Did he sell the fish, or was it done only for enjoyment? Manuel knew so little about Sweden, about the people who lived in this country. He had read a little in a guidebook in a store in Mexico City, that was all.
He knew that there were many different types of Swedes but didn’t really care. His role here was not the eager curiosity of the tourist nor the systematic investigation of the ethnographer.
The fisherman disappeared behind a bend in the path and Manuel left his secluded spot. Ever since he had set fire to the short man’s house he had felt a growing anxiety. There were so many. He had aimed for Armas and the fat one, but in encountering the short one his task had suddenly increased. Although the short one had not been actively involved in the recruitment of Angel and Patricio, he was a link in the chain, and apparently an important one. He may even have been the brains behind the whole operation, and perhaps Armas and the fat one had simply been his errand boys?
The anxiety also stemmed from something Patricio had said to him in prison: “We could have said no.” That was true. Manuel had said no, and had warned his brothers against going to Oaxaca, where they were going to stay in a hotel and receive new clothing. They could have spoken up, continued to cultivate their corn, which others now harvested.
But they had chosen to say yes. How far did their responsibility extend?
Manuel drew a deep breath, locked the tent with the little padlock, and then strolled up to the parking lot. He looked around before wandering out into the open. Some twenty cars were parked in the lot. His rental car did not stand out, it blended in with the others, but he felt like an exotic creature as he carefully made his way to it.
The parking lot was located at the edge of an arts and crafts village that appeared to have a steady stream of visitors. The place was ideal. He knew that no one would pay any attention to the car, even if it stayed there overnight. It could belong to one of the workers from the strawberry fields.
That morning he had bathed in the river, scrubbing himself thoroughly, and relished it despite the cold temperature. He had swum back and forth, caressed by waterlilies and reeds, and thereafter dried in the sunshine back on shore.
He was a short, wiry man and there were those who misjudged his slight build. But he knew his own strength. Like all Zapotecs, schooled in farm labor, he was capable of working long and hard. He could carry a hundred kilos on his shoulders, clear the land with his hoe or machete for hours without tiring, take a break, eat some beans and posol only to resume his work, walk for miles up and down through valleys and over mountain passes.
He was the kind of man Mexico relied on, trusted. He would support himself, his family, and also take part and help add to other peoples’ riches and excess. He had erected all churches and monuments, put in roads along steep mountain ridges, cultivated corn, beans, and coffee, so why could he not be allowed to rest for a few minutes at an unfamiliar river, stretch out and let the sun dry his limbs?
Nonetheless his anxiety was there and he sensed its source: he had lost his ability to rest, to feel happy for the moment, to take pleasure in the small things and nurse his hope for the future. It was the “man from the mountain” who had taken from him these attributes so necessary for a Zapotec.
He despised himself, aware that his ládxi-his heart and soul-were lost. He had become exactly like them.
When he reached his car, he tried to shake off the sombre mood of the morning, because it made his movements plodding and his thoughts dull. He needed all the sharpness he could muster. This foreign country was placing great demands on him, there were no resting places here, whether in time or space.
After a glance at the map he started the car, turned onto the main road, crossed a bridge, and drove toward Uppsala. The landscape was varied, with fields of wheat, newly harvested with the golden brown stubble that reached toward the horizon, and gracious mounds, shaped like women’s breasts, where the grazing cattle, fat and healthy, looked up unconcerned as he passed. His mood immediately improved.
On the horizon he could see the cathedral with the towers pointing up into the clear blue sky. Up in that sea of air, thousands of black birds were struggling in billowing formations against the blustery southeasterly wind. They, like Manuel, were on their way into town.
Right before he entered Uppsala from the north, he stopped and checked the map for the best way to “K. Rosenberg,” the name that he had seen on the short man’s door.
He parked the car outside a small mall, crossed the street, and took the final stretch to the building on foot.
Thirty-Three
Since his childhood, Konrad Rosenberg always woke early. His inner clock started to ring as early as six. He didn’t like it, had never liked it, but it was the inheritance from Karl-Åke Rosenberg making itself felt. His father had gotten up at five every morning and started fussing, making coffee and rustling the newspapers. Since Konrad was the youngest, he slept in a pull-out sofa in the kitchen, so he had no choice but to be woken up.
The power of habit is great, and so even this morning he woke up early. It was half past five when he opened his eyes. He had to pee, and he had a pounding headache. He lay in bed a while longer and tried to fall back to sleep, then realized it was hopeless. At exactly six o’clock he got up and went to the bathroom.
The night before he had boozed it up, as thoroughly as in the good old days, but with the difference that this time he had drunk completely alone. This had perhaps contributed to the amount of alcohol he had managed to consume.
It was an unaccustomed feeling, almost solemn, to pour the first drink and raise his glass by himself. After the third one there was no solemnity left, only determined drinking. After the fourth one, Konrad started a long, embittered monolog about the “fat devil-chef” who believed he could lord it over Konrad Rosenberg.
Konrad had received a letter, not by ordinary mail but stuck in his mailbox. It was printed by machine and lacked a signature, but the content convinced Konrad of the identity of the writer. He assumed that Slobodan had hired someone to deliver the letter. He was simply too scared to show himself in Tunabackar.
Slobodan wrote that they could have absolutely no contact, no telephone calls, and could not allow themselves to be seen together. Slobodan instructed Konrad to stay at home: “only go to the store and then straight home,” he wrote, as if Konrad were a child. He was not to place himself in “risky situations,” not to spend his evenings out, not to “get in touch with any of our shared associates” or engage in anything that could awaken the interest of “persons unknown to us who we do not wish to know better,” which Konrad assumed meant the police.
At first he thought it felt ridiculous and was actually tempted to defy the instructions and call Slobodan, but realized it was wiser to keep a low profile until the whole thing had died down. The fire was a real blow, but not a complete catastrophe. Konrad trusted completely in the fact that his brother would not say a word about Konrad using the house. His brother simply wanted to get the insurance money.
He turned on the radio but turned it off immediately. Normally he would have gone down to the newsstand and checked the program for the week’s harness-racing results, maybe gone downtown and frittered away a few hours. He considered calling Åke to see if he had heard anything more about the fire, but then concluded it would only make him nervous.
It was a little after eleven when the doorbell rang. Konrad jumped as if he had been struck in the back with a whip. He tiptoed over to the door and listened, at a complete loss as to who it could be.