Kennedy's Brain

by Mankell Henning

  She read the email again.

  The second one had been sent to himself at his own Hotmail address.

  I'm writing this as dawn starts to break, when the cicadas have fallen silent and the cocks have started to crow, despite the fact that I'm living at the very heart of the city. Soon I must write to Aron and tell him that I'm going to break off all contact with him unless he accepts his responsibilities and becomes a father to me. Becomes a man I can associate with, feel devotion to, see myself in. If he does that I shall tell him about the remarkable man I still haven't met in person, Christian Holloway, who has shown that, despite everything, there are examples of goodness in this world. I am writing these lines in Lars Håkansson's house, on his computer, and I can't imagine that I could have asked for anything more out of life than it is giving me at the moment. I shall soon be going back to the village with all those sick people, and once again I shall feel that I am doing something useful. Henrik, to myself.

  Louise frowned and shook her head. She read the letter again, slowly. There was something that did not add up. Henrik writing a letter to himself need not be of any significance. She had also done that when she was his age. She had even posted letters to herself. There was something else that worried her.

  She read it again. Then the penny dropped. It was the language used, the way the letter was constructed. Henrik never wrote like that. He wrote in a straightforward fashion. He would not use a word like 'devotion'. That was not him speaking, it was not a word used by his generation.

  She shut down the computer, switched off the light and opened the door to the corridor. Just before the computer screen went dead, it flared up for a few seconds. In the light it gave off she thought she could see the handle of the door to Håkansson's bedroom move slowly. The light went out, the corridor was dark. Håkansson must have been out in the corridor and returned quickly to his room when he heard that she had switched off the computer.

  She felt a brief moment of panic. Should she get out of here, leave the house in the middle of the night? But she had nowhere she could go to. She went back to her room and placed a chair behind the door in such a way that nobody would be able to enter. Then she went back to bed, switched off the air conditioning but left the bedside lamp on.

  A solitary mosquito was dancing outside the white net. She listened for sounds, her heart pounding. Was that his footsteps she could hear? Was he listening outside her door?

  She tried to think completely calmly. Why had Håkansson written a letter in Henrik's name and kept it on his computer. There was no answer, only a creeping sense of unreality. It was like entering Henrik's flat in Stockholm again and finding him dead.

  I'm scared, she thought. I'm surrounded by something that frightened Henrik, an invisible but dangerous membrane that enveloped him as well.

  The night was stiflingly hot and damp. She could hear a thunderstorm in the distance. It drifted away in what she imagined was the direction of Swaziland's distant mountains.

  CHAPTER 16

  She lay awake until dawn. She could no longer remember how many sleepless nights she had endured since Henrik died. Her existence now was characterised by a permanent lack of sleep. Only when the pale morning light seeped through the curtains and she heard Celina talking to one of the security guards who was getting washed under the tap in the garden did she feel sufficiently calm to doze off.

  She was woken up by a dog barking. She had slept for three hours, it was nine o'clock. She stayed in bed, listening to Celina or Graça sweeping the corridor floor. She was no longer afraid; instead she felt helpless anger at having been insulted. Did Lars Håkansson really believe that she was incapable of seeing through what he had written in Henrik's name? Why had he done it?

  She now thought she no longer needed to be considerate towards him. He had intruded brutally into her life, he had lied and had planted a forged letter in his computer. Moreover, he had scared her and robbed her of sleep. Now she would ransack his computer, his cupboards and his drawers to find out if there was anything Henrik really had left behind. Not least, she wanted to know why Henrik had trusted Håkansson.

  * * *

  By the time she went to the kitchen she found that Graça had made breakfast for her. Louise felt embarrassed at being served by this old lady who had severe pains in both her back and her hands. Graça's smile was made by a mouth almost totally bereft of teeth, and her Portuguese, mixed with a few English words, was almost incomprehensible. Graça fell silent when Celina joined them. Celina asked if it was convenient for her to clean Louise's room.

  'I can make the bed myself.'

  Celina laughed hollowly and shook her head. When Celina left the room, Louise followed her.

  'I'm used to making my own bed.'

  'Not here. That's my job.'

  'Are you happy here?'

  'Yes.'

  'How much are you paid per month for the work you do here?'

  Celina hesitated and wondered if she ought to reply. But Louise was white, she was her superior even if she was only a guest.

  'I get fifty dollars a month, and a similar amount in Mozambique meticais.'

