The Return of the Dancing Master (3 page)

He had the idea many years ago. He had tuned in to a musical on television; he'd been awake all night, as usual. In the film a man—Gene Kelly, perhaps—had danced with a doll. He'd been fascinated, and decided then and there that he would make one himself.

The hardest part was the filling. He'd tried all sorts of things, but it wasn't until he'd filled her with foam rubber that it felt as if he were holding a real person in his arms. He had chosen to give her large breasts and a big bottom. Both his wives had been slim. Now he'd provided
himself with a woman who had something he could get his hands around. When he danced with her and smelled her perfume, he was sometimes aroused; but that hadn't happened often over the last five or six years. His erotic desires had started to fade.

He danced for more than an hour. When he finally carried Esmeralda back to the spare room and put her to bed, he was sweating. He undressed, hung the suit in the wardrobe, and took a shower. It would soon be light, and he would be able to go to bed and sleep. He had survived another night.

He put on his dressing gown and made himself some coffee. The thermometer outside the window was still showing—2°. He touched the curtains, and Shaka barked briefly out there in the darkness. He thought about the forest surrounding him on all sides. This was what he'd dreamed of. A remote cottage, modern in every way, but no neighbors. And it was also a house at the very end of a road. It was a roomy house, well-built and with a big living room that satisfied his need for a dance floor. The seller was a forestry official who had retired and moved to Spain.

 

 

He sat at the kitchen table with his coffee. Dawn was approaching. Soon he'd be able to get some sleep. The shadows would leave him in peace.

A single bark from Shaka. He sat up straight. Another bark. Then all was quiet. It must have been an animal. Probably a hare. Shaka could move around freely in his large pen. The dog kept watch over him.

He washed his cup and put it next to the stove. He would use it again seven hours from now. He didn't like changing cups unnecessarily. He could use the same one for weeks. Then he went into the bedroom, took off his robe, and snuggled into bed. It was still dark, but usually he lay in bed as he waited for dawn to break, listening to the radio. When he noticed the first faint signs of light outside the house he would turn off the radio, switch off the light, and lie comfortably, ready for sleep.

Shaka started barking again. Then stopped. He frowned, listening intently, and counted up to thirty. No sound from Shaka. Whatever animal it had been, it was gone now. He turned on the radio and listened absentmindedly to the music.

Another bark from Shaka. But it was different now. He sat up in bed. Shaka was barking away frantically. That could only mean that there was an elk in the vicinity. Or a bear. Bears were shot every year in this
area. He'd never seen one himself. Shaka was still barking just as frenziedly. He got out of bed and put on his robe. Shaka fell silent. He waited, but nothing. He took off his robe and got back into bed. He always slept naked. The lamp by the radio was on.

 

 

Suddenly he sat up again. Something odd was going on, something that had to do with the dog. He held his breath and listened. Silence. He was uneasy. It was as if the shadows all around him had started to change. He got out of bed. There was something odd about Shaka's last barks. They hadn't stopped in a natural way, they seemed to have been cut off. He went into the living room and opened one of the curtains in the window looking directly out onto the dog pen. Shaka didn't bark, and he felt his heart beating faster. He went back into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of pants and a sweater. He took out the gun he always kept under his bed, a shotgun with room for six cartridges in the magazine. He went into the hall and stuck his feet into a pair of boots, listening all the time. Not a sound from Shaka. He was imagining things, no doubt, everything was as it should be. It would be light soon. It was the shadows making him uneasy, that was it. He unlocked the three locks on the front door and slowly opened it. Still no reaction from Shaka. Now he knew for certain that something was wrong. He picked up a flashlight from a shelf and shone it into the darkness. There was no sign of Shaka in the pen. He shouted for Shaka and shone the flashlight along the edge of the woods. Still no reaction. He quickly shut the door. Sweat was pouring off him. He cocked the gun and opened the door again. Cautiously he stepped out onto the porch. No sound. He walked over to the dog pen, then stopped in his tracks. Shaka was lying on the ground. The dog's eyes were staring out and his grayish white fur was bloodstained. He turned on his heel and ran back to the house, slamming the door behind him. Something was going on, but he had no idea what. Somebody had killed Shaka, though. He turned on every light in the house and sat down on his bed. He was shaking.

The shadows had fooled him. He hadn't caught on to the danger in time. He had always supposed the shadows would change, that they would be his attackers. But he'd been fooled: the threat came from outside. The shadows had persuaded him to look in the wrong place. He'd been misled for fifty-four years. He thought he'd gotten away
with it, but he had been wrong. Images from that awful year of 1945 came welling up inside him. He hadn't gotten away with it after all.

He shook his head and resolved not to give himself up without a fight. He didn't know who was out there in the darkness, the person who had killed his dog. Shaka had succeeded in warning him even so. He wasn't going to surrender. He kicked off his boots, put on a pair of socks, and took his sneakers out from under the bed. His ears were alert all the time. What had happened to the dawn? If only daylight would set in, they would have no chance. He dried his sweaty palms on the duvet. The shotgun gave him some sense of security. He was a good shot. He wouldn't allow himself to be taken by surprise.

And then the house collapsed. That's what it felt like, at least. At the explosion he flung himself onto the floor. He'd had his finger on the trigger and his gun went off, shattering the mirror on the wardrobe. He crawled to the door and looked into the living room. Then he saw what had happened. Somebody had fired a shot or maybe thrown a grenade through the big window facing south. The room was a sea of splintered glass.

