Treacherous Paradise (9780307961235) Read online

  He didn’t answer as he hadn’t understood what she said. He simply wiped the sweat from his brow, then let his arm hang loosely by his side again.

  She returned to O Paraiso where Senhor Vaz was pacing up and down in the street outside, looking worried. He was carrying an umbrella as a substitute for a parasol to protect him from the sun. Carlos had climbed up onto the hotel sign and was throwing chips gathered from the stone roof at a dog down below. When Hanna arrived back, Senhor Vaz immediately started berating the black man. She didn’t understand what he was saying as he was speaking so quickly, but she gathered he had been worried that something had happened to her.

  The black man still said nothing, but she had the impression that he was unmoved by the fit of rage aimed at him. And as she watched Senhor Vaz growing more and more furious, she noticed something that hadn’t occurred to her before.

  Even if Judas was afraid of his white master, Senhor Vaz was just as afraid. The gigantic black man was not the only one on the defensive. Naturally, he couldn’t allow himself to react to the white man standing in front of him and shouting at him. That would be a punishable offence, and could lead to imprisonment or a beating. But now Hanna could see that Senhor Vaz was also afraid—a different sort of fear, but just as strong. And didn’t the same apply to Ana Dolores as well? She would boss the black servant girls and prostitutes about, give them orders, and was never satisfied with what they did, nor did she ever thank them. But wasn’t she also possessed by a never-ceasing flood of unease and fear?

  The outburst came to an end just as quickly as it had begun. Senhor Vaz dismissed Judas with a wave of the hand, and offered Hanna his arm to take her with him into the coolest of the rooms, overlooking the sea. Judas squatted down next to the house.

  Senhor Vaz flopped down onto a chair, placed his hands over his heart as if he had just been indulging in something extremely strenuous, and warned her at great length about the dangers of going for long walks in the extreme heat. He told her about friends of his who had suffered from heatstroke, especially after spending time in places where the sun was reflected by white stone, or by the sand on the town’s beaches. But above all he warned her against relying too much on the support offered by blacks.

  She didn’t understand what he was trying to say.

  “Is it dangerous for black people to look at you?” she asked.

  Senhor Vaz shook his head in annoyance, as if the strain he had just undergone had used up all his patience.

  “A white woman shouldn’t walk around too much on her own,” he said. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “I went to the cathedral and listened to the black children singing.”

  “They sing very beautifully. They have a remarkable ability to harmonize without needing to practise all that much. But white ladies should only go for short walks. And preferably not at all when it’s very hot.”

  She wanted to ask more about the unlikely danger she had evidently exposed herself to. But Senhor Vaz raised his hand, he didn’t have the strength to answer any more questions. He remained seated on the chair, his white hat on his knee, his black walking stick made from a wood known as pau preto leaning against one of his legs, and seemed to be lost in thought.

  After a while Hanna stood up and left the room. Senhor Vaz had fallen asleep, his mouth half open, his eyebrows twitching, snoring softly.

  When she looked out of the front door, she found that Judas was no longer there. She wondered where he lived, if he was married, if he had any children.

  But most of all she wondered what he was thinking.

  That evening she had dinner in her room once again. One of the black servant girls whose name she didn’t know brought her food. She also moved without making a sound, just like Laurinda. She wondered if these silent movements also had to do with fear—the fear she was beginning to see more and more of.

  She ate the food: rice, boiled vegetables whose taste she didn’t recognize, and a grilled chicken leg. There were many spices, completely new to her. But she ate her fill. She drank tea with her food. What was left over she drank later on when it had grown cold, as a substitute for water in the evening and during the night.

  That was one of the last pieces of advice Lundmark had given her before he suddenly fell ill and died. Never drink unboiled water.

  She had followed his advice. Now that she wasn’t bleeding any more and was no longer carrying what would have been their child, her stomach wasn’t causing her any problems.

  What she was now carrying was merely emptiness.

  35

  She put the tray on the floor outside her room and locked the door. She took off all her clothes and lay naked on her bed. The curtain in front of the window was hanging motionless. There was something sinful about lying naked on a bed, she thought. Sinful because there is no man here who desires me, nobody I would allow to take advantage of me. She reached for the blanket in order to cover up her body, but then changed her mind. There was nobody who could see her hiding away here. If there was a God who was invisible but all-seeing, He would surely allow a person to lie down naked when the heat was so suffocating.

  That evening she lay there for a long time, thinking about the fear she thought she had detected in Senhor Vaz’s eyes. She had never seen fear like that in her mother or father. There was an upper class in Sweden, of course, but it didn’t need to be frightening if you cooperated with it. But here, things were different. Here, everybody was afraid, even if the whites tried to hide their fear behind a front of either calmness and self-control, or well-planned outbursts of rage.

  She thought: where is my fear? Am I not afraid because I don’t have anybody to be afraid of? Am I completely alone?

  The solitary world. She would never be able to cope with that. She had grown up as a human being in the company of others. She would never be able to survive in a world without that communion.

