The Hand that Trembles (7 page)

A man with a blond crew cut, wearing a Nehru jacket, was explaining their work to the king.  

‘Ah, children’s theatre,’ the regent said finally.  

The men nodded and smiled.  

‘Very good,’ the king said, and then that audience was over.  

Jan Svensk drew back, mingled, but mostly longed for the buffet. An old acquaintance, whom Svensk had got to know when they worked together at Arcore but had not seen since then, came over and thumped him on the back.

‘It wasn’t exactly yesterday,’ he said.

Svensk examined his former colleague. He was one of the ones who had sold in time. It was rumoured that his profit was close to 70 million kronor. He was the same, the same smile and boyish appearance. But Svensk would never again allow himself to be taken in by such appearances. He had lost some of those kronor.

‘Feeding at the trough, I see,’ Svensk said.

‘Of course,’ his former colleague replied. ‘What are you up to these days?’

Svensk suddenly felt that he had no desire to discuss what he had done since they last met, not what he was up to, nor what he was doing in Bangalore, not anything actually that had to do with work.

‘Various things,’ he said.

‘Good stuff,’ his former colleague said, and sailed off. The message had gone through.

Elise, he thought, you should be here. An unexpected longing for her made him withdraw, back up for a party crossing his path, and set his sights on the buffet that had not yet been opened up. Then he went around and read from the small labels what was hiding under the well-polished lids.

‘Hungry?’ he heard a woman say behind his back, and he was taken with the thought that it was the young woman he had spied earlier and he turned expectantly.

Before him stood a woman in her sixties. She was wearing a light blue sari folded around her generous body.  

‘Well, well,’ he said.  

‘I don’t recognise you,’ she went on.  

He pulled out the same old story again, for God knows which time, who he was and why he had come to Bangalore.

‘Gunlög Billström,’ she said, introducing herself. ‘I belong to the residents. I was “bangalored” long before most of the others.’

‘How long have you lived here?’

‘In India almost eighteen years, in Bangalore fourteen.’

‘Then you know most of the Swedes in the city?’

‘It is my area,’ she said with a smile. ‘I am the one who keeps tabs on the colonials.’

‘Sven-Arne Persson?’ he said.

The woman shook her head and her large earrings rattled.

‘From Uppsala. Around sixty, tall, fairly thin …’

A new shake.

‘He may have been here ten years.’

‘Strange,’ she said.

‘I thought you kept tabs on everyone,’ Svensk teased.

His comment had the desired effect. He saw her make an effort to play out the role she had laid claim to.

‘What does he do?’

‘I’ve no idea. He disappeared from Uppsala some ten, twelve years ago. I think it was 1993. Without a trace. And now I saw him here yesterday.’

‘That sounds exciting. A man who disappears.’

‘He was a county commissioner in Uppsala.’

The woman took a step closer. ‘Where did you see him?’

‘At Koshy’s.’

‘Strange,’ she repeated.

Then the lids to the food came off and the human wave that welled forth came between them. He saw her grab hold of a plate and be carried off by the race to the dishes that caused the ravenous masses to stream over to Svensk’s side of the festively lit ballroom. In the background, the Adolf Fredrik Boys’ Choir was singing
‘Uti Vår Hage’.
The sound of talking in the room had died down. The focus was now on the food. Jan Svensk lingered in the background for a while observing the action, although he was very hungry. He exchanged a glance with the kitchen staff and they smiled at each other.

When the worst of the rush was over, he took a plate and helped himself to the delicacies.

When the time was approaching eleven, the crowd had thinned considerably. The king had retired. A couple of Svensk’s colleagues were standing around the bar, but he did not feel like joining them. It was enough with work during the day.

Gunlög Billström had also stayed behind. She was talking with the Swedish ambassador and the general consul of Chennai. Their gazes met and it made Svensk think of something important.

He approached the trio of women.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, and it was only the wine that allowed him to be so forward.

He introduced himself, told the ambassador and consul that he was looking for a Swedish man, missing for many years, and then turned to Gunlög Billström.

‘There was a piece of information I forgot to give you. Sven-Arne Persson is wall-eyed.’

