A Treacherous Paradise

57

There was still a long way to go before dawn when the woman called Ana and usually referred to as Ana Branca was woken up by a man’s hand touching one of her breasts. For a moment she thought it was Lundmark who had returned from the dead, but when she switched on the light she saw that it was just Carlos who had touched her in his sleep, as if he were feeling for something he’d lost in his dreams. He was woken up by her violent movement. She didn’t know if it was disappointment or merely a feeling of shame at being touched up by an ape, but she pushed Carlos out of bed. He gathered that she was angry and jumped up on to the ceiling light. He sat there, looking at her — she could never decide if those eyes of his were sad or amused.

‘You confounded ape,’ she yelled. ‘Don’t ever touch me again!’

Then she switched the light off. She could hear that Carlos’s concern was gradually fading away, and he was able to relax on the lamp as it swayed back and forth over the bed. She immediately regretted what she had said and done. After all, Carlos was very close to her — like a dog, but cleverer, and just as affectionate. He wasn’t messing her about.

She also thought it was remarkable that the tapeworm Carlos had swallowed didn’t seem to have harmed him at all. Perhaps the stomach juices of an ape are so acidic that a worm able to survive inside a human being can’t live inside an ape’s gut? She had promised Rumigo, who looked after her garden, some extra payment if he would examine Carlos’s excrement to see if there was any sign of a tapeworm. He hadn’t found anything yet, but she was sure he would continue to look — he didn’t dare not to.

Ana used to be called Hanna. She had also lost her previous second name, Vaz. She lost it the same day as the peacock disappeared.

Despite its clipped wings, Judas swore that he had seen it flying away over the rooftops. Hanna refused to believe him, and in a fit of rage threatened to have him beaten if he didn’t tell her the truth. Had he killed the bird and eaten it? Had he plucked off its feathers and sold them as adornments for women’s hats? But Judas was adamant: the bird really had flown away.

It was only when one of the harbour guards on his way home from work swore that he had seen the peacock flying out over the sea that Hanna was forced to accept that it really was the truth. She was living in a part of the world where birds whose wings had been clipped could suddenly recover their ability to fly. It was no more peculiar than the claims about ghostly dogs with no legs or paws roaming the streets at night. Or that tapeworms inside a human being’s stomach could grow to be five metres long.

Hanna thought that it was a premonition. If she wanted to achieve the impossible, she must do the impossible. She must become somebody else.

And so she was now called Ana Branca, nothing else. Ana Branca is a lonely person, she thought. She was losing the respect that Hanna Vaz had enjoyed. Her decision to try to get Isabel absolved from the murder of her husband Pedro had aroused widespread indignation on the grounds that she had failed in her foremost duty — upholding the solidarity of the white race. Defending the status of her own race at all costs.

Ana was unable to go back to sleep. When the first light of dawn illuminated her window, she got out of bed. This was the morning when she was due to meet Senhor Andrade and talk to him about what was likely to happen to Isabel.

Her first thought that morning was the same as the last one she had the day before. It was the image of Isabel in her underground cell in the fort, where a tiny window at ground level was the only way in for the same light of day that Ana could see was now lighting up the sea and the town, the palm trees along the promenade, and the hills marking the border with the African interior. Isabel slept on a bunk with a single blanket and a mattress stuffed with grass. The cell was either freezing cold or so hot that the damp dripped down from the ceiling. During her first weeks in the cell she had a shackle round one of her ankles, but Ana had succeeded in persuading Lima, the commanding officer of the military prison, to have it removed.

Ana intended to visit Isabel later that day. Every time she had to humiliate herself by asking permission from Lima, who usually kept her waiting inordinately long before making a decision. Sometimes he wasn’t even there — or pretended not to be there. Ana always took some food with her, the only thing she was permitted to give Isabel. Only twice had she been allowed to take her clothes. Isabel had been in jail now for two months. She smelled of sweat and dirt every time Ana met her, but Isabel couldn’t use the small amount of water she was given in order to wash herself: she had to drink it. Ana knew that two white men who were imprisoned after beating up and killing a third were treated quite differently. But when she complained to Lima about this, it was as if he didn’t hear what she said. He would look past her, or through her, while absent-mindedly polishing the stripes on his uniform.

Ana Branca is a lonely person, she thought as she stood by the window. She had rebelled against her own race by standing up for Isabel, who was wasting away in the bowels of the fort.

It was nine o’clock when Andrade arrived and handed his white hat and walking stick to Julietta, who made a fuss of him and bowed after escorting him to Ana’s study. Ana and Andrade no longer shook hands: that gesture, which had never been a mark of friendship but had signified respect, was a thing of the past. He sat down opposite her at her desk.

What she wanted to know first of all was if there was a risk that Isabel might be decapitated or hanged. She had asked her solicitor that question several times, but never received a satisfactory answer.

‘The death penalty was abolished in Portugal in 1867,’ said Andrade. ‘In other words, I can’t see any risk of her being executed. I’ve tried to explain that before.’

Ana felt relieved. But could she be absolutely sure?

‘I’ve consulted all the law books,’ said Andrade, ‘and the fact is that nobody is condemned to death any more apart from those found guilty of treason. I’ve also written a letter to the Ministry of Justice in Lisbon, but I haven’t had a reply yet. But I don’t hesitate to say that there are a lot of us who think that the death penalty ought to be reinstated, especially in the Portuguese colonies in Africa. That would force the blacks to refrain from even thinking about committing crimes against white people.’

‘Who will pass judgement on her?’ she asked.

Andrade was surprised by the question, possibly even annoyed.

‘Pass judgement on her? Surely she has already condemned herself.’

‘Where will the trial take place? Who will be the judges? Who will defend her?’

‘This isn’t Europe. We don’t need a judge in order to lock up a black woman who has committed murder.’

‘So there won’t be a trial?’

‘No.’

‘How long will she be locked up in the fort?’

‘Until she dies.’

‘But won’t she be given a chance to defend herself?’

Andrade shook his head in irritation. Her questions were annoying him.

‘Portugal’s relationship with this black country is still not legally regulated. We are here because we want to be here. We send our own criminals back to Lisbon or Oporto. We don’t bother about blacks who commit crimes involving other blacks. They have their own laws and traditions, and we don’t poke our noses into that. But in this unique case, we lock her up in the fort. End of story.’

‘But surely she has the right to a lawyer? Somebody who can argue her case?’

Andrade leaned forward.

‘Isn’t there somebody who is now known as Ana Branca who is looking after that side of things?’

‘I’m not a lawyer. I need advice. There’s nobody here in Lourenço Marques who is willing to help me.’

‘It might be possible to find an Indian lawyer in Johannesburg or Pretoria who would be prepared to take on the case.’

Andrade took a gold pen from his breast pocket and wrote a name and address on the back of a business card.

‘I’ve heard about somebody who might do it,’ he said as he put the business card on the table. ‘He’s called Pandre and comes from Bengal. For some strange reason I don’t understand he has learnt Shangana, which is no doubt the language Isabel speaks when she’s not babbling on in Portuguese. He might be able to help you.’

Andrade stood up and bowed. When Ana offered to pay him, he shook his head in disdain.

‘I don’t accept payment for when I’m not working,’ he said. ‘I’ll find my own way out.’

He paused in the doorway.

‘If you decide to leave our town, I’m prepared to offer you a good price for this house. Can we say that I’m first in the queue if that’s the way things go? As a reward for the bit of help I’ve given you this morning?’

He didn’t wait for a reply, but left the building. She could hear his car starting in the street outside.

Carlos had crept into the room unnoticed, and was now sitting in his usual spot on top of the dark brown wardrobe that still contained Senhor Vaz’s clothes.

What exactly does he understand? Ana thought. Nothing? Or everything?

58

Ana took a horse-drawn cab down to the brothel. There she picked up Judas who accompanied her to the fort when the worst of the midday heat was over. She was always a little worried when she walked past the armed guards: perhaps the doors to the fort would close behind her? Judas was carrying the basket containing the food for Isabel. Judas suddenly began talking — a very rare occurrence.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why is Senhora Ana helping this woman who stabbed her husband?’

‘Because I know I might well have done the same thing myself.’

‘He should never have got involved with a black woman.’

‘Isn’t that what white men do every evening in my establishment?’

‘Not in the way that Senhor Pimenta did. He sired children with her, and recognized them as his own. That could only end in one way.’

They walked in the shadow to the low building where Indian vendors sat at their stalls smelling of foreign spices.

Ana paused and looked at Judas.

‘I’m going to keep on fighting until I’ve got Isabel out of prison,’ she said. ‘You can tell that to everybody you talk to.’

Commanding Officer Lima was standing on the steps to the building where the fort’s weapons were stored. He seemed to be bored stiff, and was rocking back and forth on his heels. On this occasion he simply waved her through without a word. Judas handed her the basket, then stood there motionless at the spot where she had left him. As usual, he waited for her in the scorching hot sunshine. Ana could hear that Lima was talking to one of the soldiers. About me, she thought. No doubt scornful comments about me.

Isabel was sitting on her rickety bunk. She said nothing, didn’t even look at Ana when she stepped into the murky cell. Despite the fact that Isabel smelled awful, Ana sat down beside her and took hold of her hand, which was very thin and cold.

Not a word was said. After a long silence, Ana took the empty basket from the previous day, and left the cell. As long as Isabel kept eating, there was still hope.

Two days later Ana took the train to Johannesburg. It was a journey she had never made before, and she would have liked to have a companion: but there was nobody she could trust among the whites she knew — at least, not in connection with the matter she hoped to resolve.

A horse-drawn cab took her to the house in the centre of town where the lawyer Pandre had his office. When she arrived, she was surprised to find that he was in — something she had hardly felt able to hope for. He even had time to speak to her, albeit for quite a short time before he had to attend a court proceeding.

Pandre was a middle-aged man, wearing Western clothes but with a turban lying on his desk. He was addressed as munshi by his male secretary, who was also Indian. He invited her to sit down, and Ana could see that he was curious to find out why a white woman would want to come and consult him, so far away from Lourenço Marques. His Portuguese was not fluent, but significantly better than Ana’s. When she asked if he spoke Shangana, he nodded — but gave no explanation of why he had bothered to learn one of the languages spoken by the blacks.

He listened intently while she told him about Isabel, and how she had killed Pedro Pimenta.

‘I need advice,’ she said in the end. ‘I need somebody to tell me how I can convince the Portuguese that she should be set free.’

Padre looked at her and nodded slowly.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should a white woman want to help a black woman who has landed in the worst possible of situations?’

‘Because I have to.’

‘You speak broken Portuguese. May I ask where you come from?’

‘Sweden.’

Pandre thought over her response for a while, then left the room and returned with a dented and stained globe in his hand.

‘The world’s a big place,’ he said. ‘Where is the country that you come from?’

‘There.’

‘I’ve heard about something called the Northern Lights,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And that the sun never sets during the summer months.’

‘That’s true.’

‘We all come from somewhere,’ said Pandre. ‘I’m not going to ask you why you have come to Africa, but please tell me what you are doing in Lourenço Marques.’

During the long train journey she had made up her mind to tell the truth, no matter what questions were asked.

‘I run a brothel,’ she said. ‘It’s very successful. I inherited it from my husband. A lot of my customers come from Johannesburg. Just now there are thirteen women of various ages and various degrees of beauty in my brothel, so I can afford to pay for your services.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Go to visit her. Get her to talk. And advise me what to do in order to have her set free.’

Pandre sat there in silence, slowly rotating the globe and pondering what she had said.

‘I shall charge you one hundred English pounds for my visit,’ he said eventually. ‘And I also have an extra request, bearing in mind the business you conduct.’

Ana understood without his needing to say anything more.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You will have access to the brothel whenever you feel like it. Gratis, naturally.’

Pandre stood up and looked at a clock hanging on the wall.

‘I’m sorry, but I have to go now,’ he said. ‘One of my clients, who I unfortunately failed to defend successfully, is due to be hanged in the municipal prison. He has requested that I should be present. It’s not something I’m going to enjoy doing, of course; but on the other hand, it doesn’t upset me all that much. Anyway, I take it that we have reached an agreement. I can pay a visit to your black woman next week.’

It required quite an effort on Ana’s part not to storm out of the room when the lawyer displayed such total indifference to the plight of a client who was about to be hanged. Just how would this man be able to help Isabel?

‘Is it a man who’s going to be hanged?’ she asked.

‘Of course it’s a man.’

‘Black?’

‘White. A poor man who could only afford an Indian lawyer to defend him.’

‘What had he done?’

‘He cut the throat of two women, a mother and daughter, in an attack of jealousy. Very brutal. It was obviously impossible to avoid the death penalty. Some accused can be saved, others can’t. And some don’t deserve to be saved. Unless we are intent on transforming human beings into beasts of prey.’

Pandre bowed, rang a bell and left the room. The obsequious secretary came in, and noted down her address in Lourenço Marques.

‘What does munshi mean?’ she asked.

‘The word means “a man who is a teacher” in Hindi. It is usually an honorary title. Herr Pandre is a wise man.’

‘But nevertheless his clients are hanged?’

The secretary flung out his arms as if he were regretting what he’d said.

‘That very rarely happens. Herr Pandre has a good reputation.’

‘Does he have any black clients?’

‘He never has had so far.’

‘Why not?’

‘The courts decide which lawyers will represent blacks. All blacks have to be defended by whites.’

‘Why?’

‘To avoid any suggestion of bias.’

‘I don’t understand that.’

‘Laws and jurisprudence are matters for specialists. Herr Pandre understands. As I said, he is a wise man.’

The following day she travelled back to Lourenço Marques. She had not forgotten the secretary’s words.

When she returned to the brothel Felicia informed her that somebody had placed a headless chicken on the steps outside the prison governor’s residence. An amateurish drawing of Isabel on a piece of brown wrapping paper from one of the Indian stalls had been attached to one of the chicken’s legs. It could only mean that a lynching might take place at any time.

The threat had become more menacing, more imminent. Things are closing in on me, Ana thought. Everywhere, everything.

59

After her trip to Johannesburg Ana began spending more of her time in the brothel. Felicia, who was by now her only confidante, had told her that certain clients had suddenly begun to mistreat the women. Ana therefore wanted to be present among them as the men were hardly likely to try anything on in her presence. She could see immediately that the women were both surprised and grateful. On the other hand, if any of them treated a customer off-handedly or merely did the minimum necessary to satisfy his desires, Ana would immediately give the person concerned a telling-off. They were not allowed to use their treatment of clients as a way of taking revenge on those who wanted to harm Isabel.

One morning Ana gathered all the women together, along with Zé and Judas, and told them about her visit to Johannesburg and the meeting with Pandre. She didn’t say anything about the promise she had given him for the time being, but she could tell by the reaction she received that even if there was an element of surprise and astonishment, they were delighted to discover that Ana had not abandoned Isabel. While the whites in Lourenço Marques regarded her as a disgraceful criminal who had killed an innocent man, for the blacks she was not exactly a heroine — she had after all killed the father of her children — but a woman who had made a valiant attempt to rise out of her misery and offer some resistance.

Ana thought that was an appropriate description of Isabel’s fate: that she had risen up and offered some resistance. Even if she was now locked up in a cramped prison cell, guarded by menacing and often drunken soldiers, it was as if she had walked away from her plight and left behind all the white people who despised her.

That same day, a white man she had never seen before came to the brothel and asked for a job. It did happen from time to time that white men, often in a bad way thanks to a fever or alcohol, came to her asking for work. She had hitherto always sent them packing as they had nothing to offer her that could be of use.

But the man standing before her now made a different impression. He wasn’t dressed in shabby clothes, nor was he unwashed with a straggly beard. He introduced himself as O’Neill, and explained that he had worked as a bouncer in bars and brothels all over the world. He also produced a well-thumbed bundle of references from previous employers.

Ana had often wished she had a white bouncer in the brothel. Even if Judas and the other security guards did what they were supposed to do, she was never absolutely sure that they would react as she wanted them to.

She decided to employ O’Neill on trial for a few months. He seemed to be strong and radiated determination. She thought it would soon become clear if he was a person she could employ permanently.

Later on Ana had a conversation with Felicia under the jacaranda tree. It was evening by now. Felicia was waiting for one of her regular customers from Pretoria, a religious gentleman farmer who was always talking about his eleven children, and that the only reason he visited the brothel was that he no longer wanted to have sex with his wife because she was worn out after giving birth to all those children.

Ana asked her about Isabel’s family. There was so much she still didn’t know. It also surprised her that none of Isabel’s relations had been to see her in the fort. Ana was the only person who visited her, apart from Father Leopoldo who always did the rounds of those imprisoned there. Ana had been to the cathedral again to see him, and he told her that Isabel never spoke to him either. She kept it to herself, but that knowledge gave her a feeling of relief. She knew that she could well have become jealous if Isabel had chosen a priest to talk to.

Felicia was dressed in white, just as the gentleman farmer always wanted her to be.

‘I don’t know much,’ said Felicia. ‘Isabel’s sisters are looking after the children. She also has an elder brother called Moses. He works in the mines in Rand. He’ll no doubt come here as soon as he can. If he can.’

‘Are her parents still alive?’

‘They live in Beira. But the sisters have decided not to tell them anything about what has happened.’

‘Why not?’

Felicia shook her head.

‘Perhaps because they are afraid that the news would cause their parents such great grief that it kills them. They are old. Or maybe they don’t want them to be afraid that the whip would start lashing their shoulders as well. Everybody seems to be waiting for the brother who works in the mines.’

‘When will he come?’

‘Nobody knows. Neither when nor if he can come.’

Ana began talking about the headless bird that had been lying on the prison governor’s steps.

‘Who could have done that?’

Felicia drew back, as if Ana were accusing her of doing it.

‘I don’t mean that you did it, of course. But who would want to kill her? No white man would put a dead bird on a step as a warning. Surely it must have been somebody black?’

‘Or somebody who wanted to make it look that way.’

Ana realized that Felicia was right.

‘So you think it was a white man?’

‘Only a white person would want her to die.’

‘Why do you think she refuses to speak?’

‘Because she’s grieving.

‘Grieving?’

‘Grieving for the husband she was forced to kill.’

‘Because he had deceived her?’

‘She knows that all whites do that.’

‘Are you saying that all white people tell lies?’

‘Not to other whites. But to us.’

‘Do I tell lies?’

Felicia didn’t answer. She continued looking at Ana, didn’t turn her eyes away, but remained silent. So I shall have to answer the question myself, she thought. She’s making me decide. It’s my decision and nobody else’s.

‘I still don’t understand what you mean when you say that Isabel is grieving. She misses her children, of course. But that’s not grief.’

‘She’s grieving for the children she never had. As she was forced to kill her husband.’

Ana had the impression that their conversation was going round in circles and getting nowhere. She sensed rather than understood the logic in Felicia’s words.

‘Who would want to kill her?’ she asked again.

‘I don’t know, but essentially I believe that every single one of all the thousands of white people living in this town would be prepared to hold the knife that stabs right into her heart.’

‘Who has anything to gain from her death? It wouldn’t bring Pedro back to life.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Felicia. ‘I can’t understand the way you think.’

Ana got no further. Felicia stroked her hand over her newly washed white dress, carefully smoothing away the wrinkles. She wanted to leave.

‘Who am I to you?’ Ana suddenly asked.

‘You are Ana Branca,’ said Felicia in surprise.

‘Nothing more?’

‘You own this tree, the ground it’s growing in and the building around us.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Yes,’ said Ana. ‘That’s more than enough. It’s so much that I can barely manage to cope with it.’

