The Shadow Girls

by Henning Mankell

  ‘No.’

  Humlin searched among the verbs at his disposal.

  ‘Perhaps it just climbed onto your back?’

  Tea-Bag smiled, drained her cup and got up.

  ‘Are you leaving already?’ he asked with surprise.

  ‘That was all I wanted to know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That the monkey climbed.’

  Suddenly she seemed anxious, but Humlin couldn’t stop himself from asking more questions.

  ‘You have to understand my curiosity,’ he said. ‘You travel all the way from Gothenburg to ask me about this one word?’

  She sat down again, hesitantly, still without unzipping her thick jacket.

  ‘Is your name really Tea-Bag?’ Humlin asked.

  ‘Yes. No. Does it matter?’

  ‘It’s certainly not without significance.’

  ‘Taita.’

  ‘Taita. Is that your first or last name?’

  ‘My sister.’

  ‘Your sister’s name is Taita?’

  ‘I don’t have a sister. Please don’t ask any more.’

  Humlin didn’t pursue it. Tea-Bag looked into her empty coffee cup and he suddenly sensed that she was hungry.

  ‘Would you like something to eat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He got out some slices of bread and some butter, jam and cheese. She threw herself at the food. Humlin said nothing while she ate, but tried to recall what hours Andrea was working this week. The whole time he was expecting her key to sound in the lock. Tea-Bag kept going until all the food was gone.

  ‘So you live in Gothenburg?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘To ask you about that word.’

  It’s not true, of course, Humlin thought. But I won’t press her any further. The real reason will come out sooner or later.

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Kazakstan.’

  Humlin furrowed his brow.

  ‘Kazakstan?’

  ‘I am a Kurd.’

  ‘You don’t look like a Kurd.’

  ‘My father was from Ghana but my mother was a Kurd.’

  ‘Are they dead?’

  ‘My father is in prison, and my mother is gone.’

  ‘What do you mean “gone”?’

  ‘She went into a container and disappeared.’

  ‘She did what? She entered a container?’

  ‘Maybe it was a temple. I don’t remember.’

  Humlin tried to interpret her strange answers, to get the different pieces to hang together, but he couldn’t make any sense of it.

  ‘Are you here as a refugee?’

  ‘I want to live here with you,’ she said.

  Humlin jumped.

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You just can’t.’

  ‘I can sleep on the stairs.’

  ‘That won’t work. Why can’t you keep living in Gothenburg? I thought you had friends there. Leyla is your friend.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Leyla.’

  ‘Of course you do. She was the one who took you to the boxing club that night.’

  ‘No one took me. I went alone.’

  Her smile died away. Humlin was starting to feel uncomfortable. She couldn’t have travelled all the way to Stockholm just to ask him about a Swedish word. He found no connection in what she had told him, between her words and the big smile that came and went on her face like waves breaking on the shore.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m thinking about the boat that sank. Everyone who drowned. And my father who sat on the roof of our hut and wouldn’t come down.’

  ‘Is that hut in Ghana?’

  ‘In Togo.’

  ‘Togo? I thought you were from Ghana?’

  ‘I come from Nigeria. But that is a secret. The river brought us cold and clear water from the mountains. One day a monkey climbed onto my back.’

  Humlin was starting to wonder if the girl was sane.

  ‘What else did this monkey do, apart from climb onto your back?’

  ‘It disappeared.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Probably. But I don’t understand the significance of this monkey.’

  ‘Are you stupid?’

  Humlin looked narrowly at her. No little African hussy, however beautiful, was going to sit in his kitchen and tell him he was stupid.

  ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to live here.’

  ‘You can’t. I don’t know who you are or what you do. I can’t have any Tom, Dick or Harry moving in here.’

  ‘I’m a refugee.’

  ‘I hope you’ve been well treated by the authorities.’

  ‘No one knows that I am here.’

  Humlin looked back at her in silence.

  ‘Are you here illegally?’ he asked finally.

  She got up without answering and left the kitchen. Humlin expected to hear the front door slam shut. Then he wondered if she had locked herself in the bathroom. But everything was quiet. Too quiet, he thought, getting up. Maybe she was looking for things to steal. He walked into the living room, it was empty but the bathroom door was ajar. He continued on into the study but she wasn’t there either. Then he opened the door to the bedroom.

  She had finally taken off her puffy coat. It lay on the floor with the rest of her clothes. Her head looked very dark against the white pillow. She was on Andrea’s side of the bed. Humlin felt a chill. If Andrea came home at this moment there was no way he could make her believe that he had had nothing to do with the fact that an illegal alien now lay in his bed. On her side.

  Humlin saw scandalous newspaper headlines in his mind. First he had stroked an immigrant girl’s cheek and been knocked out. If Tea-Bag started screeching that he had forced her into his bed then all the country’s journalists would come after him like a pack of wolves and rip him to shreds. He walked over to her. She lay with her eyes closed.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing? You can’t lie in my bed! And you’re lying on Andrea’s side. What do you think she’s going to say about that?’

