A Treacherous Paradise

  ‘My name’s Hanna. My Portuguese is not good. I need to speak slowly in order to find the words I need, and I often place them in the wrong order.’

  Father Leopoldo smiled. Hanna thought that his face was handsome even if he was very pale and almost gave the impression of being undernourished. Perhaps the priest also had a hungry worm in his intestines?

  ‘Where do you come from, Senhora Hanna?’

  She recounted her background in brief, but chose not to mention the brothel: she merely said that she had married a Portuguese man called Senhor Vaz, who had died suddenly shortly after the marriage.

  ‘You said you needed some advice,’ said Father Leopoldo, who had listened intently to her story. ‘But you still haven’t asked me a question that I can react to.’

  I can’t possibly start talking about a chimpanzee that has swallowed a tapeworm, she thought dejectedly. The priest will either think I’m crazy, or that I’ve come here to the cathedral to poke fun at him and all that’s holy.

  Nevertheless, she explained the situation. She told him about the chimpanzee that meant so much to her, about the contents of the glass jar and the tapeworm that was now living inside its body. The priest was not at all annoyed by what she said: he believed both what had happened and her worries about Carlos’s fate.

  ‘I don’t think you have told me everything,’ he said when she had finished, still just as patient and friendly as before. ‘It’s difficult to give advice to somebody who doesn’t tell the whole story.’

  Hanna realized that he had seen through her. Even if Vaz was not an unusual name in Lourenço Marques, Father Leopoldo evidently knew about the Senhor Vaz who had run the biggest brothel in town. Perhaps he had even heard about his marriage to the Swedish woman, and his death that had taken place so soon afterwards?

  There was no longer any reason to hold anything back. She told him about Esmeralda, and that she herself was now the owner and proprietor of the brothel.

  ‘I’m afraid for my chimpanzee’s life,’ she said in the end. ‘And I simply don’t know what I’m going to do with what I now own and am responsible for.’

  Father Leopoldo observed her from behind his rimless spectacles. She didn’t find his look censorious. She thought it likely that even a young priest was used to hearing the oddest of tales, whether or not they were told to him during confession.

  ‘There is a veterinary surgeon here in Lourenço Marques called Paulo Miranda,’ said Father Leopoldo. ‘His clinic is right next to the big market. Perhaps he can give you some advice on how to cure your ape?’

  ‘What can he do that the local women who know about medicines can’t do?’

  ‘I don’t know. You asked me for advice. Besides, I think that traditional native medicine is based mainly on magic and should be opposed.’

  Hanna would have liked him to see those white tapeworms, and to explain to him how much weight Esmeralda had lost by showing him the clothes she had worn when she was at her fattest. But she said nothing.

  The priest continued to look at her, and pushed his chair closer to her.

  ‘In everything you say I detect a searching for something else,’ he said. ‘Something different from the ape and your worries about what it has in its stomach. As I understand it, the advice you are seeking has more to do with your own life. As the owner and hostess of the biggest brothel in Lourenço Marques, I don’t need to tell you what the Church thinks about the type of life of sin that takes place in that establishment. All I know about your homeland of Sweden is that it can be very cold there, and that large numbers of poor people have left it and travelled over the sea in search of a better life in America. But not even there would the life you are now leading be regarded as decent or honourable.’

  His words affected her deeply.

  ‘What should I do?’ she asked. ‘I was left the brothel in my husband’s will.’

  ‘Close it,’ said Father Leopoldo. ‘Or sell it to somebody who can transform it into a respectable hotel or restaurant. Give the women money so that they can begin to lead respectable lives. Leave this country and go back to where you come from. You are still young. The ape can return to the bush, It will no doubt soon find a troop it can join.’

  Hanna said nothing about the fact that Carlos had lost his identity as an ape a long time ago, and now lived in a twilight world in which he was neither an animal nor a human being. His home was a ceiling light rather than a forest.

  ‘You are running away from something,’ said Father Leopoldo. ‘That flight will never come to an end if you don’t return to your homeland. And leave all this messy business behind you.’

  ‘I don’t know if I have anything to return to.’

  ‘Surely you have a family, Senhora? In which case you have your roots there, and not in this town.’

  Hanna noticed that Father Leopoldo was staring at something behind her head. When she turned round to find out what it was, she saw one of the Portuguese garrison’s highest-ranking officers. He was wearing his uniform, with a sabre hanging from his belt and his officer’s cap under his arm. Father Leopoldo stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t continue this conversation, but do come back some other time.’

  He gave Hanna an encouraging smile, then accompanied the soldier into one of the confessionals. The curtains were drawn on each side of the centre wall. Hanna thought that the high-ranking officer probably had a large number of sins to confess. She had recognized him immediately. He was a regular customer at the brothel, and sometimes had strange requirements of the women who served him. Some of his perversities were such that the women refused. Hanna had blushed the first time she’d had explained to her what the officer wanted. He asked for two women at the same time, and that they should pretend to be mother and daughter. Her first reaction was to ban him, but he was a good customer. Felicia had also told her that much worse requests sometimes came from some of the South African customers who were more deserving of a ban.

