A Necessary Action

by Per Wahlöö

  ‘Then I’ll kill you,’ he said.

  ‘If you can,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘Yes, if I can.’

  The cat sniffed at the fish, put one forepaw on it, turned its head sideways and sank its teeth into the fish’s back.

  ‘What’s gone wrong?’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘Something’s up today. Something big. I know the signs. There were two road-blocks on the road from the puerto, and those idiots in the jeep too.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They stopped me at the first and searched the van, even took off the tarpaulin and looked in the top boxes. There’s never anything in them. Then they saw all this shit and the butcher’s stuff and they gave up. They were people from hereabouts and they’re never very dangerous. They’ve stopped me so many times that nowadays it’s just automatic. Once I made them search through the whole load and lay the fish out along the side of the road. I pro … pro … what’s it called?’

  ‘Provoked.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. I provoked them. Since then they’ve not been so fussy. The next road-block let me straight through. They’ve got some signalling system between them. But then that Policia Armada patrol came. They’d parked their jeep under some trees and I didn’t see either it or any halt-sign until they shot after me and the bullet came sailing through from behind and smashed the windscreen. However, they didn’t feel like messing themselves up with fish and they didn’t want to be out in the rain either. The one who had shot at me was a bit ashamed too. He said it must have been a ricochet.’

  Santiago Alemany got up and went and fetched the cigarettes.

  ‘I daren’t go on now,’ he said. ‘It’s worse on the other side of the mountains, on the main road. There are real barricades there. And tonight or early tomorrow morning this scare will have blown over. That’s what usually happens.’

  He lit two Ideales with the same match and gave one to Willi Mohr. Then he kicked the boxes and said: ‘These have got to be there tonight or at the latest tomorrow morning.’

  He stood still smoking, for perhaps thirty seconds, before he finished the sentence: ‘… they say.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You ask too many questions.’

  ‘Antonio Millan?’

  Santiago started and said roughly: ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing. Just heard his name.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the police.’

  ‘Have they had you down there? Then I shouldn’t have come.’

  He paused briefly and then said thoughtfully: ‘But I had nowhere else to go. You and I …’

  He fell silent again.

  Willi Mohr experienced a vague astonishment over the fact that he was not surprised, and also over the fact that the conversation was running so naturally and logically. He asked another question.

  ‘Why are you doing all this? For money?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not now. Anyhow, they don’t pay all that well. At first I did it for money, but then something happened about a year ago, last autumn. Did you hear about the revolt in Santa Margarita?’

  ‘Yes, a little.’

  ‘Forty or fifty people were butchered there. They hadn’t got any ammunition or hand-grenades. Do you know why?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I didn’t take the stuff there, although they’d said it was important and although I’d promised to do it and had already been paid for it. And do you know what I did instead? Went bathing with you and …’

  He stopped suddenly and crashed his right fist into his left palm.

  ‘Those people fought all the same, though they had nothing to fight with. There must be something in that. This time they’ve said again that it’s important and this time the stuff’s got to get there. No one’s going to stop me.’

  Then he began to breathe heavily and his voice grew suddenly hostile.

  ‘Not even you,’ he said.

  ‘You must realize that this has really nothing to do with me,’ said Willi Mohr with chilling politeness.

  He did not like the change of tone, and he was always made uneasy by uncontrolled outbursts of emotion. A moment later he said: ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Leave the stuff and fetch it tonight or tomorrow when the extra patrols have been withdrawn. I’ll drive into town with the fish this afternoon as usual. There are four boxes that are to be sold there anyhow.’

  ‘What were you going to do with the arms and ammunition?’

  ‘Put them in the outhouse or in here upstairs.’

  ‘There’s a rubbish heap behind the house. That’d be better.’

  ‘As they’re already on to you, it’s dangerous wherever they’re put.’

  ‘No one’ll think of the rubbish heap. There are a whole lot of old scrap metal and other things to cover them up with. And there’s straw in the outhouse.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Santiago. ‘I’ll get going now. The siesta’s practically over.’

  Willi Mohr fingered the dismantled machine-gun.

  ‘Good stuff,’ he said. ‘Who are they for?’

  ‘Don’t know. Someone who needs them.’

  Santiago swiftly and methodically scooped the squids back into the box. Then he opened the outer door. Outside the rain was like a thick living curtain.

  ‘This weather’s saved us,’ he said. ‘Visibility’s no more than thirty feet. If anyone comes, then my van’s broken down and I’ve had to borrow the camioneta and am loading it up.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps that’ll do.’

  Santiago lifted the box of sharp-finned, sardine-like fish.

  ‘Are you going to help?’ he said.

  Willi Mohr got up from the stairs, pulled on his plastic coat, and pried the box of squids up off the floor. Then he took it in his arms and walked bare-footed round the house, just behind Santiago.

  It took them only a quarter of an hour to transfer eight boxes of fish and sealed metal boxes of cartridges and hand-grenades from the Ford to the rubbish heap, and no one appeared as they were doing it. When they had covered over the boxes with old abandoned reed fencing and rotted straw from the outhouse, Santiago roped down the rest of the load and without looking up from the job, said: ‘I’ll be back this evening or tonight.’

