'Yes, in Greece. Have you ever come across a man working for Sida called Lars Håkansson?'
'I've bumped into him once or twice, and we've exchanged a few words. But our paths have never really crossed. Why do you ask?'
'He works in Maputo. For the Ministry of Health.'
'I hope he's a decent fellow.'
'To tell you the truth, I don't like him.'
'Then it's a good job I didn't tell you he was my best friend.'
'Could I ask you something? What sort of a reputation does he have? Are there any rumours about him? I have to know because he knew my son. I'm embarrassed to have asked you this.'
'I'll see what I can dig out. Without mentioning who wants to know, of course.'
'Has your life in general turned out as you'd planned?'
'Hardly. But does it ever? I'll get back to you when I've got something to tell you.'
Two days later, when Louise was thumbing through one of her old archaeology textbooks, the phone rang.
Every time it happened she hoped it was Aron. But it was Jan Lagergren.
'Your intuition seems to have been right. I talked to a few people here who can usually be relied on to distinguish between malicious insinuation and envy on the one hand, and what is true on the other. Lars Håkansson is evidently not a man with many friends. He is considered to be haughty and arrogant. Nobody doubts that he is competent and does his job well, but it seems that his hands are not clean even so.'
'What has he done?'
'Rumour has it that he has taken advantage of his diplomatic immunity to smuggle home rare skins of big game and reptiles, all of which are classified as endangered species. That kind of thing can be a big earner for unscrupulous people. It's not all that difficult either. A python's skin doesn't weigh very much. Other rumours attached to Mr Håkansson's CV suggest that he is involved in illegal car trading. The most significant thing, no doubt, is that he has a mansion in Sörmland which ought to be beyond his means. "Toppman's Manor" sounds almost too appropriate a name for it. To sum up, I think I would characterise Lars Håkansson as a competent but ruthless person who looks after number one in every conceivable situation. But then he's hardly the only one in that category.'
'Did you find anything more?'
'Don't you think that's enough? Lars Håkansson appears to be a dodgy character who operates in murky backwaters. But he's clever. He walks a tightrope but nobody has found a way of knocking him off it.'
'Have you ever heard of a man called Christian Holloway?'
'Does he also work for Sida?'
'He runs private hospital villages for Aids sufferers.'
'That sounds very praiseworthy. But I don't recall ever having heard the name.'
'And it didn't crop up in connection with Lars Håkansson? I think Håkansson was working for that man in some way or other.'
'I'll keep the name tucked away in the back of my mind. I promise to let you know the moment I hear anything about him. I'll give you my phone number. And I'm very keen to hear why you're so interested in Lars Håkansson.'
She noted the phone number down on the cover of her old archaeology textbook.
Another ceramic fragment had been dug up out of the dry African soil. Lars Håkansson, a ruthless person prepared to do more or less anything. She placed the shard alongside the others, and felt how cripplingly heavy her weariness was.
It was getting dark earlier, both inside her and out.
But there were days when her strength returned, and she managed to keep despondency at bay. Then she would spread out her fragments on the old dining table, symbolically speaking, and try once again to fit them together so as to form the beautiful urn they had once been. Artur would shuffle around silently, pipe in mouth, serving her a cup of coffee at regular intervals. She started sorting the pieces into two sections: a periphery and a centre. Africa was in the centre of the urn, and the very hub was the town of Xai-Xai. She found details on the Internet about the floods that had devastated the town some years previously. Pictures of a little girl had been transmitted all round the world. What made her famous was the fact that she had been born in the crown of a tree: her mother had climbed up there to avoid the rising mass of water.
But Louise's fragments did not breathe birth and life. They were dark, and spoke of death, of Aids, of Dr Levansky and his experiments in the Belgian Congo. She shuddered every time she thought about the screaming apes, strapped down onto a table and cut up alive.
It was like a freezing cold draught constantly by her side. Is that what Henrik had felt as well? Had he also felt the cold? Had he taken his own life when his insight into the fact that human beings were being treated like apes became too hard to bear?
She started again from the beginning, rearranged the pieces and tried to interpret what she saw in front of her.
All around her autumn slipped away, and winter tightened its grip.
Thursday 16 December was a bright, cold day. Louise was woken early by Artur, clearing snow from the drive. The telephone rang. When she answered, she could not make out who the caller was at first. There was a loud crackling noise in the receiver, the call was evidently a longdistance one. Could it be Aron, sitting among his red parrots in Australia?
Then she recognised Lucinda's voice, faint, forced.
'I'm ill. I'm dying.'
'Can I do anything for you?'
'Come here.'
