A Necessary Action

by Per Wahlöö

  ‘You and your friendship,’ said Siglinde, holding him more firmly with her arm. ‘You’re more Spanish than the most Spanish of Spaniards.’

  As soon as he got into the camioneta, Dan fell fast asleep.

  Siglinde took an uncertain step as she was getting into the truck, and Willi Mohr had to help her up.

  ‘What a night,’ she said. ‘Willy, did I behave very badly?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I only get like that sometimes,’ she said, and she yawned.

  Willi Mohr drove home. He was feeling rather drunk and kept having to shake his head to be able to see the road clearly in the beams of the headlights. He saw no civil guards, but already knew the country so well that he was certain that they were there.

  8

  When Siglinde Pedersen woke, the daylight was flooding into the room through the open windows, but although it was very warm, the sun looked pale and veiled.

  She was lying behind her husband’s back, on one side, with one hand under her cheek and the other between her thighs, just above her knees, as she always lay when she slept. But now she was awake and had opened her eyes and was listening to her husband’s even breathing and to the small noises outside. She could hear the chickens scratching round in the dry grass between the cobblestones and the rattle of a motor-cycle on the road and a donkey braying far away. For the moment she was feeling secure and happy about having woken to a new day.

  Siglinde turned over on to her back and stretched her warm naked body. She ran her hands over her hips and waist and breasts and burrowed her head into the pillow, yawning widely, for a long time. Then she raised herself on to her elbow and reached over her husband for his watch lying on the stool by the bed.

  It was half-past seven and the date-indicator showed it was the fifteenth of December.

  She untangled herself from the sheet and cautiously climbed over Dan, who was sleeping so calmly and heavily that she took the risk of giving him a light kiss on the ear and she swung her body back and forth a couple of times so that her bare breasts brushed his shoulder. She found it difficult to leave him alone, but wanted to be up first as she needed longer time to get dressed.

  Then she remembered something and stayed standing by the bed as she thoughtfully pinched her breasts to see whether they were beginning to feel tender. She could feel nothing and she rummaged round in the bag lying on the chair. Then she found her pocket diary, wet her thumb and leafed through it, looking at the dates and pouting as she counted in her head. She should be having her period on the sixteenth if her calculations were right and there was no sign as yet. That did not necessarily mean anything but things were not quite right anyhow.

  Siglinde Pedersen looked down at her husband and smiled.

  She took the dressing-gown off the bedpost and swept it round her as she walked over to the window. The sunlight was drab and dusty and a veil of greyish mist covered the sky. The town lay spread out below the window, flat, yellowish and lifeless, and visibility to the east was so poor that she could not see the sea.

  She padded bare-footed down the stairs and crept out through the outer door. Willi Mohr was lying asleep on his back with his mouth open and his hands behind his head.

  When Siglinde came back from the lavatory, he had turned over on his side, but still appeared to be asleep.

  She went out into the kitchen, shut the door and quickly washed herself all over with cold water. As she was doing this, the rest of the household woke up. The dog came rushing up to her and wriggled round her legs, and she heard Dan and Willi calling to each other.

  When she came out again, Willi was sitting curled up on the mattress, smoking. He grinned slightly when he saw her, as she was wearing Dan’s dressing-gown and looked rather funny.

  ‘Today’s the day we’re going fishing,’ she said. ‘Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘No, but I’ll come with you down to the puerto. I thought I’d wander round and do some sketching while you’re out.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. I don’t think it’ll be up to much today.’

  In the room above, Dan Pedersen was still lying in bed. He watched Siglinde as she took off the dressing-gown and moved round the room.

  ‘What are you staring at. Haven’t you ever seen me before?’

  ‘It must feel silly to have a damn great mass of hair like that between your legs. All black, too!’

  ‘I can think of something that must feel ten times sillier.’

  Siglinde pulled on her pants and fastened her bra, then stood still for a moment deciding what to put on.

  ‘Wrap up well,’ said Dan. ‘It won’t be all that warm out there.

  ‘It’s hot and peculiar.’