A gigantic man with a large beard and a weatherbeaten face appeared in the open door leading into the garden. It was Felicia’s client. Ana watched them walking towards Felicia’s room. She looked very small by his side.

Just like I must have done, Ana thought. When I walked beside Lundmark to the consul in Algiers, to get married.

She remained sitting under the tree. It had been raining earlier in the evening. Steam was rising from the soil, and there was a sweet smell coming from the tree’s roots. There was also another smell, but she couldn’t make out where it was coming from. The underworld was intruding. Ana thought of herself as Hanna again, and remembered all the smells that rose up from the marshes and heather-clad moors where she grew up.

For a short while the feeling of homesickness was overpowering. No memories could awaken this longing as strongly as smells and fragrances, reminding her of something that she had lost and would always miss.

There under the tree she decided to stay in Africa until the lawyer Pandre had been to visit Isabel and given her advice. If the bottom line was that there was no way in which she could help the imprisoned woman, there was no reason for her to stay here any longer. She wouldn’t give up, but neither would she surrender to illusions.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice she thought she recognized. Emerging from one of the rooms, together with Belinda Bonita, was a man who, she could see that from the way he walked, seemed to be not completely sober. His back was turned towards her. At first she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then she realized it was a language she understood when the person talking it wasn’t slurring his speech.

She knew now who it was with his back turned towards her. Halvorsen. The man who had been Lundmark’s best friend. The one who had promised her his support if she needed it after Lundmark’s death and burial.

60

For the second time, somebody from the original crew of the Lovisa had come to her brothel. But she had to ask herself if she might be mistaken after all. Halvorsen had been a serious man, deeply religious, and not a heavy drinker like most others of the crew. Svartman, Lundmark and Halvorsen had been among the sober ones, she thought. But he was having difficulty in keeping his balance, and his Norwegian was slurred. She had the feeling that he was irritated because Belinda Bonita hadn’t understood what he said. On board the ship Halvorsen had always spoken in a low voice, not much more than a whisper. Now he was shouting, as if giving orders.

When he finally turned round and flopped down on to one of the sofas — with a bundle of banknotes in his hands, which Belinda quickly took from him — Ana saw that she had not been mistaken. It was Halvorsen all right, his hair plastered down, wearing his best clothes: she had last seen him dressed like that when he stood on deck at Lundmark’s burial, watching the corpse, weighed down with an iron sinker, disappear down into the depths.

She could still remember the magic number of metres: 1,935.

When Belinda had left Halvorsen, who was now sitting mumbling to himself, Ana stood up. O’Neill was standing behind him, wondering whether to help him out, but Ana waved him aside and sat down carefully beside Halvorsen. He turned his head slowly to look at her with bloodshot eyes. He had hardly changed since she saw him last, a few hours before she had slipped across the gangplank and jumped ship. Perhaps his hair had become slightly thinner, his cheeks hollower. But his enormous hands were exactly the same.

She smiled at him, but could see immediately that he didn’t know who she was. There was nothing in his eyes to suggest that he recognized her. As far as he was concerned she was an unknown woman, a white woman in a black brothel where he had just availed himself of the services of the beautiful but cool Belinda Bonita, who had stuffed his banknotes inside her blouse and gone back to her room to get washed and perhaps also change the sheets.

Halvorsen screwed up his eyes and tried to look at her with just one eye. He still seemed not to know who she was.

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Hanna Lundmark. Do you remember me?’

Halvorsen gave a start. He shook his head, couldn’t believe his ears.

‘I’m not a ghost,’ she said, trying to speak as clearly as possible. ‘It really is me.’

Now he knew. He stared at her incredulously.

‘You disappeared,’ he said. ‘We never found you.’

‘I went ashore. There was no way I could continue the voyage. It was as if Lundmark was still on board.’

‘1,935 metres,’ said Halvorsen. ‘I still remember that.’

He sat up, straightened his back, tried to force himself to become sober.

‘I didn’t believe I would ever see our cook alive again,’ he said. ‘Least of all here. What happened?’

‘I went ashore. I got married again, and became a widow once more.’

Halvorsen pondered upon her words, then asked her to repeat them, but more slowly this time. She did as he asked.

‘We thought you were dead,’ he said. ‘Nobody could believe that you would leave the ship voluntarily in an African port.’

‘I’d like to hear about the voyage,’ she said. ‘Did you see any icebergs?’

‘We saw one iceberg, as tall as a church. It was just after we left this port. The nights were always a worrying time — nobody ever discovers an iceberg until it’s too late. But we got to Australia and came back again.’

‘I kept going down to the harbour, but I never saw you berthed there.’

‘We bunkered further north, in Dar es Salaam. Or was it further south, in Durban? I can’t remember.’

Ana realized that Halvorsen must have remained on board all the way back to Sundsvall. That meant that he must have met Svartman, who always gathered together and greeted his crew when they returned to their home port.

‘I assume you stayed with the ship all the way back home?’

‘I stayed on board all the way to Sundsvall. But then I travelled to Norway and signed on to a different ship.’

‘I’m not worried about that. I’d just like to know what Forsman said.’

Halvorsen frowned.

‘Forsman? Who’s he?’

‘The ship’s owner!’

The penny dropped.

‘He came rolling up to the quay in a sort of wheelchair.’

‘Had he injured himself?’

‘He’d had an accident and had to have a leg amputated. But he was determined to go up on deck. He hopped around like a lame bird.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘I think he was accompanied by a Finn, but I can’t remember his name.’

Ana continued questioning him, but he didn’t know anything about Berta or any children. Although it was obviously pointless, Ana couldn’t help asking him about her mother. Had anybody mentioned Elin? The woman who had a daughter who never came back to Sweden?

Halvorsen knew nothing about anybody called Elin.

‘I never spoke to Forsman,’ he said. ‘It was Svartman who did that. I know nothing about what they said about you and Lundmark, his death and your disappearance. I travelled to Spitzbergen and spent the winter there in the belief that I’d be able to hunt down so many furs, I’d be able to afford to buy a little farm somewhere in Trøndelag. All that happened was that I nearly froze to death, was driven mad by the darkness, and completely lost all faith in the God I used to turn to in times of trouble. He doesn’t exist for me any longer. But I think I’ve collected in advance enough forgiveness for all the sins I haven’t yet committed.’

Halvorsen couldn’t help laughing somewhat plaintively. Then he suddenly leaned towards her, so close that the stench of strong drink hit her full in the face.

‘As you are here, I take it you are also for sale. That negress certainly knew what she was doing. But it can never be the same as it is with a white woman. Do you cost as much as she does? Or maybe you charge even more?’

Halvorsen placed a hand on her breast and gave it a squeeze. She was reminded of Carlos’s hairy fingers, and pushed him away. Halvorsen thought it was the start of a game, and felt her again. This time she slapped him hard and shouted for O’Neill.

‘Throw this man out,’ she said. ‘And make sure he’s never allowed back in. Never ever.’

Halvorsen didn’t even have time to protest before O’Neill had pulled him up off the sofa and dragged him out into the street.

The door closed behind him.

Ana thought that the difference between Captain Svartman and Crewman Halvorsen had been ironed out the moment they entered the establishment where women were for sale. But she couldn’t get over the fact that Halvorsen had thought she was a whore. At that moment something ended irrevocably.

61

After Halvorsen’s unexpected visit, Ana began noting things down in her diary more often. What had previously been an occasional activity now became more and more important for her. She wrote down in minute detail absolutely everything about Halvorsen’s visit, and his churlish behaviour.

The day after his visit she went with O’Neill down to the harbour. There were two English ships and one Portuguese berthed at the quay. She had no way of knowing which of the ships Halvorsen was a crew member of. Nor could she work out afterwards why she had made that visit to the quay. Perhaps it was nothing more than curiosity that she had no control over?

During the night a swarm of grasshoppers had descended on Lourenço Marques. Nobody knew where they had come from, nor why they had chosen Lourenço Marques to fall down and die in. There were dead or dying grasshoppers lying all over the place — in the streets, on steps and on roofs. When she walked from the brothel to the harbour, she had the impression that this was what a battlefield looked like: every grasshopper was a wounded or dead soldier.

The only one who seemed to appreciate all these grasshoppers was Carlos, who sat on the roof of Ana’s house feasting on the insects.

That afternoon, when she made her usual visit to Isabel in the fort, she was confronted by an officer she had never seen before. That day she had chosen to take O’Neill with her rather than Judas. Commanding Officer Lima had succumbed to some illness that was probably malaria, and had been taken to hospital. His military adviser had taken over Lima’s place. He introduced himself as Lemuel Gulliver Sullivan. Despite his English name, he spoke fluent Portuguese. He was a young man, and could barely have celebrated his thirtieth birthday. Ana hoped that his youth would contribute to more tolerance and consideration for Isabel than Lima had displayed.

But the moment he started speaking, she realized that what she had hoped for would not, in fact, take place.

‘As long as I am in charge here, stricter rules will be applied,’ he began. ‘Those who are imprisoned in this fort are criminals. Their punishment must be felt. At this very moment I am discussing with my fellow officers about the possibility of reintroducing whipping. Giving miscreants a good walloping has always produced good results.’

Ana thought at first that she had misheard what he said. Was Isabel’s life in her wretched cell going to become even worse than it was already? She said as much, without attempting to conceal her concern.

‘Her crime must be treated extremely strictly,’ said the new commanding officer. ‘The only thing that matters in this case is that she killed a white man. If we don’t clamp down strictly on that, it could be interpreted as a sign that the respect we demand is not total and unconditional.’

Ana could see that it was pointless to try to argue with Sullivan.

‘Are there other regulations that will come into force from now on?’ she asked instead.

‘We shall not permit more than an extremely limited number of visitors.’

‘Who, to be precise?’

‘You, of course. And that priest who keeps turning up and trying to accumulate lost souls. Plus a doctor, should that become necessary. But nobody else.’

‘What about if she should acquire a legal adviser?’

Sullivan burst out laughing and advertised the fact that he was short of quite a large number of teeth, despite his age.

‘Who on earth would want to advise her? And about what?’

Ana asked no more questions. She went down the stairs into the darkness where Isabel was sitting motionless on her bunk bed, looking as if she hadn’t moved since Ana’s visit the previous day. But the basket was empty: Isabel was still alive. She was eating.

‘Somebody will come to visit you,’ said Ana. ‘I think and hope he’s a clever man who might be able to help me to have you set free. He’ll pretend to be a doctor when he enters the fort. As he speaks the same language as you, nobody will be able to understand what the pair of you are saying, not even me.’

Isabel didn’t respond, but Ana had the impression that she was listening.

‘The next time I come I’ll bring you some clean clothes,’ she said. ‘By then it will be three months since you were locked up here. I’ll ask once again for them to give you sufficient water for you to get washed.’

Ana only stayed for a few minutes. The important thing now was not her visits, but whether or not Pandre would be able to change her situation.

On the way back she made a detour via the harbour. When O’Neill wondered why, she snapped at him. She didn’t like him asking questions all the time. She had begun to discover sides of O’Neill she didn’t like. She was annoyed by the way he eavesdropped on her, and, moreover, she had heard that he’d been seen in the company of the owner of another of the town’s brothels. Perhaps she had made a mistake in employing him?

‘What does she do all day?’ he asked. ‘Does she regret her sins? Does she hammer on the cell walls as if they were tom-tom drums? Does she turn up the whites of her eyes?’

Ana stopped dead.

‘One more word from you and you can go away and never come back.’

‘But I’m only asking a few questions.’

‘Not a word. Not a single word. From now on part of your duties is to remain silent.’

O’Neill shrugged, but Ana could see that he had understood the risk he was running.

When they came to the harbour Ana noticed that one of the English ships had left. She suspected that must be the ship that Halvorsen had signed on to as a carpenter.

She had also noted that O’Neill was staring hard at her. When she left the harbour she told him to stay where he was until she had disappeared round the first corner.

A few days later Pandre sent a telegram to say that he was on his way. Ana met him at the newly built railway station. Although Pandre had said in his telegram that he only intended to stay for two days, he had a large number of suitcases, bags and hat boxes with him. Four porters and two trolleys were needed to transport the luggage to the car that she had once again borrowed from Andrade. A horse-drawn carriage was filled with all the luggage for which there was no room in the boot of the car.

They drove to the hotel where, in accordance with the instructions in Pandre’s telegram, Ana had rented the largest suite they had. Ana had been a little worried when she went to the hotel: would they accept Pandre, who was coloured, as a guest? But the hotel manager had assured her that a lawyer of Indian origin would be most welcome. Ana was committed to paying all expenses for Pandre’s visit, and handed over a sum of money to pay for his stay. She began to wonder if Pandre was intentionally doing all he could to squeeze out of her as much money as possible; or was this the way he always lived whenever he left Johannesburg on business?

After Pandre had taken a bath, changed into a newly ironed white linen suit and then spent some time admiring the view, they sat down to eat in the empty dining room.

Dark clouds were gathering over the inland mountains, presaging a storm that would arrive in Lourenço Marques by the evening. Ana told Pandre about her conversation with the new prison governor, and explained that Pandre would only be allowed in if he played the role of a doctor.

‘I don’t have a white coat with me in my luggage, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Being a lawyer doesn’t normally mean that one needs to adopt a disguise.’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary, either.’

‘Tell me more about this man. Officers in the military are often suspicious by their very nature. Will he be able to see through a false doctor?’

‘I don’t know. He introduced himself as Lemuel Gulliver Sullivan. But he spoke fluent Portuguese so I suspect he’s only an Englishman by name.’

Pandre burst out laughing as he rolled a gleaming serviette ring between his fingers.

‘Is that really his name? Lemuel Gulliver Sullivan?’

‘I wrote the name down the moment I got back home.’

‘Was he surrounded by horses?’

‘The soldiers’ horses are stabled in the outskirts of the town. There are only a few goats inside the fort.’

‘I mean his soldiers. Did they look like horses?’

Ana didn’t understand his question. She was immediately on her guard.

‘Why should he be surrounded by horses?’

‘Yes, that’s a good question. Perhaps he was surrounded by unusually small people instead? People who would be able to stand inside this serviette ring as if it were a wine barrel. Or are his soldiers giants?’

He could see that she didn’t understand his references.

‘Lemuel Gulliver is a character in a novel,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’ve never heard of anybody cheeky or conceited enough to call their son after that remarkable fictional character. I take it you don’t know about the books featuring that man?’

‘I run a brothel,’ said Ana. ‘I’m trying to help a woman to get out of prison. I don’t read books.’

‘That sounds reasonable enough,’ said Pandre. ‘I don’t suppose that young commanding officer reads all that many books either. If any at all. But in any case, his father must have read Gulliver’s Travels.’

They ate in silence. Pandre occasionally asked her a question, mainly as a polite indication that he hadn’t retired entirely into his own private thoughts. He asked about the climate, the rainy season, animal life and various tropical illnesses. She answered as best she could, and wondered if he intended to visit her brothel that same evening, to take advantage of the special offer he had asked for and received.

But that wasn’t his plan. After the meal he stood up, bowed and asked to be collected at ten o’clock the following morning. Then he bowed again and left the dining room. Ana paid the bill, and was driven home.

Carlos had come down from the ceiling, replete with all the grasshoppers he had been gobbling. He was lying on her bed, belching contentedly. Ana sat down at her desk, opened her diary, but left it untouched to start with. She thought about the impression that Pandre had made, now that she had spent some time with him, and only then wrote down everything that had happened since he arrived.

One of these days she hoped to be able to read aloud for Isabel everything she had written. The story of the long journey she had undertaken in order to secure Isabel’s liberty.

She knew now how she would conclude her diary: she would note down the date and time when Isabel had been set free.

And she would also write the answer to the question she spent most of her time thinking about: was everything that had happened since the death of Lundmark merely a temporary parenthesis in her life?

The last thing she would write would be about Isabel’s and her own freedom.

She closed the diary, extinguished the paraffin lamp and remained sitting there in the dark. She thought: Isabel is locked up in her disgusting dump. And I’m confined in a different sort of prison.

62

The following day: intense heat.

Pearls of sweat were glinting on Pandre’s brow when he came out of his hotel and stepped into the car. He was carrying a leather briefcase. It occurred to Ana that it could very well have contained a stethoscope and other instruments that a doctor would need.

Lemuel Gulliver Sullivan was waiting for them on the steps, just as his sick predecessor had always done. Ana thought he looked like a little boy in a uniform that was too big for him and boots that were far too shiny.

She introduced Pandre.

‘Here is the doctor I spoke about with your predecessor — I assume he told you Herr Pandre would be coming?

The commanding officer nodded, but he regarded Pandre with undisguised antipathy.

‘I thought I had better come with you,’ he said, ‘and listen to the doctor’s conversation with his imprisoned patient.’

‘The conversation will take place in the patient’s own language,’ said Pandre in a friendly tone of voice. ‘That is purely in order that she can describe her aches and pains properly, so that I can ask the right questions and give answers that are clear to her.’

‘I’ll come with you in any case,’ said the governor. ‘I’m interested to see if you can persuade her to talk at all. So far she hasn’t uttered a word. Perhaps she was born without any vocal cords? I don’t even know if her voice is low or high-pitched.’

‘It’s low,’ said Ana. ‘I shall understand what they say to each other in her native tongue. I can translate for you.’

Pandre looked fleetingly at her. He understood what she was intending to do, and regarded her for the first time with genuine approval.

They walked down the stone steps to the fort’s basement. A half-asleep soldier quickly straightened his back, saluted and began to raise the grating in front of the iron door. The commanding officer turned to Pandre.

‘I assume that you don’t have a gun in your briefcase,’ he said. ‘Whether it’s to shoot the prisoner dead or to set her free.’

Pandre opened the briefcase and took out the stethoscope Ana had imagined might be inside it. How on earth had he managed to get hold of that? He’s prepared himself well, she thought. Perhaps he’s the right man to help Isabel after all.

They stepped into the dark basement where the musty air was motionless. An unshaven, half-naked white man was shaking in his cell as they passed by.

‘He’s going to be moved to a lunatic asylum,’ said the commanding officer. ‘He is convinced he has a large insect in his stomach that is eating him up from the inside. He beat a man to death because he refused to listen to him going on about the insect’s insatiable hunger.’

Pandre listened attentively and politely to what the officer had to say. He doesn’t seem to be affected by the musty air, Ana thought. Perhaps there are similar prisons in the town and the country where he comes from.

They passed by another cell where a man was lying asleep, stretched out on the floor, gasping for air.

‘He’s a Spaniard by the name of Mendoza,’ said the commanding officer as he continued to guide them through the darkness. ‘He killed his brother on a coaster, and now he’s trying to punish himself by refusing to eat. He ought to go to the asylum as well, but they refuse to accept him. I expect him to die within the next few days. Some of my soldiers are placing bets on how long he will live. I don’t like that, but there’s not much I can do about it.’

They entered Isabel’s cell. Ana noted that the basket was empty. Isabel was sitting motionless on her bunk.

‘You have a visitor,’ roared the commanding officer.

Isabel didn’t react. Pandre nudged the officer’s arm to indicate that he shouldn’t yell at her again, then went up to Isabel and sat down beside her. Ana stood by the side of the bunk, while the officer remained in the half-open doorway. Ana had no idea of what Pandre was saying to Isabel, but Isabel bucked up the moment the lawyer started speaking to her, and answered his questions in her own language.

The commanding officer rattled his sabre impatiently. Ana took a step closer to him and began to tell him the story she was making up as she spoke.

