Echoes From the Dead

Puerto Limón, March 1960

The sun has disappeared, darkness has fallen over the eastern coast of Costa Rica. In the shadows on the little sandy beach below the veranda bar of the Casa Grande, someone coughs quietly and then begins to whistle to himself, a cheerful, carefree melody that rises and falls almost in time with the rhythmic swell of the sea as the waves break on the shore. From inside the bar comes the sound of laughter and clinking glasses.

Silent flashes of white lightning illuminate the horizon, followed by a muted rumbling. It’s a night thunderstorm far out over the Caribbean, a storm which is slowly coming closer to the land.

Nils Kant is sitting at his usual table at the far end of the veranda, alone as always beneath the small red lanterns. He stares down into his half-empty glass for a while, then empties it in one gulp.

Is that his sixth or seventh glass tonight?

He can’t remember, it doesn’t matter. He hadn’t intended to drink more than five glasses of lukewarm red wine tonight, but it doesn’t matter. Soon he’ll order another. There’s no reason to stop drinking, none at all.

He puts down the empty glass and scratches his left arm. It’s red and swollen. These last few years he’s begun to get painful inflamed patches of skin on his arms and legs, from the sun. White flakes of skin peel away in drifts, the skin breaks, and his sheets are spotted with blood each morning when he wakes up. And there are always hairs on the pillow; he’s begun to get a bald patch on the top of his head.

It’s the sun, it’s the heat, it’s the humidity. Nils is falling to pieces bit by bit. Nothing he can do about it.

Nothing but keep drinking. He’s been drinking cheap wine for a few years now, because the stream of money from his mother has steadily diminished since the middle of the fifties.

All his mother has written by way of explanation is that the family quarry has been sold and closed down. She hasn’t told him how much money she has left. And Uncle August hasn’t written from Småland for many years.

Nils hasn’t had a fight with anyone or seriously injured anyone since he left Öland. But still District Superintendent Henriksson stands by his bed some nights, silent and bleeding. One small consolation is that it happens less often now.

Nils clutches his wineglass and leans forward to get up and go inside for a top-up — and at that very moment he realizes that he actually recognizes the melody someone is whistling in the darkness down below.

He stops and listens more carefully.

Yes, he’s heard it before, many years ago. It was played on the radio quite a bit during the war, and it was in his mother Vera’s collection of 78s.

Hej mina lustiga bröder...

A cheerful, bold song. He doesn’t remember what it’s called, but he remembers the words.

He hasn’t heard it since he left Stenvik — it’s a Swedish tune. Nils gets up. He peers cautiously over the balustrade, seven or eight feet above the ground.

Shadows.

But isn’t there someone sitting down there on the sand, right next to the poles supporting the veranda?

“Hello?” he calls quietly in Swedish.

The whistling stops at once.

“Hello yourself,” replies a calm voice from the darkness.

As his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, Nils sees a figure sitting down below. It’s a man in a hat. He’s stopped whistling, and he isn’t moving.

Fine drops of cold drizzle begin to fall as Nils goes over to the steps at the other end of the veranda. He places his hand on the banister and makes his way down on unsteady legs.

Down into the darkness, step by step, until he feels soft sand, still warm, beneath his leather sandals.

Nils has sat up on the veranda in the evenings for years, but he has never been down on the beach in the dark before. There might be rats there, big, hungry rats.

He cautiously approaches the sturdy poles that hold the veranda up.

The figure who answered him is still sitting over there, leaning back comfortably in a deck chair that can be rented for a few colónes in the shop a couple of hundred yards away.

It’s a man, Nils sees, with his shirtsleeves rolled up and some kind of sun hat shading his face. He’s humming to himself, the same cheerful melody as before.

Nils takes a couple more steps and stops. He stands still, his body swaying with the wine, but also with nervousness.

“Good evening,” says the man.

Nils clears his throat.

“Are you... from Sweden?” he asks.

The Swedish words feel strange in his mouth.

“Can’t you tell?” says the man in the deck chair, just as a flash of lightning illuminates the horizon.

In the sudden burst of light, Nils catches a brief glimpse of the Swede’s white face. A few seconds later a faint rumble comes from the sea.

“I thought it was best if you came down to me in the darkness, rather than the other way round,” says the Swede.

“What?” says Nils.

“I went to look for you in your room, but your landlady said you’re usually here in the bar drinking in the evenings. Perhaps there isn’t much else to do in Costa Rica.”

“What do you want?” asks Nils.

“It’s more important to talk about what you want, Nils.”

Nils says nothing. For a brief moment he has the feeling that he’s seen this man before, when he was young.

But when? In Stenvik?

He can’t remember.

The Swede grabs hold of the arms of the chair and gets up. He glances at the sea, then looks straight at Nils.

“Do you want to go home, Nils?” he asks. “Home to Sweden? To Öland?”

Nils nods slowly.

“Then I can make that happen,” says the Swede. “We’re going to give you a whole new life, Nils.”