  She thought for a moment again. Then she got out her shorts and a clean white blouse, which ought to go well with her sunburn. When she had dressed and tied on her espadrilles, she was annoyed they had no proper mirror.

  ‘I’ll take my jeans and polo-necked sweater in reserve. Do you think that’ll be all right?’ she said.

  ‘Sure to be,’ said Dan, indifferently.

  Siglinde put on her straw hat with green edges and fetched a bag from the kitchen. Before she went to the tienda she got another hundred peseta note from Willi Mohr and carefully noted the sum down on the wall alongside the kitchen door, where she kept her household accounts.

  The tienda was dark, cool and very dirty. Along the one wall stood sacks of beans, sugar and dried green peppers, along the other the barrels of wine with their taps and galvanized metal measures. From the roof hung sausages, earthenware jugs, shoulders of mutton and pieces of harness. The proprietrix absently chased away a dog which was standing on its back legs slobbering in a sack of sugar. Then she took ten small oblong rolls out of a brown paper bag.

  ‘Are you going out on a trip today?

  ‘We’re going out fishing.’

  ‘It’s not a good day to be out at sea,’ the woman said gloomily. ‘Better to stay at home.’

  Apart from the ten rolls, Siglinde bought two litres of the cheapest red wine, a piece of cheese and a few slices of smoked sausage. She needed only the things they were to take out with them, for they were to have fish for their evening meal, and she had olive oil to fry it in at home.

  As Siglinde walked up the hill back to Barrio Son Jofre, she peered several times up at the sky. She had a feeling of anxiety, but could not think of any plausible reason for it.

  Dan and Willi were up and had made the beds and swept out the house in her absence. Siglinde sat down on the stairs, sliced through the rolls and put cheese and sausage into them. Then she packed the food into a bag and added her jeans and her polo-necked sweater.

  Willi Mohr had gathered up sketching-block, pencil box, his box of water-colours and had fastened them all together in a bundle with a strap so that he could sling the lot over his shoulder.

  Just as they were about to leave, Siglinde discovered that they were almost out of paraffin. She put the can down just inside the door and said: ‘Don’t forget to remind me about that, if I forget.’

  Willi Mohr locked the door and pushed the key into the crack in the wall.

  When they were in the truck, Siglinde found they had locked the dog out and she was sniffing round outside the house.

  ‘We’ll take Perrita with us, shall we?’ she said.

  ‘Out to sea?’ said Dan.

  He sounded slightly disturbed.

  ‘She can go with Willi while he’s sketching, and then he won’t be lonely.’

  Willi Mohr grinned. He seldom felt really lonely nowadays. He jumped down and lifted the dog up into the camioneta. Then he climbed up again and sat down behind Siglinde.

  They left the house in Barrio Son Jofre.

  The truck rolled down the hill at a moderate and reliable speed. Siglinde pushed her hat back and looked up at the sky with its smooth veil of shining white mist. The light hurt her eyes and although the cloud-veils appeared quite harmless, they frightened her. She ha
d a vision of the sky suddenly opening and unloading on them some devastating, unimagined disaster. Siglinde lowered her gaze to the roadside and saw a small green lizard creeping under a stone in terror as the shadow of the truck fell across it.

  She thought: Why is one afraid and why just today? And no one notices, only Dan, and even he doesn’t usually. But he knows I imagine things and think up all kinds of nonsense and anyhow I’m no more afraid today than I’ve been hundreds of times before and nothing happened then.

  She put her arm along Dan’s back and tried to find security there, saying quietly to herself: ‘It’s really a great personal tragedy to be so stupid.’

  They met the sheep at almost exactly the same place as the last time. But this time it was on a straight stretch of road so Dan saw them in good time and had time to brake.

  They sat in silence and watched while the old shepherd ran about trying to shoo the flock off the road. He rushed hither and thither with his rags flying round him like an actor in an old slapstick comedy, and not once did he dare even glance at the people in the truck.

  ‘The children of Israel leaving Egypt, directed by Mack Sennet,’ said Dan Pedersen, spitting on to the dusty road.

