Kennedy's Brain

by Henning Mankell

  The man who had been swimming in the pool clambered out. Louise discovered that one of his legs had been amputated at the knee. He hopped to a lounger, beside which lay an artificial leg. The waiter, who was barefoot, asked if Louise would like more coffee. He nodded at the man who had just left the pool.

  'He swims every day, all year round. Even when it's cold.'

  'Can it ever be cold in this country?'

  The waiter looked worried.

  'In July it can be five degrees at night. We all freeze then.'

  'Minus five degrees?'

  She regretted asking that question the moment she saw the waiter's expression.

  He refilled her cup and brushed a few crumbs off the table. The dog immediately licked them up. The man on the lounger had finished strapping on his leg.

  'Colonel Ricardo is a remarkable man. He's our chauffeur. He's taken part in many wars,' said the waiter. 'But nobody knows anything about him for certain. Some say that he got drunk and trespassed on the railway line and that's where he lost his leg. But you can never be completely sure. Colonel Ricardo is a one-off.'

  'I've heard that he keeps his jeep very clean and tidy.'

  The waiter leaned towards her and said confidentially: 'Colonel Ricardo is very keen on keeping himself clean and tidy. But he often gets complaints about his jeep being dirty.'

  Louise signed the bill and watched the colonel walk away towards the hotel exit. Now that he was dressed she could see no sign that one of his legs was artificial.

  He picked her up outside the hotel. Colonel Ricardo was about seventy. He was trim, sunburnt, and his grey hair was neatly combed. A European with more than a few drops of black blood in him, Louise thought. No doubt there's a fascinating story hidden within his family history. The colonel spoke English with a British accent.

  'I gather Mrs Cantor would like to pay a visit to our famous Raphael. He will appreciate that. He is especially pleased to receive female visitors.'

  She sat in the front passenger seat. The colonel used his artificial foot on the accelerator. They drove along a dirt road that wound its way through the metre-high grass towards the southern part of the island. The colonel drove jerkily and seldom bothered to slow down when the road turned into a mudbath. Louise held on tightly with both hands to avoid being thrown out. The dashboard instruments either pointed to zero or vibrated around incomprehensible speeds and temperatures. It was like being in an armoured car.

  After half an hour the colonel slowed down. They had reached a wooded part of the island. She could glimpse low cabins through the trees. Colonel Ricardo pointed.

  'Our dear old Raphael lives over there. How long do you intend staying? When shall I collect you?'

  'So you're not going to wait?'

  'I'm too old to have time to wait. I'll come back here and fetch you in a few hours' time.'

  Louise looked round but could see no sign of life.

  'Are you sure he's at home?'

  'Our dear old Raphael came to Inhaca at the end of the 1950s. He had fled from the country known in those days as the Belgian Congo. Since then he has never left the island, and hardly ever leaves his home.'

  Louise got out of the jeep. Colonel Ricardo raised his cap and disappeared in a cloud of dust. The sound of the engine faded away. Louise was enveloped by remarkable tranquillity. No birds, no croaking frogs, not even any wind. She had a vague feeling of recognition, and then she realised that it was like being in the depths of a forest in northern Sweden, where both distance and sound can cease to exist.

  Being surrounded by total silence is to experience severe loneliness. Those were Aron's words when they had been hiking in the Norwegian mountains. Early autumn, rusty brown colours, and she had begun to suspect that she was pregnant. They were walking in the Rjukan mountains. One evening they had pitched their tent by a mountain tarn. Aron spoke about silence being able to convey extreme, almost unbearable loneliness. She had not paid much attention at the time, the thought that she might be pregnant had dominated her mind. But she could remember what he said.

  A few goats were grazing and ignored her. She walked along the path to the huts hidden among the trees. There was a patch of open, sandy ground surrounded by a circle of huts. The embers of a dying fire were glowing. Still no sign of people. Then she noticed a pair of eyes observing her. Somebody was sitting on a veranda, only his head was visible. The man stood up and beckoned to her. She had never seen a man as black as that before. His skin was so black that it gave the impression of being dark blue. He stepped down from the veranda, a giant bare-chested man.

  He spoke hesitantly, searching for words in English. His first question was if she could speak French.

  'It flows more fluently over my tongue. I take it you don't speak Portuguese?'

  'My French isn't very good either.'

  'In that case we'll speak English. You are very welcome, Mrs Cantor. I like your name. Louise. It sounds like a sudden movement over the water, a reflection of the sun, a hint of turquoise.'

  'How do you know my name? How did you know I was going to come?'

  He smiled and led her to a chair on the veranda.

  'On islands, only a fool tries to keep a secret.'

