A Necessary Action

by Per Wahlöö

  These three people lived together in the house in Barrio Son Jofre for four months and six days, from the ninth of August to the fifteenth of December.

  While they were living there, a number of things happened. The summer ebbed away into a last spell of explosive heat, with burning hot days and steaming, sweaty nights. Then came a brief autumn with continuous warm rain, when the underground streams from the mountains roared along under the surface of the ground. Dried-up wells were filled and plant life, which never resigns itself, came to life again and waited for the sun, which would soon come back and burn it all up again. After the rain came the winter, the most exciting time of the year, and also the most pleasant. The winter could be said to begin in November. Beautiful, glass-clear sunny days were followed by astonishing storms and apocalyptical thunderstorms. One never knew what it would be like from one day to the next.

  The people in the house in Barrio Son Jofre came to learn each other’s patterns of behaviour and adapted themselves accordingly. They soon acquired a tenable daily routine which was self-evident and required no discussion. Dan Pedersen finally set to work to earn his advance. He sat on the second step of the staircase and wrote. The typewriter was on a chair in front of him and the light from the open door fell on to his paper. He liked it there, despite the fact that the cat insisted on lying on his heap of typescript and despite the fact that he had to move every time Siglinde wanted to go upstairs. As she walked past, he used to run his hand down her naked leg.

  Willi Mohr had borrowed some tools and had knocked up an easel. Then he sat by the door, six feet from the staircase, and painted. It took him about a week to paint a picture and then he took the drawing-pins out of the piece of hardboard, pinned the canvas on to the wall and never looked at it again.

  Sometimes Dan looked at his pictures and said critically: ‘You must try and get free, Willi. That’s technically skilful but there’s nothing in it. No feeling either, but most of all no content.’

  He tapped the heap of typescript with his pipe.

  ‘This is at least utterly false and repulsive,’ he said, ‘and I also know why I’m doing it.’

  He sighed and wrote another sentence.

  Willi Mohr smiled sardonically and went on dabbing with his brush.

  Now and again Siglinde took out her sketching-block and sat down on the outside steps to draw the cat. She did it quickly and elegantly, with bold simplifications. When Dan told her it was good, she refused to believe him, although he was right. She was talented, but could never see any point in drawing a cat.

  ‘Things that are quite meaningless can’t possibly be any good,’ she said.

  Otherwise she did the housekeeping and that involved the burden of the daily chores. She had to cook all the food on an open fire, and this she did very well. Presumably it was due to her that the house in Barrio Son Jofre bloomed in the middle of its grotesque decay.

  The previous tenants, a group of Asturian labourers, who had been taken from their homes and put to assisted work on the roads, had not been so well placed. Inscriptions on the walls bore witness to their despair and hatred.

  Siglinde did all the shopping.

  Willi Mohr fetched the water.

  Dan Pedersen collected the wood.

  No one had consciously created this organization. It had just come about.

  Dan Pedersen’s royalties did not come and would be some time coming too. Willi Mohr paid. He was relatively well off and kept his money in his wallet at the bottom of his rucksack. Above the wallet lay a 9 mm Walther pistol, an army model, carefully wrapped in a cloth.

  As they had no form of lighting except candles and the old paraffin lamp, their working day coincided with the daylight. At dusk they went up to the bar in the square and drank something. Sometimes they played ping-pong, but Dan always won. Willi Mohr usually got beaten by Siglinde too, and this annoyed him a little.

  Once, just before falling asleep, he realized that this was a healthy sign.

  The people in the house in Barrio Son Jofre had a daily routine, but they did not allow themselves to be enslaved by it. Once or twice a week they started up the old truck and went down to the puerto. When it was warm they bathed from the cliffs or from the breakwater by the pier and they swam in the green salty water. Occasionally they stayed long into the night and knocked about Jacinto’s bar or some other place. On these occasions they were always together with Santiago or Ramon, usually both.

