Misterioso

It was the mid-1990s.

He made his way cautiously down the empty, dismal government corridor until he was standing outside the closed door. He took a deep breath and shouted, “Frakulla!”

It was very, very quiet. Not wanting to give himself time to think, he went on.

“My name is Paul Hjelm, and I’m a police officer. I’m alone and unarmed. I just want to talk to you.”

A faint rustling sound could be heard behind the door. Then a husky, barely audible voice said, “Come in.”

Hjelm took another deep breath and opened the door.

Sitting on the floor of the office were two women and a man with their hands on their heads. Standing very close to them, against the windowless wall, was a short, dark man in a brown suit, complete with vest, tie, and shotgun. The latter was pointed straight at Hjelm’s nose.

He closed the door behind him and raised his hands in the air.

“I know what’s happened to you, Frakulla,” he said calmly. “We need to resolve this situation so nobody gets hurt. If you surrender now, you can still appeal the decision; otherwise it’s going to be prison and then deportation for you. Look, I’m unarmed.” He carefully shrugged out of his jean jacket and dropped it to the floor.

Dritero Frakulla was blinking rapidly. He aimed the gun alternately at Hjelm and at the three civil servants on the floor.

Don’t ask me to turn around, thought Hjelm. Keep talking, keep talking. Focus on showing him sympathy. Use words that’ll make him think. Distract his attention.

“Think about your family,” he managed. “What will your children do without you to support them? What about your wife-does she work? What kind of job will she be able to get, Frakulla? What sort of qualifications does she have?”

The shotgun was now aimed at him; that was what he wanted.

Frakulla suddenly spoke, almost as if he were reciting the words, in clear Swedish: “The worse crimes I commit, the longer we’ll be able to stay in this country. They won’t send my family away without me. I’m sacrificing myself for their sake.”

“You’re wrong, Frakulla. Your family will be deported immediately, forced to return to the Serbs without any means of defending themselves. What do you think the Serbs will do with a woman and a couple of preschool kids that tried to flee from them? And what do you think will happen to you if you’re charged with murdering a cop, an unarmed cop?”

For a second the man lowered the shotgun an inch or two, looking utterly confused. That was enough for Hjelm. He reached back to fumble at his waistband, pulled out his service revolver, and fired one shot.

A voice was silenced inside him: “Why the hell are you still disgusted by a woman’s bodily functions?”

For a moment that seemed lifted out of time, everything was absolutely still. Frakulla held the shotgun in a tight grip. His inscrutable eyes bored straight into Hjelm’s. Anything could happen.

“Ai,” said Dritero Frakulla, dropped the gun, and toppled forward.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, thought Hjelm, and felt sick.

The male civil servant grabbed the shotgun and pressed the muzzle hard against Frakulla’s head. A patch of blood was growing larger under the man’s right shoulder.

“Drop the weapon, you fuck!” yelled Hjelm, and vomited.

3

At first it’s only the piano’s bizarre little strolls up and down the keys, accompanied by a high-hat and maybe the faint clash of a cymbal, possibly the sweep of the brushes on the snare drum as well. Occasionally the fingers digress a bit from the marked path of their climb, into a light, bluesy feeling, but without breaking the choppy rhythm of the strutting two-four beat. Then a slight pause, the saxophone joins the same riff, and everything changes. Now the bass comes in, calmly walking up and down. The sax takes over, and the piano scatters sporadic comping chords in the background, broken by a few ramblings behind the apparently indolent improvisations of the sax.

He presses the tweezers into the hole, tugging and tugging.

The saxophone chirps with slight dissonance, then instantly falls back into the melodic theme. The piano goes silent; it’s so quiet that the audience can be heard in the background.

The tweezers pull out what they’ve been looking for.

The sax man says “Yeah” a couple of times, in between a couple of rambles. The audience says “Yeah.” Long drawn-out notes. The piano is still absent. Scattered applause.

Then the piano returns and takes over. It meanders as before, making successive detours, rumbles, ever freer trills. Just the piano, bass, and drums.

He presses the tweezers into the second hole. This time it’s easier. He drops both lumps into his pocket. He sits down on the sofa.

The wanderings of the piano have returned to their starting point. Now the bass is gone. Then it comes back in, along with the sax. All four now, in a veiled promenade. Then the applause. Yeah.

He presses the remote. A vast silence ensues.

He gets up cautiously. Stands for a moment in the big room. High over his head dust motes circulate in the nonexistent draft around the crystal chandelier. The dull metal on the streamlined shape of the stereo reflects nothing of the faint light: Bang & Olufsen.

Bang, bang, he thinks. Olufsen, he thinks. Then he stops thinking.

He runs his gloved hand lightly over the shiny leather surface of the sofa before he allows himself to tread tentatively across the pleasantly creaking parquet floor. He avoids the huge Pakistani carpet, hand-knotted over a month’s time by the slave labor of Pakistani children, and goes out into the corridor. He opens the door and steps out onto the terrace, stopping for a moment, close to the hammock.

He fills his lungs with the tranquil, chilly air of the spring night, letting his eyes rest on the rows of apple trees: Astrakhans and Akeros, Ingrid Maries and Lobos, Transparante blanches and Kanikers. Each tree is labeled with a little sign; he noticed that on his way in. So far the apples can be found only on the signs, showy, brilliantly hued, long before any blossoms have even appeared. Flat, surrogate apples.

He would like to believe that it’s crickets that he hears; otherwise it’s inside his head. Sonic bang, he thinks. And Olufsen, he thinks.

Although it wasn’t a real bang, of course.

Leaving the terrace, he closes the door behind him, goes back down the long corridor, and returns to the enormous living room. Once again he avoids the red-flamed frescos of the hand-knotted carpet, goes over to the stereo, and presses the eject button. In a vaguely elliptical trajectory, the cassette tape gently rises out of the tape deck. He plucks it out and puts it in his pocket. He turns off the stereo.

He looks around the room. What an atmosphere, he thinks. Even the dust motes seem custom-made to complement the crystal chandelier, as they elegantly swirl around it.

In his mind’s eye he sees a list. In his mind he checks off each item.

Kuno, he thinks, laughing. Isn’t that the name of a party game?

He leaves the living room by a slightly different route. A teak table and four matching, high-backed chairs stand on another hand-knotted rug; he imagines that it’s Persian. It is predominantly beige, in contrast to the red Pakistani carpet.

Although right now they’re very similar.

Close to the table he has to step over what is coloring the Persian rug red. Then he lifts his legs to step over someone else’s.

Out in the garden a drowsy full moon peeks from behind its fluffy cloud cover, as a veiled fairylike dance skims the bare apple trees.