75
Ana raised the pickaxe. That very movement meant that she had reverted to being Hanna Renström. It was how she used to raise the pickaxe when she and Elin were preparing the potato patch in the spring, and again in the autumn when they needed to harvest the potatoes before the first frosts arrived, heralding the approach of the long winter.
The ground was hard on the surface, but softer underneath and easier to penetrate. She exchanged the pickaxe for a spade and began digging. She was in a hurry, but couldn’t bring herself to work fast. Digging a grave was not something that could be rushed. A grave was not merely a hole in the ground: it was just as much a hole being made in her heart.
Once, when she was a child, she had buried a dead great northern diver that had been washed ashore by the river. It was the only grave she had ever dug in her life. But now she was about to commit a dead ape to its final resting place, and then leave it and the tree, never to return.
She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and unbuttoned it at the neck—it was early in the morning, but already the temperature was rising. She could smell the scent of a little lemon tree that Senhor Vaz had planted in the garden.
The spade hit against something she thought at first was a stone, but when she bent down to pick it up she saw that it was a bone. A chicken bone, she thought. Somebody must have been sitting here, chewing the meat off it, and then thrown it away. She carried on digging. More bones appeared in the soil she shovelled to one side.
The spade hit against a biggish stone that sounded noticeably hollow. When she picked it up she saw that it was in fact a skull. A very small skull. She paused, wondering what it could be, and decided it must be from a dead monkey.
But then she realized that it was the remains of a human head. A child’s skull. So small that it might well have been that of a newborn baby, or even a foetus.
She was beginning to feel very uneasy, but she continued digging. Wherever she dug she was coming across bones and skulls. These were not chicken bones at all, but the remains of human skeletons. She felt queasy, but she didn’t stop digging. She wanted to bury Carlos that morning, and to have finished before the brothel came back to life.
It eventually dawned on her that she was exposing a mass grave, the remains of babies and foetuses that had been buried under this jacaranda tree to be hidden and forgotten about. She was faced with a children’s cemetery, the results of unwanted pregnancies after all the thousands of nocturnal encounters that had taken place in this brothel. The bones were all white or grey, but all the foetuses and newborn babies that had been strangled or killed in some other way had been a mixture of white and black.
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 onto 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.”
76
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.
A school of playful dolphins attached itself to the boat. Carlos is not going to be buried in isolation, Ana thought. The dolphins dived, reappeared and swam along close to the boat, then vanished into the depths once again. She felt an almost irresistible desire to tell Berta about these dolphins and the remarkable funeral procession in which they were taking part. Once she’d located Isabel’s parents, she would at last have a definite plan for the next stage of her life: I want to tell Berta about a dead chimpanzee, a school of playful dolphins, and me approaching the second seismic shift in my life.
They continued sailing towards the horizon. Lourenço Marques glided past in the mist. It seemed to Ana that they had now reached the point she had been looking for.
“Let’s take down the sail,” she said. “This is the right place.”
Columbus tucked his pipe away somewhere behind his ragged shirt, took in the sail and secured it to the mast. The boat was stationary now, bobbing up and down in the swell. The dolphins were circling around them, at a distance. The seabirds above their heads were screeching like instruments out of tune. Columbus helped Ana to lift up the sack and drop it into the water with a gentle splash. She watched it sinking down into the depths. One of the dolphins swam up to it, nudged it with its nose, then swam away again, having said its final goodbye.
When Ana could no longer see the sack, she felt that her loneliness was now greater than ever before: but it no longer frightened her as much as it had done in the past. She was about to bid farewell to a world in which it had been impossible for her to have any friends. She had no feelings of community with the whites who lived in Lourenço Marques, and the blacks didn’t trust her but merely saw her as a person in authority whom they must obey.
Senhor Vaz had given her a necklace when they got married: she suddenly wrenched it off and flung it into the water. A seabird dived after it, but not quickly enough to catch it before it sank.
They turned back to the harbour and berthed by the jetty. Ana paid Columbus and shook his hand. She wondered for how many years he would have to make his fishing trips in order to earn as much as she had just given him. But Columbus seemed unimpressed by the bundle of banknotes he had received. He continued to smile at her, but didn’t even turn to watch her walking back to the car.
