A Necessary Action

by Per Wahlöö

  ‘Relatively.’

  ‘Well, perhaps my informant was exaggerating. But his brother is said to be quite different. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been told so. I’ve never met him either.’

  It was not a question and so Willi Mohr did not have to answer, a fact he was grateful for, as if he had been granted a welcome and unexpected favour.

  Willi Mohr stared absently at the man in uniform and slowly formulated a question which he had a reason for asking.

  ‘You’ve killed people, haven’t you?’

  Sergeant Tornilla smiled sadly and threw out his hands.

  ‘That’s been unavoidable,’ he said. ‘In nine years’ soldiering. Later too, it’s happened. The Service has not always been as pleasant as it is now.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Thanks, I feel fine. Not especially tired. Our conversation has stimulated me.’

  ‘I mean how do you feel, to have killed and to know you’re going to do it again?’

  ‘So far as I’m concerned, it’s always happened in wartime or in situations comparable to war. One doesn’t analyse such situations afterwards, and beforehand the problems are largely of a technical nature.’

  ‘Thank you. You don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You don’t mind that I … so to speak … took over the interrogation?’

  ‘What interrogation?’

  For the first time in their time together, Tornilla seemed genuinely surprised. He looked round his desk and seemed to be searching among his papers.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘that man and the wood. Amadeo Prunera. You won’t forget him?’

  ‘No,’ said Willi Mohr.

  Sergeant Tornilla rose and walked round the desk.

  ‘This has been a very pleasant and fruitful conversation,’ he said. ‘I hope I haven’t tired you out too much.’

  He smiled and put out a hand to help Willi Mohr up on to his feet.

  ‘I also hope you will excuse my curiosity and obstinacy if I once again mention those details you have not wanted to tell me. If you should change your mind in the near future, do come here. Well, naturally you’re welcome under any circumstances, I need hardly tell you.’

  After following Willi to the door, he suddenly stopped with his hand on the door-handle and said: ‘Otherwise perhaps we won’t be meeting again. It pains me that I’ve not had an opportunity to see your paintings.’

  Sergeant Tornilla opened the door and held out his hand. His handshake was dry and firm and heartfelt.

  Willi Mohr stepped out of the shadow of the porch straight into the heavy, muggy afternoon heat.

  He was fifty yards from the entrance before he realized that he was carrying his hat in his hand, and he stopped to put it on. When he had pressed it down over the back of his neck, he turned round and looked back at the guard-post, lying there like a long yellow brick in the white dust.

  Black and white lines were vibrating in front of his eyes, but all the same he could distinguish Sergeant Tornilla quite clearly.

  The man in the elegant green uniform was standing with his feet apart beneath the flag. He had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and was just wiping the palm of his right hand with a clean white handkerchief.

  ‘He’ll break me next time,’ said Willi Mohr to himself.

  As he wandered on between the silky grey olive trees he thought: Hope it’s not too long before then.

  Part Six

  1

  It began to rain on the night of the fourteenth of December, at first in large scattered drops, and then it poured down in the dawn light, like a wall outside windows and doorways. The people of the town up in the mountains woke and blessed the rain.

  It was steady and inexorable, numbing in its grey monotony, and the cool of the first few hours was soon exchanged for a raw chill which ate its way through the stone walls and penetrated into the houses. There was no defence against it, for the rain thrust the smoke back down the chimneys and smothered the embers in the open fires. At first the dry ground greedily absorbed the water, but gradually that too became soaked.

  On the third day, four buildings collapsed as their foundations gave way and the walls caved in. In one case it happened quite unexpectedly and several sleeping people were crushed by the rubble, beams and sharp yellow stones. After the accident, many tried to shore up their houses with planks and poles, but there was a shortage of wood and in the worst affected parts people dared not sleep under their roofs, spending the nights in small provisional shacks of sacking and corrugated iron.

  Now it was raining for the fifth day running.

  The house in Barrio Son Jofre stood on rock foundations and showed no greater tendency to collapse than usual, but the whitewashed wall of the room downstairs was already spotted with grey mould and everything in it was covered with a misty layer of damp.

  Willi Mohr was sitting on the stairs watching the cat cowering by the doorway. Its head was down between its shoulders, its tail stuck straight up in the air, stiff and thick and staring, and although it was on heat, even this inducement could not persuade it out into the wet just like that. Now and again it miaowed, hoarsely and urgently, staring reproachfully at the man on the stairs.

  Willi Mohr laughed to himself and shook his head.

  Ten minutes earlier he had been behaving in exactly the same way, and for a reason which was even more peculiar. The pistol under the mattress had irritated him as he slept and when he transferred it to his rucksack he discovered two reddish corrosive spots on the clip. So the rust had probably already begun to spread into the dry barrel, and the thought of a little damp obliterating that mirror-corridor of terror had filled him with a cheerfulness which a moment later had seemed both misplaced and inexplicable.

  He defended himself by saying that he would only be using the pistol once anyhow, and quite soon too, so a little rust in the barrel would not affect the effectiveness of the gun at such short range.

