and Sven-Arne obeyed.

Sven-Arne wiggled his knees back and forth. If he came in with this big of a load he would be praised. He wanted to hurry out of the woodshed and back to the cottage, but his uncle stood in the way.

‘I remember the winters during the war. We burnt a lot of wood back in those days.’

‘Your war?’

Ante shook his head.

‘That one was hotter than hell.’

Sven-Arne was getting cold. He misjudged shifting his weight, and stumbled slightly.

‘I’ll tell you about it sometime,’ Ante said.

He was missing two fingers on his left hand. Emil had once mumbled something about how it was Ante’s carelessness that had been the cause, but no one really wanted to talk about Ante’s war adventures, not even Ante himself. That was why his comment about how he would tell him about it one day was a little out of the ordinary.

‘You seem to have your head screwed on right. Olars doesn’t understand anything.’

Ola Persson was Sven-Arne’s cousin, older by ten years. He was having a cup of coffee inside the cottage. He was a dynamite expert and smelt funny, even when he changed into his nice clothes. Ante insisted on calling him Olars.

Sven-Arne’s arms were aching, but his irritation vanished at the moment that his uncle criticised his cousin.

He couldn’t help staring at Ante’s left hand as it searched for suitable pieces of wood. He stretched right and left, and after a while his arms were full.

‘Head back together when we’re done?’

Sven-Arne nodded. He tried to shift the weight of the wood, get it closer to his chest.

‘We’ll take only birch,’ Ante decided, and tightened his right arm around his load.

When they were done, they could hear the tinkling of bells and shortly thereafter the muted thuds of hooves against the deeply rutted gravel road.

‘That’s Rosberg,’ said Ante, who had a curious way of tilting his head as he listened.

They left the woodshed. The sun blinded his eyes. Sven-Arne caught a glimpse of his grandmother’s neighbour behind the lilac bushes. Rosberg was sitting on the load of timber with his hat jauntily askew and holding the reins as if he were driving a four-horse hitch.

His horse, an unusually light-coloured Ardennes by the name of Lightning, shook its head as it passed the cottage. Maybe it disliked the smell of smoke, or else it was just anxious, very conscious of its proximity to the barn.

Sven-Arne was still cold, but enjoying it. The cottage stood out more clearly than usual in the afternoon sun. The snow was piled all the way under the windows, the chimney almost as crooked as the house, but the sun made it gleam red-brown. Sven-Arne repressed a laugh.

The tinkling from Rosberg’s sled died away. A flock of bullfinches fluttered about the Swedish Whitebeam tree in the middle of the garden. A swing still hung from the lowest branch. Now it was topped with a white cap like a chef’s hat. He had to admit that he still loved to swing back and forth with the great Whitebeam tree above him like a protecting giant. No rain could penetrate it. In the wind, it simply turned up its leaves and showed the silver-fuzzy underside. In the spring, it was covered in white flowers, and in the autumn there were clusters of berries, some years so heavy that the colour could be seen from far away. Sometimes his grandmother brought in clusters and laid them in a bowl of water. She maintained that her grandfather had planted the tree, even though most people did not believe it was that old.

‘That Lightning, he was also in the war,’ Ante said, and Sven-Arne was suddenly unsure which war he was referring to.

‘The only ones they get are horses and idiots.’

They walked back to the house, Ante in the lead. It was only three degrees Fahrenheit. Ante spat in the snow, smiled at Sven-Arne, and pushed open the door.

‘Damned excruciating,’ he said, and stepped into the hall.

Sven-Arne assumed he meant the cold. Or else he meant being in Grandmother’s kitchen.

Even though she had built a fire in the parlour, it was too cold in there and so everyone had crowded into the kitchen. Sven-Arne’s parents, Erik and Lisbeth, were there, as was Uncle Emil and his sons Ola and Tommy. Their mother was in the hospital, but no one talked about that. She had weak nerves.

Grandmother’s brother Edvin and his two unmarried daughters were sitting by the window. Majvor – large as a house, who breathed laboriously and liked to complain about everything and everyone – and Inga-Lisa, always on her way up to assist Grandmother Agnes but who was trapped between Edvin and Majvor so she remained seated. Both sisters were active members of the society ‘Friends of Jerusalem’ and considered a bit quirky, but tolerated.

A neighbour woman, who kept track of all social engagements in the area and made sure to stop by if there was going to be coffee and cake, was sitting on a stool next to them.

‘I’ll be damned. We should make sure to send Sven-Arne out to get the firewood from now on,’ Emil said.

The cousins gave Sven-Arne a look of indifference.

Ante and Sven-Arne dropped the logs straight into the wood bin.

‘Your boys will have to top it up before we leave,’ he said.

‘Of course they will,’ Emil said good-naturedly.

Agnes patted Sven-Arne on the head.

‘Make sure you warm up now.’

He sat down at the end of the table with his back to the stove. His grandmother opened the door and pushed in a log. Ante remained standing, a cup of coffee in his hand.

The warmth in the room made the birthday guests drowsy but the conversation gradually picked up again. Clearly the trio of men, Erik, Emil, and Edvin, had been involved in a discussion that had been interrupted by the return of the wood-bearers. Maybe Ante had gone out to the woodshed to escape it, not primarily to help Sven-Arne. When Emil said something, Ante sighed heavily and mumbled something that to Sven-Arne sounded like ‘Damned whining.’

Ante was different, not just because he had been in a war and was missing two fingers. He maintained a skeptical attitude to most things. Emil called his brother a ‘Snuffy Smith’ and they quarrelled often. It was as if they were drawn into a lifelong duel, only interrupted from time to time simply because they could not stand to listen to the other’s words.

Later, Sven-Arne would understand Ante’s irritation and hopelessness that no words or phrases could persuade or change. When he himself was accused of being one-sided and not flexible enough, then it was Ante’s inheritance making itself felt, for it could not be Eric’s genes that had moulded his mindset. Sven-Arne’s father was ‘flexible’ in the personal sphere as well as in his work as a printer at A&W. Only in his meetings with his brother did he display a tendency toward obstinance.

