The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  The gravel crunched under the tyres when he drove off the main road to study the map again. It wasn’t far to the Norwegian border, but that’s not where he was going. He set off again, heading north, and passed through Funäsdalen before turning into a smaller road and driving into the darkness to see where it would take him. He was climbing steeply now, perhaps he was in the mountains already. He could well be, if he’d read the map correctly. He drew up, switched off the engine and sat back to wait for daylight.

  When dawn began to break, he set off again, climbing all the time. He noticed several chalets tucked among the rocks and bushes. He must be in some kind of holiday village. There were no lights anywhere. He kept on going until he came to a gate blocking the road. He got out of the car to open it, and continued along the track after closing the gate behind him. He realised that if they came after him, he’d be cornered. But he didn’t care. All he wanted was to keep on going until the track petered out. Then he would have to make a decision.

  Eventually the road came to an end and he could go no further. He got out of the car and filled his lungs with the chilly air. The light seemed to be grey. He looked round: mountain-tops, in the distance a long valley, and beyond that more mountains. A path led into the trees. He followed it. After a few hundred metres he came to an old wooden chalet. Nobody had been along that path for ages, he could see that. He went up to the chalet and peered in through the windows. The front door was locked. He tried to imagine where he would have hidden a key if the chalet had been his. There was a broken plant pot in front of one of the flat stones forming part of the steps up to the front door. He bent down and lifted the pot. No key. Then he felt underneath the stone, and there it was, fastened to a lump of wood by a piece of ribbon. He unlocked the door.

  The chalet hadn’t been aired for a considerable time. It comprised a big living room, two small bedrooms and a kitchen. The furniture was made of light-coloured wood. He ran his fingers over one of the chair arms, and thought how attractive some of this light-coloured wooden furniture would look in his dingy home in Buenos Aires. Tapestries were hanging on the walls, with embroidered texts that he couldn’t understand. He went into the kitchen. The chalet had mains electricity, and there was a telephone. He picked up the receiver and listened to the dialling tone. He looked in the big freezer. It was full of food. What could that mean? Was the chalet only empty for a short time? He had no way of knowing. He took out some packets of deep-frozen hamburgers and put them in the sink. Then he turned on a tap over the sink, and water came gushing out.

  He sat down by the telephone and dialled the long number to Maria in Buenos Aires. He’d never quite managed to work out the time difference. He could hear it ringing at the other end. He wondered who would be paying for this international call from his cottage in the mountains.

  Maria answered. As usual, she sounded impatient, as if he’d interrupted her when she was doing something important, like cleaning or preparing food. If she had any time to herself, she used to play complicated games of patience. He’d tried in vain to decipher the rules. He had the impression that she cheated. Not to solve the patience, but to make it last as long as possible.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Can you hear me all right?”

  She spoke loud and quickly, as she always did when she was nervous. I’ve been away for too long, he thought. She’s started to suspect that I’ve left her, and will never come back home.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “I’m still in Europe.”

  “Where?”

  He thought about the map he’d been studying in the car, trying to come to a decision.

  “Norway.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I’m looking at furniture. I’ll be coming home soon.”

  “Don Batista’s been asking for you. He’s upset. He says you promised to renovate an antique sofa for him. He wanted to give it to his daughter as a wedding present in December.”

  “Tell him it will be ready in time. Has anything else happened?”

  “What do you expect to have happened? A revolution?”

  “I don’t know. I’m only asking.”

  “Juan has died.”

  “Who?”

  “Juan. The old porter.”

  She was speaking more slowly now, but still far too loudly, as if that was necessary because Norway was so far away. He suspected that she wouldn’t even be able to point to it on a map. It also struck him that she was never closer to him than when she was talking about somebody who’d died. He was not surprised to hear that the old caretaker was dead. He’d had a stroke a few years back, and since then had only been able to shuffle round the courtyard, looking at all the work that needed doing, but he no longer had the strength to do it.

  “When’s the funeral?”

  “It’s already been. I sent flowers from both of us.”

  “Thank you.” There was a swishing and crackling in the receiver. “Maria, I’ll soon be back home. I miss you. I haven’t been unfaithful to you, but this journey has been very important. I feel as if I’m moving around in a dream, as if I’m really back in Buenos Aires. I had to make this trip as there was something I needed to see that I’d never seen before. Not just this foreign furniture in such light colours, but also something inside myself. I’m starting to get old, Maria. A man of my age ought only to make journeys by himself. To find out who he really is. I’ll be a different person when I get back.”

  “What do you mean, a different person?” She sounded worried.

  He knew that Maria was always worrying in case something changed. He wished he hadn’t said that.

  “I’ll be changed for the better. I shall have dinner at home in future. I’ll very seldom dine at La Cãbana and leave you alone.”

  She didn’t believe him and was silent again.

  “I’ve killed a man,” he said. “A man who committed a terrible crime, a long time ago, when I still lived in Germany.”

