Kennedy's Brain

by Henning Mankell

  They stopped outside Lars Håkansson's house. The guards at the entrance stood up.

  'I came here a few times,' Lucinda said, 'but only when he was drunk.'

  'With Henrik?'

  'Not Henrik. Lars Håkansson, the do-gooder from Sweden. He could only bring himself to take me home to his own bed when he was drunk. He was ashamed that the security guards would know what he was doing, afraid that somebody would see him. European men run after whores, but they do it in such a way that nobody notices. To prevent the guards from seeing that I was in the car I had to lie down and he would cover me with a blanket. Naturally, they saw me even so. Sometimes I used to stick my hand out from underneath the blanket and wave to them. The most remarkable thing was that all the friendliness he usually paraded fell off him the moment we entered his house. He would carry on drinking, but never drank so much that he was incapable of having sex. That's the expression he always used, "having sex". I think it turned him on to keep any emotions at bay. What was going to happen would be crude and clinical, a piece of meat was going to be cut up. I had to get undressed and pretend that I didn't know he was there, that he was merely a peeping Tom. But then another game started. I had to take off all his clothes but not his underpants. Then I had to take his cock in my mouth while he still had his underpants on. Then he would come into me from behind. Afterwards it was one big rush, I got my money, he threw me out and I didn't need to be Julieta any more. And he didn't care if the guards saw me or not.'

  'Why are you telling me this?'

  'So that you know who I am.'

  'Or who Lars Håkansson is?'

  Lucinda nodded.

  'I must go to work. I'm late already.'

  Lucinda kissed her quickly on the cheek. Louise got out of the car and the guards opened the squeaky gate.

  When she entered the house she found Håkansson sitting waiting for her.

  'I got worried when you didn't appear and hadn't left a message.'

  'I ought to have thought of that.'

  'Have you eaten? I've saved some dinner.'

  She went with him to the kitchen. He dished up some food and poured her a glass of wine. Lucinda's story was echoing eerily inside her head.

  'I've been to visit Christian Holloway's village for sick people near a town whose name I can't pronounce.'

  'Xai-Xai. Think Shy-Shy. So you've been to one of the missions? That's what Christian Holloway calls them, even though he doesn't have any religious beliefs.'

  'Who is he?'

  'My colleagues and I often wonder if he really exists, or if he's just some kind of an elusive phantom. Nobody knows very much about him. Apart from the fact that he holds an American passport and has an inconceivably vast fortune that he's now pouring over Aids victims in this country.

  'Only in Mozambique?'

  'In Malawi and Zambia as well. He's said to have two of his missions near Lilongwe, and another one or possibly more than one up in Zambia, near the border with Angola. Rumour has it that Holloway once went on a pilgrimage to the sources of the River Zambezi. It starts off as a trickle in the Angolan mountains before it becomes a stream and eventually a river. They say he put his foot over the hole where the trickle of water comes out of the ground, and thereby stopped the flow of the mighty River Zambezi.'

  'Why would anybody want to do that?'

  'It's not impossible to combine charitable visions with megalomania. Perhaps also with even worse things.'

  'Who spreads stories like that?'

  'It's probably the same as with the river. A few drops trickle out, then more and more until it becomes a rumour that can't be stopped. But the source remains unknown.'

  He offered her more food, but she declined. Nor did she have any more wine.

  'What did you mean when you said even worse things?'

  'It's a well-known fact that many a crime hides behind a large fortune. You only need to look around Africa. Corrupt tyrants sweating among their wealth in the middle of the most catastrophic poverty. Even Christian Holloway seems not to be as pure as the driven snow. Oxfam made an investigation into him and his activities a year or so ago. Oxfam is a superb organisation that uses its limited resources to bring great benefits to the poor people of this world. When Holloway was a young man everything was very clear and transparent. Everything he undertook was clear and could be checked. There were no stains, no grey areas. He was the only son among lots of daughters in a family that was one of the biggest producers of eggs in the USA. He had a colossal fortune behind him based not only on eggs but also various other products such as wheelchairs and perfumes. He was bright, and was awarded a first-class degree by Harvard University. He had a doctorate before his twenty-fifth birthday. Then he started experimenting with advanced oil pumps that he patented and sold. Up to that point, everything is clear. Then Christian Holloway vanishes. It was cleverly done, because nobody seems to have noticed. Not even the press, usually so good at spotting such things, started to ask questions.'

  'What happened?' Louise asked.

