A Necessary Action Read Online Free PDF

from an acquaintance who was a builder in Santa Margarita and although it was twenty-five years old, it functioned quite satisfactorily.
    The road ran in long curves down the mountainside and down there, on the other side of the bay, the houses of the fishing settlement lay piled up along the quay. The surface of the water was calm and blue and sunlit, and out by the pier a number of people could be seen bathing. Several white yachts lay by the harbour wall and farther in, along the quay itself, were half a dozen dirty yellow trawlers with their nets draped like mourning veils round their masts. Despite the distance, one could see groups of lightly-clad tourists standing on the quay, looking at the fishing-boats.
    It was the beginning of August and very hot. The truck rolled swiftly down, its engine switched off, and all that could be heard was the squeal of the mechanical brakes and the noise of stones striking the underneath of the vehicle. The road was narrow andrough, but then it also led to the most distant and isolated houses in the community.
    There were three people in the truck. Dan Pedersen, who was driving, and beside him Siglinde, his wife. On the bench behind sat Willi Mohr, his straw hat pulled down over his forehead as protection against the clouds of dust. Now and again he had to use both arms and legs against the bodywork to prevent himself from being thrown off on the sharp corners.
    He was looking at the girl’s slim, sunburnt neck and when the breeze raised her short blond hair, he saw a string of small drops of sweat along the roots of her hair. He also saw that the hairs were darker at the roots and realized that she had bleached her hair and wondered why.
    ‘Don’t drive so damned fast,’ said Siglinde. ‘The dust’s choking me.’
    Dan did not reply. He thought: The Scandinavians have got their money and now they’re drinking at Jacinto’s. They’ve forgotten that they owe me two thousand pesetas and that I’ve not paid the rent for two months and have hardly enough money for food. But they’ve also forgotten that this is a pretty small place and that one finds things out almost at once. And now they’ve damn well got to pay up. Hope I can get hold of Santiago and Ramon, for there’s going to be a row, and the German here’s not much use. He’s only good for sitting goggling at Siglinde when she’s sunbathing, and why not, as that’s what I’d do too, if I didn’t already know what she looks like all over.
    Dan Pedersen did in fact use the term Scandinavians, but with a certain contempt, forgetting that he himself belonged to that same group.
    At this time of the year there were perhaps a couple of hundred foreigners in the puerto and about a dozen of them were residents, people of various nationalities, mostly painters or writers, or at least pretending to be, and most of them were Swedes or Finns. Among them was a small group which never had any money. They were the Scandinavians. They were very fond of their liquor.
    Siglinde thought: There’s going to be trouble, I know it, as I know Dan, and I hope we meet Santiago or Ramon on the way, because this German’s not much use, although he seems kind,and he can’t paint either, poor thing, and it’s hell Dan let him come and live with us, so that now I can’t sunbathe naked.
    She was a young woman of fairly ordinary nordic type, healthy and strong and moderately beautiful. She was wearing pants and bra, dusty thonged sandals and a pale blue dress with shoulder-straps. She was blond and grey-eyed and much more sunburnt than genuine blondes usually get.
    The man in the back seat stared coolly at her bare shoulders and held a silent monologue with himself.
    What on earth have I got to do with these people? I’m as indifferent to them as they are to me. But what could I do when Hugo went and I was left with nowhere to live and not a word of the language? Stay at a boarding-house? Then my money would not have been enough and I was to