  Then he put his shoulder to the little van, got it moving and clambered into the driver’s seat. The vehicle vanished into the rain long before it reached the alleyway, and if the engine started, it was not possible to hear it.

  Willi Mohr stood on the flat steps in front of the door and stretched out his naked feet for the rain to rinse the mud off them. Then he did the same with his hands, which stank of fish and tainted offal.

  As he stood there, a large piece of masonry loosened from the wall and fell down on to the soaking ground. He thought he heard the crack of a shot through the noise of the rain, but he was not certain.

  3

  Willi Mohr did not once leave the house in Barrio Son Jofre during the afternoon or evening. Once or twice he considered getting himself something to eat, but he only had to think about the squid tentacles and the offal for his appetite to disappear immediately. Although he was wet through and everything indoors was quite damp, he did not feel especially uneasy and was not cold.

  Although he did not think the arms-smuggling story was of any great significance and was convinced no one would find the compromising goods on the rubbish-heap, he sensed a rising excitement in face of the events ahead. He knew that something was about to happen, but he did not know what.

  Most of the afternoon he sat on the stairs and thought. For more than an hour he turned over the pages of his passport. He studied the different visas thoroughly and suddenly found himself wondering about when and where and for what reason his passport would be stamped next.

  His thoughts were muddled and undisciplined for long spells at a time. The events of the day had indeed enriched his store of new facts and lead-threads, but he was incapable of sorting t
hem out or following them up. Nothing fell in with the pattern he had already defined and held to for a long time. The equation was not working out, although it ought to be doing so, and as a result life refused to appear simple and free of problems.

  And it seemed to him that if his will to live was about to return, then it was doing so at a particularly ill-chosen moment.

  Even after darkness had fallen, Willi Mohr still went on sitting on the stairs, thinking that there were altogether too many pieces of the jig-saw puzzle. Then he started listening. The downpour continued with the same monotonous force, but when he listened carefully and grew familiar with the sounds, certain nuances began to come through, for instance that sometimes it decreased in order to work itself up again to new strength soon afterwards. As if the rain itself were alive and breathing.

  It was nine o’clock. He closed the door, undid his belt, pulled his shirt out of trousers and went and lay down on the mattress, flat out under the blanket, now swollen and decomposing like a piece of grey paper in a plant-press.

  He fell asleep twenty minutes later, but before that he experienced a moment of sexual obsession, coming suddenly and violently and its physical manifestation was so ungovernable that he realized that using his will-power to overcome it would be useless. There was only one way of freeing himself.

  Willi Mohr lay on his back and looked at naked women. Barbara Heinemann, and the Norwegian woman who had lived upstairs, and oddly enough the girl on the tractor-paper too. He had in fact never seen her undressed and the only time he had let his fingers glide over her cheek and neck down under her vest, she had blushed and perspired and gone on talking. He remembered a collar-bone which was slender and brittle and a breast beneath her bra and her polo-necked sweater. It lay in his hand like a terrified animal, soft and warm and small, its hard little nose hidden in his palm. And all the time she had talked on and on, her head down, quickly and disjointedly and mostly about production. The course of events was violent and strictly mechanical, the cramps beginning in his testicles and spreading out all over his loins. Then his thigh and calf muscles knotted and all his sinews stretched, first in his feet, but soon after in his neck and arms too, and then the dam burst into a scarlet pulsating haze.

  He was almost naked, as he had had enough presence of mind to take his pants and trousers off and unbutton his shirt. He lay in the dark dripping room, on a flock mattress which had begun to go mouldy, alone, his heart thumping.

  A minute or two later he found his damp clothing and pulled them on again.

  Eighteen months had past since he had slept with a whore in a brothel in Cologne. Since then he had had only one other opportunity, in Marseilles at the beginning of May, and then he had had other things to think about. So it was natural that he masturbated, but it irritated him all the same. More than anything else, it seemed ridiculous.

  Willi Mohr fell asleep and was woken by the sound of the fish-van’s engine. It was one o’clock, and raining as before. Santiago came in from the darkness in his shining wet oilskins. He took off his sou’wester and said: ‘The whole district is crawling with police and soldiers. I was stopped twice on the way here. The last time I thought they were going to take the van apart.’

  He took out a cigarette and lit it above the paraffin lamp.

  ‘The stuff must be got there before the siesta tomorrow. The action will presumably be postponed, but the man I spoke to didn’t think it’d be abandoned. But they must have got wind of something. There can’t be that many people on the roads for a round-up or an ordinary routine check.’

  ‘What action?’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘The strike. Four hundred factory workers above Santa Margarita are going on strike tomorrow afternoon. They must have that load before then.’

