A Treacherous Paradise (35 page)

‘Was it the commanding officer? Sullivan?’

O’Neill made an energetic gesture with the knife, and in doing so happened to tread on Carlos, who whimpered.

‘No, it wasn’t Sullivan. But I shan’t answer any more of your questions.’

He picked up a grey sack made of jute that was lying on the floor beside him.

‘Fill this with your money!’

‘I can’t.’

Something in her voice made him hesitate rather than repeating his demand immediately in an even more threatening tone.

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Because nearly all my money is locked up in the commanding officer’s office, in the fort.’

She could see that he was nervously swaying between doubt and fury. The sack was hanging down in his hand.

‘Why has he got your money? You didn’t know that I was going to come here tonight.’

‘I gave the money to him as a bribe,’ said Ana. ‘So that he would secretly allow me to fetch Isabel and arrange for her to leave Lourenço Marques. Later this morning I was due to go to him with the rest.’

‘So there is more money here in the house?’

‘Not more money, no. The rest of the bargain was to be paid in a different way.’

‘How? With what?’

‘With me.’

O’Neill didn’t move. She could see that he was confused. He didn’t understand what she meant. His uncertainty gave her the upper hand despite his knife.

‘I promised to become his whore. Who would believe the immoral proprietess of a brothel if she tried to explain afterwards what had happened?’

At last the penny dropped for O’Neill. What Ana said couldn’t be a lie, something she had simply made up. He picked her up from the bed, grabbed hold of her throat and shook the sack violently.

‘Everything you’ve got,’ he said. ‘Absolutely everything. And you must never breathe a word to anybody that I was the one who came here.’

‘People will understand that even so.’

‘Not if you don’t say anything.’

He thrust her away so hard that she fell down on to the stone floor. She landed with her face right next to Carlos, who was still breathing awkwardly.

Just as she was about to get up, Carlos cautiously opened one eye and looked at her.

Ana stood up and began gathering together the money she still had in the house. She had filled two porcelain vases decorated with oriental nymphs with money she was going to use to compensate the women for their reduced earnings. She put it all into the sack while O’Neill urged her to hurry up. On the floor in the wardrobe she had two of Senhor Vaz’s leather suitcases filled with money intended for her journey to wherever she eventually decided to go. The money she received for selling her house and the brothel would go to the people who worked there. She didn’t intend to keep any of that herself.

When she had emptied the last of the suitcases, she saw that the sack was still less than half full. If the money in the CO’s office had been available, O’Neill would have needed two, possibly three sacks.

‘That’s everything,’ she said. ‘If you want any more, you’ll have to talk to Sullivan.’

O’Neill punched her, hard, a blow loaded with his disappointment: he had expected so much more. In the midst of all the pain that the punch caused her, Ana managed to think about how brutal O’Neill was. How could she have failed to see that earlier? That she had appointed as a security guard a man who was worse than the worst of her clients?

‘There must be more,’ he said, his face so threateningly close to hers that she could feel his stubble against her cheek.

‘If you like I can swear on the Bible, or on my honour. There is no more.’

She couldn’t make up her mind if he believed her or not. But he pulled off the rings she had on her fingers and dropped them into the sack. Then he hit her so hard that everything went black.

WHEN SHE CAME
round Carlos was sitting looking at her. He was swaying back and forth, as he always did when he was frightened or felt himself abandoned. O’Neill had left. Ana had the feeling that she hadn’t been unconscious very long. The open window overlooking the upper veranda indicated the way O’Neill had chosen to leave, and perhaps also the way he had got in. She went outside and saw that the two guards were sitting by the spent remains of their fire, yawning as if they had just woken up. If she had had a gun, she would have shot them – or at least, the temptation to do so would have been very great. But even if she had aimed at them she would no doubt have pointed the pistol at the sky before pulling the trigger: she would never be able to kill anybody. She was a mucky angel, not a murdering monster.

