He recalled the story of Ehud. When Manuel and his brothers were small, their father would read aloud from the Bible in the evenings. He had reached all the way to the book of Daniel until his worsening sight put an end to all reading.
It was perhaps the fact that Ehud, like Manuel, was left-handed that had fixed the story in his mind. Edud murdered a king in secret. Manuel tried in vain to think of the king’s name. The king, who came from the land of Moab, was enormously fat. Ehud had been assigned the task of murdering the king and had thrust his sword into him. The sword sank to its hilt in the voluminous belly. Ehud fled, and managed to escape. The people rose up and freed themselves from their oppressors.
Am I Ehud, he asked himself. Is it right to kill another person?
Manuel weighed Slobodan’s life. Carried on a silent dialogue with death or, rather, himself, the man he could be, the man he was in actuality. This was how he experienced those hours in Slobodan Andersson’s darkened apartment. It was as if he were reasoning with an inner being who spoke to him, advised and admonished him, sometimes querulously and somewhat snobbishly. But mostly reasonably and calmly, soothingly, like a good friend, the only true friend who loyally accompanied him through life.
When this voice fell silent, so too did Manuel, and therefore he pursued the dialogue, even though it became increasingly disjointed due to his exhaustion and his longing for a life far from poverty and death.
He sat down in an armchair, stared into the darkness, and allowed his thoughts to wander freely. He may have fallen asleep, dreamed about the village and his mother, Maria, his friends and the scent of rain. Slobodan snuffled occasionally, flailed his limbs, and shouted something with such desperation in his voice that for a moment he appeared quite human.
He was like a shapeless mound of flesh and bones as he lay there, a shadow figure who dominated the room with his snoring and other sounds. There was a stench of sweat and vomit, but that did not bother Manuel. What he did find distracting, however, were the human sounds. Perhaps there were memories from another time stored in his unconscious that made him reflective and filled with melancholy? Was it memories of his father, as he turned in his sleep and muttered something inaudible? Perhaps it was memories from the barracks at McArthur’s farm in Idaho where he had worked one summer erecting fences and clearing fields? There, seven men were crowded into a few square meters. The odors emanating from their bodies and the pressing restlessness as they slept in heat and congestion forced Manuel to leave the barrack and sleep on the veranda, where he was safe from the rain but not the mosquitoes that flew in from the marshlands to the south. Even out there he could hear the sounds of the men who he both hated and loved as he lay close to the stars, with the bloodsucking fiends buzzing around his head.
He is a person, Manuel thought, and felt acute consternation. He would have preferred not to admit there was any human aspects in Slobodan Andersson, the man of the mountain who sold and bought souls. A man whose only goal was to enrich himself, cost what it may. It had cost Angel his life and Patricio his freedom.
But if? Then Manuel was back at the beginning: his brothers’ own responsibility.
“If,” he said aloud.
If. If they had not followed the enticements of a bhni guí’a? If they had been men, if they had been true Mexicans?
He stood up and walked over to the bed, leaned over the sleeper.
“Are you a human being?”
The pale cheeks in the fleshy face trembled as Slobodan turned over. His eyelids twitched and he whimpered like a dog.
Exhaustion drove Manuel back to the armchair. It was starting to get light outside and the shadows of the room went from black to gray. Manuel closed his eyes and immediately fell asleep.
He dreamed he was a happy man. The woman he loved, and to whom he had promised to return as soon as he could, was walking by his side. Sometimes the image changed and they were lying together somewhere outside, but not so far that they could not hear the barking dogs and the occasional shout of a villager. Manuel felt an unprecedented sense of strength, it was as if his physical powers had been amplified and he knew that they would soon meet. It filled him with a feeling of hope that he had not experienced for a long time.
He reached for Gabriella and when she crept up into his lap he woke with a start, sat up, and did not know at first where he was.
“Who the hell are you?”
Slobodan Andersson’s voice had nothing of the authority or acerbity for which he was both feared and hated. In fact, he appeared frightened and confused.
Manuel, who had not understood what he had said, got up out of the chair.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked in English.
Slobodan stared at Manuel, then looked around the room before he once again stared at the Mexican without comprehension. Then he seemed to recollect something from the previous day and night.
“You are the dishwasher,” he observed.
“I am the dishwasher.”
“Have you made any coffee?”
Manuel shook his head.
“Then do it. I need to clear my head.”
Slobodan Andersson swung his legs over the side of the bed, made a face, and rubbed his hands over his head. He muttered something and drew in the snot in his nose.
Manuel sat down again. He took hold of the idea that had been slumbering and growing unexpressed since his visit to the summer-house.
“I come bearing a message,” he said.
Slobodan looked up.
“I come bearing a message from my brother.”
“What the hell are you talking about. What brother?”
“Angel.”
The astonishment momentarily made Slobodan look human, until he realized who Manuel was.
“You are the brother who was not so enthusiastic, is that right? The one who stayed behind? What kind of message?”
“That which Angel was not able to deliver,” Manuel said and stood up again. Slobodan was five meters away.
“The German cops didn’t take it?”
Manuel shook his head, not sure if Slobodan would buy the lie. He did not know what had appeared in the papers or what Slobodan knew about where the drugs had gone.
“But it will cost you,” he went on.
“I have never received anything for free in my entire life,” Slobodan said, and smiled.
He appeared unaffected. The hangover he most likely had felt as he woke up appeared to be gone.
“But I don’t buy something that already belongs to me,” he added.
“Well, then,” Manuel said. “There are other buyers.”
“Did you try with Armas first?”
“I don’t know who that is,” Manuel said and Slobodan stared at him for a long time before he spoke.
“How is Patricio? Is he well?”
“I am going to visit him tomorrow.”
Manuel did not like the situation. There was a veiled threat behind Slobodan’s questions, the same tactic that Armas had used to try and shake him up.
“How long have you been in Sweden?”
“Not long.”
“I can reimburse you for your costs.”
“Fifty thousand dollars,” Manuel said and tried to keep his voice level.
Slobodan chuckled. Manuel watched him without moving a muscle, hoping the fat one would not realize how nervous he was. He had been taking a chance when he threw out that figure, but now he saw in Slobodan’s reaction that fifty thousand dollars was in the ballpark.
The thought of offering Slobodan the chance to buy back his own stash of drugs had come as an inspiration, and now seemed like sheer genius. He imagined the possibilities; now his brother could get a more comfortable life in prison.