Free A Treacherous Paradise by Henning Mankell Page A

been sent to help out in the kitchen.
    ‘Even though my husband is dead, I shall do my job,’ she said.
    She didn’t wait for a reply but climbed down the ladder to the storeroom to fetch the potatoes that needed to be boiled for the meals that still remained to be served that day.
    The potatoes were duly peeled. She emptied the buckets of peel overboard and went back into the galley. Halvorsen was busy repairing a cupboard with racks for saucepans and frying pans. Her husband’s best friend on board. He has also lost a companion, she thought. He’s also wondering why the third mate took it into his head to go ashore on that unhappy occasion.
    She continued her work with the mess-room boy and the deckhand. But when Halvorsen had finished what he was doing he tapped her on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow him out. She asked the mess-room boy to keep an eye on her saucepans, and followed after him.
    He was looking down at the deck when he spoke to her, never looked her in the eye.
    ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked.
    That was a question she’d had neither the strength nor the courage to ask herself. What
could
she do? What choice did she have?
    She was honest with him, and said she didn’t know.
    ‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘Just so that you know. If I can.’
    Halvorsen didn’t wait for a response, but turned on his heel and headed towards the bows. She thought about what he had said. And gathered that her husband had asked him to help her in his desperation when he realized how ill he was.
    It was Lundmark speaking with Halvorsen’s voice. A voice from the deep. A voice that was very good at imitating others.

20
    THEY BERTHED IN an African town by the name of Lourenço Marques. The town was small and sparsely populated, reminiscent of Algiers perhaps, with white-fronted houses climbing up a slope. At the top of the hill was a white hotel. The name of the town was impossible to pronounce, so the crew called it Loco – a word she recognized from her Portuguese dictionary, meaning ‘mad’.
    Halvorsen had been there before. He urged Hanna not to sleep with the porthole open as there were mosquitoes that carried the dreaded malaria. And she should never wear anything with short sleeves, even though the evenings were warm.
    He offered to go ashore with her. They could go for a walk through the town, perhaps stop at one of the countless small restaurants and eat the grilled fish, the prawns deep-fried in oil, or the lobster that was the best in the world.
    But she declined. She wasn’t yet ready to go anywhere with another man, even if Halvorsen had the best of intentions. She remained on board and thought about the fact that in two days’ time they would set sail due east over the big ocean that separated the African continent from Australia.
    One night as they were lying in their cramped bunk, whispering, Lundmark had told her that sometimes ships heading for Australia came across icebergs. Although they were sailing on warm seas, some of these icebergs – as big as palaces built of marble – could drift a long way north before they were completely melted by the heat. Captain Svartman had told him that, and everything Captain Svartman said was true.
    She stood by the ship’s rail, watching African porters dressed in rags carrying provisions on board supervised by Captain Svartman. A white man, bearded and tanned, wearing a khaki suit, was in charge of the porters. It seemed to Hanna that the movements of his hands gave the impression that he was lashing their shoulders with an invisible whip. The porters were thin, frightened. Now and again she would meet their scared, shifty eyes.
    Sometimes she thought she could also see something different: fury, perhaps hatred. But she couldn’t be sure.
    The white man’s voice was shrill, as if he hated what he was doing, or just wanted it to come to an end as quickly as possible.
    Sometimes when the gangplank was not being used she thought that