Ana stopped at the harbour office to ask about the next coaster heading for Beira. She was in luck. A ship would be leaving the day after next, at six in the morning. She booked a ticket and paid for the biggest cabin they had—and thought how easy everything had become. All she needed to do now was make sure that the photographs were taken to the brothel, say goodbye to her domestic staff, and hand over all her bunches of keys. Getting rid of those keys, which she had been obliged to carry around and take care of constantly, was something she longed to do.
She spent the last couple of days packing two light suitcases. She arranged with Andrade that all her and Senhor Vaz’s clothes would be donated to those in need. All she kept were a few photographs, Lundmark’s discharge book, and her diary. She disposed of everything else.
The last afternoon before her departure, Ana assembled all her domestic staff in order to say goodbye to them. As Andrade was about to move into the house he had bought from her, none of them needed to worry about their future.
She had prepared individual envelopes for each of them, so that nobody would know how much the others had received. She was quite sure, for instance, that Julietta would try to find out how she was valued in relation to Anaka.
Ana summoned them to her study. She recalled how Jonathan Forsman had done the same when he spoke to his staff. She told them the facts, that she was going first to Beira, and then to an as yet unknown destination. She thanked them for their services, and wished them all the best with their new employer, Andrade.
As usual, her words were greeted with silence. Nobody thanked her, nobody said anything at all. Ana sent them back to their duties, but asked Julietta to stay behind.
“You’ll be okay with Andrade,” she said, “as long as you behave yourself.”
“I always behave myself,” said Julietta.
“I’d like you to do something for me,” Ana said. “Before it gets dark I’d like you to take this envelope down to Felicia and the other women. It contains photographs.”
Julietta took the letter, then left the room. Ana heard the front door close with a bang.
Now that she was alone, she made a note in her diary. “I can’t live in a world in which everybody always knows more than I do.” Then she put the diary in one of the suitcases, still not entirely sure about why she was keeping it.
The next morning, when Ana got up very early to prepare for her journey down to the harbour, Julietta still hadn’t returned.
She was worried—what could have happened to her? She sent for Anaka and asked her. Anaka didn’t answer, but she didn’t give the impression of being worried in the least.
Then the penny dropped. Julietta had stayed at the brothel. She had gone to Nunez, who had now taken over the premises, and told him she wanted to start working there. And, of course, he had taken her on. All that talk about a children’s home h
ad been a lot of hot air. Perhaps he had even taken her to one of the rooms to find out how good she was at satisfying a man.
Ana was highly annoyed when she realized that this was the most likely reason for Julietta’s non-appearance.
But she banished the thought. She had no desire to leave this house weighed down with disappointment and unpleasant feelings. She’d had more than enough of her joyless existence. For the last time she spoke to Anaka, who accompanied her down to the front door.
“I’m leaving now,” she said. “It’s going to be a hot day—but it will be cooler at sea.”
She thought she ought to say more than that—but what?
She had run out of words. She stroked Anaka gently over her cheek, then left her for the final time.
77
When Ana came out into the street, it was not only her car standing there waiting for her. Moses had also returned. So he hadn’t returned to the mines in the Rand after all, but had stayed in town all the time. Perhaps he’s been keeping an eye on me without my knowing it, Ana thought. Just like a leopard, who sees everything but is never seen.
Moses was wearing his usual overalls and a worn-out pair of sandals. His hands were dangling down by his sides, looking quite helpless.
“You’re here,” she said.
“Yes,” said Moses. “I’m here. I wanted to say goodbye.”
“How did you know I’d be leaving today?”
As soon as she’d said that, she knew it was a question to which she would never receive an answer. If Moses had said he’d discovered the date of her departure in the pattern of paving stones outside her house, she wouldn’t have believed him: but he would have believed it himself. Anyway, here he was, just as she was about to step for the last time into the car that Vanji would return to its owner later in the day.
Moses looked at her and smiled, but he didn’t answer.
It wasn’t important, Ana thought. She was simply pleased that he’d come back.