Henning Mankell - I Die, but the Memory Lives on

Perhaps it was the sight of the actor Rock Hudson on a stretcher in Paris. I remember that distinctly. There were photographs on the front pages of all the main newspapers. It was immediately clear that the man who – not least together with Doris Day – had made so many films over so many years in which he had played a husband in an idealised and hence dishonest American marriage, was in fact homosexual. What had he been thinking of as he wandered around in his striped pyjamas, always immaculately ironed, Doris Day at his side, also smiling non-stop and fussing around?

Now he was dying, not at all old. His last journey to Paris in a chartered aeroplane was reminiscent of the handicapped faithful who tried to recover their health by going on a pilgrimage to a shrine of the Madonna. A last desperate attempt to keep death at bay by trying a new form of treatment that was said to be available in France.

I remember reading that he slept twenty-three hours a day. The one hour he was awake he devoted to telling stories about his life. I shuddered.

That news photograph of Rock Hudson is among my earliest intimations of Aids. At that time we had not yet been exposed to the mass of pictures and documentation. All the photographs from Africa, with anonymous men and women, emaciated bodies, sunken eyes, people without hope, without strength.

I also recall a young African quoted in a newspaper: "Must we die because we are in love?"

But the first decisive impression? I am pretty sure it was Rock Hudson. It was as if a sculpture guaranteed unbreakable had nevertheless shattered. And yet I am not absolutely sure.

On the other hand, I can say precisely when Aids became real for me, when I myself became frightened of the illness, terrified that I had been infected.

I knew, of course, how one became infected. And, yes, I had friends who were doctors and they assured me that there were no short cuts that the infection could take to attack me. Nevertheless, the fear was there. I know it is a fear that I shared and still share with many people.

It is easy to lie about this. Easy to boast that one has never experienced any trace of the irrational fear of being infected, despite the fact that common sense tells you that you have not been exposed to any risks. That is how it has always been. People ten or so years older than I am have stories to tell about a similarly needless fear of having been stricken with syphilis. They will tell you about the Wasserman test they had to take before being accepted as a blood donor, and that it was a good way of establishing that one did not in fact have a syphilis bomb ticking away in one's body. I remember as a teenager being scared stiff by stories about gonorrhoea. I don't think I've spoken to a single person in connection with venereal disease who hasn't felt a cold shiver down the spine at least once in their lives.

But the fear of HIV and Aids? I recall it very clearly. There was a period in the 1980s when the fear was especially widespread. All kinds of horror stories were circulating in the mass media. There was an account of how a passenger suffering from Aids was not allowed to board an American flight from China. The captain refused to allow him on board. There were those who argued that people infected should be branded, or tattooed in the groin. Or why not herd them together and maroon them on remote islands, there to await their deaths?

There are moments when the frescoes in the Gotland churches seem to be speaking directly to us, right now. Not only addressing us, but speaking about us, and that we are part of their story.

It was also in the mid-1980s that people started looking for scapegoats. Politicians with extreme views started fishing in muddy waters, but they were not the only ones looking for scapegoats, a lot of "ordinary" people were also carried away by the fear. Homosexuals were branded the guilty party, the ones who were spreading the disease. Just as in the past it was the Jews who had been blamed for spreading the deadly plague by infecting people's wells.

So it was the homosexuals who should all be branded, especially if they were black men. All black men seeking asylum in Europe should be subjected to HIV tests. Those infected should be turned away.

When the history of Aids in the 1980s comes to be written, a lot of ugly truths will emerge with full and frightening force.

In our part of the world at least, the absolute terror is no longer with us. There are nevertheless some people still who maintain that the Aids epidemic is the wages of sin. The scapegoats exist, be they asylum seekers, homosexual men or Russian prostitutes.

I well remember the moment when I myself was struck by this fear. It was in Lusaka, in November 1987. I was staying at the Ridgeway Hotel. I'd just driven there from Kabompo where I was living at the time, high up towards Zambia 's north-western border with Angola. I was on my way to Europe. The flight was going to leave the following day. I was dirty and tired after the long journey and had checked into the Ridgeway. That evening, after dinner, I went for a walk around the hotel and its grounds. At one end of the hotel I discovered the entrance to a casino. I took a look inside the dimly lit room and was immediately solicited by several prostitutes who were stationed along the wall next to the roulette table. Young and pretty. Dangerous. I thought at once that several of them were bound to be infected. How many men in my situation, visitors to the hotel or the casino, would succumb to the temptation offered by the girls? A night in the hotel, then goodbye. But death would be there already, inside their skin, sowed into their blood, flowing through their veins.

I drew back in alarm. There before me, a smiling mask, was death. The virus I was so afraid of. The girls were indeed young and pretty, but what they were offering me was death. I would have to be an idiot to accept. And, what is more, be willing to pay for it.

The fear, irrational though it was, stayed with me for many years, certainly until the mid-1990s. Perhaps it is still there, even if my fits of baseless anxiety have become increasingly rare. I took a test once, even though I had absolutely no reason to be scared. But scared I was, no matter what. And, I know, many others, very many, have experienced that same fear.

It was in Zambia too that I first encountered someone who quite definitely did have Aids. It was a young man. He staggered from an overcrowded bus in Kabompo. He fell at the feet of the people who had come to meet him. He was taken to the hospital in a wheelbarrow. He was as thin as it is possible to be.

Two days later he was dead. He had only just made it home from Kitwe, back to his mother in order to die close to her. His name was Richard. He was 17, and he was not gay. This was in 1988.

At the same place, Kabompo, I listened to a Dutch doctor giving a talk about this terrifying disease. It was an evening in the rainy season. The roads were a sea of mud, but people came from all points of the compass and a number of tribal chieftains were there. The premises belonged to one of the missionary groups and were the biggest in Kabompo, but still the place was packed to the rafters. There were others standing outside, looking in through the open windows. It was unbearably hot.

The doctor described in simple, straightforward terms – and what he said was translated into the local language by an interpreter – what happened in the body once HIV had entered the blood. He said that promiscuity was the principal culprit in the spread of the disease, and there was a rising hum, like a swarm of bees, from the women present. It was a pregnant moment. When the doctor had finished, one of the chieftains, a very old man, rose to his feet. He said: "We must all protect ourselves. For the sake of our children. There must be a stop to all unnecessary travelling. Families must stick together. Men must remain faithful to their women, women to their men. If not, we shall all die."