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The Hand that Trembles
By Kjell Eriksson, Ebba Segerberg St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2011 Kjell Eriksson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-8359-4
CHAPTER 1
It was at the corner of Brigade and Mahatma Ghandi Road that he had the first intuition. Not that he was superstitious, quite the opposite. Over the course of his career, rationality had been his trademark. It rendered him ill-suited to this country, and yet sympathetic to the Indian fatalism that he had grown to appreciate over the years. But he should have heeded the signs.
First this so unexpected thought of "home": Whenever he thought of this word it was usually in conjunction with the apartment in Bangalore or, more rarely, the town house in Uppsala. But this time a vision of his Vaksala Square neighborhood rose before him. Of course he thought of his childhood street from time to time, but this time the recollection gripped him with unexpected force. He paused, was pushed aside, and came to a halt outside the entrance of a store that sold Kashmir silk.
There was nothing about MG Road that was reminiscent of Uppsala. Absolutely nothing. The intense, almost insane traffic, the eternal honking, and the cloud of exhaust fumes hovering over the street, all this was unthinkable around Vaksala Square. Almost everything he saw was unimaginable on Salagatan; the holes in the sidewalk, some so deep they seemed like portals to another world — a darkness into which to descend. The stream of people, who adeptly veered to avoid the stopped man; the vendors of "genuine" Rolex watches and "police glasses" who avoided him with equal adeptness; the security guard from Guardwell posted outside the shop that promised excellent deals on shawls and saris but that in reality milked Westerners' credit cards for a couple of thousand rupees extra. No eye-catching sums but enough to ensure that the Mafia from the north made handsome profits. At least that was what Lester said.
He saw the apartment building in which he grew up, the courtyard with the newly raked gravel of Fridays, the neatly edged lawns and plantings of roses and lilacs, the obligatory mock-orange bush and the unpleasant-smelling viburnum by the park down toward the railway tracks. An almost rigid order reigned over the landscaping around the buildings. An impression of immutability that he, at a brief visit many years later, could testify had lingered a surprising number of years. A utility building had been added, poorly placed and completely different in style; the gravel was no longer quite as attractively ridged; the flag post had been removed, perhaps temporarily; but the fundamentals remained, and the substantial lilac trees leaned thoughtfully, heavy with age and with twisted trunks as if they writhed in regret at the passing of time.
All this came before him as he stood on the pavement along MG Road. The guard looked more closely at him, perhaps nervous that the old man was about to collapse and thereby force him to engage.
Sven-Arne smiled reassuringly. The guard jerked his head but remained otherwise impassive.
Was it nostalgia? Could it be called that, although before this moment he could not have been able to imagine returning to Uppsala? But suddenly this dreamlike vision appeared, as when one imagines soaring like a bird or diving into the depths like a fish.
It was most likely the lack of possibility that caused his pain. He even lacked a valid passport. He took a couple of steps, mostly to escape the watchful eyes of the guard, stopped, then walked off in the direction of St. Marks Road.
The next warning came shortly thereafter.
After a few hundred meters, he saw a couple walking in his direction. He was immediately convinced that they were Swedes, even though there was nothing in their clothing or behavior that gave this impression. He walked toward the catastrophe without a thought of slipping into the alley he had just passed. He would have been able to get away, as he had done so many times before when he had had this premonition. But it was as if the learned defense mechanisms that had functioned so well for over a decade had now collapsed after the odd experience outside the silk store. He walked toward them, defenseless.
Their gazes met when they were ten or twenty meters from each other. The woman scrutinized him, her eyes going from his face to his strange clothing (in her opinion, most likely) and then she looked away with indifference. As they passed each other he heard her say a few words to her companion, a man around forty years of age. He was sweating in his suit and tie, one pace behind the woman.
She was speaking Swedish. Northwestern Skåne, maybe Helsingborg, he thought, always childishly pleased with his ability to place a person's dialect. "I think we should ask Nils anyway." Her tone was decisive, almost aggressive. Sven-Arne had time to catch the man's unease. It was clear that he did not want to place a question to this Nils.
Just as they reached each other, the man glanced at Sven-Arne and for a moment the latter thought he saw a subtle shift in the man's facial expression, as if he recognized him, and Sven-Arne also caught an imperceptible reaction. The man slowed down slightly and lost even more ground to the woman. Was it just an unconscious reaction, an appeal, as if to say, "Help me get away from this woman, distract her for a moment so that she'll drop the idea of talking to Nils"?
Sven-Arne hurried on his way, without turning around.