  'He reappeared, three years later. It was only then that anybody noticed he'd been missing. He claimed to have been travelling around the world, and realised that he felt the need to change his life dramatically. He was going to create missions.'

  'How do you know all this?'

  'Part of my job is to know about people who turn up in poor countries with ambitious plans. In all probability they will eventually come knocking at the door of aid organisations, asking for money they once claimed to possess, but might have exaggerated slightly. Or we might find ourselves standing in the middle of ruined enterprises and having to pick up the pieces after people who came here to swindle the poor and line their own pockets.'

  'But surely Holloway was rich from the very start?'

  'It's hard to get insight into the lives of wealthy men. They have the necessary resources to create sophisticated smokescreens. You can never be certain if there really is anything inside the shell, if the ample resources they claim to have in fact conceal imminent bankruptcy. It happens every day. Gigantic oil companies or concerns such as Enron suddenly collapse, as if a series of invisible explosions has taken place. Nobody knows what's about to happen apart from those most deeply involved. Either they run away, hang themselves, or they just sit there apathetically and wait for the handcuffs to be clipped on. There was a lot of speculation when Holloway suddenly decided to become a Good Man and help those afflicted with Aids. There were millions of egg-laying hens clucking away in Christian Holloway's background, but there were also rumours, as usual.'

  'Saying what?'

  'I assume you are who you say you are. Henrik's grieving mother, and not somebody else?'

  'What else could I be?'

  'An investigative journalist, for instance. I've learned to prefer the journalists who bury things others try to dig up.'

  'Are you suggesting that the truth should be suppressed?'

  'Perhaps rather that lies shouldn't always be exposed for what they are.'

  'And what have you heard about Christian Holloway?'

  'Things you should never talk about openly. Even a whisper can sometimes have the same effect as a shout. There are things I know that mean I would be dead within twenty-four hours if I made them public. In a world where a human life is worth no more than a few packets of cigarettes, you have to be careful.'

  Lars Håkansson recharged his glass. Louise shook her head when he held out the bottle of South African red wine.

  'Henrik surprised me many times. One of the first occasions was when he tried to establish how much a human life was actually worth. He got fed up with me and my friends, thought we spoke in far too generalised terms about the value of a human life. He set out to pin down the real price in the current market. I've no idea how he went about it. He found it easy to make friends. He must have ventured into circles he shouldn't really have had anything to do with. Illegal bars, dark corners, of which there are so many in this city. But that's where you
find the people who trade in death. He told me that for thirty American dollars, you could hire somebody who was prepared to kill anybody you cared to name, without asking why.'

  'Thirty dollars?'

  'May be forty dollars today. But no more. Henrik could never get over that. I asked him why he'd bothered to find out. It shouldn't be brushed under the carpet, was all he would say.'

  He broke off, as if he had already said too much. Louise waited for what was coming next, but didn't.

  'I suspect there is more you could tell me.'

  Håkansson screwed up his eyes and looked hard at her. His eyes were red and shiny. He was tipsy.

  'You should be aware that in a country like Mozambique people are always talking about the greatest of all dreams. The modern version of King Solomon's Mines. Every day people are lowered down into mines with lanterns in their hands. What do they find? Most probably nothing. They come back to the surface, freezing cold, bitter, furious over the fact that the dream has collapsed. The next day they allow themselves to be lowered down again.'

  'I don't understand what you're getting at. What is it that they don't find?'

  'The cures.'

  'The cures?'

  'The remedies. Medicines. Rumour has it that Christian Holloway has secret laboratories where researchers from all over the world are looking for the new penicillin, the cure for Aids. That's what they're hoping to find in the new version of Solomon's Mines. Who cares about precious stones when you can search instead for a cure for the insignificant, weak virus that's well on its way to wiping out the whole of this continent?'

  'Where are these laboratories of his?'

  'Nobody knows, they don't even know if the accusation is true. At the moment Holloway is merely a Good Man investing his money in helping the people nobody else cares about.'

  'Did Henrik know about this?'

  'Of course not.'

  'Did he suspect it?'

  'It's often very difficult to know for certain what people think. I don't base judgements on guesses.'

  'But did you tell him what you've just told me?'

  'No, we never spoke about that. Henrik might well have looked for information about Christian Holloway on the Internet. Henrik used to use my computer. If you'd like to borrow it, be my guest. It's always best to look for oneself.'

  Louise was convinced that the man opposite her was lying. He had told Henrik. Why was he denying it?

  She felt a sudden hatred of him, his self-assurance, his red eyes and bloated face. Did he humiliate the whole of the Third World in the same way as he trampled all over Lucinda? The man who chased women with his diplomatic passport in his pocket?

