Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

‘I don’t mean that you did it, of course. But who would want to kill her? No white man would put a dead bird on a step as a warning. Surely it must have been somebody black?’

‘Or somebody who wanted to make it look that way.’

Ana realized that Felicia was right.

‘So you think it was a white man?’

‘Only a white person would want her to die.’

‘Why do you think she refuses to speak?’

‘Because she’s grieving.

‘Grieving?’

‘Grieving for the husband she was forced to kill.’

‘Because he had deceived her?’

‘She knows that all whites do that.’

‘Are you saying that all white people tell lies?’

‘Not to other whites. But to us.’

‘Do I tell lies?’

Felicia didn’t answer. She continued looking at Ana, didn’t turn her eyes away, but remained silent. So I shall have to answer the question myself, she thought. She’s making me decide. It’s my decision and nobody else’s.

‘I still don’t understand what you mean when you say that Isabel is grieving. She misses her children, of course. But that’s not grief.’

‘She’s grieving for the children she never had. As she was forced to kill her husband.’

Ana had the impression that their conversation was going round in circles and getting nowhere. She sensed rather than understood the logic in Felicia’s words.

‘Who would want to kill her?’ she asked again.

‘I don’t know, but essentially I believe that every single one of all the thousands of white people living in this town would be prepared to hold the knife that stabs right into her heart.’

‘Who has anything to gain from her death? It wouldn’t bring Pedro back to life.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Felicia. ‘I can’t understand the way you think.’

Ana got no further. Felicia stroked her hand over her newly washed white dress, carefully smoothing away the wrinkles. She wanted to leave.

‘Who am I to you?’ Ana suddenly asked.

‘You are Ana Branca,’ said Felicia in surprise.

‘Nothing more?’

‘You own this tree, the ground it’s growing in and the building around us.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Yes,’ said Ana. ‘That’s more than enough. It’s so much that I can barely manage to cope with it.’

A gigantic man with a large beard and a weatherbeaten face appeared in the open door leading into the garden. It was Felicia’s client. Ana watched them walking towards Felicia’s room. She looked very small by his side.

Just like I must have done, Ana thought. When I walked beside Lundmark to the consul in Algiers, to get married.

She remained sitting under the tree. It had been raining earlier in the evening. Steam was rising from the soil, and there was a sweet smell coming from the tree’s roots. There was also another smell, but she couldn’t make out where it was coming from. The underworld was intruding. Ana thought of herself as Hanna again, and remembered all the smells that rose up from the marshes and heather-clad moors where she grew up.

For a short while the feeling of homesickness was overpowering. No memories could awaken this longing as strongly as smells and fragrances, reminding her of something that she had lost and would always miss.

There under the tree she decided to stay in Africa until the lawyer Pandre had been to visit Isabel and given her advice. If the bottom line was that there was no way in which she could help the imprisoned woman, there was no reason for her to stay here any longer. She wouldn’t give up, but neither would she surrender to illusions.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice she thought she recognized. Emerging from one of the rooms, together with Belinda Bonita, was a man who, she could see that from the way he walked, seemed to be not completely sober. His back was turned towards her. At first she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then she realized it was a language she understood when the person talking it wasn’t slurring his speech.

She knew now who it was with his back turned towards her. Halvorsen. The man who had been Lundmark’s best friend. The one who had promised her his support if she needed it after Lundmark’s death and burial.

For the second time, somebody from the original crew of the Lovisa had come to her brothel. But she had to ask herself if she might be mistaken after all. Halvorsen had been a serious man, deeply religious, and not a heavy drinker like most others of the crew. Svartman, Lundmark and Halvorsen had been among the sober ones, she thought. But he was having difficulty in keeping his balance, and his Norwegian was slurred. She had the feeling that he was irritated because Belinda Bonita hadn’t understood what he said. On board the ship Halvorsen had always spoken in a low voice, not much more than a whisper. Now he was shouting, as if giving orders.

When he finally turned round and flopped down on to one of the sofas — with a bundle of banknotes in his hands, which Belinda quickly took from him — Ana saw that she had not been mistaken. It was Halvorsen all right, his hair plastered down, wearing his best clothes: she had last seen him dressed like that when he stood on deck at Lundmark’s burial, watching the corpse, weighed down with an iron sinker, disappear down into the depths.

She could still remember the magic number of metres: 1,935.

When Belinda had left Halvorsen, who was now sitting mumbling to himself, Ana stood up. O’Neill was standing behind him, wondering whether to help him out, but Ana waved him aside and sat down carefully beside Halvorsen. He turned his head slowly to look at her with bloodshot eyes. He had hardly changed since she saw him last, a few hours before she had slipped across the gangplank and jumped ship. Perhaps his hair had become slightly thinner, his cheeks hollower. But his enormous hands were exactly the same.

She smiled at him, but could see immediately that he didn’t know who she was. There was nothing in his eyes to suggest that he recognized her. As far as he was concerned she was an unknown woman, a white woman in a black brothel where he had just availed himself of the services of the beautiful but cool Belinda Bonita, who had stuffed his banknotes inside her blouse and gone back to her room to get washed and perhaps also change the sheets.

Halvorsen screwed up his eyes and tried to look at her with just one eye. He still seemed not to know who she was.

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Hanna Lundmark. Do you remember me?’

Halvorsen gave a start. He shook his head, couldn’t believe his ears.

‘I’m not a ghost,’ she said, trying to speak as clearly as possible. ‘It really is me.’

Now he knew. He stared at her incredulously.

‘You disappeared,’ he said. ‘We never found you.’

‘I went ashore. There was no way I could continue the voyage. It was as if Lundmark was still on board.’

‘1,935 metres,’ said Halvorsen. ‘I still remember that.’

He sat up, straightened his back, tried to force himself to become sober.

‘I didn’t believe I would ever see our cook alive again,’ he said. ‘Least of all here. What happened?’

‘I went ashore. I got married again, and became a widow once more.’

Halvorsen pondered upon her words, then asked her to repeat them, but more slowly this time. She did as he asked.

‘We thought you were dead,’ he said. ‘Nobody could believe that you would leave the ship voluntarily in an African port.’

‘I’d like to hear about the voyage,’ she said. ‘Did you see any icebergs?’

‘We saw one iceberg, as tall as a church. It was just after we left this port. The nights were always a worrying time — nobody ever discovers an iceberg until it’s too late. But we got to Australia and came back again.’