The Return of the Dancing Master (21 page)

The third photograph was also of Molin as a young man. Here he was standing beside a motorcycle and sidecar. He was holding a rifle. He was smiling at the camera. Lindman laid the photographs side by side. They also had this in common: Molin's clothes. His uniform. It was the same as the one in Berggren's wardrobe.

T
here was a story about Scotland.

It was in the middle of the diary, slotted like an unexpected parenthesis into the account Molin had written of his life. In May 1972, Molin has two weeks' vacation. He takes a ferry from Göteborg to Immingham on the east coast of England. He takes a train to Glasgow and arrives late in the afternoon of May 11. He checks into Smith's Hotel, which, according to his description of it, is “close to some museums and a university,” but he doesn't visit the museums. The next day he rents a car and continues his journey northwards. His diary says that he passes through Kinross, Dunkeld, and Spean Bridge. He drives for a long way that day, as far as Drumnadrochit on the western shore of Loch Ness, where he stays the night. He doesn't look for the monster, however.

Early on the morning of May 13, he drives on along the lochside and reaches his destination in the afternoon: the town of Dornoch, situated on a peninsula east of the Highlands. He checks into the Rosedale Hotel near the harbor, and notes in his diary that “the air here is different from that in Västergötland.” He doesn't explain in what way it is different. Now he has reached Dornoch, it's the middle of May 1972, and so far he has made no mention of why he's here. Just that he will meet “M.” And he does in fact meet “M.” that same evening. “Long walk through the town with M.,” he writes. “Strong wind, but no rain.” He makes the same note for each of the next seven days. “Long walk through the town with M.” Nothing more. The only thing he finds worth remembering is that the weather changes. It seems always to be windy in Dornoch, but sometimes it's “pouring down,” sometimes the
weather is “threatening,” and just once, on Thursday, May 18, “the sun is shining” and it's “rather warm.” A few days later he drives back the same way as he came. It is not clear whether it's the same rental car, or whether he has dropped off the first one and rented another. On the other hand, when he comes to pay his bill at the Rosedale Hotel, he's surprised that “it didn't cost more.” After a few more days, having been forced to spend an extra twenty-four hours in Immingham due to “the ferry's engine breaking down,” he returns to Göteborg and then Boras. By May 26 he's back at work.

The passage about Scotland was a mysterious insertion in the middle of a diary with large time gaps. Sometimes several years pass without Molin applying pen to paper, usually a fountain pen, although occasionally he used a pencil to write his journal. The trip to Scotland, to the town of Dornoch, is an exception. He goes there to meet somebody called “M.” They go for walks. Always in the evening. It is not clear who “M.” is, nor what they talk about. They go for walks, that's all. On one occasion, Wednesday, May 17, Molin allows himself to make one of the extremely few personal comments to be found in his diary. “Woke up this morning fully rested. Realize I should have made this journey years ago.” That's all. “Woke up this morning fully rested.” It is a significant comment in many ways, because elsewhere in the diary there are many references to how difficult he finds it to sleep. But in Dornoch he sleeps soundly, and realizes he should have come here years ago.

 

 

It was afternoon by the time Lindman had read this far. When he found the package in the shed, his first thought was to take the diary to his hotel in Sveg. Then he changed his mind, and for the second time he entered Molin's house by climbing in through the window. He brushed the jigsaw puzzle pieces to one side of the table in the living room and replaced them with the diary. He wanted to read it there, in the ruined house, with the spirit of Herbert Molin close at hand. He set out the three photographs beside the diary. Before opening it, he untied the red ribbon around the letters. There were nine of them. They were from Molin to his parents in Kalmar, dated between October 1942 and April 1945. All of them were written in Germany. Lindman decided to work his way through the diary first.

It started with notes from Oslo on June 3, 1942. Molin recorded the fact that he'd bought the diary in a stationery shop in Stortingsgatan, Oslo, with the intention of “noting down significant events in my life.”

He'd crossed the border into Norway to the west of Idre in northern Dalarna, on a road passing through Flotningen. The road had been recommended by a certain “Lieutenant W. from Stockholm whose job it is to ensure that those who wish to join the German army can find the way there through the mountains.” It was not explained how he traveled from the border to Oslo, but the fact is that he's there now, it's June 1942, he buys a notebook and starts to keep his diary.

Lindman paused at this point. It was 1942, and Molin was nineteen. In fact, his name at that time was August Mattson-Herzén. He started keeping his diary when he was passing through a life-changing phase. Nineteen years of age, and he decides to enlist in the German army. He wants to fight for Hitler. He's left Kalmar, and one way or another he got in touch with a Lieutenant W. in Stockholm who has something to do with recruitment for the German military. But does young August go off to war with or without the blessing of his parents? What are his motives? Is he fighting Bolshevism? Or is he just a mercenary bent on adventure? It is not clear. All that emerges is that he is nineteen years of age and is in Oslo.

