The Hand that Trembles

NINE

Once upon a time, Uncle Ante had been part of a mission to blow up a bridge over a river. Sven-Arne Persson could not remember what the river was called, but he could remember his excitement as Ante narrated – slowly at first, and then with increasing engagement – how they crawled between the boulders, how they approached the start of the bridge. Sven-Arne could feel the sharp stones cutting through his trousers, his breathing grew quick and yet controlled, and he scrutinised his uncle’s face in order not to miss a single detail.

It was cold and it was night-time. The decimated troop took advantage of the fact that there was a new moon. Above them there was an outpost, an old stone house with a tile roof. It was most likely just Moroccans, and they stayed inside. The smoke from the chimney blew down over Ante and his three comrades. They had been forced to leave the fifth man, a German, when he sprained his ankle and could not continue up and down the steep slopes.

‘We never saw him again,’ Ante said. ‘His name was Ernst.’

His uncle went silent for a while, and Sven-Arne knew he was thinking about the German. A thing like that, to have to leave someone behind, a trifling matter in a war that had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, brought Ante to silence, sometimes for days and weeks. He would refuse to continue his story, became grumpy and got something in his eyes that made Sven-Arne avoid him. The war inside Ante was thundering, a battle noise that seldom quietened. ‘The Africans were the worst,’ he said finally, ‘they fought like animals. They terrified us, as if they did not know what death was.’

The bridge operation, the in part failed mission to cut the supply chain to the Fascist armies gathered just outside Teruel, was something that returned again and again in Sven-Arne’s mind. It symbolised something more than the targeting of a poorly constructed wooden bridge.

‘The timber was popping in the cold, kind of whiny. It was around minus fifteen degrees Celsius. One of my companions, who was from southern Italy, was also whining. He kept talking about Sicily and the heat. He was a farmhand and used to hard labour. But he hated the cold.’

Sven-Arne never figured out what the bridge stood for. It was just one of the stories he had grown up with.

He rolled over onto his back. It was almost ten o’clock. The voices in the corridor had died down. The hotel had suddenly grown unbelievably quiet.

Sven-Arne stared up at the ceiling where Ante crawled on toward the bridge. The Italian was right after him, thereafter the two Bulgarians. One of them was a miner, he was the one who was going to set the explosives. He was big, almost too big, well over six feet tall and ‘wide as a barn door’ and Communist like most Bulgarians. He had been a body guard for Dimitrov and spoke both Russian and German fluently.

‘I felt safe when “the Brush” was around,’ Ante said. ‘That was what we called him; the hair stuck straight out of his ears like a brush. He did everything right. He was a good buddy.’

That was the highest praise one could get. Once he had called Sven-Arne ‘my little pal.’

But did the Bulgarian actually do what was right?

‘It was war,’ Ante said. ‘Not everything goes like you think it will. You die. No one thought they were going to die. At least not when we landed or came hiking through the Pyrenees; there we were invincible. The Brush did what he could, and more. He was a piece of fly shit, like the rest of us. A speck of dust.’

A good buddy was suddenly a piece of fly shit who didn’t mean anything. Sven-Arne wanted everyone to be a hero. Surely the Bulgarian miner did not blow himself up for nothing.

‘No, maybe not,’ Ante said, and Sven-Arne noticed that his uncle was close to the big silence.

It was as if there was always a fight going on inside him, a battle flowing back and forth. All of the battles had a place inside his head, nothing was forgotten. Not a single speck of dust.

That afternoon on Rosberg’s rooftop, when Ante stood up and screamed something in Spanish, was the only time Sven-Arne had seen him really worked up, off-kilter in a way he had never seen him either before or after, but he calmed down almost immediately. Rosberg waved. Perhaps he thought Ante was yelling something to him?

‘War is so damned dirty,’ he said, before he climbed down.

On their way home, Sven-Arne walked as close to his uncle as was possible.

‘Aren’t your hands freezing?’

Ante had left his gloves on the roof.

‘You can borrow mine. They’re big.’

Ante shook his head.

He stood up reluctantly and studied the filthy floor. Then he let his gaze travel over the sparsely furnished room, before he got himself together and walked to the bathroom. The cracked glass of the wall mirror reflected a divided image where the two sides of his face did not quite connect, as if the picture had been cut in two and someone had tried to paste it back together again.

In his reflection, a wide black line ran down his forehead, nose, and mouth like a monstrous column. He turned his head, made a face, monkeyed around, creating new images, fully conscious of the fact that it was a game, a way of postponing the inevitable decisions that had to be made. Soon he would have to decide where to go. The filthy hotel room was a bus stop, the starting point for his new life. His journey to death started here. What was it he had dreamt during the night, a nightmare that had bathed him in cold sweat? In his reflection, he saw himself as an old man with tired features and a muddied gaze that begged for mercy. The nightmare had ridden him like a young woman. She had laughed at his impotence. Weeping, he had tried to hold her fast, but she shrugged off his limp arms.