In general, Eric did not say very much, did not anger, and those times he spoke up it was in a soft-spoken way and with such a disarming smile that any antagonists let down their guard, perhaps in the belief that they had changed his mind.

Since a couple of years back he had been secretary of the local chapter of the Typographical Society, in the eyes of many the ideal of trustworthiness – taciturn, dutiful, and as precise and predictable as the calendars he produced. Eric most often came with not amazing ideas, but well-reasoned propositions, which he called his suggestions, always timely, delivered in a dry, somewhat formalistic, factual tone that vouched for rationality and continuity. The protocols were miracles of meticulous attention and the arrangement of the paragraphs beyond reproach.

Sven-Arne was drinking coffee with milk. He had no idea where the coffee came from, but the milk came from his neighbour’s cows. Rosberg had seven milk-producing cows in a dilapidated barn that threatened imminent collapse. They were discussing whether or not Sven-Arne and his cousins should go over and help clear the snow from the roof. It had been snowing nonstop for two, three days and now warmer weather was coming. This would make the snow heavy as lead and endanger the barn in its frail condition. Ola and Tommy had refused, and Ola added that it was just as well for the barn to collapse. He said this with such assurance and such a grown-up air that no one chastised him. Sven-Arne had realised that adults were allowed to say things without being corrected. If he had said anything to this same effect, he would have been told he was impertinent.

Not even Agnes said anything, even though everyone knew that she and Rosberg were as close as two good neighbours who had lived next to each other their entire lives could be.

That Rosberg himself was missing from the party, and out driving timber, was nothing remarkable. Everyone knew he would come over once the family had gone. After the evening milking he would wash up and take the well-worn path to the cottage. They would have a couple of sandwiches and share a beer. Maybe they would listen to the radio. Not much would be said. At half past nine he would take his leave.

Come spring, Rosberg was planning to get rid of the critters, so this was perhaps the last time that Sven-Arne would drink the neighbour’s milk. He had always liked Rosberg. The warmth of the cowshed, the low grinding sound of the animals masticating, and the smell of the farmer’s entryway were intimately connected with his childhood.

They would have been able to shovel the snow from the roof with ease, it would be done in half an hour, but they preferred to sit in the warmth and pretend to be city-modern and adult.

‘I can do it,’ he said.

‘What?’ his uncle said.

‘Go over to Rosberg’s.’

Emil did not reply, but flashed a grin. Agnes put a hand on Sven-Arne’s shoulder.

‘Me and the boy,’ Ante said.

‘You want the boy to fall to his death?’ Erik objected.

‘The cows can’t get up there,’ Ante said. ‘Rosberg can’t either. The snow has to come down. Someone has to do it, that’s all there is to it.’

The view from the barn roof made Sven-Arne pause in his shovelling for long periods at a time. The road to the church curved at the horizon and was swallowed by the forest. From up here the narrow road looked completely different, much more interesting than from the country bus. Ax – the bus driver – would joke with Sven-Arne and call him his ‘little pal.’ Once he had stopped the bus, climbed out, and urinated on one of the front tyres. He did as he pleased, but was generally well-liked. He made an effort, made sure packages got to the remote cottages, and ran errands for the isolated elderly in the village.

Two other small farms also took on a different perspective from above. The distance ennobled the small outhouses. What looked insignificant from the ground attained grandeur from another perspective. Sven-Arne saw someone moving on a plot of yard several hundreds of metres away.

Rosberg was on the hill leading up to the farm. He had not showed any surprise when Ante and Sven-Arne turned up and offered their services, and had immediately gone out to unhook the ladder from the wall.

‘You’ll be careful, won’t you,’ he yelled.

Arne waved reassuringly, turned to Sven-Arne, and smiled. ‘You cold?’

Sven-Arne shook his head.

‘I’ll tie the rope around you so you can slide down to the edge.’

It was around six metres to the ground, but since the barn backed onto a hillside that sloped sharply down, the impression of height appeared great. Sven-Arne slid across the roof tiles, a shovel in his hand, pushing the snow in front of him. He felt the rope around his middle. The thudding sound of the snow masses leaving the roof and hitting the ground made him smile and turn.

‘Good job,’ Ante said. ‘You can do almost anything.’

Bam went the next landing. Ante pulled him up to the ridge and then they kept going. Ante like a conquering general, broad-legged, with bowed legs but a straight back. Sven-Arne like a front-line soldier on the attack, pulled back by the commander only to attack the enemy once more.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ante said, when a roof tile clattered with an almost metallic sound. ‘The barn’s coming down in the spring anyhow.’

Maybe it was the windowpane in the front door, flashing with a reflection from the sun, that caused Sven-Arne to turn his head. He spotted his father and cousins on his grandmother’s garden.

‘Do you see the bugs?’ Ante asked.

Should he wave to them? No, they could stand there and stare. Soon they would get cold and have to go in. Sven-Arne unconsciously slowed his pace, resting a moment with his hand on the handle, and spitting over the edge of the roof. He shot Ante a look.

‘What is it with Hungary?’ he asked. ‘You’re always arguing about it.’

‘Just shovel,’ Ante shot back.

‘But what is it about?’

Sven-Arne saw the indecision in his uncle’s face. If he hadn’t known him so well he would have interpreted it as pain.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said with nonchalance and picked his shovel back up.

Rosberg had also gone over to the other side and was watching intently. Suddenly Ante sat down on the roof ridge, pulled his gloves off, and laid them beside him.

‘Sit down,’ he said, and made a gesture of invitation. ‘Sit on the gloves!’

Sven-Arne did as he said. His uncle looked off toward the forest.

‘Sunset,’ he said after a while.

Then he started talking about the war he had been in. Sven-Arne did not understand everything, but did not want to irritate him with questions. His uncle’s stubble glowed black. The high cheekbones he had inherited from his mother and the large nose created a sharp profile. He talked slowly, as if he had to look for the words a long way back in the past.

