Henning Mankell - I Die, but the Memory Lives on

The day before we were due to rehearse the scene which involved the coffin I was approached by Alfredo, the stage manager, who asked for a word in private. He was very worried, and stared at his feet. I had great difficulty making out what he was muttering. In the end, the penny dropped.

"Are you saying that the coffin has disappeared?"

"Disappeared."

"How is that possible? It was agreed from the word go that this production would have a second run."

Alfredo stammered and mumbled away. I started getting impatient.

"For Christ's sake, that coffin can't simply have disappeared, can it?"

"It has been used."

"Used? What do you mean, used? What for?"

"For a funeral."

I stared at Alfredo for quite a while. Then we sat down in the front row of the stalls. I asked him to tell me the full story. A girl who used occasionally to hang around outside the theatre had died. She was seventeen or so and used to beg for food. She had died of Aids, Alfredo knew that for sure. He also assured me that although the girl probably worked as a prostitute, none of the theatre workers had been with her in that capacity.

But it was all to do with the burial. The girl did not have any relatives. She had run the risk of being tipped into one of the paupers' graves in the city. They were filled once a week with dead bodies. Then the stage technicians at the theatre had remembered the coffin that had been used in the Dario Fo play. It might only be a stage prop, a cheap plywood box, but it was better than nothing. So the coffin had been retrieved from the stores and the girl had been buried in a dignified way, though her coffin was only a prop from a play written by an Italian master of farce.

When Alfredo had finished his story, we sat there for ages, neither of us saying a word. I felt sick. It was as if reality had placed its heavy, gnarled hand over the theatre.

But the queasiness passed. I told Alfredo that I thought they had done the right thing. No doubt it would be possible to build another coffin.

"Mestre Afonse says he has no more plywood."

"Then he'll have to use something else."

"He has only solid wooden planks."

"Then he'll have to use those."

"They are thick planks. The coffin will be very heavy."

"Then the actors who carry the coffin will have to get used to that."

About a year later, Alfredo and I were both present at a burial service in the big cemetery outside Maputo, by the side of the road leading to Xai-Xai. Afterwards, as we were walking towards the gate, Alfredo pointed towards a corner of the cemetery. There were several mounds with no crosses.

I understood without him needing to say anything.

That was where she was buried, in a stage coffin made of plywood which had been used in a theatre production.

I've often thought that I ought to write to Dario Fo and tell him this story. I'm sure he would have liked it. I'm certain he would have been moved.

It is impossible of course not to feel angry about the Aids epidemic that is ravaging our world. The number of unrecorded cases is astronomical and terrifying. For the majority of those affected, death is inevitable. Only a limited number of those with the disease have access to effective ARVs and the full resources that can more or less control the virus.

The virus can infect anybody at all who is careless, unaware or irresponsible. But depending on where you were born or who your parents were, the implications are different. The virus will also infect those who, through poverty, are forced into situations where they are exposed to it. This in itself is enough to arouse and justify anger. This is what our world is like, a twilight zone for poor people in the so-called developing countries. At the same time it is an illusory paradise for those who live in the rich ghettos surrounded by palisades that are growing higher and higher. Death has become an economic question. Solidarity with our fellow men and women is being made more and more difficult.

A growing number of people are forced to accept that their lives are going to be unexpectedly short. They will not be able to watch their children grow up, grow to be in a position to look after themselves. That is why they write their memory books, so that they do not completely disappear from the memories of their children.

In the midst of all this I see Aida and her mango plant. I never saw any trace of her anger, but I am convinced that it exists. Why should her mother have to die when she herself is still so young? Why should Aida have to shoulder responsibilities that are much too great for her to bear? She finds herself in a situation in which she has no choice. The only thing she can do is to protest, and she does that by tending her mango plant, watching it live even as she herself is surrounded by death and more death.

This is the point of what I am writing. We must hope that Aida will not need to write a memory book about her own life for her own children. She is aware that the disease exists, she knows how she can avoid catching it, and she will make demands of the man she meets one day.

Memory Books are important for Aida's sake.

It will be best if her own is never written.

What did Aida say when she took me to see the mango plant that she had hidden among the banana trees? As she was very shy, she didn't say much at all.

I think she felt an affinity with that plant. It was young, as she was. I think she wanted to show that she was able to nurture a piece of life, to make something grow and survive; that she had drawn up her own line of defence, there in among the banana trees. Surrounded by death and fear she had planted her little tree as a protection for the living, for things that grow.

But I do remember one thing we spoke about. What mangoes taste like. We were in complete agreement: if you eat one mango, you want to eat another one. Mangoes always make you want more. I asked her how long it would be before her plant was big enough to bear fruit. She didn't know, but she promised to write and tell me.

Now, several months after I met her, as I am writing this, I can't help but think about her name. Aida. One letter makes it different from the name of the disease. Just as one hair's breadth separates life and death.

I shall end as I began. One night in June, in 2003, I dream about dead people in a coniferous forest. Everything in the dream is very clear. The smell of moss, the steam rising after autumn rain. Fungi around the roots of the trees, unseen birds taking off from branches that are still shaking. The faces of the dead are inlaid in the tree trunks. It is like wandering through a gallery with an exhibition of unfinished wooden sculptures. Or a studio that has been hurriedly abandoned by the artist.

The faces are contorted. No cries come from their half-open mouths, only silence.

In many ways the dream fills me with unanswered questions. But I know the important thing is that death has a name: Aids.

If I look carefully enough, at the periphery of the dream, I can see a young and still very fragile mango plant, hidden under layers of twigs that protect it.

And close by, a half-rotted plywood coffin that once was used on a theatre stage, but then was spirited out into dark and horrific reality.

We are the ones who decide, nobody else. About what will happen in the trial of strength between the mango plant and the coffin of rotting, black-painted plywood.

Nothing is inevitable.

Nor is anything too late.

The people I have written about here exist in the real world. But their words are not only theirs, the words are also mine. What I have written is a record of what I heard them say and to an equal extent my interpretation of what they didn't say out loud.