A Necessary Action

by Per Wahlöö

  Willi Mohr stood leaning against the doorpost, watching. Santiago’s face was calm and purposeful. He looked totally absorbed in his occupation, but now and again the tip of his tongue ran along his lips. After a while Willi Mohr shifted his gaze to the man’s hands, which nimbly and skilfully manipulated the broad-bladed knife and the small red fish.

  They were not the hands of a labourer, although they were sunburnt and quite large. The fingers were long and well-kept with broad, short nails. Black hairs grew on his wrists as well as on the backs of his hands. His fingers moved, swift and supple, and between them ran small streams of pale, watery blood.

  His hands seemed to settle the matter.

  Willi Mohr went back into the room, bent down and thrust his hand under the pillow. The butt was scored and roughened to give a better grip and when he touched it he thought about the cold shiny steel tunnel and the bullet which would rotate through it, driven forwards with relentless force.

  He stopped and listened to the sounds from the kitchen. Then he withdrew his hand and looked at it. It did not look like the hand of a labourer any longer, although it was sunburnt and quite large. The fingers were long and the nails broad and cut straight across. Sparse fair hairs grew on his wrists.

  He shrugged his shoulders and returned to the kitchen door.

  Santiago had cleaned the fish and was just wiping out the large frying pan, which had been thrown to one side for almost a year now and had got very dirty.

  Santiago muttered to himself and rubbed at the iron with a bit of grey wrapping paper. Now and again he studied the results, finally pouring in the oil and putting the fish in after dipping them in salt. Then he poured paraffin over the wood and struck a match. The fire flared up at once and burnt with a clear orange flame.

  As the fish were cooked he put them into the earthenware bowl, now rinsed out and thoroughly cleaned.

  All this time Willi Mohr was standing in the doorway, watching. He still did not feel hungry.

  Santiago finished cooking. He put the bowl down on the beaten earth floor between the two stone seats and cleaned his knife against his trouser-leg. Then he held one of the loaves to his chest and cut it up into thick slices.

  He had also taken out two of the old tin mugs and poured out the wine.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ he said.

  They sat opposite each other, the bowl between them.

  Santiago looked at Willi Mohr once or twice, questioningly and uncertainly.

  Then he raised his tin mug and nodded.

  When Willi did not react, Santiago took a gulp and put the mug down again without saying anything.

  After a minute or two, he took a fish and began to eat. He ate with his fingers, occasionally glancing at the man opposite him.

  His eyes are not like they were before, thought Willi Mohr. Not cold and bold.

  When Santiago had eaten his third fish, Willi Mohr stretched out his hand and took a salmonete from the dish.

  He looked at it for a long time, as if hesitating still.

  ‘Good fish,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, very good. The fish are best at this time of the year, but it’s difficult to catch them. The weather’s usually impossible. It’s just been good for a few days. The boats have had big catches. Last night’s were the best for a whole year. Good business.’

  Willi Mohr bit the salmonete in the back. As soon as he had taken the first bite, he was overwhelmed with hunger and had to stop himself gobbling the fish and at once stuffing his mouth full with another one.

  ‘Lot of money,’ said Santiago, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. ‘A great deal of money.’

  Willi took a piece of bread and washed it down with a mouthful of wine.

  ‘A lot of money,’ repeated Santiago.

  ‘Needed, too,’ he added.

  Another fish. Eating, slowly and carefully.

  ‘If they’d gone out again tonight, we’d have earned a lot more money,’ said Santiago.

  ‘Aren’t they going out then?’ said Willi Mohr.

  Santiago shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘If they have a good night then they seldom bother to go out again the following night. Even if they could have earned a whole month’s income on just that one night. They forget they haven’t been able to fish for a month, and that the fine weather might well come to an end the next day. Then there’ll perhaps be stormy weather for a month again. Perhaps two months.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘They’re like that. All of them. My father too. They’re hopeless. But if things are bad, really bad, then they lie out there night after night and day after day, just to get a little, perhaps not even enough to pay for the fuel. It’s what the priests call humility in the face of the inevitable. That’s what’s called work.’

  Willi Mohr was eating.

  He had not understood the last remark and looked up, shaking his head.

  Santiago raised his right forefinger and made an effort to explain.

  ‘Before I got hold of the van,’ he said, ‘they used to just sit down there, waiting for a buyer from the town, who came when he felt like it and paid whatever price he cared to offer. Sometimes he didn’t come at all and they had to give away their catches or throw them back in the sea, if the fish were the kind you couldn’t salt down. That’s what they call work. What I do, that’s not work. D’you see what I mean?’

  Willi Mohr nodded. He felt very peculiar. Perhaps it was because his stomach was rebelling against the rich food after such a long fast.

  He went on eating. It annoyed him that he could not stop.

  Santiago had finished. He drank up his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he picked up a dry piece of wood, shaved a piece off with his knife, and picked his teeth lengthily and thoroughly.

