Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

In the end she put down the spade and sat on the bench. She was in torment. The ground in front of her was covered in bones from dead children. It seemed as if this morning, once and for all, she had discovered what kind of a world she had been living in. Her queasiness had turned into a feeling of dismay, perhaps even horror.

Without Ana’s noticing, Felicia had come out into the courtyard. She was wearing one of her many attractive silk dressing gowns. She looked at the dug-up soil and all the pieces of bone with a blank expression on her face.

‘Why are you digging all this up?’ she asked.

Instead of answering Ana opened the sack and showed her Carlos’s stiff and shrivelled corpse.

‘Didn’t you know that this was a cemetery?’ asked Felicia in surprise.

‘No. I knew nothing about it. I just wanted Carlos to have a pretty resting place here under the jacaranda tree.’

‘Why have you killed Carlos?’

Ana was not surprised by Felicia’s question. If she had learnt one thing during her time in this town, it was that black people thought whites were capable of all kinds of actions, even the most inexplicable or cruel.

‘It wasn’t me who killed him.’

She explained what had happened at Pedro Pimenta’s farm. When Ana mentioned Ana Dolores’s name, she realized that Felicia understood that what she was saying was true.

‘Ana Dolores is a dangerous person,’ said Felicia. ‘She is surrounded by all kinds of evil spirits that can kill. I have never understood how she could be a nurse.’

It struck Ana that Felicia didn’t seem in the least disturbed by all the bones that had been dug up. That only increased Ana’s unease.

‘Bury him here,’ said Felicia. ‘It’s a good place for him to be.’

Felicia turned to leave, but Ana stretched out her hand and took hold of her dressing gown.

‘I must ask you a question,’ she said. ‘I realize that all these aborted foetuses or newborn babies that have been killed are the result of what happened here in the brothel. But there’s something else I want to know, and I want you to give me an honest answer.’

‘I’m always honest,’ said Felicia.

Ana shook her head.

‘Oh no you’re not,’ she said. ‘Neither am I. I haven’t met a single person in this town who tells the truth. But the truth is what I want from you now. Is my dead foetus buried here as well?’

‘Yes. It was Laurinda who buried it. She dug a hole and emptied the bucket into it.’

Ana nodded in silence. This seemed to be the moment when she discovered and understood everything about her time here in Lourenço Marques, from the moment she stepped ashore until now, as she sat here with all these human remains in front of her.

She stood up.

‘That was all I wanted to know,’ she said. ‘Now I’ll lay my ape to rest and replace all the soil as it was before. I understand that this is a cemetery. Right at the heart of the brothel is a secret burial place.’

‘And it tells a truth,’ said Felicia.

‘Yes,’ said Ana. ‘The cemetery also tells a truth. One we’d rather not know about.’

Felicia went back inside. But it dawned on Ana that she couldn’t bury Carlos here as she had planned. She couldn’t allow him to lie here among all these lost souls of foetuses and dead babies. She put Carlos back into the sack, and replaced the soil so that no bones could be seen. She went to fetch the chauffeur, who carried the sack back to the car. He didn’t ask any questions. He’s an old man who’s seen and heard it all, she thought. Is there any basic difference between all the crazy things white people do, and me being driven back and forth with an ape in a sack?

She asked him to take her to the part of the harbour where small fishing boats were moored. It was next to the high wooden frames where the fishermen hung their nets and the baskets that were used to carry their catches up to the market stalls.

Ana got out of the car. Most of the fishing boats were already out at sea, and would return later in the day with their catches. But at one of the jetties there were a few boats still moored there, with their sails furled round the masts. She asked the chauffeur to accompany her there.

‘I need to hire a boat,’ she said. ‘I want to take my ape out to sea and bury him there.’

‘I shall ask,’ said the chauffeur.

‘Whoever takes me out to sea will be well paid, of course.’

Two of the fishermen shook their heads, but a third one, an older man about the same age as the chauffeur, said he was willing. When Ana gathered the man was prepared to take her out in his boat, she went on to the jetty.

‘I’ve assured him that you are not out of your mind,’ said the chauffeur. ‘He’s willing to take you to sea, provided you go right away.’

‘I shall pay him well,’ said Ana. ‘I also need some heavy weights to put in the sack, to make sure that it really does sink.’

The chauffeur explained that to the fisherman, and listened to his response.

‘He has an old anchor that he can sacrifice as a sinker,’ he said. ‘He’ll need to be paid extra for that, of course. He hopes you won’t be afraid of getting your dress dirty, but he also has another important question.’

‘What does he want to know?’

‘Can you swim?’

Ana thought about her father and his stubborn refusal to allow her to swim in the river. Should she tell the fisherman a white lie, or give him an honest answer? She felt that she couldn’t cope with any more lies.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t swim.’

‘Good,’ said the chauffeur. ‘He doesn’t want to have people who can swim in his boat. They don’t have sufficient respect for the sea.’

They fetched the sack containing Carlos. Ana had the feeling that it was getting heavier and heavier.

‘I’m ashamed to say that I’ve forgotten your name,’ said Ana.

‘Why should you be ashamed of something you’ve forgotten? Does that mean you should also be ashamed of what you remember? My name’s Vanji.’

‘I’d like you to stay here until we get back, please. Then I’ll only need you and your car for a few more days.’

Vanji was disappointed to hear that their time together would soon be over. Ana didn’t have the strength to console him.

‘What’s the name of the man with the boat?’ she asked.

‘Columbus,’ said the chauffeur. ‘He never goes out fishing on a Tuesday. He’s convinced he would never catch anything then. You are lucky that it’s Tuesday today. It’s unlikely that anybody else apart from Columbus would be prepared to go to sea with a dead ape in the boat, and, to cap it all, with a white woman as a passenger.’

Ana sat down by the mast in the little boat. The sack and the rusty old anchor were lying at her feet. The boat smelled strongly of many years of catches. Columbus raised the sail with his sinewy arms and sat down by the rudder. When they came to the harbour entrance, the wind filled the sail and they started moving more quickly. Ana pointed out to sea, the wide strait between the mainland and the as yet invisible island known as Inhaca.

‘Until we can hardly see land,’ she tried to explain, not knowing if the old fisherman could speak Portuguese or not.

He smiled by way of an answer. That smile calmed Ana down. The discovery of the child cemetery had been gripping her in a sort of stranglehold. Now that feeling was beginning to fade away. She let one hand trail in the water, which was both warm and cool at the same time. A few seabirds were circling overhead. They were like sparks coming out of the sun, white sparks that eventually formed a sort of halo over the fishing boat, which was painted red, blue and green. Columbus had lit an old pipe, and his gaze seemed to be permanently fixed on the horizon. Ana packed the anchor into the sack, letting Carlos embrace the rusty iron, then tied a knot just as she remembered it being done at Lundmark’s burial. Perhaps the two bodies will meet? Could there be a sort of cemetery somewhere down at the bottom of the sea where all the corpses eventually gathered together? It was a childish thought, she knew that, but nobody could care less what she was thinking just now, least of all Columbus with his pipe in his mouth.