Free A Treacherous Paradise by Henning Mankell Page B

despite everything she might cross over it, and set foot on the African continent one more time.
    But she never did. The rail continued to be her unsurmountable border.
    The first night she lay awake in the heat. Halvorsen had said that she could leave the porthole open as long as she covered it carefully with a thin cotton cloth. He had given her a piece of suitable material that he had bought for her while he was ashore.
    Now she lay there in the dark, listening to the cicadas, and beyond them occasional drumbeats and something that might have been a song, or perhaps the cry of a nocturnal bird.
    The static heat was so stifling that she got dressed and went out on deck. A sailor was guarding the gangplank, which was blocked at night by a thick rope. She went forward to the bows of the ship and sat down on a capstan.
    All around her the ship was in darkness, apart from the hurricane lamp by the gangplank. A fire was burning down below on the quay. Men were sitting around it, their faces lit up by the flames. She shuddered. She didn’t know why. Perhaps she was afraid, perhaps it was all the unaddressed sorrow that had been accumulating inside her.
    She remained sitting on the capstan until she fell asleep. She woke up when she felt a mosquito biting her hand. She brushed it away, and thought that it wouldn’t matter anyway if she died.
    The following day, the last one they would be spending in Lourenço Marques, she asked Halvorsen what the country they were in was called.
    ‘Portuguese East Africa,’ he said somewhat doubtfully. ‘If that can really be the name of an African country.’
    He shook his head and pulled a face.
    ‘Slavery,’ he said. ‘The blacks are slaves. No more than that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many brutal people as I’ve seen here. And they are all white, like you and me.’
    He shook his head again, and left her.
    She had seen his disgust. Just as she had seen in the eyes of some of the black men their fury, and perhaps also a feeling similar to Halvorsen’s.

21
    IT WAS DURING that same day that the Swedish missionaries came on board the ship. Captain Svartman met them by the gangplank shortly before eleven o’clock in the morning. The women in long skirts and white safari helmets, and a small fat man with a club foot came on board. Hanna stopped what she was doing and watched the strangers. Captain Svartman handed them a suitcase full of post, then invited them into his cabin.
    Halvorsen had told her that they had a mission station inland at a place called Phalaborwa. It was a long way from the coast. They must have been travelling by ox cart for over a week before arriving in Lourenço Marques.
    ‘Captain Svartman no doubt sent them a telegram when we were docked in Algiers,’ said Halvorsen. ‘So they would know roughly when we were due to arrive.’
    Hanna had been doing some laundry and was about to hang it up to dry on one of the lines the deckhands rigged up for her whenever it was needed, but suddenly she discovered that one of the unknown women was standing in front of her.
    The woman was pale, and very thin. She had a little scar along one side of her nose. Her eyes were dull, blue, and her lips narrow. She might have been about forty, perhaps younger.
    Hanna thought she looked ill.
    The woman said her name was Agnes.
    ‘Captain Svartman has told me,’ she said. ‘About your husband who has just died. Would you like us to pray together?’
    Hanna was standing with several items of newly washed clothing in her hand. Did the woman mean that they should drop down on to their knees here on deck? She shuddered at the thought.
    ‘I’d be glad to help you,’ said Agnes.
    Her voice was gentle. One of the crewmen spoke the same dialect, a bosun by the name of Brodin who came from the forests of Värmland. Was the woman standing there in front of Hanna really from Värmland?
    She glanced at the woman’s left hand: no ring. So she was unmarried. And wanted to help. But