He repeated some of the words, particularly place names. I want to go there too, Sven-Arne thought, each time his uncle mentioned the name of a village or city.

Sven-Arne relived the feeling of grandeur he had felt earlier in his grandmother’s garden. It felt as if every individual word his uncle was uttering was important, as if Ante was sending them out into space as a message. He was sending a message from Rosberg’s roof. He was addressing the forest, and Sven-Arne. Rosberg heard him but understood nothing. The bugs heard but understood nothing. Only he got the message. Only he was allowed to take part in the knowledge of what really happened.

Suddenly Ante finished, smiled sadly, and looked at Sven-Arne.

‘You know, sometimes I don’t want to live,’ he said. ‘It’s as if nothing means anything anymore. I look around me and nothing seems appealing. There is no medicine for the pain I feel. It’s in here.’ He thumped his chest. ‘I knew it would go like this. Do you know what I had in my backpack when I walked ashore in France?’

Sven-Arne shook his head. He wanted to reach out to Ante, hug him.

‘Children’s drawings. Hundreds of them. Dreams, terror, and all the longing the children felt, all that I carried with me.’

Ante turned his head and stared off toward the church and the community house.

The stillness over Rosberg’s farm and the village was monumental. The winter afternoon was resting in silence. Say something else, Sven-Arne pleaded in his head. Tell me about the children. Who were they? Why did you bring children’s drawings back with you?

But he felt as if he were walking on the frozen millpond. A single word could shatter it, not only the silence but also the connectedness, just as a careless movement could crack the thinnest ice.

Sven-Arne put his hand on Ante’s.

‘Are you cold?’

Ante shook his head.

‘Only in my missing fingers.’

When they were done, Rosberg insisted that they come in. He poured Ante a shot of aquavit, and a bowl of warm milk for Sven-Arne.

‘Skål,’ he said, and raised his glass.

Sven-Arne noticed that he had only poured half a shot for himself.

Ante’s face was flushed. He downed his shot in one gulp and put the glass down on the kitchen table with a bang.

There was a smell of stove, barn, and damp clothes.

‘That was well done,’ Rosberg said. ‘Another?’

Ante shook his head. ‘So are they going?’

‘In the spring,’ Rosberg said.

‘Thanks for the shot.’

‘I’m the one who should be thanking you.’

‘A pension from now on?’

‘That is unchristian,’ Rosberg said.

‘Doesn’t matter what we do,’ Ante said.

Sven-Arne listened to the conversation and was amazed at how little was said and yet gave the impression of a lively conversation.

Rosberg hauled himself up out of his chair.

‘There’s one more thing,’ he said, and went out into the room next to the kitchen.

Ante glanced at Sven-Arne. ‘You warm now?’

Sven-Arne nodded and drained the last of the creamy milk.

Rosberg reappeared with a clock in his hands. He stroked his walrus moustache, in which a couple of drops of melted snow gleamed.

‘I know you’ve looked at this before,’ he said.

Sven-Arne had admired the old-fashioned alarm clock many times. One of Rosberg’s relatives had bought it in America many years before, maybe back in the 1800s. Rosberg did not need an alarm clock, but kept it as a decoration. The outside shone like gold, the hands were black and ornately wrought, just as the numbers on the face; the enormous ringer mechanism was ear-deafening. There were winding keys on the back, both for the alarm and the time, also a lever that could be placed in two positions: ‘Long alarm’ and ‘Rep. alarm.’

Its ticking was as irregular as it was vehement. Sometimes it seemed to be holding its breath and it grew completely silent until it realised it had to keep the time and returned to a vigorous tempo in order to compensate for its momentary lack of industry.

It was a remarkable object, and it radiated dignity. In the parlour, it was the alarm clock that drew one’s attention, and not only due to the sound of its ticking. Perhaps it was the otherwise spartan furnishings that accorded the clock its special glow.

‘I was thinking …’ Rosberg said, and held it out to Sven-Arne, who took it with bewilderment.

‘If you want it,’ Rosberg went on.

‘You’re giving me this?’

‘As sure as it is standing here before you.’

For a few moments, Rosberg grew positively loquacious as he related the clock’s history, something he had done many times before.

‘Forever?’ Sven-Arne asked.  

Ante chuckled.  

‘Nothing is forever.’ 

November 1993

Åke Sandström was pursuing his point as slowly and painstakingly as ever. Sven-Arne Persson had almost forgotten what it was.

Amazing how many words could be used to say nothing, he thought, and glanced at his watch. A quarter to two.

The meeting had been under way since the early morning, with a break for lunch.

‘If we regard all the circumstances, there is still much that indicates that proceeding according to the existing plans will go against the spirit as well as the letter of current county regulations, but on the other hand there are no actual reasons for …’

‘Åke, if we are to arrive at a—’

‘I’m getting there. It is not as simple as some appear to believe.’

Sven-Arne Persson sighed, pointedly closed his folder, and started thinking of other things. There was not much competition for his attention except the ‘big question,’ as he called the line of thinking that had been claiming more and more of his time the last year.

Is it time? Can Sandström’s soulless droning be the signal I have been waiting for? Sven-Arne drew a deep breath, which caused Sandström to pause for a second. But then he continued implacably.

Sven-Arne looked around at the assembled, all familiar to him for many years. Some he would have called his friends, others simply party colleagues. But he knew that fewer and fewer of them were listening to him. He suspected it was more an expression of his own frustration and growing indifference for the burning county issues than the party’s view of him as a politician, for surely they considered his views as seriously as before.

They did not like him. He knew that without a doubt. There was an aspect of his personality that few of them could stand. He was generally held to be personable and normally had no problems circulating around the city, getting to know the town’s citizens and voters. He was a good listener, allowing others to finish talking, had the knack of looking genuinely interested, and could be either serious or joking, as the situation demanded. As with all elected officials in the public sphere, there was a measure of calculation in his attitude, and adaptability, but his concern for those he had been elected to represent was generally acknowledged. This was also his foremost ability and it made him a party asset. If at times he came across as a pompous ass there were few who regarded him as one.

