The Hand that Trembles (12 page)

She knew that Jan Svensk had not been mistaken. Sven-Arne lived.

The past few years the memory of him had only come back to her from time to time. It could be a smell or a phrase that made her think about Sven-Arne, but then it was never as heavy and piercing as in the beginning.

If only he had died of a heart attack she would have been able to grieve and talk about him as a widow, receive condolences and pretty talk, put on a suitable face and then slowly but surely resume her own life.

But he had been swallowed up by the earth. So typical of Sven-Arne: always the big words about solidarity, but when it came to the small details he was a worm who, egotistically enough, simply disappeared. And in this way, as always, he had the last word. She could never be done with Sven-Arne, shut the book and go on. The uncertainty and the speculations that surfaced from time to time – most recently around the ten-year anniversary of his disappearance – meant that she could not end the chapter.

She had never believed that he had committed suicide. He was too much of a coward for that. Most likely it was a woman – she did not want to use the word ‘mistress’ – who had led him to leave everything: his family, career, and politics.

During the first few months she wanted to stand on the main square, at the county labour meetings, or at City Hall, and just scream out her rage. But it was only Anna-Stina, who had been her best friend since adolescence, with whom she shared her feelings.

When a year had gone by her anger started to fade. She became reconciled with her husband’s disappearance. Or rather, the fact that he was missing made her more conciliatory.

Her financial situation had become more strained, but that wasn’t something she took hard. She had never lived extravagantly and could easily adjust to a more meagre budget. The feeling of having been abandoned gave way to a sense of freedom. She took care of everything herself, she did not have to put up with his monologues at the breakfast table and all of his papers, ‘documents,’ that lay spread out around the house. After only a couple of days she had burnt them in the fireplace.

Now she could not even think the thought that he would float up again, she did not want to imagine him alive. If he were to return to Uppsala against all expectations, she would immediately demand a divorce.

But it would make one person happy: Uncle Ante. Elsa had never understood the love-hate relationship that had existed between him and Sven-Arne. They had almost always fought; it could be about trivial matters, but above all about politics. Nonetheless, Ante was the relative that Sven-Arne had maintained the closest contact with over the years.

For a while she had suspected that Ante conspired with Sven-Arne, that the uncle was in on why and how her husband had disappeared. He denied it, but Elsa was never really sure. If there was anyone to whom Sven-Arne would confide, it would be Ante.

Now he was in an assisted living facility, as good as immobile, one leg amputated below the knee.

His life had consisted of hard labour on the farm and in the forest, thereafter many years as a plumber, and the last few years doing facilities maintenance at a school. That had been easier physically, but with Ante’s temperament it was stressful enough. He was always irritated by the students, seeing them all as hooligans. In 1980 he finally reached retirement age.

Despite his handicap he was unbroken mentally. He seldom to never complained about his aching joints or the vertigo that he suffered – this, Elsa had to admit, was his greatness – but instead he had started to express himself about society with more frequency and intensity, high finance and the ‘overlords.’ He had been a Communist for seventy-five years and he was still the same: incorruptibly loyal to the ideology. Elsa knew that it was this that had both appealed to and irritated Sven-Arne.

She got up from the chair, walked out into the kitchen, but only to sit down once more. She stayed there, staring unseeing into the garden and her thoughts on her husband, whom she had once loved so much. Back then, forty years ago, when he was a plumber – which in hindsight seemed like the most honourable of all professions – he would return all filthy to their little flat in Petterslund, imbued with many smells. There was sweat, welding smoke, a rough smell of iron, and something organic that she could never figure out what it was. It was simply Sven-Arne.

He used to sit down in the kitchen, his hands resting on the table, always with raw knuckles and soiled wrists, and he would smoke a cigarette, every Friday downing a Pilsner, and talk about the events of the day. There was rarely anything out of the ordinary.

Sven-Arne was not a forceful man, but there was a strength in the stories he told and in the lazy tiredness that characterised him an hour or so after his work was done. He did not brag, but Elsa could discern a sprouting self-confidence surrounding him.

She, who had just started her studies, daughter to two teachers, let herself become intoxicated by his scent. There was something exciting, if not forbidden, then veiled in his world, concealed from her. But she could taste it by way of him, his experiences at work, and she felt it so strongly that first year that she would always remember the smell of the young, optimistic plumber, captured by the marked physicality of his being at the kitchen table. You are my man, she often thought, and she laid so much love in those words, which gave way to an increasing distance when the smells disappeared and his wrists were no longer soiled but clad in shirt cuffs.

Sven-Arne started to talk labour unions and politics at the kitchen table, at first casually and with nonchalance, but later – as he became schooled in his profession and the professional community and became more secure in his role – with increasing self-confidence and precision.

He did not appear to realise how this affected her. That was at least what she believed then, forty years ago. But a long time later, when, as a politician, he started to use his experiences from the workplace and his class background, she was struck by the thought that he had always been aware of his position in society, and their relationship. A sort of self-sufficient class pride that he may have sensed attracted her. But at the same time he excluded her – the teachers’ daughter – from his world. He was a man whose justification lay in his story, in the trade he plied and in the language that he spoke. She believed that her education and her future role as university instructor both attracted and frightened him. None of his co-workers was married to an academic.

For many years, Elsa had longed to get back to that feeling in the kitchen, the peaceful chatter and the smell of sweat and welding, even though she understood that it belonged to a time gone by. Now and again, when he had been drinking, the old words and phrases could come back. Then he laughed, for a moment freed of the politician’s mask that he had so carefully adopted. He grabbed her, heavily, drawing her to him, clumsily but with determination. She liked it, but was also embarrassed, because of his lust, his own weakness. Finally she pushed him away, disgusted with her two-faced husband.

* * *

Elsa thought about calling the assisted living facility to tell Ante that Sven-Arne had been spotted in India, but she decided to wait and go to see him instead. Maybe she could surprise the old man and get him to reveal something? If he really had been in league with Sven-Arne.

He cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid as to return to the garden? He should have left town. He knew that Jan Svensk came from an unusually stubborn family. He was probably like his father.

It was only sheer luck that Svensk had not caught him. Sven-Arne had observed him entering the nursery and taken refuge in the little shop at the back of the garden, and there he had hidden himself away while Lester had detained Svensk.

He had watched him leave after a while, and in the Swede’s movements he read anger and frustration. It gave him no satisfaction. Instead, he just felt guilty. Jan Svensk was probably not a bad man, he was simply curious.

Lester immediately came into the shop. He was amused, that much was clear, but made an effort not to show it.

‘He has gone now.’

‘I saw that,’ Sven-Arne Persson said, with curiosity but at the same time unwilling to listen to what Svensk had said.

‘Do you know where Harsha hotel is?’

‘Of course,’ Sven-Arne said, ‘in Shivajinagar, not far from Russell Market.’

‘If you want to, you can find him there.’

Lester smiled, and Sven-Arne did not understand what was so funny.

‘Sven-Arne, is that your name?’

Lester had such a peculiar pronunciation of his name that at first Sven-Arne did not catch it.

‘No, my name is John Mailer. I am John Mailer. And what would I want with him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lester said, ‘but he said that you had been a powerful man in your country. That you were a politician and in charge of many, like a governor. It confused me.’

‘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.

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.