Kennedy's Brain

by Henning Mankell

  'I swim with whales and dolphins. Then I can forget that I am a human being.'

  'Do you want to forget that?'

  'I think that sometimes all humans have wished that they had not only arms and legs, but fins as well.'

  She went up to her room, and washed her hands and face under the tap that had now suddenly acquired a new lease of life and produced a strong jet of water. She sat down on the edge of her bed and opened the matchbox. Lucinda had torn a scrap from the margin of a newspaper, and written a message in tiny handwriting. Listen for the timbila in the dark. That was all.

  Listen for the timbila in the dark.

  She waited for dusk after succeeding in bringing the air conditioning to life by thumping it with a shoe.

  Warren rang and roused her from her slumbers. Did she need him now? Or would it be all right if he drove into Xai-Xai to see his wife, who was due to have a baby any day now? She told him to go.

  She had bought a swimming costume at the airport before leaving Stockholm. She felt embarrassed, because her reason for going to Mozambique was to meet a young woman who was dying. She made several attempts to persuade herself that it would be acceptable to go to the beach. But she could not bring herself to do it. She needed to conserve her strength, even though she did not know what lay in store. Lucinda and her laboured breathing made her both upset and afraid.

  In this oppressive heat everything smacked of death and decay. But on the other hand, there was nothing so life-giving as hot sunshine. Henrik would have protested vehemently at the designation of Africa as the continent of death. He would have argued that it is our own inability to dig out the truth that is responsible for the idea that 'we know all about how Africans die, but hardly anything about how they live'. Who had said that? She could not remember, but the words had been in one of the documents she had read when she went through his papers in the flat in Stockholm. She suddenly remembered something he had written on the front of one of the vast number of files containing material about Kennedy's brain. Henrik had been furious. He had asked the question: How would we Europeans react if the world only knew about how we die, but nothing at all about how we live our lives?

  As the brief dusk approached, she stood in the window, looking down at the sea. What remained of the beach kiosk was in shadow. The lorry had gone. Some children were playing with what appeared to be a dead bird. Women carrying baskets on their heads were walking along the beach. A man was trying to avoid falling off his bicycle as he rode through the deep sand. He failed, fell over, and stood up again, laughing copiously. Louise admired him for his genuine amusement at having failed.

  Darkness fell, spreading a dark cloak over the earth. She went down to the dining room. The albino with his timbila was in his usual place. But he was not playing, he was eating rice and salad from a red plastic bowl. There was a bottle of beer by his side. He ate slowly, like someone who was not really hungry. She went to the bar. Several men were sitting at a table, half asleep over their beer glasses. The woman behind the bar was so like Lucinda that she gave a start. But when the woman smiled it became obvious that she was toothless. Louise felt the need to drink something strong. Artur would have produced a bottle of aquavit, and plonked it down on the table. Here, drink up, fortify yourself! She ordered a whisky, something she did not really like, and a bottle of the local beer, Laurentina. The albino started playing his timbila again. Listen for the timbila in the dark. Some more guests came into the dining room, an elderly Portuguese man with a very young African girl. Louise estimated about forty years between them. She felt an urge to march over and punch him on the nose. He embodied the way in which love and contempt combined to embody the way in which colonial oppression was still going strong.

  I know too little. With my knowledge of Bronze Age graves, or the importance of ferrous oxides for the colour of Greek ceramics, I'm a match for almost anybody. But when it comes to life beyond burial grounds and museums I know nothing compared with what Henrik knew. I am a very ignorant person, and I've only just realised that, after I've turned fifty.

  She emptied her glass and felt herself breaking into a sweat. A thin fog descended over her consciousness. The albino was still playing. The woman behind the bar was biting her fingernails. Louise listened out into the darkness. After a few moments' hesitation, she ordered another glass of whisky.

  It was twenty minutes to seven now. What time was it in Sweden? Was the time difference one hour or two? In which direction? Earlier or later? She was not at all sure.

  Her questions were unanswered because the timbila suddenly stopped playing. She emptied her glass and paid. The albino wound his way slowly through the tables in the empty dining room, heading for the toilets. Louise went to the front of the hotel. Warren's lorry had not yet returned. She could hear the sighing of the sea, somebody passed by in the darkness, invisible, whistling. A flickering bicycle light staggered past, then vanished. She waited.

