They sat down in the cabin and were served tea by a nervous-seeming boy in a white jacket. Hanna noticed that the potted plants in the brass-framed portholes were well looked after.
‘I must know what you said to Jonathan Forsman.’
Svartman nodded. He’d been expecting that question.
‘All I could tell him were the facts as I knew them. That you had disappeared during our stop at the last port before the final lap to Australia. That we spent a whole day looking for you, but were then forced to continue our voyage. And that I didn’t know what had happened to you. Either you were alive, or you were dead: I had no idea which.’
‘What did Forsman say?’
‘He was upset. Shaking. I was afraid he might get into such a state that he had a heart attack. It wasn’t me he was directing his anger at, but Fate. The fact that you hadn’t come back. I think he felt a heavy responsibility.’
‘Do you know what he told my mother?’
The captain shook his head.
‘I assume he tried to give her courage and hope, but I suspect she must have thought that her daughter was dead and buried in a foreign country.’
Hanna felt a lump in her throat, and tears gathering behind her eyes. But she didn’t want to start crying in front of the captain. She tried to keep a firm grip on herself so as not to break down.
They drank the tea that the boy had poured into their cups, his hand trembling. Hanna recognized the crockery from her time on board.
‘This accursed continent!’ said the captain out of the blue. ‘I’m trying to understand how it’s been possible for you to live here so long.’
‘Not everything is bad,’ she said. ‘The heat can be difficult, but most of the time it’s pleasant. There’s no such thing as cold here. I’ve tried to explain to black people what snow is — like ice, but at the same time as light as a chicken feather falling down from the sky. It’s not possible to make them understand.’
‘But what about the people? The blacks? I shudder when I see how they live.’
‘I don’t know much about that. They live their own lives outside town. In the mornings they come wandering in out of the sun to work as servants or miners. Then they disappear again.’
‘I hear a lot of talk about violence and robbery. We always post extra guards by the gangplank when we are berthed in African harbours. Other captains have told me about thieves who swim to the ship and climb on board.’
‘I haven’t come across anything of that kind all the time I’ve been living here. The blacks are not like us, but I don’t know if they are dangerous. I wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘Can they be trusted?’
‘No,’ said Hanna, mostly because that was obviously what the captain wanted to hear. She suddenly realized that she simply didn’t know what she really thought.
The captain studied his hands without speaking.
‘It doesn’t happen very often,’ he said eventually. ‘My visits to those black women.’
‘Of course not,’ said Hanna. ‘I’ve already forgotten it was there we happened to meet.’
The captain seemed relieved. Hanna immediately cashed in on her reward for being so understanding.
‘I only went to the brothel to find out why the cashier hadn’t been to see me the evening before. I never go there otherwise. I do the work I need to do at a safe distance. I live in a stone-built house that is not much smaller than Jonathan Forsman’s.’
The captain nodded. Hanna could see that he was impressed by what she had to say, although he wasn’t totally convinced that it was true. We don’t trust each other, she thought. But we did when we were working together on the boat.
She suddenly had the feeling that she wanted to get away from the ship as quickly as possible. And so she put the three letters on the little table that was screwed down on to the floor.
‘Three copies of a photograph are on their way,’ she said. ‘A messenger boy will bring them to the ship shortly. I want Forsman and Berta to have a copy, and the third one should be sent to my mother.’
She opened her purse and took out several high-value Portuguese banknotes. Svartman declined to accept them. Hanna couldn’t help wondering what currency he had used to pay Felicia for her services. She felt uncomfortable when the image of the naked captain lying on top of Felicia’s attractive body appeared in her mind’s eye.
He accompanied her out on to the deck.
‘I’ll be going back to Sweden soon,’ she said. ‘Other Swedish ships call in here from time to time, but I can’t possibly leave just now. I’ve accepted responsibility for the brothel for as long as the owner is ill, so I can’t leave this town until she’s fit again.’
‘Of course not,’ said the captain.
He doesn’t believe me, Hanna thought. Or at least, he doesn’t believe what I say. Why should he, after all?
They walked around the ship, and took a good look at the Norwegian forest cat that had come on board in Sundsvall and was now curled up fast asleep down at the bottom of a large coil of hawser.
‘How about Berta?’ Hanna asked apropos of nothing. ‘Is she still at Forsman’s place?’
‘She’s had a baby,’ said the captain. ‘I don’t know who the father is, but Forsman has allowed her to stay on in his house.’
Hanna immediately assumed that Forsman himself was the father of the child. Otherwise he would never have allowed Berta to stay.
Berta’s loneliness, she thought. And mine. Is there really any difference between them?
A black man came running along the quay. He had a packet in his hand. It contained the photographs from Picard. The captain and Hanna opened the envelope. The black and white picture was a true image of what she looked like, she realized. A woman, still very young, looking frankly and unhesitatingly straight at the camera.
‘Both Forsman and your mother will be very pleased,’ said the captain. ‘Forsman will probably be extremely relieved to discover that you are alive.’
He had one last question for her before they took leave of each other by the gangplank.
‘Where shall I tell them you are working?’
‘At a hotel,’ she said. ‘The Paradise Hotel.’
They shook hands. She didn’t look back after leaving the ship.
The following day when she returned to the harbour, the ship had left.
52
A few days later. The sea was calm, no cooling breezes were blowing along the dusty streets.
One night Hanna woke up, feeling as if somebody had hit her. Carlos had shouted out from his perch on the ceiling light, then jumped down on to the bed. Hanna knew that monkeys screamed in a special way when they were warning others in the troop about a snake or some other danger they had become aware of. She lit the paraffin lamp next to her bed. When it radiated its flickering light around the room, Carlos seemed to calm down immediately. She thought he must have had a nightmare, something she had suspected on previous occasions when he had started whimpering restlessly in bed, and the following day seemed to be gloomily introspective and preoccupied.
But something was still worrying him. He had climbed up on to the window ledge and was now sitting behind the curtain. When Hanna opened it she found herself looking straight out into the brief tropical dawn — but she could also see smoke and flames rising from a block not far from the brothel. When she opened the window she could also hear shouts and screams in the distance. Carlos climbed out on to the roof, and didn’t come back despite her calling for him.
She aimed her binoculars at the centre of the blaze. The dawn light was still only faint, but she could see right away that it was no ordinary fire. Black men were running around with cudgels and bows and arrows in their hands. They were throwing stones and burning bundles of twigs at the soldiers from the Portuguese garrison who had assembled there. Hanna could see bodies lying in the street, but she couldn’t make out if they were black or white.