The Hand that Trembles (2 page)

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.’ 

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.