Events Below the Surface a Reading of Henning Mankell’S the Troubled Man

Events below the Surface A Reading of Henning Mankell’s The Troubled Man JOHN LINGARD ABSTRACT: Den orolige mannen (2009) [The Troubled Man, 2011] is Henning Mankell’s twelfth and last Kurt Wallander novel. Uniquely in the series, it combines detective and spy fiction. Its rich metaphoric texture is based on a continued play between surface and depth, between what is illusory and what is true. Wallander’s investigation into the disappearance of an aristocratic former naval officer, Håkan von Enke, and the death of that officer’s wife Louise, takes the detective back into the Cold War with its atmosphere of spies, moles, and treachery. Mankell also offers readers an unprecedented look into Wallander’s inner life where increasing moments of forgetfulness are leading him towards “det tomma universum som heter Alzheimer” [the empty universe that is called Alzheimer’s] (555). The novel is further enhanced by a metafictional retrospect of Wallander’s earlier career and his most important relationships: with his daughter Linda and the love of his life, Baiba Liepa. RÉSUMÉ : Den orolige mannen [L’homme perturbé] est le douzième et dernier roman de Henning Mankel dans la série de Kurt Wallander. Unique au sein de la série, il combine le roman policier et le roman d’espionnage. Son riche caractère métaphorique est basé sur un jeu continu entre ce qui apparaît en surface et ce qui demeure en profondeur, entre l’illusoire et le vrai. L’enquête de Kurt Wallander sur la disparition d’un aristocrate, ancien officier de marine, Håkan von Enke, et la mort de la femme de cet officier, Louise, ramène le détective à la guerre froide avec son atmosphère d’espions, de taupes et de trahison. Mankell propose également aux lecteurs un regard inédit sur la vie intérieure de Wallander, où des moments d’oubli croissants le conduisent vers « det tomma universum som heter Alzheimer » [l’univers vide que l’on appelle l’Alzheimer] (555). Le roman est complété par une rétrospective méta-fictive de la carrière antérieure de Wallander et de ses relations les plus importantes : celle avec sa fille Linda et celle avec l’amour de sa vie, Baiba Liepa. John Lingard taught English and Drama at Cape Breton University until his retirement in 2007. SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 27 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2020 Introduction en orolige mannen (2009) [The Troubled Man, 2011] is the twelfth and last of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander mysteries. It is the longest and most complex novel in the series, combining two genres, D detective and spy fiction. Its complexity also springs from an unusually dense use of flashbacks that lead the reader through the Cold War, the past lives of the two central characters, Wallander and Håkon von Enke, to a metafictional reflection on Mankell’s career. To use a phrase from the Epilog [Epilogue], the novel is marked by “ett tilbakeblikkande perspektiv” [a retrospective perspective1] (547). Wallander thinks that in social terms such a perspective is caused by his generation’s “ovilja att bry sig om världen de levde i, de politiska omständigheterna som hele tiden skiftade” [unwillingness to trouble themselves about the world they lived in, the political circumstances that shifted all the time] (547), but he is forced to enter the past to make sense of the present; for Wallander the past is his personal and professional life from his early days as a police officer, while for von Enke it is the Cold War. The Troubled Man is rich in its metaphoric texture. What might be called the control-metaphor is that of surface and depth, most evident in submarine activity in the Baltic. The title of Part 2, “Händelser under ytan” [Events below the Surface] (149), refers to this activity, and its reflection in the way that the surface of events, people, conversations, documents, is invariably elusive. Wallander remembers advice from his mentor Rydberg: “Ytor är någonting man nästan alltid halkar på” [Surfaces almost always cause you to stumble] (102; emphasis in the original). The most obvious surface-depth phenomena are vertical: the surface and depth of water. They can, however, be horizontal, and psychological. One of Mankell’s epigraphs looks forward to a frequent use of the word “skugga” [shadow]. A character can be shadowed by another person, by the past, or, in Wallander’s case, by attacks of amnesia that he calls “en inre fallande skugga” [an inner shadow] (53). The first epigraph reads: “En människa lämnar alltid spår, Ingen människa är heller utan sin skugga” [A person always leaves a trail. Nor is anyone without their shadow] (5). When Wallander is close to discovering the truth about von Enke, he has a similar realization: “Bakom varje person stod alltid någon annan” [Behind every person someone else was always standing] (515; emphasis in the original). This echoes a remark by Baiba Liepa about Latvia: “Bakom varje lett stod en ryss, brukade vi säga. Men bakom varje russ stod någon annan” [Behind every Latvian a Russian was standing, we used to say. But behind every Russian someone else was standing] (360–61). 