Echoes From the Dead

Ciudad De Panamá, April 1963

Panama City in the canal country of Panama.

Tall apartment blocks and dilapidated shacks side by side. Cars, buses, motorbikes, and jeeps. Mestizos, military police, bankers, beggars, buzzing flies, and gangs of sweaty American soldiers along the avenues. The smell of burnt gas, rotten fruit, and grilled fish.

Nils Kant wanders through the narrow streets every day, the soles of his feet burning inside his shoes.

He’s looking for Swedish sailors.

There aren’t any in Costa Rica — at least, Nils has never met any. To be sure of finding Swedes, he has to come here, to Ciudad de Panamá.

The journey south by bus takes six hours. Nils has made five such journeys to the canal area in three years.

In the long canal between the oceans, ships line up to avoid the lengthy journey around Cape Horn. The sailors go ashore to enjoy themselves in the big port. Some stay behind: the bums.

He is looking for the right man among these forgotten sailors: those who gather at the docks when ships from Scandinavia arrive, at the Scandinavian church when they’re handing out food, and who spend the rest of their time within reach of the bars and shops. Those who’ll drink anything that contains alcohol, from cheap Colombian rum to pure spirit distilled from shoe polish.

On the second evening of his fifth visit, he is walking along the cracked cement sidewalks when he sees a shadowy figure clutching a bottle, crouching in a dark doorway a few blocks away from the entrance to the Scandinavian church. Sniveling, fits of coughing, and the stench of vomit.

Nils stops in front of him.

“How are you?” he asks.

He speaks Swedish. It isn’t worth wasting time on anyone who doesn’t understand what he says right away.

“What?” asks the bum.

“I said, How are you?”

“Are you from Sweden?”

The look in the Swede’s eyes is more sorrowful and weary than dull, his beard is unkempt, but the lines around his mouth and eyes are not that deep. This man hasn’t been drinking all that long, despite the fact that he looks as if he’s just about thirty-five — around Nils’s age.

Nils nods. “I come from Öland.”

“Öland?” The bum raises his voice and coughs. “Öland, shit... I’m from Småland... shit. Born in Nybro.”

“It’s a small world,” says Nils.

“But now... I missed the ship going through the lock.”

“Really? That’s a shame.”

“Last year. I missed... the ship was supposed to go through the lock after two days. Up, down. Got arrested here... there was a fight in a bar, I was swigging beer straight from the jug.” The man looks up with a new light in his eyes. “Have you got any money?”

“Maybe.”

“Buy something, then, buy whisky... I know where.”

The man tries to get up, but his legs are too stiff.

“I might be able to go and buy a bottle,” Nils tells him. “One bottle of whisky, we can share it. But you’ll have to wait here. Are you going to wait for me?”

The man nods, and squats down again.

“Buy something” is all he mutters.

“Good,” says Nils, straightening up without looking the man in the eyes. “Perhaps we can be friends.”

Five weeks later in Jamaicatown, which is the name of Puerto Limón’s English quarter:

Tican Hotel it says on the sign, but it’s hardly a hotel, and the lobby is just a cracked piece of wood balanced on a couple of table legs, and a register spotted with mold. A staircase on the outside of the building leads up to a few small guest rooms on the second floor. Nils can hear English being spoken loudly in a building on the opposite side of the street.

He goes silently up the steps, past a fat, shiny cockroach on its way down the wall. He reaches the narrow veranda on the second floor, and knocks on the second door in a row of four.

“Yes, sir!” calls a voice from inside, and Nils opens the door.

For the third time he sees the Swede who says he has come to help him get home.

The Swede is sitting on the only bed in the stifling hotel room, amid a heap of tangled sheets and brown-speckled pillows, his upper body bare and gleaming with sweat. He has a glass in his hand. A small fan is humming away on the bureau next to the bed.

The man whom Nils has begun to think of as the Ölander. He has never said where he’s from, but Nils has listened carefully, and thinks he can detect a faint Öland accent when the man speaks. He has realized the man knows the island well. Did Nils meet him there?

“Come in, come in.” The Swede smiles and leans back against the wall, nodding toward a bottle of West Indian rum on the bureau. “Drink, Nils?”

“No.”

Nils closes the door behind him. He’s given up drinking alcohol. Not completely, but almost.

“Limón is a wonderful town, Nils,” says the man on the bed, and Nils can hear no hint of sarcasm in his voice. “I was out for a stroll today and I found a genuine brothel, purely by chance, hidden in some rooms behind a bar. Wonderful women. But of course I didn’t indulge, to put it politely... I had a drink and left.”

Nils nods briefly and leans against the closed door. “I’ve found somebody,” he says. “A good candidate.” He still feels uncomfortable speaking Swedish out loud after eighteen years abroad. He fumbles for the right words. “He’s from Småland too.”

“Good, that’s good,” says the Swede. “Where? In Panama City?”

Nils nods. “I brought him with me... The border controls have got stricter, I had to bribe my way through, but it went okay. He’s in San José now, in a cheap hotel. He’s lost his passport, but we applied for a new one at the Swedish Embassy.”

“Good, good. What’s his name?”

Nils shakes his head. “No names,” he says. “You haven’t told me yours.”

“All you have to do is look it up downstairs,” says the man on the bed. “I signed the register. You have to do that.”

“I’ve read it,” says Nils.

“And?”

“It said Fritiof Andersson,” says Nils.

The man nods with satisfaction. “You can call me Fritiof, that’ll be fine.”

Nils shakes his head. “That’s just a name from an old song about a sailor — I want to know your real name.”

“My name isn’t important,” says the man, staring at him. “Fritiof will do very well. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” Nils nods slowly. “For the time being.”

“Good.” Fritiof wipes his chest and forehead with a sheet. “Now, we’ve got a few more things to talk about. I’m going to—”

“Did my mother really send you?”

“I’ve already told you that.”

The man on the bed doesn’t appear to appreciate being interrupted.

“She should have sent a letter with you,” says Nils.

“That’ll come later,” says Fritiof. “You got money, didn’t you? That was from your mother.” He takes a swig of his drink. “But right now we have other things to discuss... I’m going back home in two days. You won’t hear from me for a while. But I’ll be back when everything’s ready, and that’ll be the last time. How long will it take, do you think?”

“Well... a couple of weeks, maybe. He has to get his passport and travel down here,” says Nils.

“Fine,” says Fritiof. “Keep an eye on him and do everything by the book. Then you’ll be able to go home.”

Nils nods.

“Fine,” says Fritiof, wiping his face again.

Someone laughs down on the street, a motorbike roars past. All Nils wants to do is open the door and get out of this stinking room.

“How does it feel, by the way?” asks the man, leaning forward.

“How does what feel?” says Nils.

“I’m a little curious.” The man who calls himself Fritiof Andersson is smiling among the filthy sheets. “I’m just wondering, Nils, purely out of curiosity... How does it feel to kill someone?”