Free Desert Divers by Sven Lindqvist Page B

part of the Ouled Nail tribal culture. According to ancient custom, the girls lived those happy days as prostitutes to save enough for their dowries.
    Today, the Transatlantic in Bou Saada is the only surviving hotel of a chain that once stretched across the whole of North Africa. An infinitely old man shows me up the high stairs, as narrow and steep as a ladder. A yellow plastic bucket in the bath has to serve as both shower and WC. The beds are as cold and deep as graves.
67
    I am lying on the ground in a strange town. A crowd of children dressed in white see me and come running over. They stand around me, chattering in French to each other, bending down and touching me, plucking at my clothes, touching my skin, lifting my hand. I am tremendously frightened. I expect them to say:
    ‘He’s dead.’
    I don’t know myself whether or not I’m alive.
68
    In the morning, the infinitely old man has put on a once-white jacket and from the narrow spout of an enamel pot poursa bubbling, pale brown drink which could well be tea, may be coffee. His hands with their raised veins shake as he pours.
    For five years after the death of my mother, I had my father’s full confidence. Then he went behind my back and started seeing another woman.
    The first time she visited us at home, as I was seventeen and was reading
Fruits of the Earth
, I suddenly felt terribly sorry for her.
    Beside my old father, she seemed so young and lively, so unused. Did she really understand what she was letting herself in for? She didn’t know what he was really like, as I did, from long experience.
    After dinner, Father went out into the kitchen to fetch the coffee. Then I said: ‘Surely you’re not considering marrying someone who is already dead?’
    She looked at me in horror.
    ‘Ssh, he can hear what you’re saying.’
    I thought I had nothing to hide, and actually raised my voice as I went on. ‘He hasn’t read a book for fifteen years, or thought a new thought. Everything about him has solidified into clichés and routines. He’s dead.’
    As I was saying this, I saw from her expression that it was hopeless. I fell silent. Then my father, as old as I am now, came back into the room. He poured the coffee through the narrow spout of an enamel coffee pot. He didn’t say anything. But I can still see before me his hands, with their raised veins, shaking as he pours.
69
    Eventually, Someone really did walk past and see me. He was a British composer called John. I was pleased a grown man was interested in me and taking me seriously. In the summer of 1948, I went to London to stay for a few weeks with John in his flat.
    It soon turned out that our expectations of this meeting were quite different.
    ‘You’re reading
Fruits of the Earth
,’ John said. ‘Do you see what your favourite book is about?’
    He showed me one place after another, for example the bit in the sixth book about the dazzling light in the towns of the Orient. I had often read that. But clearly not thoroughly enough. I hadn’t seen that among the white-clad Arabs were also children who appeared far too young, don’t you think, to know anything about love? ‘Some of them had lips hotter than newly hatched baby birds.’
    ‘Practise it! Live it!’ said John, and kissed me.
    I was scared. I had no desire to be involved like that. As soon as I could, I escaped from the flat and ran through the streets of London to the Swedish Embassy, where, still gasping with the fear and effort, I rang the doorbell.
    It was Sunday morning. A gigantic British butler gazed down at me blankly from the top stratum of society.
    Haughtily, he saw me off.
    It was pouring with rain. I had nowhere to go. I went back to John. When he found out where I had been, he was instantly transformed from attacker into victim.
    ‘Are you crazy?’ he said. ‘Do you want me sent to prison?’
    He told me about Oscar Wilde. Wilde was the prototype for Menalces in
Fruits of the Earth
.
    I could hardly believe