Authors: Henning Mankell
“He lives in Abisko. That’s a long way from here. He comes to see me once a year, sometimes alone, sometimes with his wife and some of his children. He keeps trying to persuade me to move there, but it’s too far north for me, too cold. Old waitresses get swollen feet and can’t cope with cold temperatures.”
“What does he do in Abisko?”
“Something to do with forestry. I think he counts trees.”
“But you have settled here in Markaryd?”
“I used to live here when I was a child, before we moved to Stockholm. I didn’t really want to leave. I moved back here to prove that I’m still just as
obstinate as I always was. And it’s cheap. A waitress isn’t in a position to save up a fortune.”
“And you were a waitress for a long time, weren’t you?”
“For all those years, yes. Cups, glasses, plates, in and out, a conveyor belt that never stopped. Restaurants, hotels, and once even a Nobel Prize banquet. I remember having the great honor of serving Ernest Hemingway his meal. He actually looked at me once. I longed to tell him that he should write a book about the terrible fate of so many sailors during the Second World War, but of course I didn’t say a word. I think it was 1954. In any case, Arne had been dead for a long time by then. Gunnar was practically a teenager.”
“But sometimes you also worked in private banquet halls, is that right?”
“I liked to have a bit of variety. And I wasn’t the type to keep quiet when a restaurateur didn’t behave as he should. I used to speak out on behalf of my fellow workers, not just for myself, and of course, that meant I got the sack now and then. I was very active as a trade unionist in those days.”
“Let’s talk about this particular private party facility,” said Wallander, judging that the right moment had now arrived.
He pointed to the newspaper article. She put on a pair of glasses that had been hanging on a ribbon around her neck, glanced through the article, then slid it to one side.
“Let me start by defending myself,” she said with a laugh. “We were paid very well to serve those unpleasant officers. A poor waitress like me could earn as much for one evening there as I was normally paid for a whole month, if things turned out well. They were all drunk by the time they went home, and some of them used to hand out hundred-krona notes like a farmer spreading muck in his fields. It could add up to a considerable sum.”
“Where was this place?”
“On Östermalm—doesn’t it say that in the article? It was owned by a man who had previously been associated with Per Engdahl’s Nazi movement. Despite his disgusting political views, he was a very good cook. He’d made a small fortune working as a chef for some high-ranking German officers who had fled to Argentina. They paid him well, he served them whatever food they asked for, said ‘Heil Hitler’ now and again, and at the end of the 1950s returned home and was able to buy that place on Östermalm. Everything I’ve just told you is what I was told by reliable sources.”
“And who might they be?”
She hesitated for a moment before answering.
“People who had been members of the Engdahl movement, but left,” she said.
Wallander was beginning to realize that he had not really understood Fanny Klarström’s background properly.
“Would I be correct in thinking that you weren’t only active in trade union circles, but that you also had political interests?”
“I was an active Communist. I suppose I still am, in a way. The idea of a world in which everybody has a common cause with everybody else is still the only ideal I can believe in. The only political truth that can’t be questioned, in my opinion.”
“Did that have anything to do with you applying for a job waiting on those officers?”
“I was asked to apply by the party. It was of some interest to know what conservative naval officers talked about among themselves. Nobody suspected that a waitress with swollen legs would remember what they said.”
Wallander tried to assess the significance of what he had just heard.
“Wasn’t there a risk that repeating what you had heard could be regarded as an impropriety?”
The tears had dried up now. She regarded him with some amusement.
“ ‘Impropriety’? Fanny Klarström has never been a spy, if that’s what you mean. I don’t understand why police officers always have to express themselves in such a complicated way. I spoke about it to my comrades in the party group, and that was all. Just as other people might talk about the attitudes of bus drivers or salesclerks. In the 1950s it wasn’t only the non socialists who regarded us Communists as potential traitors. The Social Democrats thought so as well. But of course, we weren’t anything of the sort.”
“Let’s forget that question, then. But I am a police officer, and justified in thinking along those lines.”
“It was over fifty years ago. Whatever was said and happened in those days must surely be out of date and of no interest now.”
