The Steel Spring (3 page)

Jensen had no clear conception of what the real aim of the demonstrations might be, but he thought he had some idea of how and when they had started.

The pain was intense and caught him off guard; it seared through the right side of his diaphragm, wild and merciless. Everything went black, he hunched over and clenched his teeth so as not to whimper like a dog about to be whipped.

The driver squinted at him suspiciously but said nothing.

It seemed a very long time until the spasm ebbed away and the pain reverted to the usual dull ache. In actual fact it was only a matter of minutes. He was panting for breath; he gasped for air and managed to suppress a fit of coughing.

When he looked up again, they were just passing the suburb where his own apartment lay. The taxi was keeping up a decent speed on the motorway.

‘We’ll be there in half an hour,’ said the driver.

The suburb where Inspector Jensen lived consisted of thirty-six eight-storey blocks of flats, set out in four parallel lines. Between the rows of blocks there were car parks, grassy areas, and play pavilions of transparent plastic for what few children there were. It was all very neatly laid out.

Further south, the tower blocks grew more spectral and decayed. It was some years since the authorities had solved the housing shortage with a building programme that produced endless blocks of flats like the one where he lived himself. So-called uniform estates, with standard apartments, all identical. But even back then, the older of the tower blocks, paradoxically often located long distances from the inner city, began to lose their occupants. They were abandoned by shopkeepers, property owners, the authorities and the tenants, in that order. Falling birth rates and the shrinking population naturally played their part, too. Deprived of communications and any way of supporting themselves – in the end they also had their water and electricity supplies turned off – the suburbs in question very quickly degenerated into slums. Most of the blocks of flats had only come into existence because private developers hoped to make a quick profit from the housing shortage. They were poorly built, and many of them had already collapsed, sinking like sinister grave mounds into the scrubby undergrowth. The experts at the Ministry of Social Affairs had promoted the concept of letting these residential areas gradually empty themselves and ultimately collapse. Such suburbs were called ‘self-clearance areas’ and were to be viewed as
naturally occurring rubbish dumps. The experts’ projections had proved valid except on one point. About five per cent of the flats in the blocks that were still standing continued to be occupied by people that the society of the Accord had somehow failed to take care of. People were sometimes even killed when the old blocks of flats collapsed, as they often did, but neither the property owners nor the authorities were held legally responsible in such cases. A blanket warning not to live in abandoned apartment blocks had been issued, and that was sufficient.

Jensen looked out of the side window. A self-clearance area stretched away to the right of the motorway. Roughly a third of the blocks were still standing. They were silhouetted like sooty pillars against the ice-blue autumn sky. In the distance he could see a few children playing amongst stacks of wrecked cars and piles of non-reusable glass bottles and indestructible plastic packaging.

His gaze was calm and expressionless.

Fifteen minutes later, the taxi stopped outside the airport terminal building. Inspector Jensen paid and climbed out.

He was still in a lot of pain.

The room had two windows with thin, pale blue curtains. The walls were dark blue and the ceiling was white. The bed was also white. It was made of wood and ingeniously constructed.

Jensen lay perfectly still on his back, arms at his sides. If he moved his right hand five centimetres he could reach the button and ring the bell. If he did that, it would take no longer than fifteen seconds for the door to open and the nurse to come in. He didn’t touch the button. The only thing he could think about was not being sure what the date was. It might be the first of November, but it could also be the second or even the third. He knew he had been in this room for about two months, but he didn’t know exactly how long, and that irritated him.

He also knew he was alive. This did not surprise him beyond a vague sense of surprise at not being surprised.

By the far window stood a basket chair. For the past two weeks he had been allowed to sit in that chair twice a day, half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon. It was afternoon now. He was aware of something that might be a desire to sit in the chair by the window. It was many years since he had felt anything like that.

The door opened. The man who came in had on a pale grey suit and was of slim build and very tanned. He had dark brown eyes, black curly hair slicked back from his face, and a thin black moustache. He nodded to Jensen and stood at the foot
of the bed. As he was flicking through the sheaf of notes hanging from the bedpost, he took out a yellowish cigarette with a long cardboard holder, put it between his lips and rolled it distractedly from one side of his mouth to the other before fishing out a box of matches and lighting up. Then he dropped the dead match on the floor and came gliding to the head of the bed, where he bent over Jensen and looked him in the eye.

Jensen felt he had had that face in front of him on countless occasions, at brief intervals, for as long as he could remember. The expression in the brown eyes had shifted; it had been worried, soothing, curious, resigned, enquiring or sad. The smell, on the other hand, had always remained the same: hair oil and tobacco smoke. Jensen had a vision of having once seen this man in a mask, with an orange rubber cap pulled well down over his black curls. That time, their surroundings had been drenched in a caustic, blue-white light and the man had been wearing something that looked like a butcher’s apron. He knew with absolute certainty that the man had once, a very long time ago, shaken him by the hand and said something guttural and completely incomprehensible that presumably meant hello or welcome. Or perhaps he had simply been saying his name.

Today, the man looked cheerful. He smiled and nodded encouragingly, tapped his cigarette ash nonchalantly on to the floor, turned and left the room with rapid steps.

Soon after, the nurse appeared. She, too, was tanned and had dark, curly hair, but her eyes were grey. She was wearing blue canvas shoes and a short-sleeved white overall buttoned down the back. Her legs and arms were muscular and shapely. Like the doctor’s, her movements were quick and supple and her touch was light. Jensen knew she was amazingly strong.
She had a permanent smile now, even when dealing with bedpans and urine bottles, but he had very often seen her grave and thoughtful, with compressed lips and her black eyebrows knitted in a frown.

