Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

She observed Pandre and his critical eyes.

Isabel’s dump of a prison seemed very close by. A chain round Isabel’s leg chafed and rattled quietly somewhere deep down inside Ana.

When Pandre eventually chose the woman he wanted to be with, and pointed at her as if he were selecting an animal for slaughter, all present were surprised to find that his finger was aimed at the pale and almost repulsive A Magrinha. Ana thought at first that it was Felicia he had selected, as she was standing next to A Magrinha. But when she saw Pandre stand up and bow in front of the extremely thin woman that hardly any of the customers ever chose, there was no doubt about it. She was astonished; but if there was one thing she had learnt during the time she spent in the brothel, it was that the desires of men and their views on what was tempting were impossible to predict. It also occurred to her, not without a degree of satisfaction, that Pandre’s selection of A Magrinha meant that the cost of his visit had decreased because A Magrinha was a net loss to the brothel rather than making any money for it. Perhaps the time had now come to have one final talk with her, ask Herr Eber to pay her enough money for a vegetable stall in one of the town’s markets for the blacks, and then to send her packing once and for all.

But she got no further in her thoughts before something unexpected happened and distracted her. There were rather a lot of clients in the brothel that evening, crowded round the little bar in one corner of the room with their glasses and cigars, and as Pandre was on his way with A Magrinha to her room a tall, well-built man suddenly stepped in front of them and blocked the way. O’Neill, who could always sense when danger was in the air, got up from his seat next to the door. Ana did the same. The man standing in front of Pandre was called Rocha, a person with an Italian father and a Portuguese mother. He worked in the colonial administration, in charge of the maintenance of roads and sewers, and visited the brothel every week. He was usually well behaved, but he occasionally lost his temper when he had been drinking too much. When that happened he would be escorted off the premises before he could cause any damage.

Ana suspected instinctively that something very serious was about to happen. Rocha pushed A Magrinha to one side and began speaking to Pandre in broken English.

‘I have choosed her to spend the evening with me,’ said Rocha.

‘I find that very hard to believe,’ said Pandre, without losing his friendly smile.

‘To say as it is, all the women have already clients for the evening. You come too late.’

Ana had approached close enough to hear the brief conversation, and knew immediately what it meant. She had noticed how many of the white customers had reacted when a coloured man entered the brothel. It had never happened before during her time in charge, although Senhor Vaz had told her how he very occasionally made an exception for influential Indians from Durban or Johannesburg. As nobody had protested openly, she thought that the complaints would come directly to her later, after Pandre had left the brothel. That somebody might ask her what she meant by allowing such a person in when all the other customers were white, and that she would reply that she was the one who decided whether anybody should be turned away or not. She knew that they wouldn’t like it, no matter how much she stressed that it was an exception.

All conversation had ceased, everybody was looking at the two men and the girl, who hardly knew what was happening around her.

‘Is there a problem?’ Ana asked.

‘Not really,’ said Pandre. ‘It’s just that this man is standing in our way. We were just about to withdraw.’

‘He has stolen the woman I have picked for this evening,’ said Rocha.

He spoke Portuguese to Ana. When he started to translate, Pandre raised his hand to stop him. He had understood everything that was said.

Rocha pulled A Magrinha roughly to his side, as if to underline what he had said. In a flash Pandre took her back again — but before either Rocha or Ana had time to react, A Magrinha had snapped out of her trance-like state. She pushed Pandre to one side and stood next to Rocha.

‘He is going to be with me tonight,’ she said. ‘Not that brown man.’

Pandre’s smile vanished. It was as if a flame had been blown out. He turned to Ana. She could see that he was furious.

‘I insist that I have made my choice,’ he almost snarled.

‘That’s my impression too,’ said Ana, turning to A Magrinha and gesturing that she should go back to Pandre.

‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘He’s brown.’

‘And you are black,’ said Ana. ‘I’m white. And I’m the one who decides what you’re going to do.’

‘No,’ said A Magrinha. ‘I’m not going to get undressed for him.’

Rocha smiled. O’Neill had moved closer as it looked as if blows were about to be exchanged. But Pandre gave up. Ana knew that he was not accepting defeat, he was still furious: but he could see that things could become very nasty, and he wanted to avoid that.

‘I’m going back to my hotel,’ he said. ‘I assume that the payment for my services will have arrived before I leave Lourenço Marques around noon tomorrow.’

He bowed, then hastily left the establishment, followed by O’Neill. The men clustered round the bar applauded approvingly. Rocha pushed A Magrinha away contemptuously, and she flopped down on to a sofa. Ana could see that right now she hated the place she found herself in — more than ever before.

When Ana heard the car’s engine start, she went out into the street. O’Neill was standing there, smoking.

‘That man should never have come here,’ he said. ‘It’s none of my business, of course. But if you let the likes of him come in, you’ll soon find that all the other customers disappear.’

Ana didn’t respond. She knew that she ought to go in and order Rocha to leave the premises, but instead she crossed over the street and went into a little bar run by two Portuguese brothers. One was small and fat, the other a hunchback. The bar was cramped. It contained a wooden counter, a few tables in the dark corners, and a number of street walkers who divided their time between parading up and down outside and having drinks bought for them in the dark interior of the bar. Ana asked the hunchbacked brother for a glass of cognac, emptied it rapidly and ordered another. She recognized one of the women lurking in the shadows. She had frequently asked to joined Ana’s brothel, but been rejected by the other women because she had a reputation for stealing. She was also in the habit of punishing customers who didn’t treat her well by poisoning them with magic potions. The poison didn’t kill them, but rendered the men impotent for a considerable length of time.

When Ana saw that the woman was coming towards her, she gestured with her hand that she should keep her distance, put money on the counter to pay for her drinks, and went back out into the street.

The night sky was clear. She thought about her father and the evenings when he used to show her the constellations he was so familiar with. She waited there in the street until the car returned from Pandre’s hotel, and just before clambering in she turned to O’Neill.

‘Tell the women I want to see them all at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘They’ll be asleep then.’

‘No, they won’t,’ said Ana. ‘They will be awake, washed and dressed. At seven o’clock tomorrow morning I want to see them gathered around the jacaranda tree.’

‘I shall be there.’

‘I want to talk to the women, not to you. You will not be there.’

She closed the car door. She could see through the rear window that O’Neill was standing with an unlit cigarette in his hand, watching the car leave.