The Hand that Trembles

THIRTY-THREE

The old man was sitting on the side of his bed when Sven-Arne entered the room. He had managed to make his way through the building and up to the third floor without bumping into anyone.

Ante had heard him coming, Sven-Arne was convinced of it. His door out to the corridor had been open and the old one must have identified him by his footsteps. He had heard his nephew come and go for fifty-one years. That it had been twelve years since last time made no difference.

He was staring straight ahead, his eagle profile the same as always. His left hand lay on his thigh, veined and lined, the tops of two fingers missing. The wrinkled trousers – were they the same gaberdine trousers he had helped him buy shortly before India? – were stained. Egg, Sven-Arne thought, the old man must still eat an astounding number of soft-boiled eggs.

Ante fought hard not to show how emotional he was, but the tense jaw muscles gave him away.

Sven-Arne rubbed a hand over his own face. The muscles above his right eyebrow twitched spasmodically. They had not done so during all his twelve years in India.

Ante slowly turned his head and looked at his nephew.

‘You’re older,’ he said.

Sven-Arne nodded.

‘Twelve years older,’ he said in a rough voice. ‘And that goes for you too.’

‘Should think so.’

Sven-Arne took a couple of steps closer to the bed. He stretched out his hand. Ante grabbed it, pulled him toward him. There was still strength in his arm.

‘It was good that you came.’

Sven-Arne suddenly remembered that December day half a century ago at Rosberg’s, how he had laid his hand on Ante’s as they sat on the roof, Sven-Arne on his uncle’s mittens, which they inadvertently left behind. How Ante for the first time told him about Spain with seriousness. Sven-Arne thought he could remember every word that was said, the bridge they were going to blow up, the Bulgarian miner ‘the Brush’, Ante’s Spanish words shouted across the roofs and woods that must have been a kind of greeting or an urging to fight, for resistance. And thereafter the shots that Rosberg and Ante took, their almost wordless conversation, his own warm milk with the line of cream in the glass and the American alarm clock he received with ‘Rep. alarm’ and ‘Long alarm’ and the seemingly unbreakable mechanism.

It was as if all of the memories streamed through their fingers. Sven-Arne saw Ante’s hand in his own. Two Persson hands, snow-shovelling hands, plumber’s hands – like a design on a table runner in a Folkets Hus community centre.

Then he remembered something altogether different and immediately let go.

He looked around the room. The sight of the crutches, leaning against one end of the bookcase, increased his sense of confusion.

‘You still have the crutches?’

Ante followed his gaze, as if to check that they were still there, and nodded.

‘They’re hanging in there,’ he said, and Sven-Arne caught a flash of his ironic smile of old for a second.

If Sven-Arne in that moment would have been able to turn the clock back a couple of days, he would have set his sights on Ismael’s barbershop and walked back.

He understood that nothing had changed in twelve years. The old man was the same, as was his sickly pride and Sven-Arne’s disapproval. No, disapproval was too weak, more like revulsion.

‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he said, and bent down.

He wanted to get it over with, hand over his package in order to, yes, in order to do what exactly? Talk about old memories?

‘I see,’ Ante said, and tried to look indifferent, but his curiosity made him follow Sven-Arne’s movements intently as he searched in his bag.

‘It’s a small thing.’

‘It’s the thought that counts,’ his uncle replied, and Sven-Arne gave him a quick glance. He couldn’t tell if he meant it ironically or not.

Ante stretched out his hand and took the gift. Appropriately enough, the wrapping paper was red. Now Sven-Arne saw that his uncle was moved. How long has it been since someone has given him anything, he thought.

With clumsy movements and his lips moving soundlessly, Ante finally managed to peel off the wrapping. The cardboard box was of poor quality and the top almost fell apart as he removed it.

‘A sickle,’ he said, and got a somewhat uncertain expression on his face.

Ante sat quietly for a long time and studied the tool, the hand-made blade, and the handle of wood.

‘There’s a hammer here already,’ Sven-Arne said.

‘What? Oh yes, of course,’ Ante said, bewildered.

‘You can hang it up.’

His uncle nodded. Sven-Arne’s gaze swept along the walls. He recognised everything that Ante had put up: the recognition from the Spanish state, the poster with the message that Barcelona did not give up, the group photo of a party conference at the end of the forties, and the little photograph of Agnes’s cottage.

‘It was a nice present,’ Ante said finally, then put the sickle back in the box and scrupulously packed it all up again. Sven-Arne even had the impression that Ante was going to rewrap the box in the red paper, but the latter put the box on the ground and pushed it off to the side with his foot.

‘It was a nice present,’ he repeated.

All at once Sven-Arne felt extremely tired. It was as if the long trip and the anticipation of meeting his uncle now hit him with full force. He pulled up a chair and sat down. He wanted to say something, tell him something, but most of all he wanted to lie down.

