The Hand that Trembles (6 page)

Sven-Arne tapped the driver’s shoulder and gave him a different address.

‘Yes, sir,’ he answered, with a nod of his head, and made a daring U-turn that caused the rickshaw to lurch and the drivers of surrounding vehicles to throw themselves on their horns.

He turned onto Regency Road and drove north, passing Brigade Street and taking a left onto MG Road.

Sven-Arne Persson leant back in the rickshaw but observed everyone who drove up alongside them and he scrutinised the pavements as if he were a newcomer to the city.

Somewhere in the crowd was Jan Svensk.

Hotel Ajantha was located at the end of a side street on MG Road. He had never been to the hotel before but knew that its clientele consisted of Indians from the lower middle class as well as the occasional European on a tight budget. His chances of encountering Jan Svensk here were minimal.

A man was snoozing on a couch in the dingy reception area, but he woke up when Sven-Arne walked in. The man blinked at him but made no attempt to get up. Sven-Arne greeted him in English and asked if there was a room for the night.

The man got up reluctantly and walked over to the front desk, opened the ledger, and pointed at a row without saying a word, then turned and pointed to a posterboard that stated the cost of the room was 990 rupees per night. That was more than he spent on food for a week.

‘Okay,’ he said, and wrote down a name that he made up that instant: Lester Young.

‘Passport number,’ the receptionist said, unselfconsciously scratching himself in the crotch.

Sven-Arne wrote down eight numbers without hesitation and said he was Australian.

‘One night, pay now.’

Room 101 was spartan: a bed, a chair, a rickety table with a television set. That was all. Sven-Arne lay down on the bed. He stared at the blades of the fan and noticed the grey layer of dust that had sprouted like a fungus over the base attached to the ceiling. Somewhere a telephone rang and someone hollered ‘Hello.’ Muted voices floated through the open ventilation to the courtyard, steps on the stone patio and a man’s hoarse laughter. There was a life out there, a contextual web that had been torn from him in the blink of an eye.

Images of his former native land came and went over the next few hours as he lay on the bed, incapable of getting to his feet, much less undressing and crawling in between the sheets. It was images of his past that he was fishing up out of his inner depths. He rarely or never read about Sweden in the Indian newspapers and was completely cut off from the great, decisive political events. Sometimes he accidentally came across a news item on Sweden, often about sports or amusing writings on climate or other rarities that had to do with the country’s exotic placement on the globe. It could be some ice hotel in the north, or now most recently a storm that had struck the southern parts and apparently taken out forests. Of course he had read about the killing of the foreign minister. He had met her during her time in SSU and recalled an enthusiastic young woman, and he remembered thinking she would either be broken or go very far. Now she was dead.  

About the small world, about Uppsala county politics, his old friends and acquaintances, who had married, had children, or died during his twelve years abroad, he knew nothing.  

From time to time he experienced a burning anxiety, a longing to meet someone from the past who could tell him. This happened especially in the beginning of his stay in Bangalore, but now and then this gnawing desire to get the information that created connections returned.  

Out of nowhere he had the thought that Jan Svensk was perhaps the person who had been dispatched by an unseen hand as a messenger from his former life. Perhaps he had messages such as … well, what? What kind of information could seriously mean anything? What was there to gladden the expatriate, to add anything to his life? What did he need? Wouldn’t the knowledge of births and deaths, about neighbours’ and local politicians’ lives, simply knock him off-kilter, perhaps risk his entire existence?  

He did not need this knowledge! But sometimes he wondered if his wife was still alive, and if so, how she was doing. Had she taken up with someone new?  

Sven-Arne suddenly stood up, walked over and turned on the television, found the remote control, and started to cruise through the channels.  

He sank down on the bed and stared unseeing at a film. A woman ran up a gentle slope, paused at a tree, melodramatically surveyed a valley, and then started a languishing song. Sven-Arne gathered that she had run away from her husband and was now looking for the man she had loved from early youth. Always the same story, he thought, convinced that she or her beloved would die before the film came to an end.

