by Per Wahlöö
Lieutenant Brown: What shall I tell the people waiting outside.
Colonel Orbal: Tell them what the hell you like.
Major von Peters: And Brown, not a word about this little dispute to anyone.
Lieutenant Brown: Sir, may I point out with incisiveness that as a Lieutenant in the Air Force I am on oath and like yourself have sworn that not a word shall be uttered outside these walls …
Colonel Orbal: Oh, my God, don’t you start, too. The session is adjourned until eleven o’clock tomorrow.
Fifth Day
Lieutenant Brown: Present Colonel Orbal, Colonel Pigafetta, Major von Peters, Commander Kampenmann. Officer presenting the case, Lieutenant Brown.
Colonel Orbal: I asked you all to come a quarter of an hour earlier.
Colonel Pigafetta: And we have, as you see, come.
Colonel Orbal: I’ve been thinking about this. Von Peters and I have had a discussion.
Major von Peters: We came to the conclusion that this assignment is far too important and … well …
Commander Kampenmann: Delicate?
Major von Peters: Exactly, much too delicate to be jeopardised by personal antagonisms.
Colonel Pigafetta: That should be fairly obvious.
Major von Peters: Yes, it should. Therefore, Colonel Orbal requests, not as President of the Court …
Colonel Orbal: Exactly. Therefore I, as the senior officer present, would like to suggest that we draw a line through any discord that has occurred.
Major von Peters: And accept each other’s apologies.
Colonel Orbal: Is that all right?
Commander Kampenmann: As far as I’m concerned, yes.
Colonel Orbal: And you, Pigafetta?
Colonel Pigafetta: All right. Though …
Major von Peters: Though what?
Colonel Pigafetta: Oh, nothing. I’m prepared to accept your solution.
Colonel Orbal: Then the matter can now be considered closed.
Colonel Pigafetta: At least for the moment.
Major von Peters: Exactly.
Colonel Orbal: Good.
Major von Peters: I heard at Headquarters by the way, that the General is said to have given Schmidt a fearful dressing down for his way of presenting the prosecution. It probably won’t be long now before he’s forced to bring in Bratianu. In which case, Schmidt will just have to be more incisive.
Tadeusz Haller: Oh, you’re already here, gentlemen?
Colonel Pigafetta: Yes, an internal military matter brought us together.
Tadeusz Haller: I see. I understand yesterday’s session was rather short.
Colonel Orbal: Is the General … I mean, has the Chief of State been …
Tadeusz Haller: Irritated? Not at all. As I said on the first day, the Chief of State has from the start indicated that time is not that important. The main aim of this session is that the court informs itself so thoroughly on the background of the Velder case that the verdict on the various sections will be absolutely unassailable, even for scrutiny in the legislature.
Major von Peters: I still don’t really see the point.
Tadeusz Haller: Between ourselves, I think the Chief of State intends to use the verdicts against Velder, and this whole investigation, as a club with which to beat the civil lawyers who are at present in the Ministry and the legislature.
Commander Kampenmann: You yourself are one of them.
Tadeusz Haller: My position is, as you will realise, somewhat different. I am the Chief of State’s personal adviser. The Chief of State, however, is a soldier. He relies more on military than on civil justice.
Major von Peters: Thank God for that. Who is presenting the case today?
Tadeusz Haller: Schmidt. I was speaking to him just now in the hall.
Major von Peters: He probably won’t be coming tomorrow. Get going, now, Mateo.
Colonel Orbal: Of course. Let the others in, Brown.
Captain Schmidt: We have now penetrated somewhat more deeply into our mission. The first thirty-two charges in the case against Velder, together with completely conclusive evidence have been submitted to the court. Before I proceed to the detailed submission concerning the continued criminal activities of the accused, I would like once again to take up the matter concerning which social and ethical factors impelled Velder along his course of crime and more and more deeply into moral decay. I request in this case to be allowed to refer to the registered documentation of the preliminary investigation.
Colonel Orbal: What? What did you say?
Major von Peters: More reading aloud?
Captain Schmidt: I intend to show, point by point, that it was the slackness and lack of moral responsibility in the existing form of society, its contempt for the fear of God and its indifference to the evident respect for firm leadership, which brought about Velder’s—and that of many others—final ruin.
Colonel Pigafetta: Please keep your orations for the final summing up.
Captain Schmidt: To illustrate how the society that turned Velder into a criminal really functioned, I would like to refer to V II/13 of the preliminary investigation. This consists of a letter, written about two years after the liberation, by the then Councillor Aranca Peterson, later sentenced to death in contumacia.
Colonel Orbal: In what? What on earth did you say, man?
Captain Schmidt: Four years ago, she was sentenced to death for treason, in her absence.
Colonel Orbal: Well, we all know that.
Captain Schmidt: Aranca Peterson seems to have written this letter quite privately. You will find tendencies in it which indicate that even a fallen woman such as she was, suffered from subconscious pangs of conscience and felt a need, at least to herself, to show shame and regret over the conditions of chaos and criminal immorality which she and her fellow-conspirators had brought to the country. The letter is franked Zürich and addressed to another member of the Council, Janos Edner, with whom the aforementioned Aranca Peterson lived in unseemly circumstances.
