The Hand that Trembles

FORTY-FOUR

The footprints in the newly fallen snow illustrated the slow progression of a thoughtful man. He turned around once and studied his own tracks. It made him think of hare prints, but hares don’t turn around, he thought. Their trajectories are erratic, they throw themselves this way and that. I walk straight ahead. I have always done so.

Once he reached the boulder and the birch tree with the split trunks occasioned by its great age, he paused a second time. The snow whirled in the wind and he loosened the straps of his hat and lowered the ear-flaps. He looked around: a sparse forest with patches of lichen and brush. It was so reassuring and familiar – nonetheless an unease tingled inside him. It was in exactly this area that he had once intended to subdivide a couple of lots. He tried to imagine a development with two or three houses and was glad he had changed his mind at the last minute.

I made the right decision in the end, he concluded, and felt satisfied for the first time that morning. He walked on. To walk oneself warm, he thought. To walk straight but look to the side. I’ll harvest the timber this winter, he decided, and the thought gave him a moment’s respite. He had actually made the decision earlier, last winter, but confirming it felt good.

He would have to buy a new chainsaw. The old one was no longer usable.

The wind whipped him from the north. He walked himself warm. The sides of the hat flapped but he did not bother to tie the strings under his chin. He would tie his hat after Christmas. Then he would start felling. He longed for the weight of the helmet, the safety headphones cupped over his ears, and the stiffness of the safety clothing against his thighs.

He stopped a third time. Now he was close by and could not opt out of his decision by thinking of woodcutting. It irritated him that he couldn’t drop the thought. And the most painful thing was that he knew what caused this inability to give a damn about the whole situation. Maybe because he had seen her. It had been during blueberry season and she had turned up like an exotic animal, so slender and elfin that she occasionally disappeared between the trees. He had followed her at a distance, sometimes coming close, and he discovered she was quick. She worked with straight legs, which he found pleasing. Crouching down or going down on one’s knees just wasted time.

Her behind was small and boyish, without a womanly definition to the hip bones, but nonetheless enticing. Occasionally she looked around as if anxious. Then he crouched down. How long had he followed her? An hour? Two? She had appeared inexhaustible.

After that, she also appeared when sleep came over him. Recently – when he had understood who she was, or rather had been – she appeared to him more frequently. He could not defend himself.

He could not drop the whole thing and that bothered him. He walked straight. Tracks in the snow on the street. Wind coming from the north. The trees sighing. A pine cone that dropped suddenly. The sound of breakers at a distance. He had soon reached Kalle and Margit’s. He couldn’t walk by without stopping in.

He walked in without knocking. There was a large pot in the hallway. He felt it – still warm. He lifted the lid and saw some kind of stew, glimpses of carrots and onion.

‘Hello there!’ Kalle called from his seat at the kitchen table.

Torsten Andersson pulled off his boots and hung his coat on a hook. He knew that was how Margit wanted it.

‘Well now,’ Kalle said.

‘How are things?’

‘As well as I deserve,’ Kalle said cheerfully.

Torsten sat down.

‘Coffee?’

‘Maybe one cup.’

‘Margit!’

‘I can get it,’ Torsten said, picking out a cup and filling it from the pot.

‘It’s an hour old,’ Kalle said. ‘But poison is as poison does.’

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ Torsten said, after tasting the coffee, ‘has Marksson been by with that rifle? I mean that one that Frisk shot himself with. He came by my house with it.’

Kalle looked out the window and appeared to deliberate over his answer.

‘Yes, he came by,’ he said finally. ‘An old relic. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything like it.’

‘But you recognised it?’

Kalle looked at his neighbour.

‘I think I need a little more,’ he said, and got up from his chair.

‘How is the hip?’

‘The butcher tells me it’s going to be fine, but the devil only knows.’

He refilled his cup and took his seat. He was breathing heavily.

‘Yes, I believe I’ve seen that gun before.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Probably the same as you,’ Kalle said, grinning.

Torsten nodded. He had suspected as much.

‘And what do you think?’

‘What should I think?’ Kalle said, and drank a little of his coffee. ‘This is poison,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll tell Margit to put on a new pot.’

‘It’s good enough for me,’ Torsten said. ‘Where is she?’

‘Pottering around upstairs.’

