The Shadow Girls

16

He called the boxing club. A young boy who could barely speak comprehensible Swedish answered the phone. After a few minutes Törnblom came to the phone.

‘It’s Jesper. What’s Leyla’s phone number?’

‘How would I know that? Where are you?’

Humlin had already decided to lie. Why, he wasn’t quite sure.

‘Back in Stockholm. I thought her brother was a student at your club?’

‘I never take down any phone numbers. It makes no sense. People come and go all the time.’

‘What about her last name?’

‘I can’t remember. But I’ll check if there’s anyone else who might know.’

It took Törnblom almost ten minutes to get back to the phone.

‘Allaf.’

‘Can you spell that?’

‘How would I know how it’s spelled? Why do you sound so worked up over this?’

‘Because I am worked up. I have to go now.’

Humlin called information and got a number for the last name ‘Allaf’. A woman answered the phone in a low voice, as if she were afraid of it.

‘I’m trying to get hold of Leyla,’ Humlin said.

He received no answer. A man who spoke in the same hushed tones came on the line.

‘I’m looking for Leyla.’

There was no answer. Another man came on the line.

‘I’m looking for Leyla.’

‘Whom am I speaking with?’

‘This is Jesper Humlin. I need to ask Leyla if she has Tanya’s number.’

‘Who?’

‘Her friend, Tanya.’

‘Do you mean Irina?’

‘I mean the other girl participating in the writing seminar, the non-African one.’

‘That is Irina.’

‘Perhaps I can speak with Leyla directly?’ Humlin asked gingerly.

‘She’s not at home.’

‘Do you know if she has Tanya’s — or Irina’s — number written down somewhere?’

‘I’ll see. Please hold.’

The phone was starting to make strange noises. The battery was about to run out. The man came back on the line and gave Humlin a number. Humlin fumbled around for something to write with.

‘What is that noise?’ the man asked.

‘My battery is about to run out. If we are cut off, it’s not because I’m being impolite.’

‘We are very happy that you have decided to come back.’

Humlin found a pen.

‘Would you mind repeating that number?’

Before the man had a chance to run through the number more than once, the phone died. Humlin wrote down what he thought was the correct number, on his hand. He went up to a pay phone and dialled, only to reach a noisy car repair shop in Skövde. He reordered the last few digits and tried again. This time a young girl barely old enough to have learned how to speak gurgled into the phone. Humlin tried yet another version of the number and this time he recognised the voice. It was Tanya.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Tea-Bag was about to get caught.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The police almost got her. They also found some mobile phones in a bag that she had. I don’t think the cops liked finding their own phones.’

Humlin tried to think straight.

‘Can you tell me what happened from the beginning, and more calmly?’

‘We need help. You have to get over here. Where are you?’

‘In Gothenburg. What can I do?’

‘You’re a famous writer, right? So, help us. I can’t talk any more.’

‘Where’s “here”?’

‘Just meet me at the boxing club.’

The line went dead.

Humlin did as he was told. He took a taxi to the boxing club which was almost deserted. Two young boys were leaning on each other in the ring. One of them had a nosebleed. They stood locked in a wrestling hold, swaying back and forth as if they had found themselves on a sinking vessel at sea. The office was empty. In the diary that was lying out Humlin could see that Törnblom was sitting in a dentist’s chair at that moment.

He walked back out into the training area. The boys in the ring had stopped swaying and the nosebleed had dried up. Humlin recognised the boy with the bloody nose. He was one of Leyla’s relatives. He smiled at Humlin, who only now noticed that the boy’s eye was swelling shut.

The boys went into the changing room. Humlin pulled on a pair of boxing gloves and started hitting a sand bag. It hurt. He wished he was punching Olof Lundin. When he broke into a sweat, he stopped. The boy with the nosebleed came back out. He was dressed in baggy pants and a long T-shirt, both articles of clothing covered with images of the American flag.

‘Someone’s coming.’

‘Who is it?’

‘I don’t know. One of them, but you’d better wait outside.’