  At last the sheep-dog managed to arrange the sheep along the roadside. The old man stood with his hat in his hand and bowed his head as the truck rolled by. He was trembling all over.

  Siglinde felt oppressed. She would have liked to get down and pat him, or give him some money, or anything.

  When they came down to the quay, Santiago and Ramon were already in the boat. They had got bait and lines and were filling up the tank with petrol. Both were bare-footed and wearing blue trousers and black jerseys. Ramon raised his head and laughed, showing his white teeth. He was unshaven and his dark hair stood out in a cloud round his head. Santiago said nothing but glanced at his watch before raising a hand in greeting.

  Dan Pedersen jumped down into the boat and Siglinde handed down the baskets with clothes, wine-jars and food. Santiago and Dan stowed the luggage in the space in the bows. Then Siglinde jumped down before anyone got around to helping her.

  Santiago went astern and cast off. He held on for a moment, to give Willi a chance to go on board.

  ‘He’s not coming with us,’ said Dan Pedersen.

  Willi Mohr had understood and shook his head.

  Santiago threw him a complicated look.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you?’ he said, and pushed off.

  Ramon began to turn the balance-wheel and the engine coughed.

  ‘What about the weather?’ said Siglinde.

  ‘It’s O.K.,’ said Santiago, without looking at her.

  The engine started up. Dan Pedersen gripped the tiller.

  Willi Mohr was standing on the quay with his sketching things in a strap over his shoulder. He raised his right forefinger in farewell.

  The people in the boat waved to him.

  The boat swung out towards the lighthouse in the approaches and tore up a long wide bow of surf. Siglinde was kneeling in the stern watching the houses in the puerto getting smaller and smaller and becoming more and more indistinct and shapeless in the peculiar light. The misty sunlight seemed to fill out and fall over the valley and farther inland the first dragging clouds were going through the pass in the mountains. It was still hot and oppressive and she hoped there would at least be some breeze out at sea.

  The engine chugged evenly and reassuringly, and the dinghy bobbed up and down in the swirling waters of their wash. The dinghy was part of the calamary fishing and there was no real reason why they should take it with them. But they had occasionally amused themselves with it out among the skerries. They rounded the lighthouse and steered close by the place where they had bathed a week or so earlier. Siglinde remembered the luminescence of the sea, the dark silence, and then the moment she had stood wet and naked and utterly defenceless in the pale light. She shivered, but did not know why.

  Dan Pedersen pulled on the rudder and the boat set course for the mouth of the bay. The cliffs on each side were high and steep with a few pines and low bushes growing on them.

  Ramon was sitting crouched in the bow peering at the sun. She could see his hairy muscular calves and the soles of his feet, which were leathery and grey with dust. Under his right heel he had a large dark brown patch of oil. Sometimes he turned round and laughed towards the others, his tongue playing between his white teeth.

  Santiago was sitting cross-legged on the bottom of the boat as he systematically and carefully cut up small square pieces of white half-transparent calamary flesh. Each line had eight hooks on it and it took a long time to bait them. He did not once look up from his work. The knife in his hand was long and sharp and flashed in the sunlight.

  They rounded the nearest point and met the breakers rolling in from the east, long and smooth and regular, and each time the bows rose on a wave a thin spray of salty water flew over the boat. Although it was still warm, Siglinde began to feel goose-flesh on her forearms and thighs. She felt like stretching out on the bottom of the boat but for some reason she wanted to be as near to her husband as possible, so she stayed where she was. When she turned round and looked towards the land, she saw a civil guard high up on the cliff farthest out. He had his carbine across his back and was leaning on his bicycle. She watched him for a long time until he was nothing but a small dark protuberance on the skyline, and she wondered whether he really could have cycled all the way up there.

  When they were farther out to sea, the waves grew larger, but they were still kindly and not at all unpleasant. The sea was moving towards them in long soft ridges and now the skerries ahead could be seen quite clearly, an irregular group of small black silhouettes against the shimmering horizon. It was about an hour’s journey there.

  Santiago was sitting as before, cross-legged on the bottom of the boat. He was still busy with the hooks and did not look up. Occasionally he hummed to himself quietly, but he said nothing.

