And now the children dressed in white sang a hymn. It was so beautiful that it was almost painful. She stood there listening, with tears in her eyes, thinking that she had never heard anything so indescribably beautiful. The children sang in exquisite harmony, the hymn was powerful and rhythmic. All of them kept their eyes fixed on the little man’s gentle hand movements. None of the children seemed to be frightened of him.
It seemed to her that here and now, in the darkness, for the first time, she was seeing people who were not afraid. There was nothing here of what usually scared her to death. Here, inside the dark cathedral, she thought, there was nobody telling lies. There was nothing here apart from the truth in the hymn and the white hands moving like wings full of energy.
Then she suddenly noticed that one of the children, a girl, had seen her and had lost contact with the choirmaster, even though she continued singing in tune.
Hanna thought that she could recognize herself, it was as if she had been transformed into that girl, with her dark skin and big brown eyes.
She and the girl kept on looking at each other until the hymn was finished. Then the choirmaster noticed her. She gave a start and thought once again that she didn’t really have the right to be there. But he smiled and nodded, and said something she didn’t understand before resuming his choir practice.
Hanna was tempted to join the children. To be a part of the singing. But she stayed where she was in the shadows, transported by the children’s voices.
She wished she had dared to join them. But she didn’t have the necessary courage.
It was only when the practice was over, the children had left and the choirmaster had packed away his battered old briefcase that she went back out into the bright sunlight.
34
Judas was still standing on the same spot.
‘Why don’t you stand in the shade?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise the fact that she was annoyed. His behaviour had spoilt her experience in the cathedral.
He didn’t answer as he hadn’t understood what she said. He simply wiped the sweat from his brow, then let his arm hang loosely by his side again.
She returned to O Paraiso where Senhor Vaz was pacing up and down in the street outside, looking worried. He was carrying an umbrella as a substitute for a parasol to protect him from the sun. Carlos had climbed up on to the hotel sign and was throwing chips gathered from the stone roof at a dog down below. When Hanna arrived back, Senhor Vaz immediately started berating the black man. She didn’t understand what he was saying as he was speaking so quickly, but she gathered he had been worried that something had happened to her.
The black man still said nothing, but she had the impression that he was unmoved by the fit of rage aimed at him. And as she watched Senhor Vaz growing more and more furious, she noticed something that hadn’t occurred to her before.
Even if Judas was afraid of his white master, Senhor Vaz was just as afraid. The gigantic black man was not the only one on the defensive. Naturally, he couldn’t allow himself to react to the white man standing in front of him and shouting at him. That would be a punishable offence, and could lead to imprisonment or a beating. But now Hanna could see that Senhor Vaz was also afraid — a different sort of fear, but just as strong. And didn’t the same apply to Ana Dolores as well? She would boss the black servant girls and prostitutes about, give them orders, and was never satisfied with what they did, nor did she ever thank them. But wasn’t she also possessed by a never-ceasing flood of unease and fear?
The outburst came to an end just as quickly as it had begun. Senhor Vaz dismissed Judas with a wave of the hand, and offered Hanna his arm to take her with him into the coolest of the rooms, overlooking the sea. Judas squatted down next to the house.
Senhor Vaz flopped down on to a chair, placed his hands over his heart as if he had just been indulging in something extremely strenuous, and warned her at great length about the dangers of going for long walks in the extreme heat. He told her about friends of his who had suffered from heatstroke, especially after spending time in places where the sun was reflected by white stone, or by the sand on the town’s beaches. But above all he warned her against relying too much on the support offered by blacks.
She didn’t understand what he was trying to say.
‘Is it dangerous for black people to look at you?’ she asked.
Senhor Vaz shook his head in annoyance, as if the strain he had just undergone had used up all his patience.
‘A white woman shouldn’t walk around too much on her own,’ he said. ‘That’s just the way it is.’
‘I went to the cathedral and listened to the black children singing.’
‘They sing very beautifully. They have a remarkable ability to harmonize without needing to practise all that much. But white ladies should only go for short walks. And preferably not at all when it’s very hot.’
She wanted to ask more about the unlikely danger she had evidently exposed herself to. But Senhor Vaz raised his hand, he didn’t have the strength to answer any more questions. He remained seated on the chair, his white hat on his knee, his black walking stick made from a wood known as pau preto leaning against one of his legs, and seemed to be lost in thought.
After a while Hanna stood up and left the room. Senhor Vaz had fallen asleep, his mouth half open, his eyebrows twitching, snoring softly.
When she looked out of the front door, she found that Judas was no longer there. She wondered where he lived, if he was married, if he had any children.
But most of all she wondered what he was thinking.
That evening she had dinner in her room once again. One of the black servant girls whose name she didn’t know brought her food. She also moved without making a sound, just like Laurinda. She wondered if these silent movements also had to do with fear — the fear she was beginning to see more and more of.
She ate the food: rice, boiled vegetables whose taste she didn’t recognize, and a grilled chicken leg. There were many spices, completely new to her. But she ate her fill. She drank tea with her food. What was left over she drank later on when it had grown cold, as a substitute for water in the evening and during the night.
That was one of the last pieces of advice Lundmark had given her before he suddenly fell ill and died. Never drink unboiled water.
She had followed his advice. Now that she wasn’t bleeding any more and was no longer carrying what would have been their child, her stomach wasn’t causing her any problems.
What she was now carrying was merely emptiness.
35
She put the tray on the floor outside her room and locked the door. She took off all her clothes and lay naked on her bed. The curtain in front of the window was hanging motionless. There was something sinful about lying naked on a bed, she thought. Sinful because there is no man here who desires me, nobody I would allow to take advantage of me. She reached for the blanket in order to cover up her body, but then changed her mind. There was nobody who could see her hiding away here. If there was a God who was invisible but all-seeing, He would surely allow a person to lie down naked when the heat was so suffocating.
That evening she lay there for a long time, thinking about the fear she thought she had detected in Senhor Vaz’s eyes. She had never seen fear like that in her mother or father. There was an upper class in Sweden, of course, but it didn’t need to be frightening if you co-operated with it. But here, things were different. Here, everybody was afraid, even if the whites tried to hide their fear behind a front of either calmness and self-control, or well-planned outbursts of rage.