Lieutenant Brown: Appendix V II/13. Marked secret according to paragraph twenty-three. The text is as follows …
Colonel Orbal: Twenty-three, is that the obscenity paragraph?
Captain Schmidt: Yes, that’s correct.
Colonel Orbal: Loud and clear, now, Brown.
Lieutenant Brown: The text is as follows: My darling, this is a dismal windy town and I can’t imagine why it is known for its beauty. And also I’m not sure I’m the right person for these international conferences. They talk and talk and I concentrate as best I can, but after a while I find myself sitting there longing for home, thinking about something quite different, mostly you, of course. The only consolation is that if you look round, you notice that all the others are also sitting day-dreaming and that the only person who is remotely paying attention is the one who is standing at the lectern, trying not to make mistakes as he reads from his manuscript, which usually someone else has written.
Anyhow, I have managed to find time to do quite a lot of useful things here these last two days. Met W yesterday and again today at lunch and late in the afternoon. He was very positive and optimistic and said that his government would ratify the agreement this week and that deliveries will get started at the end of next month. He thinks a lot about his percentage, avarice glistens in his eyes, and I’m sure he finds it hard to sleep at night, thinking about all that money he can make on the side. To judge from actual appearances—he dribbled at the mouth and at first I thought he was going to rape me—well, to judge from appearances, then we can probably be certain that the shipments will come as they should. ‘With utmost punctuality’ he said. We can also probably reckon that he himself ‘with utmost punctuality’ will be standing in front of his bank-deposit here in Zürich, waiting for the deposits to fall in.
I met him at his hotel, but then we went in separate cars to the congress hall. He was the first speaker of the afternoon, and he condemned us roundly in tremendous terms. He said, for instance; this (ours,
that is) is a country which through its activities and spineless politics has lost all sympathy and placed itself outside every form of international co-operation. We demand immediate international sanctions against this impertinent little dictatorship and until our views gain general approval, we are thinking of continuing in our role of the conscience of the world and of imposing a total and uncompromising blockade. Neither a pin nor a sewing-needle shall we export, for to trade with a country like this (he shouted) is as unthinkable to us (and here he achieved a really handsome metaphor) as for the famous camel to get through the needle’s eye. A nation (he puffed, when he’d got his breath back) which gains its prosperity, its free life and its sovereignty with the aid of loans and generous investments from understanding, unsuspecting democracies such as our country, and which then rewards this gratitude (here he lost the thread completely) by a completely, … I wanted to say unprecedented (he stopped and finally saved the situation by saying …) well, I’m at a loss for words.
He stood there struggling for air, and naturally I did my duty without getting up, by taking the words from his mouth and saying: Well, it is quite true that we nationalised the foreign concessions which were making in-roads into our people’s rights. We have never made a secret of that. We are not afraid to put our cards on the table and stand by our decisions (one in the eye for him, the bastard). In that way we have repulsed attempts by the capitalist and imperialist countries to get a foothold into what is for them virgin ground, in the same way as we have rejected every sign of international communism and other mass ideologies trying to sabotage our independence and make us into a pawn in the game between the power blocks.
A few people even applauded, although it was just after lunch and everyone was just sitting aching for some bicarbonate of soda. W didn’t say anything else about us, but stood muttering for a while that they couldn’t fulfil their deliveries and obligations before the agreement with the international steel union. When he went back to his place, he was stupid enough to wink at me, the idiot. It’s a pity we need their damned steel, not to mention the other stuff.
Later on in the afternoon, when we met W again and settled the details in a meeting room at my hotel, the door was suddenly flung open and BM swept in with a whole lot of guys who he’d presumably been talking to about agricultural products. He stared at W and me as if he’d seen an apparition. They had made a muddle at the hotel and booked the same rooms for two different conferences at the same time. It didn’t matter, of course, except that BM suspected something nasty in the woodshed, but I felt so incredibly silly and ashamed, rather like that time five years ago when we were sleeping together in your room and didn’t know the lock was broken and that so-called head of the company came in with two English guests in black jackets and striped trousers, whom he was showing round his marvellous place. I can never laugh when such things happen—just feel foolish. At this moment I feel foolish and lonely.
The whole affair with BM is settled, anyhow. We’ll get stocks that’ll last for ten years.
Tomorrow I’ve promised to make a statement with an interview attached to some international women’s organisation. It’s being broadcast on several television networks, radio, of course, and all that. I know exactly what it’ll be like. They’ll ask about all the same old things and I know all the answers. It’ll end by some of them getting annoyed and most of them pretending to be fearfully impressed.
Darling, will we really manage this? Did we know what we were letting ourselves in for four years ago, when this conspiracy began? Are you really so certain as you maintain when you say that it can’t fail? Couldn’t it get out of hand.
