Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

Silberstein lay on top of a hill with a view of Abraham Andersson’s house, aiming his binoculars down at the surrounding area. He counted three police cars, two vans, and three private cars. From time to time, somebody wearing a uniform would come out of the forest. He gathered that it was there, among the trees, that Andersson had been killed; but he hadn’t been able to go there yet. He would make that excursion after nightfall, if possible.

He scanned the house and cars again. A dog, of the same breed as the one he’d been forced to kill at Molin’s place, was tied to a line running between the house and a tree at the edge of the forest. He wondered if the dogs might have come from the same litter, or at least have the same parents. Thinking of the dog whose throat he’d slit made him feel sick. He put the binoculars down, lay on his back, and breathed deeply. He could smell the damp moss. Clouds sailed overhead.

I’m insane, he thought. I could have been in Buenos Aires instead of here in the Swedish wilderness. Maria would have been glad to see me. We might even have made love? In any case, I’d have slept soundly that night, and the following morning I’d have been able to open my workshop again. No doubt Don Antonio has been phoning, getting more annoyed by the day that the chair he sent me three months ago still isn’t ready.

If he hadn’t happened to sit down at a table with a Swedish sailor in a restaurant in Malmö, a sailor who understood and could speak Spanish, and if that damned television set hadn’t been on and shown the face of an old man who’d been murdered, he wouldn’t have needed to abandon his plan. He would have been looking forward to an evening at La Cãbana.

Above all, he wouldn’t have needed to be reminded of what had happened. He’d thought it was all over, at long last, the business that had dogged him all his life. When he’d returned to his hotel room he’d sat on the edge of the bed until he’d reached a decision. He didn’t drink a drop that night. At dawn he took a taxi to the airport some way out of town, where a friendly woman had helped him buy a ticket to Östersund. A rental car was waiting for him. He drove into town and once again bought a tent and a sleeping bag, a camping stove and the other things he needed for making meals, some more warm clothes, and a flashlight. At the System wine shop he bought enough wine and brandy to last him a week. Finally he went to the bookstore in the square and bought a map — he’d thrown away the one he’d had before, just as he’d dumped his pans, stove, tent, and sleeping bag. It was as if the nightmare were starting over. In Dante’s purgatory there was a level where men were tortured by everything repeating itself. He tried to remember what sins they had committed, but he couldn’t.

Then he drove out of town and stopped at a gas station where he bought every local paper he could find. He sat in the car and looked for everything they’d written about the dead man. It was front-page news in all the local papers. He didn’t understand the words, but there was a name mentioned after a reference to Abraham Andersson. Glöte. He guessed that must be the place where Andersson had lived, and where he’d been murdered. There was another name, Dunkärret, but that wasn’t on the map. He got out of the car and spread the unwieldy map over the hood and set about making a plan. He didn’t want to get too close. There was also a risk that the police might have set up roadblocks.

He decided on a place called Idre. He judged it to be far enough from Andersson’s house. He was tired when he arrived, and pitched his tent at the end of a forest road where he felt safe. He left the tent, after covering it with leaves and branches he’d laboriously gathered. Then he drove north toward Sörvattnet, turned off for Linsell, and had no difficulty in finding the road marked by a sign saying “Dunkärret 2.” But he didn’t take that road; instead, he continued towards Sveg.

Just before the road leading to Molin’s house he’d passed a police car. About a kilometer further on he drove into the trees along a road that was almost completely overgrown. He’d surveyed the area thoroughly during the three weeks he’d spent observing Molin. He had compared himself to an animal that needed many exits from its den.

Now he parked his car and walked along the familiar track. He didn’t think the place would be guarded, but even so he kept stopping and listening. Eventually, he could glimpse the house through the trees. He waited for twenty minutes. Then he walked up to the house and the spot where he’d left Molin’s dead body. The forest floor was trodden down. The remains of red-and-white police tape hung from trees. He wondered if the man he’d killed had been buried yet. Perhaps the pathologists were still examining the body? He wondered if they would realize that the lashes on Molin’s back had been made by a bullwhip used by cowboys on the Pampas. He approached the house and heaved himself up until he could see into the living room. The bloodstained footsteps had dried onto the floor but could still be made out. The woman who came to clean for Molin had obviously not been back.

He took his usual path to the lake. That was the path he’d used the night he decided he’d been waiting long enough. The other woman, the one who used to visit Molin and dance with him, had been there the previous day. If they followed their usual custom, it would be a week more before she came again. Moreover, the other man, the one called Andersson, had also been there the day before. He’d followed Andersson home, and had watched from behind some trees as he closed all the shutters and locked the shed and gave every sign of preparing to go away. He could still remember the feeling of having decided that the time had come. It had been raining that day. The clouds had dispersed by evening and he’d gone to the lake for a swim in the cold water, so that his head would be clear when he made the fateful decision. Afterwards he’d snuggled up in his sleeping bag in order to restore his body heat. All the weapons he’d acquired when he’d made his break-in on the way to Härjedalen were spread out on a plastic sheet beside him.

The time had come. Even so he was held back by a strange reluctance. It was as if he’d been waiting so long, he didn’t know what would happen when the waiting was over. As so often before, his mind went back to the events of the last year of the war, when his life fell to pieces and could never wholly be restored. He’d often thought of himself as a sailboat with a broken mast and shredded sails. That was how his life had been, and nothing would be fundamentally changed by what he was about to do. He’d harbored the thought of revenge all his adult life, and he sometimes hated that feeling more than he hated the man responsible. Still, it was too late now. He couldn’t return to Buenos Aires without doing what he’d come here to do. He made up his mind after swimming in the dark lake. That night he launched his attack, carried out his plan.

He walked along the undulating shore of the lake, keeping his ears pricked all the time. The only sound was the rustling of the wind through the trees around him. When he came to the place where he’d pitched his tent, he decided that violence had not warped him, despite everything. He was basically a kind man who couldn’t bear to see suffering. Violence to another human being would be unthinkable in any other circumstances. What he’d done to Molin was a closed book the moment he’d left his naked body at the edge of the forest.

Violence has not poisoned me, he thought. All the hatred that built up inside me over those years deadened my senses. I was the one who lashed Molin’s skin into bloody strips, but at the same time, it wasn’t me.