Henrietta had to wait another hour before Malin came home. Jessica’s dad was driving and let Malin off right outside the gate.
The man by the fence did not move a muscle. It almost seemed to Henrietta that he had fallen asleep standing up.
Her daughter was dragging a bag. Henrietta waved through the bay window and got a tired smile in response.
“How was it?”
Malin immediately took out a glass, filled it with water and a little ice, before she answered.
“The first two days went okay, but then it got too hot.”
She drank greedily and filled the glass again.
“Who’s the strange guy?”
“I don’t know,” said Henrietta. “He’s been standing there for three hours at least.”
“Sick,” said Malin, filling the glass again. “Maybe it’s the murderer.”
“What murderer?”
“The one who killed that homeless guy last week.”
Henrietta shut her eyes. The past week the news had been dominated by the homeless murder and the discovery of the young girl in the forest.
“Now I’m calling the police,” she said, getting up.
“What do you mean, just because a guy is standing outside? That seems silly. Maybe he’s waiting for someone.”
“For several hours?”
Malin shrugged.
“Isn’t Dad home?”
“He probably fell asleep in his chair.”
“Home, sweet home,” said Malin, dragging the trunk into the laundry room, which was adjacent to the kitchen.
Henrietta sank down on the chair again, calmed by her daughter’s talk. She heard her daughter unpacking her bag and could even make out the odor of her sweaty gym clothes. She smiled quietly to herself. Malin was good, she took care of her own dirty clothes.
“I have to buy a new bikini!” Malin shouted.
“Do it in Bulgaria, it’s probably cheaper.”
“No way,” said Malin, but did not explain why that was so inconceivable. “I’m going into town tomorrow.”
“Well, maybe that’s better,” said Henrietta, because it struck her that perhaps Bulgaria was like Moscow.
She took a look out the window.
“Now he’s gone!”
“Who? Dad?”
“No, the guy outside, of course.”
“Well, there you go,” said Malin, sticking her head out of the laundry room, “you’re just a worrywart.”
“Malin, sit down a moment.”
Her daughter observed her for a fraction of a second, hesitated, then pulled out a chair and sat down across from Henrietta.
How should I talk about it, she thought, smiling at Malin, but noticed her watchfulness and worry, and changed her mind. Soon Malin would be going on her first vacation without her parents, so why tell her now, and add to the tension she probably was feeling prior to the trip?
“You’ll be careful, won’t you,” she said. “I mean, you are four girls.”
“We’ve talked about that,” Malin interrupted.
“We have,” Henrietta noted, taking her daughter’s hand. “I trust you, you know that, it’s just that I-”
“… am a worrywart,” Malin filled in with a grin.
Twenty-nine
He recognized him right away. They faced each other silently, for an eternity it seemed to Anders Brant. How did the man get in? The gate by the street and the downstairs door were both locked. Now he was standing, evidently perplexed, outside the door to Brant’s apartment.
Brant noticed that he had prepared for the visit carefully, there was an odor of cheap soap and he had put on the best set of clothes he could get hold of, perhaps even borrowed the dazzlingly white shirt and blue shorts. He had flip-flops on.
“Good afternoon,” said the man.
“Good afternoon. Can I help you?”
The man nodded. Brant hesitated whether he should invite him in. The landlady was in Ribeiro visiting her sister and would probably not be home before evening. The Dutchman who rented the minimal studio that shared a wall with Brant had been gone for several days, probably on a visit to the woman he spent time with.
If he let him in, what might happen? It was the man’s obvious efforts to look proper that decided it.
“Come in,” said Brant, stepping to one side.
He went toward the kitchen. Sitting in the combination living room-bedroom felt wrong, too private, and besides the windows faced out toward the alley.
They sat down at the table. The man took a quick look around the kitchen. His eyes settled for a moment on the camera and the little tape recorder on the table, before he cleared his throat.
“Thanks,” he said.
Brant suddenly felt thirsty, perhaps it was the man’s throat clearing that triggered it, but he refrained from taking a beer out of the refrigerator. He did not want the man to be the least bit affected.
“I know you saw what happened,” said the man.
Brant said nothing, but instead waited for what would follow with an expressionless face. This was a technique he used in interviews. Saying too much yourself, filling in, making comments, explaining, giving background and intentions, that could lead astray. The interlocutor, or interview victim, adapted so easily, made a parallel course to try to please or get off easily.
From the inner courtyard was heard the stubborn sound of the bird calling its incessant nitschevo-nitschevo, the Russian word for “nothing.”
The man sighed, looked down at the table, certainly bothered by his errand, but probably also by the unfamiliar environment, apparently indecisive about how to present his case.
At last Brant felt obliged to break the silence. The bird’s stubbornness and the man’s timidity were making him nervous.
“What’s your name?”
“Ivaldo Assis,” he said, extending his hand.
Brant introduced himself and took the man’s hand across the table.
“I know that you saw,” Ivaldo repeated.
Brant nodded, and that was what was needed for Ivaldo to continue.
“What you see is one thing, but what really happens is another. My son died. I am grieving my son, not the man who died before your eyes. That wasn’t my Arlindo. He died a long time ago. Do you understand?”
For the first time their eyes met. The man’s left eye was full of blood, red streaks marbled the white of his eye.
“He was not, he did not turn out to be a good man. Not a good son, not a good husband and father. He created a lot of sorrow around him. Arlindo was only twenty-seven years old, but he had three lives on his conscience, and many others I don’t know about, because he was not only a murderer, he dealt drugs too. I did all I could to get him to change his ways, but he was so disturbed in his soul. May God forgive him!”
Brant stretched out his arm, opened the refrigerator, and took out a Brahma. There were glasses on a tray on the table. He filled two and set one in front of Ivaldo.
The man waited patiently until the foam had settled and then emptied the glass in one gulp, thanked him with a nod and continued his story.
“Our family comes from the inland, sertão, in the vicinity of Jacobina, do you know it?”
Anders Brant nodded. Not because he had visited Jacobina, a city perhaps three hundred kilometers northwest of Salvador, but he guessed that the landscape looked much like around Itaberaba: caatinga, bushy vegetation worn by wind and sun, river channels dried out for long periods of time, cactus, merciless heat in the summer, stony, meager soil, which could be made fertile if irrigation could be arranged.
“Then you know. It was poor. We had no land. When my wife died my three sons and I moved here. I thought they might get some education. I had a brother here in Salvador, in Massaranduba, and we moved in with him. It was crowded but we managed. I took odd jobs. My brother was a bus driver. Then he died too, shot during a robbery, and we were evicted. My oldest son had moved to Ilhéus and was doing fine, but two were left, and then my nephew Vincente, who I was taking care of. We were without a roof over our heads, three young men and I. We stole some lumber, put together a few carts, and started collecting rags and boxes. That worked out too. There were four of us and we were strong.”