The Hand that Trembles

by Kjell Eriksson

  ‘A powerful man!’ Sven-Arne stared at his co-worker. For the first time in twelve years, Sven-Arne mistrusted his motives. What was he trying to say?

  ‘I am not powerful,’ he said. ‘I am just a human being like anyone else.’

  ‘You are an unusual person,’ Lester said slowly. ‘You may have a terrible past.’

  Never before had he censured the Swede, never snooped in his background or his reasons for coming to India, never questioned his work as a day labourer in a botanical garden, and had never pressed him in this way. For that was what it was. In his words there was a criticism, Sven-Arne understood this.

  ‘You may be a murderer,’ Lester went on, unconcerned.

  Sven-Arne stared at him, even more perplexed.

  ‘It is of no consequence to me.’

  ‘What do you mean? Do you think I—’

  ‘It does not matter who you were!’

  A couple of shop clerks looked up.

  ‘Here in India we are equal,’ Lester said, now much more softly, ‘at least those of us who dig in the earth. Even if you had been the governor it doesn’t matter. You have no servants here. Here we are equals.’

  Sven-Arne relaxed. He smiled at his friend and took hold of his left upper arm, squeezed it and felt the sinewy muscles under his shirt.

  ‘I won’t leave Bangalore immediately,’ Sven-Arne said abruptly. ‘I don’t think the Swede will come back. And it may be a while before he returns to Sweden and talks. He may go to the police, I don’t know, perhaps my … It doesn’t matter. I will stay here a few days, then we will see.’

  ‘Can’t you talk with this old neighbour? Perhaps convince him to keep quiet?’ Sven-Arne knew that Lester was testing him. If he had made himself guilty of ‘something horrible’ in his homeland, then chances were minimal that Jan Svensk would be willing to forget the whole thing.

  ‘I think he will tell his family and they will not be able to keep quiet.’

  ‘And if you ask him to?’

  Sven-Arne smiled.

  ‘Shall we get back to work?’ he said, and felt a sudden surge of joy. He needed the exertion of digging, weeding, watering, and carrying pots in order to keep his thoughts from Sweden and his former life, from the threat of being exposed. This last day had been discombobulating. He had not been able to think clearly, but it was as if his talk with Lester made everything fall into place again. Perhaps he didn’t need to worry? If Jan Svensk was going to announce his ‘find’ in Bangalore when he returned home, who would believe him – the county commissioner as day labourer in an Indian garden? Would anyone take the trouble to travel all the way here in order to check it out?

  Sven-Arne Persson decided not to let Svensk trouble him any longer. The humiliation he experienced when he left Lal Bagh need not awaken any need for revenge; instead Jan Svensk might prefer to forget the whole thing. Sven-Arne convinced himself that the Svensk affair was over.

  FOURTEEN

  Two days later Jan Svensk stood once more at the entrance to the nursery. He was one of the first that morning to have bought a ticket to Lal Bagh. This time he had demanded to get the change. He had nodded at the man in the wheelchair and quickly walked past him without a word.

  He walked down the main path with a determined stride, so different from the hesitant steps he took last time, scanning the side paths with radar alertness, rounding a thicket, and there, by the shed out of which Lester had taken an axe, was Sven-Arne Persson sitting on a low, three-legged stool. He was setting the teeth of a saw. He moved the file back and forth across the teeth, paused and tested the sharpness with a finger, then continued with his work.

  His long, bony back was bent over, the hair on his neck sparse, a little grey, and sticking out in different directions. Through a tear in the dingy tank top that Sven-Arne Persson was wearing one could see his spine.

  It had been a long time since Jan Svensk had seen someone sharpening a saw, in his childhood maybe, at his uncle’s, whose cleverly stacked woodpiles were known all over Järlåsa. For a moment he felt uncomfortable at the idea of interrupting his work, but nonetheless took a couple of steps closer. The sound from the file was mechanical and regular.

  ‘Hello there, Sven-Arne.’

