Kennedy's Brain

by Henning Mankell

  'You would never have allowed him to become so like me.'

  'How can you be so sure that you're right?'

  'I've never been sure about anything in my life, apart from the fact that uncertainty and despair have been my constant companions.'

  Aron checked the plug on the computer and lifted the lid. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together, as if he were wearing invisible rubber gloves and was about to start an operation.

  He looked at her.

  'There is a letter from Henrik that I have not shown you. It was as if he were telling me something in confidence that he didn't want me to share with anybody else. Maybe that wasn't what he intended, but what he told me was of such significance that I didn't want to tell anybody else about it, not even you.'

  'You've never wanted to share anything with me.'

  Her comment annoyed him.

  'I shall tell you.'

  It was one of the last letters Aron had received before he made the break from computing and decided to have nothing more to do with his electronic archive. He had just been to New York and collected the big cheque, the thing that would enable him to do whatever he liked for the rest of his life, and he returned to Newfoundland to gather together his belongings, most of which he burned – for him, burning an old sofa or a bed was just as significant as burning a bridge. That was when the letter arrived from Henrik. It was postmarked in Paris. One of Henrik's friends, a young cellist from Bosnia – it was not clear how they had become friends, nor even if it was a male or a female friend – had won a competition for young soloists and the prize was to play with one of the finest orchestras in Paris. At an early rehearsal, Henrik had been given the opportunity to sit in the middle of the orchestra, behind the strings and in front of the brass. It had been a staggering experience: the loud noise had shot through him like an agonising pain. But Henrik had described that moment as one he would always think back to in order to confirm the strange power that pain confers upon you. He had never mentioned the occasion again.

  'We had a son who once sat in the middle of an orchestra and learned something about pain,' Aron said. 'He was a remarkable person.'

  'Switch the computer on,' she said. 'Carry on searching.'

  She took some of the files from the shelf and went into the kitchen. There was a pounding in her temples, as if she had taken over the pain Henrik had written about in his letter. Why had he never mentioned it to her? Why had he chosen to tell the story of the orchestra to Aron, the father who had never bothered about his son?

  She gazed out over the dark rooftops. The thought upset her. She was weighed down with painful grief, and now Henrik had caused her more pain, something she was ashamed of.

  She brushed the thought aside.

  There is something else more troubling.

  Blanca was not telling the truth. I have found a new fragment that I must piece together with other shards in order to create a context. I don't know if her lie is the beginning of a story, or its end. Did she lie because Henrik had asked her to? Or was there somebody else who had insisted she should lie?

  She started leafing through the files. Every page was a new fragment, broken off an unknown whole. Henrik had lived a double life, he had a flat of his own in Barcelona that nobody knew about. Where did he get the money from? A flat in the centre of Barcelona couldn't be cheap. I shall follow in his footsteps, every page is like a new crossroads.

  She soon realised that she was not coming across anything about Kennedy, neither photocopies of archive material and articles, nor his own notes. On the other hand Henrik had collected material about the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Most of it was critical articles and statements by organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the Third World Academy of Sciences. He had marked and underlined passages. He had drawn a red rectangle around a heading saying that nowadays nobody needed to die from malaria, and written exclamation marks in the margin. In another file he had collected articles and extracts from books about the history of plagues.

  Fragment after fragment. Still no whole. How was all this connected with Kennedy and his brain? Was there any connection at all?

  She could hear Aron clearing his throat in the other room. Occasionally he would tap away at the keyboard.

  We so often used to sit like this when we lived together. He in one room, I in another, but always with an open door between us. One day he closed it. When I opened it again, he had gone.

  Aron came into the kitchen for a drink of water. He looked tired. She asked if he had found anything, but he shook his head.

  'Not yet.'

  'How much do you think he paid for this flat? It can't have been exactly cheap.'

  'We'll have to ask Blanca. What have you found in his files?'

  'He's collected a lot of material on illness and disease. Malaria, the plague, Aids. But there's nothing about you, nothing about me. He sometimes marks certain sections or sentences, or even individual words, with red lines and exclamation marks.'

  'Then you should look closely at the sections he's underlined. Or perhaps even more closely at those he hasn't.'

  Aron went back to the computer. Louise opened the refrigerator. It was almost empty.

  Midnight came and passed. Louise was sitting at the kitchen table, leafing slowly through one of the last of the files. Yet again press cuttings, mainly from British and American newspapers, but also a series of articles from Le Monde.