  When Willi Mohr had eaten up the last bit of fish, Santiago threw away the toothpick and said:

  ‘Which country do you come from?’

  ‘Germany.’

  ‘Hamburg?’

  ‘No. I come from the south-east really, The German Democratic Republic … but I left several years ago.’

  ‘Was it a bad country?’

  Willi Mohr found the question difficult to answer. After a while he said: ‘Yes, I suppose I thought so … then. From certain points of view, anyhow.’

  ‘Do they let people starve there too? And do they shoot people who want better pay?’

  ‘No, not that. No, no one starves.’

  ‘What was bad about it then?’

  ‘They were short of things, for instance.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘All kinds. Coffee, tobacco, certain sorts of clothes, cars, motor-cycles. There weren’t any foreign things to buy.’

  ‘And no work?’

  ‘Yes, almost too much.’

  ‘No industry?’

  ‘It was being built up. The whole country was wrecked by the war.’

  ‘But the factories must have made things?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you could buy those things if you had money, I suppose?’

  ‘Only necessities, simple things. Everything else was called a luxury and was for export only.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To improve the economy. Our money wasn’t worth anything in other countries.’

  ‘But there was food?’

  ‘Yes, everyone had food and clothes and somewhere to live. And work.’

  ‘Why did you leave it then?’

  The question was direct and caught him off his guard. Willi Mohr sought for words for a moment. For some reason he wanted to answer as explicitly as possible.

  ‘Such huge sacrifices were demanded and so little given in return. Everything, your whole life, was built on a concept of a system. If you lived there, you had to be convinced that the system was really worth the sacrifices, you had to believe in the justification of the ideas, so to speak. If you didn’t, then it was all poi
ntless, and you couldn’t stand outside it.’

  ‘It was Communism there, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you have to be a Communist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And otherwise? Prison? Or …’

  He made an international gesture, raising his chin and drawing his forefinger across his throat.

  ‘No, not like that. You didn’t have to be a Communist like that. No one demanded it and you couldn’t even be a member of the party just like that either, even if you wanted to. But you have to be one from conviction, to be really able to work in that way and on those conditions.’

  Santiago sat in silence for a while and looked absently in the direction of the door.

  ‘When I was a boy, during the war, there were Communists here too. I remember them arranging meetings. Andres Nin came here and spoke, on the quay in the puerto. I was about ten then. Or eleven. Then the war came. I had two brothers, older than me, and they were both killed.’

  Willi Mohr nodded.

  ‘Communism is forbidden here now,’ said Santiago, after a minute or two.

  ‘So are all socialist movements, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Santiago.

  He looked searchingly at Willi Mohr. Then he said: ‘I’ve never bothered with politics. But last winter something happened which …’

  Willi Mohr started and his eyed widened.

  Santiago stopped abruptly and got up.

  He pushed the dish away with his foot, picked up a packet of cigarettes from the stone bench and went out of the kitchen.

  Willi Mohr gathered up the dishes into a heap and put them in the corner by the water-jar. Then he opened a packet of Ideales and smoked with deep long draws. He had not had any cigarettes for a week.

  When he went out on to the steps, he saw that the evening was already drawing in. The sun was low and throwing long, violet shadows along the ground. The air was dry and hot and in the east the sky flaring in colours varying from indigo blue to purple above a thick black band of the rising dusk.

  Santiago Alemany was standing by the camioneta, absently kicking one of the flat front tyres.

  ‘Punctured?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It shouldn’t stand like this. Wrecks the tyres.’

  Willi Mohr shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Gasket.’

  ‘A gasket’s not the whole world.’

  ‘Perhaps the cylinder-head too.’

  Santiago bent down over the engine and ran over it with his fingers.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ he said.

  Willi Mohr did not reply.

  ‘It’ll be difficult to get it going again.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Santiago walked round the truck and extracted the spare tyre lying on a rack above the back axle. He rolled it round a couple of times and pushed his fingers in it to test it.

  ‘This is a good tyre,’ he said.

  He was right. There had been no spare tyre when Dan Pedersen had taken over the camioneta, and as that had been at a time when he and Siglinde had had money, they had bought one to be on the safe side, but they had never had a puncture and the spare had never been used.

  ‘I could use it,’ said Santiago. ‘I’ve been thinking of buying one for some time, but haven’t done anything about it.’

  ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘No, I suppose not, really.’

  Santiago smiled joylessly. He took a roll of notes out of his pocket and extracted three hundred pesetas. Willi Mohr made no effort to take the money. He was looking suspiciously at the fish-van.

  ‘They’re exactly the same size,’ said Santiago.

  He put the notes down on the running-board of the camioneta, found a small stone and placed it on top of them.

  ‘Not that anything gets blown away in this weather,’ he said.

  ‘It’s too much,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘On the contrary, a tyre like that costs at least a hundred duros.’

  Santiago rolled the tyre across to the Ford.

  ‘Your Spanish is really good now,’ he said.

