The Hand that Trembles

TWENTY-SIX

He remembered the sea, of course he remembered the sea, and could still, after almost seventy years, feel its scent in his nostrils. It was remarkable that this smell had imprinted on him so strongly, because the overwhelming emotion that day when he first got back on his legs and was allowed to totter out into the sunshine and onto the boardwalk was rage. He was furious, and tried to articulate this to the woman by his side, a Serbian, who was steadying him. But she only smiled, focused on preventing the enormous Scandinavian from tripping. She would never have been able to hold him. There was a difference of at least twenty centimetres and thirty kilos between them.

He was furious because he was comparing the magnificent villas along the promenade with the houses in the area he had inhabited the past three months. It was nothing new that a few lived royally while the majority of the population were crowded into ramshackle cottages, but his experiences in the mountains and then the contrast to Benacasim was too much.

He was also afraid, or rather terrified, that he would never be able to have intercourse again. This he was unable to acknowledge to anyone else and hardly even to himself, so his fury was unleashed over the disparity of the caves in the mountains and the palaces by the sea.

He was limp. The sliver of a grenade had entered his sack. The pain that first day at the temporary first-aid station had been indescribable. The medics had been able to quell the bleeding but not the pain. He was given some pills, but they hardly made any difference.

In addition to the wound in his groin, his thigh and lower back were perforated with tiny, infernally stinging pieces of metal.

For three days he lay on his side on the stretcher, with a testicular sack that was becoming increasingly infected, before he was transported to the coast. Which in itself was quite a feat.

He was operated on by a Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune, who was assisted by a Swedish nurse from Karlstad. The Canadian, in actuality a lung specialist, was renowned at the front. It was viewed as an honour to be operated on by him. He later died in China, according to the newspaper Ny Dag.

‘I am only a human being,’ the nurse had laughed when he asked her in his feverish state if she belonged to the party.

Pus oozed from his body, a foul-smelling yellow paste, as they cut into the bulges that had formed.

He was still weak but getting better. Slowly but surely, his young and strong body had fought off the infection.

But would he ever again be able to lie with a woman? He was not sure how everything down there was connected, and did not dare ask, but he was afraid he had become ineffectual. A damned, tiny little sliver.

He had glanced down at the woman at his side. She had smiled back, nodding encouragingly. Nothing, he felt nothing.

Something about that young policewoman reminded him of Irina. That was her name, the Serbian. Sometimes he forgot names. Was it her smile? Or her straightforward manner, which he was to encounter in due course. Irina was sharp enough behind that smile. She was the one who had brought his desire back to life. She must have sensed his fears.

Later she was to sit in the Yugoslavian parliament. In the early fifties, he received a letter from her. He had not replied; Tito was not in such good standing with the party at that point. He had followed the party line even when it came to Irina.

What was it that police girl had said? ‘My, you’re a grumpy bastard.’ He liked that. Her visit had made him think of Sven-Arne. He had suspected his nephew was sweating it out in India. Now he had finally been outed. What would he do? Ante guessed he would try to make his way somewhere else. There was no way back.

Ante Persson had understood his decision, had secretly admired it, perhaps also been envious. He himself would never have been able to up and leave in that way.

‘Everyone is dead,’ he muttered.

Unease was lodged in his body like the sliver of a grenade. He knew he was unable to work on days like this. The texts rushed at him, images in his interior became too insistent, his buddies – above all those who had remained in Spain – appeared like phantoms and leered at him with their death-distorted faces.

The feeling of failure was never as clear to him as in these days of meaningless revisiting of the past. He knew his time was running out and that the finale was rapidly approaching. He was now as old as his mother Agnes when she slipped into her final slumber.

She had never understood his passion but had also never hesitated to support him, often without words. Perhaps she was afraid of using the wrong word.

Agnes had seen his suffering, understood that every person needed a little pride, a smidgeon of hope. In that way she was like the most persistent fighter, although she never reflected in political terms.

Teruel had made him into a ‘grumpy bastard,’ but also into a failure. He and his buddies had not only lost the battle, but the entire war. As the brigade pulled back, they lost life and hope. No one admitted it, other than perhaps a few, the ones who slunk away to Valencia to find a boat out, but they were few in number. Otherwise they simply kept their spirits up, or rather, appearances.

He flipped through his papers, stared listlessly at the spines of the books, dragged himself over to the window, and saw that the rain would go on all day.

How long can one live in a dream? One’s whole life. If one is a ‘grumpy bastard.’ A failure never gives up, adding defeat to defeat.

He missed Sven-Arne. He wanted to tell him how it had all really happened. He could have done so immediately, or as the years went by, but Ante Persson had wanted to win so badly, for once in his life, one single time he wanted to deal Fascism a fatal blow.