A Necessary Action by Per Wahlöö Page B

he was the product of a comfortable life and a tolerant upbringing. He had gone to Spain because it was cheap there and he would be able to finish a very bad serial he was writing under an assumed name and for which he had already been paid an advance. Later he took another advance and was now waiting until it was absolutely necessary for him to do some writing. As a professional writer he was what is usually called nimble-fingered. He could write so that what he wrote seemed good without it any way being so. In general he knew how things should be done but was seldom able to do them himself. He liked Spain very much, but he had liked Norway very much too, even during the war. He liked drinking too, but drank to excess only rarely. He often felt uncertain, but that was not often noticeable.
    Siglinde was like him in many ways, and in some ways she was his superior. She was more farsighted and practical, but she was also more conscious of the threats in life. All her life she had borne a latent fear for a variety of things, fears which often varied in reason and character and which she tried to suppressbecause she thought them foolish. She possessed an immediate attractiveness, which appeared shallow and which made people think of sexuality. She was really a wholly normal girl with a normal physique, though here, in this phantom world of suppressed emotions, she played a peculiar rôle, and she herself noticed it, but did not bother about it because it seemed absurd to her. In the puerto they had often had trouble with peeping toms. In fact she was a shy person and could not, for instance, say certain things without sweating all over.
    Willi Mohr was a bad painter, although he was technically skilful. He lacked spark and an artistic sense of purpose, and he energetically tried to replace what he lacked with industry and obstinacy, without for one moment believing or even wishing that this would be successful. Generally speaking, he was incapable of involving himself in anything, he believed, not even in his own problems, which he found quite meaningless. He was caught in a closed circuit and he himself considered that he could not with certainty remember any occasion on which he had been really happy or really miserable. He was locked in an attitude of physical and intellectual perfection, and if he had really been in a position to hope, he would have hoped for a miracle.
    These three people lived together in the house in Barrio Son Jofre for four months and six days, from the ninth of August to the fifteenth of December.
    While they were living there, a number of things happened. The summer ebbed away into a last spell of explosive heat, with burning hot days and steaming, sweaty nights. Then came a brief autumn with continuous warm rain, when the underground streams from the mountains roared along under the surface of the ground. Dried-up wells were filled and plant life, which never resigns itself, came to life again and waited for the sun, which would soon come back and burn it all up again. After the rain came the winter, the most exciting time of the year, and also the most pleasant. The winter could be said to begin in November. Beautiful, glass-clear sunny days were followed by astonishing storms and apocalyptical thunderstorms. One never knew what it would be like from one day to the next.
    The people in the house in Barrio Son Jofre came to learn each other’s patterns of behaviour and adapted themselvesaccordingly. They soon acquired a tenable daily routine which was self-evident and required no discussion. Dan Pedersen finally set to work to earn his advance. He sat on the second step of the staircase and wrote. The typewriter was on a chair in front of him and the light from the open door fell on to his paper. He liked it there, despite the fact that the cat insisted on lying on his heap of typescript and despite the fact that he had to move every time Siglinde wanted to go upstairs. As she walked past, he used to