Senhor Andrade suddenly materialized by her side. Despite the fact that it was early in the morning, sweat was already pouring down his face. A drop hanging from the tip of his nose filled her with distaste. She had to restrain herself from thwacking him in the face with the handkerchief she had stuffed inside her blouse.
‘Is there anything else you require of me this morning?’
‘No. Nothing apart from hearing what you thought about it.’
Andrade gave a start. New drops of sweat gathered on the tip of his nose. Hanna realized that she had used the familiar form of address, and that he objected to that. She ought to have included the words ‘Senhor Andrade’. He evidently thought that not doing so indicated a lack of respect. But she knew that he was well paid for his services, and she certainly didn’t want to exchange him for one of the keen young solicitors from Lisbon who were now converging on Portugal’s African possessions in the hope of making their fortunes.
‘What I thought about what?’
‘My address. The meeting. The silence.’
Her distaste was increasing all the time. The beads of sweat on his bloated face made her feel ill.
‘It was a good exposition of the facts of the situation,’ said Andrade thoughtfully.
‘You’re not in court. Tell me what you really think. About their reaction.’
‘The whores? What else can you expect from them but silence? They’re used to opening other things than their mouths.’
Andrade’s effrontery almost made Hanna blush. She became the girl by the river again, scarcely daring to look any man she didn’t know in the eye. But she also realized that he was right. Why had she thought that she might be able to expect anything other than silence? On several occasions she had been present when Senhor Vaz had assembled the women to address them, but none of them had ever asked a question or requested that anything should be explained more clearly — and most certainly there had never been any question of contradicting him.
Andrade went out into the broiling sunshine and clambered into his car, which was driven by a black chauffeur in uniform. Hanna had arranged for the chauffeur to come and collect her an hour later.
She went up the stairs and opened the door to the room where she had slept those first nights after she had fled from Svartman’s ship. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. But there was nothing she could return to, not even the memory of those first lonely nights, the bleeding, and Laurinda coming to help her without making a sound.
She left the room without understanding why she had gone up the stairs to the upper floor. She sat down on one of the red plush sofas and waited for the car. Carlos had woken up and climbed into the jacaranda tree. He sat there watching her, as if he expected her to climb up as well and cling on to the branches.
She looked at all the closed doors. She thought about the fact that she knew nothing at all about what really went on inside the women’s heads. She would never be able to repeat the conversations she had sometimes had with Felicia. The fact that she was now the owner of the brothel opened up a chasm between her and the women with whom she had previously had a relationship as close as racial differences allowed.
Her unrest made it difficult for her to breathe. She held tightly on to the arms of the sofa so as not to fall. I can’t stay here, she thought. I have no business to be here. On a foreign continent where the residents either hate me or are scared of me.
Her thoughts were still unclear, but she had an idea of what she ought to do. The very next day she should summon Andrade and instruct him to find somebody willing to purchase the brothel. There was bound to be any number of willing would-be buyers prepared to pay for the brothel’s good name and reputation. Then she would get out of here as quickly as possible. Her future was secure, thanks to the money she already had plus what she would earn from the sale of the brothel. It would be a rich woman leaving Africa behind her. Hers had been a brief visit. Two short-lived marriages, two unexpected deaths, and then nothing else.
I have just one problem, she thought. What will happen to Carlos? I can’t take him with me to the cold country where he would freeze to death. But who will be able to look after him, now that he has no desire at all to return to the forests he originally came from? When he doesn’t even want to be an ape any longer?
She had no answer to that. When the car arrived and she shouted for Carlos, he immediately climbed down from the tree.
But just as he touched the ground after climbing out of the tree, he had given a start, as if he had burnt himself on the hard, flat soil. He sniffed around, then hurried away.
Hanna stared at him in surprise. Why had he been afraid of the ground underneath the tree? But Carlos gave no indication of why. He simply sat down beside her in the car, grinning as the sea air caressed his face.
46
Shortly before his death, totally unexpectedly — as if he had had a premonition of his imminent demise — Senhor Vaz had told Hanna that if she ever needed advice and he was not at hand to give it, she should turn first to Senhor Pedro Pimenta.
‘Why him?’ she had asked. ‘I barely know who he is.’
‘I don’t know anybody who is more honest than he is,’ he said. ‘He’s the only person in this country who I’ve never caught out telling lies. Talk to Pedro Pimenta if you need advice. And rest assured that you can trust Herr Eber to look after our money — he’d never steal a single escudo of our assets. He believes that God goes out of His way to look after him. You couldn’t ask to find a better cashier than Herr Eber. God has erected steel bars between Herr Eber and any thievish inclinations he might have, deep down inside him.’
Pedro Pimenta was an immigrant from Coimbra who carved out for himself an astonishing career when he came to the African colony. He had first been an assistant to a tailor who had decided to seek his fortune in the African colonies. Pimenta’s real intention had been to emigrate to Angola, and more specifically to the city of Luanda, because rumour had it that the white colonial population was badly in need of tailors. But fate had dictated that the master tailor who paid for Pimenta’s ticket had decided to settle in the country that at that time was still called Portuguese East Africa. For the first three months after his arrival, Pimenta, who was only seventeen at the time, had been scared to death by everything the alien continent threw at him. He was terrified of the dark nights, of the whispering voices of the blacks, of the snakes he never saw and the spiders that hid away in the darkness. Even though it was many years since beasts of prey had wandered into the town at night, he was always afraid that a lion would force its way in through his half-open window and rip out his throat. For the first three months Pimenta spent all his time hiding behind barricades. As he was unable to sleep at night, he didn’t have the strength to work during the day. The master tailor sacked him, and kicked him out of the little house down by the harbour where he had established his tailoring business.
The fact that Pimenta was out of work did not mean that he was ruined: instead he was forced to overcome his fears and take responsibility for his life. Thanks to a number of forged references, he was given a job by an Indian businessman, learnt the basics of commerce, and before long started up his own business with prices undercutting anything his rivals had to offer. After less than ten years he had become a rich man. He built a house on a hill outside the town, was one of the first people in Lourenço Marques to own a car and a chauffeur, and was considered to be one of the most prominent of the colonial immigrants.
Nobody knew that Pedro Pimenta was illiterate. He managed to keep in his head all the figures he needed to master in his business dealings. When he became more successful he called up a younger brother from Portugal who could both read and write. That brother took care of all the necessary correspondence, and nobody had the slightest idea that all the letters of the alphabet jumped around inside Pimenta’s head in total confusion.