  With that, the thought that he would very shortly be killing Santiago Alemany had brushed across his mind. It was the first time he had thought about the matter since he had parted from Sergeant Tornilla beneath the drooping red and yellow flag at the guard-post. He had been busy during the last few days with things that had already happened and had not had time to reflect on what might happen next.

  The cat at last made up its mind, crouched down, took a long leap out through the doorway and vanished into the pouring grey rain outside.

  Willi Mohr shivered. His trousers were crumpled and his shirt so damp that it was sticking to his back, and he longed for a dry change of clothes, knowing full well that that was a luxury he could not aspire to. Instead he took off his shirt and tried to wring it out, but managed to squeeze out only a few drops, which did not even leave a mark when they fell on the damp tile of the stair. He spread the shirt out over the wooden railing in a vain hope that it would at least get a little dryer. Then he rose and fetched a towel from his rucksack. Even if not dry, it was at least clean and he went out into the kitchen and took off his sandals, trousers and long pants. He stood naked on the stone floor and rubbed himself systematically with the coarse towel, beginning with his legs and working upwards over his hips, stomach, chest, and back. When his body had warmed up, he put on his wet clothes again with a reluctant grimace, flung his thin, wrinkled, plastic raincoat over his shoulders, and went out into the rain.

  The dog splashed faithfully at his side, after a few minutes her black coat as smooth and shiny as a seal’s along her back.

  ‘Why don’t you stay at home?’ said Willi Mohr, poking her with his foot.

  A moment later he thought: And what on earth am I doing out at this time of day?

  It was no later than midday and he did not usually go up to town so early. But he felt lonelier than ever shut in by the rain and was tormented by a mounting anxiety which he could only counteract by keeping moving.

&nbs
p; Willi Mohr wanted to see people and hear them speak. He was aching, quite simply, for company.

  He had felt like this since the day before the rain had started, and he was perfectly aware that this change had become noticeable after his eighteen hours together with Tornilla at the guard-post.

  But he was not going to admit it, not even to himself.

  In the middle of the cross-roads stood four civil guards and on Avenida Generalissimo Franco, he met two more. With their hoods and long dark-green oilskin coats, they looked strangely alien, but they blended into the surroundings in a way that made it seem quite natural that it was they who inhabited this world of rain and no one else. Although they did not appear to notice him and he could not see their faces, he was sure that they would not forget him in their reports.

  His wet trousers flapped round his legs as he crossed the square, and his hat was already so wringing wet that the rain simply went straight through it. He felt the water making its way under his shirt-collar and trickling down his neck and shoulders.

  Outside the Café Central stood a grey jeep with its canvas hood up, and beside it a small black Renault of the kind that had just begun to be manufactured on licence in Valladolid. These cars were not especially good, but extremely expensive, and most of the first series had been reserved for the authorities. Private individuals who could afford a car of their own for pleasure only were usually able to afford to get themselves a foreign car in some way or other.

  The car was empty, but in the front seat of the jeep sat two gendarmes from the Policia Armada. They were smoking cigarettes and gazing philosophically out at the rain.

  Inside the café there were about a dozen people.

  Near the door sat two civil guards filling in their football coupons. They had hung up their raincoats and leant their carbines against the wall behind the table. The crumpled sports page from Vanguardia lay spread out on the marble table-top and now and again one of them bent over the paper and frowningly studied the tables in it.

  Two strangers were standing by the bar, drinking coffee. One was small and thin and bald, the other a little taller and much younger, almost handsome, with dark hair parted at the side, a dimple in his chin and gentle brown eyes. They were obviously strangers to the town, but their appearance was ordinary and they could have been anything from commercial travellers to fish-merchants or travelling showmen. Their relatively well-cared for clothing, shirts with starched cuffs and detached collars, sleazy suits of some striped purplish material, bore witness to the fact that they had come at least from Santa Margarita, though more likely the provincial capital. The bald one had hung his black plastic coat over the rail round the bar, and the other was wearing a thin pepper-and-salt overcoat of very poor quality which would not stand up long to heavy rain. Willi Mohr concluded that these were the owners of the black private car in the square.

  The other people in the café were road-workers. They were squatting in the middle of the floor round a large brazier of glowing charcoal. Not one of them spoke and their expressions were serious and closed.

  Willi Mohr hung up his hat and coat and went over to the bar. He ordered a cognac and café con leche. The proprietor shrugged his shoulders and began to carry out the order. He was Willi Mohr’s landlord and the owner of the creaking bedstead which was still up on the first floor of the house in Barrio Son Jofre. He had also saved his tenant from precarious situations on several occasions during the past six months. This had always happened in exchange for some kind of consideration or guarantee, but Willi Mohr reckoned the man would probably show the same goodwill without the guarantees. He knew the road-workers came here because it was the only place they could warm themselves and because it only cost a few reales to hire a pack of cards. There was always a crowd at the Central, but the bar was probably not very profitable, as all the road-workers together spent less in one year than the Scandinavians spent in an evening at Jacinto’s down in the puerto.