  Ramon had left his place in the bows and was crouching down beside the engine. He poked at the fuel regulator, then turned his head towards Siglinde and stared at her knees and thighs.

  She felt naked under his look and wished she had put on her jeans and sweater. For a moment she considered changing, but then thought it would look silly. Her jeans were tight and she could not very well put them on on top of her shorts. Change clothes in this open boat, she did not want to do.

  After a while Ramon raised his eyes, looked at her and smiled. He shouted something to Dan who shouted back, but she did not understand what they had said.

  A shoal of porpoises went by on both sides of the boat. They tumbled joyfully and playfully in the dark blue-green water, and one of them came so near that she was able to stretch out her hand and pat it on the back, shiny and as grey as lead. She looked out at the islands again. They were much nearer now and she thought they looked ominous in their wet rugged blackness. She had seen them many times before but never like this.

  Siglinde leant over the side and let her right hand drag in the bubbling luke-warm water.

  Pull yourself together, my girl, she thought. This won’t do.

  And then: We’ll be fishing for a couple of hours and in three, or at the most, four hours’ time I’ll be home again. Every minute that goes by is a minute nearer home.

  And: If you look round you’ll see that everything is just the same as usual, and it’s quite fine weather, and you’re sitting in the same old boat together with the same old Dan … and same old Santiago … and same old Ramon …

  She straightened up hurriedly. The nearest island was very close now, a high black chunk of rock which rose straight out of the sea, girded by a narrow border of foaming surf. Ramon had sat down in the bows again. He was singing and smiling up at the sun.

  Santiago had finished baiting the lines. He had turned his head and was looking at her legs, as he moistened his lips with his tongue.

  They passed the first island by a few yards and steered into the arc
hipelago. The swell was hardly noticeable now and Ramon adjusted the regulator so that the engine chugged more slowly. The pale blue exhaust gas floated astern in light clouds which dissolved over the water. The islands were volcanic and severely eroded.

  Many of them were small and hardly rose above the surface of the water, but others were large and high, with steep towering cliffs. Once in amongst them, they resembled ruins of a long since devastated desert city. Here and there were lagoons and sheltered bays with small beaches of fine gravel and pulverized sea-shells.

  ‘The usual place, I suppose?’ said Dan Pedersen.

  Santiago looked round and nodded.

  ‘The wind’ll probably get up this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we’d better not stay too long.’

  Not stay too long … Siglinde became aware of an instant sense of relief, but she at once felt frightened again. Perhaps of the storm that was coming.

  She found it difficult to sit still and twisted her fingers round and round each other. Once she noticed that Santiago was looking at her hands, she straightened her fingers and pressed the palms of her hands down on the thwart of the boat. She could feel the grain of the dry sun-warmed wood, but it gave her no comfort.

  Dan had been here many times and knew the archipelago as well as the Alemany brothers did. He steered skilfully and purposefully through narrow passages and set course for the largest of the islands, a high narrow ridge of cliff lying almost farthest out towards the sea. A few minutes later he rounded the northern point and the boat glided forward along the outer side, close under the cliff wall. Ramon switched off the regulator and Dan Pedersen fastened the tiller. When the sound of the engine died away Siglinde could hear the cries of the sea-birds and the sound of the waves breaking and washing over the shoals farther out at sea.

  The boat had stopped moving forward. It rocked slowly in the water only five yards from the cliff. The others started moving and handling the fishing gear. Siglinde sat still.

  The island was a quarter of a kilometre long and perhaps a hundred-and-twenty feet high. On the outer side it plunged almost perpendicularly down into the sea, offering no foothold. Up on its highest point was a ruined stone lighthouse, built there with great labour a long time ago. It had later been discovered that the lighthouse was useless in bad weather, as the clouds sank so low, it became swallowed up in them. A number of lighthouse-keepers had been slowly driven mad in the place. Then the stone tower had been replaced by two automatic metal lights, one on each point. Nowadays the island was only visited by fishermen and police-boats hunting for enemies of the state.