She did not smoke or use any cosmetics, but she sometimes smelt of soap. Today he sensed only a vaguely astringent smell, which was presumably her own. It reminded him of something. When she had drawn back the bedclothes and tucked up his nightshirt, she washed him with a sponge. As she was bending over his legs, he observed the shape of her back and hips beneath the fabric. He wondered what she was wearing under the white overall. He could not remember ever having thought anything like that before.

The nurse had full lips and short black hairs on her shins. When she smiled you could see that her teeth were rather uneven but very white.

These two, the doctor and the nurse, had comprised his only direct contact with the world for a long time. He understood nothing of what they said, and by now they had stopped saying things, anyway. Once the doctor had had a newspaper with him, but it had no pictures and the letters of the alphabet were symbols he had never seen before.

The nurse had very suntanned hands and no rings on her fingers. Once when she thought he was asleep she had scratched herself between the legs.

When Jensen was sitting in the basket chair by the window, he could see out over a lawn with paved paths and little trees with pink or white flowers.

Men and women in blue gowns like the one he had on himself were strolling along the paths or sitting at small stone tables playing something, presumably chess. The grounds were
not large, and beyond them ran a road where yellow trolleybuses rattled by. Once he had seen a camel out there.

On the other side of the road there was a factory. Every morning thousands of people, mainly women of different ages, would stream in through the gates. Many had small children with them. They left the children in a low, yellow-brick building to the right of the factory entrance. Some of the children whined and cried when their mothers left them, but within a few minutes they could be seen running around the playground outside the yellow building. They played and made plenty of noise. The women who looked after the children wore white cotton housecoats buttoned at the front. They all seemed to be expecting babies and he worked out that they were simply members of the workforce who had fallen pregnant and been automatically transferred to nursery duties.

There was laughter and a buzz of conversation in the morning when the women arrived for work in the factory and in the afternoon when they went home. Sometimes they would sing.

Jensen was not actually in pain any more, but he could not walk properly and felt very tired. He slept almost twenty hours a day.

One day the doctor appeared with a newspaper again, pointed to a headline and spoke quickly and agitatedly. When he realised Jensen did not understand a word, he shrugged and left.

The nurse was twenty-five at most. When they took their walks in the grounds, he supported himself on her arm. It was muscular and steady. She seemed calm, contented and harmonious. He was convinced he had once seen her crying.

Jensen stood at the window with thin blue curtains and looked out over the lawn towards the road and factory. He had seen another camel a few days earlier.

He was wearing his own suit. They had removed the bandages and taken out the stitches and he could move relatively freely. The only thing that was still difficult was going to the toilet.

There was a knock at the door and he turned to see who it was. The doctor and nurse never knocked, and nor did the cleaning lady or the man who came to mend the WC that was always going wrong.

Nobody entered but the knock came again. Jensen went over to the door and opened it. Outside stood a small, grey-haired man in a dark blue suit and black felt hat. He had glasses and was carrying a black briefcase. The man immediately took off his hat and said:

‘Inspector Jensen?’

‘Yes.’

It was the first word he had spoken since reaching the airport three months earlier. He thought his voice sounded husky and alien.

‘I’ve got a message for you. May I come in?’ What the man said was grammatically correct, but he had a slight accent.

Jensen stepped aside.

‘Be my guest.’

It was an effort to speak, and it almost disgusted him somehow.

The man took off his hat and opened his briefcase. He took out a pink telex strip and handed it to Jensen. The message was concise.

Return home immediately
.

Jensen looked enquiringly at his visitor.

‘Who sent this?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why isn’t it signed?’

‘I don’t know.’

The man hesitated for a moment.

‘The communication came through diplomatic channels,’ he said.

‘Who are you?’

‘I come from one of the sections of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have never been to your country, but I studied the language at university.’

Jensen said nothing. Waited for the man to continue.

‘We knew nothing about your state of health, not even whether you were still alive. I was sent here to deliver the message.’

Jensen still said nothing.

‘Your doctor says you have quite recovered and can leave the hospital the day after tomorrow. There are just a few tests to do first.’

The man hesitated again. Then he said:

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’

‘The doctor says they initially thought there was no hope for you.’

He produced an envelope from his briefcase.

‘I have taken the liberty of reserving a seat for you on a plane leaving at 9 a.m. the day after tomorrow. Here are the tickets.’

Jensen took the envelope and put it away in his inside pocket.

‘Did the communication say anything apart from those three words?’

More hesitation.

‘Only some general instructions, such as how and where to find you.’

‘Do you know who the communication came from?’

Pause.

‘Yes.’

‘Who?’

‘I’m not permitted to tell you that.’

‘Why not?’

‘The sender of the message specifically asked me not to. It wasn’t our idea, you see.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘But I have been given the task of relaying your answer to the person in question. Will you be flying home the day after tomorrow?’

‘Yes,’ said Jensen.

‘Excellent,’ said the man, picking up his hat. He went towards the door.

‘Just a moment,’ said Jensen. ‘Have you been in contact with our embassy?’

The man had already half opened the door. He stopped, caught in mid movement.

‘Your embassy is unmanned.’

‘Unmanned?’

‘Yes. There’s nobody there.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. Goodbye.’

The nurse gave Jensen a lift to the airport. She was wearing open sandals and a strappy, red cotton dress. The road was full of potholes and it was a battered old car, but she drove fast and skilfully. Jensen was sitting in the back seat. He noted the sweat glistening on the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades. Out in the fields he saw tractors and combine harvesters. They passed through a village of low, mud houses. The village street was swarming with children and domestic animals. She constantly sounded her horn to chase chickens, goats and pigs out of the way. The children roared with laughter at her. She stuck her tongue out at them and they laughed even more.