  She emptied her glass and stood up.

  'I need to get some sleep.'

  'If you like I can show you round town tomorrow. We can drive to the beach and have a decent lunch, then continue our conversation.'

  'Let's decide on that tomorrow. By the way, should I be taking something to avoid catching malaria?'

  'You should have started on that a week ago.'

  'A week ago I didn't know I would be here. What do you take?'

  'Nothing at all. I've had my attacks, I've had malaria parasites in my blood for over twenty years. There wouldn't be much point in my starting to take preven- tative medicine now. But I'm very careful to make sure that I always sleep under a mosquito net.'

  She paused in the doorway.

  'Did Henrik ever speak to you about Kennedy?'

  'The president? Or his wife? John F or Jackie?'

  'About his brain that disappeared?'

  'I didn't know that. That his brain had disappeared.'

  'He never mentioned it?'

  'Never. That's something I would have remembered. I remember that November day in 1963. I was a university student in Uppsala. A rainy day, and deadly boring lectures on law. And then the news broke. Details emerged bit by bit from the wireless, then everything went strangely quiet. What do you remember?'

  'Very little. My father frowned and was even quieter than usual. That's about all.'

  She took a shower, then settled down in bed and lowered the mosquito net. The air conditioning hummed away, the room was dark. She thought she heard his footsteps on the stairs, and shortly afterwards the corridor light went out. The patch of light under the door disappeared. She listened into the darkness.

  She went over in her mind everything that had happened that day. The hellish walk through the dark rooms full of dying people. Everything she had heard about Christian Holloway, the clean exterior and the dirty contents. What had Henrik seen that produced such a change in him? Something that had been hidden was revealed. She tried to link the loose ends together, but failed.

  She fell asleep but woke up with a start. Everything was very quiet. Too quiet. She opened her eyes in the darkness. It took her a few seconds to realise that the air conditioning had stopped. She fumbled for the bedside lamp. Nothing. There must be a power cut, she thought. Somewhere in the distance she heard a generator whirr into life. Down at street level somebody laughed, perhaps one of the security guards. She got out of bed and walked over to the window. The street lights had gone out as well. The only light came from the fire the guards had lit. She could just make out their faces.

  She was scared. The dark frightened her. With no torch or candle for comfort, Louise got back into bed.

  Henrik had been afraid of the dark when he was little. Aron was always afraid of the night. He couldn't sleep without a light.

  The electricity returned. The air conditioning started to whine. She switched on her bedside lamp and settled down to sleep again. But she started thinking about the conversation with Håkansson in the kitchen. Why would he have lied about not having said anything to Henrik? She could think of no plausible explanation.

  She recalled his words: If you'd like to borrow it, be my guest. Henrik had sat at that computer. Perhaps she would be able to find some trace of him?

  Suddenly she was wide awake again. She got out of bed, dressed quickly and opened the door to the corridor. She stood completely still until her eyes had grown used to the light. The door to Lars Håkansson's bedroom was closed. The study was at the other end of the corridor, overlooking the garden. She groped her way to the door that was standing ajar, closed it and located the light switch. She sat down at the desk and switched on the computer. A flashing message told her that the computer had not been switched off properly. Presumably it had been in sleep mode when the electricity supply was interrupted. She opened an Internet link and typed Holloway into a search engine. There were many hits, including the addresses of a chain of restaurants, the Holloway Inn in Canada and a little airline in Mexico, Holloway-Air. But Christian Holloway's missions were there as well. She was just about to open the link when a flashing light indicated an incoming email message. She had no intention of examining Håkansson's correspondence, but perhaps Henrik might have left traces on Håkansson's email.

  Håkansson had not used a password to prevent others from gaining access to his emails. She immediately found two messages sent by Henrik. Her heart started beating faster. The first had been sent four months ago, the other just before Henrik must have left Maputo for the last time.

  She opened the first message. It had been sent to Nazrin.

  First I scratch my fingernail over the hard surface of the wall, but it makes no impression. Then I take a piece of stone and scrape the wall with that. It only makes a faint mark, but what I have done is there, no matter what. So I can continue to scratch and scrape and make the impression I've made on the wall deeper and deeper until it falls down. That's the way I think about my life here. I'm in Africa, it's very hot, I lie awake at night, naked and sweaty because I can't put up with the buzzing of the air conditioning. I think the main point of my life is that I shall not give in until the walls I want to pull down really do fall. Henrik.