Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

“Speak into his left ear,” she said. “He can’t hear anything in his right one.”

She closed the door behind him. Lindman suspected he’d heard a trace of weariness or irritation in her voice when she referred to her father’s deafness. He went up to the bed. The man in it was thin and hollow-cheeked. In a way he reminded Lindman of Emil Wetterstedt. Another skeletal figure, waiting to die.

Jacobi turned his head to look at him. He gestured to a chair at the side of the bed.

“The music is nearly finished,” he said. “Please excuse me, but I regard it as a serious crime to interrupt the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.”

Lindman sat on the chair and waited. Jacobi had turned up the volume with a remote control, and the music echoed round the room. The old man lay listening, with his eyes closed. When the music stopped he pressed the remote control with trembling fingers, and put it on his stomach.

“I shall die soon,” he said. “I think it has been a great blessing to live after Bach. I have my own way of measuring time, and I divide history into the age before Bach and the age after him. An author whose name I’ve forgotten has written poems about that. I am being granted the enormous privilege of spending my last days to the accompaniment of his music.”

He adjusted his head on the pillows.

“Now the music has finished and we can talk. What was it you wanted?”

“My name is Stefan Lindman.”

“My daughter has already told me that,” Jacobi said, impatiently. “I remember your father. I drew up his will. That was what you wanted to discuss, but I don’t know how you can expect me to remember the terms of an individual will. I must have drawn up at least a thousand during my forty-seven years as a practicing attorney.”

“It has to do with a donation to a foundation called Strong Sweden.”

“I might remember. But I might not.”

“It transpires that the foundation is part of a Nazi organization here in Sweden.”

Jacobi drummed his fingers on his quilt. “Nazism died with Hitler.”

“It appears that a lot of people in Sweden still support this organization. And the fact is that young people are joining it.”

Jacobi looked hard at him. “Some people collect stamps. Others collect matchbox labels. I regard it as not impossible that there are some people who collect obsolete political ideals. People have always wasted their lives doing pointless things. Nowadays people drop dead while staring at all those trivial and degrading television series that go on forever.”

“My father pledged money to this organization. You knew him. Was he a Nazi?”

“I knew your father as a proud and patriotic Swede. No more than that.”

“And my mother?”

“I didn’t have much contact with her. Is she still alive?”

“No, she died some time ago.”

Jacobi cleared his throat. “Precisely why have you come here?”

“To ask if my father was a Nazi.”

“What makes you think I could answer that question?”

“There are not many people still alive who can. I don’t know anybody else.”

“I’ve already given you my answer, but of course, I wonder why you have come to disturb me and ask me your question.”

“I discovered his name in a membership list. I didn’t know he’d been a Nazi.”

“What sort of membership list?”

“I’m not sure, but it contained more than a thousand names. Many of them were already dead, but they were continuing to pay their subscriptions by leaving money for that purpose in their wills, or by way of their surviving relatives.”

“But the association or organization... what did you say it was called? Strong Sweden?”

“It seems to be some sort of foundation that is a part of a bigger organization. What that is, I don’t know.”

“Where did you find all this?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that for the time being.”

“But your father was a member?”

“Yes.”

Jacobi licked his lips. Lindman interpreted that as an attempt to smile.

“In the 1930s and ’40s Sweden was teeming with Nazis. Not least in the legal profession. It wasn’t only the great master Bach who came from Germany. In Sweden, ideals — be they literary, musical, or political — have always come from Germany. Until the period following World War II. Things changed then, and all the ideals started coming from the USA. However, just because Hitler led his country to a catastrophic defeat doesn’t mean that ideas about an Aryan superman or hatred of Jews died out. They survived among the generation that had been indoctrinated when they were young. It’s possible that your father was one of them, perhaps your mother also. No one can be certain that those ideals will not rise again, like the phoenix.”

Jacobi fell silent, short of breath after the effort he’d made. The door opened and in came Anna Jacobi. She gave her father a glass of water.

“Your time’s up,” she said.

Lindman stood up.

“Have you received the answer you were looking for?” asked Jacobi.

“I’m trying to work it out,” Lindman said.

“My daughter said you were ill.”

“I’ve got cancer.”

“Terminal?”

Jacobi asked the question in an unexpectedly jocular tone, as if, despite everything, he could be happy that death wasn’t the exclusive priority of old men who spent the last of their days listening to Bach.

“I hope not.”

“Of course. Still, death is the shadow we can never get away from. One day that shadow turns into a wild beast that we can no longer keep at bay.”

“I hope to be cured.”

“If not, I recommend Bach. The only medicine worth taking. It provides comfort, eases a bit of the pain, and gives a certain degree of courage.”

“I shall remember that. Thank you for your time.”

Jacobi didn’t answer. He had closed his eyes. Lindman left the room.

“I think he’s in pain,” his daughter said at the front door. “But he refuses to take painkillers. He says he can’t listen to music if he’s not thinking straight.”

“What illness is he suffering from?”

“Old age and despair. That’s all.”

Lindman shook hands and said goodbye.

“I hope things turn out okay for you,” she said. “That you’ll be cured.”

Lindman went back to his car. He had to duck from the wind. What do I do now? he wondered. I go see an old man close to death and try to find out why my father was a Nazi. I discover only that he was a proud and patriotic Swede. I can get in touch with my sisters and ask what they knew, or I can see how they react when I tell them. But then what? What can I do with the answers I get? He got into the car and looked across the street. A woman was struggling to steer a stroller into the wind. He watched her until she was out of sight. This is all that’s left to me, he thought. An isolated moment in my car, parked in a street in a suburb south of Varberg. I’ll never come back here, I’ll soon have forgotten the name of the street and what the house looked like.

He took out his cell phone to call Elena. There was a message for him. Larsson had phoned. He called his number.

“Where are you?” he said.

It struck Lindman that in the age of the cell phone, this had become the standard greeting. You started by asking where people were.

“I’m in Varberg.”

“How are you?”

“Not too bad.”

“I just wanted to tell you about the latest developments. Have you got time?”

“I have all the time in the world.”

Larsson laughed. “Nobody has that. Anyway, we’ve made a little progress regarding the weapons used. In Molin’s case there was a whole arsenal. Shotgun, tear gas canisters, God only knows what else. They must have been stolen from someplace. We’ve been chasing reported cases of weapons thefts, but we still don’t know where they came from. But one thing we do know. It was a different gun that killed Andersson. The forensic boys have no doubt about that. It means we’re now faced with something we weren’t really expecting.”