  ‘I wonder if violence is the right way,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘The strikes that can be achieved now, and which can in some way be organized beforehand, are not very big ones. As strikes are illegal and the ones that occur are small and local, then they’re always broken with violence. And as that’s what happens anyhow, there’s no point in the workers letting themselves be butchered like a flock of sheep, without putting up any resistance. Instead it’s important that they show that there are still people who dare fight and that we can get help from outside, with arms for instance. In that way it’ll be possible to carry through bigger actions later on and those actions needn’t be armed, but will be effective all the same.’

  Willi Mohr looked questioningly at him. Santiago smiled joylessly and said: ‘I didn’t think all that up. Do you know who said that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A man you mentioned earlier today.’

  ‘Antonio Millan?’

  ‘Yes, I asked him about it one day.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Has he got a wart between his eyebrows?’

  ‘How did you know that? Have you met him?’

  His voice had turned suspicious again.

  ‘No. They showed me a photograph at the guard-post.’

  Santiago had been kneeling down by the lamp as he smoked. Now he crushed his cigarette-end against the stone floor and got up.

  ‘The arms must be got away from here at once,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a good hiding-place.’

  ‘Are you going to try now? Tonight?’

  ‘No, I’ll get through in daylight in the morning. That’ll be better. But I’ll move the stuff now, to a safe place, not far down the road to the puerto. I couldn’t take it there this morning because of that jeep.’

  ‘But the patrols?’

  ‘They’ll withdraw them later on, or at dawn.’

  ‘You might as well let the things stay here. The rubbish-heap’s a good place.’

  ‘When I came from town, it had stopped raining there. It’ll stop here too, perhaps tonight, perhaps early tomorrow morning. Then you can see this house with its rubbish heap and everything from miles away, up in the mountains. There are always people up there. I know the ropes in this business. Been at it a long time. It was coffee and cigarettes before. There’s always been something, ever since I was small. The priest, one of them that is, for there are lots of them, once said I was too intelligent to get caught. And my father says I’m a wastrel. Although it’s thanks to me he earns more money than any other fisherman down there. Although he was all through the war on the Libertad, even at Cabo Palos where we won a great victory, he would still do nothing against them. Not now, and neither would he agree to me doing so. He argues that if you’re once beaten, then you’ll never rise again. Lots of them who were in on it seem to think that way.’

  ‘Not all that strange, perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps not. And he’s right about me. I am a wastrel.’

  Santiago took out a plug of tobacco, drew out his knife and cut off a piece with a quick slash.

  ‘Good knife,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘All my tools are perfect,’ said Santiago and he laughed loudly.

  When Willi Mohr looked at him, he saw that his eyes were shining and exalted under the rim of his sou’wester. His sunburnt face was tense and glittering, not with raindrops, but with sweat.

  ‘I must load up now,’ said Santiago. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘I’ll help.’

  ‘No need. This is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I’ll help all the same.’

  They went round the house, slipping and stumbling over the half-buried stones sticking out of the ground. The rain was heavier than ever, beating down with a roaring sound, as if wishing to do its very best before its predicted end.

  The move was troublesome in the darkness and wet, and although they worked as quickly as they could, it took them forty minutes to get the boxes stowed on to the fish-van. On one occasion Santiago tripped and fell against the wall. The box slipped out of his hands and the parts of two automatic-pistols hurtled down into the mud, together with a foul mess of stinking pig’s stomachs and rotten intestines.
He hit his knee against a stone in the fall and found it difficult to move. While Willi Mohr shovelled up the horrible mixture, Santiago leant against the house and held the paraffin lamp, shaded with a flap of his oilskin jacket.

  When the boxes were on the back of the van, well roped and with the tarpaulin over them, they went into the house and locked the door behind them. They had been working hard and were breathing heavily. Both were soaked with sweat and rain, and in spite of the downpour, their arms and legs were covered with clay and filth under their clothes.

  Santiago stood with his back to the wall beside the door. He drew in a deep breath and said, unevenly and jerkily: ‘Hope there are no guards at the cross-roads. Then I can free-wheel the whole way with the lights out and the engine switched off.’

  Willi Mohr nodded.

  ‘You can go down first and check. I’ll stop the van at the entrance to the alleyway and wait. If anyone’s down there, then hurry back. Otherwise I’ll count to a hundred before I take off the brakes. If there’s a checkpoint, then I’ll start the engine and drive in the other direction.’

  Willi Mohr nodded again.

  After a brief pause he said: ‘O.K. Let’s get going.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Santiago.

  The house was silent. Outside the rain was crashing down with apocalyptic force. Santiago was still leaning against the white-washed wall, now grey with damp. Willi Mohr stood in the middle of the room, his feet apart and his arms hanging. Neither of them moved.

  Time floated by, perhaps a minute, perhaps two, long and unreal.

  ‘Where’s my brother?’ said Santiago Alemany.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘I know. Where is he?’

  ‘On the sea-bed.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘I killed him.’

  The cat came in through the hole in the door, thin and soaking wet, with scratches round its eyes. It looked from one man to the other and miaowed.

  ‘Who killed Dan Pedersen?’ said Willi Mohr.