And she had become aware of something else: what upset the blacks most of all was that the young men hadn’t reacted at all to what they had done.
A dead black man — nothing to bother about.
Julietta stood up, but remained on the veranda. Hanna asked her if there was anything else she wanted to say.
‘I want to work at the hotel,’ said Julietta.
‘Don’t you like it here?’
No answer.
‘We don’t need any staff in the hotel. Nobody books in there any longer.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
It dawned on Hanna, to her surprise, that Julietta wanted to start working as a prostitute. She wanted to sit alongside the other black women on the sofas, waiting for customers. Hanna was upset. Julietta was still a child. She was younger than Hanna had been when she had snuggled down among Forsman’s greasy furs in the sleigh that had transported her through the frozen countryside to the coast.
‘Have you ever been with a man?’ Hanna asked angrily.
‘Yes.’
‘Who? When?’
No answer. Hanna knew that she was not going to get one. But she had no real reason to doubt that Julietta was telling the truth about her experience.
I know nothing about these black people, she thought. Their life is a mystery about which I can’t even begin to conjure up some kind of explanation. It’s just as unknown as the whole of this part of the world I find myself living in.
‘That’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘You’re too young.’
‘Felicia was sixteen when she started.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She told me.’
‘I didn’t know you talked to the women who live down there.’
‘I talk to everybody. And everybody talks to me.’
Hanna thought the conversation was starting to go in circles.
‘Anyway, I’m the one who decides. And I say once and for all that you are too young.’
‘But Esmeralda is old and fat. Nobody wants to go with her any more. I want to start in her place.’
‘How do you know that nobody is interested in her any longer?’
‘She’s told me that.’
‘Has Esmarelda said that?’
‘Yes.’
Hanna no longer knew if Julietta was telling the truth or not. But unfortunately Julietta was quite right about Esmeralda. The old prostitute had recently gone even further downhill. She drank in secret, always seemed to be eating chicken coated with thick layers of fat, and she had completely lost control of her weight. At one of their morning meetings Herr Eber had told Hanna sorrowfully that nowadays Esmeralda was earning virtually no money at all. She spent most of her time sitting on sofas, with nothing else to do. Only an occasional drunken sailor would turn up late at night, collapse into her arms, then fall asleep and remain in her bed until he was lifted up by one of the guards and thrown out — naturally having first paid for the intercourse he thought he had had, but most often couldn’t remember.
Esmeralda’s situation was not something Hanna wanted to discuss with Julietta. She was still upset by the girl’s request to start working in the brothel. She dismissed her from the veranda without saying anything more.
That same afternoon Hanna sent a messenger to Felicia with a brief message she had placed inside an envelope and sealed it. Hanna didn’t want the letter to come into the wrong hands. ‘I need to talk to you about Esmeralda.’
Felicia came up the hill to the stone house that evening. There was still a smell of smoke on the veranda and outside the windows. Felicia was able to tell Hanna that all the dead bodies had now been removed from the street. The riot had fizzled out. Soldiers with guns at the ready were still patrolling the most important thoroughfares, but nobody expected anything drastic to happen. On the other hand, the brothel was almost empty.
Felicia sat down on the chair in Hanna’s study. Hanna gave her an envelope, this one sealed as well.
‘I’d like you to give this to the girl Nausica, please,’ she said.
‘Nausica is a sixteen-year-old girl who can’t read.’
‘The envelope doesn’t contain anything written. I’m giving her money. For her father’s burial and a new water pitcher.’
Felicia hesitated before accepting the envelope and putting it inside her blouse. Hanna wondered if Felicia might be considering if her honesty was being tested.
But she said nothing about that, and started talking about Esmeralda instead. Esmeralda was about twenty when she came to the brothel — Felicia didn’t know where Senhor Vaz had found her. In the early days Esmeralda had been one of the favourites, for several years the most sought after of the women.
Hanna wanted to know about Esmeralda’s life outside the brothel.
‘She’s married and has five children. Another two have died. Of those still alive four are girls and the other a boy. He is the youngest, and is called Ultimo. Her husband is called Pecado, and he makes a living by selling birds he has caught with nets.’
‘Where do they live?’
‘In a house in Jardin.’
‘Where the riot began?’
‘Where all riots begin. There or in Xhipamanhine.’
‘What is their house like?’
‘Like all the other houses.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Leaky, patched up, built of whatever Pecado has managed to get hold of.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘Never. But I know even so.’
Hanna thought over what Felicia had said. Everything seemed to be beyond her comprehension.
‘What do you advise me to do?’ she asked in the end.
Felicia was evidently prepared for that question. She took some small clear glass jars from out of one of the side pockets in her skirt. They were filled with water, and white worms were swimming around inside.
‘I think Esmeralda deserves a chance to get rid of all the fat she is carrying and become in demand again. She’ll be able to do it. She knows already that she’s no longer justifying her place on one of the sofas.’
Felicia leaned over towards Hanna and gave her the glass jars. At that very moment Carlos sneaked silently into the room. He climbed up on to the wardrobe in which Senhor Vaz used to keep his suits and shorts and ties. Carlos sat there motionless, eyeing the two women and the glass jars.
‘They are tapeworms,’ said Felicia. ‘I got them from a feticheira who knows more than anybody else in these parts about how to help people to lose weight. All Esmeralda needs to do is to put one of these tapeworms into a glass of milk and then drink it. It will start growing inside her body, and could eventually become as much as five metres long. It will gobble up most of the food that Esmeralda eats. She will quite soon be thin again. Most tapeworms need many years to grow, but not this particular type.’
Hanna observed the white worms and felt quite sick. But she knew that what Felicia had described would come to pass. Her main concern was not Esmeralda, but that Julietta shouldn’t end up with the white men who regarded the women in the brothel with superior contempt.
The following day, when the final remnants of the uprising had been cleared away, the streets cleaned up and the cartridge cases removed, Hanna had a meeting with Herr Eber. She also exchanged a few words with Felicia, who reported that Esmeralda had drunk the milk containing the tapeworm late the previous evening.
As Hanna was on her way to the outside gate, she happened to glance into the interior courtyard where the jacaranda tree was. She noticed that Esmeralda was kneeling beside the tree.
It seemed to Hanna that something was happening around that tree that she didn’t understand. But there was nobody she could ask about it. The white people she knew would understand no more than she did, and the blacks would give her evasive answers.