  He turned his back to the steps, bent down and jerked the starting-handle. The engine started immediately. Dusk was falling quickly and it was almost dark.

  Santiago climbed into the driver’s seat and switched on the lights.

  He said something, but his words were drowned by the sound of the engine.

  As he backed away, the beam from the headlights fell on the man on the steps, standing quite still, his hands in his trouser pockets.

  When the sound of the engine had died away, Willi Mohr went back into the house and fumbled for the pistol under the pillow. He stood with the gun in his hand, talking to himself.

  ‘It won’t come off,’ he said.

  He had a sense of helpless unreasonable despair, as if the very foundations of his existence had suddenly collapsed.

  He pushed over the safety catch and tucked the gun under the mattress. Then he went out into the kitchen and struck a match to look at the things lined up on the stone bench.

  ‘Hell,’ he said.

  He went out to the camioneta and found the notes, rolled them up and pushed them into his pocket.

  As he shut the door from the outside and turned the key, he had collected himself sufficiently to think: This won’t do. I must wait him out as I did the other one. There’s plenty of time.

  Willi Mohr went to the Café Central to drink his evening coffee.

  6

  Although there were only fourteen days left until Christmas, the hot weather continued and the stone floor felt warm under his bare feet. It was half-past eight and Willi Mohr had just woken up. He was wearing creased pyjama trousers, his hair was untidy and he was yawning as he unlocked the outer door. The heat stood like a wall outside the house, white and blinding.

  On the running-board of the camioneta sat Santiago Alemany, elbows on his knees, hat pulled down over his eyes, whittling boredly on a stick. At his feet stood a metal tool-box and beside it lay a gasket, a brand-new one, of shining copper.

  ‘Good-day,’ he said, pushing back his hat off his forehead.

  Willi Mohr nodded. Then he cleared his throat and spat indifferently on the ground.

  He was dumbfounded and painfully moved. This, to be caught in bed, was something he had not reckoned with and he looked round incredulously.

  ‘I was forced to leave the van down there,’ said Santiago. ‘They were killing a pig in the middle of the road.’

  He dropped the piece of wood, but still went on fiddling with his knife.

  ‘It’ll soon be Christmas,’ he said. ‘Then they’ll eat themselves full.’

  Willi Mohr glanced down at the knife and went back into the house. He did not like the situation and had no desire to stand naked in the kitchen with his back to the door. On the other hand, he could hardly take the gun with him and put it down beside the basin. He scratched his chest and thought. Then he shrugged, took off his trousers and began to wash.

  When he came out again Santiago had taken out the tools and was already bending over the engine.

  ‘This’ll take several hours,’ he said.

  Willi nodded. They would probably have to carry on all day and perhaps the next day too, if they wanted to get the truck going. And then he would not use it, anyhow. The whole operation seemed pointless to him, unless something lay behind it all. Perhaps Santiago was thinking of using the camioneta instead of his worn-out Ford.

  ‘Let’s start then, shall we?’ said Santiago.

  ‘We must drain it first,’ said Willi Mohr.

  Santiago handed him the spanner.

  Willi hesitated a moment before getting down on his back to get at the stopper. He was painfully aware that he was lying with his head and arms under the camioneta and the rest of his body utterly defenceless outside. The stopper was jammed and it took quite a while for him to loosen it; the mixture of oil a
nd rusty water ran out of the engine and was sucked up into the dry soil between the cobblestones.

  They worked in silence and without haste. When they had taken off the cylinder head and exposed the broken gasket, they took a rest and ate some bread with slices of sausage, then sat in the meagre shade of the outhouse wall for a smoke. Santiago said: ‘I’ve a friend who’s a seaman. He’s been to Hamburg several times. He says there are whole streets there full of bars and night-clubs, where the women dance with no clothes on and the girls parade naked in front of you in the brothels. And that the kiosks and ordinary tobacconists have books and papers full of naked women.’

  ‘That’s more or less true,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘Last time he told me he’d been to a place where a woman made love with a goat if you paid her twenty-five duros.’

  Willi Mohr stuck out his lip and thought about Hugo Spohler, who had once told him that the whores in Egypt lay naked in the shop windows and smoked cigars from their cunts to demonstrate their professional skills. The world was full of exaggerations and anyhow Hugo had probably never been to Egypt.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said.

  ‘Is it like that in your part of Germany?’

  ‘No, things like that are arranged better in the Federal Republic.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In West Germany, I mean.’

  ‘What are the women like in your country?’

  ‘Well, they don’t make love with goats,’ said Willi Mohr.

  He was not particularly amused by the conversation and would have preferred to put an end to it, but when he looked at Santiago he realized that even the last question had been quite serious.

  ‘They have quite different conditions from here,’ he said. ‘They work, at different things, in all kinds of occupations. As bus-drivers and building workers and engine-drivers, for instance. In factories and in the Customs. Well, everywhere. They have the same education as men and have quite a different place in society. So they also have the right to take the same liberties if they want to.’