She sat down on the bed and dabbed at Carlos’s wounds with a damp sponge. Nobody would believe me if I told them about this, she thought. Me sitting on my bed after being attacked, tending the wounds on a chimpanzee’s bleeding forehead. But I’m not going to tell a soul.

Quite early in the morning she left the house and was driven down to the fort. Julietta and Anaka had been horrified by the state of the bedroom – the torn sheets, the bloodstains and the broken mirror – but Ana had simply told them that Carlos had had nightmares. He had caused the wound on his own forehead. She didn’t bother to comment on her swollen cheek.

As she arrived at the fort earlier than usual, Sullivan was not yet standing on the steps, pipe in hand. He hadn’t even arrived at the fort from his lodgings in the upper part of the town, where the garrison’s accommodation was situated. Ana took a deep breath and walked over to the entrance to the cells. The guard at the entrance was reluctant to let her in at first. He was worried because the lock on the grill had been forced during the night when another soldier had been on duty, but Ana yelled at him to get out of the way and pushed him aside.

Isabel was lying dead on the stone floor next to the bunk. Ana had the feeling that she had used up the last of her strength in an attempt to sit up, since that was how she wanted to be when she died, but she hadn’t had the strength. One of her arms was resting on the bunk. O’Neill had turned her body into a bloody mess of skin, thoughts and memories, scars after the birth of her children, her love of Pedro – everything that had made her the person she was. O’Neill had not only stabbed and cut her with his sharp knife, he had disfigured her in such a way as to make her body almost unrecognizable. In her desperation Ana thought that O’Neill must harbour unlimited hatred for black people who refused to submit to the will of whites, even when they were locked up in prison.

With considerable difficulty Ana carefully lifted Isabel on to the bunk. She covered her with the blanket she had never used, even when the nights had been at their coldest. Every time she touched the corpse she seemed to be reminded of the cold that had always surrounded her when she was a child. Isabel’s dead body transformed the underground cell into the countryside she had once lived in, always frozen, always longing for the heat of a fire, or from the sun that so seldom forced its way through the clouds drifting in from the mountains to the west. She looked at Isabel and was reminded of all these things that until a few minutes ago had seemed so far away but had now returned. Who is it I am saying goodbye to? she thought. Isabel or myself? Or both of us?

A soldier came into the cell and announced that the commanding officer was waiting for her. He was standing by his desk when she arrived. When he asked why she was making her visit so early, it dawned on Ana that he didn’t know what had happened during the night. That gave her an unexpected advantage that she didn’t hesitate to make use of.

‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

‘Perhaps we should first sort out the last part of our agreement?’

‘There is no longer any agreement.’

Ana turned on her heel and left the room. Sullivan hurried after her into the courtyard. Ana could see that the news had begun to spread among the soldiers. Sullivan entered the cell. Ana removed the blanket and revealed Isabel’s mutilated body.

‘I know who killed her,’ said Hanna. ‘I’ll give you his name, but he’s bound to be on his way to the interior of the country already, and he knows all the roads. Perhaps he has a horse to carry him? All I can do is to give you his name, then you can decide if you want to send your soldiers out after him.’

She told him about O’Neill, about the attack in her house, and how he had admitted that he was the murderer. Sullivan listened with mounting anger. Ana didn’t know if it was because he had been humiliated or because he would lose all that money in the laundry basket, and could no longer look forward to having sex with her. All she did know is that just now she had the upper hand.

‘Her brother will come to collect the body,’ she said. ‘I shall take the money with me. We shall never meet again. But I want soldiers to continue keeping watch over her, even though she is now dead.’

They returned to the courtyard. Two soldiers carried the laundry basket to the car and put it in the boot.

‘We’ll catch him,’ said Sullivan, who had accompanied her to the entrance door.

‘No,’ said Ana. ‘He is a white man, and you’ll let him escape. I don’t believe a word you say. I had thought of agreeing to your request, but now I feel great relief at never needing to come anywhere near you again.’

