‘These are Pedro’s and my children,’ she said.
Teresa stared at them.
‘Good God!’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me their names!’
‘Why not?’
‘Is the boy called José? And the girl Anabel?’
‘They’re called Rogerio and Joanna.’
‘Well, at least he hasn’t given them the same names as the children he abandoned. At least that was a step too far.’
Hanna tried to understand. So Pimenta had a family in Portugal and another family here in Lourenço Marques.
Teresa had stopped shouting now. She was speaking in a low but firm voice, as if she had drawn a horrific conclusion which nevertheless gave her the calm that truth endows.
‘So that’s why we weren’t allowed to come here,’ she said. ‘So that’s why you wrote all those damned letters about the dangers of this place. You’d got yourself a new family here in Africa. When I was finally unable to wait any longer, I thought you would be pleased. Instead, I came here and found you out. How could you treat us like that?’
Pimenta stood leaning against the wall. He was very pale. Hanna had the impression that standing in front of her was a man who had been caught after committing a very serious crime.
Teresa suddenly turned to look at her.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Does he have children with you as well? Where are they? Perhaps you are also married to him? Are your children called José or Anabel?’
Hanna stood up.
‘He’s only my friend.’
‘How can you have a man like that as your friend?’
Teresa suddenly seemed totally abandoned. She looked from one of them to the other. But it was Isabel who progressed from words to action. Lying on the table was a knife that Pimenta used to carve small wooden sculptures, which he burnt when they were finished. She grabbed the knife and thrust it deep into Pimenta’s chest, pulled it out, then stabbed him again. Hanna thought she could count up to at least ten deep wounds before Pimenta’s body slowly slithered down on to the floor of the veranda. Isabel took her children and disappeared into the house. Teresa collapsed. For the first time the boy left the doorway. He squatted down beside his mother and put his arms round her. The girl started crying again, but quietly this time, almost silently.
Many hours later, when Pimenta’s dead body had been sent to the mortuary and Isabel had been led away wearing handcuffs and with a chain round her right foot, Hanna went back home. She had also met once again Ana Dolores, the nurse who had helped her to become fit again, and tried to explain to her the difference between black and white people. Ana had taken care of Teresa and her children, but handed over Isabel’s children to the servants with instructions to take them to their mother’s sister. She lived in a slum whose name Hanna had failed to grasp. She was distressed to think that they would be taken away from the well-organized white world where they had grown up, and instead plunged into the chaos that reigned in the inaccessible black settlements.
On the way back to town Hanna asked the chauffeur to stop the car by the side of the road. They were on the bank of the river, just before the old bridge that was so narrow, it could only cope with one-way traffic. An old African stood on duty there with a red and a green flag, directing the few cars that used it. The shock of what had happened was only now beginning to register with her.
‘What will happen to Isabel?’ she asked.
‘She’ll be locked up in the fort,’ said the chauffeur. There was no trace of doubt in his voice.
‘Who will pass judgement on her?’
‘She’s already condemned.’
‘But surely the fact that Pedro double-crossed her and let her down must be taken into account? Just as he let Teresa down.’
‘If Teresa had killed him, she would just have been sent back to Portugal with the children. But Isabel is a black woman. She has killed a white man. She will be punished for that. Besides, who would get upset over the fact that a white man had let down a black woman?’
They spoke no more about the matter. Hanna noticed that the chauffeur didn’t want to reveal what he really thought.
They continued their journey back to town when the man at the bridge raised his green flag. Hanna felt a surge of anger when she noticed that the flag was broken and frayed.
She asked to be taken to the promenade to the north of the town. She took off her shoes and walked over the soft sand. It was low tide. Small single-masted fishing boats were bobbing up and down in the distance. Black children were playing on the part of the beach that wasn’t reserved for whites only.
Saving Isabel will be identical with saving myself, she thought. I can’t leave here until I’ve made sure that she gets a fair trial. Only then will I be able to make up my mind what I’m going to do.
She walked along the beach, watching the tide come slowly in. Just now Isabel was the most important person in her life. What happened to Isabel was inseparably linked with herself. She was surprised at how natural and convincing that feeling was. For once in her life, she had no doubts whatsoever.
She was driven back home and paid the chauffeur. That evening she sat at her desk and counted up all the cash she had collected since Senhor Vaz’s death. She would now use some of the money to pay for a lawyer.
Carlos was sitting on top of the wardrobe, observing what she was doing. He suddenly jumped down and sat beside her at the table. He picked up a bundle of notes and began counting them with his long, black fingers, bundle after bundle. Seriously, as if he actually understood what he was doing.
Part Four
The Butterfly’s Behaviour When Faced With a Superior Power
57
There was still a long way to go before dawn when the woman called Ana and usually referred to as Ana Branca was woken up by a man’s hand touching one of her breasts. For a moment she thought it was Lundmark who had returned from the dead, but when she switched on the light she saw that it was just Carlos who had touched her in his sleep, as if he were feeling for something he’d lost in his dreams. He was woken up by her violent movement. She didn’t know if it was disappointment or merely a feeling of shame at being touched up by an ape, but she pushed Carlos out of bed. He gathered that she was angry and jumped up on to the ceiling light. He sat there, looking at her — she could never decide if those eyes of his were sad or amused.
‘You confounded ape,’ she yelled. ‘Don’t ever touch me again!’
Then she switched the light off. She could hear that Carlos’s concern was gradually fading away, and he was able to relax on the lamp as it swayed back and forth over the bed. She immediately regretted what she had said and done. After all, Carlos was very close to her — like a dog, but cleverer, and just as affectionate. He wasn’t messing her about.
She also thought it was remarkable that the tapeworm Carlos had swallowed didn’t seem to have harmed him at all. Perhaps the stomach juices of an ape are so acidic that a worm able to survive inside a human being can’t live inside an ape’s gut? She had promised Rumigo, who looked after her garden, some extra payment if he would examine Carlos’s excrement to see if there was any sign of a tapeworm. He hadn’t found anything yet, but she was sure he would continue to look — he didn’t dare not to.
Ana used to be called Hanna. She had also lost her previous second name, Vaz. She lost it the same day as the peacock disappeared.
Despite its clipped wings, Judas swore that he had seen it flying away over the rooftops. Hanna refused to believe him, and in a fit of rage threatened to have him beaten if he didn’t tell her the truth. Had he killed the bird and eaten it? Had he plucked off its feathers and sold them as adornments for women’s hats? But Judas was adamant: the bird really had flown away.