The boy left, shortly followed by the other one. Humlin walked out onto the street. It was raining. He was reminded of the night Tanya had turned up out of the shadows and he had thought he was about to be mugged. He jumped. Tanya was right behind him. As usual she had managed not to make a sound.

‘Where’s Tea-Bag?’

She didn’t answer. They started walking.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The city centre.’

‘I thought Tea-Bag was here?’

Again there was no answer. They took the tram. A drunk man tried to talk to Tanya, but she swore at him with startling ferocity. It was like seeing her turn into a dangerous predator. The man immediately backed off.

They got off close to Göta square. The rain had stopped. Tanya led the way onto one of the small but impressive streets above the square where large stone villas lay nestled in expansive, well-tended gardens. Tanya stopped by the gate to one of the less-impressive mansions.

‘Is this where Tea-Bag is staying?’

Tanya nodded.

‘Who lives here?’

‘Gothenburg’s Chief of Police.’

Humlin flinched.

‘It’s no big deal. He’s gone to a conference, and his family aren’t home either. Plus he has no alarm system.’

Tanya opened the gate. The front door was slightly ajar. The curtains were drawn in the large living room on the ground floor. Tea-Bag lay on the floor watching TV with the sound turned low. The programme was a Swedish film from the 1950s. The actor Hasse Ekman was turning on the charm for some actress Humlin couldn’t remember the name of. She’s watching a film about an extinct species, Humlin thought. A Sweden whose inhabitants no longer exist.

There was a clatter from the kitchen. Tanya was making a meal. Tea-Bag quickly got up and joined her. Humlin heard them laughing. Then he was startled by the sound of the front door opening. But it wasn’t the Chief of Police, it was Leyla. She was red in the face and sweating heavily.

‘I love him,’ she said.

Then she too disappeared out into the kitchen. Humlin wondered if he was ever going to hear the rest of her story. He joined the girls and sat down next to Tanya who was chopping onions, tears streaming down her face.

‘How did you know this house was empty?’

‘Someone told me, I can’t remember who. After everything me and Tea-Bag have been through I think it’s only fair that we get to borrow it for a while.’

‘Can I help with anything?’

No one answered.

Slowly the table was filled with the contents of both of the large refrigerators. It was one of the most remarkable meals he had ever had, even compared to his mother’s late-night feasts. Everything was brought out and mixed; champagne and juice, pickled herring and jam. This isn’t happening, Humlin thought. If I were ever to write about this evening, this meal in the absent police chief’s house, no one would believe me.

He tried to remain alert for outside noises, checked that the curtains remained drawn and waited for the doors to be thrown open. But nothing happened. He did not participate in the conversation which simply jumped between the three girls. Giggling teenagers have the same language, he thought, regardless of where they come from.

A strip of passport pictures of the three of them was passed back and forth and finally landed in Humlin’s hands. He had done the same thing in his youth, pressed himself into a picture booth, pulled the curtain and had his picture taken. Tea-Bag found a pair of scissors and cut out the four snapshots. They walked into the living room. There was a row of family portraits on the bureau. They picked out a photograph of a large group of people gathered in the shade of a big tree.

‘What strange clothes,’ Tea-Bag said. ‘When was this?’

Humlin looked at the picture.

‘That’s from the late nineteenth century,’ he said.

‘This is where we belong,’ Tea-Bag said, opening up the back of the frame and stuffing one of the passport pictures into a corner.

‘What will they think?’ Leyla said when Tea-Bag had replaced the back of the frame and put the picture on the bureau. ‘They won’t understand. They won’t appreciate the riddle — the best gift anyone could get.’

Humlin looked at the picture. The three smiling faces were already blending into the old picture of the people who had posed for the camera one hundred years ago.

They returned to the kitchen. Even though it was warm, Tea-Bag had not taken off her coat. She hadn’t even unzipped it. Tanya sat down at one corner of the table where her face was in shadow. Leyla picked at a spot that was growing on one of her nostrils. Tea-Bag rocked back and forth on her chair.

‘What happened?’ Humlin asked, thinking the moment had arrived.

Tea-Bag shook her head and tucked her chin even deeper into her coat.

