A Treacherous Paradise

  She was surrounded by black people, their faces, eyes, smells, cudgels and knives. Hanna remembered something Senhor Vaz had told her. If you were confronted by a lion, the worst thing you could do was to run away. That would only result in the lion taking up the hunt and felling the fugitive with a bite at the back of his head.

  Hanna also knew that she shouldn’t look the lion in the eye. So she lowered her gaze and forced herself to begin making her way through the crowd of people. At any moment she expected to be stabbed, or to be hit on the head by a cudgel. But a path opened up for her. She suppressed the urge to start running, and continued walking slowly, her heart pounding inside her blouse. There was still a clatter of rifle shots on all sides. She gave a start after each one. She stumbled over a man lying dead on the street with his chest torn apart, and paused. But then she forced herself to continue.

  Suddenly a troop of cavalrymen on agitated, sweaty horses came galloping up. In just a few seconds the mass of people that had been crowding around her melted away. The street looked like a battlefield, filled with burnt rags and broken cudgels, and among them the gleaming cases of the soldiers’ cartridges. The street and pavements were covered in a large number of distorted black bodies, some of them almost naked. A man was howling in pain or in rage, she couldn’t make up her mind which. The white soldiers in their dark blue uniforms were standing with their rifles at the ready, as if they were afraid that the dead would rise again and attack them. White people were now beginning to assemble at a safe distance. They were making a sort of growling noise, as if the hatred they felt could not be satisfied by the sight of the dead, but needed to continue punishing them.

  The howling man suddenly fell silent. Hanna began walking slowly back to Andrade’s car. The chauffeur had already returned, and was sitting with his hands round the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, right through her.

  Andrade was sitting hunched up in the back seat. The urine stain on his white trousers had begun to dry. He was holding his revolver in his hands as if it were a crucifix.

  Hanna looked at him, and thought that she hated him for his cowardice. But at the same time she couldn’t help but be pleased that he had survived and was uninjured. Everything is full of contradictions, she thought. Nothing is as straightforward as I wish it were.

  She was surprised to find that she felt nothing at all for the dead black corpses all around her.

  Swarms of flies had already begun to gather around the dead bodies. Horses and carts that had been requisitioned by the soldiers stood in the shade. Soldiers with white handkerchiefs over their faces began to gather up the corpses.

  Like dead animals, Hanna thought. Just slaughtered, but not yet skinned.

  She hurried away. Andrade shouted something after her but she didn’t gather what it was he wanted.

  She didn’t stop until she was inside the brothel.

  The black women were sitting on the sofas, looking at her. She thought she ought to say something.

  But she had no idea what.

  53

  THEIR SILENCE UNNERVED her, as did the fact that they were looking her in the eye. All she had experienced that morning was so frightening and so overwhelming that she was now the one who averted her eyes. She went back out into the street where an officer she recognized was handing out ammunition to the soldiers standing guard on the street corner. He visited the brothel regularly and promised to drive her back home in his army car as soon as he had finished. She sat down in his car and waited. As there was no roof, she raised her parasol to protect herself from the scorching sun. Swarms of flies were buzzing excitedly around her head as if she were dead as well. She flapped her hand at them, and had the feeling that everything that was happening was a dream she had not yet managed to wake up from.

  The young officer sat down at the wheel himself. Next to him was a soldier with a gun at the ready. When they pulled up outside the stone house the officer asked if she would like to have an armed guard outside her front door, but she felt safe in her own home. In addition, she knew full well that the officer was trying to do a deal – he would provide a guard if she allowed him access to one of the women for free. That annoyed her.

  And so she declined his offer and went in through the door that Julietta was holding open for her. She took her mistress’s hat, gloves and parasol.

  Hanna asked her to come upstairs to the veranda. The smell from the fires in the town below was still noticeable. Anaka brought her a carafe of water. Julietta was waiting a few metres away from the sofa where Hanna was sitting. Hanna pointed to a chair, and Julietta sat down very gingerly, on the extreme edge of the seat.

  ‘What happened?’ Hanna asked. ‘Don’t make anything up. Just tell me what you know for sure.’

  Julietta spoke slowly as she knew Hanna found it difficult to understand what she was saying. Hanna frequently had to ask her to repeat a sentence or two, but out there on the veranda that morning, Julietta spoke more clearly than she had ever done before. Perhaps that was because she knew that what she had to say was very important for her.

