Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

The black priest, dressed in a white cowl, spoke one of the languages Hanna didn’t understand. She occasionally registered the name Esmeralda, but understood nothing else of what he said. She thought that was quite appropriate: she had no idea about Esmeralda’s life, and so it was right that she should continue to be unknown to Hanna in death.

We are the ones who have brought about this situation, Hanna thought, somewhat remorseful. We have turned their lives into something that suits us, rather than them.

Hanna stood there watching Esmeralda’s children, and her husband, who was staring at the priest with his teeth clenched. When it was all over, she summoned Felicia and asked her to tell Esmeralda’s husband that the family would receive a regular payment. The man came over to thank Hanna. His hand was wet with sweat, his grip slack like that of a man scared to grasp the hand of another person too firmly.

Hanna returned home. Herr Eber, who had attended the funeral, was instructed to make sure that the brothel was opened for business again, and that the black mourning clothes were taken care of.

As she left the cemetery she noticed that Julietta was communicating in whispers with Felicia next to a mausoleum for an old Portuguese ship’s captain. Her first instinct was to box Julietta on the ear, but she resisted the temptation, turned away and left the grave — which was already being filled in.

When she got home she went to lie down on her bed. She slept like a log for several hours. Afterwards she ate some of the food she had been served, but the thought of the tapeworm came back to haunt her, and she slid the plate to one side.

With the paraffin lantern in her hand, she went into her study to write about Esmeralda’s death and burial in her diary. But when she entered the room and the lamp banished the shadows, she saw that Carlos was sitting on her desk chair. He was holding in his hand one of the glass jars he had taken from the big wardrobe, and had unscrewed the lid. Only now did Hanna realize that the jar was empty. Then she saw the tapeworm wriggling away in the side of Carlos’s mouth. She screamed and tried to take hold of the worm, but Carlos swallowed it. Her first impulse was to hit him, but instead she prised apart his jaws and thrust her fingers down into his throat to make him sick. Carlos screamed and resisted. He was strong, and she couldn’t hold on to him. Anaka and Julietta heard the noise and came running to assist. Hanna couldn’t manage to explain what Carlos had swallowed, just that it was important that he should vomit it up. They grabbed hold of Carlos and this time it was Anaka who managed to force her hand so far down into his throat that he started to vomit. Yellow carrot juice spurted out all over the desk.

Hanna didn’t know the Portuguese word for tapeworm. She fetched one of the glass jars that were left in the wardrobe, showed them the tapeworm, and then the jar on the desk that was empty. They all poked around in the contents of Carlos’s stomach, but didn’t find it. Hanna was furious, sent Julietta to fetch more lamps, and told Anaka to thrust her fingers down into Carlos’s throat once again. But all that came up was nasty-smelling stomach juices.

They never succeeded in finding the tapeworm.

Carlos jumped up on to the ceiling light and refused to come down even when Hanna tried to console him and offered him the drink he liked more than anything else: milk. But he didn’t come down. Carlos was a wounded animal that hid himself away in his impregnable fortress — a lampshade.

Julietta and Anaka cleaned up the desk. Hanna went out on to the veranda. The town down below was shrouded in darkness. One or two fires in the far distance. Perhaps also the sound of drums.

From somewhere came the sound of laughter. It reminded her of the night when she had made up her mind to leave Captain Svartman’s ship.

Perhaps it’s the same man laughing, she thought. But I am quite a different person now: how can I be sure that I’ve heard his laughter before? And besides, on that occasion I didn’t need to worry about a chimpanzee that has eaten a tapeworm.

It was dawn before she went to bed.

By then Carlos had also gone to sleep, curled up like a frightened child in the ceiling light.

Hanna turned to Felicia once again. She told her about the tapeworm that Carlos had swallowed, but the only advice Felicia had to offer was to wait until it left the chimpanzee’s body of its own accord. Hanna asked whether there was a cure, anything the woman with the knowledge of medicine could give Carlos to kill the worm while it was still inside him, but Felicia said that the mysterious female magician who had sold her the tapeworms refused to have anything to do with apes or any other animal. She refused to treat elephants or mice, her knowledge was restricted to human suffering and the remedies she could offer them.

Hanna became so desperate that she borrowed Andrade’s car and was driven to the cathedral to talk to one of the Catholic priests. She assumed that the priests there could give advice on everything to do with human life. Even if it was the health of a chimpanzee that she was worried about, it was her own worries that she wanted to be free of.

The heat was like a solid wall in front of her as she travelled to the cathedral. Even though it was early in the morning the heat was so intense that her eyes ached as she hurried towards the darkness behind the open doors. Once inside, Hanna stood still for a while and allowed her eyes to become used to the darkness. The cathedral was empty, apart from a few nuns dressed in white, kneeling before a picture of the Madonna, and a solitary man in a white suit sitting in a pew with his eyes closed, as if he were asleep. There was a smell from the newly painted doors. Some black women in bare feet were gliding over the stone floor, carrying dusters and long poles with feathers on the end, with which they carefully caressed the highest-hanging pictures of the saints.

A priest dressed in black came out of a room in the chancel. He paused in front of the high altar and polished his spectacles. Hanna stood up and walked towards him. He put his glasses back on and eyed her up and down. He was young, barely more than thirty. That made her feel hesitant — a priest ought to be an old man.

‘The senhora looks as if she wants to confess,’ he said in a friendly tone.

‘What do people look like then?’ she responded. ‘Guilty? Full of sin?’

The claim that she looked as if she wanted to make a confession touched a sore point in her. She could not deny that she was the owner of the town’s biggest brothel, and earned money from the organized sin that was for sale there. But the priest didn’t seem to react against her negative tone of voice.

‘Most of all people who want to confess express a longing. They want to liberate themselves.’

‘I don’t want to confess. I’ve come here to ask for advice.’

The young priest pulled up two chairs and placed them facing each other. The cleaners had vanished, but the sleeping man was still there in a pew not far away.

‘I’m Father Leopoldo,’ said the young priest. ‘I’ve recently come here from Portugal.’

‘My name’s Hanna. My Portuguese is not good. I need to speak slowly in order to find the words I need, and I often place them in the wrong order.’

Father Leopoldo smiled. Hanna thought that his face was handsome even if he was very pale and almost gave the impression of being undernourished. Perhaps the priest also had a hungry worm in his intestines?

‘Where do you come from, Senhora Hanna?’

She recounted her background in brief, but chose not to mention the brothel: she merely said that she had married a Portuguese man called Senhor Vaz, who had died suddenly shortly after the marriage.