‘She tried to steal a monkey,’ Leyla said.

‘A monkey?’

‘A Chinese monkey. Made of china. It was in an antique store. It broke. It was pretty expensive.’

‘How much was it?’

‘Eighty thousand.’

‘How could it be so much?’

‘It’s from some ancient dynasty. Three thousand years old or something. It said something about it on the price tag.’

‘Good God. What did they do?’

‘The owners locked the front door and called the police. But she ran away. But the bag with the mobile phones was left behind.’

‘Why did you want to steal a china monkey, Tea-Bag?’

Tea-Bag didn’t answer. She got up and turned off the light. It was dark outside now. A narrow strip of light fell into the kitchen from the hall and living room. Humlin sensed that he was about to hear the continuation of the story that had been interrupted so many times before. He would perhaps even hear it to its end.

When I’m at a total loss for what to do next I sometimes choose a shop window at random and peer in to see if there’s something there behind the glass that can give me a sign as to what I should do next: where I should go, who I should talk to, what I should avoid. Before I came to Lagos I hadn’t even seen a shop window before. There were no shops in the village where I was born or in the small settlements out on the plain where roads came together and where the rivers were wide enough to sail on. Anyway, I saw that china monkey in the window display and its eyes looked straight into mine and I felt I had to hold it for a while. If the owners hadn’t started tugging at me I would have simply put it down again and walked away. I looked into the monkey’s eyes and knew it was very old, several thousand years probably. It was like looking into the eyes of a very old person, like my grandmother’s eyes, Alemwa’s eyes. It was like being sucked into a waterfall and then being driven straight into her soul. Perhaps it really was Alemwa’s eyes in that china monkey — I don’t know — but suddenly it was as if I was back in the village where everything had started. I could see my journey, my whole life, completely clearly, like the stars in the African night sky.

Alemwa, I know you are watching over me although you have been dead for many years. I still remember, though I was so little at the time, how you lay down and closed your eyes for the last time. I can see how we carried your thin body wrapped in woven grasses and buried you at the bottom of the hillside where the path to the river took a sharp turn. My father said you had been a kind person who always took the time to listen to the problems of others and that was why you should be buried next to a path so that you would never lack company. Everyone said I was like you, especially my mother, and I think she was a little afraid of me in the same way she had been afraid of you. I can still feel your breath on my neck. It happens every day and it happened often on my long journey. I know you are close to me when I am in danger and there seems to be nothing but danger in this world.

Perhaps it was your breath that woke me up, Alemwa, that night when the soldiers came to take away my father. I remember how my mother screamed like an animal with its leg caught in a trap trying to gnaw it off. I think that is what she was trying to do; trying to gnaw off her arms, legs, ears, eyes, when they came for my father. They hit him until he was covered in blood but he was still alive when they dragged him away in the night.

I know I became an adult that night, way too fast, as if childhood were a skin that was torn from my body. I still remember the pain of seeing my father dragged away in a bloody heap by those soldiers, of knowing but not understanding. I think that was what made me grow up; the realisation that brutality could be accompanied by laughter. Every night during the following months my mother sat outside the hut waiting for my father to come back, to suddenly reappear on the roof so that she could lure him down with soft words and they could spend the rest of the night tightly curled up together.

Then there was the night when we heard that the laughing soldiers were on their way back. When my mother heard about it she covered her head with a white cloth and shook. I was the only child at home at that time. When she took the cloth from her face I could see she had been crying. Her face looked completely different, it had turned inward and I could not see any life in her eyes. She struck me with the white cloth and screamed at me to go away. She chased me away so that I would live.

From that moment I just ran. I planted the soles of my feet firmly into the ground as my father had taught me but I kept my speed up the whole time. I was so afraid I did not even stop by your grave, Alemwa. I don’t think anyone can really understand what it means to have to flee. To leave everything behind, forced to run for your life. The night I left my village it felt as if all my thoughts and memories hung behind me like a bloody umbilical cord that refused to break until I was a long, long way away. I doubt that anyone who has not been forced to flee and has run from people or weapons or dark shadows threatening to kill them can understand what that means. The most desperate fear can never be described or told in words. One can never quite say what it is like to run into the darkness with death and pain and denigration only a step behind.

