Henning Mankell - I Die, but the Memory Lives on

That was in 1988, during the rainy season. I often wonder how many of those who were there listening to the Dutch doctor were already infected. And how many of them are still alive today.

The mist is dispersing. I stare out to sea and I think about Aida and her mango plant. As she showed me it, I felt no doubt that it was one of the moments I shall remember for as long as I live.

Just how it came about, I don't know. Nor do I know when Aida made up her mind to take me into her confidence and share her secret with me. But I saw it the second time I visited her and her family.

The first time I met her, it was a very hot day. We left Kampala early so as to avoid being stuck in the chaotic traffic that envelops the city's roads every morning. Beatrice, who was the person helping me to make contact with people carrying the disease and writing memory books, had told Christine that I would be coming. At that time I didn't know Christine had a daughter called Aida. In fact, I knew only two things about Christine: that she had Aids, and that she was prepared to talk to me about it.

When we left Kampala that morning I felt the same distaste I'd been feeling ever since arriving in Uganda. There was something almost obscene about asking fatally ill people to talk about their suffering and their fate with a complete stranger. Somebody who, to make matters worse, had flown in from a distant corner of the world – Europe, the West – in which the terrible disease had almost been tamed and turned into a chronic but not necessarily fatal disease. The same disease that now is killing indiscriminately the length and breadth of the African continent and in other parts of the Third World.

I had slept badly because I had been worrying about the task ahead. My unease was not difficult to understand. I was dreading it because I knew I would find the fate of Christine and the rest of them very hard to take.

Beatrice had given us very efficient directions as to how to get there. We turned off the main road and, as always in Africa, we immediately found ourselves deep in a different world, a world usually, but wrongly, called the real Africa. Africa is always "real", whether it be savannah or slum, old ramshackle urban district or a grim and difficult-to-pin-down shadowland between bush and desert.

Christine had two houses. In one of them lived her mother and father and some of her brothers and sisters. When I arrived and got out of the car, the first thing I saw was her father, who was sitting peeling some kind of vegetable I had never seen before. He was unshaven but very dignified. Eventually I discovered that he was about 80, although nobody could be sure exactly how old. He had a keen eye, and was surrounded by an aura that immediately captivated anyone who approached him.

He went on peeling his vegetables all the time I was talking to Christine. Occasionally some child or perhaps his wife or one of the other women would give him something to drink.

He was like a measurer of time who would reject a normal clock with scorn. For him, a better way of measuring progress in his life and that of others was peeling vegetables.

Christine was thin and tired. I could see at once that she had put herself out in anticipation of our meeting. Her choice of clothes, her face carefully made-up, her meticulously brushed hair. She was typical of all the people suffering from Aids whom I met during my visit to Uganda: the last thing they were forced to surrender was their dignity. That was the ditch that had to be defended at all costs: after that there was nothing but death, and it often struck quickly once their dignity had been lost.

Christine said:"I have a daughter."

We were sitting on two brown stools behind the open but covered room which the family used to prepare food. Christine said something in her native tongue. Her daughter emerged from a clump of banana trees. She was wearing a dark blue skirt, which was ragged and torn, a red blouse, and she was barefooted. She was slim and tall and took after her mother: they had the same features around their mouths and noses and eyes. Aida was shy, she spoke in a low voice and her eyes were cast down. When I shook her hand, she withdrew it as quickly as she could.

Aida was nowhere to be seen for the rest of my long conversation with her mother. It was almost afternoon, when we had to leave to drive back to Kampala and had other appointments, before I saw Aida again. She was with Christine's mother and some of the other girls, not Christine's daughters but the daughters of her sister. One sister had already died of Aids. They were preparing dinner. I watched Aida fetch the vegetables that Christine's father had been peeling all day.

Christine said:"When I'm gone, Aida will have to take on a lot of responsibility. I am trying to live for as long as I can for her sake."

"Does she know about it?"

Christine looked at me in surprise.

"Of course she knows about it."

"What did you tell her?"

"What had to be said. She will become the mother of her brothers and sisters, and if my parents are still alive she will become their new daughter once I'm gone."

"How did she react?"

"She was distressed. What else would you expect?"

We went to the car that was parked in the shade of some tall trees whose name I have never managed to remember. I had said goodbye to everybody, and worked out that Christine's family comprised sixteen people. Christine, who had been a schoolteacher and still worked whenever she had the strength, was the only one in this large family who had any income, and even that was extremely modest. She had a very direct way of assessing her wages in relation to her own fate.

"The monthly cost of antiretroviral drugs is precisely twice what I earn."

She shook her head before continuing.

"Obviously, you have to ask yourself if it is the drugs that are too expensive, or if it's me who isn't earning enough. The answer is straightforward. My small wage has always been sufficient to feed my family, but it's not enough money to save me from death."

So Christine wasn't taking any medication at all. She said she felt more weary now than she had done the previous year. She had been feeling ill for seven years. When her husband suddenly began losing weight and fading away, she knew. The day after her husband died, she went for a test. The result was no surprise. She kept everything to herself for a year. Then she told people, first her sister and then her mother. Whereupon her sister told her that she too was ill.

"I told Aida once she had celebrated her thirteenth birthday. I noticed that the disease was beginning to affect me. It was no longer dormant in my body. It had started moving."

"What did she say?"

"You've asked that already. She said nothing. She was distressed. I believe she already knew that I was ill."

"How could she know that?"

"Aida's a bright girl who listens to what people are saying. And she's not afraid to ask. But most important of all is that she doesn't believe all those people who say that this disease does not even exist."

We had reached the car. The driver was asleep. Flies were buzzing around, there was a smell of crushed banana and wet soil. Christine looked at me.

"You are not surprised? You must know that lots of people, many too many, still think there is no such disease as Aids. Or else they think it's a disease they can get rid of in various terrible ways."

I nodded, because I did know.

When we drove off, Aida was standing with a huge pan in her hand. Christine waved, as did her mother and other members of the family. Aida didn't wave because she was holding something in her hand. But I knew even then that I would be returning.

How can you sometimes know things you don't know? You just know.