He looked at the old man, who seemed equally exhausted.

‘You still read,’ Sven-Arne said finally.

Ante looked up.

‘Elsa came by,’ he said.

Sven-Arne did not want to know anything about his wife’s visit or how she was, but forced himself to ask anyway.

‘She is in the hospital,’ Ante said. ‘Unconscious.’

Sven-Arne nodded. Strange, he thought, that’s as far as my interest reaches for this woman I lived with for so many years.

‘You are writing your memoirs, I hear.’

The old man nodded.

‘About Spain?’

‘Among other things.’

‘And more?’

‘Everything,’ Ante said. ‘Do you remember Anders Bergström?’

Sven-Arne did not, but saw from his uncle’s expression that it had to do with Spain.

‘I’ve told you about him, I know I have, but you probably don’t remember, probably don’t want to remember. The one from the Workers’ Syndical Union who taught me-’

‘How to handle a machine gun,’ Sven-Arne filled in. ‘Now I remember. You’ve talked about so many.’

‘It was an old Russian piece that was in the school in Albacete, heavy as all get out. It was a Maxim from World War One. I’m writing about Bergström right now. He went on to meet a strange fate.’

‘Wasn’t that true of all of you?’

He did not want to hear the story over again.

‘Bergström was a good shot. He belonged to the Reserve Unit at Teruel and there he froze to death. It was probably twenty-five below zero at New Year’s. I didn’t know anything about it until I was stationed in Morella. It was before I came back to the hospital at the coast, but of course I heard what had happened. There were oranges there. Bergström would have wanted one. He often talked about food, not least oranges. You understand, we missed fruit. We didn’t talk politics as much as one would think, mostly it was about food and how things were back home, what we wanted to do later on.’

He shot Sven-Arne a quick look.

‘There’s only two of us left,’ he said after a moment’s silence.

Did he mean Spanish veterans or was he referring to the two of them? Sven-Arne decided he was talking about the International Brigades. He knew that the society with the old volunteer republicans had been slumbering for a number of years. The members had fallen away or become too old to manage the organisation. Was it true that only Ante and one other was still alive?

He had accompanied Ante to a number of meetings over the years. It had always been a remarkable feeling to meet Ante’s old comrades, tremulous old men who once had been battle-ready youths and who for so long had nursed memories of their fight against the Falange.

‘Are you still living in Spain?’

‘Are you afraid that the truth will come out? Is that why you have returned?’

Sven-Arne lowered his head, tried to think, tried to get himself to understand Ante, and thereby perhaps himself, but his thoughts went round in circles.

But Arne appeared to have gathered himself and continued to talk about Bergström and his machine gun. Sven-Arne’s apathy grew. His uncle’s words became a murmur.

‘You aren’t listening,’ Ante declared.

Sven-Arne opened his eyes.

‘I’m a little tired,’ he said. ‘I have had a long trip.’

‘You’re as mixed up as you were twelve years ago. Don’t you understand that there is no alternative?’

‘There are always alternatives!’

‘It was justice,’ Ante said. ‘And you know it.’

‘Your justice.’

‘Our justice.’

Now he’s going to start talking about class, Sven-Arne thought. The suffering, the burden. As if we aren’t reminded enough about it.

‘No, I’m not going to talk about class,’ Ante said, and smiled when he saw the perplexed look on Sven-Arne’s face.

The old bastard isn’t normal, Sven-Arne thought. Now he’s reading my thoughts.

‘I have left the party,’ Ante went on. ‘Oh, come on, don’t look so baffled. I’ve thrown in the towel after seventy years. Not even Hungary got me to go, I didn’t quit with Seth Persson, even though I thought he was reasonable, or with the Holmbergs, even though I knew him so well, and not after Czechoslovakia either. I stayed on when that bitch became chairman and everything was just women’s blather. But then it was time.’

All at once Sven-Arne’s head cleared. Not in his wildest fantasy would he have imagined that his uncle would leave the party he had been so faithful to for so many years. Granted, it was a party that had changed appearance, from an almost purely working-class membership to a party for all manner of types from the middle class, now with a minister’s son presiding at the helm. But it had been a party that was Ante. The organisation had been his whole life and being.

‘Why?’

‘I realised that it was easier to act as a socialist from without than within a Socialist Party.’

How much longer does he think he is going to live, Sven-Arne wondered. Is he going to ‘act’ as a socialist here at the nursing home?

‘You’re bluffing.’

‘Not at all, why would I do that? You drew the same conclusion, didn’t you? Ran off to India to dig in the dirt and that schoolteaching you talked about. Wasn’t it easier to be a Social Democrat there, in the garden and in the school, than in the party? No circulars and briefs that laid out how you should think and act. No high-and-mighty chairman getting applause for every smelly fart he lets out.’

