She said farewell to Vanji, who stood up straight and saluted her awkwardly.
‘We’ll never see each other again,’ said Ana.
‘Not in this life, at least,’ said Vanji, saluting her again.
When she turned round she saw that Moses had already picked up her suitcases. He went on board with her. The white officer by the gangplank saluted Ana and let them pass. A steward in a white jacket led the way to her cabin. Ana couldn’t help but recall the first time she had seen Carlos, and chuckled sadly.
Nobody will understand this, she thought. I’m mourning the loss of a man I was barely married to. Another man I was married to died but I felt no sorrow. But there is a black woman and a chimpanzee who will always be a part of me for as long as I live. And now there’s a black man, by the name of Moses, who I want to be with.
The steward opened the cabin door, and waited in order to escort Moses back to the quay. But Ana closed the door, after explaining that Moses would unpack her suitcases before going back ashore.
For the first time, they were alone together in a room. Ana sat on the edge of the bed. Moses remained standing.
‘I thought you had gone back to your mines,’ she said. ‘I was angry because you had left without saying anything.’
Moses didn’t respond. His usual calm smile seemed to have deserted him.
I must be bold, Ana thought. I’ve nothing to lose. If I’ve learnt anything from my time between the two gangplanks — the one I crossed when I first arrived here, and the one I’ve crossed now that I’m leaving — it’s that I must dare to do what I want to do, and not allow myself to be held back by what others consider is permissible for a white woman like me.
To her surprise, everything seemed perfectly clear to her now, for the first time. Now, when she was about to place a full stop behind the confused months she had spent in the town by the lagoon. Meeting Isabel had awoken inside her an affection for a black woman whose fate had affected her so profoundly. But Isabel was dead. Just as Lars Johan Jakob Antonius Lundmark, her first husband, was dead. And Senhor Vaz, who had made her rich, was also dead.
Then Moses had crossed her path. The affection she had felt for Isabel had turned into love for her brother. And he was alive, he hadn’t left her.
Ana stood up and walked over to Moses. She leaned her face against his, and felt both gratitude and relief when he put his arms around her waist.
They made love in great haste, half-dressed, anxious but passionate — accompanied by the sound of footsteps on the deck over their heads and in the narrow corridor outside the cabin. She was possessed by the thought — and the desire — that this lovemaking would never end, that they would stay where they were until the ship filled up with water and sank. She appreciated Moses’ sensual pleasure, his tenderness, and then when she heard him sob, Isabel and her children were with them in that cabin.
Afterwards everything was very still. They lay beside each other on the narrow bunk with its high sides of well-worn wood, designed to prevent passengers from falling out during a storm. Ana placed her hand on Moses’ heart, and felt how his breathing slowly subsided from excited passion to deep calm.
Perhaps she thought about Lundmark at that moment, she couldn’t be sure afterwards. But over and over again she thought about how so many aspects of her life kept repeating themselves. Making love in cramped bunks, sudden departures, burials at sea. She hadn’t been prepared for any of this, not by her father or by Elin. In her life by the river, Ana had learnt how to handle a pickaxe, to look after children, to wade through deep snow and endure freezing temperatures and emerge smiling — and even to be afraid of a God who punished you for your sins, according to her grandmother’s angst-filled convictions. Now she had done courageous things without being prepared in the least, and without anybody forcing her to do them.
Time was short. The ship would shortly be leaving.
‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I want you to come with me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know that, Senhora.’
‘Don’t call me Senhora! Don’t call me Ana either. Call me Hanna. That’s my real name.’
‘I’ll be killed, just like Isabel was.’
‘That will not happen as long as I’m around.’
‘You couldn’t even protect Isabel.’
‘Are you accusing me?’
‘No. I’m just stating the facts.’
Moses sat up, then stood and put on his overalls again. Ana was still lying in bed, half-dressed, her clothes in disorder, her hair all over the place.
At that moment there was a sound of loud footsteps outside the cabin door. Somebody hammered hard on the door, which was then flung open. The officer who had been on duty by the gangplank — a first mate — stood in the doorway, accompanied by another man who Ana assumed was his colleague.
78
Ana thought the two men looked like rampant beasts of prey.
‘Has he attacked you?’ roared the mate, punching Moses in the face.
‘He hasn’t touched me,’ shrieked Ana, trying to put herself between them. But the mate had already managed to kick Moses on to the floor, and he sat on him with his hands round his throat.
‘I’ll kill the bastard,’ yelled the mate. ‘A porter who dares to attack one of my passengers in her cabin.’
‘He hasn’t attacked me,’ shouted Ana in desperation, pulling at the mate’s hands. ‘Let go of him!’
The raving officer stood up and dragged Moses to his feet. Blood was dripping from Moses’ face.
‘What did he do?’ asked the man in the doorway, who hadn’t spoken so far.
‘He didn’t do anything apart from what I asked him to do,’ said Ana. ‘And I’m disgusted by the way you have treated him.’
‘We’re the ones who decide how to treat the niggers who come on board this ship,’ said the mate.
As if to emphasize what he’d said, he punched Moses again. Ana forced her way between them. She was only half-dressed, and realized that her appearance might have led the mate to jump to conclusions. But she didn’t bother about that now. At one of the happiest moments in her life, she had been more outraged than ever before.
‘Let him go,’ she said. ‘And don’t set hands on him again.’
‘No,’ said the mate. ‘He’s off to jail. The fort can take care of him.’
Ana was struck dumb by the thought of Moses ending up in the same miserable dump in which his sister Isabel had died.
‘In that case you’ll have to take me there as well,’ she said.
Something in her voice was so convincing that the two officers backed off. Ana took out a handkerchief and wiped Moses’ face. The blood clinging to the handkerchief suddenly made her aware of a sticky feeling on the inside of her thigh. She knew what it was, and thought that just now, it was the biggest and most important secret of her whole life.
When they left the cabin, all the passengers and crew stared at the procession, wondering what had happened. Everybody on board knew that something out of the ordinary had taken place inside the ship’s biggest cabin.
Moses walked along the gangplank, not having been able to say a proper goodbye to Ana. She watched him walking along the quay without so much as a backward glance. She continued watching until he was out of sight, then she went back to her cabin and lay down on her bunk, completely exhausted, but also furious about what had happened. She lay there until she heard various commands being issued, felt the shaking as the pressure rose in the boilers, and listened to the rattling of chains as the moorings were shed.
Why hadn’t she left the ship and gone with Moses? Why hadn’t she dared to do that?