  One of the Alemany brothers often used to come up to the town. Then they brought fish with them, which Siglinde cooked on the open fire and which they ate together.

  Willi Mohr went out fishing three times with the others. Santiago and Ramon had a motor-boat which was used at night for calamary fishing. It was large and well-made and eminently suitable for pleasure trips.

  On these three occasions they went quite far out, to a small archipelago of rocky islands, and they fished with hooks close under the cliff walls. The archipelago was bare and uninhabited, but full of hidden bays.

  They bathed there too and once Ramon Alemany looked at Dan Pedersen and laughed and said: ‘You’ve a very beautiful wife.’

  Siglinde was standing two steps away, dripping wet in her blue bathing-costume. She looked healthy and strong and happy.

  Dan Pedersen slapped her jokingly on the backside and said: ‘Siglinde? Oh, her bottom’s far too big.’

  Santiago was sitting in the boat watching them. He did not laugh.

  Willi Mohr noticed the little scene and tucked it away in his mind.

  He caught several small fish that day and one that was large and flat and blue, but it did not amuse him much.

  He thought: I won’t go with them next time.

  9

  At the end of October, a prominent fascist official came to the puerto. He was a member of parliament and a military man and had been persuaded there by his wife, who liked visiting idyllic and untouched parts of the country. They stayed for three days with a very rich director of a bank in the provincial capital, who had long ago built himself a large summer residence and equipped it with a staff of servants, near the lighthouse, but had practically never stayed there. With them the couple had their twenty-year-old daughter and her fiancé, a senior official in the Portuguese Embassy. They drove from the provincial capital in a large cream-coloured American car, towing a trailer on which was a little mahogany racing-boat equipped with a brand new outboard motor of a kind that cannot be bought on the open market.

  The daughter was studying economics at Madrid University and belonged to the small group of emancipated Spanish women. She went about in white slacks, a red jumper, and French cork-soled shoes, which made her look a trifle long-legged.

  She and her Portuguese fiancé had the servants put the racing-boat into the sea, start the motor and then they set off round the pier. It was windy beyond the mountains, but in the bay the water was green and calm. When they had got about two hundred yards behond the lighthouse, they slowed down and moved closer to each other on the seat. She unbuttoned her bra and pulled down the zip of her slacks, and then they busied themselves with an occupation which would have filled the member of parliament with wonder and doubts, had he been equipped with a pair of binoculars.

  Three minutes later they lost the engine, which had been badly fixed on and had shaken loose with the vibration. It hissed as it fell into the water and immediately sank to the bottom and stayed there, forty feet below, jammed between two large stones. A couple of small squids fled in terror, each in a different direction.

  The girl at once lost interest, took away the young man’s hand and pulled up her zip. Although it was less than half an hour before the civil guard’s barque towed the racing boat into the pier, the engine appeared to be a wholly indispensable toy. The barque went out again.

  The young corporal with the shiny boots looked thoughtfully at the engine through a glass-bottomed box. He got one of his men to let down a drag-rope, but soon saw that it was not worth it. The
n he sounded the depth and shook his head. When the barque returned, the member of parliament’s daughter was standing on the jetty, looking at him coldly and challengingly.

  The cabo knew exactly how long it would take to get hold of a diver or a frogman from the provincial capital, and his smile was not entirely convincing. Thirty seconds later he happened to think of Ramon.

  It was in the middle of the siesta and the Alemany brothers were lying asleep in the room behind the kitchen when the cabo came in. He shook Ramon awake and said: ‘General Moscardo’s daughter has lost an outboard engine out at the approaches. Can you get it up?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ramon, blinking drowsily. ‘I’ll dive with stones.’

  Santiago had woken and sat up.

  ‘How far down is it lying?’

  ‘Twenty, twenty-five feet, and they must have it up at once.’

  ‘Not for nothing, I hope,’ said Santiago.

  ‘No,’ said the cabo, ‘the General is sure to pay.’

  ‘And that trouble in the bar?’ said Santiago.