Sven-Arne could not believe his ears. Had Ante ever had difficulties adjusting to the party’s directives and violent swings?

‘You if anyone should know why I left.’

Fatigue came creeping again, now accompanied by a headache.

‘That was just a pretext. You also thought this whole thing smelt like shit.’

‘Maybe,’ Sven-Arne said weakly.

He did not want to go on digging through the past. Maybe he should tell something from his time in India. A small episode, some vignettes from the street or Lal Bagh, or about Lester’s family, anything that could get him to think about something other than his time as an Uppsala politician.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ante said, and heaved himself to his feet with the help of the walker. A tremor shot through his upper body before he found his balance.

‘You are here now, and that makes me happy.’

Sven-Arne stared at him, dumbfounded.

‘Yes, happy,’ his uncle went on. ‘I haven’t had a debate in twelve years.’

‘Someone to debate, you mean?’

‘We are the same kind, you and I. You are thirty years younger, but you’ve sort of caught up with me. Now you can also start to sum things up. And I don’t have to explain so goddamn much, you know from your own experience what life is like. I don’t want to debate anymore. I want to conclude. Don’t you think I realise what my life must have seemed to those around me?’

He sank back down on his bed.

‘Are you depressed?’

‘You are the only thing I have,’ Ante said.

Sven-Arne looked at him. If the news that Ante had left the party was sensational to say the least, then this was no less earth-shattering.

‘The only thing or the only one?’

Ante looked uncertainly at him, then his face broke into a smile.

‘Both,’ he said. ‘Olars comes up once a year. For Christmas! As if Christmas was anything special. He has a box of chocolates with him every time. I give it to the girls. Olars, he is starting to get old and decrepit… Do you remember Rosberg’s roof? I remember everything, that is my biggest problem. Most people go on, but I’m still thrashing around in the same muck.’

Sven-Arne looked at Ante in amazement. During the approximately twenty telephone conversations they had had during the past twelve years – Sven-Arne had called every spring and autumn – his uncle had not said a word that could imply a change of heart. Not even his letters had contained any of this.

‘I thought that was your strength.’

‘Maybe it is,’ Ante said. ‘You see,’ he went on, and waved his hand in the direction of the books on the shelf, ‘all the words, all the visions, it is as if I can reach out and touch the dreams, I see them before me.’

‘Maybe the dreams were unrealistic?’

Ante shook his head slowly.

‘No,’ he said, ‘our dreams were too small. In Spain we dreamt of the defeat of Fascism, violent defeats, we were so young, we wanted to see blood, I admit that. But we also dreamt of culture. We were envious of the knowledge of the bourgeoisie, their sureness, fine words, and carriage. We knew there was something behind it, something that we never reached. Do you understand what I mean? We were proud, of course, but inside us there was the gnawing feeling that we were still poor, as if we were not worth as much. And then we dreamt of women, of course, comrade women, beautiful women in battle.’

Ante smiled unexpectedly as if he remembered something. Sven-Arne knew he had fallen in love with a woman during his time in Spain, but he had never talked about her other than telling him her name was Irina.

Sven-Arne wanted to say something beautiful and inspiring, but as in so many other cases his uncle pre-empted him.

‘Don’t say anything. I know what you can do. Words, words, and more words. I’m sure you still have that ability. I am glad that you came, but maybe you should have stayed where you were. There is nothing here. In India, yes… there is… what is there there, anyway?’

‘But you haven’t exactly given up and laid yourself flat on the ground.’

‘I have tried to fight back,’ Ante said. ‘But now everything is about defeat. Yes, we won a little, I am the first to admit that, but the final conclusion will not be affirming reading. And now everyone is talking about the fact that the world may be coming to an end, the ice caps are melting and we will drown like cats. That may be just as well. Everything will be ocean.’

He stopped and Sven-Arne thought for a moment that he was about to burst into tears. His upper lip trembled and his watery old-man eyes twitched.

‘I often think about a little village by the name of Forcall. There was a whole gang of us there – a Pole, some Germans, and then me. Blom was off on some errand, maybe a woman, he was always after them. You must remember Blom.’

Sven-Arne nodded. Ante’s talk was calming him down.

‘Everything was fine. Sometimes an Italian surveillance plane would go past, but everything on the ground was still. The Polack was a little hurt and one of the Germans was helping him with the bandage. We sat and talked about life. One of those times when you really get close to each other. It must have been our proximity to the Fascist positions. We had nothing to lose except our lives. I talked about Irina, the Serbian. You know, the one who made it into parliament and later became one of Tito’s trusted circle. I believed I would never see her again. It was fated that I should die in the mountains. I had been given a warning, been perforated by a grenade, but returned. I was in love with those villages.’