  The filing stopped, the county commissioner stiffened but did not turn.

  ‘I come with greetings for you.’

  Sven-Arne turned his head. The look he gave Jan Svensk was filled with disgust, not fear; pure unfettered loathing, as if his visitor had brought with him a stinking load of something intended for the heap in front of the shed.

  ‘You recognise me, don’t you? We were neighbours. I have …’ He fell silent, unsure how to proceed.

  Sven-Arne put down the file. ‘You should leave,’ he said. ‘It’s not good for you to be here.’

  Jan Svensk looked around. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Go. My friends are here. You have no place here, unless you are looking for work. Do you want to dig? Can you dig? Eight hours a day in ninety-degree weather. Not much pay. Can you even begin to—’

  Sven-Arne’s fury caused him to fling the saw aside.

  ‘Don’t you come here with your questions and your shit!’

  ‘There’s no point in threatening me. I don’t want to hurt you, and you should know that. I’ve got a message for you.’

  ‘I don’t want a message! I want to be left in peace, and you should understand that!’

  Sven-Arne had risen to his feet and stretched out his right hand, pointing at his visitor. Jan Svensk noticed a scar that stretched from his hand far up his arm.

  ‘From your wife, Elsa.’

  Sven-Arne dropped his arm and stared at the intruder.

  ‘Elsa,’ he managed to get out.

  Jan-Svensk nodded, vengefully pleased at the shock he had managed to cause, but the message he had to deliver was no joyful greeting.

  ‘She has been run over by a lorry and is currently unconscious.’

  ‘Then how can she send me a message?’ Sven-Arne spat.

  ‘They operated on her and she has not woken up. But before then she was able to speak.’

  ‘Speak?’

  The former county commissioner had trouble envisioning his wife ‘speaking’ as if she were standing at a podium, orating.

  ‘Your parents must have squealed.’

  Svensk nodded. His mother had bumped into Elsa Persson on the street outside the row of town houses where they lived. She was barely recognisable. The normally so well groomed and balanced woman had looked ‘terrible’, with her hair in disarray and her features twisted in a combination of confusion and anger. Margareta Svensk had asked her if she was all right. At first Elsa Persson had simply stared at her neighbour, as if she did not understand the question or even recognise who she was. Then she had burst into tears.

  Margareta Svensk had pushed open the gate and firmly guided Elsa into the house, taken off her coat, and prevailed upon her to sit down at the kitchen table. And there she had sat with a catatonic gaze, muttering, crying, and cursing.

  ‘And what did she want to tell me?’

  ‘According to my mother she had been to see your uncle Ante,’ Svensk said placidly, unaffected by Sven-Arne’s aggressive tone.

  Sven-Arne stared at him in bewilderment.

  ‘He must be one hundred years,’ Svensk continued. ‘I remember him from when I was a child, he was old even then.’

  ‘Get to the point, you bastard.’

  Sven-Arne Persson tasted his own words. It was the first time in twelve years that he was speaking Swedish with someone eye-to-eye.

  ‘She was extremely upset by the visit. When she came home she was like a zombie. Mother had all the trouble in the world getting even so much as a single word out of her. When she had calmed down a little, she went home. One hour later, my mother saw her leave again. Then came the police. According to witnesses she had gone straight out into the traffic on Luthagsleden Expressway. The light was red, but she walked straight out. A
lorry ran over her.’

  Sven-Arne sank down on the stool.

  ‘Why did she get so upset? The day before my mother had told her that I had seen you here in Bangalore and she took it in stride. She actually did not react at all. “I see,” was all she said. No questions, nothing, but then after visiting your uncle it was as if her whole world came crashing down. Ante told her he was working on his memoirs and that all would be revealed. What did he mean by that? My mother didn’t get it. Do you?’

  Sven-Arne did not reply. After a long period of silence Svensk sat down in front of him.

  ‘What are you doing here? Why did you leave?’

  Sven-Arne looked up.

  ‘Because I am a traitor,’ he said finally.