  The albino started playing his timbila again. The sound was different now, more distant. It suddenly dawned on her that what she was hearing was another timbila. The instrument in the dining room had been abandoned, the albino had not returned.

  She took a few steps forward into the darkness. The vibrating sounds of the timbila were coming from somewhere closer to the sea, but not from the ramshackle beach kiosk, in the other direction, where the fishermen used to hang up their nets. Once more Louise was gripped by fear, she was afraid of what was about to happen, but she forced herself to think of Henrik. She felt closer to him now than at any other time since his death.

  She listened for other noises besides the timbila, but there was only the ocean, and her own isolation, like an icily cold winter night.

  She walked towards the source of the music. It came closer, but she could see no fire, nothing. Now she was very close, the invisible timbila almost next to her. It stopped playing abruptly, between two notes.

  Then she felt a hand on her ankle. She gave a start, but nobody was pinning her down. She stopped dead when she heard Lucinda's voice in the darkness.

  'It's me.'

  Louise squatted down and groped into the blackness. Lucinda was sitting on the ground, leaning against a withered tree that had been blown over in a storm. Louise could feel her feverish, sweaty face against her hand, which Lucinda took hold of and pulled her down to the ground beside her.

  'Nobody saw me. Everybody thinks I'm so weak that I can't stand up. But I can. Not for much longer, though. But I knew you would come.'

  'I'd never have believed that you could become so ill so quickly.'

  'Nobody believes that death is just round the corner. For some, it all happens very quickly. I'm one of those.'

  'I can take you away from here and make sure you get the necessary drugs.'

  'It's too late. Besides, I have all Henrik's money. It doesn't help. The illness is spreading through my body like a fire in dry grass. I'm ready. I'm only occasionally afraid, at dawn, on certain days, when the sunrise is more beautiful than usual and I know that soon I shall never be able to experience it again. Something inside me has already laid itself to rest. A human being dies one step at a time, like when you wade out into the shallows on a very gently sloping beach, and it's only after several kilometres that the water comes up to your neck. I thought I would stay and die at my mother's place. But I didn't want to die pointlessly, I didn't want my life to pass by without leaving something behind. I thought about you and how you were searching for Henrik's soul in everything he had done or tried to do. I came here to see if things really were as Henrik suspected they were, that behind all the goodwill there was a different reality, that behind all the young idealists lurked people with black wings who were exploiting the dying for their own ends.'

  'What have you seen?'

  Lucinda's faint voice trembled as she spoke.

  'Terrible things. But let me tell you the whole story. How I got to Xai-Xai is neither here nor there, it doesn't matter if I was taken there in a whee
lbarrow or on the back of a lorry. I have a lot of friends, I'm never alone. I had put on the shabbiest clothes I could find, and then they left me in the dirt and sand outside the buildings in Christian Holloway's village. I lay there, waiting for dawn. The first one to see me was an old man with white hair. Then all the others came, all of them wearing rubber boots, big aprons and rubber gloves. They were white South Africans, one might have been a mulatto. They asked me if I had Aids, where I'd come from, it was as if they were cross-questioning me. In the end they decided to let me stay. They put me in one of the buildings, but when night fell I moved to the place where you found me.'

  'How were you able to ring me?'

  'I still have a mobile phone. The man who drove me here recharges my battery every other day and passes it to me in secret at night. I phone my mother and listen to her terror-stricken appeals to keep death at bay. I try to console her although I know that's not possible.'

  Lucinda started coughing, hard and long. Louise changed her position and noticed that there was a little cassette recorder standing by the tree. Listen for the timbila in the dark. It had not been a spectre playing. The sound came from a cassette. Lucinda stopped coughing. Louise could hear her panting with the strain. I can't leave her here, she thought. Henrik would never have abandoned her. There must be something that can ease her pain, perhaps she can be saved.

  Lucinda grasped hold of her hand as if seeking support, but she made no attempt to stand up. She carried on speaking.

  'I listen as I lie there on the floor. Not to the sickly, but to the healthy people in the room. In the night, when most of the white angels are asleep and only the night security guards are awake, the underworld comes to life. There are rooms under the floor, dug out of the ground.'

  'What's in them?'

  'The terrible things.'