In his internal work the situation was more complicated. In county administration his flexibility was nowhere to be seen. He was a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of county politics, impatient and often abrupt, and always seemed in a hurry to bring the matter at hand to a close under his hammer.

Toward the latter half of the 1980s, a number of party colleagues – mostly from the women’s caucus – had tried to get rid of him. Gerda Lyth, who was his harshest critic, had called him a power-hungry chauvinist pig.

At first he had taken the matter lightly. She had difficulty making inroads since she had no base in the city. She was a political blow-in from the south and therefore also had her dialect against her. Gerda Lyth was employed at the university. Sven-Arne was from the working class and had at least ten years of physical labour behind him, before he had been lifted into the union ombudsman position and later into county assignments, and there was a dearth of his kind of experience in the Labour Party.

In his battle with Gerda Lyth and her followers he made conscious use of this class background, which appeared spectacular in this city so dominated by academics and the bourgeoisie. It was first in hindsight that he fully realised how close they had come to removing him from power in the Labour community and thereby the county board.

When pressed in some way, he could fall back into the naked Uppsala dialect that had dominated his childhood, above all through his uncle Ante. There were those who claimed that Uppsala had no dialect, but nothing could be more wrong, in his view. He could identify a genuine native after only a couple of sentences, someone sprung from the Uppsalian working class, but had to admit that this rare tongue was heard increasingly seldom. Everything was getting mixed, the language was getting smoothed out. Class sensibility and class language were awkward tools for a Labour Party flirting with the middle class. They functioned more as flourishes, markers of a proud past that lent a legitimacy in speaking for the masses.

But they could also be used as weapons in the internal struggles, and Gerda Lyth had had a taste of it. After the first few attempts, which he had mainly waved away in irritation, the attackers had gathered in a renewed and more organised offensive and then Sven-Arne Persson had to show his colours.

He mobilised his old war buddies, calling upon a former county commissioner, and won over the older ones in the city districts; there was intrigue behind the scenes and thundering argumentation at the meetings. He reached out to the media, writing up something called the ‘Persson Appeal,’ a skillfully constructed document centred on ‘caring for the city of Uppsala’ and ‘moving the centre.’ The second expression could be taken literally, as the majority of his power base lay in the old working-class parts of Salabackar, Tunabackar, Almtuna, and Svartbäcken, but it could also be interpreted ideologically.

In the article he talked about ‘good work’ as an independent, almost magical concept, and used a couple of anecdotes from his days as a plumber, with a metaphorical language that characterised class-bound supremacy and the secretive language of the craft, which he knew presented a temptation for both the knowledgeable and the ignorant.

He spoke of tradition and renewal, worn concepts that in his appeal emerged as genuine since he skillfully connected his and others’ experiences of the poor Sweden, tradition with class, the smell of wet wool and dreams of holiday and dental care, with those of new technology within the fields of computer and biomedical research that would put Uppsala on the world map.

An area that he touched on only briefly was that of ‘the new Swedes,’ which truth be told he did not know, more than the fact that they lived in the outskirts of the city. Even here he successfully employed symbols. He was able to squeeze in Vilhelm Moberg’s Karl Oskar, Walloons, and Greek feta cheese in a piece that, viewed superficially, was unassailable, but that did not articulate a single problem and was not beholden to anything.

Sven-Arne Persson received flowers. His office at City Hall smelt of greenery. A multitude of Letters to the Editor streamed in to Upsala Nya Tidning, all positive. ‘At last someone who dares to talk ideology,’ someone wrote. ‘This is a Social Democracy we can recognise,’ said another.

The opposition was wise enough to hold off. The article was too generally supported and rhetorically so well constructed as to rule out the possibility of a counter-attack. Persson’s foremost opponent, the commissioner Herbert Gunnarsson of the Moderate Party, realised this gesture was intended for internal affairs. Privately he detested women in politics, and above all those with socialist leanings, and he was happy that Lyth was struck a blow, even though she was not actually referred to by name.

The only one who offered any criticism was Ante. He called right after the piece was published and laughed abrasively. He was not tricked. He undressed the words, and Sven-Arne silently cursed this person who stood nearest to him. Ante’s words would become etched in his body like rusty staples. Each time he employed this method, the rhetoric and the compelling but intentionally vague political language of the political appeal that he had mastered so well, the staples twisted and turned inside him.

Sven-Arne did not engage his uncle in debate. There was no point in gilding the lie. After Ante was done with his sarcastic tirade, Sven-Arne enquired about his hip. This was his uncle’s Achilles’ heel, since he was no longer able to move about without effort and was dependent on his nephew if he needed to travel any distance.

The result of Sven-Arne’s offensive was that Gerda Lyth had to back down. Sven-Arne pitied her for a moment, but immediately put this thought behind him. He was a power player and knew it. There was no room for doubt or regret.

Not a single word in his text was incorrect but he knew the whole was flawed. It was not an ideological manifesto, but an Orwellian betrayal.

After his victory over his internal critics, Sven-Arne sank into a deep depression. It went on for six months. After the refreshing power struggle, only indifference remained.

It was as if his disingenuousness not only revealed his true self but that of his colleagues, the ones who had supported him, cheered, and slapped him on the back. Shouldn’t everyone have been able to see through the dishonesty? Was his oration so convincing or was his party colleagues’ longing for ideologically coloured argumentation so great that they allowed themselves to be tricked by fanfare, which after it had died away left the same vacuum that they were looking to escape?

After hardly a year, Gerda Lyth left Uppsala for Gothenburg, where she had applied for and received a position within the university administration. When Sven-Arne met Gothenburg’s strong man in politics at a conference, he had asked about Gerda Lyth but the politician had never heard her name. Perhaps she had had enough of politics?