  ‘What or whom did you betray? Your wife?’

  The one-time county commissioner snorted. He saw an image of Uncle Ante. The old man was still affecting his life. ‘Almost one hundred.’ Yes, in ten years. He would probably live another ten years. What had he said to Elsa?

  ‘How did you get out of the country?’

  ‘By air, of course.’

  ‘But you had left your passport at home.’

  ‘There are other ways,’ Sven-Arne said. ‘I was a parole mentor. I did that for about twenty years. Small-time guys whose life had taken a wrong turn. I got to know a bunch of them real well, some of them became my friends. They taught me a lot.’

  He let the words sink in, proud in an indeterminate sort of way over the fact that he had managed to trick everyone and go up in smoke without leaving a trace. He had often wondered if he had left some clue behind, but realised now that everyone was still puzzled by his disappearance.

  ‘I was a court-appointed guardian as well,’ he went on. ‘John Lundberg recruited me. There are no politicians like him anymore. Talk about betrayal.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Sven-Arne shook his head. He didn’t really want to talk politics, especially not about the movement he had served for almost four decades, ever since he had become a member of SSU Club in Svartbäcken as a fourteen-yearold, but for some reason he was pulled into the discussion. Maybe because for the first time in twelve years he had an audience, the old rhetoric floated up like a greeting from an age gone by.

  ‘If you look at the party, the one I belonged to, as a body – a living organism – then it was poisoned in small doses. Gradually there were changes for the worse, so that with each new generation it developed a new handicap, a new defect.’

  ‘But you were part of that body,’ Svensk objected. ‘You were Mr Socialist around town.’

  ‘I know. But I left.’

  ‘And ended up here?’

  The politician turned day labourer nodded and smiled tightly.

  ‘Here,’ he repeated, and waved his hand, ‘in the centre of the world. Right here, in this insignificant little garden, is the centre of the world. For Lester and for everyone else who works here. We see the world from here and it looks very different compared to the perspective from Uppsala City Hall.’

  ‘Why Bangalore?’

  ‘There are worse places. I do good here. The garden I help to plant will survive both you and me.’

  ‘Was coming here a way to make amends? For your sins in the rich-man country of Sweden?’

  Sven-Arne chuckled.

  ‘Have you seen anything of India, other than your air-conditioned office?’

  ‘Not much,’ Jan Svensk admitted. ‘But you gave up on the ones who believed in you. You were popular, people liked you. I know Dad talked about it all the time: If they hadn’t had Sven-Arne then …’

  ‘That’s a load of shit,’ Sven-Arne said, and stood up. ‘You don’t understand anything. You must be one of these IT idiots who comes over and destroys this country. What do you know about suffering?’

  ‘Then tell me! I’m not as stupid as you think. And if you think that computer technology and the Internet is destroying India then you haven’t understood one iota of the world. You go around planting trees and that’s fine, but there is also another world. People want to meet each other, not just in a garden but online. Last time I was here I saw a school class playing in the park. Do you think they want to be labourers when they grow up?’

  Sven-Arne turned on his heel and left, with steps at first as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave his countryman and their exchange, but the closer he came to the exit the more he hurried his pace, so that finally he was half running out of the garden.

  Lester and a handful of his other co-workers observed him but did nothing to stop him.

  They did not know it was the last time they would see the man they had got to know as John Mailer.

  FIFTEEN

  They walked through the forest. Bosse Marksson had told her that the original owners of the land – an older couple with no children – had subdivided the property bit by bit to make way for half a dozen holiday home lots, and sold the remaining acres to a retired executive director ten years ago.

  ‘They had a small farm, which is common around these parts. A free life, but a slog, you could summarise it,’ he went on once they had reached the beach.

  They looked around. The sun reflected in the water and created a play of sparkles when the occasional breeze ruffled the surface.

  ‘Can you see the sheep fence?’

  Lindell nodded.