  Why had he said that? A confession made over the phone from a chalet in the mountains in the Swedish province of Härjedalen to a cramped, damp flat in Buenos Aires. A confession to somebody who didn’t understand what he was talking about, and was even less able to imagine him doing harm to any other person. It was probably because he couldn’t bear any more not having shared his secret with someone else, even if it was only Maria, who wouldn’t understand what he said.

  “When are you coming home?” she said, again.

  “Soon.”

  “They’ve put the rent up again.”

  “Think of me in your prayers.”

  “Because they’ve raised the rent?”

  “Don’t worry about the rent. Just think of me. Every morning and every night.”

  “Do you think of me when you say your prayers?”

  “I don’t say any prayers, Maria, you know that. You’re the one who does that job in our household. I’ll have to stop now. I’ll ring again later.”

  “When?”

  “I can’t say. Goodbye, Maria.”

  He put the phone down, and it at once occurred to him that he ought to have told her he loved her, even if he didn’t. After all, she was the one who was always around, she’d be the one who held his hand when he was dying. He wondered if what he’d told her had sunk in.

  He stood up and went over to one of the low windows. It was light outside now. He looked at the mountains, and in his mind’s eye he could also see Maria, sitting in the plush red armchair next to the little table with the telephone.

  He needed to get back home.

  He made some coffee and opened the front door to let in some air. If anybody were to come along the path to the house, he knew what he would say. He’d tell them he’d killed Molin, but not the other man. But nobody would come, he was convinced of that. He was alone here. He could make this little chalet his base while he tried to find out what had happened to Andersson.

  There was a framed photograph on a shelf. Two children were
sitting on the stone slab under which he’d found the key, smiling at the camera. He took it down and looked at the back. He could just about make out a date: 1998. It also said “Stockholm”. He searched for the name of the owner of the cabin. He found an invoice from an electrical shop in Sveg addressed to a man by the name of Frostengren with a home address in Stockholm. That persuaded him that he need have no fear of being disturbed. The chalet was a long way off the beaten track, and November was not a month for hikers or skiers. The only thing he’d have to avoid was being seen when he joined the main road. He’d also better keep an eye on the other cottages whenever he left or returned, to make sure that they were all shut up for the winter.

  He spent the rest of the day in the chalet. He slept a lot, dreamlessly, and woke up without feeling restless. He drank coffee, grilled a hamburger and occasionally went out to look at the mountains. At about 2 p.m. it started raining. He switched on the light over the table in the living room and sat by the window to work out what to do next.

  There was only one obvious and absolutely incontrovertible starting point: Aron Silberstein or Fernando Hereira, whichever he happened to be at the time, had committed murder. If he’d been a believer, like Maria, that would have ensured eternal hell. He was not a believer, however; as far as he was concerned there were no gods, apart from those he occasionally created for himself in moments of weakness, and then only fleetingly. Gods were for the poor and weak. He was neither poor nor weak. Even as a child he’d cultivated a thick skin, which had become part of his nature as the years went by. He was unsure if he was first and foremost a Jew, or a German emigrant to Argentina. Neither the Jewish religion and traditions, nor the Jewish community had given him any assistance in life.

  He had visited Jerusalem once, in the late 1960s. It was after the third of the wars with Egypt, and it was in no sense a pilgrimage. He’d made the journey out of curiosity and perhaps as a penance for his father, an apology for not yet having traced the man who killed him. Staying at the same hotel as Silberstein in Jerusalem was an old Jewish gentleman from Chicago, an orthodox believer, and they’d often taken breakfast together. Isak Sadler was a friendly man. With a friendly smile that did not disguise the fact that he was still astonished at how it happened, he told Silberstein about how he survived a concentration camp. When the US troops arrived to liberate them, Sadler was so emaciated that he’d had to use his last reserves of strength to let the Americans know he was still alive and shouldn’t be buried. After that it seemed only natural that he should go to America and spend the rest of his life there. One morning they’d spoken about Eichmann, and discussed the principle of revenge. It had been a depressing time for Silberstein. He’d grown resigned by the end of the 1960s, and supposed that he would never be able to trace the man who’d killed his father.

  However, his conversations with Sadler had given him the inspiration to take up the search once more. Sadler had argued very strongly that the execution of Eichmann had been appropriate. The hunt for German Nazis must continue for as long as there was the slightest hope of finding alive any of those who had been associated with the horrendous crimes.

  When he returned from Jerusalem, Silberstein had cared no more about his Jewish origins, but he’d resumed his search and received assistance from Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna, although it led to nothing. He didn’t know it at the time, but he would have to wait until Höllner appeared before he found the clue he’d been looking for.

  He sat in the chalet belonging to the man called Frostengren, gazing at the mountains and valleys. He’d managed to find a needle in a haystack, and when the moment of truth came, he hadn’t hesitated. Molin was dead. Everything had gone according to plan up to that point. Then they’d found the other man, murdered in the woods outside his own house.

  There were similarities between the two deaths, as if whoever killed Andersson had imitated what Silberstein had done with Molin. Two old men who lived on their own. Both had a dog. Both were killed in the open. Yet more important were the differences. He couldn’t tell how much the police had noticed, but he could see the differences because he had had nothing to do with Andersson’s death.