  A young woman by the name of Nausica had gone to fetch water from a well on the outskirts of Xhipamanhine, one of the town’s biggest settlements for blacks. Like all other women, she was balancing the water pitcher on her head. The pitcher was large, it contained twenty litres: but Nausica was proceeding gracefully along the path as she had done so many times before. Then according to Julietta, something happened just as the woman was coming back to the settlement. Nausica had been confronted by three white men, all of them young, carrying shotguns to shoot the seagulls that were gathered at the site of the large rubbish dumps by the shore. It was a swampy area where nobody and nothing lived, apart from the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that had one of their biggest incubation sites just there. Nausica tried to make way for the three men without losing control of the heavy water pitcher. But just as they were passing one of the young men hit the pitcher with the butt of his shotgun and smashed it, so that the water poured down over Nausica. She sank down in a heap on to the ground, hugging her knees hard. Behind her she could hear the men laughing. Some women working on their tiny machambor had seen what happened. Only when the three men had disappeared along the path did they dare to venture forward to see if Nausica was badly injured.

  But there was somebody else who had seen what had happened. It was Nausica’s father, Akatapande, who now came running along the path. He was an engine driver on trains travelling between Lourenço Marques and the South African border at Ressano Garcia. This incident happened to coincide with the two days off he had every month. Having established that Nausica was not seriously injured, his first instinct was to chase after the three men who had attacked her. Nausica and the other women tried to restrain him – he was risking being beaten to death or shot by the white men who were hardly likely to worry about a father who was protesting about his daughter having been humiliated. But they couldn’t hold Akatapande back. He raced along the path until he caught up with the three men who were still laughing about the woman who had been soaked through.

  Akatapande started by cursing the three men. At first they seemed to pay no attention to him at all, but continued walking down to the beach. However, Akatapande stood in their way and started punching one of the men on the chest. One of the others clubbed him down with the butt of his shotgun. When Akatapande managed to get to his feet, he was immediately clubbed down again. Then the first man aimed his gun at Akatapande’s head and shot him. Then they had continued on their way, quite calmly, as if nothing had happened.

  News of Akatapande’s death spread with the speed that only extremely brutal attacks could bring about. When an officer summoned from the fort decided not to instigate an investigation because one of the men concerned was the son of one of the governor’s closest associates, the subdued muttering in Xhipamanhine began to grow into a furious outcry, and by the early morning had developed into the riot.

  Hanna had no doubt that what Juliet
ta had told her was the truth.

  And she had become aware of something else: what upset the blacks most of all was that the young men hadn’t reacted at all to what they had done.

  A dead black man – nothing to bother about.

  Julietta stood up, but remained on the veranda. Hanna asked her if there was anything else she wanted to say.

  ‘I want to work at the hotel,’ said Julietta.

  ‘Don’t you like it here?’

  No answer.

  ‘We don’t need any staff in the hotel. Nobody books in there any longer.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  It dawned on Hanna, to her surprise, that Julietta wanted to start working as a prostitute. She wanted to sit alongside the other black women on the sofas, waiting for customers. Hanna was upset. Julietta was still a child. She was younger than Hanna had been when she had snuggled down among Forsman’s greasy furs in the sleigh that had transported her through the frozen countryside to the coast.

  ‘Have you ever been with a man?’ Hanna asked angrily.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who? When?’

  No answer. Hanna knew that she was not going to get one. But she had no real reason to doubt that Julietta was telling the truth about her experience.

  I know nothing about these black people, she thought. Their life is a mystery about which I can’t even begin to conjure up some kind of explanation. It’s just as unknown as the whole of this part of the world I find myself living in.

  ‘That’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘Felicia was sixteen when she started.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you talked to the women who live down there.’

  ‘I talk to everybody. And everybody talks to me.’

  Hanna thought the conversation was starting to go in circles.

  ‘Anyway, I’m the one who decides. And I say once and for all that you are too young.’

  ‘But Esmeralda is old and fat. Nobody wants to go with her any more. I want to start in her place.’

  ‘How do you know that nobody is interested in her any longer?’

  ‘She’s told me that.’

  ‘Has Esmarelda said that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hanna no longer knew if Julietta was telling the truth or not. But unfortunately Julietta was quite right about Esmeralda. The old prostitute had recently gone even further downhill. She drank in secret, always seemed to be eating chicken coated with thick layers of fat, and she had completely lost control of her weight. At one of their morning meetings Herr Eber had told Hanna sorrowfully that nowadays Esmeralda was earning virtually no money at all. She spent most of her time sitting on sofas, with nothing else to do. Only an occasional drunken sailor would turn up late at night, collapse into her arms, then fall asleep and remain in her bed until he was lifted up by one of the guards and thrown out – naturally having first paid for the intercourse he thought he had had, but most often couldn’t remember.

  Esmeralda’s situation was not something Hanna wanted to discuss with Julietta. She was still upset by the girl’s request to start working in the brothel. She dismissed her from the veranda without saying anything more.

  That same afternoon Hanna sent a messenger to Felicia with a brief message she had placed inside an envelope and sealed it. Hanna didn’t want the letter to come into the wrong hands. ‘I need to talk to you about Esmeralda.’