“Not quite,” Wallander said. “History isn’t just something that’s behind us, it’s also something that follows us.”
She made no comment. He wasn’t sure whether she had understood what he meant. Wallander steered the conversation back to the newspaper article. He realized that Fanny Klarström had a pent-up need to talk to somebody, which meant there was a serious risk that their conversation could go on for a very long time.
Was his own future going to be similar? An aging, lonely old man who grabbed ahold of anybody he happened to come across and held on to them for as long as possible?
· · ·
Fanny the waitress had a good memory. She remembered most of the men in uniform with their various insignia, gathered together on the fuzzy printout. Her comments were needle sharp, often malicious, and it was obvious to Wallander that she considered every word justified. There was, for instance, a Commander Sunesson who was always telling dirty jokes, which she described as “not funny, just coarse.” He had also been one of the most extreme Palme-haters, and the one who proposed quite openly various ways of liquidating the “Russian spy.”
“I have a horrible memory of Commander Sunesson,” she said. “Two days after Palme was shot down in a Stockholm street, these officers were booked for one of their dinners. Sunesson stood up and proposed a toast in gratitude for the fact that Olof Palme had finally had the sense to disappear from the land of the living and could no longer poison the air for all upright citizens. I recall his exact words, and I came close to pouring something over him. It was a terrible evening.”
Wallander pointed at Håkan von Enke.
“What do you remember about him?”
“He was one of the better ones. He didn’t drink too much, seldom said anything, just listened most of the time. He was also one of the most polite. He actually saw me, if I can put it like that.”
“What about the hatred of Palme? The fear of Russia?”
“They all shared that. They thought of course Sweden should be a member of NATO—it was a scandal that we steered clear of it. Many of them also thought that Sweden should acquire atomic weapons right away, that if only we could arm a few submarines with those weapons, it would be possible to defend the Swedish borders. All conversations were about the fight between God and the devil.”
“The devil came from the east?”
“And God the Father was also known as the U.S.A. There was evidently some kind of secret agreement in the 1950s between the government and the top military brass that American planes could cross Swedish borders whenever they liked. Our air-traffic controllers had certain codes that the Americans knew about and used. So all the Yanks needed to do was to take off from their bases in Norway and head for the Soviet Union. I recall discussing this with my friends and being upset about it.”
“But what about the submarines?”
“We talked about them all the time.”
“Including the one trapped in the shallows off Karlskrona? And the ones in the Hårsfjärden channel?”
Her reply surprised him.
“They were two entirely separate incidents.”
“How could that be?”
“A Russian submarine had run aground off Karlskrona. But there was never any confirmation of what was lurking under the surface at Hårsfjärden. That was no doubt intentional.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“They drank a few toasts to the poor captain—what was his name?”
“Gushchin.”
“Yes, that was it. Poor old Gus, they said. He was so drunk that his submarine got stuck on a Swedish rock. So at last they had the Russian submarine they’d always wanted to capture. Right? This proved beyond doubt that it was the Russians who were playing hide-and-seek inside Swedish territorial waters. But with regard to Hårsfjärden, there was nobody there who wanted to drink a toast to any Russian captain—do you get my meaning?”
“Are you suggesting that there weren’t any Russians lurking around under the surface at Hårsfjärden?”
“It was impossible to prove anything, one way or the other.”
Fanny Klarström continued talking enthusiastically about things Wallander didn’t know much about. He had never tried to conceal his extremely limited knowledge of history. Earlier in his life he simply hadn’t been all that interested. But now he was listening closely to what Fanny Klarström had to say.
“So Russia was the enemy,” Wallander said.
“None of our military men thought otherwise. Whenever the officers met they would talk to each other as if we were already at war with the Russians. Nobody gave a thought to the possibility that the U.S.A. could be just as big a threat.”
“What was the point of those dinners?”
“To eat and drink well, and to criticize the politicians who ‘represented a threat to Swedish sovereignty.’ Those were the precise words they always used. The main enemy was the Social Democrats. Even though everybody knew that Olof Palme was a staunch Democrat, he was always referred to in these circles as a ‘Communist.’ ”
Despite Wallander’s protests, Fanny went to make more coffee. He already had a stomachache. When she came back he explained the real reason for his visit to Markaryd.
