He sat on the sofa to enjoy the music. It had been one of his life’s ambitions to visit Argentina. To spend a few months in Buenos Aires, dancing the tango every night. But it had never happened; something always cropped up to make him draw back at the last minute. When he’d left Vastergotland eleven years ago and moved north to the forests of Härjedalen, he’d meant to take a trip every year. He lived frugally, and although his pension wasn’t a big one, he could afford it. In fact, all he’d done was drive around Europe once or twice looking for new jigsaw puzzles.
He would never go to Argentina. He would never dance the tango in Buenos Aires. But there’s nothing to stop me from dancing here, he thought. I have the music and I have my partner.
He stood up. It was 5 A.M. Dawn was a long way off. It was time for a dance. He went to the bedroom and took his dark suit from the wardrobe. He examined it carefully before putting it on. A stain on the jacket lapel annoyed him. He wet a handkerchief and wiped it clean. Then he changed. This morning he chose a rust-brown tie to go with his white shirt. Most important of all were the shoes. He had several pairs of Italian dancing shoes, all expensive. For the serious dancer, the shoes had to be perfect.
When he was ready, he studied his appearance in the mirror on the wardrobe door. His hair was gray and cropped short. He was thin; he told himself he should eat more. But he looked considerably younger than his seventy-six years.
He knocked on the door to the spare bedroom. He imagined hearing somebody bidding him enter. He opened the door and switched on the light. His dancing partner was lying in the bed. He was always surprised by how real she looked, even though she was only a doll. He pulled back the duvet and lifted her up. She was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt. He’d given her the name Esmeralda. There were some bottles of perfume on the bedside table. He sat her down, and selected a discreet Dior, which he sprayed gently onto her neck. When he closed his eyes it seemed to him that there was no difference between the doll and a living human being.
He escorted her to the living room. He’d often thought he should take away all the furniture, fix some dimmed lights in the ceiling, and place a burning cigar in an ashtray. Then he would have his own Argentinean dance hall. But he’d never gotten around to it. There was just the empty stretch of floor between the table and the bookcase with the CD player. He slid his shoes into the loops attached to the bottoms of Esmeralda’s feet.
Then he started dancing. As he twirled Esmeralda around the floor, he felt he had succeeded in sweeping all the shadows out of the room. He was very light on his feet. He had learned a lot of dances over the years, but it was the tango that suited him best. And there was nobody he danced with as well as Esmeralda. Once there had been a woman in Borås, Rosemarie, who had a milliner’s shop. He used to dance the tango with her, and none of his previous partners had followed him as well as she did. One day, when he was getting ready to drive to Gothenburg, where he’d arranged to meet her at a dance club, he received a call saying she’d been killed in a car accident. He danced with lots of other women after that, but it wasn’t until he created Esmeralda that he got the same feeling he’d had with Rosemarie.
He had the idea many years ago. He had tuned in to a musical on television; he’d been awake all night, as usual. In the film a man—Gene Kelly, perhaps—had danced with a doll. He’d been fascinated, and decided then and there that he would make one himself.
The hardest part was the filling. He’d tried all sorts of things, but it wasn’t until he’d filled her with foam rubber that it felt as if he were holding a real person in his arms. He had chosen to give her large breasts and a big bottom. Both his wives had been slim. Now he’d provided himself with a woman who had something he could get his hands around. When he danced with her and smelled her perfume, he was sometimes aroused; but that hadn’t happened often over the last five or six years. His erotic desires had started to fade.
He danced for more than an hour. When he finally carried Esmeralda back to the spare room and put her to bed, he was sweating. He undressed, hung the suit in the wardrobe, and took a shower. It would soon be light, and he would be able to go to bed and sleep. He had survived another night.
He put on his dressing gown and made himself some coffee. The thermometer outside the window was still showing—2°. He touched the curtains, and Shaka barked briefly out there in the darkness. He thought about the forest surrounding him on all sides. This was what he’d dreamed of. A remote cottage, modern in every way, but no neighbors. And it was also a house at the very end of a road. It was a roomy house, well-built and with a big living room that satisfied his need for a dance floor. The seller was a forestry official who had retired and moved to Spain.