The Hand that Trembles

FOURTEEN

Two days later Jan Svensk stood once more at the entrance to the nursery. He was one of the first that morning to have bought a ticket to Lal Bagh. This time he had demanded to get the change. He had nodded at the man in the wheelchair and quickly walked past him without a word.

He walked down the main path with a determined stride, so different from the hesitant steps he took last time, scanning the side paths with radar alertness, rounding a thicket, and there, by the shed out of which Lester had taken an axe, was Sven-Arne Persson sitting on a low, three-legged stool. He was setting the teeth of a saw. He moved the file back and forth across the teeth, paused and tested the sharpness with a finger, then continued with his work.

His long, bony back was bent over, the hair on his neck sparse, a little grey, and sticking out in different directions. Through a tear in the dingy tank top that Sven-Arne Persson was wearing one could see his spine.

It had been a long time since Jan Svensk had seen someone sharpening a saw, in his childhood maybe, at his uncle’s, whose cleverly stacked woodpiles were known all over Järlåsa. For a moment he felt uncomfortable at the idea of interrupting his work, but nonetheless took a couple of steps closer. The sound from the file was mechanical and regular.

‘Hello there, Sven-Arne.’

The filing stopped, the county commissioner stiffened but did not turn.

‘I come with greetings for you.’

Sven-Arne turned his head. The look he gave Jan Svensk was filled with disgust, not fear; pure unfettered loathing, as if his visitor had brought with him a stinking load of something intended for the heap in front of the shed.

‘You recognise me, don’t you? We were neighbours. I have…’ He fell silent, unsure how to proceed.

Sven-Arne put down the file. ‘You should leave,’ he said. ‘It’s not good for you to be here.’

Jan Svensk looked around. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Go. My friends are here. You have no place here, unless you are looking for work. Do you want to dig? Can you dig? Eight hours a day in ninety-degree weather. Not much pay. Can you even begin to-’

Sven-Arne’s fury caused him to fling the saw aside.

‘Don’t you come here with your questions and your shit!’

‘There’s no point in threatening me. I don’t want to hurt you, and you should know that. I’ve got a message for you.’

‘I don’t want a message! I want to be left in peace, and you should understand that!’

Sven-Arne had risen to his feet and stretched out his right hand, pointing at his visitor. Jan Svensk noticed a scar that stretched from his hand far up his arm.

‘From your wife, Elsa.’

Sven-Arne dropped his arm and stared at the intruder.

‘Elsa,’ he managed to get out.

Jan-Svensk nodded, vengefully pleased at the shock he had managed to cause, but the message he had to deliver was no joyful greeting.

‘She has been run over by a lorry and is currently unconscious.’

‘Then how can she send me a message?’ Sven-Arne spat.

‘They operated on her and she has not woken up. But before then she was able to speak.’

‘Speak?’

The former county commissioner had trouble envisioning his wife ‘speaking’ as if she were standing at a podium, orating.

‘Your parents must have squealed.’

Svensk nodded. His mother had bumped into Elsa Persson on the street outside the row of town houses where they lived. She was barely recognisable. The normally so well groomed and balanced woman had looked ‘terrible’, with her hair in disarray and her features twisted in a combination of confusion and anger. Margareta Svensk had asked her if she was all right. At first Elsa Persson had simply stared at her neighbour, as if she did not understand the question or even recognise who she was. Then she had burst into tears.

Margareta Svensk had pushed open the gate and firmly guided Elsa into the house, taken off her coat, and prevailed upon her to sit down at the kitchen table. And there she had sat with a catatonic gaze, muttering, crying, and cursing.

‘And what did she want to tell me?’

‘According to my mother she had been to see your uncle Ante,’ Svensk said placidly, unaffected by Sven-Arne’s aggressive tone.

Sven-Arne stared at him in bewilderment.

‘He must be one hundred years,’ Svensk continued. ‘I remember him from when I was a child, he was old even then.’

‘Get to the point, you bastard.’

Sven-Arne Persson tasted his own words. It was the first time in twelve years that he was speaking Swedish with someone eye-to-eye.