116 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA The Cold War 1: Events below the Surface The novel’s events below the surface are at first literal: submarine activity off Sweden’s coast. In 1981 “hade en sovjetisk ubåt gått på grund” [a Soviet submarine had run aground] (13) not only in Swedish territorial water but close to the world’s most sophisticated system of military defence. The captain of submarine U 137 claimed that he had gone off course because of a faulty gyrocompass. Swedish authorities thought he had been drunk (13). The incident caused considerable embarrassment to the Soviet Union, and less than a decade before the fall of the Soviet Union may have been a sign that, in the words of von Enke’s friend Sten Nordlander: “trollen kom ut i solen och sprack” [the troll came out into the sun and burst] (252). Wallander sees von Enke, his daughter Linda’s father-in-law, twice before von Enke disappears. The first time is at a dinner party given by Linda and Hans, her husband and von Enke’s son (37). The second is at von Enke’s birthday party held at a rented facility in the Stockholm suburb of Djursholm (59). During the party Wallander talks with his host in a glassed-in-terrace. Wallander notices that the older man is not only “orolig” [troubled] but “rädd” [afraid] (61–62) after glimpsing a man standing “utanför staketet alldeles under en gatlykta” [outside the fence directly below a streetlamp] (61). After this incident von Enke takes the detective into a small windowless room, ostensibly to drink cognac, but really to share an anecdote about a second submarine. By October 1983 von Enke had been entrusted with the control of Sweden’s naval defence system (66). Suddenly a message came to him on the first of October that one or more foreign submarines had been detected in Hårsfjärden “i närheten av våra hemligaste militära anläggningar” [near our most secret military installations] (66). One submarine had been cornered and von Enke had received permission to bring it to the surface with warning depth charges (67). Five minutes before zero hour, however, he received a telephoned order from the Ministry of Defence not to drop depth charges and thus to allow the submarine to escape (69). Wallander asks him if he found any explanation for this counter command, but von Enke drops the story then and there and they return to the party (71). Three months later von Enke disappears (73). Then his wife Louise also vanishes only to be found dead (262). There are two more phenomena below the surface of water that Wallander will discover. The first is a mysterious cylinder that a fisherman had caught in his net (212–13). Wallander learns from Sten Nordlander that the cylinder is a listening device attached by the Americans to a cable laid by the Russians on the bottom of the Baltic (254–55). The second is a curious toy owned by George Talboth, a former but probably still active CIA agent and a friend of von Enke. He lives in Berlin, and Wallander drives there to meet him. Talboth has a large aquarium that almost fills a room: EVENTS BELOW THE SURFACE 117 Men det som förbluffade Wallander mest var att det på botten av akvariet fanns stillrikt konstruerad tunnlar där elektriska tåg rusade fram i slutna banor. Tunnlarna var helt genomskinliga, som glas bakom glas. Där släpptes inte in en droppe vatten. Tågen rusade runt utan att fiskarna tycktes vara medvetna om denna järnvägslinje på deres konstgjorda havsbotten. (484) [But what surprised Wallander most was that on the bottom of the aquarium there were skilfully constructed tunnels where electric trains rushed round on covered tracks. The tunnels were completely transparent, like glass behind glass. Not a drop of water was able to seep through. The trains rushed round without the fishes seeming to be aware of these railway tracks on their artificial seafloor.] Wallander notices two aspects of Talboth’s underwater trains: “att de inte möttes exakt på samma ställe. Det fanns en förskjutning som til en början knappt var märkbar. Han såg också att tågen på en viss sträcka framfördes på samma spår” [that they did not pass each at exactly the same spot. There was a displacement that was at first sight barely distinguishable. He also saw that on one stretch the trains used the same track] (485). When he remarks on this Talboth replies “Du ser bra” [You’ve a keen eye] (485).

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