  They had been sitting under the jacaranda tree, talking. Felicia had explained all the peculiar perversions men sometimes had when it came to their association with women. She had been astonished, and blushed. She had never experienced anything remotely like that in her short erotic life with Lundmark and Vaz. She realized that there was a lot she knew nothing about. Things that the proprietor of a brothel certainly ought to know.

  She stood up to leave the cathedral, still unsure about what she ought to do.

  The man who seemed to have been asleep was suddenly standing in front of her. He was holding his white hat in his hand, and there was a friendly smile on his face.

  ‘I couldn’t help hearing what Father Leopoldo said. Sometimes things can be heard very clearly in this enormous cathedral. It’s only in the confessional that nobody can hear what’s being said. But I want to stress that I’m not normally an eavesdropper. My name is José Antonio Nunez. I’ve spent many years in this country, doing business. But I’ve put all that behind me now, and nowadays I devote myself to quite different things. Things that are important in this life. I wonder if I might steal a few minutes of Senhora Vaz’s time?’

  ‘I don’t know you. But you know my name?’

  ‘This is not a big town. Or at least, the white population is not so great that one can remain anonymous for very long. Let me just say that I knew your husband, and ask you to accept my condolences. I really did wish Senhor Vaz a happy and successful life.’

  Hanna reckoned that the man standing in front of her was in his forties. His friendliness seemed convincing. It seemed somehow that he didn’t really belong to this town – in the same way that she was also a foreigner.

  They sat down. He was confident and determined, she less so.

  ‘I’ll keep it short,’ said Nunez. ‘I’m prepared to relieve you of the establishment of which you are the proprietor. I would pay off the women, just as Father Leopoldo recommended. What is of value to me is the actual building. After all my years as a businessman, I’m trying
to pay back something of all the benefits I have accrued. If you sell the building to me, I shall turn it into a children’s home.’

  ‘For black children?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the middle of the white men’s red-light district?’

  ‘That is precisely my intention. To create something that reminds people of all the parentless black children drifting around like leaves in the wind.’

  ‘The governor would never allow it.’

  ‘He’s a friend of mine. He knows that he’s dependent on me to keep his job. A lot of white people in this town accept my advice.’

  Hanna shook her head. She didn’t know what to believe. Who was this man who had been sitting there with his eyes closed, and now suddenly wanted to buy the brothel?

  ‘I don’t know if I’m going to sell,’ she said. ‘Nothing has been decided.’

  ‘My offer still applies tomorrow, and perhaps some time into the future. I know you use the solicitor Andrade. Ask him to contact me.’

  ‘I don’t even know where you live.’

  ‘He does,’ said Nunez with a smile.

  ‘I need some time to think this over. We can meet here a week from now. At the same time.’

  He bowed deeply.

  ‘I’ll be here. But a week is too long. Let us say three days from now.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said again.

  ‘I’m sure you can easily find out.’

  Hanna left the cathedral. Once again she needed some advice, and she knew there was a person she could turn to. Not only to ask about Nunez, but also about what Father Leopoldo had said.

  That same afternoon she was driven out to Pedro Pimenta’s farm, where dogs were barking and crocodiles thrashing their tails before vanishing into the murky waters of their pools.

  When she got out of the car and the engine had been switched off, she heard the sound of glass shattering inside the house. The veranda was deserted.

  Hanna looked around. Everything seemed strangely empty. Then a white woman came racing out of the door, her hands covering her face. She was followed by a girl, screaming and trying to catch up with the fleeing woman.

  They disappeared down the hill leading to the crocodile pools. Then silence once again.

  A boy a few years older than the girl came out of the door. Hanna had never seen him, the girl or the sobbing woman before.

  The boy, who might have been sixteen or thereabouts, paused in the doorway. He seemed to be holding his breath.

  He’s like me, Hanna thought. I can recognize myself in him – there in the doorway stands a boy who doesn’t understand a thing about what is happening all around him.

  56

  THE SCENE HANNA was observing was transformed into an oil painting with the frame formed by sunbeams. The boy’s face seemed to melt as he stood there in the doorway. The dogs in their cages had fallen silent: they just stood there, tongues hanging out and panting heavily.

  Quietness at last! Hanna thought. In this peculiar town it is never normally silent. There’s always somebody speaking, shouting, screeching or laughing. Not even at night does the town seem to rest.

  But just now: silence.

  The boy stood there motionless, tied down in the middle of the painting. Hanna was just going to walk over to the steps leading up to the veranda when Pedro Pimenta came out through the door. He stopped next to the boy, who stared at him. Pimenta was holding a blood-soaked handkerchief. He had a wound in his forehead that hadn’t quite stopped bleeding. He can’t have been shot, Hanna thought. A shot in the forehead would have killed him. Then she remembered the sound of shattering glass, and assumed that the sobbing woman must have thrown something at him.

  Pimenta looked down at the blood-soaked handkerchief, then caught sight of Hanna standing under her parasol. He seemed tired, lacking the usual energy and friendliness he normally displayed when he had visitors. Instead of inviting her up to the veranda, he went down the steps to her. The wound in his forehead was a deep scratch just above his left eye and running up to his greying hair.