‘Wall-eyed?’

‘Cross-eyed, only his eyes go in different directions,’ Svensk clarified.

‘Oh, then I know!’ Billström exclaimed. ‘I have seen him. It was at Lal Bagh. An extraordinary thing.’

She grabbed his arm, looking from the ambassador to the consul, and nodded enthusiastically, clearly satisfied to be someone who knew what was going on, before she turned her attention back to Svensk.

The ambassador and consul took the opportunity to slip away.

‘You see, it was perhaps three years ago. I was walking in Lal Bagh …’

‘What is Lal Bagh?’ Svensk interrupted.

‘The botanical gardens. I was there with a couple of girlfriends and then we see a man who is standing in some kind of thicket. Maybe it was bamboo, I don’t know. In the middle of that mess, with a big knife in his hand, or perhaps a saw, hacking wildly around him. It looked very funny. Suddenly, just as we were walking past, he called out. In Swedish! As you can guess, I was flabbergasted. A worker at Lal Bagh who speaks Swedish, can you imagine?’

‘What did he say?’

Gunlög Billström lowered her voice. ‘He said “Fucking hell.” He had cut his arm, not anything serious from what I understood, but there was some blood. We stopped and one of my friends asked him if he was all right.’

‘In Swedish?’

‘No, no, she is Indian. She was speaking English, not fluently of course, but fully comprehensible English. He was very polite, thanked her for her concern, and explained that it was a minor laceration. He actually used the Swedish word “a minor
blessyr
”.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘No, I did not want to embarrass him by speaking Swedish.’

Jan Svensk sensed that it was she who had felt embarrassed by a fellow countryman doing simple gardening.

‘What did he look like?’

‘He was cockeyed. We commented on it afterwards. My friends said they were convinced he must have some kind of special task, perhaps something to do with research.’

‘Because he was cockeyed, or because he was a Westerner?’

‘Oh, something like that.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Fifty or sixty, quite tall and lanky. He was stuck in all that greenery so it is hard to say. He was barefoot but his sandals were placed next to the bushes. I thought that would have been strange if he was a researcher. Surely they don’t work in bare feet?’

‘No,’ Svensk agreed, ‘I wouldn’t think that would be usual. You haven’t seen him on any other occasions?’

‘No, strangely enough. I have been to Lal Bagh many times since, but have never bumped into him again. I have not wanted to ask for him, either. It seemed intrusive.’

Jan Svensk asked where the garden was located.

‘It is so pleasant to walk there, in Cubbon Park also for that matter. But especially in the morning. Of course, I don’t like all the doves.’

Jan Svensk laughed.

‘But,’ Gunlög Billström resumed, while she carefully but deliberately placed her arm around Jan Svensk’s back and guided him to a calmer part of the room where they sank down into armchairs, ‘is there something mysterious about him? I mean, is he a fugitive from justice?’

‘Not that I know. He just disappeared.’

‘Was it love?’

Gunlög Billström’s expression, and the way she leant in toward Svensk, clearly said that this was something she viewed with a benign eye and that he should feel free to tell her everything he knew about the amorous adventures of the former county commissioner without reservation. Her confidential tone, which Jan Svensk sensed was not based only in curiosity but at least as much in a desire for something romantic and deeply human in the mystification around Sven-Arne Persson, caused her to lower her voice so much that he had trouble hearing her.

‘You see, we just run after material things,’ she said, and let her gaze sweep over the room. ‘It would be so liberating if someone gave way to their heart. I can see him there in the garden, going about his trivial tasks, but, in his heart of hearts, so very happy. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?’

Her face glowed, and in some obscure way Jan Svensk was moved by her words. She was no longer just a gossipmonger, one who closely followed the goings-on of Bangalore’s Swedish colony. Suddenly she appeared beautiful, with her somewhat wilted features.

‘Yes, it would be amazing,’ he agreed.

She clasped one of his hands in both of hers.

‘We can go to Lal Bagh together,’ she enthused. ‘I can show you around and then we might find your mysterious friend together.’

Jan Svensk carefully retracted his hand.

