Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

A young woman by the name of Nausica had gone to fetch water from a well on the outskirts of Xhipamanhine, one of the town’s biggest settlements for blacks. Like all other women, she was balancing the water pitcher on her head. The pitcher was large, it contained twenty litres: but Nausica was proceeding gracefully along the path as she had done so many times before. Then according to Julietta, something happened just as the woman was coming back to the settlement. Nausica had been confronted by three white men, all of them young, carrying shotguns to shoot the seagulls that were gathered at the site of the large rubbish dumps by the shore. It was a swampy area where nobody and nothing lived, apart from the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that had one of their biggest incubation sites just there. Nausica tried to make way for the three men without losing control of the heavy water pitcher. But just as they were passing one of the young men hit the pitcher with the butt of his shotgun and smashed it, so that the water poured down over Nausica. She sank down in a heap on to the ground, hugging her knees hard. Behind her she could hear the men laughing. Some women working on their tiny machambor had seen what happened. Only when the three men had disappeared along the path did they dare to venture forward to see if Nausica was badly injured.

But there was somebody else who had seen what had happened. It was Nausica’s father, Akatapande, who now came running along the path. He was an engine driver on trains travelling between Lourenço Marques and the South African border at Ressano Garcia. This incident happened to coincide with the two days off he had every month. Having established that Nausica was not seriously injured, his first instinct was to chase after the three men who had attacked her. Nausica and the other women tried to restrain him — he was risking being beaten to death or shot by the white men who were hardly likely to worry about a father who was protesting about his daughter having been humiliated. But they couldn’t hold Akatapande back. He raced along the path until he caught up with the three men who were still laughing about the woman who had been soaked through.

Akatapande started by cursing the three men. At first they seemed to pay no attention to him at all, but continued walking down to the beach. However, Akatapande stood in their way and started punching one of the men on the chest. One of the others clubbed him down with the butt of his shotgun. When Akatapande managed to get to his feet, he was immediately clubbed down again. Then the first man aimed his gun at Akatapande’s head and shot him. Then they had continued on their way, quite calmly, as if nothing had happened.

News of Akatapande’s death spread with the speed that only extremely brutal attacks could bring about. When an officer summoned from the fort decided not to instigate an investigation because one of the men concerned was the son of one of the governor’s closest associates, the subdued muttering in Xhipamanhine began to grow into a furious outcry, and by the early morning had developed into the riot.

Hanna had no doubt that what Julietta had told her was the truth.

And she had become aware of something else: what upset the blacks most of all was that the young men hadn’t reacted at all to what they had done.

A dead black man — nothing to bother about.

Julietta stood up, but remained on the veranda. Hanna asked her if there was anything else she wanted to say.

‘I want to work at the hotel,’ said Julietta.

‘Don’t you like it here?’

No answer.

‘We don’t need any staff in the hotel. Nobody books in there any longer.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

It dawned on Hanna, to her surprise, that Julietta wanted to start working as a prostitute. She wanted to sit alongside the other black women on the sofas, waiting for customers. Hanna was upset. Julietta was still a child. She was younger than Hanna had been when she had snuggled down among Forsman’s greasy furs in the sleigh that had transported her through the frozen countryside to the coast.

‘Have you ever been with a man?’ Hanna asked angrily.

‘Yes.’

‘Who? When?’

No answer. Hanna knew that she was not going to get one. But she had no real reason to doubt that Julietta was telling the truth about her experience.

I know nothing about these black people, she thought. Their life is a mystery about which I can’t even begin to conjure up some kind of explanation. It’s just as unknown as the whole of this part of the world I find myself living in.

‘That’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘You’re too young.’

‘Felicia was sixteen when she started.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She told me.’

‘I didn’t know you talked to the women who live down there.’

‘I talk to everybody. And everybody talks to me.’

Hanna thought the conversation was starting to go in circles.

‘Anyway, I’m the one who decides. And I say once and for all that you are too young.’

‘But Esmeralda is old and fat. Nobody wants to go with her any more. I want to start in her place.’

‘How do you know that nobody is interested in her any longer?’

‘She’s told me that.’

‘Has Esmarelda said that?’

‘Yes.’

Hanna no longer knew if Julietta was telling the truth or not. But unfortunately Julietta was quite right about Esmeralda. The old prostitute had recently gone even further downhill. She drank in secret, always seemed to be eating chicken coated with thick layers of fat, and she had completely lost control of her weight. At one of their morning meetings Herr Eber had told Hanna sorrowfully that nowadays Esmeralda was earning virtually no money at all. She spent most of her time sitting on sofas, with nothing else to do. Only an occasional drunken sailor would turn up late at night, collapse into her arms, then fall asleep and remain in her bed until he was lifted up by one of the guards and thrown out — naturally having first paid for the intercourse he thought he had had, but most often couldn’t remember.

Esmeralda’s situation was not something Hanna wanted to discuss with Julietta. She was still upset by the girl’s request to start working in the brothel. She dismissed her from the veranda without saying anything more.

That same afternoon Hanna sent a messenger to Felicia with a brief message she had placed inside an envelope and sealed it. Hanna didn’t want the letter to come into the wrong hands. ‘I need to talk to you about Esmeralda.’

Felicia came up the hill to the stone house that evening. There was still a smell of smoke on the veranda and outside the windows. Felicia was able to tell Hanna that all the dead bodies had now been removed from the street. The riot had fizzled out. Soldiers with guns at the ready were still patrolling the most important thoroughfares, but nobody expected anything drastic to happen. On the other hand, the brothel was almost empty.

Felicia sat down on the chair in Hanna’s study. Hanna gave her an envelope, this one sealed as well.

‘I’d like you to give this to the girl Nausica, please,’ she said.

‘Nausica is a sixteen-year-old girl who can’t read.’

‘The envelope doesn’t contain anything written. I’m giving her money. For her father’s burial and a new water pitcher.’

Felicia hesitated before accepting the envelope and putting it inside her blouse. Hanna wondered if Felicia might be considering if her honesty was being tested.

But she said nothing about that, and started talking about Esmeralda instead. Esmeralda was about twenty when she came to the brothel — Felicia didn’t know where Senhor Vaz had found her. In the early days Esmeralda had been one of the favourites, for several years the most sought after of the women.