The Hand that Trembles

TWENTY-ONE

What should he leave behind? The question bordered on the ridiculous. He surveyed the small flat. He had not accumulated much. If he were to fill two smallish suitcases, all his clothes and personal belongings would fit. And this after twelve years.

Sven-Arne Persson listlessly picked through the worn things, some trousers, a handful of shirts, and some underwear. He could wear nothing of this in Sweden. Possibly the underpants. He set those aside.

The three pairs of sandals he rotated between – at work, in his neighbourhood, and at St Mary’s – were lined up right inside the door. They looked ashamed, or else they were simply fearful at the prospect of being moved to such a remote land.

The light blue shirt had a hole by the collar. He held it up to his face and drew in the scent of detergent. He put it in the pile that he was going to give to his downstairs neighbour.

Two white shirts he kept, hesitated on a third, but let it stay behind.

He walked around aimlessly in the flat for an hour, picking, sorting. The vase from Lester he packed in the handkerchiefs that Jyoti gave him before returning to Chennai for good. A beautiful stone that he found during an outing to Nandi Hills he slipped into a bag of toiletries. The English pruning shears – Wilkinsons that he had bought for a small fortune – he wrapped in a cotton cloth.

He had given notice on the flat. The landlord had shaken both his hands with a look of concern and assured him that he had been his best tenant ever, and urged him to return as soon as possible. But what did one know about the future? Was it a woman? An inheritance in England that needed to be guarded? The landlord, who had actually searched Sven-Arne’s flat several times in secret in order to establish who he was, looked genuinely downcast. You will come again, will you not?

Did he want to return? Was his time in Bangalore, in India, at an end for good? Was he returning home to die? In a way it felt as though he were going toward death, that Svensk had been a messenger who had come with a dire message: It is time to total things up and turn in the final reckoning.

He felt no terror, no anguish before the black hole about to suck him in. Sweden was death for him. There was only one thing he wanted: to speak with Ante. One matter to get to the bottom of. Then he was finished with both India and Sweden.

Elsa he did not want to see, even if she lay on her deathbed, even if she… He did not complete the thought.

He couldn’t give a damn about politics.

One more thing: He wanted to see his grandmother’s cottage and Rosberg’s farm, if they were still there.

That’s enough of want and not want, he thought. Travel as unnoticed as you arrived. Walk off the plane – it will be December, he thought with something akin to terror, as he surveyed his clothes piles – and walk as through a tunnel toward your goals. Do not state or lay claim to anything. Finish. Write in a final period.

He sat down at the table. Some books lay before him: a flower lexicon, a few thin publications on herbal medicine and traditional folk healing methods, and a biography of Gandhi. He came to think of all the trees he had planted in Lal Bagh. It brought a smile to his face. Lester would remember. He also believed the trees would remember their youth, when the tall but very thin gardener took hold of the trunk and gently placed the plant in the ground, sprinkled the roots with damp earth, shook and lightly tapped the ground, added more earth in a circle around the trunk, added water, let it sink in, and repeated the procedure until the area was well hydrated.

Trees remember. They sighed contentedly once in place, Sven-Arne Persson was convinced of that. It was the memory that allowed them to grow.

He had always been careful, thorough. There were few things that infuriated him as much as when someone was careless with earth and plants. This he had shared with Lester, indeed had it been the very basis of their friendship?

Would he miss Lal Bagh? Maybe, maybe not. The trees would remember, that was a comforting thought as he now collected the considerably fewer items than initially planned. He filled a suitcase and a small shoulder bag, looked around one last time, let the door remain open, and left the building. He stepped out into the cool morning air and waved to Ismael, whom he had bade goodbye the night before. He walked slowly down the street. A rickshaw pulled up alongside but he gestured it away. He wanted to proceed on foot for a while.

After about one hundred metres his pace slackened, as if he had remembered something, before he came to a complete stop, put his suitcase down, and turned around. Ismael was still outside his shop, staring after him. It appeared to Sven-Arne that he smiled. But he did most of the time.

The day before he had painstakingly shaved Sven-Arne and cut his hair and talked about the events of the street from the past several days: an older woman who had died – ‘she was almost too old’ – the couple above the barber shop had had another fight – ‘he is not a good man’ – and the police had been looking for a gang of boys that often loitered in the copy shop – ‘Tamils!’ Before they had parted, Ismael had – clearly self-conscious but also childishly excited – fumblingly brought out a small box. ‘From all of us,’ he had said, and made an indeterminate gesture with his hands as if he were including the entire street. Sven-Arne had accepted the gift but had not yet opened it. The last thing he wanted was to break down in tears with Ismael.

He had let his gaze wander over the worn interior, the cursorily cleaned combs in a glass jar, the bottles of aftershave and tinctures, the mirror with its blemishes, the little table where there was always a vase of plastic flowers, the curtain that concealed the area where Ismael could wash up for Friday prayers. Ismael followed his gaze. Sven-Arne wanted to say something pleasant, something for Ismael to remember, but could not think of anything.

In the street outside there was the usual group of boys. He recognised all of them. Some of them had attended his lessons.

What did the barber say about Sven-Arne? What would he say in five or ten years? How long would he live on in the collective memory of the neighbourhood? What would the boys say?

Sven-Arne knew he was liked. He did not hurt a fly, was attentive and polite, but perhaps he was also not someone they would miss. By way of his careful silence he received respect but an Indian also wanted to see a little drama, and of this Sven-Arne had nothing to add.

Should he have become more involved? He had followed the debate about the development of Indian agriculture, seen how the multinational companies had taken over more and more with their genetically modified seeds and their custom-designed pesticides. The past few years the conflict about water and water resources had raged in the media as well as on the ground. Dams had been constructed that laid waste to half districts and forced people to flee, factories had continued to destroy both surface and groundwater, and along the coast the mangrove swamps were decimated. All of this was clearly evident and deeply unjust, painful for all those who worked with plants, earth, and water. They had often spoken of this at Lal Bagh.

He knew that Bangalore, and all of modern India, was partly built on the sweat and meagre existence of poor farmers.

Even locally there were reasons for activism. There was rubbish collection, the appalling street maintenance, or the renovations of homes by the canal.

He should perhaps have got involved, but he also knew his hands were tied. The police would have been happy to single out the foreigner who was making his voice heard, make a sensation of him residing illegally in the country and deport him, perhaps even throw him in prison first.

In Sweden he did not want to be a public figure and in India he couldn’t.

Sven-Arne stroked his smooth cheeks, waved one last time to Ismael, picked up his bag that felt as if it had grown heavier, and continued his march to the bus stop.