‘They’re talking about her children,’ she said. ‘They are discussing her great sorrow at having been deceived by her husband, and her regret for what she has done. She’s telling him how much she wants to leave this dump of a prison and start work in one of the white missionary stations, spreading the true faith among the black population.’

Ana tried her hardest to imbue the story she was making up with as much conviction as she could possibly muster. The commanding officer listened in stony silence. He’s not really interested, she thought. Isabel means nothing to him. It doesn’t matter to him if she lives or dies. He only came along with us because he was bored stiff.

She continued to elaborate on her story while Pandre and Isabel spoke quietly to each other. When the conversation was over — and it stopped suddenly, as if absolutely everything had now been said — Ana rounded off her account by repeating what she had said about Isabel’s longing to devote her life to a Christian missionary station.

When they returned to the hotel they sat down in the shade of some frangipani trees and gazed out over the sea. Pandre had said nothing in the car after saying a polite goodbye to the commanding officer. Now he swayed slowly back and forth in the garden hammock, a glass of iced water in his hand.

‘Isabel is ready to die if she has to,’ he said. ‘She will die rather than admit to any guilt. Her silence is due to her dignity. Her soul. She kept repeating that word over and over again. “It’s all about my soul.”’

‘Doesn’t she want to live for the sake of her children?’

‘Of course she wants to live. Perhaps she might be able to escape. But if her only way out is to admit to being guilty, she would rather die.’

Pandre continued rocking back and forth, gazing out to sea. He stretched out the hand in which he held the glass of water and pointed at the horizon.

‘That’s India over there,’ he said. ‘Thirty years ago my parents came to Africa from there. Perhaps I or my children will go back one of these days.’

‘Why did your parents come to Africa?’

‘My father sold pigeons,’ Pandre said. ‘He heard that there were a lot of white people in southern Africa who were prepared to pay large sums of money for beautiful pigeons. My father had learnt how to glue extra tail feathers on to his pigeons so as to get a higher price for them.’

He looked at Ana with a smile.

‘My father was a confidence trickster,’ he said. ‘That’s probably why I have become his opposite.’

He put down the glass of water.

‘I can’t really give you any advice,’ he said. ‘The only thing that can save her is if she can escape. Perhaps the commanding officer can be bribed? Perhaps one of the soldiers can be persuaded to leave her cell door open one evening? I’m afraid I can’t suggest anything else. But as you have plenty of money, you have access to the one thing that might be able to get her free. I simply don’t know how best you can use your money in this particular case.’

‘I’ll do anything to get her out of that prison.’

‘I suppose that’s what I’m suggesting. That you do anything at all you can.’

Pandre took an envelope out of his inside pocket and gave it to Ana.

‘Here is my bill,’ he said. ‘I’m intending to visit your women tonight. I’d like to be picked up from here at nine o’clock. I’ll have dinner alone in my room.’

He stood up, bowed and walked over to the white hotel building. Ana stayed where she was, thinking over what Pandre had said. She knew that he was right. Isabel was trying to choose between dying and saving her soul.

Is that what I’m doing as well? she asked herself. Or has the possibility of choosing already passed?

She remained sitting there until the sun set. Then she went home, changed her clothes and went to pick up Pandre at nine o’clock. He was now wearing a dark suit with a high stiff collar, and smelled of a perfume Ana had never before come across on a man.

‘That stethoscope,’ she said when they were sitting in the car. ‘Where did you get it from?’

‘I made my preparations,’ said Pandre. ‘Before I was picked up I paid a short visit to the hospital. A friendly doctor let me have an old stethoscope very cheaply.’

They sat in silence for the rest of the journey.

When they arrived at O Paraiso, Pandre sat down on one of the red sofas, was served a glass of sherry, and then started to assess the women carefully, one by one.

Ana sat down on a chair in a corner of the room, and watched him from a distance. She still hadn’t opened the bill he’d given her. They had agreed earlier on £100, but she suspected Pandre would have added considerable extra costs that she would have to pay him.

She observed Pandre and his critical eyes.

Isabel’s dump of a prison seemed very close by. A chain round Isabel’s leg chafed and rattled quietly somewhere deep down inside Ana.

63

When Pandre eventually chose the woman he wanted to be with, and pointed at her as if he were selecting an animal for slaughter, all present were surprised to find that his finger was aimed at the pale and almost repulsive A Magrinha. Ana thought at first that it was Felicia he had selected, as she was standing next to A Magrinha. But when she saw Pandre stand up and bow in front of the extremely thin woman that hardly any of the customers ever chose, there was no doubt about it. She was astonished; but if there was one thing she had learnt during the time she spent in the brothel, it was that the desires of men and their views on what was tempting were impossible to predict. It also occurred to her, not without a degree of satisfaction, that Pandre’s selection of A Magrinha meant that the cost of his visit had decreased because A Magrinha was a net loss to the brothel rather than making any money for it. Perhaps the time had now come to have one final talk with her, ask Herr Eber to pay her enough money for a vegetable stall in one of the town’s markets for the blacks, and then to send her packing once and for all.

But she got no further in her thoughts before something unexpected happened and distracted her. There were rather a lot of clients in the brothel that evening, crowded round the little bar in one corner of the room with their glasses and cigars, and as Pandre was on his way with A Magrinha to her room a tall, well-built man suddenly stepped in front of them and blocked the way. O’Neill, who could always sense when danger was in the air, got up from his seat next to the door. Ana did the same. The man standing in front of Pandre was called Rocha, a person with an Italian father and a Portuguese mother. He worked in the colonial administration, in charge of the maintenance of roads and sewers, and visited the brothel every week. He was usually well behaved, but he occasionally lost his temper when he had been drinking too much. When that happened he would be escorted off the premises before he could cause any damage.

Ana suspected instinctively that something very serious was about to happen. Rocha pushed A Magrinha to one side and began speaking to Pandre in broken English.

‘I have choosed her to spend the evening with me,’ said Rocha.

‘I find that very hard to believe,’ said Pandre, without losing his friendly smile.

‘To say as it is, all the women have already clients for the evening. You come too late.’

Ana had approached close enough to hear the brief conversation, and knew immediately what it meant. She had noticed how many of the white customers had reacted when a coloured man entered the brothel. It had never happened before during her time in charge, although Senhor Vaz had told her how he very occasionally made an exception for influential Indians from Durban or Johannesburg. As nobody had protested openly, she thought that the complaints would come directly to her later, after Pandre had left the brothel. That somebody might ask her what she meant by allowing such a person in when all the other customers were white, and that she would reply that she was the one who decided whether anybody should be turned away or not. She knew that they wouldn’t like it, no matter how much she stressed that it was an exception.

All conversation had ceased, everybody was looking at the two men and the girl, who hardly knew what was happening around her.

‘Is there a problem?’ Ana asked.

‘Not really,’ said Pandre. ‘It’s just that this man is standing in our way. We were just about to withdraw.’

‘He has stolen the woman I have picked for this evening,’ said Rocha.

He spoke Portuguese to Ana. When he started to translate, Pandre raised his hand to stop him. He had understood everything that was said.

Rocha pulled A Magrinha roughly to his side, as if to underline what he had said. In a flash Pandre took her back again — but before either Rocha or Ana had time to react, A Magrinha had snapped out of her trance-like state. She pushed Pandre to one side and stood next to Rocha.

‘He is going to be with me tonight,’ she said. ‘Not that brown man.’

Pandre’s smile vanished. It was as if a flame had been blown out. He turned to Ana. She could see that he was furious.

‘I insist that I have made my choice,’ he almost snarled.

‘That’s my impression too,’ said Ana, turning to A Magrinha and gesturing that she should go back to Pandre.

‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘He’s brown.’

‘And you are black,’ said Ana. ‘I’m white. And I’m the one who decides what you’re going to do.’

‘No,’ said A Magrinha. ‘I’m not going to get undressed for him.’

Rocha smiled. O’Neill had moved closer as it looked as if blows were about to be exchanged. But Pandre gave up. Ana knew that he was not accepting defeat, he was still furious: but he could see that things could become very nasty, and he wanted to avoid that.

‘I’m going back to my hotel,’ he said. ‘I assume that the payment for my services will have arrived before I leave Lourenço Marques around noon tomorrow.’

He bowed, then hastily left the establishment, followed by O’Neill. The men clustered round the bar applauded approvingly. Rocha pushed A Magrinha away contemptuously, and she flopped down on to a sofa. Ana could see that right now she hated the place she found herself in — more than ever before.

When Ana heard the car’s engine start, she went out into the street. O’Neill was standing there, smoking.

‘That man should never have come here,’ he said. ‘It’s none of my business, of course. But if you let the likes of him come in, you’ll soon find that all the other customers disappear.’

Ana didn’t respond. She knew that she ought to go in and order Rocha to leave the premises, but instead she crossed over the street and went into a little bar run by two Portuguese brothers. One was small and fat, the other a hunchback. The bar was cramped. It contained a wooden counter, a few tables in the dark corners, and a number of street walkers who divided their time between parading up and down outside and having drinks bought for them in the dark interior of the bar. Ana asked the hunchbacked brother for a glass of cognac, emptied it rapidly and ordered another. She recognized one of the women lurking in the shadows. She had frequently asked to joined Ana’s brothel, but been rejected by the other women because she had a reputation for stealing. She was also in the habit of punishing customers who didn’t treat her well by poisoning them with magic potions. The poison didn’t kill them, but rendered the men impotent for a considerable length of time.

When Ana saw that the woman was coming towards her, she gestured with her hand that she should keep her distance, put money on the counter to pay for her drinks, and went back out into the street.

The night sky was clear. She thought about her father and the evenings when he used to show her the constellations he was so familiar with. She waited there in the street until the car returned from Pandre’s hotel, and just before clambering in she turned to O’Neill.

‘Tell the women I want to see them all at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘They’ll be asleep then.’

‘No, they won’t,’ said Ana. ‘They will be awake, washed and dressed. At seven o’clock tomorrow morning I want to see them gathered around the jacaranda tree.’

‘I shall be there.’

‘I want to talk to the women, not to you. You will not be there.’

She closed the car door. She could see through the rear window that O’Neill was standing with an unlit cigarette in his hand, watching the car leave.

Carlos spent that night lying asleep, looking like a hairy ball, in the bed beside Ana. He touched her arms now and then in his sleep, as if he were climbing. As he didn’t whimper at all she assumed that meant he wasn’t having nightmares. If indeed apes had dreams like humans did. She wasn’t sure, but perhaps by now Carlos had moved sufficiently far away from his life as an ape. She had the impression that more and more often he was having dreams that scared him. Ana herself lay awake, dozing off briefly now and again, but most of the time rehearsing for the meeting tomorrow morning. She needed to prepare them for the difficulties which were going to get worse for as long as she continued trying to secure the release of Isabel. She would tell them that she had no intention of giving up, no matter what problems that might cause. But at the same time she wanted to know what they thought about it all. Did they understand Isabel’s situation? Was there any desire to help her?

During the night Ana got out of bed now and then — quietly in order not to wake Carlos up, even if she was never sure if he was only pretending to be asleep. She leafed through her well-thumbed and shabby Portuguese dictionary in an attempt to find the right words to express what she wanted to say the next morning. She went out on to the veranda in the warm night air. The guards were asleep beside their fires, a solitary dog trotted past without a sound in the street below. From the sea she could see the twinkling lights of ships waiting for high tide so that at dawn they could progress into the harbour and berth.

One of these days I’ll go down to the quayside as well, she thought. With a life newly shattered, in an attempt to mend it. That’s what brought me here. Soon it must also lead me on to the next stage, even if I don’t yet know where my destination will be.

64

Everybody was already there when Ana arrived at the brothel the next morning. On the way, she had stopped at Pandre’s hotel and handed over an envelope sealed with sealing wax to the half-awake manager. It contained the money Pandre had asked for. As she left the hotel, she wondered if she would ever see him again. She didn’t really know anything about him, apart from the fact that his father was a confidence trickster who used to glue false tail feathers on to pigeons.

There was no sign of O’Neill when Ana entered the brothel for the early-morning meeting. A chair had been placed under the jacaranda tree for her. To her surprise it was Felicia who started talking the moment she sat down. It became obvious to Ana that the women had prepared for the meeting in advance, perhaps just as thoroughly as she had.

Felicia spoke on behalf of them all.

‘We know that Senhora Ana is trying to help Isabel. That is something that surprises us, and we respect you for it. No white man would do that. Probably no other white woman either. But we are also aware that your doing so is causing difficulties for us. We are getting fewer customers, and the ones that do come are not as generous as they were before. We’ve also noticed that they sometimes treat us more roughly than they used to. The word in town is that men are choosing to go to different establishments with different women, as a protest against what you are doing to help Isabel. That means that we are earning less — if it goes on like this we shall soon have no customers at all. In other words, this place would lose altogether the good reputation it used to have.’

Felicia had spoken as if she were reading from a script. Ana knew she was right. The number of customers had indeed gone down — at first only slightly, but lately much more noticeably. Herr Eber was worried and had shown her a graph illustrating how income was falling — not exactly over a precipice, but down a hill that was growing steeper and steeper.

Nevertheless, Ana was both annoyed and disappointed by what Felicia had said. She had hoped for approval and support for her efforts to get Isabel released. She found herself feeling contempt for these black women who sold their bodies without a second thought. All that mattered to them was their income.

She realized immediately that the thought was unfair. She was the one who earned more than anybody else from the activities of the brothel. She was the one who could afford to spend time and money on attempts to help Isabel. She was the one who had the means to bring Pandre to Lourenço Marques from abroad, and she was the one who might eventually be able to bribe somebody to allow Isabel to escape.

But what Felicia had said continued to annoy her. Even during the time when Senhor Vaz was alive, the women in his establishment had earned much more than those in any of the town’s other brothels.

‘The difference in earnings can’t be all that great,’ said Ana. ‘Is there really anybody among you who has cause for complaint?’

Ana noticed that her voice was tense. She wanted them to be aware of her anger.

None of the women spoke. They all stared into space. Nobody reacted even when two orange-sellers in the street outside started quarrelling. The women were normally more interested in fights or noisy quarrels outside the brothel than almost anything else.

‘I want to know,’ said Ana. ‘Is there anybody who has noticed a significant fall in earnings?’

Still nobody spoke — but then, as if in response to an invisible sign, all of them raised their hands.

Ana stood up. She felt she couldn’t bear this any longer.

‘I shall personally pay each of you however much you think you have lost as a result of my helping Isabel,’ she shouted. ‘Come to me every month with bills for what you would have earned from customers who haven’t shown up. I shall pay them. I shall become your new customer!’

Ana stormed out of the brothel without looking back, and was driven straight back to her house. She sat for ages in front of her open diary without actually writing anything. She didn’t yet know how to deal with her big disappointment.

After a while, she went over to a window and looked out over the sea. Small fishing boats with triangular sails were scudding along over the waves, making the most of a fresh following wind. Carlos had climbed up on to the roof and was sitting on the edge of the chimney with an orange in his hands.

Ana was just about to leave the window when she noticed a black man standing in the street down below, looking up at her. She had never seen him before. He was strongly built, and wearing what looked like overalls. When he noticed that she had seen him, he turned round and walked away. She shouted for Julietta.

‘Have you seen a black man standing in the street, looking up at my house?’

‘No,’ said Julietta.

‘I’ve just seen one down below, looking up.’

‘I don’t know who it could have been. But I can ask.’

By the time Ana got into the car that afternoon to be driven down to the fort, Julietta had still not managed to find out the identity of the man in the street. Nobody seemed to have seen him. Ana began to wonder if she’d imagined it.

Sullivan was standing on the steps waiting for her when she arrived.

‘The prisoner was injured last night,’ he said, off-handedly as if it didn’t concern him.

At first Ana didn’t understand what he meant.

‘The woman for whom you bring food was injured during the night.’

‘What happened?’

‘Somebody tried to kill her. But failed. It’s also possible that it was only somebody trying to disfigure her, to make a mess of her face.’

‘How could that happen?’

‘We are investigating the circumstances.’

Ana didn’t wait to hear what else Sullivan had to say. She ran across the open courtyard with the grassy patch where goats were grazing. A soldier had already raised the grating when he saw her come in through the front gate. Ana raced along the dark corridor. The door to Isabel’s cell was standing open. For once she wasn’t sitting on the bunk, but lying down. Ana sat down on the stone floor next to the bunk. Blood was running from one of Isabel’s cheeks and her mouth. It was obvious that she had been slashed with a knife.

Sullivan had followed her down to the cell.

‘Maybe you should fetch that Indian doctor,’ he said.

Ana had the distinct impression that Sullivan knew Pandre was not at all what he had pretended to be, but just now was not the time to start wondering about what Sullivan knew or didn’t know. He could think whatever he liked.

‘He’s already left,’ she said. ‘Why can’t the fort summon a doctor?’

‘He’s on his way,’ said Sullivan. ‘But he had to deliver a baby first. Life always takes precedence over death.’

‘Not always,’ said Ana. ‘I think that life and death are equally important. Isabel might die if she doesn’t get medical treatment.’

The doctor who eventually arrived turned out to be an extremely deaf old Portuguese man who had lived in Africa for over fifty years. He surprised Ana by stitching up the gaping wound with admirable skill, and covering it with cotton wool.

‘Will she survive?’ Ana asked.

‘Of course she’ll survive,’ said the doctor. ‘She’ll have a scar. But that’s all.’

‘Did whoever attacked her want to kill her, or just to injure her?’

She had to shout loudly into the doctor’s ear in order for him to understand.

‘Both intentions are possible,’ he said, ‘but the probability is that he wasn’t trying to kill her. To do that all he’d have needed to do was to slash her a bit lower down, over her throat, and a bit deeper. A sharp knife across a victim’s throat can kill in less than a minute.’

Ana stayed with Isabel. She couldn’t be sure how much pain the patient was in. They shared the silence and listened to each other’s breathing. Ana watched an insect creeping incredibly slowly over one of the cell walls.

‘Who could have got access to her?’ Ana asked.

‘To be absolutely honest,’ said Sullivan, ‘I just don’t know. But I can promise you that we shall get to the bottom of this. I don’t want a prisoner for whom I’m responsible to be killed.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes,’ said Sullivan. ‘It certainly is true. I don’t care about her — I think she ought to be hanged or shot. But nobody is going to sneak into one of my cells and kill her, and get away with it.’

That evening, when Ana returned to her house and was about to draw the curtains in her bedroom, she once again saw the black man in overalls standing in the street below.

Not long afterwards, she peered out through a gap in the curtains.

The man was still there.

He’s waiting for me, she thought. There’s something he wants from me.

She went down the stairs, carefully opened the front door and passed by the guards. She was possessed by an overwhelming desire to push them into the fire for falling asleep instead of standing guard over the entrance to her house, but instead she opened the gate leading into the street. The man was still there, on the other side. She was carrying a candle, and walked over to him.

‘I’m Moses,’ he said. ‘Isabel’s brother. I’ve come from the mines to set her free and take her away with me.’

His eyes were completely calm. In some strange way he reminded her of her father.

65

Two fires were already burning where the guards were curled up asleep. But Moses lit a third one at the back of the house where Ana had arranged for a vegetable garden to be created, and planted some orange and lime trees. For the first time since she arrived in Lourenço Marques she found herself with an African who treated her as an equal. There was no trace in him of the false subservience the blacks felt obliged to assume. Moses looked her in the eye when he spoke to her. And this was the first time a black man had sat down on a chair in her presence. The norm was always for her to sit down while the black man she was speaking to remained standing. Ana Dolores had made that clear to her from the very start.

