Quicksand

by Henning Mankell

  But the dead cats! Perhaps they can be seen as an appropriate symbol for our history? That we killed the cats instead of allowing them to catch the rats?

  Human beings are risk-takers. Risk coupled with our constant curiosity has taken us to where we find ourselves today. But if a third element is missing – caution – it can be dangerous. Perhaps the presence of caution would have meant it took longer for us to get to where we are, but it might also have meant that we would have avoided some of the devastating consequences and catastrophes that have hounded us in the footsteps of progress.

  The question is: how much of this lack of caution and consideration is deeply embedded in the nature of mankind? Young men kill themselves the very same day they acquire a licence to ride a motorbike or drive a car. Deep down they are well aware that speed kills, but nevertheless they floor the accelerator, overtake impulsively and suddenly find that their radiator or bonnet has smashed into a tree or a cold, hard stone wall.

  Girls of the same age are significantly more careful. They acquire their driving licences, but they don’t kill themselves by driving like lunatics. The reason for this caution is of course the biological fact that they are here on earth in order to give birth to children. They normally give birth to more boys than girls, which is necessary in order to achieve a balanced society because so many more boys than girls die at a young age. On the Normandy beaches in the summer of 1944, for instance, or on the battlefields in France between 1914 and 1918, it was young men who ran headlong into the bullets and shrapnel. There were no women present. It had never occurred to anybody that women should be sent out to war, except in the roles of nurses, drivers or office workers. On the contrary, their role was to stay at home to make the shells that would later kill the young men belonging to what was called the enemy.

  Let us move from the munitions factories to the town of Alberta in northern Canada. In an area as large as Florida are the world’s richest deposits of oil-bearing sand. But there is no drilling for oil here; the method used is a kind of mining called fracking. In the last ten years the USA has imported more oil fracked in Alberta than has been acquired from Saudi Arabia.

  With a short-sighted view of the world, this is of course a sensible political decision. But fracking has a devastating effect on the environment. The dangerous carbon dioxide emissions from the oil harvested in Alberta are almost twice as great as those from Saudi Arabia.

  Some scientists believe that the expensive and environmentally damaging fracking exceeds the tipping point for whether or not we shall be able to control global warming.

  James Hansen, who works on questions of climate control at NASA, says that ‘the game is over when it comes to controlling global warming’.

  Obviously the most important aim is to reduce all use of fossil fuels. This is something we all know, except perhaps for the most fanatical and corrupt climate experts who work for the industry and energy companies. But it could be that fracking in Alberta is one of the clearest examples of how we avoid taking into consideration the consequences of our actions before we embark upon projects we always maintain are for the good of mankind.

  In 1977 Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched from Cape Kennedy. Those space probes have made the longest journey in human history, a journey that is still continuing. Today those small rockets are at a distance of 19 billion kilometres from the sun, and even further from the earth. Radio signals sent from our planet to Voyager 1 and 2 and then returned need thirty-four hours in order to cover that distance.

  Today those space probes (which I would like to call Travelling Men after the Swedish ship that sailed the seas 250 years ago) are at the outermost edge of our solar system. It is still the solar winds and magnetic fields that control everything in the closest universe that the spaceships can report to us about. But at any moment the Travelling Men could leave our solar system and disappear into another part of the universe where different magnetic fields will be dominant. Nobody can say when that will happen, except that it will be ‘soon’. In a universal perspective that could be a matter of months, or years.

  Our Travelling Men will continue their solitary journey following the same course until they fall to pieces. They will continue to send their signals and tell us about the unknown waters that comprise our universe.

  When I think about all the scientific and engineering triumphs that lie behind this journey, I cannot but be astonished that we were able to achieve them with all the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that had to be sorted out before the spaceship was launched. This means I must also believe that one of these days cancer will be defeated. And that we shall find a satisfactory way of taking care of the nuclear waste we are collecting.

  Meanwhile the Travelling Men disappear deeper and deeper into a world we know nothing about.

  Perhaps a world we could call ‘Eternity’?

  33

  How long is eternity?

  I am realising more and more how significant for me the period was that I spent in Paris when I was very young. It formed me in so many ways.

  Not all of them positive, perhaps.

  For instance, for a long time there was a woman I wanted to see dead.

  As I have already said, after a month (by which time my money had run out), I managed to find a job as an assistant repairer of clarinets and saxophones. Monsieur Simon cleaned them and renewed moving parts before it was time for me to reassemble the instruments.

  His little workshop was located in a backyard high up in the working-class area of Belleville. He had another employee, an elderly rotund man who was both unpleasant and cowardly. When Monsieur Simon was around he said nothing; but when the owner left his workshop in order to travel around various music stores to collect or deliver instruments, the fat little man would start making rude comments about my work. I arrived too late in the morning, I worked too slowly, I wasn’t skilful enough. Above all, I was illegally employed and could be whisked away by the police any day.