‘What do you think of the whole thing? I mean, that Frisk-’

‘No, I thought the same thing. He was no one to… It’s mysterious.’

‘Have you talked to-’

‘No, I didn’t want to get involved,’ Kalle said. ‘It’s bad enough as it is.’

‘I know. Who would have thought this would happen. I saw her.’

‘Who?’

‘Her. The one who… disappeared,’ Torsten said.

‘You saw her? Where?’

‘In the woods.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Little, thin.’

Kalle nodded as if this confirmed his own idea.

‘And then she disappeared,’ he said with a sigh.

‘What do you think happened?’

‘I don’t know. But the fact that Frisk had her hidden away seems pretty clear. Maybe she wanted to leave. It’s hard to say in these cases. I mean, with women.’

Torsten finished the last of the coffee. It felt better now that he had told someone he had seen her, but now he should move on. He was also grateful to have spoken with only Kalle. Margit would have urged him to go to the police.

He thanked Kalle for the coffee and brought his cup to the sink.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, and Kalle raised his hand.

Malm was at home; he knew as much because his car had gone by about an hour earlier. Torsten didn’t know how he would take it. They knew each other well, but had not had much contact the past few years. Torsten and Lasse Malm’s father had been childhood friends and after his suicide, Torsten had often walked over in the evenings to talk to Lasse. Everyone in Bultudden had done what they could to support him. Margit had invited him for dinner many nights and Kalle had taken him out to sea. For a while it was as if the suicide had brought the area inhabitants closer to each other.

Malm’s pickup stood parked outside the front door. There was a large shrink-wrapped package in the back. Lasse Malm stepped out on his front porch as Torsten walked up to the house.

‘Your timing couldn’t be better,’ he said, and gestured to the car.

‘Is it a fridge?’

‘A wardrobe,’ Malm said.

‘You can carry that yourself,’ Torsten said, and smiled.

Malm laughed and punched Torsten on the shoulder.

‘How’s things?’

Torsten muttered something and turned back to the pickup. He didn’t want to ask, but had to. Now or never. He was no coward, but it felt disloyal to bring up the subject of weapons with Malm. Torsten knew that he had detested firearms of all kinds since the day he had found his father on the second floor.

‘There’s one thing,’ Torsten said, and turned to Malm. ‘Something I’ve been thinking about. I have to ask, even though it doesn’t feel quite right.’

‘Yes?’

‘The seal-shooting rifle,’ Torsten said. ‘How did Frisk get hold of it?’

Lasse Malm stared at him before he turned his gaze to the side. Torsten tried again.

‘I have to-’

‘You don’t have to do fuck!’

Take it easy, Torsten thought.

‘Marksson came by and asked me if I recognised it and I said no. I did it for your sake. I would never-’

Lasse Malm raised an arm to stop the flood of words. His face was dark and there was a flicker of something in his small eyes that could be taken for hatred.

‘I knew the talk would start up sooner or later.’

‘No one is talking,’ Torsten said, and made sure not to raise his voice. ‘No one along the Avenue is talking. No one has said anything to the cops. I just wanted to know. This is between you and me.’

Lasse Malm lowered the tailgate and started to pull on the wardrobe box. Torsten laid a hand on his arm.

‘We can do this together,’ he said. ‘Just calm down. I’ll jump up on the bed.’

‘I don’t need any help. You can go to hell!’

‘Lasse,’ Torsten pleaded. ‘The two of us have to stick together, you know that. I just want some clarity.’

Malm shrugged himself out of his grasp but made no attempt to unload the car on his own. He stood staring out over the yard.

‘I sold it to Frisk,’ he said finally. ‘Sold? I more or less gave it to him. He gave me a couple of nets. I didn’t want to see that damn gun, not after… How the fuck could I know he would shoot himself twenty years later. How could I! It’s not my fault.’

‘No one is saying it’s your fault,’ Torsten said. ‘Only Frisk is responsible and everyone out here knows it. No one is blaming you for what happened.’

He felt a wave of gratitude. That explained it.

‘Let’s finish this,’ he said, and climbed up on the back wheel, swung a leg over the side, and climbed up onto the cargo area. ‘Now I know, end of story.’

Lasse Malm was motionless for a moment longer, then grabbed the package and pulled it forward so that only the very edge rested on the tailgate.

‘You can get down,’ he said. ‘It’s not so heavy.’