  Louise did the sums in her head. Seven hundred kronor per month. Was that a lot or a little? What was its purchasing power? She asked about the price of cooking oil and rice and bread, and was surprised by Celina's answers.

  'How many children do you have?'

  'Six.'

  'And your husband?'

  'I suppose he's in South Africa, working in the mines.'

  'Suppose?'

  'I haven't heard from him for two years.'

  'Do you love him?'

  Celina looked at her in astonishment.

  'He's the father of my children.'

  Louise regretted asking that question when she saw how upset Celina was.

  She followed her upstairs and went to Håkansson's study. The heat was already oppressive. She switched on the air conditioning and sat still until she could feel it becoming cooler.

  Somebody had been in the room since she left it. But it could not have been Celina or Graça, the floor had not been swept this morning. And the chair in front of the computer was not tucked under the desk. But it had been when she left it.

  That was one of King Artur's most important commandments from her childhood. When you had finished eating, you should always tuck your chair back under the table before leaving the room.

  She looked around the study. Shelves with files, official documents, reports, presentations. Several shelves containing documents from the World Bank. She selected a file at random: 'Strategy for Sub-Saharan Development of Water Resources 1997'. She replaced it after noting that it had hardly been opened or read. Several shelves were stacked with journals in Swedish, English and Portuguese, the rest were packed with books. Håkansson's library was disorganised, haphazard. Well-thumbed editions of Agatha Christie stood alongside factual reports and vast numbers of books on Africa. She found tomes on the most dangerous snakes in Africa and Australasia, welltried recipes for traditional Swedish dishes, and a collection of faded sepia pornographic photographs from the middle of the nineteenth century. In one of them, dated 1856, two girls sat on a wooden bench with carrots inserted between their legs.

  She replaced the book and recalled stories about chefs who spat or peed onto plates before they were placed before aristocratic diners. If only I could vomit onto his hard drive. Every time he switched on he would smell something unpleasant without realising what it was.

  An envelope from a Swedish bank was sticking out from between two books on one of the shelves. It had been opened. She took out the contents and found that it was a confirmation of payment of Håkansson's monthly wages. On the basis of her current wage, it would take Celina nearly four years to earn as much as Håkansson was paid per month. How was it possible to build bridges over a gulf that wide? How could a man like Lars Håkansson even begin to understand the life that Celina lived?

  Louise noticed that in her m
ind she was conversing with Artur. She raised her voice because his hearing was defective. After a while she changed her choice of discussion partner to Aron. They were sitting at the table where the red parrots used to assemble and eat breadcrumbs. But Aron was on edge, he did not want to listen. In the end she found herself talking to Henrik. He was near by. She had tears in her eyes, closed them, and imagined that when she opened them again, he would be sitting next to her. But, of course, she was alone in the room. She drew a curtain in order to keep out the sunlight. Down in the street she could hear dogs barking, security guards laughing. All this laughter, she thought. I noticed it the day I landed here. Why do poor people laugh so much more than somebody like me? She asked the question of Artur, Aron and Henrik in turn. But none of her three knights answered, they were all silent.

  She switched on the computer, determined to erase Henrik's two messages. She also wrote a message to Lars Håkansson in which she had Julieta speaking Swedish and telling him what she thought of him. Was he not somebody posted to Africa to help the poor?

  Then she tried systematically to open various files on the computer, but met barriers wherever she turned. Håkansson's computer was now riddled with reinforced doors. She was also convinced that she was leaving a trail behind her. He would be able to follow all her clicks, and her attempts to break open the doors. Wherever she turned she was confronted by a raised hand that demanded a password. She tried all the obvious ones at random: his name spelled correctly, his name spelled backwards, various possible abbreviations. Needless to say, no doors opened. All she succeeded in doing was to leave evidence of her own failed attempts to hack into the computer.

  Louise jumped when Celina suddenly asked her if she wanted tea.

  'I didn't hear you,' Louise said. 'How can you move so quietly?'

  'Senhor doesn't like noise,' explained Celina. 'He likes a silence that doesn't really exist here in Africa. But he creates it himself. He wants Graça and me to move silently, barefoot.'

  She declined the tea. Celina left on her soundless feet. Louise stared at the computer screen that stubbornly refused to open its doors. Underground tunnels, she thought, with no lights, no maps. I can't get to him.