She put it to him straight out: why was he so different from all the others?

‘Why shouldn’t I look you in the eye?’ Moses replied. ‘You can’t hate or despise blacks or you wouldn’t be trying to help my sister. And so you are an unusual person as far as I am concerned.’

‘What do you do down the mines? Do you dig for coal?’

‘Diamonds. But of course, there is also coal there. It’s the same stuff, after all.’

Ana didn’t know about the connection between diamonds and coal, and so she didn’t understand his comment.

‘You make fires with coal. You wear diamonds on your fingers. How can they be the same thing?’

‘Really old coal develops into diamonds,’ said Moses. ‘One day perhaps I can explain it to you properly — all about the stuff we take out of the ground in the Rand.’

Ana said that she knew who he was and where he worked — but wondered how he knew who she was. Has Isabel told him about her?

‘I know what I know,’ was all he said in response. He gave her no further explanation, but instead embarked on a description of life in the mines, without her having asked about it.

‘The whites who’ve landed on our coasts have always turned most of their attention to looking for what is hidden under the soil,’ said Moses. ‘That’s why we Africans find it so hard to understand you. How can anybody travel so far and be prepared to risk dying of fever or snake bites, simply in order to look for things that are hidden under the ground? Of course, a lot of hunters come here as well. Others are running away from harassment they suffer in their homelands — what we don’t understand is why they come here and choose to live a life harassing us. White people are basically incomprehensible — but for that reason we find it easy to understand them because we know what they are after. But they don’t even do the digging themselves: they force us to do it. The whites have transformed us blacks into servants in the underworld. One day it will all come to an end, just as the sources of gold and diamonds will wither away.’

‘What will you do when your sister is free again?’ Ana asked.

‘I’m thinking of using those underground tunnels I know so well to protect my sister and her children. That’s where I shall take them to once she has escaped. Moving into another country, passing over a border that the whites have established, that doesn’t mean a thing. All the borders you have made are nothing more than lines in our red soil — they could have been drawn by children using sticks.’

He stopped, and watched the fire dying out. It seemed to Ana that he had made a fire that would only burn for as long as he had something to say to her. Once the embers were no longer glowing, he stood up and left. His last words were that they would meet at the fort the following day.

Ana went back to her bedroom. Carlos woke up when she lay down in bed, and stretched his hand out towards her. But just now she didn’t want an ape in bed beside her. Not just after having met and talked to the man known as Moses. She smacked Carlos — not hard, but enough to signal to him that he should move to the ceiling light. With a sigh and an irritated grunt, Carlos leapt up and lay down in the dish-shaped lampshade, one arm hanging down towards the bed.

She got up early next morning, sat for a long time in front of the mirror contemplating her face and thinking how she could barely contain herself until she met Moses again. To her surprise she found herself thinking an unheard-of thought: Moses was a man she could imagine herself becoming close to. She put her hand over her mouth, as if she had cried out in horror.

The person I can see in the mirror is somebody else, she thought. Or somebody I have become without realizing it.

A few hours later, when she had forced herself to go through Herr Eber’s accounts in order to try and understand the claims about reduced income, Julietta announced that Father Leopoldo had come to visit her. Ana was immediately worried that something might have happened to Isabel. She ran down the stairs to meet him. But Father Leopoldo was able to calm her down. The old doctor had stitched up the wound very well, and the cotton wool was protecting her skin and preventing dirt from entering it.

‘I’ve only come to say that I’m continuing with my attempts to talk to her,’ he said when they had sat down in the shade on the veranda and Julietta had served tea.

‘But she’s still silent, is she?’

‘She doesn’t say a word. But she listens.’

‘Can you be sure of that?’

‘I can see that she’s listening.’

‘I know it’s none of my business, but what are you trying to talk to her about?’

‘I’m trying to persuade her to confess to her terrible sin, and submit her soul to God. He will pass judgement on her, but His judgement will be mild if she confesses and submits to His will.’

Ana looked at Father Leopoldo in surprise. He really believes what he says, she thought. For him, God is someone who hands out punishment — the same God that my grandmother in Funäsdalen used to talk about. He believes in the same hell that she did. He’s not like me. I don’t believe in hell, but I’m frightened of it all the same. If there is a hell, it is here on earth.

God is white, Ana thought. I suppose I’ve always thought that, but never so clearly as I do now.

She wanted to conclude the conversation.

‘This is the first time you’ve been to visit me,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe that you have only come to inform me that Isabel still isn’t saying anything. I know that already, because I visit her every day.’

‘I’ve also come to tell you that the plaster and rendering in one corner of the cathedral is falling off and needs repairing.’

‘I’m not a plasterer.’

‘We are going to need voluntary donations so that we can carry out repairs as soon as possible, before the damage gets any worse. We can’t wait for the Church authorities in Lisbon to pass resolutions to assist us.’

Ana nodded. She promised to make a donation despite the fact that it felt humiliating to discover that this was the real reason for Father Leopoldo’s visit. She no longer regarded him as a priest, but as a beggar pestering her.

He stood up, as if he were in a hurry to leave. Ana rang her bell and instructed Julietta to escort him out. She thought about her father’s words, to the effect that priests should be kicked out into the snow in bare feet. He wouldn’t have liked Father Leopoldo, she thought — but I would still have been a mucky little angel as far as he was concerned.

Ana avoided visiting the brothel that day. She sent Julietta there with a message to O’Neill saying that he would be responsible for what happened there until her next visit, but at the end she implied that she might well turn up before the end of the day despite everything. Senhor Vaz had taught her that everybody in the brothel needed to be kept on tenterhooks, suspecting that checks might be made at any time of day or night.

After the meeting with Father Leopoldo, Ana sacked one of the night security guards who had been asleep on duty. He pleaded in vain to keep his job. He had been ill, he said; he’d had a fever, his mother had had an accident, several of his children were in difficulties — that was why he had fallen asleep. Ana knew full well that nothing he said was true, it was a ritual from start to finish. But she allowed him to fetch his brother and appointed him as a night security guard instead, warning him that she would check up every night to make sure that he was awake.

After her afternoon siesta, when she had lain in bed unable to sleep, fanning herself, she was driven down to the fort. Carlos was sitting on the chimney when she left. She had realized that he was changing in some way, although it was not clear how. Perhaps I see Carlos as a reflection of myself, she thought. Something is happening, something with vital implications for my life. And hence also for Carlos’s future.

66

Moses was waiting in the shade of the wall surrounding the fort. Ana got out of the car and walked over to him. Moses selected a place where they could stand without being seen, and gave her a small leather pouch.

‘What’s this?’

‘The crushed shell of a special snail that lives off the Inhambane coast. Plus dried blossom from a tree that only blossoms once every nineteen years.’

‘Surely there aren’t any such trees?’

He looked offended, and she regretted what she had said.

‘What do you want me to do with this?’

‘Give it to Isabel. Say it’s from me. She should eat it.’

‘Why should she eat flowers?’

‘They’ll give her wings, like a butterfly’s. She’ll then be able to fly out of the prison. I’ll meet her and take her and her children to the tunnels in my mine. All that will be left in the cell is the leather pouch, and it will slowly rot away with a whispering noise.’

‘What? Can a leather pouch whisper?’

‘This one can: it will tell the story of Isabel and her new life for anybody who wants to listen.’

‘It sounds like a fairy tale you tell to small children.’

‘But what I’m telling you is the truth.’

Ana could see that Moses was serious. The person standing in front of her was no small child, and as far as he was concerned what he said was the truth, and nothing but the truth. Ana thought he looked very much like Isabel, you could see they were brother and sister, especially in his eyes and the high forehead.

‘I’ll give it to her,’ said Ana, putting the pouch into the basket with the food. ‘Does she know what to do with it?’

‘Yes, she knows.’

‘And you really believe that she will grow wings?’

Moses took a step backwards, as if he no longer wanted to be too close to her. Then he turned on his heel without answering, and left. Ana remained where she was, hesitating. She put down the basket, took out the leather pouch and opened it. It was half full of a bluish-white powder that glittered when the sun’s rays fell on it.

I’m taking part in a strange game, she thought. How can wings suddenly grow on a human being’s back? If my father had given me these ground snail shells and flowers, would he then have been able to watch me flying off over the river and up into the mountains?

She tied the pouch again. There’s a lot I don’t understand, she thought. The wings are something that only Moses and Isabel can relate to. For me they are both laughable and deeply serious at one and the same time.

She went into the fort through the entrance doors. Sullivan was waiting for her on the steps as usual. Today, he was wearing his white dress uniform. He was holding his pipe in one hand. It had gone out. She asked if he had managed to throw any light on who was responsible for the attack on Isabel.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I can’t believe that we won’t be able to work out who did it.’

‘One of the soldiers?’

‘Who would take the risk? I would send the guilty man back home, and doing one’s military service in a penal settlement in Portugal is something every sensible soldier is scared stiff of.’

‘But who could get past the guards?’

‘That’s precisely what we are looking into. This is a small town. It will be difficult to hide away the truth about what happened.’

I’ll never get an answer, Ana thought. For all I know the man I’m talking to now could be the one who slashed her face.

She left the commanding officer and went down to the cells. She sat down beside Isabel. The basket from the previous day wasn’t completely empty: she had eaten, but not very much.

‘This pouch is from Moses,’ Ana said. ‘He wants you to swallow the contents so that you can escape.’

For the first time Isabel took hold of Ana’s hand. She squeezed the leather pouch hard, and for a brief moment leaned her head on Ana’s shoulder.

‘Go now,’ she said in a voice that was hoarse from lack of use. ‘I don’t have much time left.’

Ana left the darkness and came out again into the bright sunshine. Some black men were busy polishing the statue of a knight that had arrived on a ship from Lisbon, and would soon be put on display in one of the town’s squares. The goats were standing motionless in a shady corner of the walled courtyard.

Ana was driven back home. She had hoped that Moses would be waiting for her outside the fort, but he wasn’t there.

The next day, when she was woken up at dawn by Carlos kicking the quilt off the bed, she discovered that Moses was standing in the street below, staring up at her window. She hurried down the stairs and out into the street. The night guards had woken up, put out their fires and were getting washed at a pump at the rear of the house.

Moses was holding a spade in his hand.

‘It didn’t work,’ he said. ‘She’s still locked up inside the fort.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know. She knows. There are too many white people around her, scaring away the spirits. And so I’m going to start digging today, so that I can get in under the wall. It will take longer than if she had been able to fly out, but we are patient.’

‘Where are you going to start digging? Do you really think it’s possible?’

‘It must be possible!’

‘Can you really do it, all by yourself? Even if you are a miner and used to digging.’

Moses didn’t answer. He merely turned on his heel and began walking quickly down the hill towards the fort.

Ana stayed where she was, even though she was wearing nothing but a dressing gown. It was only when the night guards came out of the courtyard and set off for home that she went back indoors. No matter what Moses and Isabel believed about butterflies’ wings, she was the only one who could help Isabel. She lay down on her bed again, and didn’t get up until she had made up her mind what to do. She got dressed, and gathered together most of the money she had in Senhor Vaz’s drawers and safes. She filled a large laundry basket with it, and was helped by Julietta to carry it down to the car when it was time for her to visit Isabel.

‘Is she going to eat that much food?’ asked Julietta inquisitively.

‘You ask far too many questions,’ said Ana sternly. ‘I haven’t the strength to answer them all. You must learn to keep quiet. Besides, this is a laundry basket, not something you carry food in.’

The chauffeur helped her to carry the basket into the fort. Sullivan was waiting for her as usual, this time wearing his ordinary uniform.

‘I want to talk to you in private,’ said Ana. ‘And I need help to carry in this basket.’

Sullivan looked at her in surprise. Then he shouted for two soldiers who carried the basket into his office. Ana followed them, and closed the door when they had left. The basket with the money was covered by an oriental quilt that Senhor Vaz had been given by a customer who didn’t have enough cash.

Sullivan sat down at his dark brown desk and pointed at a visitor’s chair.

‘You want to speak to me?’

‘I’ll come straight to the point. Isabel won’t survive if she stays here. So I’m prepared to give you this basket of money if you can arrange for her to be given the opportunity to escape.’

She stood up and removed the quilt, exposing the money in bundles of notes that filled the whole basket. Sullivan contemplated the contents of the basket.

‘It’s all I have,’ said Ana. ‘And of course, I promise never to mention this money to anybody. I want only one thing, and that is for Isabel to be set free.’

Sullivan sat down behind his desk again. His face was totally expressionless.

‘Why does she mean so much to you?’

‘I saw what happened. I know why she did it. I would have done the same thing. But I have never been locked up inside an underground hellhole. Because I am white.’

Sullivan nodded without saying anything. The goats could be heard bleating in the courtyard. Ana waited.

There was a long pause before he spoke. In the end he turned to look at her. He smiled.

‘It sounds like an excellent idea,’ he said. ‘I’m not impossible to do business with. But the money isn’t enough.’

‘I don’t have any more.’

‘It’s not money I want.’

Ana assumed Sullivan had the same desire as Pandre.

‘You are of course welcome to visit my establishment whenever you like,’ she said. ‘Without needing to pay.’

‘You still don’t know what I mean,’ said Sullivan. ‘You’re absolutely right to think that I’m intending to visit your place and all the beautiful women who are so tempting to your customers. But I shall expect it to be you who accompanies me to a room and stays there with me all night. Nobody else will do. I want the woman no other customer could have.’

Ana had no doubt that he meant what he said. Nor would he allow himself to be persuaded to accept any of the other women. He had made up his mind.

‘The money can stay here until you have made your decision,’ he said. ‘I guarantee that nobody will steal anything. I’ll give you until tomorrow to decide.’

He stood up, bowed and opened the door for her. As he passed her he stroked his gloved hand gently over her cheek. She shuddered.

Ana’s visit to Isabel that day was very short. Late that evening, when Carlos was already asleep, she made her decision. For once in her life, she would sell herself.

Once it was over she would be able to go away at last. To leave this hell on earth that her mother had never taught her anything about. She would vanish from this town where she had once gone ashore without knowing what she was letting herself in for when she walked down that confounded gangplank.

67

In order to sleep she took a large dose of the chloral sleeping tablets Senhor Vaz used to use. She slept restlessly, but she did sleep.

All of a sudden, she was awake. She opened her eyes and found herself looking straight into O’Neill’s unshaven and glistening face. His eyes were open wide, and bloodshot.

It was daybreak. Light crept in between the half-open curtains. O’Neill had a knife in one hand, and it was covered in blood. She thought at first that she had been the victim, but she could feel no pain. Confusion and terrified thoughts whirled around in her brain. Where was Carlos? Why hadn’t he protected her? Then she saw that he was lying on the floor next to her bed, with blood on the part of his face that wasn’t covered in hair. She couldn’t make out if Carlos was dead or seriously injured. She now had a vague memory of hearing Carlos shout out while she was asleep — was that the sound that had lifted her into consciousness?

Once she had established that she wasn’t injured, she realized that O’Neill was scared. Against whom had he used that knife? The sleeping night guards? Julietta? She tried to force herself to be calm, and slowly dragged herself up so that she was half sitting, leaning back on the pillows. O’Neill pulled open the curtains so that the last of the darkness disappeared. He seemed to be in a hurry. That increased her worries, as it could only mean that he had done something he needed to run away from, as fast as he possibly could.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, as calmly as she could manage.

‘I’ve come to take your money,’ he said.

She could see that he was trembling.

‘What have you done?’

Had he attacked one of the women in the brothel? Or perhaps several? Or even all of them? Was it the blood of Felicia and the others dripping from the blade of his knife?

‘I have to know,’ she said. ‘What has happened? Who have you stabbed?’

O’Neill didn’t answer. No more than an impatient groan passed over his lips. He pulled back the quilt and hissed at her that she should give him all the money she had in the house. She got out of bed, put on her dressing gown and thought about how remarkable it was that since yesterday most of her money was locked up inside the commanding officer’s office, guarded by the town’s Portuguese garrison.

‘What has happened?’ she asked again.

O’Neill was still holding the knife at the ready, as if he was afraid that she would jump at him. Carlos was lying unconscious, but Ana could see from the rising and falling of his chest that he was still alive. Whatever else O’Neill had done, she would never forgive him for attacking an innocent chimpanzee and almost killing him.

O’Neill suddenly answered her question. It was as if he were flinging the words out of himself.

‘I went into her cell and finished off what I failed to do the last time. This time she really is dead.’

Ana became stone cold. She groaned. O’Neill took a step towards her.

‘I couldn’t stand by and watch the women’s earnings being squandered by you on a black woman who murdered her husband. Now I’m getting out of here. And I intend to take all your money with me. You won’t even be able to afford a coffin for her funeral.’

Ana sat down tentatively on the edge of the bed. It was as if O’Neill’s knife had severed something inside her. She had only one desire just now, and that was to mourn the death of Isabel: but O’Neill was standing in her way. He wouldn’t leave until he had received the money, and he wouldn’t believe what she said about most of her wealth being in the commanding officer’s office. Perhaps this was the end of the remarkable journey that had begun with a sleigh-ride in what seemed to be the far distant past. She would die here in this room, stabbed to death by a raving lunatic of a man she had made the mistake of employing. A man she personally had taken on for a trial period without knowing that in doing so, she had allowed a murderer into her house. She would die in this bedroom where she had spent her widowhood, and would die together with the remarkable chimpanzee who used to work as a servant in the brothel, dressed in a white suit.

But could what O’Neill had said happened possibly be true? She looked at him, and it struck her that this could be a trap she had fallen straight into. She had failed to notice the gap that had suddenly opened up in front of her, and was about to fall into it.

‘Why did you kill her? And why should I believe you?’

‘Because nobody else was able to do the only right thing — killing her — I took it upon myself.’

‘How could you get into her cell? Twice?’

‘Somebody helped me, of course. Left doors open. But I’m not going to say who it was.’

‘Was it the commanding officer? Sullivan?’

O’Neill made an energetic gesture with the knife, and in doing so happened to tread on Carlos, who whimpered.

‘No, it wasn’t Sullivan. But I shan’t answer any more of your questions.’

He picked up a grey sack made of jute that was lying on the floor beside him.

‘Fill this with your money!’

‘I can’t.’

Something in her voice made him hesitate rather than repeating his demand immediately in an even more threatening tone.

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Because nearly all my money is locked up in the commanding officer’s office, in the fort.’

She could see that he was nervously swaying between doubt and fury. The sack was hanging down in his hand.

‘Why has he got your money? You didn’t know that I was going to come here tonight.’

‘I gave the money to him as a bribe,’ said Ana. ‘So that he would secretly allow me to fetch Isabel and arrange for her to leave Lourenço Marques. Later this morning I was due to go to him with the rest.’

‘So there is more money here in the house?’

‘Not more money, no. The rest of the bargain was to be paid in a different way.’

‘How? With what?’

‘With me.’

O’Neill didn’t move. She could see that he was confused. He didn’t understand what she meant. His uncertainty gave her the upper hand despite his knife.

‘I promised to become his whore. Who would believe the immoral proprietess of a brothel if she tried to explain afterwards what had happened?’

At last the penny dropped for O’Neill. What Ana said couldn’t be a lie, something she had simply made up. He picked her up from the bed, grabbed hold of her throat and shook the sack violently.

‘Everything you’ve got,’ he said. ‘Absolutely everything. And you must never breathe a word to anybody that I was the one who came here.’

‘People will understand that even so.’

‘Not if you don’t say anything.’

He thrust her away so hard that she fell down on to the stone floor. She landed with her face right next to Carlos, who was still breathing awkwardly.

