Arne Torvald

Murder Bound.

I am (re)reading Chapter xv of xxi. I remember almost nothing. I do not think that Arne Torvald is revealed as the villain at the end. So far, he has disappointed me once when he challenged young Conrad Lauring to a fist fight and knocked the guy down in xiii.

He, Torvald, behaved very sensibly when he and his shipmates were attacked in Yokohama. He made sure that they defended themselves but also that they neither appropriated their assailants' knives nor gave chase when the assailants fled.

The leader of the assailants had said that his friends and he disliked Norwegians but Yamamura, when told the story, is canny enough to know that Norwegians are not disliked like that in Yokohama. Did someone set the thugs on the sailors because of Torvald's political activities? Yamamura has to ask such questions but Torvald assures him that he was too busy for any political activity. This is authentic. Plenty of people have political views but are not politically active.

I have no problems with Torvald's leftism. His illusions in Russia are unfortunate but also common at the time. Backing Stalin's Russia was one big historical cul-de-sac like so many Germans being misled by "National Socialism."

Yamamura, held at gun-point on leaving the ship (see the previous post), hopes that Torvald will notice what is happening when he leaves the ship shortly afterwards but unfortunately he doesn't and here we return to the theme of the previous post. Waller says that, if he shoots Yamamura, it will sound like a backfire and Yamamura's body will go into the water. All this is happening out in the open in broad daylight with no one noticing. How much does happen without us noticing?