He pressed the remote and came to the local news channel. There was a picture of the Swedish king in the background, as well as Taj West End hotel, one of the more luxurious in the city.

Sven-Arne chuckled. The events of the afternoon and evening were such an unlikely chain of events that it was almost a parody. First the memories of his childhood streets, then the meeting with the Swedish couple in MG Road, then Jan Svensk at Koshy’s, and now the Swedish head of state on the television screen. Maybe Jan Svensk was in town for the Swedish activities that the news anchor was talking about? The Swedish Trade Council was opening an office in Bangalore and had invited King Carl Gustaf for the event.

The streets were probably crawling with Swedes. He had to be careful. It was completely possible that there were others among the accompanying Swedes, beyond Jan Svensk, who would recognise him as the missing politician.

Sven-Arne Persson fell asleep very late. The last conscious thought in his head was centred on the children of St Mary’s school. How would they react if he simply disappeared from town, as much as he had always lectured them on the importance of punctuality? 

It was just before two o’clock. The sound from the street had abated in intensity but a car or motorcycle would occasionally drive down the monsoon-ravaged street. It had been one of the rainiest Bangalore Octobers in memory and this had left its mark. The streets were ruined, large potholes created dangerous traps, the water had turned the surface to washing boards, and whole pavements had collapsed, so undermined had they become.

And still it rained. More sporadically in the interior and not as violently as two, three weeks ago, but as recently as the past few days hundreds of people had died. Weddings had been rendered impossible because brides and bridegrooms had not been able to be brought together. School instruction had been suspended and everyone talked of ‘the great depression.’ Jan Svensk finally understood that this referred to a powerful low pressure weather system out at sea.

In addition, it was unexpectedly cold. The newspaper, which appeared tucked into the door handle every morning, indicated that it was time to get out one’s winter clothes, as the temperature the day before had sunk to the record low of fifty-six degrees.

The hospitals had been deluged by those seeking assistance, suffering coughs and fevers, and even Svensk had been stricken by ‘the big depression.’ He could not sleep, and it was not the rain that was keeping him awake, nor – as in the first few days – the jet lag; it was his thoughts of Sven-Arne Persson, and by extension Uppsala and his own life. Anxiety caused him to writhe on his bed, turn on the reading lamp, open a book for a while only to lay it aside, turn out the light, and try once again to fall asleep.

Now he had given up. He glanced at the telephone. Should he call home to Elise? It was only half past nine in the evening in Uppsala. But he abandoned the thought. They had spoken recently and she would wonder why he was calling so soon after they last talked. A conversation that contained the usual phrases but lacked all warmth. Jan Svensk had replaced the receiver with sadness, well aware that something was missing, and he grew increasingly morose as he recalled how joyless their exchange had been. No words of love, nothing of longing or desire, only the routine talk of everyday, if there had been exciting mail, if someone had called, how the weather had been, how the children were. He had talked about Bangalore in an uninspired way, the weather, the masses of people, his ongoing work.

Everything was fine. No one had called. No, mostly bills and some of his magazines. The children were well. No, they were with friends. It was snowing.

It’s raining here, he thought, and looked at the brick tiles that covered the hotel entryway. Many of the tiles were chipped, which he found irritating. Suddenly he caught a motion on the wall above the entrance. A squirrel scampering along a thirty-centimetre-wide ledge running under the windows on the third floor. It was running back and forth in an anxious manner. Clearly it wanted to get down. But how had it ended up there? At one end of the ledge there was only a ninety-degree corner to a smooth concrete wall and the other end looked equally unpromising. But there was also a tree – it looked to be a rubber plant – admittedly a couple of metres out from the wall, but it was also the only thing that could offer a way out of the nervous back and forth. It was clear that the squirrel had also come to this conclusion, because it started pausing for longer and longer stretches at this corner, leaning forward daringly and examining the leaves shiny with rain, before leaving once more for the other end.