* * *
The street noise grew louder the closer he got to St. Marks Road. A rickshaw had collided with a motorcycle, and two men were involved in a heated dispute. A woman standing next to the motorcyclist was crying. Blood trickled down her forehead. The rickshaw driver was screaming out his fury, saliva was spraying out of his mouth, and he was gesturing wildly to underscore his arguments.
The crash had blocked traffic and caused a serenade of honking, from the bellowing of the trucks to the ridiculous high-pitched signals from all the yellow rickshaws trying to maneuver their way through. Sven-Arne slowed down but did not stop. He had his inner crash to sort out.
Afterward, when he had caught his breath at Lester's, he cursed his own stupidity. He should have interpreted the signs better. Despite the evident warnings, he had continued along the street.
His goal had been Koshy's, where he returned to eat dinner once a year, for sentimental reasons. It was the only nostalgic act he allowed himself.
One evening in November 1993, disoriented and hungry after having vomited on the plane from Delhi, he had found himself standing outside the airport and had asked a taxi driver to take him to a good restaurant. That had been Koshy's.
Now he was going there to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of his arrival to the city that had become his home. It was, especially at first, an expression of self-torture, to test his own resolve.
The very first visit had not gone very well. He had burst into tears. Perhaps it was the exhaustion from the painful journey through Europe, the long flights and the extraordinary tribulations that caused him to collapse silently at the table. The waiter became aware of his distress and hurried over, but Sven-Arne waved him away, dried his tears, and opened the menu.
He was a stranger when he staggered out of the airport, and the sense of alienation had grown during the short ride into the city center. At his table at Koshy's he realized for the first time the enormity of his actions. Until this point he had been acting automatically without any thought of the consequences, from Uppsala to Arlanda airport, at Heathrow, at the terminal in Delhi. He had only one goal: to get away.
The yearly visit to the restaurant was therefore a test. He always sat at the same table. If it was occupied, he waited. Then he recalled in his mind the first experiences of Bangalore, the confusion and indecision, the uncertainty if he had done the right thing. Every year he came to the same conclusion: Yes, it had been the right thing to do. What other conclusion could he come to?
He stepped into Koshy's, relieved to escape the noise of the street and any possible new unsettling events. He went to the right, to the somewhat more exclusive part, pushed open the swinging door, and set his sights on the table, which was obscured both by a pillar and the maitre d'. The latter had been the same for all these years, a broad-shouldered wrestling type whose hair was growing thin on top but who still had an imposing handlebar mustache, large hands, and a heavy-set, choleric face whose expression could nonetheless lighten at a moment's notice.
It came as a complete shock. Sven-Arne Persson turned on his heels and fled.
CHAPTER 2
Jan Svensk got halfway to his feet, had automatically stretched out a hand as if to detain the fleeing man, but then realized it was meaningless. The doors swung back and forth a few times; he was gone.
It isn't possible, he thought, frozen for a few moments before he flung himself out of his chair and onto the deafening street. The heat struck him. He stared in all directions and glimpsed a gray head of hair through the filmy plastic window of a rickshaw. The driver set off and the vehicle was swallowed up in the heavy traffic.
He returned inside. The other guests, about a dozen, stared at him with undisguised curiosity. The waiter regarded him quizzically.
"Is anything wrong, sir?"
Jan Svensk shook his head.
"I just thought ... there was a gentleman ..."
"Oh, you mean 'the Polite One'?"
"You know him?"
The waiter waggled his head, a gesture that Jan Svensk had never really grasped the meaning of. Was it an answer in the affirmative, a "no," or did it stand for the more diffuse notion of "maybe"?
"Does he come here regularly?"
The waiter glanced around. The maitre d' approached.
"Who is he?"
"No one knows, sir."
The waiter started to draw away from the table, but Svensk grabbed hold of his arm.
"Does he come here often?"
"No, not very often."
They looked at each other. Jan Svensk felt the waiter had the upper hand, perhaps because he was standing. How tall could he be? Five foot four at most, he thought, not without bitterness. He himself was six foot one.
The waiter smiled, straightened his sleeve, and turned his attention to the next table after having delivered another waggle of his head that Jan Svensk interpreted as "That is all I know" or perhaps more precisely, "That is all I will tell."
He resumed his eating, with a lingering feeling of having been unfairly treated. The food was not tasty. It reminded him of excrement, or perhaps it was the other way around. That which he was able to excrete into the hotel toilet retained its original form; a brown, sometimes yellow, stinking mass that dribbled out of him and left a burning sensation. At least it smelled better beforehand, he thought, and swirled his spoon in the bowl of lentils. The consistency was that of a thin porridge.
Could it be Persson? And what was his first name? It was a hyphenated name, something a little nerdy. Sven-Arne, that was it!