Before Sullivan had a chance to respond, Ana had turned away and got into the car. As they drove off Ana saw how the enormous statue of the knight was being dragged out into the street by several black men with ropes round their shoulders and waists. She closed her eyes. She now regretted not having agreed to Sullivan’s request immediately. Perhaps that might have saved Isabel. During the night that turned out to be her last, Isabel might have been with Moses, on her way to freedom in the distant mine tunnels.

The rest of the day passed: Ana couldn’t remember anything about it. Only a bright white light and a deafening roar in her ears. Nothing else.

Moses turned up outside her house as dusk fell. She had been standing by the window, waiting for him. He knew already that Isabel was dead. Ana never bothered to ask him how he knew about what had happened. He stood there, grubby and dirty after the digging he had just embarked upon.

He was digging to make a tunnel, she thought. An opening through which a person would be able to escape into freedom. Instead, what he is doing now is the beginning of a grave.

‘You can collect her body tomorrow,’ she said. ‘It won’t have started smelling by then. If you want me to help you, I will. Nobody will mistreat you at the fort. Soldiers are standing guard over her body.’

‘I’ll collect her myself,’ said Moses. ‘I want to make the last journey with her by myself.’

‘What will happen now to her children?’

Moses didn’t answer. He merely shook his head, muttered something inaudible, and left.

At that moment she was on the point of running after him, following him to wherever he was going – back to the mines in the Rand or Kimberley or anywhere else in the world that extended for ever out there, beyond the mountains and the vast plains.

But she remained where she was. Ana Branca and Hanna Lundmark didn’t know which world they belonged to.

When she returned to the house, she saw that Carlos had returned to his place on the chimney. All that could be seen in the last light of the setting sun was his silhouette. Carlos looked like an old man, she thought. An ape, or a hunchbacked man weighed down by an enormous burden he was unable to free himself from.

That evening she made a note in her diary. She wrote: ‘Isabel, her wings, a blue butterfly, fluttering away into a world where I can no longer reach her. Moses left. I love him. Impossible, in vain, desperate.’

She closed the book, knotted a red linen ribbon around the covers, and put it into the desk drawer.

She didn’t touch the laundry basket full of money that evening.

SHE STOOD ON
the veranda as the sun began to rise over the sea, but Moses wasn’t around. Disappointed, she went back into the house, emptied the laundry basket of all the money and packed the bundles of notes into the safe and cupboards and drawers. She had great difficulty in making enough room for it all. When she had finished, she washed her hands thoroughly – but even so there was an unpleasant, lingering smell.

When Julietta came with her breakfast tray, Ana instructed her to go immediately to the fort and find out about arrangements for Isabel’s burial. To Ana’s surprise, Julietta didn’t react to what ought to have been the news that Isabel was dead: she obviously knew about it already. There must be a secret way, she thought, for black people to send out invisible messengers to one another with important news.

‘Be as quick as you can,’ said Ana. ‘Don’t pause to look in shop windows, or to talk to any boys or girls you meet. If you are really fast and get back here so soon that I’m surprised, you’ll get a reward.’

Julietta hurried out of the room. Ana could hear her footsteps racing down the stairs.

Julietta arrived back less than an hour later, panting after all that running up the steep hills. Ana was forced to tell her to sit down and get her breath back, as to begin with she couldn’t understand what Julietta was trying to say.

‘The body has gone already,’ said Julietta in the end.

Ana stared at her.

‘What do you mean by “the body has gone”?’

‘He fetched it as the sun rose.’

‘Who fetched it?’

‘A black man. He carried her away without any assistance.’

‘Did you not see the young commanding officer?’

‘One of the soldiers said he was still in bed in his lodgings, asleep. He’d been invited out yesterday evening.’

‘Invited by whom? Had he been drinking? Do I have to drag everything out of you?’

‘That’s what they said. Then they tried to lure me down into the dark underground prison where Isabel had died. I ran away.’

‘You did the right thing.’

Ana had prepared a reward for Julietta. She gave her a pretty necklace and a shimmering silk blouse. Julietta curtseyed.

‘You may go now,’ said Ana. ‘Tell the chauffeur I’ll be down shortly.’