He looked away and turned on the tap but out came only a few drops and a hissing sound that caused the pipes to vibrate and sing.

‘I don’t feel so good,’ he said out loud but somewhat haltingly, mostly in order to calm himself with the sound of a voice, prove that he could still talk, that he was alive. A dream was a dream.

The shocking encounter with Jan Svensk had shattered much of the defences he had built up over the better part of a decade. He looked straight into himself and it was not an encouraging sight. The repressed feelings of alienation and emptiness, despite the friendship with Lester, his work in the garden and teaching at St Mary’s, lay bared, woven together with the lies of his flight.

He realised that the complicated dreams of the night were the answer from his unconscious. They had not let go yet and at night he could not escape. His thin legs trembled, his chest rose in ragged breaths, his hands unconsciously found their way to his genitals, shaped like the faucet and as dry, and he felt a shiver of the impotent lust he had experienced during the night. Staring into the cracked mirror he tried in vain to satisfy his lust while his inner vision of the mocking woman – more and more coming to resemble a young Indian woman in his neighbourhood – became increasingly difficult to catch hold of, blurred at the edges, only to disappear completely.

Not even this, not even his desire remained. He had not made love to a woman for many years. The last time was with a young Indian woman, too young, whom he had been with for a short time. Every time she fumbled for his wrinkled member, he became depressed. Finally he had been unable to achieve an erection. His self-disgust conquered his self-pity and his need for another’s hands on his body. He cut himself off, did not want to be some old white lech for whom gratification and artificial warmth were bought for a few simple rupees.

Before this brief adventure, he had had a relationship with a co-worker, a widow barely forty years old, originally from Chennai, who had moved to Bangalore and her brother’s family. When her brother died in a head-on collision on the road to Mysore, she was thrown out. She got a job at the botanical garden, living very simply and not speaking much, and she lived near Sven-Arne. Sometimes he accompanied her on the way home; from time to time they had had a meal at some street café.

The whole thing had started with an accident. Sven-Arne was clearing the area around the Japanese garden, picking up fallen branches, sweeping up leaves and paper. It was trivial work, but gave him a great sense of satisfaction. He liked the little oasis, even if the division was painfully neglected and did not have many similarities with a Japanese garden.

When he completed his work, he sat down on the slope to the drained pond. It was early in the morning, still cool in the air, at least in the shade of the trees surrounding the pond. He remembered that he felt happy, not simply because his morning work was done – new sticks, leaves, and papers waited – but because of the stillness of the entire garden. Before the school groups and other visitors arrived, he was shielded from their curious gazes and could think in peace. He used to plan his lectures at St Mary’s during this time. These did not take a great deal of preparation but it gave him pleasure to think through some subject or theme.

He stood up in order to make his way down the slope and toward the nursery. Perhaps he had been sitting too long, he had been training himself to sit in a crouch, so that his muscles had become stiff and his joints immobile, for after only a couple of steps he tripped and pitched forward headlong. He automatically threw his hands up to break his fall. When he landed, a root poking out of the ground cut into his right arm, into the flesh from his wrist to his elbow. He remained prone for a while, in shock, shaken by his flight, experiencing a burning pain. Shortly thereafter he felt blood running down his arm. At first he did not even want to look at his injury, as he knew it was serious. His thoughts went – strangely enough – to Ante, and how his uncle with his all-seeing gaze, like a worshipped but also feared god, pointed his finger as if to say that sin punishes itself.

Finally he lifted his head and looked at his arm. The blood was flowing and had already formed a neat pool at the bottom of the pond. He managed to crawl to his feet and felt at that point that one knee had been banged up and that blood was also flowing from his forehead. He fumbled with his shirt, pulled it off, and wrapped it around his forearm.

On his way over to the nursery, he started to think of the consequences. He was not insured, but that was less important as he – in contrast to his co-workers – had enough money to pay for healthcare. What was much worse was the fact that he would be unable to work. He would have to take it easy and recuperate for a while. The routine of going to the garden every day gave his life meaning. A long convalescence, with a lack of assigned tasks and the anxiety-infused thoughts that he knew would come, would throw him off balance just at the time when he after many years had managed to find a kind of equilibrium and peace of mind.

But as it turned out, it was just the opposite. The period that followed the unfortunate accident was the best of his time to date in Bangalore.

After bandaging Sven-Arne with materials from the paltry first-aid kit at the nursery, Jyoti took him to a hospital in Vasanth Nagar that she claimed was good.

The long laceration needed nineteen stitches, his head was cleaned and bandaged, and he received a support bandage for his leg. He was treated quickly and well. Jyoti pointed out that he went before many others. When she saw his expression she smiled and said something he did not understand, but it sounded like a saying.

