‘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.