 * * *

‘What do you think, Sven-Arne?’

The county commissioner was jolted out of his reverie and stared blankly at Sandström.

‘I have to admit I haven’t really followed you.’

‘Are you unwell? You look a little pale.’

‘A headache,’ Sven-Arne Persson said. ‘Perhaps I’ll take a break, if that’s all right with you.’

He did not expect any protest, just stood up and left the room. And in so doing, also his wife, municipal politics, Uppsala, and Sweden.

ONE

It was at the corner of Brigade and Mahatma Ghandi Road that he had the first intuition. Not that he was superstitious, quite the opposite. Over the course of his career, rationality had been his trademark. It rendered him ill-suited to this country, and yet sympathetic to the Indian fatalism that he had grown to appreciate over the years. But he should have heeded the signs.

First this so unexpected thought of ‘home’: Whenever he thought of this word it was usually in conjunction with the flat in Bangalore or, more rarely, the town house in Uppsala. But this time a vision of his Vaksala Square neighbourhood rose before him. Of course he thought of his childhood street from time to time, but this time the recollection gripped him with unexpected force. He paused, was pushed aside, and came to a halt outside the entrance of a shop that sold Kashmir silk.

There was nothing about MG Road that was reminiscent of Uppsala. Absolutely nothing. The intense, almost insane traffic, the eternal honking, and the cloud of exhaust fumes hovering over the street, all this was unthinkable around Vaksala Square. Almost everything he saw was unimaginable on Salagatan; the holes in the pavement, some so deep they seemed like portals to another world – a darkness into which to descend. The stream of people, who adeptly veered to avoid the stopped man; the vendors of ‘genuine’ Rolex watches and ‘police glasses’ who avoided him with equal adeptness; the security guard from Guardwell posted outside the shop that promised excellent deals on shawls and saris but that in reality milked Westerners’ credit cards for a couple of thousand rupees extra. No eye-catching sums but enough to ensure that the Mafia from the north made handsome profits. At least that was what Lester said.

He saw the block of flats in which he grew up, the courtyard with the newly raked gravel of Fridays, the neatly edged lawns and plantings of roses and lilacs, the obligatory mock-orange bush and the unpleasant-smelling viburnum by the park down toward the railway tracks. An almost rigid order reigned over the landscaping around the buildings. An impression of immutability that he, at a brief visit many years later, could testify had lingered a surprising number of years. A utility building had been added, poorly placed and completely different in style; the gravel was no longer quite as attractively ridged; the flag post had been removed, perhaps temporarily; but the fundamentals remained, and the substantial lilac trees leant thoughtfully, heavy with age and with twisted trunks as if they writhed in regret at the passing of time.

All this came before him as he stood on the pavement along MG Road. The guard looked more closely at him, perhaps nervous that the old man was about to collapse and thereby force him to engage.

Sven-Arne smiled reassuringly. The guard jerked his head but remained otherwise impassive.

Was it nostalgia? Could it be called that, although before this moment he could not have been able to imagine returning to Uppsala? But suddenly this dreamlike vision appeared, as when one imagines soaring like a bird or diving into the depths like a fish.

It was most likely the lack of possibility that caused his pain. He even lacked a valid passport. He took a couple of steps, mostly to escape the watchful eyes of the guard, stopped, then walked off in the direction of St Marks Road.

The next warning came shortly thereafter.

After a few hundred metres, he saw a couple walking in his direction. He was immediately convinced that they were Swedes, even though there was nothing in their clothing or behaviour that gave this impression. He walked toward the catastrophe without a thought of slipping into the alley he had just passed. He would have been able to get away, as he had done so many times before when he had had this premonition. But it was as if the learnt defence mechanisms that had functioned so well for over a decade had now collapsed after the odd experience outside the silk shop. He walked toward them, defenceless.

Their gazes met when they were ten or twenty metres from each other. The woman scrutinised him, her eyes going from his face to his strange clothing (in her opinion, most likely) and then she looked away with indifference. As they passed each other he heard her say a few words to her companion, a man around forty years of age. He was sweating in his suit and tie, one pace behind the woman.

She was speaking Swedish. Northwestern Skåne, maybe Helsingborg, he thought, always childishly pleased with his ability to place a person’s dialect. ‘I think we should ask Nils anyway.’ Her tone was decisive, almost aggressive. Sven-Arne had time to catch the man’s unease. It was clear that he did not want to place a question to this Nils.

Just as they reached each other, the man glanced at Sven-Arne and for a moment the latter thought he saw a subtle shift in the man’s facial expression, as if he recognised him, and Sven-Arne also caught an imperceptible reaction. The man slowed down slightly and lost even more ground to the woman. Was it just an unconscious reaction, an appeal, as if to say, ‘Help me get away from this woman, distract her for a moment so that she’ll drop the idea of talking to Nils’?

Sven-Arne hurried on his way, without turning around.

The street noise grew louder the closer he got to St Marks Road. A rickshaw had collided with a motorcycle, and two men were involved in a heated dispute. A woman standing next to the motorcyclist was crying. Blood trickled down her forehead. The rickshaw driver was screaming out his fury, saliva was spraying out of his mouth, and he was gesturing wildly to underscore his arguments.

The crash had blocked traffic and caused a serenade of honking, from the bellowing of the lorries to the ridiculous high-pitched signals from all the yellow rickshaws trying to manoeuvre their way through. Sven-Arne slowed down but did not stop. He had his inner crash to sort out.

Afterward, when he had caught his breath at Lester’s, he cursed his own stupidity. He should have interpreted the signs better. Despite the evident warnings, he had continued along the street.

His goal had been Koshy’s, where he returned to eat dinner once a year, for sentimental reasons. It was the only nostalgic act he allowed himself.

One evening in November 1993, disoriented and hungry after having vomited on the plane from Delhi, he had found himself standing outside the airport and had asked a taxi driver to take him to a good restaurant. That had been Koshy’s.