Just as she was about to get up, Carlos cautiously opened one eye and looked at her.

Ana stood up and began gathering together the money she still had in the house. She had filled two porcelain vases decorated with oriental nymphs with money she was going to use to compensate the women for their reduced earnings. She put it all into the sack while O’Neill urged her to hurry up. On the floor in the wardrobe she had two of Senhor Vaz’s leather suitcases filled with money intended for her journey to wherever she eventually decided to go. The money she received for selling her house and the brothel would go to the people who worked there. She didn’t intend to keep any of that herself.

When she had emptied the last of the suitcases, she saw that the sack was still less than half full. If the money in the CO’s office had been available, O’Neill would have needed two, possibly three sacks.

‘That’s everything,’ she said. ‘If you want any more, you’ll have to talk to Sullivan.’

O’Neill punched her, hard, a blow loaded with his disappointment: he had expected so much more. In the midst of all the pain that the punch caused her, Ana managed to think about how brutal O’Neill was. How could she have failed to see that earlier? That she had appointed as a security guard a man who was worse than the worst of her clients?

‘There must be more,’ he said, his face so threateningly close to hers that she could feel his stubble against her cheek.

‘If you like I can swear on the Bible, or on my honour. There is no more.’

She couldn’t make up her mind if he believed her or not. But he pulled off the rings she had on her fingers and dropped them into the sack. Then he hit her so hard that everything went black.

68

When she came round Carlos was sitting looking at her. He was swaying back and forth, as he always did when he was frightened or felt himself abandoned. O’Neill had left. Ana had the feeling that she hadn’t been unconscious very long. The open window overlooking the upper veranda indicated the way O’Neill had chosen to leave, and perhaps also the way he had got in. She went outside and saw that the two guards were sitting by the spent remains of their fire, yawning as if they had just woken up. If she had had a gun, she would have shot them — or at least, the temptation to do so would have been very great. But even if she had aimed at them she would no doubt have pointed the pistol at the sky before pulling the trigger: she would never be able to kill anybody. She was a mucky angel, not a murdering monster.

She sat down on the bed and dabbed at Carlos’s wounds with a damp sponge. Nobody would believe me if I told them about this, she thought. Me sitting on my bed after being attacked, tending the wounds on a chimpanzee’s bleeding forehead. But I’m not going to tell a soul.

Quite early in the morning she left the house and was driven down to the fort. Julietta and Anaka had been horrified by the state of the bedroom — the torn sheets, the bloodstains and the broken mirror — but Ana had simply told them that Carlos had had nightmares. He had caused the wound on his own forehead. She didn’t bother to comment on her swollen cheek.

As she arrived at the fort earlier than usual, Sullivan was not yet standing on the steps, pipe in hand. He hadn’t even arrived at the fort from his lodgings in the upper part of the town, where the garrison’s accommodation was situated. Ana took a deep breath and walked over to the entrance to the cells. The guard at the entrance was reluctant to let her in at first. He was worried because the lock on the grill had been forced during the night when another soldier had been on duty, but Ana yelled at him to get out of the way and pushed him aside.

Isabel was lying dead on the stone floor next to the bunk. Ana had the feeling that she had used up the last of her strength in an attempt to sit up, since that was how she wanted to be when she died, but she hadn’t had the strength. One of her arms was resting on the bunk. O’Neill had turned her body into a bloody mess of skin, thoughts and memories, scars after the birth of her children, her love of Pedro — everything that had made her the person she was. O’Neill had not only stabbed and cut her with his sharp knife, he had disfigured her in such a way as to make her body almost unrecognizable. In her desperation Ana thought that O’Neill must harbour unlimited hatred for black people who refused to submit to the will of whites, even when they were locked up in prison.

With considerable difficulty Ana carefully lifted Isabel on to the bunk. She covered her with the blanket she had never used, even when the nights had been at their coldest. Every time she touched the corpse she seemed to be reminded of the cold that had always surrounded her when she was a child. Isabel’s dead body transformed the underground cell into the countryside she had once lived in, always frozen, always longing for the heat of a fire, or from the sun that so seldom forced its way through the clouds drifting in from the mountains to the west. She looked at Isabel and was reminded of all these things that until a few minutes ago had seemed so far away but had now returned. Who is it I am saying goodbye to? she thought. Isabel or myself? Or both of us?

A soldier came into the cell and announced that the commanding officer was waiting for her. He was standing by his desk when she arrived. When he asked why she was making her visit so early, it dawned on Ana that he didn’t know what had happened during the night. That gave her an unexpected advantage that she didn’t hesitate to make use of.

‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

‘Perhaps we should first sort out the last part of our agreement?’

‘There is no longer any agreement.’

Ana turned on her heel and left the room. Sullivan hurried after her into the courtyard. Ana could see that the news had begun to spread among the soldiers. Sullivan entered the cell. Ana removed the blanket and revealed Isabel’s mutilated body.

‘I know who killed her,’ said Hanna. ‘I’ll give you his name, but he’s bound to be on his way to the interior of the country already, and he knows all the roads. Perhaps he has a horse to carry him? All I can do is to give you his name, then you can decide if you want to send your soldiers out after him.’

She told him about O’Neill, about the attack in her house, and how he had admitted that he was the murderer. Sullivan listened with mounting anger. Ana didn’t know if it was because he had been humiliated or because he would lose all that money in the laundry basket, and could no longer look forward to having sex with her. All she did know is that just now she had the upper hand.

‘Her brother will come to collect the body,’ she said. ‘I shall take the money with me. We shall never meet again. But I want soldiers to continue keeping watch over her, even though she is now dead.’

They returned to the courtyard. Two soldiers carried the laundry basket to the car and put it in the boot.

‘We’ll catch him,’ said Sullivan, who had accompanied her to the entrance door.

‘No,’ said Ana. ‘He is a white man, and you’ll let him escape. I don’t believe a word you say. I had thought of agreeing to your request, but now I feel great relief at never needing to come anywhere near you again.’

Before Sullivan had a chance to respond, Ana had turned away and got into the car. As they drove off Ana saw how the enormous statue of the knight was being dragged out into the street by several black men with ropes round their shoulders and waists. She closed her eyes. She now regretted not having agreed to Sullivan’s request immediately. Perhaps that might have saved Isabel. During the night that turned out to be her last, Isabel might have been with Moses, on her way to freedom in the distant mine tunnels.

The rest of the day passed: Ana couldn’t remember anything about it. Only a bright white light and a deafening roar in her ears. Nothing else.

Moses turned up outside her house as dusk fell. She had been standing by the window, waiting for him. He knew already that Isabel was dead. Ana never bothered to ask him how he knew about what had happened. He stood there, grubby and dirty after the digging he had just embarked upon.

He was digging to make a tunnel, she thought. An opening through which a person would be able to escape into freedom. Instead, what he is doing now is the beginning of a grave.

‘You can collect her body tomorrow,’ she said. ‘It won’t have started smelling by then. If you want me to help you, I will. Nobody will mistreat you at the fort. Soldiers are standing guard over her body.’

‘I’ll collect her myself,’ said Moses. ‘I want to make the last journey with her by myself.’

‘What will happen now to her children?’

Moses didn’t answer. He merely shook his head, muttered something inaudible, and left.

At that moment she was on the point of running after him, following him to wherever he was going — back to the mines in the Rand or Kimberley or anywhere else in the world that extended for ever out there, beyond the mountains and the vast plains.

But she remained where she was. Ana Branca and Hanna Lundmark didn’t know which world they belonged to.

When she returned to the house, she saw that Carlos had returned to his place on the chimney. All that could be seen in the last light of the setting sun was his silhouette. Carlos looked like an old man, she thought. An ape, or a hunchbacked man weighed down by an enormous burden he was unable to free himself from.

That evening she made a note in her diary. She wrote: ‘Isabel, her wings, a blue butterfly, fluttering away into a world where I can no longer reach her. Moses left. I love him. Impossible, in vain, desperate.’

She closed the book, knotted a red linen ribbon around the covers, and put it into the desk drawer.

She didn’t touch the laundry basket full of money that evening.

69

She stood on the veranda as the sun began to rise over the sea, but Moses wasn’t around. Disappointed, she went back into the house, emptied the laundry basket of all the money and packed the bundles of notes into the safe and cupboards and drawers. She had great difficulty in making enough room for it all. When she had finished, she washed her hands thoroughly — but even so there was an unpleasant, lingering smell.

When Julietta came with her breakfast tray, Ana instructed her to go immediately to the fort and find out about arrangements for Isabel’s burial. To Ana’s surprise, Julietta didn’t react to what ought to have been the news that Isabel was dead: she obviously knew about it already. There must be a secret way, she thought, for black people to send out invisible messengers to one another with important news.

‘Be as quick as you can,’ said Ana. ‘Don’t pause to look in shop windows, or to talk to any boys or girls you meet. If you are really fast and get back here so soon that I’m surprised, you’ll get a reward.’

Julietta hurried out of the room. Ana could hear her footsteps racing down the stairs.

Julietta arrived back less than an hour later, panting after all that running up the steep hills. Ana was forced to tell her to sit down and get her breath back, as to begin with she couldn’t understand what Julietta was trying to say.

‘The body has gone already,’ said Julietta in the end.

Ana stared at her.

‘What do you mean by “the body has gone”?’

‘He fetched it as the sun rose.’

‘Who fetched it?’

‘A black man. He carried her away without any assistance.’

‘Did you not see the young commanding officer?’

‘One of the soldiers said he was still in bed in his lodgings, asleep. He’d been invited out yesterday evening.’

‘Invited by whom? Had he been drinking? Do I have to drag everything out of you?’

‘That’s what they said. Then they tried to lure me down into the dark underground prison where Isabel had died. I ran away.’

‘You did the right thing.’

Ana had prepared a reward for Julietta. She gave her a pretty necklace and a shimmering silk blouse. Julietta curtseyed.

‘You may go now,’ said Ana. ‘Tell the chauffeur I’ll be down shortly.’

Julietta remained standing where she was. Ana realized immediately what she wanted.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re never going to be allowed to work in the brothel with the other women. Go now, before I take back what I’ve just given you!’

Julietta left. Ana put on her black clothes, the same ones as she had worn at Senhor Vaz’s funeral. Once again she was going to accompany a person to her grave, someone who had died quite unexpectedly. Unlike Senhor Vaz’s funeral, Ana would be the only white person among the mourners. And any whites who saw her would become even more antagonistic towards her, more adamant in what in many cases had already become their hatred of her. She was not only concerned about the welfare of blacks who were alive, but she also accompanied a convicted murderess to her grave.

She was unsure about black people’s burial rituals, but she picked a few red flowers from her garden and sat down in the car. The chauffeur gave a start when he heard that he was being asked to drive her to the cemetery. He knows, she thought. He knows it’s now time for Isabel to be buried.

A new wall was being built at the entrance to the cemetery. When Ana got out of the car the black workers paused and stared at her with bricks and trowels in their hands. She stood in the shade of a tree and told the chauffeur to ask when Moses and the rest of the family were due to arrive with Isabel’s body. She watched him asking one of the bricklayers, and could see that the reply he received surprised him. He hurried back to her.

‘They have already arrived,’ he said. ‘They are waiting inside the cemetery.’

‘Waiting for whom?’

‘Waiting for you, Senhora.’

Moses, she thought as she hurried into the cemetery, the red flowers in her hand. He knew that I wouldn’t allow Isabel to be buried without my being present at the ceremony.

The chauffeur pointed out a part of the cemetery separate from the graves of white people, where a group of blacks were waiting. As she hurried along past the crumbling gravestones she detected a sort of sweetish smell of dead bodies rising up from the earth. She held her hand over her mouth, and was afraid that she would feel so sick that she would throw up.

The coffin was brown, made of rough planks. It had already been lowered into the grave. Standing round it were Moses in his overalls, Isabel’s children and several black women Ana had never seen before. She assumed they were Isabel’s sisters who were now looking after the orphaned children. There was no priest from the cathedral present. When she reached the grave, Moses led the mourners in the singing of a hymn. Everybody joined in, singing in harmony. Afterwards Moses mumbled a few words that Ana couldn’t understand, then looked at Ana.

‘Would you like to say something?’

‘No.’

Moses nodded, then began shovelling soil down over the coffin. All the others joined in to help. They dug with their hands, or with sticks and flat stones. Ana had the impression that they were in a great hurry. The coffin should be covered over as quickly as possible. She remembered something Senhor Vaz had said, about black people always wanting to get away from burials as quickly as possible because they were afraid that evil spirits would escape from the coffin and chase after them. Could it be that despite everything, Isabel was regarded above all as an evil, obsessed murderess, even by her own sisters? Ana placed her red flowers on the heap of earth on top of the grave. Then she saw that what she had heard was true: everyone apart from Moses scuttled away from the grave. Some of them jumped back and forth between the paths as if to confuse the evil spirits they were afraid might be following them. It looked so odd that she found it hard not to burst out laughing, despite her deep sorrow.

In the end there was only Moses and herself left.

‘What happens now?’ she asked.

‘I go back to the mines.’

‘But surely you could stay here? I still have the money I’d saved to try to get Isabel set free.’

Moses looked at her.

‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘You can build a house, and look after Isabel’s children. You don’t need to toil in the mines any more.’

Did he believe her? She couldn’t be sure. But in any case he said no.

‘I can’t take your money.’

‘Why not?’

‘Isabel wouldn’t have wanted me to. Her children are well looked after as it is.’

‘As I understand it you have been working for many years in the smoke and dust in the mines — it’s not good to work for too long in those conditions.’

‘But that is where I’m at home.’

She could sense that he was a little bit hesitant even so.

‘I shall think about what you have said,’ he said. ‘I’ll come to your house tomorrow, when I’ve finished thinking.’

He turned on his heel and hurried off along the paths between all the unmarked graves. She watched him until he came to the white mauseleums, then vanished completely.

She was driven back to town and asked the chauffeur to stop at the brothel, but just before they got there she changed her mind and told him to drive her home. She still didn’t know what she ought to say. Isabel’s death and her meeting with Moses had increased her feeling of being totally absorbed by herself and her own thoughts.

After taking a bath, she lay down on her bed. Over and over again she relived the long journey that had eventually taken her to the room where she was now lying. But the images inside her head were jumbled up haphazardly. Now it was Senhor Vaz she had married in Algiers, and Lundmark she had met in the brothel. Moses was her bouncer, and O’Neill was dressed as Father Leopoldo in the shadowy cathedral.

The rest of the day and the evening was spent in the borderland between dreams and consciousness. She changed into a dressing gown when Julietta brought her a tray of food, but hardly touched the food on the plate. She occasionally opened her diary, and picked up her pen in order to make an entry: but in the end she wrote nothing at all. She merely drew a map of the river that was flowing inside her head, the mountains decked in white, and the house where her father seemed to spend all his time filling the gaps and cracks so that they could endure the never-ending cold of yet another winter.

After taking another large dose of sleeping tablets she managed to fall asleep. But all the time she dreamt that she was awake. Or at least that’s how it felt when she eventually woke up.

70

She was already standing on the veranda when dawn broke. There was an expectation within her that she tried to dampen down, but without success. She had never felt as strongly as this when she had been waiting for Lundmark, or Senhor Vaz. But she certainly felt that way now.

Moses didn’t show up. After having waited in vain all morning, she decided he must have already gone back to the mines. He hadn’t meant what he said about coming back to her house. She didn’t feel he had deceived her: he had been certain that she would understand his decision. He didn’t want her money. All he wanted was to return to the mines, where he felt at home.

However, at around noon a little boy came to the front door of the house and handed in a sealed envelope with Ana’s name on it. Julietta carried it up to her room. Ana asked her to leave before she opened the envelope. She didn’t recognize the handwriting, but it was — as she had hoped — from Moses. He asked her to go to Beira and try to find his and Isabel’s parents, and tell them that she was dead. It was a mission he wanted to entrust to her, and was sure that Isabel would have felt the same.

She put the letter in her desk drawer, and locked it. As usual, she hung the key round her neck.

The letter had made her both upset and disappointed. Why had Moses chosen to give her a task that he ought to have carried out himself? Had she misjudged him, just as she had misjudged O’Neill? Did Moses lack the courage his sister had possessed? She felt increasingly despondent, but at the same time wondered if she had misunderstood his motives for bestowing the honour of undertaking this journey upon her. She didn’t even know who to talk to, in an attempt to understand better. Could Felicia be of help again? She was doubtful, and chose in the end to speak to Father Leopoldo, who had met Isabel after all, and might be able to explain Moses’ behaviour.

She found him sitting on a chair in the cathedral, listening to the children’s choir practising. Ana recalled her first visit, and tears came into her eyes. She wasn’t sure if this was a result of the children’s singing, or of the memory of that first time she had ever entered the cathedral.

Father Leopoldo noticed her, and took her into a room where the priests kept their vestments. The singing of the children’s choir could be heard faintly through the thick walls. She told Father Leopoldo about Isabel’s burial and Moses’ letter.

‘Why is he asking me to go and look for her parents?’

‘Perhaps he wants to show them the greatest respect he can think of: sending a white woman to inform them about a death. How often does a white woman or man do something like that for a simple black miner?’

‘But he was her brother, surely?’

‘I think he wants to honour her memory by asking you to do it.’

‘Then why didn’t he say so? Why did he promise he would come back, and then simply send me a letter?’

‘In a way he did come back. He wrote down his plea to you.’

Ana was still doubtful, despite the fact that there was something convincing about Father Leopoldo’s voice. She thought that he might well have understood better than she had why Moses had done what he did. Then Father Leopoldo asked her cautiously how she had reacted to Isabel’s death. She told him the truth: her sorrow still hadn’t hit her with full force, and she was afraid of the moment when it eventually arrived.

‘What are you going to do now, Senhora? You have frequently talked about leaving here.’

‘I don’t know. But I do know that I must soon make up my mind.’

The conversation was interrupted by Father Leopoldo being summoned to listen to a confession. Ana walked through the empty church. The choir had stopped singing and the children had left. Then she noticed somebody sitting in the darkness next to the big entrance door. It was Senhor Nunez. He was waiting for her. I’m being watched all the time, she thought. There are so many who see me without my seeing them.

Nunez stood up and bowed. She raised her hand.

‘Don’t say anything! Give me a moment to think!’

Nunez nodded and sat down again. Ana flopped down on a chair after having turned her back on Nunez.

She stared out through the open door, straight into the bright sunlight. And she made up her mind almost immediately. She didn’t need to hesitate any longer. She knew what she wanted to do.

She turned her chair to face Nunez.

‘I’m going to sell my establishment,’ she said. ‘I want paying in English pounds, and I want the whole amount in one go. You must promise to observe the same rules and procedures as apply now. I don’t care what you do after the women who are working there now have moved on. I don’t believe in the children’s home you spoke about.’

‘I shall respect your demands, of course. But I’m still thinking about that children’s home.’

Ana stood up.

‘You don’t need to lie to me. Come round to my house tomorrow afternoon, and bring the money with you.’

‘But we haven’t agreed on a price yet.’

‘I’m not going to name a price — but I’ll tell you if you come with too little money. In that case I’ll sell to somebody else. A lawyer will have prepared a contract. I want the whole affair to be settled immediately.’

She didn’t wait for a response, simply stood up and left the cathedral. Now I’m the one who’s leaving the underworld, she thought; but in contrast to Isabel, I’m still alive.

The following day Andrade drew up two contracts. One was for the sale of Ana’s house, for which he was to pay £4,000, with all the furniture included in the deal. He also promised to keep all the staff on for at least a year, and after that to pay Anaka’s and Rumigo’s pensions.