  That evening she regretted having jumped ship. If she had continued the voyage to Australia, perhaps the feeling of being unable to cope with the loss of Lundmark would have faded away? Despite everything, there was a feeling of community on board that she was a part of. She felt like an insect, flapping its wings frantically, trapped inside a glass that had been turned upside down.

  But that feeling also faded away. She knew she had done what she was forced to do. If she had stayed on board the ship, she might well eventually have jumped overboard. Lundmark’s constant shadowlike presence would have driven her mad.

  She was about to fall asleep, still naked on top of the bedcover, when she heard the sound of raindrops on the tin roof. The sound gradually grew louder, and before long it was the booming of tropical rain. She got up and pulled the curtain to one side. The mosquitoes had fled the heavy rain, so she could allow the cooling air to flow freely into the room.

  It was pitch-dark outside. There were no fires burning. The rain drowned all other noises. There was no sound of voices or the gramophone from the ground floor.

  She held out her hand and let the rain patter onto her skin.

  I must go home, she thought again. I can’t cope with living here, surrounded by all this fear and a loneliness that is threatening to suffocate me.

  She remained standing by the window until the heavy but short-lived rain had stopped. She closed the curtain and went back to bed, still without covering herself with the blanket.

  The following day, and for many days to come, she went down to the harbour to see if a ship flying the Swedish flag had berthed by a quay or was waiting in the roadstead. Judas always accompanied her, keeping watch in silence a few paces behind her.

  It is October 1904. She is waiting.

  36

  The piano tuner’s name was José, but he was never called anything but Zé, and he was Senhor Vaz’s brother. That was a discovery she made after having lived for quite a long time in the brothel. No matter how much she studied the two men, she couldn’t see any similarities. But Zé assured her there was no doubt at al
l that they had the same parents. Even though she soon gathered that Zé was somewhat mentally challenged, she had no reason to doubt him on this point. And why would Senhor Vaz allow him to sit there tuning the piano day after day unless there was some special reason? Senhor Vaz was looking after his brother because their parents had passed away.

  In a word, Senhor Vaz loved him. Hanna noted the touching solicitude with which he treated his brother. If any of the clients complained about the constant tuning of the piano, she witnessed with her own eyes how Senhor Vaz would order the man out of the building and would never allow him back in. Zé had permission to tune the piano or polish the keys as often and for as long as he wanted.

  But there were exceptions, of course. When the brothel was visited by prominent men from South Africa, leading figures in the government or the church, Vaz would lead his brother gently to the room behind the kitchen where Zé had his bed. The beautiful Belinda Bonita, who was always well informed about everything that went on in the brothel, told Hanna that there was also an old piano in that room. The keys were still there, but all the instrument’s strings had been cut and removed.

  So Zé would sit in his room, tuning a silent piano.

  Zé lived in a world of his own. He was a few years older than his brother, seldom spoke unless he was spoken to, tuned his strings or merely sat quietly hunched over the piano as if he were waiting for something that was never going to happen. He was like a ticking clock, Hanna thought, with nothing happening to interrupt the regular rhythm.

  But that wasn’t completely true, she realized one day when she had been living in the brothel for nearly four months. As usual she had strolled down to the harbour together with her gigantic bodyguard, and looked to see if she could find a ship flying the Swedish flag: but there was none to be seen on this occasion either. She had bought a pair of binoculars from an Indian businessman who also sold cameras and spectacles. Thanks to the magnified images she was able to establish that none of the ships waiting in the roadstead was displaying a Swedish flag. Every time she returned to the hotel she did so with mixed feelings of disappointment and relief. Disappointment because she really did want to return home, relief because she dreaded ever having to board a ship again.

  The moment she entered O Paraiso she could see that Zé wasn’t in his usual place at the piano. But she didn’t have time to ask where he was before he made his grand entry. The women who had been lounging around on the sofas or leaning over the billiard table patting balls back and forth with rather silly flourishes of the hand burst out laughing but also applauded him when he appeared. He had changed out of his usual crumpled dark suit into a white one. Instead of the usual dirty beret pulled down over the back of his head, Zé was now wearing a panama hat similar to the one his brother usually wore. In addition he had a white shirt with a high collar and a black cravat, elaborately tied. In one hand he was carrying a bunch of white paper flowers. He stood in front of the woman whose name was Deolinda, but who was never called anything other than A Magrinha, since she was so thin, flat-breasted and totally lacking in the usual female characteristics.

  Hanna had sometimes looked at her and wondered how on earth she could attract a man. She preferred not to think that thought through to its logical conclusion, but she couldn’t avoid it: Deolinda was ugly. It seemed to Hanna that the whole of her emaciated person radiated sorrow and suffering. But she did have clients, Hanna knew that: she had seen them going with Deolinda. She found it totally repulsive to imagine A Magrinha in bed with one of the white men who patronized the brothel; but she evidently had something that enticed them and aroused their desires.

  Zé bowed and handed over his paper flowers. Deolinda stood up, took him by the arm and led him to her room in the corridor where clients were entertained. They were sent on their way by merry laughter and renewed applause before the room was once again characterized by apathetic idleness.

  There were always a few hours in the late afternoon when nothing really happened in the brothel. Clients rarely if ever appeared. The women dozed off, painted their nails, or possibly exchanged a few whispered confidences.