Jyoti hailed a rickshaw and they went home to Sven-Arne’s place, where she took charge and made him lie down while she made tea. His head throbbed and his limbs ached, but he took pleasure in listening to the rattle from the little kitchen alcove.

The next day she returned, changed the bandage on his head, massaged his leg, and made tea.

He was close to tearful gratitude for her attentions. He gave her money so that she could buy some food. Perhaps he exaggerated his pain, made faces when he tried to cross the room, and took his head in his hand as he rested on the bed.

Sven-Arne started to long for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. Misfortune turned to joy.

After only a week, they embarked on an intimate relationship. He decided that they should celebrate the removal of his stitches and on the way back he bought delicacies, beer, and a bottle of Old Monk. He had imagined that it would be difficult to get Jyoti to indulge, but she ate with a wonderful appetite. They became somewhat intoxicated, she spoke about Chennai and described the life of a single, childless woman. He lied as usual about his life, now without hesitation. The friction he felt in the early days when he narrated his fictitious tale had evaporated.

He looked at her from across the table, wanted her, and when she got up to clear the table he made some clumsy advances. To his great surprise she did not reject them.

They undressed in the dark, lying close to each other all night, and when she left early in the morning Sven-Arne was possessed with happiness, a feeling from a very long time ago.

She returned the next evening and thereby confirmed their budding relationship. He knew it was not easy for her. The rumour that she was associating with ‘the Englishman’ and spending the nights there would soon spread. He could only imagine how it would affect her life, but when he asked her, he only received an embarrassed reply.

Their bliss lasted only half a year. Then Jyoti wanted them to get married. She gave him an ultimatum. The rumour of their relationship had reached Chennai. He had to explain he could not get married, but was obliged to lie as usual. He could not give her the real reason. He was already formally married, but above all he lacked an identity. He would never be able to register for anything in India, definitely not a marriage. His invented alias was all too transparent, he was convinced the Indian authorities wanted documents to prove who he was, perhaps a birth certificate.

She went without a word, gave up her post at the garden and left. To Chennai, Sven-Arne supposed, where else would she go?

He asked himself if he would have married, if he were free? He did not think so.

He wanted love, but no longer believed himself capable of receiving it, and definitely not giving it. This insight came to him one day in the alley outside his home. He sat, as he often did in the early evening, on a stool leaning against the wall. There he could follow life on the street, catch his breath after work, and exchange a few words with his neighbours. A cat, or rather, a kitten, rubbed against his legs and unexpectedly jumped into his lap.

The emaciated body immediately started to purr. It stretched its paws, showed its puny claws, found a comfortable position, and purred loudly. A feeling of well-being arose in Sven-Arne, perhaps it was even love, that such a vulnerable creature found a haven in his skinny lap. He was also slightly ashamed. Would the street’s ‘Englishman’ play a host to a miserable, bony kitten?

But it was as if he grew a little more human with his temporary visitor, because he cherished no illusions that it would ever return. To be a cat in Bangalore was to be jilted, cast aside. Passers-by did not ridicule him, quite the opposite. They paused, stroked the cat, and smiled. And Sven-Arne felt he got a drop or two, he felt they were patting him.

It struck him that he loved the cat and that animals were perhaps the only thing he was capable of loving. Mute creatures who came and went as they pleased, who exchanged warmth, stole a few minutes of rest and security, perhaps a morsel of food, and showed a form of trust in return.

While he slowly ran his hand along the cat’s back he thought of Elsa, how much he had taken for granted, and how little he had given in return.

He had not loved. He had simply not been capable. He had loved the cause, the task, the movement. There was his source, the tenacity, after the initial passion had died away, which is necessary in order to have a long life together.

He realised this in a narrow alley in India, miles and years from Uppsala, with a flea-bitten cat in his lap. At that point it was too late. Nothing could be made undone. He mumbled something. A woman passing on the pavement stopped questioningly but Sven-Arne waved her on. At the same time he hoped that she, in some unconscious way, could accept his tardy apology, make it universal, and in this way reconcile him with Elsa. At that moment he wished for nothing else.

‘Is it my fault?’ he asked of the cracked mirror, well aware of how the answer would sound, raised as he was on Ante’s doctrines.

All of a sudden he perceived the smell of cut grass. He stared down at his body but realised his unconscious was playing a trick on him. He was back in his grandmother’s cottage, back in Rosberg’s fields. Lightning, so strong in his calmness, made his way across the meadow with the harvester as a laughable burden. Rosberg smiled at him. The cap that he always wore from the spring planting to harvest had that jaunty proletarian style that Sven-Arne had never seen after, that reminded him of the figures in Ante’s photographs from the 1930s.