Now he was going there to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of his arrival to the city that had become his home. It was, especially at first, an expression of self-torture, to test his own resolve.

The very first visit had not gone very well. He had burst into tears. Perhaps it was the exhaustion from the painful journey through Europe, the long flights and the extraordinary tribulations that caused him to collapse silently at the table. The waiter became aware of his distress and hurried over, but Sven-Arne waved him away, dried his tears, and opened the menu.

He was a stranger when he staggered out of the airport, and the sense of alienation had grown during the short ride into the city centre. At his table at Koshy’s he realised for the first time the enormity of his actions. Until this point he had been acting automatically without any thought of the consequences, from Uppsala to Arlanda airport, at Heathrow, at the terminal in Delhi. He had only one goal: to get away.

The yearly visit to the restaurant was therefore a test. He always sat at the same table. If it was occupied, he waited. Then he recalled in his mind the first experiences of Bangalore, the confusion and indecision, the uncertainty if he had done the right thing. Every year he came to the same conclusion: Yes, it had been the right thing to do. What other conclusion could he come to?

He stepped into Koshy’s, relieved to escape the noise of the street and any possible new unsettling events. He went to the right, to the somewhat more exclusive part, pushed open the swinging door, and set his sights on the table, which was obscured both by a pillar and the maître d’. The latter had been the same for all these years, a broad-shouldered wrestling type whose hair was growing thin on top but who still had an imposing handlebar moustache, large hands, and a heavyset, choleric face whose expression could nonetheless lighten at a moment’s notice.

It came as a complete shock. Sven-Arne Persson turned on his heels and fled.

TWO

Jan Svensk got halfway to his feet, had automatically stretched out a hand as if to detain the fleeing man, but then realised it was meaningless. The doors swung back and forth a few times; he was gone.

It isn’t possible, he thought, frozen for a few moments before he flung himself out of his chair and onto the deafening street. The heat struck him. He stared in all directions and glimpsed a grey head of hair through the filmy plastic window of a rickshaw. The driver set off and the vehicle was swallowed up in the heavy traffic.

He returned inside. The other guests, about a dozen, stared at him with undisguised curiosity. The waiter regarded him quizzically.

‘Is anything wrong, sir?’

Jan Svensk shook his head.

‘I just thought … there was a gentleman …’

‘Oh, you mean “the Polite One”?’

‘You know him?’

The waiter waggled his head, a gesture that Jan Svensk had never really grasped the meaning of. Was it an answer in the affirmative, a ‘no,’ or did it stand for the more diffuse notion of ‘maybe’?

‘Does he come here regularly?’

The waiter glanced around. The maître d’ approached.

‘Who is he?’

‘No one knows, sir.’

The waiter started to draw away from the table, but Svensk grabbed hold of his arm.

‘Does he come here often?’

‘No, not very often.’

They looked at each other. Jan Svensk felt the waiter had the upper hand, perhaps because he was standing. How tall could he be? Five foot four at most, he thought, not without bitterness. He himself was six foot one.

The waiter smiled, straightened his sleeve, and turned his attention to the next table after having delivered another waggle of his head that Jan Svensk interpreted as ‘That is all I know’ or perhaps more precisely, ‘That is all I will tell.’

He resumed his eating, with a lingering feeling of having been unfairly treated. The food was not tasty. It reminded him of excrement, or perhaps it was the other way around. That which he was able to excrete into the hotel toilet retained its original form; a brown, sometimes yellow, stinking mass that dribbled out of him and left a burning sensation. At least it smelt better beforehand, he thought, and swirled his spoon in the bowl of lentils. The consistency was that of a thin porridge.

Could it be Persson? And what was his first name? It was a hyphenated name, something a little nerdy. Sven-Arne, that was it!

Jan Svensk had read about doppelgangers; from time to time one saw published pictures of people who closely resembled each other. Often it was someone from Tierp or Alingsås who looked ridiculously like a film star or other celebrity. Could someone really look that much like Persson? Jan Svensk shook his head.

‘No,’ he murmured, deciding the matter, and looked around for the waiter, who very likely harboured more information, he was sure of it.

The maître d’, impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, glided over to his side.

‘Is everything to your satisfaction?’

Or at least this was what Jan Svensk thought he said, and he nodded.  

‘I was wondering, that gentleman who came in here … Is he someone you know?’  

The maître d’ made a dismissive hand gesture.  

‘He has dined here a few times, but we do not know him.’  

They are protecting him, Jan thought.  

‘He is … an old friend from my homeland.’  

‘Really?’ said the maître d’.  

He wants money, Jan thought.  

‘A friend of the family,’ he went on.  

‘I am sorry you did not have a chance to talk to each other.’  

You old bastard! You know who he is. The maître d’ disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. Svensk turned his head and saw him exchange a few words with the waiter.  

Svensk waved his arm and the waiter approached.  

‘The bill, please.’  

The waiter returned with it after ten minutes. Jan Svensk gave him around 500 rupees.  

The waiter looked at the bills.

‘It is too much,’ he said, and opened the brown leather folder that held the bill.

The total came to 420 rupees.

‘The rest is for you,’ Jan Svensk said.

The waiter put one bill back on the table.

‘It is enough, thank you.’

Then he smiled. Jan Svensk became bright red in the face.

‘I thought …’

‘I understand, sir,’ the waiter said slowly, ‘but like our guests, we have our dignity. I do hope the food was to your liking.’ 

THREE

The rickshaw took him away from Koshy’s. He had given the driver his address, but after a couple of minutes he changed his mind and gave him another: South End Circle. To Jayanagar, just south of Lal Bagh, the botanical garden, where Lester lived. He could spend the night there. He had done that before; the first was when his work at Lal Bagh had taken longer than expected. Lester had invited him for a late supper and thereafter offered to let him spend the night on a camp bed in the inner room.

This, like his visit to Koshy’s, had become a tradition. Lester invited him over several times a year. Sven-Arne always knew he would be treated to something special.

