Echoes From the Dead

Puerto Limón, July 1963

Nils leaves the beach known as Playa Bonita outside Limón when all the wine has been drunk and the party is almost over. He has emptied two bottles of Chilean wine all by himself during the course of the evening, and yet he still doesn’t feel drunk enough for what is to come.

There have been few visitors to Playa Bonita today, and almost all of them went home long ago.

There are only two men left. They are sitting like shadows in the sand beside a small, glowing fire. They are singing quietly and laughing drunkenly with their arms around each other’s shoulders. One of the shadows is the man Nils knows as Fritiof Andersson, the other is their victim. Nils sometimes thinks of the man as the guy from Småland, but usually he calls him Borrachon. The alcoholic.

Costa Rica is much better than Panama, Borrachon keeps saying; he can’t understand why he didn’t come here much sooner. And Limón is a fantastic town. In fact, he doesn’t want to go home. Not ever.

Nils has told him he can stay as long as he wants.

It’s Nils who has helped Borrachon get to Costa Rica. He made sure Borrachon dragged himself out of the fog of alcohol and got hold of a provisional passport from the embassy in Panama City, to replace the one he left behind on his last ship, then took the train north to San José. Nils has paid for a room in a cheap hotel by the central station, provided Borrachon with money for wine and a little food, then waited for Fritiof Andersson.

Borrachon has been so grateful, exhaustingly grateful. He has found a new friend, someone who understands him. Someone he would die for.

Nils has nodded and smiled at Borrachon, but inside he has been constantly wishing that Fritiof Andersson would return as quickly as possible and help out. Here comes Fritiof Andersson... Nils doesn’t want to become friends with this defeated Swede who is so much like him; he just wants to go home to Öland. Fritiof has promised to organize it, and all he wants in return...

— all Fritiof wants are the hidden gemstones.

This is what Nils suspects. On the occasions when Fritiof has visited him, he’s mentioned the stones several times. He knows what happened to Nils out on the alvar just after the war.

“Did they say where they came from, those Germans?” Fritiof has asked. “Is it true they’d brought something with them to Öland — some treasure? And if they did have something with them... what happened to it? What did you do with it, Nils?”

So many questions, but Nils suspects that this man who calls himself Fritiof already knows the answers to most of them.

Nils has answered the questions, briefly, but he isn’t telling anyone where he hid the gemstones. That treasure is his, whatever it’s worth. He’s earned it, after living with no money for so many years now.

Very soon Borrachon became restless in the little room in San José, but Nils had to keep him there until Fritiof arrived. After three days they had run out of conversation, and after a week all that Nils and Borrachon had in common was drinking wine. They sat in the hotel room, surrounded by empty bottles, and outside the sun beat down on the street.

At last Fritiof’s plane landed out at the airport, and he turned up at the hotel with a broad smile below his sunglasses. Borrachon woke from his drunken state without really grasping who this new Swede was and what he wanted, but Fritiof provided more bottles of wine and the party continued. Fritiof sang and laughed, but kept control all the time; he studied Borrachon with a steady gaze.

The day after Fritiof’s arrival, Nils went on ahead to Limón by train. He returned to his little room, paid a final installment of rent to his landlady, Madame Mendoza, and had his hair cut just as short as Borrachon’s. Then he went to the bar by the harbor and nodded to all the poor bastards who would never leave Limón. He drank wine and made sure he was seen on the muddy streets of the town for several evenings in a row, apparently very drunk indeed.

“Echa,” he said. He thanked everyone.

And he told Madame Mendoza and several bartenders that he would soon be off on a little walking trip north along the coast, past Playa Bonita — but that he’d be back in a few days, when a Swedish friend was coming to visit.

“Echa,” he says. “Hasta pronto.”

At dawn on the final day in Limón he got up, left a little money in the kitchen drawers, and most of his possessions; he just took a few clothes and some food, his wallet, and the letters from Vera. Then he left Limón at long last. He went through the market in the square where the old fishmongers were already setting up, silent witnesses to the start of his journey home. He went on past the railway station and continued northward, out of the town, on the way to his meeting with Fritiof Andersson without looking back.

Not running away — going home.

For the first time in almost twenty years, Nils is on his way home to Öland.