Kennedy's Brain

by Henning Mankell

  'I don't believe you. Henrik wasn't like that.'

  'What he was like is not something you and I are going to agree about. I loved him, you were his mother.'

  'But he didn't infect you?'

  'No.'

  'I apologise for the accusation. But I find it hard to believe that he lived as you say he did.'

  'He's not the first white man who's come to a povertystricken African country and taken advantage of black women. Nothing is as important for a white man as getting in between the legs of a black woman. It's just as important for a black man to bed a white woman. If you wander around this city you'll find a thousand or more black men willing to sacrifice everything in order to get you into their beds.'

  'You're exaggerating.'

  'Sometimes the truth can be found in exaggerations.'

  'It's late. I'm tired.'

  'It's early for me. I can't go home until tomorrow morning.'

  Lucinda stood up.

  'I'll accompany you to the exit and make sure you get a taxi. Go back to your hotel and get a good night's sleep. I'll see you again tomorrow.'

  Lucinda escorted Louise to one of the gates, said a few words to the attendant. A man with car keys in his hand emerged from the shadows.

  'He'll take you home.'

  'What time tomorrow?'

  But Lucinda was already walking away. Louise watched her disappearing into the shadows.

  The taxi stank of petrol. Louise tried not to imagine Henrik putting himself about among the thin African girls with their short skirts and hard faces.

  When she reached the hotel she drank two glasses of wine in the bar. Once again she saw the white South Africans who had shared her minibus from the airport.

  She hated them.

  * * *

  The air conditioning buzzed in the background as she went to bed and put out the light. She sobbed herself to sleep, like a child. In her dreams she was transported from the burnt African terrain to the white plains of Härjedalen, the endless forests, the silence, and her father who observed her with an expression that combined pride and surprise.

  The next morning a young woman in reception informed Louise that one of the hotel's closest neighbours was the Swedish Embassy. If she walked past the street vendors and a petrol station, she would find herself outside the brownish-yellow building that contained the embassy.

  'I was mugged yesterday when I went in the opposite direction and turned off into a side street.'

  The girl at the desk shook her head in sympathy.

  'I'm sorry to say that such things happen all too often. People are poor, they lie in wait for our guests.'

  'I don't want to be mugged again.'

  'Nothing will happen, it's not far to the embassy. Were you injured?'

  'They didn't beat me up. But they did stab me, under my eye.'

  'I can see. I'm very sorry.'

  'That doesn't help much.'

  'What did they take?'

  'My handbag. But I'd left most things here at the hotel. They got a bit of money, but no passport, no mobile phone, no credit cards. They took my brown comb – I wonder if they can make use of that?'

  Louise had breakfast on the terrace, and experienced a short if somewhat bewildering few minutes of wellbeing. It was as if nothing had happened.

  On the way to the embassy, she kept looking over her shoulder. A lump of iron ore featured as a sculpture outside the green-painted fence. A uniformed guard opened the gate for her.

  The usual official portraits of the king and queen were hanging in reception. Two men were sitting on a sofa and discussing in Swedish 'the shortage of water and the input we need to make in Niassa Province as soon as the funding comes through'. She was reminded that, sadly, she had lost contact with what was happening in Argolis. What had she thought would ensue when she stood there in the middle of the night and smoked a cigarette while Mitsos's dogs were barking? The horrors in store had left no warning.

  The person who had stood there in the darkness with a cigarette in her hand no longer existed.

  At the reception desk she asked to speak to Lars Håkansson. The woman on duty asked why she wanted to see him.

  'He knew my son. Just tell him that Henrik's mother is here. That will do.'

  The woman set in motion a complicated sequence of key-pressing before eventually getting through to Håkansson.

  'He's coming down.'

  The two men who had been discussing water had moved on. Louise sat down on the dark blue sofa and waited.

  A short man with thin hair and a face suffering from too much exposure to the sun, wearing a suit, came out through the glass door. She could see that he was on his guard even as he approached.

  'So you are Henrik Cantor's mother, are you?'

  'Yes.'