The other contract concerned the sale of the brothel business to Senhor Nunez. To Andrade’s surprise Ana requested him to leave a line blank for the selling price to be written in. Nor did the contract include any mention of the brothel being converted into a children’s home.

At three o’clock in the afternoon Nunez arrived. He offered £4,000 for the establishment. Ana said that she wanted £5,000, as she was convinced that was the sum he had in his fat leather briefcase. Nunez smiled and agreed. All aspects of the sale were completed in less than an hour.

‘Four days from now you can take over everything,’ she said. ‘Before then you are not allowed inside the premises. And you are not allowed to breathe a word about our deal until I’ve spoken to everybody who works here. Where have you got all your money from?’

Nunez smiled and shook his head.

‘Revealing my source of income is not a part of our deal.’

‘Elephant tusks? Lionskins? Secret diamond mines that nobody knows about?’

‘I’ve no intention of answering your question.’

‘As long as you are not a slave trader,’ said Ana.

‘What will happen to the chimpanzee?’ Nunez asked, pointing at Carlos who was sitting on top of the tall cupboard. ‘Is he a non-specified part of our agreement?’

‘He’s coming with me,’ said Ana. ‘His future is my responsibility, not yours. I hope you also noticed that I didn’t require that the brothel should be converted into a children’s home. Why should I demand something that you have no intention of doing? I want you to leave now. We’ve concluded our business, and don’t need to talk to each other.’

Nunez eyed her up and down. He suddenly appeared sorrowful.

‘I don’t understand why you distrust me,’ he said. ‘Just like you I am upset about the way in which we treat black people. Maybe I’m not good through and through, but I hate the contempt we show towards these people. It is lunacy to believe that such an attitude can continue for ever and a day — an illusion, and very stupid.’

Nunez stood up.

‘Perhaps you are not as lonely as you think,’ he said. ‘I share your disgust.’

He bowed and left. She thought about what he had said. Perhaps she had been wrong about him after all.

When she was alone she looked at the contracts and the bundles of banknotes. She had arrived in Africa with nothing: now she was very rich.

All she knew about her future was that she would travel to Beira and look for Isabel’s parents. What would happen after that she didn’t know, and it was something that she was somewhat afraid of. But before leaving she would have to have a final discussion with the women in the brothel, and also sort out a future for Carlos.

That evening, for the second time in their shared lives, she and Carlos sat together and counted all the money that was piled up in enormous heaps on tables and chairs.

71

The next morning Ana carefully dug out the photograph of her and Lundmark from their wedding in Algiers. It was only eighteen months since that occasion, but even so it seemed like another world and another age, when everything had a context and she always looked forward to the next day. Now it seemed to her that darkness was closing in all around her. She had a long way to go, and she didn’t know where the path would lead her. Moreover, she would have to do everything on her own. When she left the house by the river in the sleigh, she was not abandoning a large circle of friends, and although she was leaving behind her family, she had had Forsman’s broad back in front

of her. Now, though, she felt totally isolated. But she had no intention of giving up, the mucky angel still had its wings. She hated the gloom surrounding her on all sides, she missed all the happiness she had enjoyed. I’m a smiling angel, she thought. The life I’m leading at the moment will always be foreign to me.

As she looked at the photograph taken in the studio in Algiers, a thought struck her and she decided immediately to say a silent ‘yes’ to it. She made up her mind to hold her final talk in the brothel during the quiet hours of the afternoon. That would give her an opportunity of paying another visit to the photographer Picard first.

But she also made up her mind to do something that had hitherto never been more than a passing thought. She now realized that the time had come to actually do it. She had nothing to lose by surprising the women in the brothel in a way that none of them would ever have been able to imagine.

The whites who lived in Lourenço Marques had themselves photographed by Picard when they got married, celebrated a birthday or some other anniversary, or lay dead, waiting to be buried or shipped back to Portugal in a well-sealed zinc coffin. He never took photographs of black people on principle, but Ana knew that the amount of money she intended to offer him would ensure that he made an exception. Picard was a skilful photographer, but he was also greedy.

He was in the process of photographing a newborn baby when Ana entered his studio. The baby was crying and Picard, who hated taking photographs of unruly children, had stuffed his ears with cotton wool. As a result he didn’t hear Ana when she came into the room and sat down quietly on a chair. The mother holding the baby was very young. Ana thought it could well have been Berta sitting there with Forsman’s child in her lap. Ana could see that the mother was looking at the child without a trace of pleasure in her eyes, and assumed she was one of those young white women who are forced to move to the African continent by their husbands, and soon become desperate and scared by what they regard as the realm of unbearable terror.

Picard disappeared under his black cloth and took a picture of the screeching baby. It was only after he had more or less shooed the woman and her child out of his studio that he noticed Ana. He took the cotton wool out of his ears, and bowed.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ he asked, looking worried. ‘If so my secretary hasn’t been doing her job properly.’

‘No, I don’t have an appointment,’ said Ana, ‘but I have come here to ask you to take a picture. At very short notice.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘In a few hours from now.’

‘Here?’

‘At the brothel.’

Picard gave a start.

‘I shall pay you more than you have ever received before,’ she said. ‘For a group photo. With me and all the prostitutes. None of them will be naked. Then I want as many copies as there are people in the picture. And the copies must be in my hands tomorrow morning before ten o’clock — but preferably this evening: if you can manage that I shall pay you extra, of course.’

Before Picard had chance to reply or raise any objections, Ana had taken several English pound notes out of her handbag and placed them on the table in front of him.

‘I want the picture taken at four o’clock this afternoon — three hours from now.’

‘I promise I’ll be there.’

‘I know you will,’ said Ana. ‘You don’t need to assure me of that.’

After her visit to the photographer’s Ana asked the chauffeur to drive her down to the promenade. She got out of the car and wandered slowly around in the shade of the palm trees, gazing out to sea. The small fishing boats with their triangular sails that she had become so fond of were on their way into port. She knew that this would be one of the images she would take away with her: fishing boats scudding along over the waves or swaying gently in the swell when the winds had dropped, just as she would remember the small black figures standing at the helm, or cleaning the nets and sorting out the catch.

I live in a black world in which the whites use up all their energy deceiving both themselves and the blacks, she thought. They believe that the people who live here wouldn’t be able to survive without them, and that black people are inferior because they believe that rocks and trees have a soul. But the blacks in turn fail to understand how anybody could treat a son of God so badly that they nail Him on to a cross. They are amazed by the fact that whites come here and rush around all the time in such a hurry that their hearts soon give way, unable to cope with the never-ending hunt for wealth and power. Whites don’t love life. They love time, which they always have far too little of.

What kills us off more than anything else is all the lies, Ana thought. I don’t want to become like Ana Dolores who really is convinced that black people are inferior to whites. I don’t want it to say on my gravestone that I was somebody who never appreciated the value of black people.

She sat down on a stone bench. The sea was glittering. The heat was bearable when cool breezes were blowing. She thought about what she was going to say in her speech to the women, then finally stood up and returned to the car.

She was driven back home to pick up Carlos. Needless to say, he was going to be in the picture that Picard would take.

When she arrived at the brothel she handed Carlos over to Judas, with whom he had always got on well. Carlos felt secure in his company. As Ana was early, the room with the red sofas was deserted. She went quietly up the stairs and into her old room. In the large wardrobes was a collection of clothes that could be worn if some customer had special desires about what his woman should be dressed in, or if for some reason or other one of the women was short of a garment.

She closed the door, undressed quickly and then opened the wardrobe doors. Several times towards the end of her stay in that room, when she was coming to the end of her long convalescence, she had taken out dresses and shoes, and even the tiaras and bracelets lying on the shelves. She had often been tempted to dress up in silk and adorn herself with rings and necklaces, but she had never done so.

Not until now. She slid her hand over the long row of silk skirts, dresses and suits. She settled on an oriental-style costume in green and red, with touches of golden embroidery. She put it on in front of the mirror. The blouse was low-cut and could be opened simply by unfastening a ribbon underneath the breast. She selected a circular tiara to match the clothes, and placed it on her hair. Then she slid a broad bracelet similar to the tiara on to her left arm.

Among the rings she also discovered brushes, powder and lipstick. She made up her eyes and painted her lips, put a pair of silk slippers on her feet, and was ready.

She looked at herself in the mirror and it struck her that the change in her appearance was much greater than she had expected. She was not Ana any longer, but a woman of oriental extraction. There was nothing left of Hanna Renström. Whoever she really was, she knew that she had transformed herself into a woman who would attract a lot of customers if she were to sit down on one of the red sofas and wait for a proposition.

She sat down on the bed. It would be some time yet before all the women had gathered.

The time eventually came. She went down the stairs and stopped by a half-open curtain that at night-time was closed in front of the opening to the inner courtyard.

The women were sitting around chatting as usual when she appeared from behind the curtain. Silence fell immediately. Ana could see that several of them didn’t recognize her at first, and as she had expected, none of the women commented on the change in her appearance. Nobody laughed or admired her beautiful clothes. They daren’t, Ana thought. Even if I have changed completely, I’m still first and foremost the white woman, nothing else.

She walked into the room.

Zé was sitting at the piano, tuning a single key deep down at the bass end of the keyboard. The guards had succeeded in not allowing any new customers in. A few sullen-looking and half-drunk sailors from a Norwegian whaling ship were staggering along towards one of the side streets where there was another establishment.

‘Are there any customers left?’ Ana asked Felicia.

‘Just a couple, asleep. They won’t wake up.’

‘Perhaps you’ve given them some of your magic medicine?’

Felicia smiled, but didn’t reply.

Picard had arrived. He had set up his large camera, hung the black cloth over it, and rearranged the furniture so that there was room for everybody in the picture.

Ana decided to begin with the group photograph. With luck it would create an atmosphere in the room that would make it easier for her afterwards to say everything it was necessary for her to say.

‘We’re going to take a photograph,’ she said, clapping her hands. ‘Everybody’s going to be on it, including Zé and the security guards. And not least Carlos, of course.’

There was immediately an air of excitement as they all moved into the places where they were directed by Picard. The women giggled and tittered, exchanged combs and little mirrors, adjusted one another’s clothes (which weren’t covering all that much of their bodies anyway). Eventually everybody was ready, with Ana in the middle, sitting in an armchair. Carlos had jumped up on to a pedestal which normally held a potted plant.

‘I want a serious picture,’ said Ana. ‘I want nobody to laugh, nobody to smile. Look serious, straight at the camera.’

Picard made the final adjustments, moving somebody a bit closer, somebody else a bit further away. Then he prepared the flash by scattering some magnesium powder on to a metal tray. He ducked underneath the black cloth with a burning matchstick in his hand. The magnesium flared up and the picture was taken.

He prepared another flash, ducked under the cloth again and took a second picture.

Afterwards, when Picard had left and gone back to his studio to develop the photographs and choose the one from which he needed to make fourteen copies, Ana assembled the women under the jacaranda tree. Zé had returned to the piano where he was examining the keys before beginning to polish them. Carlos was sitting on one of the red sofas, smacking his lips noisily as he ate an orange.

It seemed to Ana at that moment as if everything surrounding her was a sort of artificial idyll.

A treacherous paradise.

72

Just as Ana was about to speak, Zé raised his hands and began playing. For the first time he had stopped merely tuning the strings. It took a few moments for what had happened to sink in. She watched Zé’s hands in astonishment and listened to his playing. It was like a bolt from the blue in the brothel. After spending all that time tinkering with his piano, Zé now seemed to have reached the point when it was sufficiently in tune for him to play it. Everybody listened in silence. Ana felt the tears in her eyes. Zé knew exactly where each finger should be, and his wrists were moving smoothly despite the frayed cuffs of his shirt.

When he had finished the piece, he placed his hands on his knees and sat there in silence. Nobody spoke, nobody applauded. In the end Ana went up to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

‘That was lovely,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you could play like that.’

‘It’s an old piano,’ said Zé. ‘It’s hard to tune it.’

‘How long have you spent tuning it?’

‘Six years. And now I’ll have to start all over again.’

‘I’ll buy you a new piano,’ said Ana. ‘A good piano. You won’t need to keep tuning it in order to play.’

Zé shook his head.

‘This the only piano I can play,’ he said quietly. ‘I’d get no pleasure out of a new instrument.’

Ana nodded. She thought she understood, even though she had just witnessed something that could well have been a miracle.

‘What was the piece you played?’ she asked.

‘It was written by a Polish man. His name is Frédéric.’

‘It was beautiful,’ said Ana.

Then she turned to face the others and started them off clapping. Zé stood up hesitantly and bowed, closed the lid, locked the piano, picked up his hat and left.

‘Where does he go to?’ Ana asked.

‘Nobody knows,’ said Felicia. ‘But he always comes back. The last time he played for us was on New Year’s Eve, 1899. As the century came to a close.’

Ana could see that everybody was looking at her. She told them the facts: she was about to leave them. The new owner, Nunez, had promised not to change anything for as long as the women now working in the brothel stayed on.

‘I came here by chance,’ she said in conclusion. ‘I was ill, and I thought in my innocence that this place was a hotel. And I was very well looked after. I might have been dead by now if it hadn’t been for the care you gave me. But now it’s time for me to move on. I shall leave here and go to Beira where I shall look for Isabel’s parents and tell them that Isabel is dead. I don’t know what will happen after that. All I do know is that I shan’t be coming back here.’

Ana then took the bundles of banknotes out of her handbag. Each of the women received the equivalent of five years’ earnings. But to her great surprise, none of the women displayed the slightest sign of gratitude, despite the fact that they had never seen anywhere near as much money as that in their lives before.

‘You don’t need to stay on here now,’ she said. ‘Evening after evening, night after night. You can start living with your families again.’

Ana had been standing up while she spoke. Now she sat down on the deep red plush chair they had placed for her under the jacaranda tree. Nobody spoke. Ana was used to this silence, and knew that in the end she would no doubt be forced to break it herself. She took one of the bundles of banknotes and tried to give it to Felicia — but Felicia declined to accept it and started talking again instead. She had obviously rehearsed her speech, as if everybody knew already what Ana was going to say.

‘We shall go with you, Senhora,’ said Felicia. ‘No matter where you decide to open a new brothel, we shall go with you.’

‘But I have no intention ever again to run a brothel, not for as long as I live! I want to give you all money so that you can lead quite a different life. Besides, what would you do with your families if you were to accompany me?’

‘We’ll take them with us. We’ll go with you, no matter where you end up. As long as it’s not a country where there aren’t any men.’

‘That’s impossible. Don’t you understand what I’m telling you?’

Nobody spoke. Ana realized that Felicia hadn’t just been talking for herself: yet again she had been speaking on behalf of all the women assembled round the tree. The women really did believe that she was leaving in order to open up a new brothel somewhere else. And they wanted to go with her. She didn’t know whether to be touched or angry at what seemed to be their incredible naivety.

She thought: they want me to lead a general exodus to an unknown destination. No matter where it is, they see me as what Forsman was for Elin — a guarantee of the possibility of a better life.

A Magrinha had suddenly stood up and left the garden: now she returned, carrying a large lizard. Ana knew that it was called a halakavuma.

‘This lizard is very wise,’ said Felicia. ‘When people find a lizard like this one, they catch it and take it to their tribal chief. A halakavuma can always give the chieftain valuable advice. Senhora Ana has been listening for far too long to advice from unreliable people. That’s why we have tracked down this lizard, so that it can advise Senhora Ana about what is best for her to do. This lizard is like a wise old lady.’

The big, crocodile-like lizard was placed on Ana’s knee. Sticky slime was dripping from its mouth, its cold skin was wet, its eyes staring, its tongue darting in and out of its mouth. Carlos had jumped up on to the piano, and was staring at the lizard in disgust.

I’m living in a crazy world, Ana thought. Am I really expected to listen to a lizard in order to find out what I ought to do with my life?

She put the lizard down on the ground. It disappeared slowly behind the tree, swaying from side to side on apparently unsteady legs.

‘I shall listen to what it has to say,’ she said. ‘But not now. I’d rather hear from you than listen to a lizard.’

She stood up again, uncertain of what to say as she thought she had already said it all. She could see that she was surrounded by disappointment and surprise. The money she had produced for the women had not had the effect she had expected. What was crucial as far as they were concerned was Felicia’s words — that they wanted to accompany her to wherever she was going.

I don’t understand this, she thought. I’ll never understand it. But the time I’ve spent in this town has been characterized by my always being surrounded by white people claiming that it’s impossible to understand the blacks. I no longer see whatever it is I’m looking at. My eyes are constantly enveloped by this white mist.

She left the garden and walked past the empty sofas. The only person in the room was a man trying to light a half-smoked cigar. For some reason his presence aroused her fury. She picked up a cushion and hit him in the face with it, sending the cigar stump flying.

She stared at him without saying anything, shouted for Carlos, and left. When she came out into the street she screamed loudly, as if for a moment she had been transformed into a peacock in distress. A street cleaner stopped what he was doing and looked hard at her. She got into the car, but her chauffeur made no comment of surprise or admiration when he saw what she was wearing. The street cleaner resumed his work, as if nothing had happened.

When Julietta opened the door and stared at her, Ana couldn’t resist asking her what she thought of her get-up.

‘I’d love to wear those clothes myself,’ said Julietta.

‘You’ll never be allowed to,’ said Ana.

She went upstairs to her bedroom. She threw the clothes she’d been wearing into a laundry basket. The masquerade was over.

Late that evening Picard came to hand over the prints of the photograph he’d taken. Long after he had left, she sat contemplating the picture he had chosen in the light of her paraffin lamp.

Everybody was wearing a serious expression and looking straight at the camera. Apart from Carlos, who was laughing — as if he were a human being.

The only person in the picture who seemed frightened was Ana herself.

73

The day after she had sat with the lizard on her knee, Ana was driven out to Pedro Pimenta’s farm for what she had decided would be her last visit. On the way there it occurred to her that this place, among the cages with the white sheepdogs and the ponds with the crocodiles, was where her journey had reached its fateful end. She had come this far, and now she just needed to travel back. When Isabel had been let down by her husband, Ana had finally become aware of all the deceit that surrounded her on all sides. An environment that seemed to be comprised of nothing but hypocrisy and a repulsive contempt for the people whose home this country actually was. It was as if the guests had eaten their fill of the meal to which they hadn’t even been invited. We are the uninvited guests, she thought. I no longer need to have any doubts about that, at least.

She had taken Carlos with her. It was for his sake that she returned to Pedro’s farm. Carlos would be able to live there in freedom. There were trees and open spaces, and in addition he would be surrounded by both white and black people, which is what he was used to. Moreover, beyond the crocodile pools was the extensive countryside he had originally come from — the endless wilderness covered in bushes that he could go back to if he so wished.

Ana had realized that Carlos was just as far away from home as she was herself. Perhaps there was also a river with cold, brown water running through the forests where he had been born? Even if nothing else unites us, there is no doubt a longing to go home that we have both done all in our power to resist. I’ve done so in my way, but I’ll never be able to understand how he’s managed it.

When they reached the farm Ana shuddered at the memory of what had happened there. Carlos climbed on to the car roof and looked around curiously, as if he suspected that something important was about to happen.

Ana Dolores came out on to the steps. It was the first time Ana had seen her when she was not wearing her nurse’s uniform, with the stiff nurse’s hat on her head. She was surprised: hadn’t Ana Dolores come here to nurse the sick Teresa?