I remember nothing of my escape, only the incredible fear I felt until I arrived in Lagos and was sucked into a world I had never known existed. I had no money, no food and no idea whom I could turn to. As soon as I saw a soldier I hid and thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I tried to talk to you, Alemwa. But it was the only time I was not able to hear your voice. Perhaps you were sick. I tried to feel your breath but there was nothing there. The breath I felt on my neck at last stank of alcohol and smoke.

How long I was in that city I don’t know. But at that point I was so deep in my desperation that I had decided to find a man who would give me enough money to continue my journey. I knew the price I would have to pay. It just had to be a man with enough money, whatever ‘enough’ was. Where was I headed? I had no idea which direction was safest.

During all of the days and nights I starved in Lagos I met other people who were also fleeing. It was as if we gave off a special smell that only other refugees could smell, drawn to each other like blind animals. Everyone had dreams and plans. Some had decided to head to South Africa. Others wanted to get to the harbour cities in Kenya and Tanzania in order to smuggle themselves onto a ship. But there were also those who had already given up. They had managed to reach Lagos but did not think they would ever be able to leave. Everyone was afraid of the military, of the laughing soldiers. Many had terrible stories to tell, some had escaped from prisons with mortal wounds to their bodies and souls.

I tried to listen to these blind animals, to interpret their smells and to answer the question as to where I myself was headed. I asked every new refugee if they had seen or heard anything about my father. But he remained gone. It was as if those soldiers had torn him apart with their laughter. I tried to speak to you, Alemwa, but I could not hear your voice. It was as if all of the eyes in the city, all these belching machines, made it impossible for me to feel your breath. I have never been as alone as I felt those days and nights in Lagos. I was so alone that I sometimes secretly touched people that I passed in the street. Occasionally they shouted out at me since they thought I was a pickpocket.

I ran, the whole time I ran, even when I was sleeping my legs continued to move. I started looking for the man who was going to help me, but it turned out that he was the one who found me. I was at an outdoor restaurant, loitering in the shadows outside the gate where furious guards chased away all beggars and people who disturbed the wealthy as they were getting out of their chauffeur-driven cars. Suddenly I felt that stinking breath. I flinched and turned around, ready to strike if someone was preparing to attack me.

The man who stood there was small, his face was pale. He was white with a thin moustache. He was breathing right in my face. His smile should have warned me since I had learned that laughing people can kill with brutal precision; I had seen smiling people commit acts of violence and betrayal. But perhaps it was because I was so tired that I didn’t care about his stiff smile, or perhaps it was because I could not hear your voice warning me. He asked me what my name was and then told me he was from Italy. His name was Cartini or Cavanini, I can’t remember any more. He was an engineer and he had been in Lagos for four months and was about to return home. His work was something to do with steam or coal-driven heating plants, I don’t even know, he was speaking so fast and his eyes travelled up and down my body, up and down, and I remember thinking that this was the man who was going to help me.

I didn’t know at that time where Italy was. I didn’t even know where Africa was, that there were continents in the world separated by great oceans. I had heard about Europe and its riches and I had heard about America but no one had told me there were no direct paths leading to these places. Maybe Europe was a city like Lagos, but without the furious guards at the gate, a city where all doors were open, where even someone like me could enter without fear of threats or assault.

He asked me if I wanted to come along, what my price was, if I was alone. I thought it was strange that these questions came in the wrong order. He asked me for my price before he even knew if I was for sale. Perhaps he thought all black women could be bought, that there was no dignity in a land where almost everyone lived in poverty. But even though he asked the questions in the wrong order I went with him.

He had a car. I thought we were going to a hotel but he drove to a large villa that lay in a fenced-off area with other villas and dogs who barked in identical ways and guards that all looked like each other and bright lights in front of each house that almost burned. We went into the house. He asked me if I wanted to have a bath and if I was hungry and the whole time his eyes travelled up and down my body. I was wearing a blue dress that had torn in one seam. When I sat and ate at the large table in the kitchen he reached over and touched me through the hole in the seam and I remember that I shivered. He asked me for my price. I had not answered him since a person cannot have a price. This must have been what made me hate him.

