‘What is a good death?’
Felicia looked at her in astonishment. It seemed to Hanna that Felicia had a special facial expression for occasions when she was having to think about questions that could only possibly have come from a white person.
‘Everybody thinks about how they are going to die,’ said Felicia. ‘Didn’t you tell me about the man you lived with, the man who was a third mate on board a ship and had a name I can’t pronounce, who had a grave in the sea?’
‘His death was anything but good,’ said Hanna. ‘He didn’t want to die.’
‘When my death comes, I don’t intend to resist it. Unless somebody is trying to murder me. I want to die peacefully. A good death is never agitated.’
Hanna didn’t know what to say about Lundmark’s death or her own uneasy thoughts about her final moments. She gave Felicia the money she had asked for. A few days later Felicia turned up when Attimilio had left the house in the morning. Wrapped up in a piece of cloth she handled with both respect and perhaps also fear was a green, almost sparkling powder. It smelled strongly of the tar Hanna remembered from the ships in the harbour at Sundsvall.
‘You must dissolve the powder into whatever Senhor Vaz drinks in the evening before going to bed.’
‘He doesn’t drink anything in the evenings. He doesn’t want to be woken up by his bladder during the night.’
‘Doesn’t he eat anything either?’
‘A mango.’
‘Then you must carefully open the fruit, press the powder into it, and close the skin again.’
Hanna shouted for Anaka and asked her to bring a mango. They then helped each other to carry out the operation and saw that it was possible to leave no traces of the powder or what they’d done.
‘Is that all?’ asked Hanna.
‘You should put a few drops of lemon into your pussy. Then you’ll be ready to receive him.’
Hanna’s face turned red when Felicia talked about the lemon. Felicia’s ability to talk quite normally about something that was still unmentionable as far as Hanna was concerned made her blush.
‘That’s all there is to it,’ said Felicia. ‘The feticheiro I spoke to has cured lots of impotent men. Some of them come from a very long way off. Some of them have come from as far away as India in order to become real men again. But he also said that if it doesn’t work — which does happen sometimes — he has other, stronger medicines to make your husband’s sexual urges start working again.’
As the moon was on the wane, Hanna had to wait for quite some time. Meanwhile Attimilio made several more attempts to consummate the marriage, without success. Afterwards, when he had given up and was lying on his side, Hanna gently stroked his black hair, which left a new greasy stain of pomade on the pillowcase every morning. I don’t really love him, she thought: but I feel tenderness towards him. He wants to do the best he can for me. He’ll never be another Lundmark in bed, but with a bit of help from Felicia perhaps one day he’ll be able to become a real man again.
43
By full moon Lourenço Marques had been battered by storms for a few days. Carlos had run away again but come back, just as mysteriously as before, this time with a red band round his neck. Senhor Vaz decided he had better keep Carlos chained up, but the women were outraged by the very thought and he let it drop. Carlos resumed his role as a waiter, and would light clients’ cigars in exchange for a banana or an apple. Felicia maintained that Carlos had a different glint in his eye now: something was happening to him.
The full moon arrived, the winds had moved on, and Senhor Vaz came home after a long day at the brothel. Hanna had prepared the mango and sat beside him at the dining table as he chewed away at it, deep in thought. She then duly applied the drops of lemon in the bathroom before going to bed and lying down beside her husband. He seemed to be on his way to sleep, so she gently stroked his arm. After a few moments he turned to face her. He went on to make frantic efforts to penetrate her, just as he had done on previous occasions, but still without success — although Hanna could feel that his attempts were more powerful and longer lasting than ever before.
When he gave up they were both sweating. Hanna decided that the very next day she would tell Felicia that stronger medicines were needed to help Attimilio to overcome his difficulties.
She could hear that he had fallen asleep, taking the usual quick, short breaths as if he didn’t really have time to sleep.
When she woke up next morning he was dead. He was lying beside her, white and already cold. The moment she opened her eyes, just before Anaka was due to come in with their breakfast tray, she knew that something had happened. He was rarely, if ever, still in bed when she woke up. He would usually be in the bathroom, getting shaved.
He was lying in the same position as he’d been in when he fell asleep. Hanna slid out of bed, her legs shaking. She had become a widow for the second time. When Anaka came in she was sitting in a chair and pointed to the man in the bed.
‘Morto,’ was all she said. ‘Senhor Vaz e morto.’
Anaka put down the tray, went down on her knees, chanted something that might have been a prayer, then hurried away. It struck Hanna that Attimilio had died in complete silence. He hadn’t screamed like Lundmark did.
It was as if he had died in shame, having failed once again, one last time, to make love to his wife.
Two days after the chaotic burial in the town’s new cemetery, at which Carlos was also present wearing a dark suit and a new black top hat, Hanna was visited by Attimilio’s solicitor, Senhor Andrade. He bowed, expressed his condolences once again, and sat down opposite her in the group of sofa and armchairs in red plush that Senhor Vaz had had made in distant Cape Town. Unlike on previous occasions, he now spoke loudly and clearly: Hanna was no longer merely an appendage of Senhor Vaz.
Andrade explained the situation:
‘There is a will. It’s signed, and witnessed by me and my colleague Petrus Sabodini. The will is simple and crystal clear. There isn’t the slightest doubt about its intentions.’
Hanna listened, but it never occurred to her that what was being said had anything to do with her.
‘So, there is a will,’ said Andrade again. ‘It makes it clear that all Attimilio’s estate and goods and chattels are inherited by you. In addition to the hotel and the other activities associated with it, you now own all his businesses, including a warehouse full of fabrics and nine donkeys grazing in various pastures just outside the town. There are also significant assets in Pretoria and Johannesburg.’
Andrade placed a number of documents on the table and stood up. He bowed again.
‘It will be a great pleasure to me if in future I can continue to offer you my services as your solicitor, Senhora Vaz.’
It was only after he had gone that Hanna grasped what had happened. She sat there motionless, holding her breath. She had become the owner of a brothel. And also of a number of donkeys and a chimpanzee that occasionally ran away when it wasn’t lighting cigars for the customers who visited her house of pleasure.
She stood up and went out on to the balcony. Through the binoculars she could see the building where the brothel was situated. She could also make out the contours of the window of the room that had been hers, when she was sick in bed.
A number of ships were bobbing slowly up and down in the roadstead, but she didn’t pay any attention to them just now. However, that same day she took Carlos home with her from the brothel, because she didn’t want to live alone. She also took the big ceiling light because Carlos always liked to sleep in it.