  Kennedy's brain. There must be a connection somewhere between your obsession with the dead president's brain and the material I have in front of me now. I'm trying to see it through your eyes, to handle the files with your hands. What were you looking for? What was it that killed you?

  She gave a start. Aron had come into the kitchen without her noticing. She could see straight away that he had found something.

  'What is it?'

  He sat down opposite her. He was obviously upset, perhaps frightened. That scared her more than anything else. One of the reasons why she had once fallen for him was that she was convinced he would protect her from every danger that threatened her.

  'I found a secret file inside another one. Like those Russian dolls you take out from inside another.'

  He fell silent. Louise waited for him to go on, but Aron said nothing. In the end she went into the living room, sat down at the computer and read what it said. There were not many words. When she thought about it afterwards she could not imagine what she had expected to find. Anything at all, but not that.

  And so I also have death inside me. That knowledge makes everything unbearable. I may be robbed of my life before I reach 30. Now I have to be strong, and turn the whole business into its opposite. The unbearable must be turned into a weapon. I must not allow anything to scare me. Not even the fact that I am HIV-positive.

  Louise could feel her heart pounding. In her confusion, she thought that she must phone Artur and tell him. At the same time she wondered what Nazrin knew. Was she also infected? Had he infected her? Was that why he no longer had the strength to live?

  The questions were buzzing around inside her head. She was forced to hold onto the desk, in order not to fall over. She could hear vaguely that Aron had come into the room.

  He caught her as she fell.

  CHAPTER 10

  Several hours later they locked the door of the flat and went out to get some fresh air, and some breakfast. Blanca was asleep – or at least showed no sign of life when they left the building.

  The early morning surprised them with the mildness of its air.

  'If you want to sleep you can go the hotel. I need some air, but I can wander around on my own.'

  'At this time in Barcelona? You'll attract all sorts, a solitary woman strolling the streets – everybody would draw the obvious conclusion.'

  'I'm used to looking after myself. I've learned how to shake off importunate men with their cock in one hand and their wallet in the other. Although they don't show you the latter.'
/>   Aron could not conceal his astonishment.

  'I've never heard you talk like that before.'

  'There's a lot you don't know about me. And how I choose my words.'

  'If you want to be alone, think of me as an extra shadow. A sort of jacket you take with you over your arm when you're not sure if it's going to rain or not.'

  * * *

  They stuck to the main streets sloping down towards a square. There was very little traffic, the restaurants were empty. A single police car glided slowly past.

  Louise was very tired. Aron walked by her side without speaking, as always hiding what he really thought or felt. Her mind was in chaos following their discovery that Henrik was HIV-positive. Now he was dead, inaccessible to the infection that had invaded him. But had it caused his death even so? Had he been unable to bear the burden he had suddenly found himself laden with?

  'How come the post-mortem didn't reveal the state of Henrik's blood?' Aron suddenly exclaimed. 'Was it too soon? Had he been infected so recently that the antibodies hadn't had time to form? If so, how could he be sure that he really was infected?'

  Aron broke down. It came suddenly, without warning. He was sobbing violently. Louise could not recall ever having seen him cry, apart from when he was drunk and maudlin and assuring her of his boundless love. As far as she was concerned, Aron's tears were always associated with the stench of strong drink or a hangover. But there was no trace of that now. His tears expressed only deep sorrow.

  They were standing in a street in Barcelona. It was dawn, and Aron was sobbing. When he regained control of himself, they looked for a café where they could have breakfast, and then they returned to the flat.

  As soon as they opened the door Aron disappeared into the bathroom. When he emerged, he had combed his hair and had clearly been rubbing his eyes.

  'I apologise for my lack of dignity.'

  'Why does such a lot of shit always come out of your mouth?'

  Aron did not respond. He merely raised his hands defensively.

  They continued searching through Henrik's computer with Aron as the determined pathfinder.

  'Uncas,' she said. 'Do you remember him?'

  'The Last of the Mohicans. James Fennimore Cooper. I was fascinated by it as a child. I dreamed of being the last of my tribe, the Aron tribe. Did girls really read that book?'

  'Artur read it aloud to me. I don't think it ever occurred to him that it wasn't suitable for girls. He only used to read to me books that he wanted to listen to himself. I suppose I had read to me the occasional detective story when I was about seven or eight, but the book I remember best is the one about Uncas.'

  'What's the incident you always remember most?'

  'When one of the daughters of Colonel Monroe steps over the edge of the cliff and chooses death in preference to the bloodthirsty Indian. That was me, brave to the very end. I decided to devote my life to stepping off cliffs.'