  Silberstein looked at the mountains. Clouds of mist drifted down to the valley. He was close now to a decision. Whoever killed Andersson had tried to make it look as if the same murderer had come back to strike again. This raised an intriguing question: who knew so much about the way Molin died? Silberstein did not know what had been in the newspapers, and he had no idea what the police had revealed at the press conferences they’d presumably held.

  There was another “why” that he was trying to find an answer to. The person who killed Andersson must have had a motive. A spring was wound up, it seemed to him. When Molin died, it triggered some mechanism that meant Andersson had to be killed as well. Why, and by whom? He spent the whole day analysing these questions from different points of view. He made lots of meals, not because he was especially hungry, but to quell his nervousness. He couldn’t help worrying that somehow or other, he was responsible for what happened to Andersson. Was there a secret between the two men? Was there a risk that Andersson might reveal it after Molin’s death? That must have been it. Something he hadn’t known about. Molin’s death meant that somebody had been put in danger, and therefore Andersson had to die as well, to prevent the secret coming out.

  He opened the door and went outside. It smelt of damp moss. Clouds were drifting past, very low. Clouds move in complete silence. He walked slowly round the wooden chalet, then again.

  Another person had appeared in the place where Molin and Andersson lived their lives. A woman. He’d seen her three times, when she came to visit Molin. He’d followed them when they went for walks on forest tracks. Once, during her second visit, they’d gone towards the lake and he’d been afraid they might discover his tent. Luckily they turned back before they came to the last bend. He’d followed them through the trees, like a boy scout or one of those Red Indians he’d read about as a child, in the books by Edward S. Ellis. Sometimes they talked, and very occasionally they’d laughed.

  After their walks they’d gone back to the house, and he’d heard the sound of music. The first time he’d scarcely been able to believe his ears when he heard somebody singing in Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, with the characteristic intonation different from that in any other Spanish-speaking country. After the music, which usually lasted between half an hour and an hour, everything had been quiet. He wondered if they’d been making love. Afterwards Molin had accompanied her to where she’d parked her car. They had shaken hands, never embraced. Then she’d driven away.

  He guessed that woman must have been Elsa Berggren. That was the name with those of Molin and Andersson on the back of the bill the police officer had crumpled up and dropped into the ashtray. He still wasn’t sure what the implications were. Was Berggren another old Nazi who’d withdrawn to Härjedalen?

  He gazed over the hills and tried to work out a possibility. A triangle of Molin, Berggren and Andersson. He didn’t know if Berggren also knew Andersson. Andersson and Berggren had been mere extras in the drama he’d come up to the forests to enact.

  He walked round the house one more time. He thought he could hear an aeroplane in the distance, then only the wind swishing along the sides of the mountains.

  There was no other explanation, it seemed to him, but that there was some kind of link, a secret, between the three of them, just as the policeman had written on that bill. Molin was dead, so Andersson had to die as well. That left only the woman. She must be the one with the key to all this.

  He went back inside. He’d taken another packet of hamburgers out of the freezer, and they were thawing on the draining board. He would have to speak to the Berggren woman to find out what had happened.

  In the evening, he worked out his plan. He had drawn the curtains and put the table lamp on the floor so that no light would seep out into the surrounding darkness. He sat at the table until midnight. By then he k
new what he was going to do. It would be risky, but he had no choice.

  Before going to bed he dialled a telephone number in Buenos Aires. The man who answered was in a hurry. He could hear the hum of conversation in the background.

  “La Cãbana,” the man shouted. “Hello?”

  Silberstein replaced the receiver. The restaurant was still there. Before long he’d be back at his table, next to the window overlooking the side street leading into Avenida Corrientes.

  Next to the telephone was a directory in which he found Elsa Berggren’s number and a town address. He checked the map of Sveg in the phone book and saw that it was a street on the south side of the river. He breathed a sigh of relief: he wouldn’t need to go looking for her house in the forest. The risk of being seen by somebody else would be greater, of course. He wrote the address on a scrap of paper, then put the directory back where he’d found it.

  He slept uneasily. He felt shattered when he woke. He stayed in bed all day, only getting up occasionally to eat some of the food he’d taken out of the freezer.

  He stayed in Frostengren’s chalet for three more days, by which time he could feel his strength returning. On the morning of the fourth day he cleaned the place, and waited until the afternoon before locking up and replacing the key under the stone. When he came to his car, he consulted the map again. Although it was hardly likely that the police would have set up road blocks, he decided not to take the shortest route to Sveg. Instead, he drove north towards Vålådalen. When he came to Mittådalen he turned off towards Hede and came to Sveg just as it was getting dark. He parked on the edge of the little town where there were shops and two petrol stations, and also an information board and a map. He found his way to fröken Berggren’s house. She lived in a white house surrounded by a large garden. There was a light on downstairs. He took a good look around, then returned to his car when he’d seen enough.