The Hand that Trembles by Kjell Eriksson Read Free Book Online

a blank map. He thought it was more than most Swedish children could manage with regard to Asia.
    These were the areas he knew – European geography and history – and these were what he confined himself to.
    They always concluded with conversational exercises in English. In his youth, Sven-Arne had only attended community college, but in connection with being drawn into county politics and from time to time receiving international visitors and guest researchers who came to the university, he had studied his way through primary and secondary school English.
    Class after class went through his lectures and discussions. Young people who had graduated several years ago could stop him on the street, still with an embarrassing amount of respect, and tell him how much they appreciated his teachings. Sometimes he was moved to tears by their kindness.
    Through these young people, he even gained a place in the world of their parents. He became known throughout the area and was received with goodwill in the small shops in his neighbourhood.
    He was a volunteer teacher not only for the sake of the children. He did it as much for himself. Something of the skills he had gained in his old life could be drawn upon in the planning of the lessons and in the actual instruction. He always tried to encourage discussion in his classroom, inviting the students to articulate a point and to use their imagination. He was not always successful in this. Even in this sense, he recognised situations from political life in Uppsala.
    Perhaps he also taught in order to assuage his bad conscience. He had chosen not to delve deeper into this, just acknowledge that he was privileged. He had chosen a simple life. Planting trees and bushes placed him far down on the social scale. He observed almost daily the surprise of the more well-to-do Indians who came to Lal Bagh. They would stare unabashedly at the white man who was dressed like a Dalit or Untouchable, bare feet in rough sandals, dirty, with calloused hands, engaged in highly unusual behaviour: He was doing the dirty work, the heavy, manual, poorly paid labour. This was somewhat of a shock to the middle-class population. They took him for a fool, a failure, who perhaps had come to India to seek God but had found a spade. They pointed, they laughed at him, and thereby felt themselves somewhat elevated.
    Some of them spoke to him and found to their astonishment a well-versed man who spoke good English, frequently even better than themselves, and who explained his position with a smile – how he had freely taken on the work of gardening because he wanted to make a contribution – but who painstakingly avoided mentioning anything about his background. Sometimes it sparked respect; there was something Ghandian about the gaunt man that was appealing to a faithful Hindu. But mostly it brought him ridicule.
     
     
    These threads, the contact with Lester and his family, his contributions as volunteer teacher, and his work in the botanical garden, constituted the safety net of Sven-Arne Persson, former county commissioner. The net that transformed the officially deceased county commissioner into a living being.
    Now all this was threatened. An unlikely encounter had brought two Uppsala citizens together.
    Suddenly it occurred to him that this might not be a coincidence at all. Was there a possibility that Jan Svensk had in some way been informed of his whereabouts? Had he been sent out from Sweden for this purpose? What was his profession? Could he actually be a police officer? Sven-Arne had no idea. If he was, he was the right person to send to Bangalore as a spy, old neighbours that they were. If this was the case, then there was every likelihood he was working with the Indian police, and then the situation was even more precarious.
    Sven-Arne tapped the driver’s shoulder and gave him a different address.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ he answered, with a nod of his head, and made a daring U-turn that caused the rickshaw