  She sat down on the chair. He remained standing, and eyed her up and down.

  'I boil all my water as I don't want my guests to suffer from stomach bugs. So it's not dangerous to drink anything I offer you. Or perhaps you would like a drop of Roman schnapps? A good friend of mine is Italian, Giuseppe Lenate. A friendly man who comes to visit me now and then. He seeks out the solitude that this island has to offer when he can't take any more of all the navvies he's responsible for, busy building roads on the mainland. He brings Roman schnapps with him. We both get so drunk that we pass out. Colonel Ricardo drives him to the airport, he flies back to Maputo and a month later he's back here again.'

  'I don't drink schnapps.'

  Adelinho the giant vanished into his dark little house. Louise thought about the Italian navvy. Was he one of the men who had spent the night in Lucinda's bar? Maputo was evidently a very small world.

  Adelinho returned with two glasses of water.

  'I take it you've come to see my paintings?'

  On the spur of the moment Louise decided not to mention Henrik yet.

  'I heard about your paintings from a woman I met in Maputo.'

  'Does that woman have a name?'

  Yet again she avoided giving a straight answer.

  'Julieta.'

  'I don't know anybody called that. A Mozambique woman, a black woman?'

  Louise nodded.

  'Who are you? Let me guess your nationality. Are you German?'

  'Swedish.'

  'One or two people from there have come to see me. Not many, and not often.'

  It started raining. Louise had failed to notice that the morning mist had developed into cloud cover that had closed in on Inhaca. It was a serious rainstorm from the very first drop. Adelinho frowned as he eyed the veranda roof, and shook his head.

  'One of these days the roof will collapse. The corrugated- iron sheets are rusting away, the beams are rotting. Africa has never been well disposed towards houses built to last.'

  He stood up and beckoned her to follow him indoors. The house comprised just one large room. There was a bed, bookshelves, rows of paintings along the walls, a few carved chairs, wooden sculptures, carpets.

  Adelinho started displaying paintings, standing them on the floor and leaning them against the table, the bed and the chairs. They were oil paintings on sheets of hardboard. The form and motifs expressed an enthusiastically naive style, giving the impression of having been painted by a child trying to reproduce reality. Dolphins, birds, women's faces, just as Zé had said.

  She immediately classified Adelinho as the Dolphin Painter, somebody who could strike a chord with her father up in the forests of northern Sweden, and his carved gallery that was growing more extensive by the day. They were leaving dolphins and
faces for future generations to cherish, but her father had artistic talent that the Dolphin Painter lacked.

  'Is there anything you like?'

  'The dolphins.'

  'I'm a rotten painter, I don't have any talent. Don't think that I'm not aware of that. I can't even get the perspective right. But nobody can force me to stop painting.'

  The rain was clattering down on the corrugated-iron roof. Neither of them spoke. After a while the rain eased off, and it became possible to talk again.

  'The man who drove me here said that you came from Congo?'

  'Ricardo? He always talks too much. But on this occasion he's right. I left the country when all hell broke loose. When that Swede by the name of Hammarskjöld was shot down over northern Zambia near Ndola – it was called Northern Rhodesia in those days – I was already here in Mozambique. It was absolute chaos. The Belgians were very brutal, they'd been cutting off our hands for several generations, but when we were about to become independent the conflict that broke out was just as brutal.'

  'Why did you flee the country?'

  'I had to. I was twenty years old. It was too early to die.'

  'But you were politically involved even so? At that age?'

  He eyed her up and down. The rain had plunged the room into semi-darkness. She sensed rather than saw his eyes.

  'Who said I was politically involved? I was an ordinary young man with no education who captured chimpanzees and sold them to a Belgian laboratory. It was in the outskirts of the city known then as Leopoldville: now it's been renamed Kinshasa. There was something secretive about that gigantic building. It was off the beaten track, and surrounded by a high fence. Men and women in white coats worked there. Sometimes they wore masks. And they wanted chimpanzees. They paid well. My father had taught me how to capture apes alive. The white men thought I was good. One day I was offered a job inside the big building. They asked me if I was afraid of butchering animals, cutting up their meat, seeing blood. I was a trapper, a hunter, I could kill animals without blinking, and I got the job. I'll never forget how I felt, the first time I put on a white coat. It was like putting on a regal robe, or the leopard skin that African rulers often wear. That white coat signified that I had entered into a magic world of power and knowledge. I was young. I didn't realise that the white coat would soon become so drenched in blood.'

  He paused and leaned forward on his chair.