‘But also with Irina,’ Sven-Arne said. He had shifted his chair a little closer to Ante, who for once was speaking quietly, almost mutteringly.

‘Also with Irina,’ he echoed.

‘But you chose the villages and the conflict,’ Sven-Arne said.

Ante nodded. ‘I thought I would meet her again when I was injured the second time, but she had been transferred.’

‘You lost both the villages and her.’

Ante lifted his head and looked at his nephew.

‘Did you have a woman in India?’

‘For a while,’ Sven-Arne said. ‘But she moved on.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘Sometimes.’

Ante nodded again. ‘Then I was captured.’

‘Where did Irina go?’

‘When the republic fell she fled to France with everyone else and ended up in a camp, Barcarès. There she met a Spaniard from Lerida, an anarchist who had fought alongside Durutti. He ended up in the Resistance movement in France, but the Germans got him and he died in Mauthausen. Irina was able to get back to Serbia.’

‘You’ve never talked about how you got yourself out.’

‘Nothing extraordinary. Bribes. I was being held with a Yankee from the Lincoln brigade, a lift technician from New York. A Jew. There were a lot of them in the republic. We managed to bribe a guard, that’s all it took. We parted ways north of Valencia, then I headed north. I had some things hidden away in a village.’

‘The children’s drawings?’

‘Among other things. You remember them?’

‘You told me about the drawings when I was a kid. What was that all about?’

‘You’ll have to read about it,’ Ante said. ‘It was a nurse from Karlstad who… but I don’t think I can go through it right now. I was just going to talk a little longer about that moment in Forcall. The Polack groaned a little. He was in pain, but it was nothing compared to what he was to experience the following day. Then he died, just like the Germans. Blom hung on for another week, then he went. He was from Hälsingland. I was the only one in the group who pulled through.’

Ante looked at Sven-Arne with moist eyes.

‘Things like that prey on your mind, you know.’

Sven-Arne had known this for fifty years, ever since that winter’s day on the roof.

‘I think about all the hopes they had. We were simple fellows, no big players. We just wanted justice. Then, when they started going on about Stalin and the camps in Siberia, what were we to think?’

Sven-Arne stretched out his hand in order to put it on Ante’s stained trouser leg but pulled it back.

They sat quietly for several minutes. The clatter of footsteps and the rattle of a passing cart could be heard from the corridor.

Sven-Arne thought about what Ante had said, that he had only been fighting for justice. It could have been used for his own part, but he felt that the words were too big, words that no longer had any grounding. Now it was too late to back up the tape and start wreaking havoc, agitating. That time was over and the fault was partly his. He had let go of his dreams and become a prisoner of his situation, and what credibility would he – a fugitive county commissioner – have? In the best-case scenario, people would laugh at him. Wouldn’t they? He hadn’t embezzled any funds and made off with the coffers, had not been bought by the money men or left on a well-paying international assignment. He had spent his time planting trees, weeding, and picking up litter. Would he be able to speak as he had used to? And perhaps some things really had changed. Perhaps people were more receptive to talk about the things that lay beyond the most immediate matters of everyday life. He knew so little about what had happened in Sweden the last decade.

Sven-Arne realised his uncle was studying him. He is reading me, he thought. To break it up he again stretched out his hand. Ante grabbed it.

‘We’re sitting on the edge of a piss-pot,’ he said. ‘We’re in a hell of a hole, aren’t we?’

His hand was bony and cold.

‘We’re in a hell of a hole,’ Sven-Arne agreed.

‘There are a couple of thousand in every generation, the five thousand worst bastards, and I am glad I’ve belonged to that bunch. That will be on my tombstone. I am an odd duck, but…’

‘In India…’

‘What about India?’

Ante sounded almost eager, but Sven-Arne shook his head and withdrew his hand.

‘Another time,’ he said, but sensed there would not be many more of those.

In the same moment that he stood up and straightened his journey-stiffened body he made his decision. Suddenly it appeared as a simple alternative, the only one really. To once again become an honourable citizen in Sweden and Uppsala was not possible and to return to India was just as unthinkable.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, and picked his bag up off the floor, but then he hesitated. He wanted to put his arms around the old man, who now observed in bewilderment that Sven-Arne was gripped by a sudden fervour. But he couldn’t do it. This was not because hugs had never been part of the Persson family repertoire but rather that he was convinced it would cause him to fall into an unconsolable fit of weeping. He had to stay upright and make his own decisions.

‘You’re leaving?’

Sven-Arne nodded.

‘Will you be back?’

Sven-Arne hated lying to Ante, and to top it off he was bad at it. Ante had almost always seen right through his hemmings and hawings, but this time he looked pleased when Sven-Arne explained that they would soon see each other again.

‘I just have some things to sort out again,’ Sven-Arne said from the door, and left the nursing home as unnoticed as when he arrived.