‘Get out of hand’ is exactly what I said to myself as I left home. The plane rose from the airport and—the airport building is really formidable now it’s finished; Dr Stoloff and his guys have done a good job there—well, then it flew in a wide sweep in over Oswaldsburg. I was sitting on the inner curve, so to speak, and I saw all the houses, the finished ones and the unfinished ones, from straight above. All that upward-straining, astonishing building. I ask myself again: Will it get out of hand? I have a feeling, anyhow, of having neither it nor the island under control any longer. Nor Ludolfsport either, which we flew over twenty minutes later. Possibly Marbella, and although it’s naturally the most complicated part of the country, I still feel most at home there. Sometimes I don’t even like those ostentatious names—Oswaldsburg and Ludolfsport, for instance—although I myself was in on choosing them. It really is a bit of luck we didn’t fall for the temptation (?) to call Marbella Ednaranca as Oswald and Ludolf wanted to at the time.
Don’t know if I could’ve borne it today.
You must forgive me. I don’t know why I’m thinking like this, when I’m alone and haven’t got anything to do. Especially when everything has gone so well and has been such fun.
When I get home I must have all the people and all the materials for the new airport hotels in Marbella. And the other casino must be ready by March, even if it kills me. It can’t be helped if our other projects have to remain at a standstill for a few weeks.
Apropos what I wrote ten minutes ago, I happened to think about one of our night talks long ago. I said: And what do we want it for? You said: We’ll re-create it into a place where people like us and other people feel well. I said: What do you mean by feel well? You said: Simply thinking that it’s fun to work, to feel yourself surrounded by people who understand and like you, naturally to have food, houseroom, what you think you need, all that, to have some point to your existence and a goal, and see others round about you who also have one. I said: And what shall we do with it when we’ve got it? You said: Live in it. I said: Is that the whole point of us and this island, which we presumably will never get? You said: That island, which we’ll certainly get, you know just as well as I do, is a natural self-sufficient unit: it should and must be free and independent. I said: Of course, that’s the point.
But we made those remarks as if they were tag-ends in some way, as if we’d said them out of shame. We both felt this, so after a while we went on with the argument and agreed on the following: today the island is the haunt of a small number of people who live a joyless and stupidly enough even an economically rather meagre life there. Lots of people who really belong there and who would like to be there are forced to move because of unemployment, lack of development, all that sort of thing. Fifty times that number of individuals could live really happily on that island, fifty times as many as those who live there now and are unhappy.
Do you remember that conversation? Yes, of course you remember everything of importance we’ve done and said together, just as well as I do. I’ve forgotten almost everything else. But as far as that argument is concerned, it seems to me now infinitely more important than what I thought then. I think that in that conversation lie the keys to both the past and the future, that on that occasion, we’d once and for all formulated both what is right and what is wrong in our thinking and our ideas. Or, anyhow, seen the truth without understanding it.
It’s an unpleasant thought.
Anyhow, what will Oswald use three hundred jeeps for? It sounds crazy. But I suppose he can be crazy in his way if he wants to be. All that business about immigration he arranged perfectly. I’ve had compliments from international quarters about it as recently as today.
I love you so. Thanks for the fine pen you gave me on the airport. I’m writing this letter with it.
Please forgive this long and childish and disjointed letter, but I’m sitting here in the middle of the night in my hotel room. I’m feeling very randy, which respectable ladies shouldn’t, I suppose, and so I’m homesick. I long for you. I don’t want to go to bed alone among all those bolsters in that large elegant bed, but now I’m going to all the same. I love you, your Aranca.
Colonel Orbal: How old was this woman?
Captain Schmidt: Thirty-two. She had at the time an eight-month-old child by Janos Edner, but funnily enough, she does not mention it.
Colonel Orbal: What’s funny about that?
Captain Schmidt: I didn’t mean that literally.
Colonel Orbal: Seems to have been ardent sort of woman. What did she look like?
Captain Schmidt: Small, fair, lively. Blue eyes. Well developed, they say. There’s a description here, four foot seven, eight stone three …
Major von Peters: You know perfectly well what Aranca Peterson looked like, Mateo. You’ve seen thousands of pictures of her.
Captain Schmidt: Aranca Peterson did not send that letter off the next day. She obviously left it and then added something the next evening. That too, is of a certain interest. Continue, Lieutenant Brown.
Lieutenant Brown: My appearance this evening, as usual, was an extraordinary business. They asked questions until I nearly died. Unfortunately, I probably looked rather dreadful on television because the heat from the lights was terrible and my face was sweating as usual. I’ll give you the main points; in comparison with all that rubbish I wrote yesterday, perhaps they’ll be of some interest.
I warmed them up with the usual statement. Then the great bombardment began:
If your country considers that it follows a pacifist line, why do you refuse to ally yourselves to the block of states which has been formed along peaceful lines?
Because all power blocks at all times have believed or maintained that they were working for peace. The results speak for themselves.
So you dissociate yourself from the third world as an idea?
Yes. From the four and the fifth, too. For us, pacifism is a type of politics without any personal conception of life.
Do you consider it compatible with the idea of pacifism that your own party as long as two years ago started an armed revolution and took power by force?
The force that was used was extremely limited. The whole of the revolution cost fewer than ten lives. However, even that was deplorable, and I would be the first to admit it.
But if the attempts to suppress the liberation movement had been more forceful, the number of victims would naturally have been much greater?