  ‘That can be forgotten,’ said the cabo, looking at the ceiling, ‘as long as the engine is really got up.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  Santiago went over to the door and called: ‘Francisca, come here.’

  His sister came in. She was a shy virgin of twenty-four, who had already grown too fat and had lost most of her freshness. Every time Santiago saw her, he was filled with loathing. He was convinced that they would never marry her off.

  ‘I want you to hear what the cabo has to say,’ he said. ‘He says that Ramon won’t be prosecuted for that row in the bar, as it appears he is innocent if he dives down to get a motor-boat engine. Didn’t you say that?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps that’s what I said,’ said the cabo sourly.

  Then he turned irritably to Ramon.

  ‘Hurry now. It’s urgent.’

  Ramon remained lying on his bed and looked at his brother.

  ‘Shall I?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, come on, let’s go.’

  ‘You needn’t come,’ the cabo said to Santiago.

  ‘Try stopping me.’

  Both the girl from Madrid and the young Portuguese came with them in the barque. They thought it was all beginning to be exciting now and when all was said and done perhaps it had not been such a silly thing to have gone and lost the engine.

  ‘Look how small and squat and muscular he is, and all hairy,’ said the member of parliament’s daughter, when Ramon pulled off his clothes.

  Santiago heard her but did not react. He was busy studying the sea bed through the glass-bottomed box.

  ‘Twenty-four feet!’ he snorted. ‘Let’s skip this, Ramon.’

  ‘Forty feet, they plumbed,’ said the girl from Madrid.

  Santiago looked contemptuously at the cabo.

  ‘Take us back,’ he said.

  ‘I can try,’ said Ramon, peering down into the water.

  ‘Think about Jacinto’s bar,’ said the cabo, drumming with his gloved fingers on the railing.

  ‘It’ll probably work,’ said Ramon.

  Santiago peered down again.

  ‘D’you think so?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I think it’ll work.’

  Santiago leant close to his brother and whispered into his ear:

  ‘Try, but don’t take any risks. If you feel it’s not going to work, then drop the stone at once and come up. Do you hear what I say, at once …’

  Ramon nodded. He lifted the large stone up from the bottom of the boat, took it in his arms and climbed over the railing.

  ‘This is fascinating,’ whispered the girl from Madrid.

  Aloud she said: ‘I really do hope he gets it up. It’s my engine and it was awfully expensive.’

  ‘It’s my brother,’ said Santiago, looking bitterly at her.

  ‘Let me look,’ she said hastily, getting down on her knees on the bottom of the boat. ‘Give me that thing.’

  Santiago gave her the glass-bottomed box. It was calm and in the clear water he could still see Ramon without the help of the box. The white figure grew slowly smaller and smaller. Time seemed to come to a halt and the seconds grew long and clear.

  ‘I think he’s got it, no, I don’t know,’ said the girl excitedly.

  Santiago thought: Damned idiot, he’d go on down to a hundred feet with that stone if it was that deep. And if the engine is stuck, he’ll stay there until he drowns.

  He was drenched with sweat.

  ‘It won’t work,’ said the Portuguese.

  ‘Yes, yes! He’s coming now. Terrific,’ said the girl.

  Santiago saw his brother through the water. The blurred white figure grew larger, slowly. Unendurably slowly.

  He won’t make it, thought Santiago. If anything happens to him, I’ll chuck this whole mob into the sea.

  ‘Drop it, drop it, for God’s sake,’ he whispered. ‘Drop their stupid little toy and who cares what happens to it.’

  ‘Come on, come on, good boy, oh, come on!’ said the girl from Madrid.

  Ramon’s black head shot out of the water and at the same moment Santiago grabbed his arm.

  The civil guard caught hold of the engine and the cabo made his contribution by wetting his uniform jacket right up to the shoulder.

  ‘Good, oh, goodie,’ said the girl, clapping her hands.