Now he would arrive uninvited, but was convinced his colleague would find nothing extraordinary in this. And if he did, he would not show a trace of it to Sven-Arne.

Lester was hardly the kind of man to be taken by surprise. He faced every new development, whether unexpected or not, with the same equanimity. He was also the only one who knew enough about his past that Sven-Arne would be able to tell him about what happened at the restaurant. Lester would listen, send one of his sons out for some beer, maybe a small bottle of rum, then dispense some sound advice and an invitation to stay overnight.

Lester’s father was British and sometimes Sven-Arne had the impression that Lester had designated him to be a stand-in for his biological father, a man who had come to Bangalore in the mid-fifties and settled in a decent house in the otherwise so rundown streets around Russell Market. No one knew what he lived on, perhaps a pension. He had been injured in the war, in the battles just outside of Rangoon, Burma, and he was missing the lower half of one arm, but had also been psychologically damaged. Lester had told him that as a child he would sometimes be awakened by his father’s screams when the nightmares set in.

Lester’s father not only hated all Japanese, but all Asians. It was therefore a bit of a puzzle why he had decided to stay in Bangalore and marry a woman from Madras, who had given birth to three children in rapid succession. In the early 1970s, when Lester was eight years old, the one-armed Englishman disappeared for good. Six years later the family was notified that he had died in a hospital in Mombasa. He left the house in Noah Street, and five thousand pounds in an account in a Hong Kong bank.

The money made it possible for Lester and his two brothers to get an education. Lester did a three-year horticultural degree in northern India and returned to Bangalore on his twenty-third birthday. He received a post at Lal Bagh and had stayed. Now he was responsible for the arboretum, care and replanting.

Lester opened the door, quickly scrutinised Sven-Arne’s face, but did not reveal by the slightest gesture what may have crossed his mind. He stepped aside and called to his wife that they had a visitor, while he observed Sven-Arne.

‘Is everything all right?’

Sven-Arne nodded, took off his sandals, and placed them by the door where they had to fight for a spot next to half a dozen others.

‘I come unexpectedly, I know, but something has happened.’

‘Nothing serious, I hope,’ Lester said, and led his guest into one of the three rooms of the flat. The caterwauling of a television could be heard from the adjoining room.

His wife stuck her head out of the kitchen.

‘A little tea,’ Lester said.

Sonia disappeared.

‘Are you hungry, perhaps?’

‘No, thank you,’ Sven-Arne said. ‘Tea is good.’

Any trace of appetite was gone. He was still shaken and it was an effort to keep his voice steady.

‘Is everything well with your family?’

‘Everything is fine,’ Lester said. ‘John took his test the other day. I think it went well. Lilian is full of life. She is with a friend. A school assignment. Joseph bought a moped yesterday.’

Lester had a habit of speaking in abbreviated sentences – he sort of thrust out the information, drawing in air through his thin lips and then forcing out another sentence. Sven-Arne had always thought it must be difficult, but was no longer bothered by his friend’s strange way of speaking.

‘I am sure the exam went very well,’ he said. ‘John is a very gifted young man. He is sure to go far.’  

Lester waggled his head modestly. John was his favourite, even if he treated the other two with equal love.

Sonia came back with tea, black for Lester and with milk and a lot of sugar for Sven-Arne. Thereafter she withdrew to the kitchen. Normally she might have stayed for a few minutes in order to listen to the men talk, but Sven-Arne could not help noticing Lester’s discreet hand gesture.

They drank tea in silence. On the television, a local news program came on.

Lester listened to the listing of the main stories before he repeated his question, whether anything in particular had happened. He knew that the twentieth of November was an important day for Sven-Arne, the day that he went to Koshy’s.

‘A man from my former life was at Koshy’s.’

Sven-Arne was not sure how to proceed. How much should he tell? Lester knew that he had more or less run away from his homeland, that he now lived stateless and without any identifying documents, basically free-floating, but he did not know all the details. Sven-Arne had told him very little, and Lester had never pushed to know more.

‘He was a former neighbour of mine,’ he went on. ‘Back then, a long time ago, he was a young man, perhaps twenty, a little wild perhaps but basically a nice guy. Now he looks like the typical sort who comes to Bangalore on business, but it was definitely him.’

‘Did he recognise you?’

‘Yes, I’m sure of it.’

‘Did you speak to each other?’

Sven-Arne picked up the teacup but his hand was shaking so badly that he decided to put it down again.

‘You walked out,’ Lester said.

‘Ran.’

Lester smiled and Sven-Arne thought he knew why. He was not known for his rapid pace – quite the contrary – and his friends at Lal Bagh would tease him about his slow gait, and sometimes called him ‘the snail.’

‘Can this harm you?’

‘I am dead,’ Sven-Arne said.

‘It is not that bad, I hope!’

Lester put his hand on Sven-Arne’s.

‘I am officially dead in Sweden.’

‘You live here.’

‘One is not allowed to be dead in Sweden and at the same time living somewhere else. Sweden wants to keep track of its citizens.’

‘Have you played a trick on Sweden?’

It was a funny question, and it made Sven-Arne smile. Yes, he supposed he had. He had pulled their leg – his wife’s and his old friends’ – and not only them. He had even betrayed the official Sweden, with all its record-keeping obligations and responsibilities. Not in a flamboyant way, but by simply slipping away unnoticed and in secrecy dissolving all ties to the homeland, he had placed himself outside of the order upon which Sweden was grounded, a system he himself had supported and helped develop. In many respects he had personified and been a spokesman for that order. Therefore his escape was a double betrayal. He was not a ‘nobody’, someone who lived on the outskirts of society, who had refused all responsibility.

He had erased his identity, transformed himself into John Mailer, and been swallowed up by the human mass that was India, making himself as anonymous to the kingdom of Sweden as all his newfound Indian friends were. Lester did not exist to Sweden anymore as an Indian, one of at least a billion, so unimportant as to be dispensable, someone one did not have to take into account in the overall social structure.