The truth about the big changes that had taken place became immediately apparent. Ana Dolores bade her a low-key welcome, gave Carlos an odd look, then invited her guest to sit down on the veranda and have a cup of tea. When a maid came with a tea tray, it was obvious who ruled the roost in this household. Ana Dolores was not simply the nurse, she was also the mistress of the house. The black woman went down on one knee before Ana Dolores after having served the tea.

We have the same name, Ana thought. She is Ana Dolores and I am Ana Branca — but soon I shall return to the person I once was. When that happens, my name will revert to being Hanna. But perhaps other changes have taken place inside me. Things I can’t see, only feel or perhaps suspect? I know that what happened to me after Isabel’s death will be crucial for the rest of my life. Even if I don’t yet know how.

She asked Ana Dolores about Teresa.

‘She’ll probably never become healthy again,’ said Ana Dolores. ‘But the chances of her throwing herself into one of the crocodile pools have decreased. Her sick mind hasn’t completely eaten away what remains of her will to live.’

‘What does she say?’

‘Not a lot. She mutters away about things that happened when she was a little girl. Her life before Pedro Pimenta entered it.’

‘What about her and Pedro’s children? What will happen to them?’

‘Just now they are on a ship to Portugal. Neither of them will ever come back here. The boy was given a crocodile skin to take back home with him, the girl a piece of cloth like those that women here wrap around themselves. All I hope is that their memories of Africa fade away and eventually disappear altogether.’

‘And what about you, Ana Dolores?’

‘I live here.’

‘Looking after a woman who’s never going to get better?’

‘I also run the place. I sell dogs and harvest crocodile skins. I’ve grown tired of merely looking after people.’

Ana said nothing more, but waited for Ana Dolores to ask a few questions about Isabel’s death. Perhaps she might also be interested in knowing why Ana had made such a determined effort to help Isabel.

But Ana Dolores said nothing. She sat there with a smile on her face, gazing out over the farm she now ruled over. It occurred to Ana that this was the first time she had ever seen Ana Dolores smile.

A car approached in a cloud of dust, and pulled up outside the house.

‘Please excuse me,’ said Ana Dolores, standing up. ‘I have a visitor, a man from Kimberley who’s going to buy one of my dogs. It won’t take long. Wait here for me. Just ring the bell if you want any more tea.’

The man who stepped out of the car was wearing a pith helmet and seemed to be in a hurry. It seemed to Ana that he was one of those white men who had come to Africa to live a short life. He would die like a hunted animal — hunted down by himself.

She and Carlos went to look at the crocodiles. Carlos stayed a respectable distance away from the pools containing the biggest crocodiles, which were almost four metres long. There have never been any crocodiles in my river, Ana thought. But perhaps once upon a time Carlos lived by a river where crocodiles lurked just under the surface of the water. He knows about the threat they pose.

As she stood there watching the crocodiles, Ana suddenly noticed how things had changed since her last visit to the farm. She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, but then it dawned on her that what she was looking at was becoming more and more decrepit: things had deteriorated markedly since Pedro’s death. She noted the cracks in the concrete walls of the pools, the weeds growing up through the stone paths, the troughs of food beginning to rust, broken tools, rubbish that hadn’t been collected and carried away for burning. Wherever she looked there were signs of decay. There was also a smell of death on all sides.

This was a change that had taken place in a very short time.

As she returned to the house she saw more and more signs of decay and decadence. The white sheepdogs in their kennels were not as well cared for as they had been in the past. Pedro Pimenta’s farm was wasting away. When he and Isabel died, what they had built up together had immediately started to crumble away.

Ana Dolores had gone into the house with her customer. Ana sat down on the veranda and Carlos climbed up on to an abandoned dovecote. Ana suddenly had the feeling that she wasn’t alone. When she turned to look she discovered Teresa standing at the point where the veranda branched off along the side of the house. She was very pale, and so thin that she was almost unrecognizable. At first Ana wasn’t sure if it really was Teresa. She was uncertain what to do, but stood up and said hello. Teresa did not reply, but she hurried over and stood close by Ana. She smelled strongly of some oily perfume or other. Ana could see that the roots of her hair were caked in dirt and grease.

‘Were you also married to my husband?’ Teresa asked.

‘No.’

‘I’m sure you were married to my husband. You used to have red hair, but then you had it dyed.’

‘I’ve never had red hair, and I’ve never been married to Pedro.’

Teresa suddenly gave Ana a powerful slap in the face. It was so unexpected that the pain in her cheek and the surprise at being hit struck her dumb.

‘As you know what my husband is called you must have been married to him.’

Teresa turned round and hurried away. Then she suddenly turned round and started to come back. Ana braced herself for another smack, but Teresa turned yet again and disappeared behind the gable end of the house, and started shrieking.

Ana Dolores came running on to the veranda.

‘Where is she?’

Ana pointed. Ana Dolores hurried along the veranda and followed it behind the gable end. When she came back she was holding Teresa by the arm. It was as if she were dragging along a rag doll. They both disappeared into the house.

The man in the pith helmet left with his newly purchased white sheepdog. He didn’t even seem to have noticed Teresa’s presence. Ana Dolores came back again. Ana wondered what she had done in order to calm Teresa down, but she didn’t ask.

‘I’ve come here because there’s something I want you to do,’ said Ana.

She pointed at Carlos, who was sitting on the abandoned dovecote, scratching his fur absent-mindedly. He didn’t seem to have noticed Teresa’s outburst either, something that surprised Ana. Carlos always tried to protect her by screeching and kicking up a row. But not this time.

‘I’m about to leave Lourenço Marques,’ she said, ‘and I can’t take Carlos with me. I thought I would ask if he could stay here on the farm. As long as he gets food and is allowed to do what he wants to do, he’s very calm and no trouble. One day he might well decide to go back to the forest again. He’d be able to do that from here.’

‘You mean that he would be free to wander around and sit wherever he likes, as he’s doing now?’

‘You could give him some rules if you liked. He’s a quick learner.’

‘But you don’t want me to build a cage for him?’

‘Certainly not. Nor should you attach a chain to his neck. Obviously I’m prepared to pay you well for your trouble.’

Ana Dolores looked at her, smiling.

‘When you first came here you were in a pitiful state,’ she said. ‘But you’ve done well for yourself.’

‘I can at least pay you so that Carlos can lead the life he wants to have when I’m no longer here.’

Ana Dolores stood up.

‘Let me think it over,’ she said. ‘If I’m going to take on responsibility for an ape, I want to be sure that I really can and want to do that.’

She stood underneath the dovecote, looking up at Carlos who was still picking away at his skin, searching for ticks. Ana watched them from her seat on the veranda. Ana Dolores left the dovecote and walked to the row of kennels and pens where the sheepdogs that were already trained were jumping up excitedly at the bars. She stopped at one of the pens and seemed to pat the dog through the bars. Then she returned to the veranda.

‘Shout for the ape,’ she said. ‘Or at least get him to come down from the dovecote so that I can introduce myself to him.’

‘So Carlos can stay here?’

‘As long as he doesn’t bite.’

Ana shouted for Carlos, who clambered slowly down from the dovecote. Looking back, it seemed to Ana that he had appeared to hesitate.

74

What came next happened so quickly that afterwards Ana wasn’t at all sure of the course of events. The sheepdog Ana Delores had just been stroking burst through the bars surrounding its pen and raced towards Carlos, who had just reached the ground. Ana shouted a warning, but it was too late. The dog leapt up and sunk its teeth into Carlos’s throat before he had realized the danger. Ana ran down the steps and began hitting the dog with a sweeping brush that was leaning against the veranda rail, but it didn’t release its grip on Carlos’s throat. Ana screamed and hit out with the brush as hard as she could. Ana Dolores didn’t move a muscle. Only when it was all over did she help to pull the dog away and drag it back to its pen.

Carlos lay motionless on the ground. His head was almost detached from his body. His eyes were open. He continued to look at Ana, even though he was dead.

Ana Dolores came back after locking up the sheepdog, which was still wild with fury.

‘I don’t understand how it could have happened,’ she said.

When Ana heard those words, she realized immediately what the facts were. At first she couldn’t believe it, but there was no other possible explanation.

It had not been an accident.

Ana stood up and slowly brushed the dust off her dress.

‘I don’t know how you did it,’ she said. ‘I understand that you unfastened the gate to the dog’s pen, but not how you then ordered it to attack. Perhaps the dog is trained to react not only to a spoken command, but also to a hand gesture or a movement of the head.’

Ana Dolores tried to interrupt her.

‘Let me finish,’ roared Ana. ‘If you interrupt me I shall beat you to death. You gave the dog a signal to attack Carlos. You wanted the ape to die. I don’t know why you did it. Perhaps because you are so full of hatred towards anybody who doesn’t look down on black people? Perhaps you are so full of hatred towards the ape who became my friend that it had to die? I have never met anybody as full of bitterness and hatred as you, Ana Dolores. One of these days the people in this country will have had more than enough of the likes of you.’

Ana Dolores tried once again to say something, but Ana — who was so furious that she was shaking — merely raised her hand.

‘Don’t say a word,’ she said. ‘Not a single word. I don’t want to hear a word from your mouth ever again. Just fetch me a sack so that I can take him away from here.’

Ana Dolores turned on her heel and disappeared into the house. She never reappeared. Instead, a maid came out with an empty sack. She handed it over without even looking at the dead ape. Ana put Carlos’s body into the sack, knowing that Ana Dolores was standing behind one of the windows in the house, watching her.

The chauffeur was waiting at the side of the car, and stepped forward to assist her. But she shook her head: she wanted to carry Carlos herself.

On the way back to town, she asked the chauffeur to stop on the bridge over the river. She got out of the car and stood by the rail. Some women were washing clothes in the river, not far from the bridge. They had hoisted up their skirts up over their thighs. They were chatting away as they did the washing, and Ana could hear them laughing merrily as they slapped and kneaded the piles of garments. She was very tempted to go down to the women, hoist up her own dress and help them with the washing. In those black women she could detect a trace of Elin, and perhaps also herself.

In the end she stepped back from the rail. By then she had decided where Carlos should be buried.

When she got back home, she found herself unable to cry over her dead chimpanzee, but she felt a boundless longing for Lundmark, to have him by her side to make the mourning for Carlos easier. He wouldn’t have had much to say, as he was a man of few words: but he would have been able to console her, and assure her that she wasn’t alone. She thought about the fact that in this continent she found so confusing and so full of contradictions, in the end the only thing she could rely on had been a chimpanzee.

She put the sack with Carlos’s body in the icebox. She forbade Julietta and the other servants to go anywhere near it. She knew that they were very curious, so she had a large, heavy stone brought up from the garden and placed on the lid of the icebox, telling them all that white people also had their witchcraft, and that hers was now hidden away inside the stone. Anybody who touched the stone would find that his or her fingers were transformed into small, sharp pieces of granite and that nothing — no white or black medicine — would be able to restore them. She could see that they believed her, and couldn’t help feeling a bitter-sweet pleasure in among all the misery she had experienced. Especially when Julietta turned pale and slunk away.

Once again, she slept that night with the aid of a strong dose of sleeping tablets. But she was up again as dawn broke. As the chauffeur had been instructed to be ready for an early departure, he had spent the night curled up on the back seat of the car. He helped Ana to carry the sack containing Carlos’s body from the icebox, and also packed into the car a spade and a pickaxe that Ana had taken from the garden shed the previous evening.

All was quiet as they carried the sack into the brothel, past the sleeping guards, through the sofa room where a few men lay stretched out, snoring.

The chauffeur put the sack down where she indicated, next to the jacaranda tree. Then he went back to the car.

This was where she was going to bury Carlos. He would lie there under an array of blue blossom.

There was simply no other location worthy of being Carlos’s last resting place.

75

Ana raised the pickaxe. That very movement meant that she had reverted to being Hanna Renström. It was how she used to raise the pickaxe when she and Elin were preparing the potato patch in the spring, and again in the autumn when they needed to harvest the potatoes before the first frosts arrived, heralding the approach of the long winter.

The ground was hard on the surface, but softer underneath and easier to penetrate. She exchanged the pickaxe for a spade and began digging. She was in a hurry, but couldn’t bring herself to work fast. Digging a grave was not something that could be rushed. A grave was not merely a hole in the ground: it was just as much a hole being made in her heart.

Once, when she was a child, she had buried a dead great northern diver that had been washed ashore by the river. It was the only grave she had ever dug in her life. But now she was about to commit a dead ape to its final resting place, and then leave it and the tree, never to return.

She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and unbuttoned it at the neck — it was early in the morning, but already the temperature was rising. She could smell the scent of a little lemon tree that Senhor Vaz had planted in the garden.

The spade hit against something she thought at first was a stone, but when she bent down to pick it up she saw that it was a bone. A chicken bone, she thought. Somebody must have been sitting here, chewing the meat off it, and then thrown it away. She carried on digging. More bones appeared in the soil she shovelled to one side.

The spade hit against a biggish stone that sounded noticeably hollow. When she picked it up she saw that it was in fact a skull. A very small skull. She paused, wondering what it could be, and decided it must be from a dead monkey.

But then she realized that it was the remains of a human head. A child’s skull. So small that it might well have been that of a newborn baby, or even a foetus.

She was beginning to feel very uneasy, but she continued digging. Wherever she dug she was coming across bones and skulls. These were not chicken bones at all, but the remains of human skeletons. She felt queasy, but she didn’t stop digging. She wanted to bury Carlos that morning, and to have finished before the brothel came back to life.

It eventually dawned on her that she was exposing a mass grave, the remains of babies and foetuses that had been buried under this jacaranda tree to be hidden and forgotten about. She was faced with a children’s cemetery, the results of unwanted pregnancies after all the thousands of nocturnal encounters that had taken place in this brothel. The bones were all white or grey, but all the foetuses and newborn babies that had been strangled or killed in some other way had been a mixture of white and black.

In the end she put down the spade and sat on the bench. She was in torment. The ground in front of her was covered in bones from dead children. It seemed as if this morning, once and for all, she had discovered what kind of a world she had been living in. Her queasiness had turned into a feeling of dismay, perhaps even horror.

Without Ana’s noticing, Felicia had come out into the courtyard. She was wearing one of her many attractive silk dressing gowns. She looked at the dug-up soil and all the pieces of bone with a blank expression on her face.

‘Why are you digging all this up?’ she asked.

Instead of answering Ana opened the sack and showed her Carlos’s stiff and shrivelled corpse.

‘Didn’t you know that this was a cemetery?’ asked Felicia in surprise.

‘No. I knew nothing about it. I just wanted Carlos to have a pretty resting place here under the jacaranda tree.’

‘Why have you killed Carlos?’

Ana was not surprised by Felicia’s question. If she had learnt one thing during her time in this town, it was that black people thought whites were capable of all kinds of actions, even the most inexplicable or cruel.

‘It wasn’t me who killed him.’

She explained what had happened at Pedro Pimenta’s farm. When Ana mentioned Ana Dolores’s name, she realized that Felicia understood that what she was saying was true.

‘Ana Dolores is a dangerous person,’ said Felicia. ‘She is surrounded by all kinds of evil spirits that can kill. I have never understood how she could be a nurse.’

It struck Ana that Felicia didn’t seem in the least disturbed by all the bones that had been dug up. That only increased Ana’s unease.

‘Bury him here,’ said Felicia. ‘It’s a good place for him to be.’

Felicia turned to leave, but Ana stretched out her hand and took hold of her dressing gown.

‘I must ask you a question,’ she said. ‘I realize that all these aborted foetuses or newborn babies that have been killed are the result of what happened here in the brothel. But there’s something else I want to know, and I want you to give me an honest answer.’

‘I’m always honest,’ said Felicia.

Ana shook her head.

‘Oh no you’re not,’ she said. ‘Neither am I. I haven’t met a single person in this town who tells the truth. But the truth is what I want from you now. Is my dead foetus buried here as well?’

‘Yes. It was Laurinda who buried it. She dug a hole and emptied the bucket into it.’

Ana nodded in silence. This seemed to be the moment when she discovered and understood everything about her time here in Lourenço Marques, from the moment she stepped ashore until now, as she sat here with all these human remains in front of her.

She stood up.

‘That was all I wanted to know,’ she said. ‘Now I’ll lay my ape to rest and replace all the soil as it was before. I understand that this is a cemetery. Right at the heart of the brothel is a secret burial place.’

‘And it tells a truth,’ said Felicia.

‘Yes,’ said Ana. ‘The cemetery also tells a truth. One we’d rather not know about.’

Felicia went back inside. But it dawned on Ana that she couldn’t bury Carlos here as she had planned. She couldn’t allow him to lie here among all these lost souls of foetuses and dead babies. She put Carlos back into the sack, and replaced the soil so that no bones could be seen. She went to fetch the chauffeur, who carried the sack back to the car. He didn’t ask any questions. He’s an old man who’s seen and heard it all, she thought. Is there any basic difference between all the crazy things white people do, and me being driven back and forth with an ape in a sack?

She asked him to take her to the part of the harbour where small fishing boats were moored. It was next to the high wooden frames where the fishermen hung their nets and the baskets that were used to carry their catches up to the market stalls.

Ana got out of the car. Most of the fishing boats were already out at sea, and would return later in the day with their catches. But at one of the jetties there were a few boats still moored there, with their sails furled round the masts. She asked the chauffeur to accompany her there.

‘I need to hire a boat,’ she said. ‘I want to take my ape out to sea and bury him there.’

‘I shall ask,’ said the chauffeur.

‘Whoever takes me out to sea will be well paid, of course.’

Two of the fishermen shook their heads, but a third one, an older man about the same age as the chauffeur, said he was willing. When Ana gathered the man was prepared to take her out in his boat, she went on to the jetty.

‘I’ve assured him that you are not out of your mind,’ said the chauffeur. ‘He’s willing to take you to sea, provided you go right away.’

‘I shall pay him well,’ said Ana. ‘I also need some heavy weights to put in the sack, to make sure that it really does sink.’

The chauffeur explained that to the fisherman, and listened to his response.

‘He has an old anchor that he can sacrifice as a sinker,’ he said. ‘He’ll need to be paid extra for that, of course. He hopes you won’t be afraid of getting your dress dirty, but he also has another important question.’

‘What does he want to know?’

‘Can you swim?’

Ana thought about her father and his stubborn refusal to allow her to swim in the river. Should she tell the fisherman a white lie, or give him an honest answer? She felt that she couldn’t cope with any more lies.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t swim.’

‘Good,’ said the chauffeur. ‘He doesn’t want to have people who can swim in his boat. They don’t have sufficient respect for the sea.’

They fetched the sack containing Carlos. Ana had the feeling that it was getting heavier and heavier.

‘I’m ashamed to say that I’ve forgotten your name,’ said Ana.

‘Why should you be ashamed of something you’ve forgotten? Does that mean you should also be ashamed of what you remember? My name’s Vanji.’

‘I’d like you to stay here until we get back, please. Then I’ll only need you and your car for a few more days.’

Vanji was disappointed to hear that their time together would soon be over. Ana didn’t have the strength to console him.

‘What’s the name of the man with the boat?’ she asked.

‘Columbus,’ said the chauffeur. ‘He never goes out fishing on a Tuesday. He’s convinced he would never catch anything then. You are lucky that it’s Tuesday today. It’s unlikely that anybody else apart from Columbus would be prepared to go to sea with a dead ape in the boat, and, to cap it all, with a white woman as a passenger.’

76

Ana sat down by the mast in the little boat. The sack and the rusty old anchor were lying at her feet. The boat smelled strongly of many years of catches. Columbus raised the sail with his sinewy arms and sat down by the rudder. When they came to the harbour entrance, the wind filled the sail and they started moving more quickly. Ana pointed out to sea, the wide strait between the mainland and the as yet invisible island known as Inhaca.

