Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

Hanna gathered the women and the security guards around the jacaranda tree in the garden. She had asked Andrade to be present, and had taken Carlos with her, dressed in his white waiter’s jacket. She now allowed him to be what he really was — a chimpanzee stolen from his troop somewhere inland. Carlos seemed worried at first about returning to the brothel, but after slapping the lid of the piano hard several times he calmed down and sat on Zé’s knee, just as in the old days.

Zé seemed to be barely aware of the fact that his brother had passed away unexpectedly. He had attended the funeral, but had shown no sign of sorrow or pain. He sat at the piano and continued to tune the strings which never seemed to attain the harmony he was striving for.

Hanna started by saying that essentially, nothing would change. Everything would continue more or less as it always had done. As the widow of Senhor Vaz she intended to retain all the rules, duties and benefits that her husband had introduced to give their workplace the best possible reputation that it had always enjoyed. She would continue to be generous with regard to granting time off, and would be no less strict than Senhor Vaz had been when it came to clients who were violent or behaved in any other unacceptable fashion.

But of course, not everything could be the same as before, she said as she approached the end of her little speech that she had learnt off by heart in Portuguese, to ensure that she didn’t lose control of her words and thoughts. She was a woman. She didn’t have the same bodily strength as her husband had had — she wouldn’t be able to intervene if there was some kind of disturbance — and so she was going to appoint a couple more sturdy security guards who would protect the women and guarantee their safety.

But there was another thing which would inevitably be different because she wasn’t a man. The women would find it easier to talk to her about some things that would have been difficult to discuss with her husband. She envisaged a situation in which they could all talk more intimately with one another. That had to be an improvement for everybody, she asserted at the end of her brief address.

Afterwards, she was enveloped by a long-drawn-out silence. A single jacaranda flower floated slowly, as light as a feather, down to the ground. She hadn’t expected anybody to make any comments, but the silence scared her. It was not the usual silence between whites and blacks: it seemed to have a significance that she was unable to put her finger on.

She flung her hands out wide to indicate that the meeting was over. Nobody needed to stay any longer. The women picked up their chairs and went indoors, and Judas started sweeping the courtyard — but she waved him away as well. Zé returned to the piano with Carlos half asleep on his lap.

It dawned on Hanna what the silence had indicated. Nobody had wanted the closer relationship she had offered them. The silence had been heavy with an invisible reluctance, she realized that now. But she didn’t understand it. Couldn’t they see that as she was a woman, she really was closer to them? That everything she had said was true, unusually so in this world of hypocrisy and lies?

She had taken her notebook with her, and now she wrote in it — hesitantly, as if she couldn’t rely on her ability to interpret her own thoughts: ‘Anybody who robs somebody of their freedom can never expect to form a close relationship with them.’

She read what she had written. She put the notebook back in the woven basket which also contained a shawl and a tin flask that she always carried with her. It contained drinking water that had boiled for many hours before being left to cool down.

The women had returned to their rooms. Nobody was sitting on the sofas yet, ready to receive their clients once again. It was clear to Hanna that they were keeping out of her way so that they didn’t need to risk her speaking to them and offering them the closer relationship she had spoken about.

A close relationship, she thought. As far as they are concerned, all that means is a threat to which they don’t want to expose themselves.

She stood there with the basket in her hand, unsure about whether the reaction she had been confronted with aroused her anger or disappointment. Or was she in fact grateful and relieved that she didn’t need to try to carry out in practice what she had so wrongly envisaged in theory?

Senhor Andrade suddenly materialized by her side. Despite the fact that it was early in the morning, sweat was already pouring down his face. A drop hanging from the tip of his nose filled her with distaste. She had to restrain herself from thwacking him in the face with the handkerchief she had stuffed inside her blouse.

‘Is there anything else you require of me this morning?’

‘No. Nothing apart from hearing what you thought about it.’

Andrade gave a start. New drops of sweat gathered on the tip of his nose. Hanna realized that she had used the familiar form of address, and that he objected to that. She ought to have included the words ‘Senhor Andrade’. He evidently thought that not doing so indicated a lack of respect. But she knew that he was well paid for his services, and she certainly didn’t want to exchange him for one of the keen young solicitors from Lisbon who were now converging on Portugal’s African possessions in the hope of making their fortunes.

‘What I thought about what?’

‘My address. The meeting. The silence.’

Her distaste was increasing all the time. The beads of sweat on his bloated face made her feel ill.

‘It was a good exposition of the facts of the situation,’ said Andrade thoughtfully.

‘You’re not in court. Tell me what you really think. About their reaction.’

‘The whores? What else can you expect from them but silence? They’re used to opening other things than their mouths.’

Andrade’s effrontery almost made Hanna blush. She became the girl by the river again, scarcely daring to look any man she didn’t know in the eye. But she also realized that he was right. Why had she thought that she might be able to expect anything other than silence? On several occasions she had been present when Senhor Vaz had assembled the women to address them, but none of them had ever asked a question or requested that anything should be explained more clearly — and most certainly there had never been any question of contradicting him.

Andrade went out into the broiling sunshine and clambered into his car, which was driven by a black chauffeur in uniform. Hanna had arranged for the chauffeur to come and collect her an hour later.

She went up the stairs and opened the door to the room where she had slept those first nights after she had fled from Svartman’s ship. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. But there was nothing she could return to, not even the memory of those first lonely nights, the bleeding, and Laurinda coming to help her without making a sound.

She left the room without understanding why she had gone up the stairs to the upper floor. She sat down on one of the red plush sofas and waited for the car. Carlos had woken up and climbed into the jacaranda tree. He sat there watching her, as if he expected her to climb up as well and cling on to the branches.

She looked at all the closed doors. She thought about the fact that she knew nothing at all about what really went on inside the women’s heads. She would never be able to repeat the conversations she had sometimes had with Felicia. The fact that she was now the owner of the brothel opened up a chasm between her and the women with whom she had previously had a relationship as close as racial differences allowed.

Her unrest made it difficult for her to breathe. She held tightly on to the arms of the sofa so as not to fall. I can’t stay here, she thought. I have no business to be here. On a foreign continent where the residents either hate me or are scared of me.