‘She was extremely upset by the visit. When she came home she was like a zombie. Mother had all the trouble in the world getting even so much as a single word out of her. When she had calmed down a little, she went home. One hour later, my mother saw her leave again. Then came the police. According to witnesses she had gone straight out into the traffic on Luthagsleden Expressway. The light was red, but she walked straight out. A lorry ran over her.’

Sven-Arne sank down on the stool.

‘Why did she get so upset? The day before my mother had told her that I had seen you here in Bangalore and she took it in stride. She actually did not react at all. “I see,” was all she said. No questions, nothing, but then after visiting your uncle it was as if her whole world came crashing down. Ante told her he was working on his memoirs and that all would be revealed. What did he mean by that? My mother didn’t get it. Do you?’

Sven-Arne did not reply. After a long period of silence Svensk sat down in front of him.

‘What are you doing here? Why did you leave?’

Sven-Arne looked up.

‘Because I am a traitor,’ he said finally.

‘What or whom did you betray? Your wife?’

The one-time county commissioner snorted. He saw an image of Uncle Ante. The old man was still affecting his life. ‘Almost one hundred.’ Yes, in ten years. He would probably live another ten years. What had he said to Elsa?

‘How did you get out of the country?’

‘By air, of course.’

‘But you had left your passport at home.’

‘There are other ways,’ Sven-Arne said. ‘I was a parole mentor. I did that for about twenty years. Small-time guys whose life had taken a wrong turn. I got to know a bunch of them real well, some of them became my friends. They taught me a lot.’

He let the words sink in, proud in an indeterminate sort of way over the fact that he had managed to trick everyone and go up in smoke without leaving a trace. He had often wondered if he had left some clue behind, but realised now that everyone was still puzzled by his disappearance.

‘I was a court-appointed guardian as well,’ he went on. ‘John Lundberg recruited me. There are no politicians like him anymore. Talk about betrayal.’

‘What do you mean?’

Sven-Arne shook his head. He didn’t really want to talk politics, especially not about the movement he had served for almost four decades, ever since he had become a member of SSU Club in Svartbäcken as a fourteen-yearold, but for some reason he was pulled into the discussion. Maybe because for the first time in twelve years he had an audience, the old rhetoric floated up like a greeting from an age gone by.

‘If you look at the party, the one I belonged to, as a body – a living organism – then it was poisoned in small doses. Gradually there were changes for the worse, so that with each new generation it developed a new handicap, a new defect.’

‘But you were part of that body,’ Svensk objected. ‘You were Mr Socialist around town.’

‘I know. But I left.’

‘And ended up here?’

The politician turned day labourer nodded and smiled tightly.

‘Here,’ he repeated, and waved his hand, ‘in the centre of the world. Right here, in this insignificant little garden, is the centre of the world. For Lester and for everyone else who works here. We see the world from here and it looks very different compared to the perspective from Uppsala City Hall.’

‘Why Bangalore?’

‘There are worse places. I do good here. The garden I help to plant will survive both you and me.’

‘Was coming here a way to make amends? For your sins in the rich-man country of Sweden?’

Sven-Arne chuckled.

‘Have you seen anything of India, other than your air-conditioned office?’

‘Not much,’ Jan Svensk admitted. ‘But you gave up on the ones who believed in you. You were popular, people liked you. I know Dad talked about it all the time: If they hadn’t had Sven-Arne then…’

‘That’s a load of shit,’ Sven-Arne said, and stood up. ‘You don’t understand anything. You must be one of these IT idiots who comes over and destroys this country. What do you know about suffering?’

‘Then tell me! I’m not as stupid as you think. And if you think that computer technology and the Internet is destroying India then you haven’t understood one iota of the world. You go around planting trees and that’s fine, but there is also another world. People want to meet each other, not just in a garden but online. Last time I was here I saw a school class playing in the park. Do you think they want to be labourers when they grow up?’

Sven-Arne turned on his heel and left, with steps at first as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave his countryman and their exchange, but the closer he came to the exit the more he hurried his pace, so that finally he was half running out of the garden.

Lester and a handful of his other co-workers observed him but did nothing to stop him.

They did not know it was the last time they would see the man they had got to know as John Mailer.