  I never responded because his obsequious cowardice reminded me of one of Charles Dickens’s fools. I relied more on Monsieur Simon, who was a kind man.

  As I lived at Porte de Versailles I had a very long journey to and from work. I had to change three times on the metro. Work started at seven, and I always fell asleep on the train in the mornings. I often didn’t wake up until long after I ought to have changed trains. Monsieur Simon would glare at me when I turned up late, or rather gaze at me with a certain amount of melancholy, but he never said anything.

  The station I had to get off at was called Jourdain, and from there I had a ten-minute walk. Every morning I would pass a toothless old woman who used to stare at me. I don’t know where she was going to. As I frequently arrived at different times I hoped every morning that I might escape seeing her – but she was always there, as if she knew when I would be coming. She was dressed in black and chewed her lower lip with her toothless gums.

  I didn’t know her, never greeted her, had no idea who she was. Nor had she done anything to me. Nevertheless, I came to hate her. She was like a black cat, or a witch, who wanted to do me ill by always staring at me when I appeared every morning, tired and unsteady on my feet.

  I don’t think I can explain this emotion in any kind of rational way. Today it seems to me that unfortunately it is a very typical human trait. I was looking for a scapegoat onto whom I could unload my anger at having to strain myself so much in order to scrape together enough money to pay for rent and food. She just happened to get in my way.

  Thirty years after leaving Paris I went back to Belleville. I got off the train in Jourdain once more and walked the usual route to Monsieur Simon’s workshop. I gave a start when I saw the old woman coming towards me on the pavement, a little creature all in black. But it wasn’t her. No doubt she was long dead.

  Naturally, on other occasions I have also felt that I wanted to kill or at least injure people who have offended me or behaved badly in some other way. But they have been transient attacks of emotio
n that have passed quickly, and in most cases I have forgotten all about them. I have every reason to be grateful that I tend to forget things easily.

  It was only that woman in the street who was not spared from my long-term anger before I returned thirty years later.

  Nevertheless I refuse to allow the concept of ‘evil’ to pass my lips. I don’t believe in it. The fact that people in all times, including those in which we live today, have done wicked things is just not the same. Those who suggest that some people are born evil are sending us back to times when original sin was still something we believed in. People were born evil just as they were born with freckles or red hair.

  In my life I have met people who have committed horrendous and barbaric acts. I have met child soldiers who have murdered their parents or their siblings. But they were not born evil. They have carried out those brutal deeds when guns were aimed at their own heads. They have had to choose between their own lives and those they were forced to kill. What would I have done as a thirteen-year-old in that situation? The only honest answer I can give is that I don’t know. I can hope that I would have acted differently, but I can’t be sure.

  Not even when neighbours in the Balkans begin to slaughter one another has an inherent force of evil come to the surface. Once again it is the horrendous circumstances that have taken the upper hand.

  There is always somebody who speculates and benefits from barbaric atrocities.

  ‘Barbarism always has human traits. That is what makes barbarism so inhuman.’

  I wrote that nearly forty years ago; I have no reason to change that view today.

  I have been exposed to the hatred and violence of others. Not often, but often enough for me to have used up a number of the extra lives that all humans are born with.

  I haven’t been involved in all that many fights. Of course I squabbled with others in the schoolyard and I was usually the loser because although I was fast I wasn’t all that strong. I also had the unfortunate tendency to take part in fights that I knew I was bound to lose. I always hoped I would manage to land a telling blow, and it did happen very occasionally.

  When I was fifteen I worked for a while in the Swedish merchant navy. I was employed by a shipping company that exported Swedish iron ore all over the world and Middlesbrough was a frequent port of call. I went ashore one evening, got drunk and couldn’t find my way back to the boat. I asked a young girl the way. Perhaps she didn’t understand my English, who knows, but suddenly several young men came racing up and accused me of addressing her as if she were a prostitute. I was beaten up and somehow managed to lose my shoes. I found my way back to the ship in my stockinged feet. It was raining, and I had a lot of blood in my eyebrows and on my lips. But even that wasn’t too awful. When I went on board I was met by the Norwegian third mate, who simply smiled somewhat ironically and suggested that the next time I went ashore when it was raining I should remember to wear my shoes.

  But sometimes I have been seriously attacked. On one occasion I was convinced I was going to die.

  It was in Zambia’s capital Lusaka in the spring of 1986. After dinner one evening I was heading back to the Norwegian-run international aid building, where I was lodging. As usual, I kept a close eye on the rear-view mirror. It was not uncommon for four-wheel-drive vehicles to be hijacked and stolen by gunmen. I couldn’t see any suspicious-looking vehicle behind me when I turned off the main road into the housing estate where my room was located.

  But I was mistaken. One of the cars that had overtaken me earlier knew where I was going to stop – they must have had the house under observation since early in the evening.

  As usual I drove up to the entrance gate in the stone wall and sounded the horn twice: that was the signal for the guards to open the gate so that I could drive in. It was not unusual for them to be asleep, or for it to take some time for them to open up. The guards had begun to open the gates at last – but when they saw what was happening they did the only sensible thing: they stopped, and said nothing. If they had started making a fuss it would have been impossible to stop guns being fired.

