The Troubled Man (2011)

poems, photocopied extracts from the Swedish supreme commander’s war diary from the autumn of 1982, more or less obscure aphorisms Hakan von Enke had formulated, and much more - including press clippings, photographs and some smudged watercolours. Wallander turned page after page of this remarkable diary, if you could call it that, with the growing feeling that it was the last thing he would have expected of von Enke. He started by leafing through the book, trying to get an overall sense of it. Then he started again at the beginning, reading more carefully this time. When he finally closed it and stretched his back, it struck him that it had thrown no new light on anything at all.

He went out for dinner. The heavy rain had passed. It was nine o’clock by the time he returned to the empty apartment. He turned once again to the pages inside the black covers, and started working his way through the contents for the third time.

He told himself he was searching for the other contents, the invisible writing between the lines.

It must be there somewhere. He was sure of that.

13

It was nearly three in the morning when Wallander got up from the sofa and walked over to the window. It had started raining again, but only a drizzle now. He forced his weary brain to return to that party in Djursholm when Hakan had told him about the submarines. Wallander felt sure that even then there were documents hidden among Signe’s Babar books. It was Hakan’s secret room, safer than a bank vault. What made Wallander so sure was that von Enke had dated some of the papers. The last date was the day before his seventy-fifth birthday party. He had visited his daughter at least once more after that, the day before he disappeared. But he hadn’t written anything then.

I can’t go any further, he had written that last time. But I’ve come far enough. Those were his last words. Apart from one final word that had evidently been added later, written with a different pen. Swamp. That was all. Just one word.

That was probably the last word he ever wrote, Wallander thought. He couldn’t be sure, and for the moment he had no suspicion that it might be important. Other things he had found in the collection of documents said much more about the man behind the pen.

What impressed him most of all were the photocopies of Supreme Commander Lennart Ljung’s war diaries. It wasn’t the diary itself that was important, but von Enke’s margin notes. They were often written in red ink, sometimes crossed out or corrected, with additions sometimes many years after the first notes were written, containing completely new lines of thought. Sometimes he also drew little matchstick men between the lines, little devils with axes or red-hot pokers in their hands. At one point he had pasted in a reduced-size sea chart of Harsfjarden. He had marked various points in red, sketched in the progress of unknown vessels, and then crossed everything out again and started from the beginning once more. He had also noted down the number of depth charges laid, various underwater minefields, and sonar contacts. At times everything merged to form an incomprehensible mush before Wallander’s weary eyes. So he would go into the kitchen, rinse his face in cold water and start again.

Von Enke had often pressed so hard that he made holes in the paper. The notes suggested an entirely different temperament, almost an obsession, in the old submarine commander. There was none of the calm he had displayed in delivering his monologue in that windowless room.

Wallander remained at his post by the window, listening to a group of young men yelling out obscenities as they staggered home through the night. The ones shouting are the ones who failed to pick up a partner, he thought, the ones forced to go home alone. That’s what often happened to me forty years ago.

Wallander had read the extracts from the war diaries so carefully that he thought he could probably recite every sentence by heart. Wednesday, 24 September 1980. The supreme commander visited an air force regiment not far from Stockholm, noted that they were still having difficulty in recruiting officers despite the investment of large sums of money in refurbishing the barracks to make them more attractive. Von Enke hadn’t made a single margin note in this section. It wasn’t until much further down on the page that his red pen leaped into action, a sort of bayonet charge on the document. The question of foreign submarines in Swedish territorial waters has arisen once more today. Last week a submarine was discovered off Uto, well inside Swedish territory. Parts of the submarine were seen on the surface and identified it beyond doubt as a Misky class vessel. The Soviet Union and Poland have submarines of this type.

The notes suddenly became difficult to read. Wallander borrowed a magnifying glass from von Enke’s desk and eventually managed to work out what the notes said. He wondered what ‘parts’ they claimed had been seen. Periscope? Conning tower? How long had the submarine been visible? Who saw it? What was its course? He was irritated by the lack of detail in the diary. Von Enke had commented on the term ‘Misky class’: NATO and whisky. The West European designation of the submarine in question. He had underlined in red the last few lines on the page. Snapshots and depth charges were fired, but the submarine could not be forced to surface. It is assumed that it then left Swedish territorial waters. Wallander sat for a while wondering what snapshots were, but he could find no explanation from either his own experience or the book he had in front of him. A margin note announced: You don’t force a submarine up to the surface with warning shots, only with volleys for effect. Why did they let the submarine get away?

The notes continued until 28 September. That was when Ljung had talks with the head of the navy, who had been on a visit to Yugoslavia. From then on Hakan von Enke was no longer interested. No more notes, no matchstick men, no exclamation marks. But further down the page Ljung is dissatisfied with a press release from the navy’s information service. He calls on the head of the navy to take whoever was responsible to task. The red pen comments in the margin: It would be more appropriate to clamp down on other blunders.

The submarine off Uto. Wallander recalled having heard about that during the party in Djursholm. That was when it all began, he seemed to remember Hakan von Enke saying. Or something like that. He didn’t remember the exact words.

The other extract from the war diaries was significantly longer. It covered the period from 5 October to 15 October 1982. That was the big gala performance, Wallander thought. Sweden was at the centre of the world’s attention. Everybody was watching as the Swedish navy and its helicopters tried to pin down the foreign submarines or possible submarines or non-submarines. And while all this was happening, there was a change of government in Sweden. The supreme commander had great difficulty keeping both the outgoing and incoming governments informed. At one point Thorbjorn Falldin seemed to forget that he was on his way out, and Olof Palme angrily expressed his surprise that he had not been kept fully informed of what was happening out at Harsfjarden. The supreme commander wasn’t allowed a moment’s rest. He was travelling back and forth like a yo-yo between Berga and the two governments that were treading on each other’s toes. And in addition, he had to answer sarcastic questions from the leader of the Swedish Conservative Party, Ulf Adelsohn, about why it had not been possible to make the intruding submarines surface. Hakan von Enke commented ironically that for once a politician was asking the same questions he was.

Wallander now started writing names and times in his battered notebook. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps just to keep the mass of details in some sort of order so that he could try to begin to understand von Enke’s increasingly bitter notes more clearly.

He sometimes had the impression that von Enke was trying to rewrite history. He’s like that lunatic in the asylum who spent forty years reading the classics and changing the endings when he thought they were too tragic. Von Enke writes what he thinks should have happened. And in doing so asks the question: Why didn’t it happen?

Wallander had long since taken off his shirt and, sitting half naked on the sofa, eventually began to wonder if Hakan von Enke was paranoid. But he soon dismissed the thought. The notes in the margins and between the lines were angry, but at the same time clear and logical, as far as Wallander could understand.

At one point a few simple words were inserted into the text, almost like a haiku.

Incidents under the surfaceNobody noticesWhat is happening.Incidents under the surfaceThe submarine sneaks awayNobody wants it to be