Jan Svensk had read about doppelgangers; from time to time one saw published pictures of people who closely resembled each other. Often it was someone from Tierp or Alingsås who looked ridiculously like a movie star or other celebrity. Could someone really look that much like Persson? Jan Svensk shook his head.
"No," he murmured, deciding the matter, and looked around for the waiter, who very likely harbored more information, he was sure of it.
The maitre d', impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, glided over to his side.
"Is everything to your satisfaction?"
Or at least this was what Jan Svensk thought he said, and he nodded.
"I was wondering, that gentleman who came in here ... Is he someone you know?"
The maitre d' made a dismissive hand gesture.
"He has dined here a few times, but we do not know him."
They are protecting him, Jan thought.
"He is ... an old friend from my homeland."
"Really?" said the maitre d'.
He wants money, Jan thought.
"A friend of the family," he went on.
"I am sorry you did not have a chance to talk to each other."
You old bastard! You know who he is. The maitre d' disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. Svensk turned his head and saw him exchange a few words with the waiter.
Svensk waved his arm and the waiter approached.
"The bill, please."
The waiter returned with it after ten minutes. Jan Svensk gave him around 500 rupees.
The waiter looked at the bills.
"It is too much," he said, and opened the brown leather folder that held the bill.
The total came to 420 rupees.
"The rest is for you," Jan Svensk said.
The waiter put one bill back on the table.
"It is enough, thank you."
Then he smiled. Jan Svensk became bright red in the face.
"I thought ..."
"I understand, sir," the waiter said slowly, "but like our guests, we have our dignity. I do hope the food was to your liking."
CHAPTER 3
The rickshaw took him away from Koshy's. He had given the driver his address, but after a couple of minutes he changed his mind and gave him another: South End Circle. To Jayanagar, just south of Lal Bagh, the botanical garden, where Lester lived. He could spend the night there. He had done that before; the first was when his work at Lal Bagh had taken longer than expected. Lester had invited him for a late supper and thereafter offered to let him spend the night on a cot in the inner room.
This, like his visit to Koshy's, had become a tradition. Lester invited him over several times a year. Sven-Arne always knew he would be treated to something special.
Now he would arrive uninvited, but was convinced his colleague would find nothing extraordinary in this. And if he did, he would not show a trace of it to Sven-Arne.
Lester was hardly the kind of man to be taken by surprise. He faced every new development, whether unexpected or not, with the same equanimity. He was also the only one who knew enough about his past that Sven-Arne would be able to tell him about what happened at the restaurant. Lester would listen, send one of his sons out for some beer, maybe a small bottle of rum, then dispense some sound advice and an invitation to stay overnight.
Lester's father was British and sometimes Sven-Arne had the impression that Lester had designated him to be a stand-in for his biological father, a man who had come to Bangalore in the midfifties and settled in a decent house in the otherwise so rundown streets around Russell Market. No one knew what he lived on, perhaps a pension. He had been injured in the war, in the battles just outside of Rangoon, Burma, and he was missing the lower half of one arm, but had also been psychologically damaged. Lester had told him that as a child he would sometimes be awakened by his father's screams when the nightmares set in.
Lester's father not only hated all Japanese, but all Asians. It was therefore a bit of a puzzle why he had decided to stay in Bangalore and marry a woman from Madras, who had given birth to three children in rapid succession. In the early 1970s, when Lester was eight years old, the one-armed Englishman disappeared for good. Six years later the family was notified that he had died in a hospital in Mombasa. He left the house in Noah Street, and five thousand pounds in an account in a Hong Kong bank.
The money made it possible for Lester and his two brothers to get an education. Lester did a three-year horticultural degree in northern India and returned to Bangalore on his twenty-third birthday. He received a post at Lal Bagh and had stayed. Now he was responsible for the arboretum, care and replanting.
* * *
Lester opened the door, quickly scrutinized Sven-Arne's face, but did not reveal by the slightest gesture what may have crossed his mind. He stepped aside and called to his wife that they had a visitor, while he observed Sven-Arne.
"Is everything all right?"
Sven-Arne nodded, took off his sandals, and placed them by the door where they had to fight for a spot next to half a dozen others.
"I come unexpectedly, I know, but something has happened."
"Nothing serious, I hope," Lester said, and led his guest into one of the three rooms of the apartment. The caterwauling of a television could be heard from the adjoining room.
His wife stuck her head out of the kitchen.
"A little tea," Lester said.
Sonia disappeared.
"Are you hungry, perhaps?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Hand that Trembles by Kjell Eriksson, Ebba Segerberg. Copyright © 2011 Kjell Eriksson. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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