  None of the black women apart from Felicia ever spoke to Hanna unless she asked them a question or requested something. Senhor Vaz had made it clear to her that the women in his establishment were there not only to satisfy their clients, but that they were also supposed to serve the hotel guests. She still didn’t know how they regarded her: they greeted her, smiled at her, but never attempted to be friendly with her. And she didn’t know what was meant by their being “supposed to serve the hotel guests.” After all, she was the only person renting a room.

  She sat down at the end of a sofa next to Esmeralda, who was one of the oldest of the women, with a bird-like face and the longest fingers Hanna had ever seen.

  Silence descended on the room. Hanna realized that this was the first time she had ever sat down next to one of the black women.

  She pointed at the corridor into which Deolinda and Zé had just disappeared.

  “A pair of lovers?” she asked.

  Esmeralda nodded.

  “Yes, they are a pair of lovers,” she said. “He sometimes gets that feeling. Then he forgets his piano. It happens every other month or so. He changes his clothes, and it is always Deolinda he chooses.”

  Hanna wanted to ask more questions, not least to make sure that she had understood properly: but Esmeralda stood up in an impressively dignified fashion. As far as she was concerned the conversation was at an end. She glided away to her room, her hips swaying attractively.

  Hanna also rose to her feet and went up the stairs. She didn’t need to turn round to know that all the nine women left down below were watching her attentively. They look at us when we turn our backs on them, she thought. They are not afraid to look each other in the eye; but they are afraid of our eyes just as we are afraid of theirs.

  She closed the door behind her, bolted it, and undressed from the waist up. She washed herself in cold water, using a linen cloth. She licked one of her lower arms and could taste all the salt from the perspiration that had been pouring off her. Then she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. But she sat up again almost immediately. She had remembered something she hadn’t thought about since she left Sweden on the ship which must have long since docked in Australia with its cargo of timber.

  She dug out the hymn book with the golden embossing in which she had hidden the gold coins she had once been given by Forsman. Between the pages was also a black and white photograph. It was of Berta and herself, taken in Bernard Dunn’s photo-studio in Sundsvall.

  37

  It had been Berta’s idea. She was always the one who came out with the boldest and most unexpected suggestions.

  “We must have a photograph,” she had said. “Before you go away. I’m frightened of forgetting what you look like. Frightened of forgetting what we both look like together.”

  Hanna started worrying immediately. She had never been to a photographer before, didn’t know what to do. But Berta dismissed all her objections. Besides, both she and Hanna had received a little gift from Forsman, like all the others who worked for him. Forsman’s business had just celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday, and he wanted to mark the occasion by being generous to his employees. The money would pay for the photograph.

  They managed to arrange for a couple of hours off one day in the spring when the days were getting longer. Dunn, the photographer, had a studio on the main square. They had put on their best clothes, polished their shoes, and been placed by a table with a chair. Behind them was a white plaster statue of a dragon-slayer with a raised sword. The photographer, who was Danish and spoke a variation of Swedish that was difficult to understand, instructed Berta to sit down on the chair, with Hanna standing behind her, next to her shoulder. To balance the photograph and give it artistic form, he placed a vase of paper flowers on the table.

  It was the flowers in Zé’s hand when he bowed in front of Deolinda, so similar t
o the ones in the photograph, that had jogged Hanna’s memory.

  She lay on the bed and looked at the picture. They had received two copies, and kept one each. Berta was smiling at the camera, while Hanna looked more serious. She tried to imagine what Berta would have done if she had been the one lying here in bed on the upper floor of an African brothel, disguised as a hotel. But the photograph provided no answer, Berta said nothing.

  She laid the photograph on her naked chest, which had started to dry now. I never expected anything like this, she thought. When Elin stood in front of me and said that I must travel to the coast in order to earn a living, I was totally incapable of imagining what would happen. Perhaps what Hanna was thinking now was confirmation of the fact that she had grown up and was an adult now? Perhaps the big secret was the realization that you never knew what was in store for you? If you made the break and left behind everything that was known and familiar?

  Elin can’t see me now, she thought. Berta can’t see me, nor can my brother and sisters. I live in a world that we only share in the sense that it’s incomprehensible, not only for them but also for me, and I’m living in the middle of it.

  She unbolted the door and fell asleep. Soon Laurinda would come up with her evening meal on a tray—they had agreed that whenever Hanna didn’t turn up at the separate table allocated to her by Senhor Vaz, Laurinda would take a tray up to her room. That evening the main course was oily deep-fried fish, something Hanna had somehow managed to get down on a previous occasion. She tried again, but soon pushed the plate aside and ate the dessert, which was half a coconut with slices of pineapple.

  When Laurinda came back to collect the tray, Hanna tried to get her to stay by talking to her. Every time she saw Laurinda she had a bad conscience on account of that slap she had given her some time ago. She thought she could go some way towards making up for that by being friendly and talking to Laurinda. After a lot of patience-testing attempts she had finally managed to make Laurinda reply to her questions with more than monosyllables. Sometimes she could even persuade her to tell brief little tales.