Lindman read on. On June 4 Molin records the date, then starts writing something that he crosses out. Nothing more until June 28. He notes in capital letters, in bold, that he's “been enlisted,” and that he was to be taken to Germany as early as July 2. His notes exude triumph. He's been accepted by the German army! Then he records that he buys an ice cream cone. Walks down the main street and looks at pretty girls who “embarrass me when I catch their eye.” This is the first comment of a personal nature in the diary. He licks an ice cream cone and eyes the girls. And is embarrassed.

The next note is hard to decipher. After a while Lindman realizes why. Molin is on a train, which is shaking. He's on his way to Germany. He writes that he is tense but confident. And that he's not alone. He's accompanied by another Swede who has joined the Waffen-SS, Anders Nilsson from Lycksele. He notes that “Nilsson doesn't have much to say for himself, and that suits me. I'm pretty reserved myself.” They are accompanied by some Norwegians, but he doesn't record their names. The rest of the page is empty—apart from a large brown stain. Lindman imagined Molin spilling coffee onto his diary, then putting it away in his bag so as not to spoil it.

His next note is from Austria. It's October by now.

Lindman turned to the pile of letters. The first one was dated October 11, from Klagenfurt. He noted that it had been written with the same pen Molin is using for his diary—a fountain pen that occasionally produced large blots. Lindman went over to one of the windows to read it. A bird flew off through the trees.

The paper had turned yellow and become brittle. Lindman held it up to the light. The watermark, the German eagle, was very obvious. He stayed at the window. August Molin leaves Sweden, sneaks over the
border into Norway, and joins the Waffen-SS. His motive is clear from the letter he sent to his parents. August is no mercenary. He joins the German war effort, fights for Nazism, in order to contribute to the emergence of a new Europe that requires the elimination of Bolshevism. At the age of nineteen, the boy is already a convinced Nazi.

Lindman returned to the diary. By the beginning of January 1943, Molin finds himself deep in Russia, on the eastern front. The optimism that had been in the diary to start with has changed into doubt, then despair, and finally fear. Lindman was struck by an extract from the winter:

He's dancing, Lindman thought. He's in some trench or another and he survives by dreaming about how he might be gliding around a dance floor.

Lindman examined the photographs. Molin is smiling. No sign of fear there. His smile is that of a real smooth operator. The fear is hidden behind these pictures, in photographs that were never taken. Unless he'd chosen not to keep any that betrayed his fear. So as not to remember.

Molin's life can be split down the middle, Lindman thought. There is a decisive watershed, before the fear and with the fear. It creeps up on him in the winter of 1943 when he tries to survive on the Eastern front. He's twenty at the time. It could be the same fear that I'd detected in the forest near Boras. The same fear, more than forty years later.

Lindman read his way through the book. It was starting to grow dark. The chill seeped in through the broken windows. He took the book into the kitchen, closed the door, covered the windows with a blanket from the bedroom, and continued reading.

In April 1943, Molin writes for the first time that he wants to go home. He's afraid of dying. The soldiers are engaged in a remorseless and depressing retreat, not only from an impossible war, but also from
an ideology that has collapsed. The circumstances are horrendous. Occasionally, he writes about the corpses on all sides, body parts shot to pieces, the eyeless faces, the slit throats. He is constantly searching for a way out, but he can't find one. On the other hand, he realizes what is not a solution. Later in the spring he is given execution duties. They are going to shoot a Norwegian and two Belgian deserters who had been captured. This is one of the longer diary entries.

Lindman could feel the young man's fear resonating from the text. He shoots deserters, considers it to be a fair sentence, is given a glass of brandy, and dreams of the Baltic Sea. But fear is creeping up on him all the time, forcing its way into his brain and giving him no peace. Lindman tried to imagine what it must have been like, lying in a trench somewhere on the Eastern front. Sheer hell, no doubt. In less than a year his naive enthusiasm had turned to terror. Nothing now about the new Europe: now it's a question of survival. And hoping he'll get back to Kalmar one day.

But it goes on until the spring of 1945. Molin has returned to Germany from Russia. He's wounded. In the entry for October 19, 1944, Lindman finds the explanation for the bullet wounds found by the pathologists in Umeå. It is not exactly clear what had happened, but at some point in August 1944 he is shot. He survives by some kind of miracle, but the message that emerges from his diary notes is not one of gratitude. Lindman observes that something new is starting to happen to Molin. What characterizes the contents of his diary is no longer fear. Another emotion has crept in. Hate. He expresses his anger at
what is happening, and speaks of the necessity to be “ruthless” and to have no hesitation in “allotting punishment.” Although he recognizes that the war is lost, he does not lose belief in the righteousness of the cause, the justification of the aims. Hitler may have let them down, but not as much as all those people who failed to understand that the war was a crusade against Bolshevism. These are the people Molin starts to hate in the course of 1944. This emerges very clearly from one of the letters he writes to Kalmar. It is dated January 1945, and as usual there is no sender's address. He evidently had received a letter from his parents, anxious about his welfare. Lindman wondered why Molin hadn't saved the letters he'd received, only the ones he'd sent. Perhaps the explanation was that his own letters were a sort of complement to the diary. It was always his own voice doing the talking, his own hand holding the pen.