Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

She wished she had dared to join them. But she didn’t have the necessary courage.

It was only when the practice was over, the children had left and the choirmaster had packed away his battered old briefcase that she went back out into the bright sunlight.

Judas was still standing on the same spot.

‘Why don’t you stand in the shade?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise the fact that she was annoyed. His behaviour had spoilt her experience in the cathedral.

He didn’t answer as he hadn’t understood what she said. He simply wiped the sweat from his brow, then let his arm hang loosely by his side again.

She returned to O Paraiso where Senhor Vaz was pacing up and down in the street outside, looking worried. He was carrying an umbrella as a substitute for a parasol to protect him from the sun. Carlos had climbed up on to the hotel sign and was throwing chips gathered from the stone roof at a dog down below. When Hanna arrived back, Senhor Vaz immediately started berating the black man. She didn’t understand what he was saying as he was speaking so quickly, but she gathered he had been worried that something had happened to her.

The black man still said nothing, but she had the impression that he was unmoved by the fit of rage aimed at him. And as she watched Senhor Vaz growing more and more furious, she noticed something that hadn’t occurred to her before.

Even if Judas was afraid of his white master, Senhor Vaz was just as afraid. The gigantic black man was not the only one on the defensive. Naturally, he couldn’t allow himself to react to the white man standing in front of him and shouting at him. That would be a punishable offence, and could lead to imprisonment or a beating. But now Hanna could see that Senhor Vaz was also afraid — a different sort of fear, but just as strong. And didn’t the same apply to Ana Dolores as well? She would boss the black servant girls and prostitutes about, give them orders, and was never satisfied with what they did, nor did she ever thank them. But wasn’t she also possessed by a never-ceasing flood of unease and fear?

The outburst came to an end just as quickly as it had begun. Senhor Vaz dismissed Judas with a wave of the hand, and offered Hanna his arm to take her with him into the coolest of the rooms, overlooking the sea. Judas squatted down next to the house.

Senhor Vaz flopped down on to a chair, placed his hands over his heart as if he had just been indulging in something extremely strenuous, and warned her at great length about the dangers of going for long walks in the extreme heat. He told her about friends of his who had suffered from heatstroke, especially after spending time in places where the sun was reflected by white stone, or by the sand on the town’s beaches. But above all he warned her against relying too much on the support offered by blacks.

She didn’t understand what he was trying to say.

‘Is it dangerous for black people to look at you?’ she asked.

Senhor Vaz shook his head in annoyance, as if the strain he had just undergone had used up all his patience.

‘A white woman shouldn’t walk around too much on her own,’ he said. ‘That’s just the way it is.’

‘I went to the cathedral and listened to the black children singing.’

‘They sing very beautifully. They have a remarkable ability to harmonize without needing to practise all that much. But white ladies should only go for short walks. And preferably not at all when it’s very hot.’

She wanted to ask more about the unlikely danger she had evidently exposed herself to. But Senhor Vaz raised his hand, he didn’t have the strength to answer any more questions. He remained seated on the chair, his white hat on his knee, his black walking stick made from a wood known as pau preto leaning against one of his legs, and seemed to be lost in thought.

After a while Hanna stood up and left the room. Senhor Vaz had fallen asleep, his mouth half open, his eyebrows twitching, snoring softly.

When she looked out of the front door, she found that Judas was no longer there. She wondered where he lived, if he was married, if he had any children.

But most of all she wondered what he was thinking.

That evening she had dinner in her room once again. One of the black servant girls whose name she didn’t know brought her food. She also moved without making a sound, just like Laurinda. She wondered if these silent movements also had to do with fear — the fear she was beginning to see more and more of.

She ate the food: rice, boiled vegetables whose taste she didn’t recognize, and a grilled chicken leg. There were many spices, completely new to her. But she ate her fill. She drank tea with her food. What was left over she drank later on when it had grown cold, as a substitute for water in the evening and during the night.

That was one of the last pieces of advice Lundmark had given her before he suddenly fell ill and died. Never drink unboiled water.

She had followed his advice. Now that she wasn’t bleeding any more and was no longer carrying what would have been their child, her stomach wasn’t causing her any problems.

What she was now carrying was merely emptiness.

She put the tray on the floor outside her room and locked the door. She took off all her clothes and lay naked on her bed. The curtain in front of the window was hanging motionless. There was something sinful about lying naked on a bed, she thought. Sinful because there is no man here who desires me, nobody I would allow to take advantage of me. She reached for the blanket in order to cover up her body, but then changed her mind. There was nobody who could see her hiding away here. If there was a God who was invisible but all-seeing, He would surely allow a person to lie down naked when the heat was so suffocating.

That evening she lay there for a long time, thinking about the fear she thought she had detected in Senhor Vaz’s eyes. She had never seen fear like that in her mother or father. There was an upper class in Sweden, of course, but it didn’t need to be frightening if you co-operated with it. But here, things were different. Here, everybody was afraid, even if the whites tried to hide their fear behind a front of either calmness and self-control, or well-planned outbursts of rage.

She thought: where is my fear? Am I not afraid because I don’t have anybody to be afraid of? Am I completely alone?

The solitary world. She would never be able to cope with that. She had grown up as a human being in the company of others. She would never be able to survive in a world without that communion.

That evening she regretted having jumped ship. If she had continued the voyage to Australia, perhaps the feeling of being unable to cope with the loss of Lundmark would have faded away? Despite everything, there was a feeling of community on board that she was a part of. She felt like an insect, flapping its wings frantically, trapped inside a glass that had been turned upside down.

But that feeling also faded away. She knew she had done what she was forced to do. If she had stayed on board the ship, she might well eventually have jumped overboard. Lundmark’s constant shadow-like presence would have driven her mad.

She was about to fall asleep, still naked on top of the bedcover, when she heard the sound of raindrops on the tin roof. The sound gradually grew louder, and before long it was the booming of tropical rain. She got up and pulled the curtain to one side. The mosquitoes had fled the heavy rain, so she could allow the cooling air to flow freely into the room.

It was pitch-dark outside. There were no fires burning. The rain drowned all other noises. There was no sound of voices or the gramophone from the ground floor.