  She was about to switch off when she started to think again about Henrik and his obsession with Kennedy's brain. What was the significance? Did Henrik seriously believe it would be possible to find imprints of thoughts, of memories, of what other people had said to the world's most powerful man before a rifle bullet made his head explode? Were there already instruments in advanced military laboratories to extract material from dead tissue, just as technicians can retrieve data from emptied hard drives?

  Her thoughts came to a stop in mid-stride. Had Henrik found something he had been intending to look for? Or had he stumbled upon something by chance?

  Working at the computer had made her hot and sweaty, even though the air conditioning was switched on. Celina had cleaned Louise's room and taken away her dirty linen. She changed into cotton underwear. As she was changing she heard Celina talking to somebody downstairs. Could it be Håkansson who had come back home? Celina came up the stairs.

  'You have a visitor. The same person as yesterday.'

  Lucinda was tired. Celina had given her a glass of water.

  'I didn't get home last night. A group of Italian navvies occupied the Malocura. For once the bar was able to live up to its name. They drank vast amounts and didn't stagger away until dawn.'

  'What does "Malocura" mean?'

  'It means "madness". The bar was started by a woman called Dolores Abreu. It must have been in the early 1960s, before I was even born. She was big and fat, one of the powerful whores of those days who made sure that her professional duties never interfered with her family life. Dolores was married to a considerate little man called Nathaniel. He played the trumpet and is said to have been one of the creators of the popular dance called "marrabenta" here in Maputo, in the 1950s. Dolores had regular customers from Johannesburg and Pretoria. It was during the golden age of hypocrisy. White South African men were not allowed to buy black prostitutes because of the race laws. So they had to take to their cars or the train and come here to get a taste of black pussy.'

  Lucinda paused and looked at Louise with a smile.

  'I hope you'll excuse my language.'

  'A woman's sex is called "pussy" in many languages. I might have been shocked when I was young, but not nowadays.'

  'Dolores was thrifty and saved a lot of money – not really what you might call a fortune, but enough to invest in this bar. They say it was her husband who invented the name. He thought she would lose all her money in this hopeless venture, but it went well.'

  'Where is she now?'

  'She's in the cemetery at Lhanguene with Nathaniel. Their children inherited the bar, started squabbling from day one, and sold it to a Chinese doctor who lost it through some complicated loan transaction to a Portuguese fabric trader. A few years ago it was bought by the daughter of our Finance Minister. But she's never actually been there. That would be beneath her dignity. She spends most of her time buying expensive clothes in Paris. What's the name of the poshest brand?'

  'Dior?'

  'That's it, Dior. Her two little daughters are said to wear Dior dresses. Meanwhile the country starves. She sends one of her underlings to the bar every other day, to collect the cash.'

  Lucinda shouted for Celina, who brought her some more water.

  'I came here because I had an idea last night. When the Italians were close to legless, and started groping me I went outside for a cigarette. I looked up at the stars. Then I remembered that Henrik once said that the starry sky over Inhaca was just as clear as the one he used to see up in the north of Sweden.'

  'Where?'

  'Inhaca. An island in the Indian Ocean. He often used to talk about it. Perhaps he'd been there a few times. The island seemed to mean something special to him. I suddenly remembered something I think might be important. He said: I can always hide away on Inhaca. Those were his exact words. Sometimes he had prepared what he was going to say very carefully. That was one of those moments.'

  'What did he do on Inhaca?'

  'I don't know. People go there to swim, walk along the beaches, go diving, fishing, or to get drunk at the hotel.'

  'Henrik was too impatient to lead that sort of life.'

  'Exactly. That's why I think there was something else that attracted him to the place.'

  'Do you think he was looking for somewhere to hide?'

  'I think he met somebody there.'

  'What kind of people live on the island?'

  'Mainly farmers and fishermen. There's a marine biology research station that belongs to Mondlane University. A few shops and the hotel. That's all. Apart from masses of snakes, they say. Inhaca is paradise for snakes.'

  'Henrik hated snakes. But on the other hand he was fascinated by spiders. Once when he was a child he ate one.'

  Lucinda did not seem to hear what Louise said.

  'He said something I never understood. He spoke of a painting and an artist who lived on the island. I can't remember properly.'

  'Where were you when he told you this?'

  'In a hotel bed. For once he hadn't been able to find an empty house where we could be. I can see him in front of me now. It was in the morning. He was standing by the window with his back to me. I could not see his face as he spoke.'