A Necessary Action by Per Wahlöö

silent and they could hear the sound of the engine until the truck stopped right up in the square.
    Santiago began carrying things into the house. In the room on the ground floor, the paraffin lamp spread a weak flickering light, and the ginger cat sniffed suspiciously round the walls.
    It took almost half an hour for Santiago to move everything into the house. He did it leisuredly and carefully, placing each thing where Siglinde thought it ought to go.
    The last thing he carried in was Dan’s typewriter. He took it up to the room above and put it carefully down on to the floor.
    Then he straightened up and lit a cigarette. Siglinde had opened the shutters and was standing looking out. The paraffin lamp below threw stray reflections of light up the stairs, and through the open window came a warm breeze from the sun-warmed mountains.
    When Santiago had finished his cigarette, he was just about to drop the butt on to the floor, when he changed his mind and tooktwo steps forward and flicked it out of the window. It fell on to the cobblestones in a shower of sparks.
    He was now standing just behind Siglinde. She was bare-footed and was still wearing the blue dress with shoulder-straps. She was standing quite still.
    They said nothing. Santiago opened his mouth and moistened his lips with his tongue.
    It was quiet outside.
    He took a step nearer and put his hands on her bare, downy shoulders.
    Siglinde did not move. He was standing close up to her. All he had on was a clean shirt and pair of cotton trousers and she felt him very close, sensed his breath and perhaps the swift beats of his heart. And yet she let his hands remain, just for a moment, just to feel what it felt like.
    With a swift consistent movement, he pulled her dress and bra straps down from her shoulders, pressed his lips to her neck, below her ear, and put both hands round her naked breasts.
    Not at all brutally, but uncertainly and groping, almost as if he were afraid of touching her.
    Her breasts were soft, firm and round, and he held them in his hands, the nipples stiff and rough against the sensitive skin of his palms.
    He changed his grip and weighed her breasts in his hands, the tips of his forefingers resting gently on her nipples. He bit carefully in the soft angle between neck and shoulder.
    Through the thin material of her dress she felt his sex, hard and upright, against a point just below the small of her back.
    Siglinde had felt what it was like.
    She freed herself, turned round and hit him across the face, quite hard, with the back of her hand.
    He took a step back into the darkness.
    She quickly pulled up her dress and bra straps, but he had time to see her naked breasts with their large dark nipples, which seemed black against her sunburnt skin.
    ‘Don’t ever try to do that again,’ she said scornfully.
    She was not really indignant. But she had found herself in similar situations so many times in her life that she knew exactly which tone of voice was the most effective.
    She walked past Santiago Alemany, over towards the stairs. She didn’t look at him and anyhow would not have been able to distinguish his features in the poor light.
    Siglinde was pottering about down below and quite a long time went by before Santiago came down. His face was controlled and closed and he constantly seemed to fix his eye on a spot behind her somewhere.
    She looked at him and almost imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders.
    She had tested herself a little just before, a little too much, too. Not for her own sake, true, for in spite of the actual physical contact, she had not really felt a thing. She liked sleeping with men, but only one at a time and preferably the same one for as long a consecutive period of time as possible. In addition she was thoroughly satisfied and generally considered herself to be happy.
    She would really like to have said ‘Don’t sulk, now,’ but she was too wise for that and said instead: ‘Give me a cigarette, there’s a good