  There was no answer. He repeated his question and noticed that he was starting to sweat. Andrea could appear at any moment. Her work schedule was always changing. He grabbed Tea-Bag’s shoulder and shook it. No reaction. He wondered if it was even possible to fall asleep as soon as one put one’s head down on the pillow. But she didn’t seem to be trying to trick him, she had actually fallen asleep. He shook her harder. Irritated, without waking up, she threw out her arm and hit the side of his face that Haiman had earlier visited with his fist.

  The phone rang. Humlin flinched as if he had received an electric shock. He ran into the living room and answered it. It was Andrea.

  ‘Why are you out of breath?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not out of breath. Where are you?’

  ‘I just wanted to tell you I’m going to a lecture tonight.’

  ‘What lecture? How long is it?’

  ‘Why do you want to know how long it is?’

  ‘I want to know when you’re going to come. If you’re coming. I don’t like to be here all alone, you know that.’

  ‘I don’t know anything of the sort. I’m going to a reading by some young poets. You should be going too. I’m hoping to get inspiration for the book I’m writing.’

  ‘I don’t want you to write a book about us.’

  ‘I’ll be coming when it’s over.’

  ‘And when is that?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  Humlin heard that she was starting to get suspicious.

  ‘I thought maybe we could eat together,’ he said. ‘If I know when you’re coming I’ll have dinner ready.’

  ‘Not before nine.’

  Humlin breathed a sigh of relief. That gave him three hours to get Tea-Bag out of the apartm
ent. He didn’t like Andrea listening to the work of other poets, but for once his young rivals had actually helped him out. He hung up and returned to the bedroom.

  She still refused to wake up when he shook her. He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to understand what was happening. Who was she and why had she come here? What was the monkey she had talked about? He looked down at her puffy coat and her trousers on the floor. He had a sudden impulse to lift the covers and see if she was naked underneath them, but resisted.

  He searched all her pockets. There were no keys or money. It was a mystery to him that anyone could get by without keys or money. He found a little plastic sleeve in the inside pocket of her coat. It contained a Sudanese passport in the name of Florence Kanimane, with a photograph of Tea-Bag. Humlin flipped through it but did not find any stamps or visas. Not even for Sweden. But she had talked of Ghana and Togo. And Kazakstan. Hadn’t she claimed to be a Kurd?

  The only other thing he found in the passport was a dried insect – large and rather frightening – as well as a pressed yellow flower. The flower looked like a heart, a compressed heart. He thought about the heart that Tanya had drawn. There was also a black-and-white photo in the plastic sleeve, showing an African family with a mother, father and six children. The picture had been taken outside with a hut in the background. There were no shadows so the sun must have been very high at the time. The picture was a bit blurry and even with good lighting Humlin could not tell if one of the children was Tea-Bag. Or Taita. Or Florence, as the name she apparently also went by.

  The plastic sleeve also contained a scrap of paper on which someone had written ‘Sweden’ and the name ‘Per’. There was nothing else. When he held the scrap of paper up to the light he saw that it had a watermark that said ‘Madrid’. He frowned. Who was she, this woman who had asked him a question in Mölndal, then turned up on his doorstep and ended up in his bed?

  He searched her clothes again but didn’t find anything except sand. What I have in my hands is a story, he thought. A girl who most probably has entered Sweden illegally and who talks about a monkey, a girl whose name I can’t be sure of and who has neither money nor keys. He sat down closer to her. She was sleeping deeply, peacefully. He carefully brushed her cheek with his fingers. She was very warm. He looked at the time. It was ten to six. He could let her sleep another hour, then he had to get her up and out of the apartment.

  The phone rang. He walked out into the living room and listened to the answering machine. The caller was Viktor Leander. ‘I’m just calling to see what you’re up to. We should get together. Call me, or better yet, pick up if you’re there. I think you are.’

  Humlin did not pick up. He sat down and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a monkey jump onto his back. But he couldn’t do it, his imagination failed him.

  *

  He didn’t hear her come out of the bedroom. She moved soundlessly.

  ‘Why did you go to bed?’ he asked when he saw her.

  ‘I was tired. I’m going now.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tea-Bag.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Your passport fell out of your pocket while you were sleeping,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help seeing that your real name is Florence.’

  She laughed heartily, as if he had told a good joke.

  ‘It’s a fake,’ she said.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I bought it in the camp. On the beach.’

  ‘What camp? Which beach?’

  That was when she started telling him her story. How she had crawled up onto the Spanish shore and been caught by armed guards and albino German shepherd guard dogs.

  *

  Even the tongues hanging out of their mouths were white. I don’t know how long I was in the camp. It may have been many years, perhaps I was even born there, perhaps the beach beyond the barbed-wire fence was the sheet on which my newborn body first felt the earth and sand. I don’t know how long I was there and that is something I don’t even want to know now. But finally one day, when my desperation was greater than it had ever been, I walked down to the fence and threw away all of the stones I used to count the days. I saw how they fell in a large fan shape of lost days and nights, and then they were washed away by the waves.