  'I'm sorry, but I shall have to ask you for an ID. We have to be very careful nowadays. I very much doubt if terrorists are planning to blow up the embassy and us with it, but the Foreign Office has tightened up safety restrictions. I'm not allowed to take anybody through that glass door unless I'm 100 per cent certain who they are.'

  Louise had left her passport and ID card in the safe in her hotel room.

  'I don't have my passport with me.'

  'Then I'm afraid we shall have to stay down here in reception.'

  They sat down. She was still curious about his guarded approach. It offended her.

  'For simplicity's sake can we assume that I really am who I say I am?'

  'Of course. I'm sorry the world is in the state it's in.'

  'Henrik is dead.'

  He said nothing. She waited.

  'What happened?'

  'I found him dead in his bed in Stockholm.'

  'I thought he lived in Barcelona?'

  Steady now, Louise thought. He knows what you didn't know.

  'Until he died I hadn't the slightest idea that he had a flat in Barcelona. I've come here to try to find out what it was all about. Did you meet Henrik while he was here?'

  'We got to know each other. He must have told you about me.'

  'Never. On the other hand, he did tell a black woman called Lucinda about you.'

  'Lucinda?'

  'She works at a bar called Malocura.'

  Louise produced the photograph of her and showed it to him.

  'I know her. But her name's not Lucinda, she's called Julieta.'

  'Perhaps she has two names.'

  Lars Håkansson stood up.

  'I'm about to break all the safety regulations. Let's go up to my office. It's no nicer up there, but it's not quite so hot.'

  * * *

  His office had windows overlooking the Indian Ocean. A few fishing boats with triangular sails were making their way into the bay. He had asked her if she would like a cup of coffee, and she had accepted.

  He came back with two cups in his hand. The cups were white with blue and yellow flags on them.

  'It occurs to me that I haven't expressed my condolences. It was a horrific piece of news for me as well. I had a high regard for Henrik. I often used to think that I wish I'd had a son like him.'

  'Do you not have any children?'

  'Four daughters from a previous marriage. A bunch of young ladies who will do well in the world. But no son.'

  Pensively, he dropped a lump of sugar into his cup and stirred it with a pencil.

  'What happened?'

  'The post-mortem showed a high concentration of barbiturates in his blood, which would suggest that he committed suicide.'

  He looked at her in astonishment.

  'Can that really be true?'

  'No. That's why I'm searching for the real cause. And I believe that whatever happened had its origins here.'

  'In Maputo?'

  'I don't know. In this country, in this continent. I hope you can help me to find an answer.'

  Lars Håkansson put down his cup and glanced at his watch.

  'Where are you staying?'

  'At the moment, next door to the
embassy.'

  'Polana is a good hotel. But expensive. During the Second World War it was crawling with German and Japanese spies. Nowadays it's crawling with South Africans who have nothing better to do.'

  'I'm thinking of changing hotels.'

  'I live alone and have plenty of room. You're welcome to stay with me. Just as Henrik did.'

  She decided on the spot to accept the offer.

  He stood up.

  'I have a meeting with the ambassador and some aid workers. It's about money which has disappeared from one of our accounts in mysterious circumstances. It's down to corruption, of course, light-fingered ministers who need money to build houses for their children. We spend an incredible amount of time on such matters.'

  He accompanied her down to reception.

  'Henrik left a tote bag behind when he was here last. I don't know what's in it, but when I put it into a wardrobe I noticed that it was heavy.'

  'So it couldn't have contained clothes?'

  'No, probably books and papers. I can drop it off at your hotel this evening. Unfortunately I have a dinner appointment with a French colleague that I can't get out of. I would have preferred to be on my own. I'm very distressed by the thought that Henrik is no longer with us. I suppose it hasn't sunk in yet.'

  They said goodbye in the little courtyard in front of the embassy.

  'I arrived yesterday and was mugged almost immediately.'

  'You weren't injured, I hope?'

  'It was my own fault. I know you should never walk down empty streets, but always stick to where there are other people around.'

  'The most cunning muggers have an impressive ability to pick out people who have only just arrived in this country. But you can hardly call the people here criminals. The poverty you come across is hair-raising. What do you do if you have five children and no work? If I'd been one of the poor wretches in this city I'd have mugged somebody like me. I'll drop off the bag for you at around seven.'