  Aron spent that day in Barcelona forcing his way into Henrik's life, with Louise as a spectator. He worked feverishly at breaking into various rooms Henrik had tried to lock. Some doors were dragged off their hinges, others had their locks picked, but all they found in the rooms were new questions, seldom any answers. How long had Henrik been ill? How long had he been infected? Who had infected him? Did he know who had infected him? He noted that he was ill in July 2004: the infection is inside me – I have been afraid that was the case, but now I know for certain. With today's antiretroviral drugs I could live for another ten years, and given tomorrow's drugs, no doubt longer. Nevertheless, it's a death sentence. That will be the most difficult thing to shake off. Not a word about how it had happened, where, who, in what circumstances. They tried going back in time, leafing through his fragmentary and chaotically disorganised diaries, found details of various journeys, but nothing was quite clear, there was always something elusive about it all. Louise tried to find old air tickets, without success.

  Aron found his way into a file in which Henrik made regular attempts to account for his income and outgoings. Both of them reacted to one particular entry: in August 1998, Henrik had listed a significant item of income, 100,000 dollars.

  'Over 800,000 kronor,' said Aron. 'Where in God's name did he get that from?'

  'Doesn't it say?'

  'All it says is the number of his account here in Spain.'

  Aron continued searching, and they continued to be amazed. In December of the same year, 25,000 dollars suddenly cropped up out of nowhere. The amount simply appeared in Henrik's account, and he noted the payment without saying where it had come from. Payment for what? Aron looked questioningly at Louise, but she had no answer. And there were further surprises. Large amounts had been paid into Henrik's account during the spring of 2000. Aron worked out that, in all, Henrik had acquired 250,000 dollars.

  'He's had access to considerable amounts of money. He's spent most of it. We don't know on what, but he could have afforded this flat many times over. And he'd have been able to travel to wherever he wanted.'

  Louise realised the further Aron dug the deeper his concern.

  Perhaps he sees it more clearly than I do. It's far too much money which has simply appeared out of nowhere.

  Aron kept on searching and muttering about culs-de-sac.

  'Just like the address of this place. Christ's Cul-de-sac.'

  'Henrik often used to say that he didn't believe in coincidences.'

  'With that amount of money at his disposal, he could have chosen any address he wanted, of course.'

  Aron continued tapping away at the keyboard. He suddenly stopped. Louise was squatting in front of a bookcase.

  'What's the matter?'

  'Something's opening. I don't know what it is.'

  There was a crackling sound and what appeared to be a heavy snowfall on the screen. Then the picture became clear. They both leaned forward, Louise close to Aron's cheek.

  A text appeared:

  The lantern in the hand of Diogenes. I now realise that I'm living in an age where the concealment of truths has been elevated to an art as well as a science. Truths that always used to be allowed to emerge as a matter of course are nowadays being kept secret. Without a lantern in your hand, it is practically impossible to find somebody you're looking for. Cold gusts of wind extinguish the lantern's flame. You then have a choice: let it stay out, or light it again. And carry on looking for people.

  'What does he mean?' Aron wondered.

  'Diogenes asked Alexander to move because he was blocking the sunlight,' Louise told him. 'Diogenes wandered around with a lantern, looking for somebody. A consummate human being, a moral person. He despised greed and stupidity. I've heard about security companies and detective agencies that use his name as their symbol. Lantern-Bearers, the ones who resist darkness.'

  They continued to read the manifesto Henrik had set himself:

  Of all the trolls that the valiant Bruse goats fight against, there are three that scare me more than any others. 'Winkelman and Harrison', with their secret gene research in their giant complex in Virginia, remarkably enough not far from the CIA headquarters in Langley. Nobody knows what really goes on behind those grey walls, but English headhunters who track down illegal money made from dealing in drugs and arms, not to mention excessive profits from trading in sex slaves in Europe and South America, have discovered fruitful channels in 'Winkelman and Harrison'. The ultimate owner is an insignificant man by the name of Riverton, who is said to live in the Cayman Islands, but nobody is sure. The second troll is the Swiss company Balco: at first sight they appear to be conducting research into new antibiotics effective against resistant strains of bacteria. But behind the scenes, something rather different is going on. Rumour suggests that there are secret research outposts in Malawi and Tanzania where new drugs against Aids are being tested, but nobody is clear about what really happens there. The third and last troll doesn't even have a name. But there is a group of researchers in South Africa working on Aids in conditions of e
xtreme secrecy. One hears of mysterious deaths, and people who simply disappear. Nobody knows, but if the lanterns are extinguished they have to be relit.