  'I'm an old man who talks far too much. I've had no company for several days. My wives live in a house of their own, they come and make my meals, but we don't talk as we have nothing more to say to one another. This silence makes me hungry. Just say if I'm boring you.' 'I'm not bored. Tell me more.'

  'About when my coat was drenched in blood? There was a doctor there called Levansky. He took me to a big room where all the chimpanzees I and others had caught were kept in cages. He showed me how to cut the animals up and extract their livers and kidneys. The rest of the cadaver should be thrown away, it was of no value. He taught me how to write down in a book what I had done and when. Then he gave me a chimpanzee, I remember that it was a young one, screeching loudly for its mother. I can still hear that screech to this day. Dr Levansky was pleased with me. But I hated it. I couldn't understand why it had to be done in that way. It could well be said that I did not like the way in which my white coat became drenched in blood.'

  'I don't quite understand what you mean.'

  'Is it so difficult? My father had taught me that you killed animals for food, or for their pelts, or to protect yourself, your livestock or your crops. Torture was not involved. If you tortured, the gods would strike you down. They would send out their invisible hounds who would hunt you down and gnaw all the flesh from your bones. I couldn't understand why I had to remove the liver and kidneys from an animal that was still alive. They would pull and yank at the straps holding them down on the table, and scream like human beings. I learned that animals and people sound just the same when they're being tortured.'

  'Why was it necessary?'

  'In order to make the special preparation the laboratory manufactured, the body parts had to be taken from living animals. They said I would lose my job if I mentioned what I did outside the laboratory. Dr Levansky said that people who wore the white coat always kept their secrets. Later I felt as if I'd been caught in a trap, as if I were one of the chimpanzees and the whole laboratory was my cage.'

  The rain drummed more heavily against the corrugated- iron roof. A wind was getting up. They waited until the rain eased off again.

  'A trap?'

  'Yes, a trap. It didn't crash down onto my hand or my foot. It wound itself silently round my neck. I didn't notice anything at first. I grew accustomed to killing my screaming chimpanzees, I removed their body parts and placed them in buckets of ice and took them to the laboratory itself, where I was never allowed in. Some days none of the apes were to be killed. Then it was my job to see that they were in good condition, that none of them were sick. It was like visiting prisoners on death row and pretending everything was normal. But the days grew very long. I started exploring, even though I had no right to be anywhere except among the ape cages. One day, after a few months, I went down into the basement.'

  Adelinho fell silent. The drumming of rain on the roof had almost ceased.

  'What did you find there?'

  'More chimpanzees. But with a difference in genetic material of less than 3 per cent. At the time I didn't know what genetic material was. But I do now. I've learned about it.'

  'I don't understand. More apes?'

  'Not in cages. On stretchers.'

  'Dead apes?'

  'People. But not dead. Not quite dead. I found myself in a room where they were crammed closely together. Children, old people, women, men. They were all ill. There was an awful stench in the room. I ran away. But I couldn't resist going back again later. Why were they lying there? It was then that I realised I'd landed in the worst trap a human being could possibly get caught in. A trap in which you are not supposed to see what you see, not to react to what you do. I went back to try to discover why sick people were being hidden in a basement room. As I got close I heard horrible screams coming from an adjacent room. I didn't know what to do. What was going on? I had never heard such screams in all my life. Then, suddenly, they stopped. There was the sound of a door closing. I hid underneath a table. I glimpsed white legs and white coats walking past. When they'd gone I went to the room where I'd heard the screams coming from. There was a dead person lying on a table. A woman, she must have been about twenty. She had been cut open in the same way as I cut my chimpanzees. I realised immediately that her liver and kidneys had been removed while she was still alive. I got out of there as fast as I could, and didn't return to the laboratory for a week. One day a man came with a letter from Dr Levansky, who threatened me with retribution if I didn't return. I didn't dare to stay away any longer. Dr Levansky wasn't angry, he was friendly, which confused me. He wondered why I'd stayed away so I told him I'd seen all the sick people and the woman who had been cut open while she was still alive. Dr Levansky explained that she had been anaesthetised and not felt any pain. But I had heard her. He was sitting there and lying through his teeth, his friendly attitude was not genuine. He told me that with the aid of these sick people, they were discovering new medicines. Everything that happened in the laboratory had to remain secret because there were so many people trying to get hold of these drugs. When I asked what illnesses they were trying to cure, and what the sick people were suffering from, he said that they all had the same sort of diseases, a fever caused by an infection in their stomachs. Again I knew he was lying. I had noticed when I was in the room full of stretchers that they all had different illnesses. I think they had been deliberately infected, poisoned. That they had been made ill in order to see if they could be cured. I think they were being used as chimpanzees.'