  ‘Did you see where they went to?’ he asked.

  ‘If you mean the woman and the girl, they headed for the crocodile pools.’

  He pulled a worried face, then shook his head.

  ‘I must find them,’ he said. ‘Go and sit down on the veranda and wait until I get back. Everything can be explained.’

  ‘Where’s your wife? Who’s the boy?’

  Pimenta didn’t answer. He threw the handkerchief on to the ground and hurried off down the slope towards the pools.

  Hanna sat down on the veranda. The boy was still in the doorway. She nodded at him, but he didn’t react. It was still silent on all sides. She stood up and went into the house. There were glass splinters all over the floor, which was covered by lion hides and zebra skins. Hanging on one of the walls was the mounted head of a kudu, with its long spiral-shaped horns. Hanna tried to imagine what had happened. Not knowing who the woman and the boy were, she couldn’t imagine the sequence of events. The glass shards glittered like pearls scattered over the animal skins.

  She found all the domestic staff collected in the kitchen. They were scared, crowded together, protecting one another. Hanna was going to ask them what had happened, but changed her mind. Pimenta’s wife and the children must be somewhere in the house. She searched the ground floor, then went up the stairs. In the biggest bedroom, where Pimenta slept with Isabel, Hanna found her and the two children. They were sitting on the bed, huddled up next to each other.

  ‘I don’t want to disturb you,’ said Hanna, ‘but I was worried when I heard the sound of breaking glass and saw Pedro with a bleeding forehead.’

  Isabel looked at her without answering. Unlike the servants, she was not afraid, Hanna could see that straight away.

  Isabel was furious, full of simmering anger of a kind that Hanna had never seen in this woman before.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s best if you leave,’ said Isabel. ‘I don’t want you to be here when what has to happen actually happens.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That I kill him.’

  The children didn’t seem at all surprised. Hanna thought that could only mean one thing: that they’d heard her say it before.

  Hanna sat down gingerly beside Isabel and took hold of her hand.

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on. How can you say to me, in the presence of your children, that you’re going to kill your husband?’

  ‘Because I am.’

  ‘But why?’

  Isabel turned to look at her. Hanna could see that Isabel found it impossible to grasp that Hanna didn’t get it. What is it that I can’t see? she asked herself. I’m caught up in a drama that I don’t understand.

  Isabel suddenly stood up and smoothed down her skirt, as if running her hands over her body in that way would give her strength. The two children looked at her. Isabel bent down in front of them.

  ‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back shortly. Nothing will happen to you.’

  Then she took Hanna by the arm and escorted her out of the room.

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’ Hanna asked.

  ‘You’ve already asked me that question. I don’t know what’s going to happen. You can leave if you want to. Or you can stay. Do whichever you like.’

  They had come down the stairs by now. The boy was still standing in the doorway. Isabel swept past him without even looking at him. She doesn’t like him, Hanna thought. A grown woman distancing herself from a young boy. A suspicion, vague as yet but perhaps the beginnings of an explanation, began to grow in her mind.

  Isabel flopped down on the sofa on the veranda. Hanna moved a basket chair closer to the wall and sat down carefully. Still the boy didn’t move. It seemed to Hanna that she was now entering the oil painting she had imagined earlier. She was no longer just an observer.

  Pedro Pimenta appeared on the slope. Walkin
g just behind him was the white woman, who was no longer crying. She was holding the girl’s hand tightly. The girl was silent. Hanna couldn’t hear what the woman was saying to Pimenta. He suddenly stopped, and started gesticulating with his hands. It looked as if he wanted the woman to take the girl with her and go away. He continued towards the veranda, started running, with the woman after him. When they came up on to the veranda, she exploded: ‘I believed you,’ she screamed. ‘I’ve kept all the letters you wrote, all the protestations of the enormous love you had for me. I kept asking to come and visit you with the children. I simply couldn’t bear to keep on waiting in Coimbra any longer. But all the time you kept on telling me that Lourenço Marques was too dangerous. The same thing in letter after letter.’

  She took a crumpled sheet of letter paper out of her pocket and started reading in a shrill voice.

  ‘“In Lourenço Marques the streets are full of cunning leopards and prides of lion prowling around at night. Every morning the remains are found of some white person or other, often a woman or a child, that has been eaten. Poisonous snakes find their way into the houses. It’s still too dangerous for you to come here.” Did you write that, or didn’t you?’

  ‘I wrote the truth.’

  ‘But there are no wild animals in the streets here. You lied.’

  ‘They were here in the streets some years ago.’

  ‘Nobody I’ve spoken to has seen a single lion in this town for the last thirty years. You lied to me in your letters because you didn’t want us to come here. The love that you described doesn’t exist.’

  The furious woman had forced Pimenta up against the wall of the veranda. The girl had joined her brother in the doorway. Isabel was sitting tensely on the sofa, watching what was happening. Hanna thought that perhaps she ought to leave: but something that wasn’t merely curiosity held her back.

  The woman suddenly turned to look at the far side of the long veranda. Joanna and Rogerio were standing there. They had appeared without a sound, like their mother.

  ‘Who are they?’ yelled the woman from Coimbra.