  The café owner had never shown himself to be intrusive and neither was he particularly talkative, due perhaps to some extent to the fact that he was a Catalonian and came from a place in the far north of Gerona Province. Lately Willi Mohr had also begun to like the man for his way of coping with the unavoidable pictures of the Caudillo and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. They hung squashed between posters for films and bull-fights and were so incredibly filthy that it was very difficult to make out what they represented at all.

  Today the proprietor said nothing whatsoever. He put down the coffee and brandy with his eyes averted and returned to drying glasses.

  Willi Mohr drank the coffee quickly and in long gulps to make the most of its warmth, before it had time to cool.

  Outside, the jeep started up and roared away across the square, the sound of the engine soon disappearing in the monotonous drumming of the rain.

  Another road-worker came in, wet and ragged, and in silence a place was made for him in the circle round the brazier.

  The two men by the bar were talking quietly to each other. As far as Willi Mohr could make out, the conversation centred on the question of when and where they should eat their dinner. The bald one, who was drinking some colourless spirits with his coffee, emptied his glass and pushed it across the bar.

  ‘Give me the same again,’ he said.

  The proprietor said nothing, but took a bottle down from the shelf and poured out the drink.

  ‘This is a very good sort,’ said the bald man.

  ‘It’s the usual,’ said the proprietor.

  ‘Do you sell cigarettes too?’

  ‘Yes, Ideales.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They won’t do. Give me a cigar instead.’

  ‘I haven’t any cigars.’

  Willi Mohr listened absently to this exchange of words as he sipped his cognac. The remarks were quite ordinary and yet they reminded him of Sergeant Tornilla and the room with its four pieces of furniture and green glass lampshade.

  ‘You should try some of this,’ said the bald man to Willi Mohr, pointing to his glass. ‘Just what you need in this weather. The peasants drink it in the mornings before they go out to work in the fields.’

  Willi Mohr had gone out to find company and listen to human voices. Now when someone was actually talking to him, he did not like it.

  ‘Cazalla,’ said the man. ‘A genuine Spanish drink. Very good for you.’

  ‘Not for your liver,’ said the handsome one in the overcoat, taking a gulp of his coffee.

  ‘Everything should be enjoyed in moderation,’ said the bald man philosophically.

  Then he raised his glass to Willi Mohr and said with a laugh: ‘Health and money and good luck with your virility.’

  ‘Your health,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘You must be a foreigner from those spots of paint. English?’

  ‘No, German.’

  ‘Do you live here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  From the other side of the bar the proprietor caught his eye, for one brief second only and without saying a word or making any sign whatsoever.

  ‘This is an unusually dull town,’ said the bald man. ‘Thank God I’m only passing through.’

  He seemed to have given up the idea of getting a conversation going and stared ahead of him, emptying his glass.

  The man’s inquisitiveness and obvious garrulousness had irritated Willi Mohr. The strangers were probably commercial travellers or at the most lowly government officials.

  The bald man seemed quite unable to keep silent.

  ‘It really is very raw and chilly out,’ he said, pulling on his fingers so that the joints cracked. ‘Must warm up a bit.’

  He went over to the brazier but could not get near, as the circle round it was tight and not one of the men moved.

  ‘Is the fire reserved for honoured guests?’ said the handsome one sarcastically.

  ‘Move up so the man can get in,’ said the proprietor.

  The road-wor
kers moved up.

  ‘Thanks boys,’ said the bald man genially, and he knelt down with his hands outstretched over the glowing charcoal.

  No one replied.

  The tall man in the overcoat leant over the bar and asked: ‘Are those men unemployed?’

  ‘Their place of employment has been washed away,’ said the proprietor. ‘They’ve lost their wages.’

  After a while the bald man came back, paid and picked up his raincoat.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, for no apparent reason. ‘See you again some time, my friends.’

  The strangers walked towards the exit, but did not go out, remaining standing just inside the door, again discussing the question of food.

  Without being asked to, the proprietor took a bottle down from the shelf and filled Will Mohr’s glass. Then he dried a glass and helped himself.

  ‘That man’s right,’ he said. ‘Cazalla is good in weather like this.’

  ‘Bottoms up,’ he added, raising his glass.

  The dry anise-spirits burnt his throat and sank like a ball of fire into his stomach. Willi Mohr was shaken by an involuntary shudder as the cold from his wet clothes chilled his skin. The air coming in from outside was heavy and raw and damp.

  ‘Warm yourself up a bit,’ said the proprietor.

  Willi Mohr went over to the brazier and the men round it at once made room for him. He sat like the others, squatting and spreading out his hands to the warmth. They all sat apathetically in silence, sullenly staring down into the sinking embers. Only the man on Willi Mohr’s right moved, nudging him slightly in the side, a small toothless man with a thin face and deep-set eyes. He looked much like the others, just as ragged and emaciated, though his eyes were perhaps a little sharper and livelier.

  The men by the door seemed to have come to some agreement at last. The jalousies rattled behind them, then car doors slammed and a starter began to rattle. After the third try, the engine started up and the car drove away.

  ‘The bastards have gone,’ said the toothless man.

  The others sat without moving. Willi Mohr was the only one to raise his head and glance questioningly at the man who had broken the silence.