  I had given up all hope of ever being allowed to leave the camp. The beach onto which I had crawled no longer meant freedom to me, it was a bridge to death and I was only waiting for the day when a finger would point at me and I would have to wade out into the water and join those who were already dead at the bottom of the sea. Every day was like the space of time between two heartbeats. But suddenly there was a tall thin man who stood in front of me, a man who swayed like a palm tree, and then I heard for the first time about Sweden. I decided I had to go there because there there were people who cared about the fact that I existed.

  There was a black market in false papers in the camp. Sometimes passports had been falsified several times over. An old man from Sudan felt that his time was near and that he would never leave the camp alive. He gave me his passport on the condition that I go to a church or mosque or temple once a month and think of him for exactly one minute. That was what he wanted in return, a reminder of his existence even though he had long ago left the land he came from. I had a photograph of myself that I had kept safe in waterproof waxed paper. With the help of a Malaysian refugee who was very good at falsifying stamps and seals although he had almost no tools, he removed the old man’s photograph and affixed mine in its place. The name was changed to Florence. It was like a holy ritual to give the passport with a dying man’s picture a new life. I blew my soul into the passport and helped the soul of the old man to free itself. I will never forget the moment the passport changed. It was one of the most important turns my life has taken.

  I found Sweden on an old and torn map from a Moroccan man who was fleeing to Europe for the ninth time, trying to get to his brother who lived somewhere in northern Germany. I realised it would be a long journey, but I never understood how long. Or perhaps I realised but did not want to accept it. I don’t know. Since I never let my expectations get the better of me I decided simply to concentrate on getting out of the camp.

  I made friends with some young men from Iraq. In secret they had been constructing a ladder made of bits of rope, branches and plastic that they tore off from the tables in the camp mess hall. When I sought them out they did not at first allow me to join them in their escape attempt since they were worried that a black girl would not manage very well on a flight through Spain. But my loneliness must have touched them because they gave me permission to use their ladder if I waited one hour after they had gone.

  One dark night when there was no moonlight the three Iraqi men took off. After exactly one hour – I had no watch but counted the seconds and minutes by tapping against my wrist – I climbed the fence and disappeared into the night. I followed the first path I found, then turned off on another as if I had an inner compass directing me. I walked in darkness without knowing where I would find myself in the morning. I slipped and fell several times. Tree branches and thorns cut my face, but I continued towards Sweden and the memory of that tall swaying man who was the first to show an interest in my story.

  By the time the sun came up I was exhausted. I sat down on a rock and all I remember is that I was very thirsty. I discovered that I had climbed up through a rocky and mountainous landscape with many steep cliffs that could have sent me to the death I escaped once in the sea. On a field in the distance I saw people. The sun reflected off the windshield of a car in the distance. I started walking due north, avoiding civilisation and people as much as I could. I ate fruits and nuts, drinking rainwater in crevices. The whole time I kept walking north. Every morning when the sun came up I oriented myself to the north and kept walking.

  How long I kept going, I don’t know. But one day I couldn’t do it any more. In the middle of taking a step I sank to the ground. Despite what my father h
ad taught me about keeping my feet firmly planted on the ground I was close to giving up at that moment, lying down and crumbling into the burned earth. If I had been walking for a week or a month I couldn’t tell. But I knew I had to find out where I was. I forced myself to get up and keep going until I came to a small town that lay exposed on a great plain.

  I walked into the town. I had come during the worst of the midday heat. The town lay still like a parched corpse. I read on a sign that the name of the town was ‘Alameda de Cervera’. On another sign I read ‘Toledo 111 kilometres’. All of the shutters on the whitewashed houses were closed, some dogs lay panting in the shade but I did not see a person anywhere. I walked along the empty streets, blinded by the strong light, and found only one shop that was open. Or perhaps it was closed but the door was open and I walked into the dim interior.

  In the corner there was a man sleeping on a mattress. I tried to move as quietly as possible; I had removed my tattered shoes and I still remember how cool the stone floor felt against the soles of my feet. I was holding my shoes in my hand when I realised that I had walked into a shoe shop. Shoes were stacked up on shelves along the wall. On another wall I found what I was looking for: a map. I found Alameda de Cervera, then traced my way to Toledo and realised that I had only come a short distance from the camp, even though I thought I had been walking for ever. I started crying, silently so that the sleeping man wouldn’t wake up.

  What I then did I can only recall in unclear images. The heat, the dogs, the sharp white light that was reflected on the whitewashed walls. I walked into a church, it was cool in there, and I drank the stale water in the baptismal font. Then I forced open the cash box sitting on a table for people to put money for postcards that they bought. There was not much money, but I thought it was enough to cover a bus ticket.

  ‘Toledo,’ I said to the driver who looked at my dark skin with distaste and desire.

  But my smile did nothing for him. Somewhere inside me a deep rage was born at these stolid European men who were not able to appreciate my beauty. I don’t remember much from the bus trip. I slept and was woken up by the driver who shook my shoulder abruptly and told me we were there. The bus was parked in an underground garage. I walked through the fumes, through the people who were crowding to get on and off the buses and at last found myself out on a street with so much traffic I became afraid. It was evening and I took shelter in a park. Suddenly I became convinced there were wild animals in the park. I don’t know where this feeling came from but it was very strong, stronger than the rational part of my mind that said there were no dangerous animals in Europe.