  She went back to the hotel. In an attempt to shake off her uneasiness, she bought a bathing costume that was far too expensive, in a shop inside the hotel. Then she went down to the large swimming pool and tired herself out by swimming lengths. She was the only person in the water.

  I'm floating on Röstjärn, she thought. That's the little lake where my father and I used to swim when I was a child. He used to frighten me by saying that the lake was bottomless. We would swim there in the evening in summer when the mosquitoes were whining, and I loved him because his strokes were so powerful.

  * * *

  She returned to her room and lay naked on top of the bed. Her mind wandered.

  Lucinda and Nazrin? The flat in Barcelona and the flat in Stockholm. Why the smokescreens? And why was he wearing pyjamas when he died?

  She fell asleep and was woken up by the telephone.

  'It's Lars Håkansson. I'm in reception with Henrik's bag.'

  'Is it seven o'clock already? I'm in the shower.'

  'I can wait. I came earlier than I'd thought. It's only four o'clock.'

  She dressed rapidly and hurried downstairs. Håkansson stood up as she approached. He was holding a black sports bag with the logo Adidas in red letters.

  'I'll pick you up at eleven tomorrow morning.'

  'I hope I'm not going to put you to any trouble?'

  'Not at all.'

  She returned to her room and opened the bag. On top was a pair of trousers and a light khaki jacket. She had never seen Henrik wearing anything like that. Underneath were plastic envelopes with documents, and some files similar to those she had found in both Stockholm and Barcelona. She emptied the bag onto her bed. There was some soil at the bottom that also ran onto the bed. She picked some up. Once again, red soil.

  She started going through his papers. A shrivelled insect, some sort of butterfly, fell out of a bundle of photocopies. It was an article in English written by Professor Ronald Witterman of Oxford University. The title was: 'Death's Waiting Room: A Journey Through the Third World'. The article oozed fury. There was no trace of the calm, disciplined style that was usual when professors were arguing cases. Witterman was bristling with anger.

  Never before have we had such enormous resources at our disposal, enabling us to make the world bearable for more and more people. Instead, we betray all our awareness, our intellectual power and our material resources by allowing untold misery to increase. We have long since sold out our responsibilities by sponsoring institutions such as the World Bank, whose political activities more often than not result merely in sacrificing human suffering at the altar of arrogant economic advice. We offloaded our consciences long ago.

  Here was a man whose anger knew no bounds, she thought. Witterman's fury had captured Henrik's attention.

  The plastic envelopes also contained pages torn off a notepad. Henrik had started translating Professor Witterman's article into Swedish. She could see that he had found it difficult to find the right words, difficult to recapture the rhythm of the long sentences. She put the article to one side and opened the next folder. Kennedy's brain suddenly turned up again in what appeared to be a transcript. She arranged them in order and started reading.

  On 21 January 1967, the American Prosecutor- General Ramsey Clark made a telephone call. He was worried, and unsure of what the reaction would be. When his call was answered, he spoke to a secretary who asked him to wait. A sullen-sounding voice asked him what he wanted. President Lyndon Baines Johnson could be a pleasant and jovial person, but just as often he could be surly when things did not go the way he wanted.

  'Good morning, Mr President.'

  'What's going on? I thought it was all done and dusted when the post-mortem on Jack was completed at the naval base?'

  'We asked the three pathologists involved to come to Washington. We were also forced to bring Fink back from Vietnam.'

  'I couldn't give a damn about Fink! I have a delegation from Arkansas chewing at the bit outside my office door. They've come to discuss oats and wheat. I don't have time for all this crap.'

  'I'm sorry, Mr President. I'll be as brief as I can. They were going through the archive yesterday – one of them was Dr Humes, who testified to the Warren Commission, about a photo of the right lung. It was important for establishing the cause of Kennedy's death.'

  'I've read about that in the Commission's report. What exactly do you want?'

  'We seem to have a problem. The photograph is missing.'

  'What do you mean, the photograph's missing?'