‘Until we can hardly see land,’ she tried to explain, not knowing if the old fisherman could speak Portuguese or not.

He smiled by way of an answer. That smile calmed Ana down. The discovery of the child cemetery had been gripping her in a sort of stranglehold. Now that feeling was beginning to fade away. She let one hand trail in the water, which was both warm and cool at the same time. A few seabirds were circling overhead. They were like sparks coming out of the sun, white sparks that eventually formed a sort of halo over the fishing boat, which was painted red, blue and green. Columbus had lit an old pipe, and his gaze seemed to be permanently fixed on the horizon. Ana packed the anchor into the sack, letting Carlos embrace the rusty iron, then tied a knot just as she remembered it being done at Lundmark’s burial. Perhaps the two bodies will meet? Could there be a sort of cemetery somewhere down at the bottom of the sea where all the corpses eventually gathered together? It was a childish thought, she knew that, but nobody could care less what she was thinking just now, least of all Columbus with his pipe in his mouth.

A school of playful dolphins attached itself to the boat. Carlos is not going to be buried in isolation, Ana thought. The dolphins dived, reappeared and swam along close to the boat, then vanished into the depths once again. She felt an almost irresistible desire to tell Berta about these dolphins and the remarkable funeral procession in which they were taking part. Once she’d located Isabel’s parents, she would at last have a definite plan for the next stage of her life: I want to tell Berta about a dead chimpanzee, a school of playful dolphins, and me approaching the second seismic shift in my life.

They continued sailing towards the horizon. Lourenço Marques glided past in the mist. It seemed to Ana that they had now reached the point she had been looking for.

‘Let’s take down the sail,’ she said. ‘This is the right place.’

Columbus tucked his pipe away somewhere behind his ragged shirt, took in the sail and secured it to the mast. The boat was stationary now, bobbing up and down in the swell. The dolphins were circling around them, at a distance. The seabirds above their heads were screeching like instruments out of tune. Columbus helped Ana to lift up the sack and drop it into the water with a gentle splash. She watched it sinking down into the depths. One of the dolphins swam up to it, nudged it with its nose, then swam away again, having said its final goodbye.

When Ana could no longer see the sack, she felt that her loneliness was now greater than ever before: but it no longer frightened her as much as it had done in the past. She was about to bid farewell to a world in which it had been impossible for her to have any friends. She had no feelings of community with the whites who lived in Lourenço Marques, and the blacks didn’t trust her but merely saw her as a person in authority whom they must obey.

Senhor Vaz had given her a necklace when they got married: she suddenly wrenched it off and flung it into the water. A seabird dived after it, but not quickly enough to catch it before it sank.

They turned back to the harbour and berthed by the jetty. Ana paid Columbus and shook his hand. She wondered for how many years he would have to make his fishing trips in order to earn as much as she had just given him. But Columbus seemed unimpressed by the bundle of banknotes he had received. He continued to smile at her, but didn’t even turn to watch her walking back to the car.

Ana stopped at the harbour office to ask about the next coaster heading for Beira. She was in luck. A ship would be leaving the day after next, at six in the morning. She booked a ticket and paid for the biggest cabin they had — and thought how easy everything had become. All she needed to do now was make sure that the photographs were taken to the brothel, say goodbye to her domestic staff, and hand over all her bunches of keys. Getting rid of those keys, which she had been obliged to carry around and take care of constantly, was something she longed to do.

She spent the last couple of days packing two light suitcases. She arranged with Andrade that all her and Senhor Vaz’s clothes would be donated to those in need. All she kept were a few photographs, Lundmark’s discharge book, and her diary. She disposed of everything else.

The last afternoon before her departure, Ana assembled all her domestic staff in order to say goodbye to them. As Andrade was about to move into the house he had bought from her, none of them needed to worry about their future.

She had prepared individual envelopes for each of them, so that nobody would know how much the others had received. She was quite sure, for instance, that Julietta would try to find out how she was valued in relation to Anaka.

Ana summoned them to her study. She recalled how Jonathan Forsman had done the same when he spoke to his staff. She told them the facts, that she was going first to Beira, and then to an as yet unknown destination. She thanked them for their services, and wished them all the best with their new employer, Andrade.

As usual, her words were greeted with silence. Nobody thanked her, nobody said anything at all. Ana sent them back to their duties, but asked Julietta to stay behind.

‘You’ll be okay with Andrade,’ she said, ‘as long as you behave yourself.’

‘I always behave myself,’ said Julietta.

‘I’d like you to do something for me,’ Ana said. ‘Before it gets dark I’d like you to take this envelope down to Felicia and the other women. It contains photographs.’

Julietta took the letter, then left the room. Ana heard the front door close with a bang.

Now that she was alone, she made a note in her diary. ‘I can’t live in a world in which everybody always knows more than I do.’ Then she put the diary in one of the suitcases, still not entirely sure about why she was keeping it.

The next morning, when Ana got up very early to prepare for her journey down to the harbour, Julietta still hadn’t returned.

She was worried — what could have happened to her? She sent for Anaka and asked her. Anaka didn’t answer, but she didn’t give the impression of being worried in the least.

Then the penny dropped. Julietta had stayed at the brothel. She had gone to Nunez, who had now taken over the premises, and told him she wanted to start working there. And, of course, he had taken her on. All that talk about a children’s home had been a lot of hot air. Perhaps he had even taken her to one of the rooms to find out how good she was at satisfying a man.

Ana was highly annoyed when she realized that this was the most likely reason for Julietta’s non-appearance.

But she banished the thought. She had no desire to leave this house weighed down with disappointment and unpleasant feelings. She’d had more than enough of her joyless existence. For the last time she spoke to Anaka, who accompanied her down to the front door.

‘I’m leaving now,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a hot day — but it will be cooler at sea.’

She thought she ought to say more than that — but what?

She had run out of words. She stroked Anaka gently over her cheek, then left her for the final time.

77

When Ana came out into the street, it was not only her car standing there waiting for her. Moses had also returned. So he hadn’t returned to the mines in the Rand after all, but had stayed in town all the time. Perhaps he’s been keeping an eye on me without my knowing it, Ana thought. Just like a leopard, who sees everything but is never seen.

Moses was wearing his usual overalls and a worn-out pair of sandals. His hands were dangling down by his sides, looking quite helpless.

‘You’re here,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Moses. ‘I’m here. I wanted to say goodbye.’

‘How did you know I’d be leaving today?’

As soon as she’d said that, she knew it was a question to which she would never receive an answer. If Moses had said he’d discovered the date of her departure in the pattern of paving stones outside her house, she wouldn’t have believed him: but he would have believed it himself. Anyway, here he was, just as she was about to step for the last time into the car that Vanji would return to its owner later in the day.

Moses looked at her and smiled, but he didn’t answer.

It wasn’t important, Ana thought. She was simply pleased that he’d come back.

She suddenly had the feeling that she didn’t want to leave after all. She wanted to stay close to him, for as long as possible. But that wasn’t on. She didn’t have a house any longer, and had handed over all the keys. The only accommodation she had was a cabin on board a coaster that would take her to Beira.

Her feelings frightened her, but also filled her with happiness. She really loved this man standing in front of her. However, it was not possible for them to have a relationship, it would go against all the assumptions and conventions that held sway in this accursed town.

‘Come with me to the harbour,’ was all she could say.

‘Yes,’ said Moses, ‘I’ll come with you.’

But when she opened the car door for him, he shook his head, and instead started running with light, springy steps down the hills leading to the harbour.

Ana told Vanji to take a different route. She didn’t want to pass by Moses as he was running.

She also handed Vanji two envelopes, one with the money she owed for renting the car, and the other with a payment to him.

Those were the last two envelopes she needed to give people: everybody had been paid. She didn’t owe anybody anything now, and she had behaved in a way which all other white citizens would have condemned outright, if they’d known about it. They would have said she was spoiling the blacks, making them obstinate and lazy, and reducing their respect for their white superiors.

I’m in the middle of all that, with a foot in both camps, Ana thought. I don’t belong anywhere. Not until now, that is. Now that Moses has returned, I belong with him. But that won’t be possible.

He was standing waiting for her by the quay when she arrived. Despite the long run, he seemed totally unaffected by the strain. It struck Ana that she was treating him as she’d treated Lundmark. She only saw what she wanted to see. If she’d examined Moses closely she would no doubt have discovered that his hands were dirty and his overalls unwashed, and she might also have noticed that the run had indeed left its mark as his lungs must have been damaged after all those years down the mines.

She said farewell to Vanji, who stood up straight and saluted her awkwardly.

‘We’ll never see each other again,’ said Ana.

‘Not in this life, at least,’ said Vanji, saluting her again.

When she turned round she saw that Moses had already picked up her suitcases. He went on board with her. The white officer by the gangplank saluted Ana and let them pass. A steward in a white jacket led the way to her cabin. Ana couldn’t help but recall the first time she had seen Carlos, and chuckled sadly.

Nobody will understand this, she thought. I’m mourning the loss of a man I was barely married to. Another man I was married to died but I felt no sorrow. But there is a black woman and a chimpanzee who will always be a part of me for as long as I live. And now there’s a black man, by the name of Moses, who I want to be with.

The steward opened the cabin door, and waited in order to escort Moses back to the quay. But Ana closed the door, after explaining that Moses would unpack her suitcases before going back ashore.

For the first time, they were alone together in a room. Ana sat on the edge of the bed. Moses remained standing.

‘I thought you had gone back to your mines,’ she said. ‘I was angry because you had left without saying anything.’

Moses didn’t respond. His usual calm smile seemed to have deserted him.

I must be bold, Ana thought. I’ve nothing to lose. If I’ve learnt anything from my time between the two gangplanks — the one I crossed when I first arrived here, and the one I’ve crossed now that I’m leaving — it’s that I must dare to do what I want to do, and not allow myself to be held back by what others consider is permissible for a white woman like me.

To her surprise, everything seemed perfectly clear to her now, for the first time. Now, when she was about to place a full stop behind the confused months she had spent in the town by the lagoon. Meeting Isabel had awoken inside her an affection for a black woman whose fate had affected her so profoundly. But Isabel was dead. Just as Lars Johan Jakob Antonius Lundmark, her first husband, was dead. And Senhor Vaz, who had made her rich, was also dead.

Then Moses had crossed her path. The affection she had felt for Isabel had turned into love for her brother. And he was alive, he hadn’t left her.

Ana stood up and walked over to Moses. She leaned her face against his, and felt both gratitude and relief when he put his arms around her waist.

They made love in great haste, half-dressed, anxious but passionate — accompanied by the sound of footsteps on the deck over their heads and in the narrow corridor outside the cabin. She was possessed by the thought — and the desire — that this lovemaking would never end, that they would stay where they were until the ship filled up with water and sank. She appreciated Moses’ sensual pleasure, his tenderness, and then when she heard him sob, Isabel and her children were with them in that cabin.

Afterwards everything was very still. They lay beside each other on the narrow bunk with its high sides of well-worn wood, designed to prevent passengers from falling out during a storm. Ana placed her hand on Moses’ heart, and felt how his breathing slowly subsided from excited passion to deep calm.

Perhaps she thought about Lundmark at that moment, she couldn’t be sure afterwards. But over and over again she thought about how so many aspects of her life kept repeating themselves. Making love in cramped bunks, sudden departures, burials at sea. She hadn’t been prepared for any of this, not by her father or by Elin. In her life by the river, Ana had learnt how to handle a pickaxe, to look after children, to wade through deep snow and endure freezing temperatures and emerge smiling — and even to be afraid of a God who punished you for your sins, according to her grandmother’s angst-filled convictions. Now she had done courageous things without being prepared in the least, and without anybody forcing her to do them.

Time was short. The ship would shortly be leaving.

‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I want you to come with me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know that, Senhora.’

‘Don’t call me Senhora! Don’t call me Ana either. Call me Hanna. That’s my real name.’

‘I’ll be killed, just like Isabel was.’

‘That will not happen as long as I’m around.’

‘You couldn’t even protect Isabel.’

‘Are you accusing me?’

‘No. I’m just stating the facts.’

Moses sat up, then stood and put on his overalls again. Ana was still lying in bed, half-dressed, her clothes in disorder, her hair all over the place.

At that moment there was a sound of loud footsteps outside the cabin door. Somebody hammered hard on the door, which was then flung open. The officer who had been on duty by the gangplank — a first mate — stood in the doorway, accompanied by another man who Ana assumed was his colleague.

78

Ana thought the two men looked like rampant beasts of prey.

‘Has he attacked you?’ roared the mate, punching Moses in the face.

‘He hasn’t touched me,’ shrieked Ana, trying to put herself between them. But the mate had already managed to kick Moses on to the floor, and he sat on him with his hands round his throat.

‘I’ll kill the bastard,’ yelled the mate. ‘A porter who dares to attack one of my passengers in her cabin.’

‘He hasn’t attacked me,’ shouted Ana in desperation, pulling at the mate’s hands. ‘Let go of him!’

The raving officer stood up and dragged Moses to his feet. Blood was dripping from Moses’ face.

‘What did he do?’ asked the man in the doorway, who hadn’t spoken so far.

‘He didn’t do anything apart from what I asked him to do,’ said Ana. ‘And I’m disgusted by the way you have treated him.’

‘We’re the ones who decide how to treat the niggers who come on board this ship,’ said the mate.

As if to emphasize what he’d said, he punched Moses again. Ana forced her way between them. She was only half-dressed, and realized that her appearance might have led the mate to jump to conclusions. But she didn’t bother about that now. At one of the happiest moments in her life, she had been more outraged than ever before.

‘Let him go,’ she said. ‘And don’t set hands on him again.’

‘No,’ said the mate. ‘He’s off to jail. The fort can take care of him.’

Ana was struck dumb by the thought of Moses ending up in the same miserable dump in which his sister Isabel had died.

‘In that case you’ll have to take me there as well,’ she said.

Something in her voice was so convincing that the two officers backed off. Ana took out a handkerchief and wiped Moses’ face. The blood clinging to the handkerchief suddenly made her aware of a sticky feeling on the inside of her thigh. She knew what it was, and thought that just now, it was the biggest and most important secret of her whole life.

When they left the cabin, all the passengers and crew stared at the procession, wondering what had happened. Everybody on board knew that something out of the ordinary had taken place inside the ship’s biggest cabin.

Moses walked along the gangplank, not having been able to say a proper goodbye to Ana. She watched him walking along the quay without so much as a backward glance. She continued watching until he was out of sight, then she went back to her cabin and lay down on her bunk, completely exhausted, but also furious about what had happened. She lay there until she heard various commands being issued, felt the shaking as the pressure rose in the boilers, and listened to the rattling of chains as the moorings were shed.

Why hadn’t she left the ship and gone with Moses? Why hadn’t she dared to do that?

For one brief moment I saw everything clearly, she thought. But then I didn’t dare to accept the consequences of what had happened.

After many hours, she went up on deck. She had combed her hair carefully and changed into a different dress. She stood by the rail. The other white passengers on board made room for her — not out of politeness, she felt, but as an indication of their disapproval.

At that last moment I was transformed into a whore in their eyes, she thought. I took a black man with me into my cabin, and performed the most outrageous act a person can imagine.

She contemplated the white town climbing along the hills in the far distance. She watched it fading away in the gathering heat haze. Their course was now almost due north, the sun was high in the heavens, and she was called to the first meal after embarkation. But she declined: she was quite hungry, but she didn’t want to interrupt her leave-taking of the town she would never see again.

Suddenly a man was standing by her side. He was wearing a uniform, and she gathered he was the captain. She had a vague feeling that she recognized him, but couldn’t quite place him. He saluted her, and held out his hand.

‘Captain Fortuna,’ he said. ‘Welcome on board.’

He smelled strongly of beer, and his breath was like a distant memory of Senhor Vaz. He was in his forties, suntanned and sinewy.

‘Thank you,’ she said after shaking hands. ‘What’s the weather going to be like on this voyage?’

‘Calm and tranquil. No rough seas.’

‘Icebergs?’

Captain Fortuna looked at her in surprise, then burst out laughing, thinking she was joking.

‘No ice apart from what we have in the iceboxes,’ he said. ‘There are no underwater reefs around here, nothing dangerous as long as one stays sufficiently far from land. I’ve been in command of this ship for nearly ten years. The most dramatic incident I’ve experienced was when we had a bull on board: it went mad and jumped over the rail. Unfortunately we couldn’t rescue him. He swam at amazing speed towards India. It was night-time, and we couldn’t locate him.’

‘I’ve never been to Beira,’ said Ana. ‘I know nothing about the town, but I know I shall need to book into a hotel.’

‘The Africa Hotel,’ said Captain Fortuna. ‘They’ve just finished building it. It’s a splendid hotel. That’s where you should stay.’

‘Is it a big town?’

‘Not as big as Lourenço Marques. It’s not far at all to the hotel.’

Captain Fortuna saluted her again, then walked over to the rope ladder leading up to the bridge.

It dawned on Ana where she had seen him before. On one occasion, perhaps more, Captain Fortuna had visited her brothel. He hadn’t been wearing his uniform, so that is why she hadn’t recognized him at first.

I’m surrounded by my old customers, she thought. And he knows who I am.

She returned to her cabin and lay down on her bunk again. She ran her hand over her pelvis, and decided that if in fact she had conceived, she would allow the baby to live. No matter where she went after doing what she had to do in Beira, she would avoid going anywhere near a cemetery for foetuses and unwanted babies.

That’s a promise, she thought. I’m swearing an oath that only I know about. So what is its significance?

She took dinner in her cabin, so as not to come into contact with curious and gossiping people.

In the evening, after darkness had fallen, she went out on deck again to breathe in the cooling air. The starry sky was completely clear. She could feel the proximity of Moses. And of Lundmark as well, and perhaps even Senhor Vaz. A coil of rope by her feet could easily be Carlos, curled up and asleep.

In the distance: lanterns, shooting stars, the beam from a lighthouse pulsating into the horizon.

Captain Fortuna suddenly emerged from the shadows. He no longer smelled of beer, now he smelled of wine.

‘Senhora Vaz, I don’t interfere in other people’s lives,’ he said, ‘but please allow me to express my admiration for what you did to try to rescue that black woman they locked up in prison. Pedro Pimenta was a nice man, but he was a scoundrel. He let down all the women he ever came across.’

‘I didn’t do enough,’ said Ana. ‘Isabel died.’

‘People from our part of the world change into insufferable creatures when they come to Africa,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Here on board this ship I don’t come into close contact with all the suffering and misery that exists on land. But there is no doubt that we treat the blacks in a way that will come back to haunt and punish us, there’s no doubt about that.’

Perhaps Captain Fortuna expected her to respond, but she said nothing for a while, then began to talk about something quite different.

‘Let’s be honest,’ she said. ‘I know you visited the brothel I inherited when my husband died. You paid up as required, and you treated the women well. But there’s one thing I wonder about. Which of the women did you visit?’

‘Belinda Bonita. Never anybody else. If it had been possible, I’d have married her.’

‘That black porter who came on board with me,’ said Ana. ‘I love him. I hope I’m carrying his child.’

Captain Fortuna eyed her in the flickering light of the lantern he was holding in his hand.

He smiled. A friendly smile.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I understand exactly what you mean.’

That night Ana slept long and deep. It seemed to her that the sea was like a rocking chair in which she was swaying gently back and forth as the night passed, and another life slowly became possible.