  Felicia came up the hill to the stone house that evening. There was still a smell of smoke on the veranda and outside the windows. Felicia was able to tell Hanna that all the dead bodies had now been removed from the street. The riot had fizzled out. Soldiers with guns at the ready were still patrolling the most important thoroughfares, but nobody expected anything drastic to happen. On the other hand, the brothel was almost empty.

  Felicia sat down on the chair in Hanna’s study. Hanna gave her an envelope, this one sealed as well.

  ‘I’d like you to give this to the girl Nausica, please,’ she said.

  ‘Nausica is a sixteen-year-old girl who can’t read.’

  ‘The envelope doesn’t contain anything written. I’m giving her money. For her father’s burial and a new water pitcher.’

  Felicia hesitated before accepting the envelope and putting it inside her blouse. Hanna wondered if Felicia might be considering if her honesty was being tested.

  But she said nothing about that, and started talking about Esmeralda instead. Esmeralda was about twenty when she came to the brothel – Felicia didn’t know where Senhor Vaz had found her. In the early days Esmeralda had been one of the favourites, for several years the most sought after of the women.

  Hanna wanted to know about Esmeralda’s life outside the brothel.

  ‘She’s married and has five children. Another two have died. Of those still alive four are girls and the other a boy. He is the youngest, and is called Ultimo. Her husband is called Pecado, and he makes a living by selling birds he has caught with nets.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘In a house in Jardin.’

  ‘Where the riot began?’

  ‘Where all riots begin. There or in Xhipamanhine.’

  ‘What is their house like?’

  ‘Like all the other houses.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Leaky, patched up, built of whatever Pecado has managed to get hold of.’

  ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘Never. But I know even so.’

  Hanna thought over what Felicia had said. Everything seemed to be beyond her comprehension.

  ‘What do you advise me to do?’ she asked in the end.

  Felicia was evidently prepared for that question. She took some small clear glass jars from out of one of the side pockets in her skirt. They were filled with water, and white worms were swimming around inside.

  ‘I think Esmeralda deserves a chance to get rid of all the fat she is carrying and become in demand again. She’ll be able to do it. She knows already that she’s no longer justifying her place on one of the sofas.’

  Felicia leaned over towards Hanna and gave her the glass jars. At that very moment Carlos sneaked silently into the room. He climbed up on to the wardrobe in which Senhor Vaz used to keep his suits and shorts and ties. Carlos sat there motionless, eyeing the two women and the glass jars.

  ‘They are tapeworms,’ said Felicia. ‘I got them from a feticheira who knows more than anybody else in these parts about how to help people to lose weight. All Esmeralda needs to do is to put one of these tapeworms into a glass of milk and then drink it. It will start growing inside her body, and could eventually become as much as five metres long. It will gobble up most of the food that Esmeralda eats. She will quite soon be thin again. Most tapeworms need many years to grow, but not this particular type.’

  Hanna observed the white worms and felt quite sick. But she knew that what Felicia had described would come to pass. Her main concern was not Esmeralda, but that Julietta shouldn’t end up with the white men who regarded the women in the brothel with superior contempt.

  The following day, when the final remnants of the uprising had been cleared away, the streets cleaned up and the cartridge cases removed, Hanna had a meeting with Herr Eber. She also exchanged a few words with Felicia, who reported that Esmeralda had drunk the milk containing the tapeworm late the previous evening.

  As Hanna was on her way to the outside gate, she happened to glance into the interior courtyard where the jacaranda tree was. She noticed that Esmeralda was kneeling beside the tree.

  It seemed to Hanna that something was happening around that tree that she didn’t understand. But there was nobody she could ask about it. The white people she knew would understand no more than she did, and the blacks would give her evasive answers.

  There was no end of possible answers. But none would be able to clarify the situation for her.

  54 br />
  AT FIRST HANNA couldn’t believe her eyes. Nevertheless the fact was that Esmeralda really did start to grow thinner.

  Every time Hanna looked at her, she’d changed. Herr Eber also kept presenting Hanna with a constantly increasing number of bills from seamstresses who had been taking in Esmeralda’s clothes. Hanna still felt uncomfortable whenever she thought about that white worm in the little glass jar, but it was quite obviously now growing apace in Esmeralda’s stomach, eating all the food that previously produced bigger and bigger layers of fat around her body.

  Hanna had put the rest of the glass jars in the wardrobe where Senhor Vaz’s suits and shirts were hanging. Despite her uneasiness, there were evenings when Hanna simply couldn’t resist taking out one of the jars and studying the white worm wriggling away inside it. How this tiny animal could grow and become as big as five metres long in a human being’s stomach and gut was beyond her comprehension. She would put the jar back in the wardrobe with a shudder.