“Wasn’t there something in the papers about that couple’s disappearance?” she asked when he had finished his account.
“The woman, Louise, was recently found dead just outside Stockholm.”
“Poor woman. What happened?”
“She was probably murdered.”
“Why?”
“We don’t have an answer to that yet.”
“And the man is that officer in the picture there?”
“Yes, Håkan von Enke. If you can remember anything else about him, I’d like to hear it.”
She thought hard, studying the photograph.
“He’s difficult to remember,” she said eventually. “I think I’ve already told you everything I can recall. Maybe that in itself says something about him? He hardly ever made a fuss, just sat there quietly. He wasn’t one of those who drank a lot and couldn’t stop talking. I remember him always having a smile on his face.”
Wallander frowned. Could her memory be completely wrong?
“Are you sure he was always smiling? My impression is that he was a very serious man.”
“I may be wrong. But I’m quite certain he wasn’t one of the awful warmongers. On the contrary, my memory is that he was one of the tiny minority who sometimes spoke up for peace. I no doubt remember that because it interested me.”
“What did?”
“Peace. I was one of those who demanded that Sweden renounce nuclear weapons as early as the 1950s.”
“So Håkan von Enke spoke up for peace?”
“As I recall, yes. But it was a long time ago.”
Wallander could see that she really was doing her best. He sipped at his coffee, trying to avoid actually drinking any, and nibbled on a cookie. And then he lost a filling. The tooth started hurting immediately. He wrapped the filling in a paper napkin and put it in his pocket. It was the middle of summer; his dentist would no doubt be on vacation and Wallander would be referred to some emergency center. He was irritated by the thought that his body was starting to fall to pieces. Once the most important parts stopped working, it would be all over.
“America.” Fanny Klarström interrupted his train of thought. “I knew there was something else.”
There was an incident that had stuck in her memory and made a deep impression; that was why she remembered it so clearly.
“It was one of the last times I worked at those banquets. There was evidently a request to see young ladies in short skirts rather than old ones with swollen legs. It didn’t bother me because I couldn’t have coped much longer with serving drinks and meals to those people. They used to have their meetings
on the first Tuesday of every month. It must have been 1987, in March. I remember that because I’d broken the little finger of my left hand and wasn’t able to work for quite a while. I started again that very evening. They always used to finish up with coffee and brandy or whatever in a drab little room with leather chairs and dark bookcases. I remember because I’ve always enjoyed reading. Sometimes when I arrived early for one of the banquets, before starting to set the tables I would go to that room and look at the books. I soon discovered to my surprise that they were fakes—just covers with nothing inside. The owner or maybe the interior designer he’d hired had evidently bought them from some stage props supplier. I remember that my respect for those people suffered another significant blow.”
She sat up straight in the armchair, as if in an attempt to prevent herself from losing the thread again.
“Suddenly one of the officers started talking about spies,” she continued. “I was going around with a bottle of very expensive cognac at the time, filling their glasses. It wasn’t unusual for them to talk about spies. Wennerström was a popular topic. Several of them announced that they would willingly kill him with their own hands, once the liquor got them talking. I recall an admiral, von Hartman I think his name was, suggesting that Wennerström be throttled slowly with a balalaika string. Then Håkan von Enke started talking. He asked why nobody seemed to be worried that spies for the U.S.A. might be active in Sweden. That aroused a furious reaction. It deteriorated into a very unpleasant argument, during which several of the officers called his loyalty into question. Of course they were all drunk, with the possible exception of von Enke. In any case, he was so angry that he stood up and stormed out of the room. That had never happened before, during all the years I had been serving them. I don’t know if he ever came back, because the young, attractive waitresses took over. I remember the incident well because my friends and I had always thought the same. If the Russians had spies in Sweden, which they doubtless did, you could be sure that the Americans were active as well. But these officers refused to believe that. Or at least, if they did, they preferred not to say so.”