I already knew what was coming. When I was thirteen my mother told me it was time for me to get used to what men wanted from women and had a rightful claim to and that it was one of her brothers who was going to show me. I didn’t like him. He had a wandering eye and wheezed when he breathed. It was a horrendous experience, like being torn apart by someone kicking their way into my body. Afterwards I cried but my mother said that the worst was over now and that it would get better, or at least not any worse.

We went into the pale little man’s bedroom which was on the upper floor. A window was open and the night breeze came in. In the distance I could hear drums and people singing. It was dark in the room and I lay down on the bed, pulled my skirt over my head and waited. I heard him moving about the room and it sounded as if he was sighing. Then he climbed on top of me and I listened to the sound of the drums and the song and the sound grew and became stronger. I never felt him inside me although he must have been, I was only aware of the drums and the song that rose and fell and sometimes changed into a scream.

Suddenly he pulled my skirt away from my face. Even though it was dark in the room with only the streetlight coming in from outside I could see that his smile was gone. He was sweaty and panting, beads of perspiration hung from his moustache. His whole face was distorted as if he was in pain. He started screaming at the same time as he grabbed my throat in his hands and tried to strangle me. I knew he wanted to kill me. I struggled with all my strength, but he was stronger. The whole time he kept screaming. He blamed me for everything, for being in his bed, for being black, for smelling strangely of spices he didn’t know, for having the skirt over my face, for selling myself, for existing. Finally I managed to kick him so hard that he lost his hold. I rolled down from the bed and tried to find my shoes. When I turned around he had one arm above his head and in his hand he held a large hook, the kind for catching sharks. I looked straight into his eyes, they were like two heavy doors about to slam shut.

Then there was a sound and he paused, the doors in his eyes stayed open. I saw him turn his head towards the window where a thin white curtain was moving in the warm breeze. A little monkey sat in the window. It had brown-green fur and it was scratching itself on the forehead. I don’t know where it came from but it saved my life. I lifted a heavy wooden chair from the foot of the bed and smashed it as hard as I could over the pale little man’s head. The monkey looked at me in surprise, then continued its scratching. I don’t know if I killed him or not. I simply gathered up my shoes and took the man’s wallet and watch that were lying on the bedside table. Then I ran. When I came out in the garden I turned. The monkey was still in the window, a shadow against the white curtain.

I crept through the city afraid of being caught by the laughing soldiers or of being robbed by someone who could smell the presence of the wallet and the watch. I hid by an old bridge. It was very dark and I felt rats brush by my legs and I flipped through the wad of notes in the wallet. It was a lot of money. I heard the monkey who had saved my life tell me that I should leave the city at dawn and take a bus going north. I didn’t know where I was headed but I knew the monkey would be waiting for me at my destination. When I got on the bus I hid the money and the watch inside my underwear, clasped my hands tightly between my legs and fell asleep.

When I woke up the bus had stopped in the middle of a plain. It was the middle of the day and the sun gave no shadow. The bus had broken down; sweaty men lay under the engine and were trying to fix a leaking oil pan. I got off the bus and started walking. To protect myself from the sun I stuck some palm branches under my headscarf. Sometimes I heard the monkey calling out to me from a tree. I thought about the fact that the one who had saved my life was out there somewhere, watching and waiting. I no longer felt alone as I walked along those dusty roads in the red sand. The monkey was with me, and so were my other invisible companions: my parents and you, Alemwa, you above all.

I kept walking north and became one of the many who wandered along the roads in unruly flocks, running away from their suffering towards a goal that most often was simply a mirage, not even a dream. At last I reached the beach. On the other side of the water lay Europe.

Tea-Bag fell silent. She slowly unzipped her jacket and Humlin jumped. He thought he’d seen an animal peek out of her coat, leap down to the floor and run out of the room.

Tea-Bag looked at him and smiled.

He wondered if Tea-Bag’s story was over now, or if it was just beginning.