Lucinda's voice sounded very distant now. Louise felt as if Lucinda was slipping out of her grip.
'I think I can see it all now. All that Henrik discovered. Come before it's too late.'
The line went dead. Louise sat up in bed. Artur was still shovelling snow. She was completely motionless.
On Saturday 18 December Artur drove her to Arlanda airport. In the morning of 19 December she disembarked in Maputo.
The heat struck her like a red-hot fist.
CHAPTER 21
Louise found her way to Lucinda's house with the help of a taxi driver who spoke no English. When she finally reached there, Lucinda was nowhere to be found. Her mother burst into tears when she saw Louise, who thought she must have come too late. One of Lucinda's sisters stepped forward and spoke broken but understandable English.
'Lucinda is no dead. She came suddenly sick, had not strong to get out from bed. In only few weeks she went down a lot in weighing.'
Louise was not certain she had understood. The sister's bad English grew even worse, the longer she talked; it was as if the little power that remained in a battery was running out.
'Lucinda say Donna Louise come very much yes and ask for her. We must say Donna Louise that she gone to Xai-Xai for getting aid.'
'Did she say that? That I would come?'
The conversation took place outside the house. The sun was directly overhead. The heat was making Louise feel ill, the Swedish winter was still inside her. Lucinda gone to Xai-Xai for getting aid. Louise had no doubt that what Lucinda had said on the phone was true – that she had very little time left.
The taxi that had brought her from the airport was waiting. The driver was sitting on the ground in the shadow thrown by his car, listening to the radio, which was very loud. Louise took Lucinda's sister with her and asked her to explain to the driver that she wanted to go to Xai-Xai. When the driver understood, he sighed and looked worried. But Louise insisted. She wanted to go to Xai-Xai and she wanted to go right now. He gave a price, Louise asked for a translation and gathered he wanted to charge several million meticais. She suggested that she should pay in dollars, which immediately made the driver more interested. They eventually agreed on a price, plus petrol charges, plus everything else that seemed to be necessary for a trip to Xai-Xai. It was 190 kilometres, Louise seemed to recall. The taxi driver gave the impression that he was preparing for an expedition to a far distant and unexplored land.
'Ask him if he's been to Xai-Xai before.'
The driver shook his head.
'Tell him I've been there before. I
know the way. Ask him his name.'
Besides discovering that his name was Gilberto, Louise was informed that he had a wife and six children and believed in the Catholic God. She had noticed a faded colour photograph, pinned to the sun visor in his cab, of the increasingly ill Polish Pope.
'Tell him I need to rest. He must not talk all the time during the journey.'
Gilberto reacted to the instruction as if he had been given an extra sum of money, and closed the back door quietly after her. The last Louise saw of Lucinda's family was her mother's desperate face.
They arrived in Xai-Xai late in the afternoon, after a puncture in a front tyre and a temporary repair tying the exhaust pipe to the chassis with a piece of string. Gilberto had not uttered a word during the journey, but had repeatedly turned the music from the radio up louder and louder. Louise tried to rest. She had no idea what was in store for her, but knew she would need all her strength.
The memory of what had happened to Umbi would not go away. Several times during the journey she considered telling Gilberto to stop and go back. Panic was only just under the surface. She had the feeling that she was on her way into a trap that would slam shut and never release her again. But all the time she could hear Lucinda's voice in the telephone. I'm dying.
Just before they came to the bridge over the river, the photograph of the Pope came loose and fell onto the floor between the seats. Gilberto stopped to pin it back up again. Louise became increasingly irritated. Did he not realise that time was short?
They drove through the dusty town. Louise had still not made up her mind what to do. Should she continue to Christian Holloway's village and leave the taxi there? Or should she go to the beach hotel first, and find somebody else to take her to the village? She opted for the hotel. When she got out of the taxi the first thing she heard was the melancholy and monotonous sound of the albino's timbila. She paid Gilberto, shook hands with him and carried her bag into the hotel. As usual there were plenty of empty rooms. The keys were hanging in neat rows behind the reception desk, hardly any were missing. She noticed that the receptionist did not recognise her, or pretended not to. He asked for neither her passport nor a credit card. She felt both invisible and trusted at the same time.
