Hanna returned to town later in the afternoon. The sun had disappeared behind thunderclouds that were building up over the mountains near the border with Swaziland.
The conversation with Pedro Pimenta had increased her confusion. She was more unsure than ever about what she ought to do. She couldn’t believe that what he had said about not changing anything was true. There was no reason to believe that he would treat the women any differently from the way he treated his white dogs and the crocodiles waiting in his ponds to be killed and skinned. Pimenta was a man who enjoyed throwing living sheep to hungry crocodiles.
She sat in the car with the window open. The wind was pounding the shawl she had over her mouth to avoid having to breathe in the red dust that was swirling around along the road.
For a brief moment she was sorely tempted to instruct the chauffeur to drive her to the South African border: but she didn’t, she merely closed her eyes and dreamt about the clear, brown water of the river.
When she got out of the car in front of her house, Julietta immediately opened the front door and took her hat. Hanna realized that her meeting with Pimenta had given her a sort of answer after all. She was responsible for the women her dead husband had bequeathed to her.
She could only live up to that if at the same time she accepted responsibility for herself.
49
After a night of heavy rain that once again flooded the streets of Lourenço Marques, a man stood shivering at the front door of the brothel, asking to speak to the woman who owned it. The fact that he knew there was now a woman owner and was evidently not a customer made Hanna uneasy. She was becoming more worried about the unknown, not least people wanting to see her without her knowing why.
That same morning she had sat with her bookkeeper and cashier Herr Eber and discussed the costs of repairs that were necessary after two Finnish sailors had run amok. They had smashed most of the furniture in the sofa room where the whores received their customers. Soldiers summoned from the Portuguese garrison had finally managed to handcuff them. Nobody knew what had triggered their furious outburst, least of all the drunken sailors themselves, who couldn’t speak a word of any language other than their odd-sounding Finnish — but on a previous occasion when clients had turned violent, Felicia had said that the cause was almost always the fact that the men had been stricken with impotence and could find no way of expressing their frustration other than trashing the brothel’s furniture and fittings, as if that was the cause of their impotence and therefore needed to be punished.
The captain of the Finnish ship had paid for his two crew members to be released, then hastily set sail for Goa, which was his final destination. The money he had paid barely covered the cost of the repairs, and Hanna had decided to draw up a manual listing the precise cost of every kind of damage that might be done to the brothel on some future occasion.
Judas came in, bowed, and mumbled something about a visitor at the front door. Hanna had never heard his name before: Emanuel Roberto. Judas was told to ask the man to wait until Hanna had concluded her session with Herr Eber, who was very precise but slow. There were times when his pedantic, almost somnambulistic writing with his rasping pen drove her to distraction. But she always managed to control herself. She depended on him for information about how all her businesses were going.
When Herr Eber had finally left her room with a deep bow, she summoned Emanuel Roberto. He seemed to stagger rather than walk normally, and his face was distorted by strange tics. Hanna wondered if he was drunk, and her first impulse was to send him packing without even bothering to discover what he wanted. But when he handed over his business card, his hand shaking, and she saw that he was the deputy director of the Portuguese tax authorities in Lourenço Marques, she realized that she had to treat him with respect. She asked him to take a seat, and ordered coffee and a bowl of fruit. His body secreted an odour that suggested his flesh was in a state of fermentation, and Hanna felt obliged to begin breathing discreetly through her mouth.
Roberto made no attempt to pick up his coffee cup, but instead bent forward and drank in a manner reminiscent of an animal at a waterhole.
Unlike his fidgety body, his voice was steady and distinct.
‘I had the honour of dealing with Senhor Vaz’s tax affairs during all the years he was the owner of this whorehouse,’ he began.
Hanna objected to his use of the word ‘whorehouse’: it seemed out of place in his mouth.
‘According to information I have received from Senhor Andrade,’ he went on, ‘Senhora Vaz is now the owner of this house and the activities which take place here. If I have understood the situation correctly, Senhor Andrade will continue to look after all legal aspects, just as he did in the time of the former owner.’
He paused and looked at her, as if he was expecting a response. Hanna found it difficult not to burst out laughing. The tics all over his face were much too strong a contrast to his solemn tone of voice. The man standing in front of her seemed quite simply to have been wrongly put together.
When she said nothing he opened his briefcase and took out some elegantly written-out documents on stiff paper, adorned with seals and stamps.
‘This is your final tax statement from the last financial year. As your husband was the owner and responsible for all activities for the main part of the financial year, we shall naturally simply present you with our calculations for you to check. But I can tell you that in the current financial year this whorehouse is still the biggest taxpayer in the Portuguese colony. Needless to say it can feel painful for a civil servant to acknowledge that a brothel is the most flourishing and profitable business in the country. Some officials in Lisbon are most upset. Therefore we usually describe your establishment as a hotel. But the outcome is the same, of course: your tax payments exceed those of any other business in the country. All I can say is: congratulations!’
He handed over the documents for her to read. The bureaucratic Portuguese and the ornate handwriting meant that she guessed rather than understood what was written: but the columns of figures were absolutely clear. She reckoned out quickly in her head that she was paying a gigantic sum of Swedish kronor in tax.
The very thought made her feel dizzy. For the first time she understood fully that she had not merely become well off by marrying Senhor Vaz: she was rolling in money. And it was not only in this distant outpost that she was filthy rich: even if she returned to Sweden she would still be extremely wealthy.
Emanuel Roberto stood up and bowed.
‘I’ll leave my papers here,’ he said. ‘If you have any points to raise, please contact me about them within the next fourteen days. But I think I can assure you that everything is in the best of order, correctly calculated and recorded.’
He bowed once again, then left the room. Hanna remained seated on her chair for a long time. When she finally stood up she had made up her mind to return to her house on the hill and think seriously about what all this wealth meant for her future.
When she came out into the big sitting room she saw one of the women disappearing into her room with an early customer.
She only saw the man briefly, from behind, as the door closed.
Nevertheless she was certain. It was Captain Svartman who had gone into the room.
50
The peacock screeched. It was standing in the middle of the empty street, bathed in sunshine streaming in through the gap between two houses while Indian traders slowly, almost casually opened up their stalls down at street level. All around the peacock was shadow. It seemed to be standing on a stage, illuminated by a single spotlight.