To this – Lester’s level – was where Sven-Arne had taken refuge. Had become one with those in a sense untouchable. Now Sweden, in the guise of a former neighbour, had caught up with him and he realised that he would not be able to escape so easily. Svensk’s boy was sharp. His father, Rune Svensk, and Sven-Arne were the same age and had been in primary school together, they had played in the neighbourhood and later, many years later, become neighbours.

Jan – that was his name – would never keep quiet.

‘John, my friend.’ Lester interrupted his thoughts and placed his hand on Sven-Arne’s arm. ‘Don’t worry too much about this. You former neighbour may not be sure of himself.’

‘I must leave,’ Sven-Arne said.

‘Where will you go?’

‘It’s better that you don’t know. There are a couple of things I must do first.’  

‘What will happen to your youngsters?’  

Sven-Arne shook his head almost imperceptibly. He would abandon them, disappear without a word of parting or explanation. What would they think? Fatigue, hunger, thoughts of the school and the friends in the garden caused him to let out a sob.  

Lester leant forward across the table. Sven-Arne smelt his onion-heavy breath. Everything is about to be determined, he thought. Everything depends on what he says next. But Lester remained quiet. The sound of the television dampened suddenly and Sven-Arne realised that Lester’s wife must have left the kitchen.

They poured themselves more tea. Sonia supplied a plate of cookies. Only at this sight did Sven-Arne become aware of how ravenous he was. With the intention of dining at Koshy’s he had not eaten anything since breakfast. He ate a couple of cookies, glanced at Lester and met his gaze.

Did Lester sense that it would be a long time before they saw each other again, if ever, that the friendship of many years would end here at a table with two cups of tea and a plate of cookies? Sven-Arne had Lester to thank for many things. He was the one who had put in a good word for him, taken him on as a helper in the garden, and this without asking any questions. ‘Merciful’ was the word that Sven-Arne came to think of. Lester had been merciful. This was a word that had dropped out of common usage and was only used by believers, something he had never been.

He had made a place for Sven-Arne, skillfully bypassing the Indian bureaucracy, and presented it as if Sven-Arne was a middle-aged man who needed a change of scenery for a short while, would only play a visiting role, and then return to his country. But Lester must surely have guessed that day he first saw him that this was a man who would be a lifelong fugitive.

Sven-Arne had never asked why he had been received with such a humble and unquestioning welcome; he knew there could be no rational explanation. This was what Lester was like. He would have been embarrassed to entertain such a question.

It was not a matter of religion. Lester rarely or never participated in ceremonies or services; his empathy was simply there. At first Sven-Arne assumed it was Lester’s half-British background that was the source of his genuine kindness toward the stranger who wanted to help dig. Or else he had been taken aback and decided to test the stranger’s mettle. Sven-Arne would never know for sure, and had long since stopped wondering about Lester’s original motivations. Nowadays he simply warmed himself with the memories of his first stretch of time in Bangalore.

They parted without much ado, shook hands and – after a moment’s bashful silence – gave each other a quick embrace. Sven-Arne asked Lester to hug the children for him and forward his best wishes. Sonia stood quietly by the kitchen door. She was holding a plastic bag with naan and a jar of pickles of the kind she knew Sven-Arne liked. She gave these to him without a word. Sven-Arne took the bag before he headed out the door.

FOUR

Each time he stepped into the bathroom he felt as if he were entering a Monty Python sketch. The hotel room was more or less quiet, despite the noise of the traffic, the honking and the recurring high-pitched signal that he always mistook for his mobile phone. But when he opened the door to the bathroom it was like stepping into a roundabout with traffic rushing from every direction. It would not have surprised him if a rickshaw had rushed out between the shower and the toilet in a crazy driving manoeuvre.

Jan Svensk sat in the midst of this tumult, in deep reflection, as he at the same time followed the exertions of an insect ascending the shower curtain. When it tumbled down, rolled over onto its legs, and set its sights on the shower for the third time in a row, he stretched out a foot and crushed it against the floor.

His irritation at the attitude of the waiter, and above all, the maître d’, had subsided. In a way he understood them. They did not know him, whereas Sven-Arne Persson was probably a regular. One protects one’s habitual guests, that is simply a fact. Why should he let this irritate him?

Maybe it was his general frustration at the Indian reality that had so incensed him. He had left Koshy’s in a rage without leaving a single rupee in tip. Now he was ashamed.

Against all odds, he was also constipated. Everyone had assumed something else, but the past two days he had spent several sessions on the traffic-exposed toilet. Now, finally, his own gases mingled with the exhaust that penetrated through the always-opened vent at the very top of the wall. He sighed with relief, but also pure exhaustion, tore long strips from the roll, dried himself with care, and washed his hands three separate times. The natives rarely used paper, from what he could understand, and simply rinsed after their bathroom visits. He wanted to try it, but his upbringing was too conventional. He imagined that it was healthier with only water, gentler on delicate skin, but hesitated to try it.

He did not regard himself as a particularly ethnocentric being. In theory he had always extolled the virtues of understanding between persons from widely differing parts of the world. He wanted to see the good, the new and exciting, in other people and cultures but was catching himself getting more and more upset at, in his view, the decidedly irrational India.

Why? Those colleagues who had been in Bangalore for a long time floated naturally in this environment and accepted apparently without friction the most bizarre, almost shamefully idiotic behaviours – to his surprise and dismay.

Couldn’t they express their disapproval? He – as a newcomer – couldn’t do it. It would appear insensitive and insulting. Maybe there was a resistance to taking on another tradition and culture. Jan Svensk was bewildered enough after his week in the city. He was attracted by the foreign but at the same time wanted things as cozy as back in Uppsala.

He left the bathroom, closing the door behind him, checked the time, and threw himself onto the bed.

‘Sven-Arne Persson,’ he said out loud, ‘what are you doing in Bangalore?’