The receptionist spoke good English. Yes, of course he could call her a taxi; but it would be better if he had a word with one of his brothers who had an excellent car. Louise asked for it to pick her up as soon as possible. She went up to her room, stood in the window and gazed at the remains of the beach kiosk. That was where Umbi had had his throat cut after talking to her. She almost vomited at the thought. Her fear had acquired claws. She managed to wash despite the fact that the bathroom tap only produced a thin trickle of water, then forced some food down her: grilled fish and a small salad that she toyed with on her plate extremely hesitantly. The timbila sounded more doleful than ever, the fish was full of bones. She sat for some time with her mobile in her hand, wondering whether to phone Artur. But she decided not to. The only thing that mattered at the moment was to respond to Lucinda's cry for help. Always assuming it was a cry for help? Perhaps it was more of a battle cry, Louise thought.
The albino stopped playing his timbila. She could hear the sea now, roaring, wild. The breakers came rolling in from India, from the distant coast of Goa. The heat was not as extreme here by the sea as it had been in Maputo. She paid her bill and left the dining room. A man in shorts and an overwashed shirt with a Stars and Stripes motif was waiting by the side of a rusty old lorry. He greeted her with a smile, and said that his name was Roberto, but for some reason Louise found impossible to understand, he was always known as Warren. She climbed into the passenger seat and explained where she wanted to go. Warren spoke English with the same South African accent as his brother in reception.
'To Christian Holloway's village,' he said. 'He's a good man. He does a lot for the sick people. Before long we'll all be ill and die,' he said offhandedly. 'We Africans will no longer exist in a few years' time. Nothing but bones in the sand and empty fields. Who will eat all the cassavas when we've gone?'
Louise was intrigued by the evident enthusiasm with which he spoke about the painful death which was common around here. Was he ill himself? Or was it merely a disguised expression of his own fear?
They arrived at the village. The first thing she noticed was that the black dog that had always been lying in the shade was no longer there. Warren asked if she wanted him to wait, or come back later and collect her. He showed her his mobile telephone and gave her his number. They made a test call, and she got through at the second attempt. He did not want to be paid, that could wait, there was no hurry, not when it was as hot as it was today. She clambered out of the lorry. Warren turned round and drove away. She stood in the shade where the dog used to lie. The heat was motionless around her and the white-painted buildings. There was not a sound to be heard. Five o'clock. She wondered if Artur had needed to clear away snow that morning. A bird flew past close to the ground, its wings flapping at an incredible rate, and disappeared in the direction of the sea. Was it a cry for help or a battle cry? Perhaps Lucinda had sent out both messages at the same time? Louise eyed the row of houses that formed a semicircle.
Lucinda knows that she needs to give me accurate instructions. Which of the buildings is she in? Naturally, in the one we visited when we came here together.
She set off over the gravel with the feeling that although the place seemed deserted, people were watching her without her being able to see them. She opened the door and stepped into the darkness. She was hit by the stench of unwashed, sweaty bodies. Nothing had changed since she was last there. There were sick people lying everywhere. Hardly any of them moved.
The beach of death. These people have come ashore here in the hope of finding help. Alas, there is nothing here but death. Like on the beaches at Lampedusa in the Mediterranean, where the dead refugees come ashore but never find the life they have dreamed of.
She stood still until her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. She listened to the chorus of breathing. Some were short, intense, strained; others so thin that they could barely be heard. There was a rattling and groaning and hissing and shrieking that subsided into whispers. She glanced round the overcrowded room, looking in vain for Lucinda. She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it over her mouth. Soon she would no longer be able to suppress the vomit rising in her throat. She started moving round the room, moving her feet carefully so as not to stand on a leg or an outstretched arm. Human roots, she thought, waiting to trip me up. She banished the thought, it was pointless, she had no need to transform reality into imagery. It was sufficiently incomprehensible as it was. She continued searching.
She found Lucinda in a corner. She was lying on a mat behind a wall projecting slightly into the room, formed by one of the pillars supporting the roof. Louise caught her eye. Lucinda really was very ill; almost naked, her chest was rising and falling with short, sudden breaths. It was clear to Louise that Lucinda had chosen her position carefully. The pillar created a blind spot. Nobody would be able to see her face when Louise was standing in front of her. Lucinda pointed at the floor. There was a matchbox lying there. Louise pretended to drop her handkerchief, bent down to pick it up and hid the matchbox in her hand. Lucinda shook her head, almost imperceptibly. Louise turned round and left the building, as if she had failed to find what she was looking for.
She flinched when she emerged into the bright light, then started to walk along the dusty road leading away from the village. When she was out of sight she rang Warren. Ten minutes later he picked her up. She apologised for not realising that her visit would turn out to be so brief, but she might well need to fly back home, possibly even today.
When they reached the hotel Warren still refused to accept any payment. If she wanted him, all she needed to do was ring. He was now going to have a nap in the shadow of his lorry, then go down to the sea for a swim.
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