And so it went on. Jan Svensk followed it with his gaze, increasingly sympathetic to the miserable creature. No, don’t stay there, he thought, as the squirrel calculated the distance to the tree. Jump! You can do it. You’re a squirrel.

A final check, a quick shake of his body, stillness and concentration for a couple of seconds, and then came the jump.

The squirrel disappeared into the dark interior of the tree. Jan Svensk remained standing at the window for a little longer. A moped sputtered along on the street. The rain fell.

The distraction offered by the moments when he had been so absorbed by the squirrel’s actions had somewhat lightened his mood.  

It occurred to him that he could call home and talk about the unlikely chance encounter with Sven-Arne Persson, but put this out of his mind. If he was going to call anyone about this, it would be his parents. They had been acquainted with Persson. He should call them anyway; they always received his calls with genuine warmth and gave expression to an embarrassing mixture of pride and worry. But he decided he would put this off for one more day; he needed to think the whole thing through.

He crawled into bed, turned off the light, and rearranged his pillows in a way that he thought would facilitate sleep.

He woke up at half past four, awakened by the signal from some kind of service phone on the wall of the corridor outside.

The call was over after a brief but loud discussion. Jan Svensk then heard the lift mechanism start up and in his half sleeping and dazed state he associated it with a war film he had seen in his youth. There it was the mechanism to a giant piece of artillery that regulated the sight of a cannon – a contraption that set its sights on the intended target with no apparent human intervention. The machinery was composed of well-oiled cogs and pins that coldly and unhesitatingly brought the deadly things into firing mode.

For a second, there was a cut to the triumphant face of the commander, and thereafter the flames from the fire against the backdrop of the night sky. The mighty thunder and high-pitched whine of the projectiles were amplified by the speakers of the cinema.

Jan Svensk could no longer remember what the target was, but most likely it was a ship making its way through the Atlantic night, whose crew was secure in the belief that they were at a safe distance from the enemy coastline and firepower.

How wrong they were, Jan Svensk thought, and shortly returned to sleep.

He was number sixteen. An inquisitive fellow from Trollhättan had once asked if he could name his fifteen predecessors. No one knows, not even the man asking the question – who was quickly escorted out – what the answer would have been.

Jan Svensk had heard about this incident and came to think of it as he watched the Swedish regent enter the ballroom at Taj West End hotel. All of the other guests turned their heads in unison as if they were watching a tennis match, but without the return volleys. Their heads and eyes were locked on the king.

‘How short he is,’ someone was heard to remark.

He was relatively casually dressed, no medal-weighted uniform, but he moved jerkily, perhaps because he was not in control of where he was going. An experienced aide-de-camp in a white uniform led him around.

The noise level resumed after a while and the approximately three hundred returned to the gossip and easy chatter so characteristic of an event such as this. Sometimes, however, faces lit up with a genuine joy, old friends reunited.

A handful of photographers circulated in the crowd, but mostly around the king and those who had managed to capture his attention. It was obvious that the goal for many was to be photographed with the famous guest.

‘A spectacle,’ Jan Svensk commented to a co-worker.  

‘And we get bread,’ the latter said, skillfully snatching a toothpick-pierced morsel from a passing plate.  

A number of people from the Swedish Trade Council were gathered in a circle like a flock of schoolboys, one peal of laughter ringing out after another.  

It was a relaxed atmosphere. Young and old jostled at the bar, Indians and Swedes, like gnus at the watering hole.  

The king was led around, a strained, somewhat uncertain smile on his lips.  

‘Poor man,’ someone said.  

‘He probably would like nothing better than to have a drink and take it easy,’ said a young woman, whom Jan Svensk had noticed already when she arrived.  

He approached the group she belonged to, and looked to see if he could spot anyone in her midst that he recognised.  

An Indian man, dressed in what appeared to be a down jacket and a long kurta, and his friend, with a narrow face, thin moustache, and kind eyes, were introduced to the king. Jan Svensk drew closer in order to listen in. They turned out to be theatre people from Mysore.