He had no chance to think any further as the window facing north was demolished by another shot. He pressed himself against the floor. They're coming from all directions, he thought. The house is surrounded and they're shooting out the windows before coming in. He searched desperately for a way out.

Dawn, he thought. That's what can save me. If only this accursed night would come to an end.

Then the kitchen window was shot out. He lay on his stomach, pressing down against the floor with his hands over his head. Then the next crash, the bathroom window. He could feel the cold air rushing in.

There was a whistling noise, then a thud right next to him. He raised his head and saw it was a tear gas canister. He turned his head away, but it was too late. The gas was in his eyes and his lungs. Without being able to see anything, he could hear more canisters sailing through the other windows. The pain in his eyes was so bad that he could stand it no longer. He still had his shotgun in his hands. He had no choice but to leave the house. Maybe the darkness would save him after all, not the dawn. He scrambled to the front door. The pain in his eyes was unbearable, and his coughing threatened to tear his lungs apart. He flung the door open and rushed out, shooting at the same time. He knew it was about thirty meters to the trees. Although he couldn't see a thing, he
ran as fast as he could. All the time he was expecting a fatal bullet to hit him. It was only a short run to the forest, but far enough for him to think that he was going to be killed—but he didn't know by whom. He knew why, but not who. That thought was as painful as his eyes.

He barged into a tree trunk and almost fell. Still blinded by the tear gas, he staggered through the trees. Branches made deep wounds in his face, but he knew he must not stop. Whoever it was was somewhere behind him. Maybe several of them. They'd catch him if he didn't get far enough away into the forest.

He stumbled over a rock and fell. He was about to get up when he felt something on the back of his neck. A boot on his head. The game was up. The shadows had defeated him.

He wanted to see who it was that was going to kill him. He tried to turn his head, but the boot prevented him. Then somebody pulled him to his feet. He still could see nothing. He was blinded. For a moment he felt the breath of the person placing the blindfold over his eyes and tying the knot at the back of his head. He tried to say something. But when he opened his mouth, no words came out, just a new attack of coughing.

Then a pair of hands wrapped themselves around his throat. He tried to resist, but he didn't have the strength. He could feel his life ebbing away.

 

 

It would be nearly two hours before he finally died. As if in a borderland of horror between the nagging pain and the hopeless will to live, he was taken back in time, to the occasion when he had given rise to the fate that had now caught up with him. He was thrown to the ground. Somebody pulled off his pants and sweater. He could feel the cold earth against his skin before the whiplashes hit him and transformed everything into an inferno. He didn't know how many lashes there were. Whenever he passed out, he was dragged back up to the surface by cold water thrown over him. Then the blows continued to rain down. He could hear himself screaming, but there was nobody there to help him. Least of all Shaka, lying dead in his pen.

The last thing he felt was being dragged over the ground, into the house, and then being beaten on the soles of his feet. Everything went black. He was dead.

He couldn't know that the last thing that happened to him was being dragged naked to the edge of the forest and left with his face pressed into the cold earth.

By then it was dawn.

That was October 19, 1999. A few hours later it started raining, rain that barely perceptibly turned to wet snow.

S
tefan Lindman was a police officer. At least once every year he found himself in situations where he experienced considerable fear. On one occasion he'd been attacked by a psychopath weighing over 300 pounds. He had been on the floor with the man astride him, and in rising desperation had fought to prevent his head from being torn off by the madman's gigantic hands. If one of his colleagues hadn't succeeded in stunning the man with a blow to the head, he would certainly have succumbed. Another time he'd been shot at while approaching a house to deal with domestic violence. The shot was from a Mauser and narrowly missed one of his legs. But he had never been as frightened as he felt now, on the morning of October 25, 1999, as he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling.

 

 

He barely slept. He dozed off now and again only to be woken with a start by nightmares the moment he lost consciousness. In desperation he finally got up and sat in front of the television, zapping the channels until he found a pornographic film. But after a short while he switched it off in disgust and went back to bed.

It was 7 A.M. when he got up. He'd devised a plan during the night. A plan that was also an invocation. He wouldn't go directly up the hill to the hospital. He would make sure he had enough time not only to take a roundabout route, but also to circle the hospital twice. All the time he would search for signs that the news he was going to receive from the doctor would be positive. To give himself an extra dose of energy,
he would have coffee in the hospital cafeteria, and force himself to calm down by reading the local paper.

Without having thought about it in advance, he put on his best suit. Generally, when he wasn't in uniform or other working clothes, he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Today, though, he felt his best suit was called for. As he knotted his tie he contemplated his face in the bathroom mirror. It was obvious he hadn't been sleeping or eating properly for weeks. His cheeks were hollow. And he could use a haircut. He didn't like the way it was sticking out over his ears.

He didn't like at all what he saw in the mirror this morning. It was an unusual feeling. He was a vain man, and often checked his appearance in the mirror. Normally, he liked what he saw. His reflection would generally raise his spirits, but this morning everything was different.

When he'd finished dressing he made coffee. He prepared some open-faced sandwiches, but didn't feel like eating anything. His appointment with the doctor was for 8:45. It was now 7:27. So he had exactly one hour and eighteen minutes for his walk to the hospital.

By the time he walked onto the street it had started drizzling.