  A car drove up behind me and blocked my line of retreat. Suddenly a revolver was pointed at my forehead through the open car window. I did what I knew was appropriate in the circumstances: I showed that my hands were empty and made no rapid movements.

  But it was clear that there was a big risk I would get a bullet in my head. That was what usually happened when robbers struck. In Zambia in those days the death penalty was the standard punishment for wielding a gun, even if it was a dummy or unloaded: if caught they would die in any case.

  I could feel that the gun pressed up against my temple was a real one. I was dragged out of the car and had time to notice that the black man holding the revolver had bloodshot eyes and smelt strongly of drugs. This was not unusual either. No more unusual than Swedish bank robbers often taking drugs before striking; those men are also filled with fear when they enter the bank.

  When I was bundled down onto the ground I was sure I was going to die. I thought it was an unusually pointless way of dying. And too early. I wasn’t even forty at the time.

  But I don’t recall any panic-stricken fear of death. All I felt was resignation. And the smell of soil pressing against my face.

  Perhaps I thought that was the last sensation I was going to experience: the smell of wet African soil. But then the car took off with a screech of tyres and the robbers disappeared.

  Then came a reaction, of course. I started shaking, my pulse rate rocketed and I didn’t sleep for several nights. But I don’t remember feeling any hatred towards the man who held the gun to my head. It was as if my relief that it wasn’t fired was so much stronger.

  There is an epilogue to this event. A month or so later I received a message from the police: they had managed to recover the car, which had been about to cross the border into Congo to be sold. One of the robbers had been shot dead. I was asked to identify the man from the photograph the police had taken.

  Despite the fact that I had only seen his face for a few seconds, I knew immediately that it was him. I was told that he was nineteen years old and in all probability had already killed three or four people.

  Life is short. But death is very, very long.

  ‘How long is eternity?’ asks the child.

  Who can answer that question?

  34

  Room number 1

  I always had my chemotherapy treatment in the same room in the Oncology Department of the Sahlgrenska hospital in Gothenburg. It was a somewhat shabby room, but always immaculately clean. The visitor’s chair was tucked away in a corner – the room was small and space was at a premium – and had a light blue cover; the wooden arms were scraped and worn. The only window in the room was high up. When I lay on the bed and looked through the window I could see a patch of sky, which was usually grey these winter months.

  It started with one of the nurses sticking a needle into one of my arms or hands. As I have deep-lying veins that are reluctant to yield any blood, and are keen to prevent needles sticking into them, it could take half an hour to fix the cannula through which the infusions would pass. It sometimes happened that one of the nurses would give up and ask a colleague to try instead. The veins would occasionally become cramped or split, but in the end the nurses always managed to fit the cannula.

  The cytotoxins came in transparent plastic bags, and most often there were five of them. One was red. When I asked why, I realised that I should have been able to work that out for myself: the contents were light-sensitive, and hence it was not possible to use a transparent bag.

  I would get to room number 1 shortly before half past nine, and the process would be finished about five hours later, by which time the contents of the bags had been absorbed into my bloodstream. Most of the time I was alone in the room – nobody needed to check that the infusions were flowing as they should. Now and then somebody would come in to check that I had been to the toilet: it was necessary for my kid
neys to be working normally.

  They were. I drank water and tea. After an hour I got up and shuffled to the toilet in the same room, carrying with me the stand with all the tubes and bags attached. I sometimes saw a confused-looking bird fly past the window. Perhaps the birds have their own hospitals, I thought. But can an ordinary little Swedish bird develop cancer? I still don’t know the answer to that, but I think they can.

  During my third cycle of chemotherapy I had an unexpected visitor in room number 1. I was lying on top of the bed and had fallen asleep. One of the nurses had just connected up the third bag, the one with the light-sensitive contents. I heard the door opening.

  But it wasn’t one of the nurses. Standing in the doorway was a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty years old. I hadn’t seen her before and wondered if she was one of the health-care assistants I hadn’t yet met. But she wasn’t dressed as if she was working at the hospital.

  I realised she was in fact a patient, just like myself. She stood there looking at me. Her eyes were glazed, her movements slow, as if every step, every gesture, required an almost impossible effort. She was very thin, her face pale, and around her eyes were deep hollows making it look as if her tiredness had been applied like mascara.

  Then I noticed that she was wearing a black wig. It was not her own hair.

  Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are always associated with hair loss. I had been spared this inconvenience, but I had noticed that people I met often glanced at my hair.

  This led to me also glancing surreptitiously at fellow patients’ heads when I attended the clinic. There were some who wore wigs, and others who didn’t bother about their baldness. I imagined it must be worst for women. But that was my prejudice; in fact more men than women hid their baldness under wigs.

  The girl stood there looking at me, like somebody who had just been woken up out of a dream.