  Ramon was waving his arms about desperately and his breath was coming in great rasps. The Portuguese helped drag him over the railing and lie him down on the bottom of the boat. Santiago knelt down beside his brother and stayed there until they had come round the lighthouse.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said the girl quietly to her fiancé. ‘Did you see, like an animal, with only one aim in mind …’

  When they arrived back, Ramon was able to stand up again. He was still very pale in the face, breathing heavily and raspingly, and Santiago had to help him up the jetty.

  The fun was over. The glow in the girl’s eyes had gone.

  ‘Have you got any loose change on you?’ she said to her fiancé.

  The man dug into his pocket and drew out a fistful of coins and small notes. He held them out, almost shamefacedly, and Santiago took them hesitantly.

  ‘Well, goodbye then,’ said the General’s daughter.

  She stopped for a moment in front of Ramon, looked him up and down and smiled at him in a way that could mean many things.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Santiago.

  He put his arm round his brother and they walked towards the fish-van.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘My head’s aching again. How much did we get?’

  ‘Don’t know. Couple of hundred, perhaps.’

  ‘Not bad. That’s more than we usually earn from your mysterious affairs.’

  ‘Huh … and we don’t do that just for money, anyhow.’

  ‘No, of course not. Did you see what a girl she was? You, she’d make a good tail, wouldn’t she? Think of tearing off those trousers of hers and … She was even better than the Norwegian woman!’

  ‘How you talk, little brother,’ said Santiago, looking round seriously.

  Then he bent down and began winding the starting-handle of the old Ford.

  10

  At the beginning of December the weather changed. The temperature rose swiftly and the wind dropped. It was just as hot as in the height of summer and the few resident foreigners in the puerto began bathing again. The fishing boats, which had been in harbour a couple of weeks because of the bad weather, went out to sea and made good catches. In the town up in the mountains, the heat lay heavily and immobile between the stone walls. It was hard to work in the daytime and the hot nights did not lend themselves to sleep.

  The good weather lasted for two weeks.

  Part Three

  1

  When the sun went down, the heat became more and more apparent, as if it had been materialized into something dry and black and dusty and it c
losed in even more round the houses and people.

  The inhabitants of the house in Barrio Son Jofre had eaten and were sitting out on the steps. They were smoking and looking out into the darkness in silence.

  They had not done any work, but had spent nearly the whole day in the puerto, lying stretched out in the shade of a cliff about two strides from the water. When they had gone back, they had felt rested and refreshed, with a dawning desire to work, but now this had already gone and they knew it would be a long time before the night would bring them any relief.

  Siglinde shifted restlessly and crushed her cigarette out between her fingers.

  ‘I can’t stand this silent dark heat tonight too,’ she said. ‘Let’s go down to the puerto again, where at least there’s a slight breeze. It seems to be easier to breathe when you’re nearer the water, somehow.’

  ‘It’ll be better in an hour or two,’ said Dan Pedersen.

  ‘It’s just those hours I don’t want. If you’re not coming, I’m going down by myself.’

  ‘You daren’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘You can hardly start the truck.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what I can and can’t do.’

  They all three went, as usual with Dan and Siglinde in the front and Willi Mohr on the bench behind.

  Halfway to the puerto, Dan Pedersen ran over a sheep and killed it. The whole flock was standing quite still on the road beyond a sharp bend and as the camioneta had its engine switched off, the meeting was equally surprising for both parties. Dan braked sharply but it was no use. The nearest animal was knocked over by the bumper and fell partly under the front wheel. Only a few days before, the mail bus had killed fifteen sheep at once in exactly the same way. The shepherd was a weak-minded old man who had sold most of his bells and had not got the sense to keep the flock moving along the edges of the road. So it was not a very serious accident, but the sheep, a ewe, was undoubtedly dead and lay on its back with pitifully splayed legs. The shepherd came up to the truck and jabbered excitedly as he gesticulated with his gnarled stick. The sheep-dog crept up to bite Dan Pedersen’s leg. Dan swore and kicked out at it.