  ‘The new owner, the General as he was called, got himself four sheep and fenced off the whole lot, stopped people from using the docking places they had used for a couple of generations, and put up signs saying it was private property. He even pulled the fence right through a lilac bower. It hadn’t mattered before, if a couple of lilac bushes had ended up in the wrong spot by a couple of metres, but the General corrected all that. It was like the Berlin Wall through a coffee table.’

  ‘What had he been the executive director of?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  They walked a while before Marksson suddenly stopped.

  ‘Here it was,’ he said, pointing. ‘You’ve seen the photos.’

  They remained standing at the spot. Nothing about the little stretch of beach was out of the ordinary: some exposed rock face, stretches of nothing but round stones sanded by the water, occasional juniper bushes and unruly mops of brown-yellow grasses. A few metres from the shoreline there was a tall pine tree, at least seventy centimetres in diameter at the base, which supported a rough trunk and a sprawling crown in which half of the branches were dried up.

  ‘You searched …’

  ‘Yes, all of the forest up to the gravel road, about a kilometre in each direction, but probably more carefully to the south. We found nothing. At least no matching right foot.’

  ‘Why more carefully to the south?’

  ‘As I wrote in the report, we thought a fox had dragged the foot here, and it couldn’t have got through the fence to the north. We had snow a couple of days ago and I saw fox tracks myself not far from here.’

  ‘So you think it came from the south? If it was a fox.’

  Marksson nodded.

  ‘You wrote that there are thirty-eight properties in a radius of a thousand metres. You have of course visited all of them?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve gone door-to-door in a much bigger area than that. All the way to Näsviken and along the road to Almbäck.’

  The place-names did not mean anything to Lindell, but she was convinced her colleagues had put in a considerable amount of work. She looked out over the bay, which was more like a gulf carved into the land. On the other side of the water, about eight hundred metres away, there was a low wooded ridge, connected with the mainland by a thin strip of land. The open sea lay to the south. Smoke from what she guessed were chimneys rose up from the point. She glimpsed a couple of houses but the shoreline was completely undeveloped. It had surprised her earlier that such large areas were untouched, although development on the coast had been significant, with the construction of holiday homes for residents of both Uppsala and Stockholm. The l
egal protection of the coastline had worked more or less as intended.

  ‘It’s sheltered in here,’ she said, indicating the bay.

  ‘Yes, Bultudden Point acts as a wave breaker towards the north and east,’ Marksson replied, after a long silence.

  She had grown used to his voice. The fact was that he was indeed a ‘good sort,’ as Ottosson had claimed, not particularly chatty but communicative and open. Lindell guessed that it had mainly been her prejudices coming into play – assuming that a policeman from the most remote part of the county would be dismissive and patronising toward a female colleague from the big city.

  ‘What do you think? You have far greater experience,’ he said, as if to confirm his unusually enlightened attitude.

  ‘I don’t know. You’ve done a good job so far, but I see nothing in this material that gets me to think—’

  ‘We have one observation that seems more exciting,’ Marksson interrupted. ‘About a week ago a car came down into this area, past the General’s place, and it returned after half an hour. The General’s wife keeps an eye on everyone who comes by.’

  ‘And she didn’t recognise it?’

  ‘No, nor could she say what kind it was, other than it was small and red.’

  ‘Then we have a couple of kinds to choose from,’ Lindell said.

  ‘At this time of year most of the summer cottages are closed up. People may come out on the weekends, but other than that it’s quiet.’

  ‘But there are full-time residents farther down the road?’

  ‘Four of them, but none of them have or have had visits from any red cars, as far as they say, at least.’

  ‘Too late for mushroom pickers,’ Lindell said, mainly to herself. ‘Is there any hunting at the moment?’

  ‘No.’ Marksson chuckled. ‘Not legal, anyways.’

  ‘You think the foot belongs to a foreigner.’

  ‘I don’t know about foreign.’

  Lindell smiled to herself. ‘Blackfoot Indian’ and ‘charred’ was what Marksson had said on the phone.