‘I don’t think I will lay down more trouble on this. I was mostly curious. Would you like another glass of wine?’

Gunlög Billström shook her head. Jan Svensk sat back.

‘He isn’t really my friend. I was just curious in general, as I said, but I am not prepared to run my legs off for his sake. If it really was him, then perhaps he wants to be left in peace, what do I know?’

She looked at him. He knew she was trying to discern something in his face that spoke against his apparent indifference. He smiled at her.

‘I think I will refill my glass,’ he said. ‘If you will excuse me …’

She made a quick gesture with her hand and almost immediately a waiter with a bottle appeared beside him. He held out his glass and the waiter refilled it.

Gunlög Billström opened her purse and held out her card.

‘Do as you like,’ she said, and smiled, ‘but if you change your mind, give me a call. I just mostly sit around at home, staring at a bloody cricket field, going to pot.’

He took her card, surprised by her choice of words, studied it, and then slipped it into his coat pocket.

‘That’s kind of you,’ he said, and tried to think of a comment that could dampen her outburst.

‘The boys are fun to look at but cricket drives me crazy, can you understand that? Cricket gives me a migraine.’ She spat out her words. ‘They can go at it for days, the newspapers are filled with drivel, and there is national mourning and rioting if they lose. As if what this country needs is cricket!’

Gunlög Billström changed as her bitterness was revealed; a desperation appeared in her eyes and her apparent dissatisfaction which she was unexpectedly sharing with him – a newcomer and temporary visitor and therefore perhaps safe – sullied her features, almost to the point of disfigurement.

Jan Svensk was filled with pity, but also regret that he had turned down her suggestion that she help him find Sven-Arne Persson. He regretted even bringing up the subject to begin with.

‘You feel sorry for me, you think I am a pathetic failure,’ she said, and quickly waved away his attempts to dispute this. ‘And you are right. I am going to pot in this town. Have you seen the filth, the substandard streets, and the decay in old Bangalore? Once this was a beautiful city.’

He nodded and leant forward in order to hear her better.

‘Now it has collapsed,’ she went on, and made a sweeping gesture with her arm, as if to illustrate the razing of the city.

He followed her gaze. The company of men in dark suits next to them was becoming increasingly boisterous. Among them there was a successful Swedish banker next to another gentleman from Sony Ericsson.

‘Is that progress?’ Billström asked, rhetorically.

‘What do you mean?’ he wondered.

‘Haven’t you seen the industrial complexes? All these call centres and corporate parks. Not to mention all the hideous shopping malls springing up like mushrooms.’

‘It creates jobs,’ he objected.

Billström snorted.

‘Impoverishment,’ she said curtly, standing up abruptly and touching his shoulder before she left.

Berglund could have left his bed but preferred to remain there. The former athlete – active in bandy and orienteering – had grown lazy. I have a right to lie here a while longer, he thought.

The first snow of the season was falling outside. He felt the nurse, the new one whose name he had not yet learnt, watching him. She was standing at the window. She was talking about the snow, how beautiful it was.

‘I know,’ he said, straight out into the open, ‘I know I can walk.’

‘You won’t fall anymore,’ the nurse said.

‘I know,’ Berglund said, but at the same time he was irritated by her persistence.

The day after the operation he had lost his balance when they forced him to get up and go to the bathroom. That time he had cursed the staff. The cut above his eyebrow still stung.

‘I know,’ he repeated, ‘but I would like to lie here a bit longer.’

He wanted her to leave the room. Didn’t she have any other patients to attend to? He could take care of himself. He wanted to be alone. The nurse smiled at him. He didn’t see it, but he felt it.

‘I hate snow,’ he said.

It was as if the procedure had reshaped his temperament, rearranging his brain in a way that caused him to say things he didn’t really recognise.

‘I’m not a winter person,’ he added.

He had the idea that it might soften his outburst, make her realise that he wasn’t really so grouchy and categorical, that it was just the snow that was affecting him.

‘It isn’t snowing in here.’

He turned his head and looked at her.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but at some point I have to get up and go outside. And then the snow will be there.’