Free The Generals by Per Wahlöö

naturally to have food, houseroom, what you think you need, all that, to have some point to your existence and a goal, and see others round about you who also have one. I said: And what shall we do with it when we’ve got it? You said: Live in it. I said: Is that the whole point of us and this island, which we presumably will never get? You said: That island, which we’ll certainly get, you know just as well as I do, is a natural self-sufficient unit: it should and must be free and independent. I said: Of course, that’s the point.
    But we made those remarks as if they were tag-ends in some way, as if we’d said them out of shame. We both felt this, so after a while we went on with the argument and agreed on the following: today the island is the haunt of a small number of people who live a joyless and stupidly enough even an economically rather meagre life there. Lots of people who really belong there and who would like to be there are forced to move because of unemployment, lack of development, all that sort of thing. Fifty times that number of individuals could live really happily on that island, fifty times as many as those who live there now and are unhappy.
    Do you remember that conversation? Yes, of course you remember everything of importance we’ve done and said together, just as well as I do. I’ve forgotten almost everything else. But as far as that argument is concerned, it seems to me now infinitely more important than what I thought then. I think that in that conversation lie the keys to both the past and the future, that on that occasion, we’d once and for all formulated both what is right and what is wrong inour thinking and our ideas. Or, anyhow, seen the truth without understanding it.
    It’s an unpleasant thought.
    Anyhow, what will Oswald use three hundred jeeps for? It sounds crazy. But I suppose he can be crazy in his way if he wants to be. All that business about immigration he arranged perfectly. I’ve had compliments from international quarters about it as recently as today.
    I love you so. Thanks for the fine pen you gave me on the airport. I’m writing this letter with it.
    Please forgive this long and childish and disjointed letter, but I’m sitting here in the middle of the night in my hotel room. I’m feeling very randy, which respectable ladies shouldn’t, I suppose, and so I’m homesick. I long for you. I don’t want to go to bed alone among all those bolsters in that large elegant bed, but now I’m going to all the same. I love you, your Aranca.
    Colonel Orbal
: How old was this woman?
    Captain Schmidt
: Thirty-two. She had at the time an eight-month-old child by Janos Edner, but funnily enough, she does not mention it.
    Colonel Orbal
: What’s funny about that?
    Captain Schmidt
: I didn’t mean that literally.
    Colonel Orbal
: Seems to have been ardent sort of woman. What did she look like?
    Captain Schmidt
: Small, fair, lively. Blue eyes. Well developed, they say. There’s a description here, four foot seven, eight stone three …
    Major von Peters
: You know perfectly well what Aranca Peterson looked like, Mateo. You’ve seen thousands of pictures of her.
    Captain Schmidt
: Aranca Peterson did not send that letter off the next day. She obviously left it and then added something the next evening. That too, is of a certain interest. Continue, Lieutenant Brown.
    Lieutenant Brown
: My appearance this evening, as usual, was an extraordinary business. They asked questions until I nearly died. Unfortunately, I probably looked rather dreadful on television because the heat from the lights was terrible and my face was sweating as usual. I’ll give you the main points; in comparison with all that rubbish I wrote yesterday, perhaps they’ll be of some interest.
    I warmed them up with the usual statement. Then the great bombardment began:
    If your country considers that it follows a pacifist line, why do you refuse to ally yourselves to the block of states which has been formed