He fumbled across his body and stuck his hand into his underpants, stiffening immediately.
The chill under his back made him twist his body and roll onto his side. The old rag runner stank of filth. He loosened his cramp-like grip on his genitals and felt about with his hand on the wood floor as if he was trying to find something, then turned his head and stared out the kitchen window. The stars winked at him.
‘I could have been happy,’ he said out loud.
In all honesty he did not understand why his life had taken such a strange turn. He was just a regular guy. Life flashed by so quickly, and he who had existed in the periphery was on the verge of being flung out into space like a powerless package of blood, flesh, and bone. Once he had been in the centre, warmed by people, hearing laughter and voices, but slowly and imperceptibly he had been forced out until one day he found himself alone.
He had been out drinking the night before. Now he had to pay the price; the ache was like a vice on his forehead. Even though suffering was at his side right now he would soon get up, he knew he would. And again. And again.
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.’