  Her voice was so weak that Louise was forced to lean forward in order to hear it. Lucinda had another coughing attack that threatened to choke her. When she tried to draw air into her lungs there was a gurgling noise. It was a long time after the end of the coughing attack before Lucinda could speak again. Louise heard the albino starting to play his timbila again after his break.

  'You don't need to continue if you don't feel up to it.'

  'I must. I might be dead tomorrow. I don't want you to have made this journey for nothing. Or Henrik.'

  'What did you see?'

  'The men in boots, aprons and rubber gloves giving people injections. But it's not only the sick who are injected. A lot of the people who come here are healthy, just as Umbi said. They are used as guinea pigs to try out untested vaccines. Then they are injected with infected blood. They're infected with the HIV virus to see if the vaccine works. Most of those lying in the room where you found me have been infected here. They were healthy when they arrived. But there are others as well, people like me who have been infected in some other way. We get drugs that haven't even been tested on animals, in an attempt to find a cure for people with fullblown Aids. For those carrying out the tests, it doesn't matter if the patients are humans or rats or chimpanzees. The animals are only a means to an end, really. They are not the ones the experimenters are trying to cure, after all. Who cares if some Africans are sacrificed if the outcome is drugs and vaccines that people in the Western world can benefit from?'

  'How can you know that?'

  'I just know.'

  Lucinda's voice had suddenly become stronger.

  'I don't understand.'

  'You ought to do.'

  'How have you found out about all this? Just by listening?'

  'I learned it from Henrik.'

  'Did he see what you've seen?'

  'He never said he had in so many words. I think he wanted to spare me that. But he taught me about the virus, how they try out various substances to see if they have a positive reaction and if there are any side effects. He'd taught himself, he'd never studied medicine. But he wanted to know. He started work here as a volunteer in order to find out the truth. I think that what he experienced here was worse than anything he'd imagined.'

  Louise felt for Lucinda's hand in the darkness.

  'Do you think that's why he died? Because he'd discovered what went on in the underworld?'

  'The people who work here are strictly forbidden to go down to the basement where all the virus samples and drugs are kept. Henrik disobeyed that order. He needed to find out, he dared to enter the forbidden area and he went down those stairs.'

  Louise tried to let what Lucinda had said sink in. Henrik had descended into another world and discovered a secret that had cost him his life.

  She'd been right. Henrik had been murdered. Somebody had forced those sleeping pills down him. But there was still a doubt gnawing inside her. Could the truth really be that simple?

  'I can tell you more tomorrow,' said Lucinda, and now her voice was once more a whisper, barely audible. 'I don't have the strength to speak any more now.'

  'You can't stay here. I'll take you away.'

  'If you try to take me away they'll never leave my family in peace. I'm staying here. I have to die somewhere.'

  Louise realised that it was pointless trying to persuade her to allow Warren to lift her into his lorry and carry her away.

  'How will you manage to get back here?'

  'It's as well that you don't know. But you don't need to worry. Can you stay here until tomorrow?'

  'I have a room in the hotel.'

  'Come back when you hear the timbila in the darkness. I might be in a slightly different place, but I'll be back, unless I've stopped breathing. It's never good to die before you've finished saying what you have to say.'

  'You're not going to die.'

  'I am going to die. Neither you nor I can doubt that fact. Do you know what I'm most afraid of? Not that it might hurt, not because my heart will resist until the very last moment. I'm afraid because I shall be dead for such an incredibly long time. I see no end to my death. Go now.'

  Louise made no reply. There was nothing she could say.

  The sound of the timbila rose and sank in the darkness and the breezes off the sea.

  Louise stood up and walked to the illuminated hotel entrance. There was no sound from the darkness where Lucinda was concealed.

  A party of South Africans were eating at a table in the dining room. Louise discovered Warren in the bar. He beckoned to her. She could see from his eyes that he was drunk.

  'I've been trying to call you, but you didn't answer. I thought you must have walked out into the sea and disappeared.'

  'My mobile has been switched off.'

  'I've been very worried. Do you need me any more tonight?'

  'No.'

  'What about tomorrow? I usually have a bet with the sun, about who'll be up first, her or me.'

  'Can I pay you for what you've done so far?'

  'Not now. Tomorrow, or another day. Sit down here and tell me all about the country you come from. About all that cold and snow.'

  'I'm too tired. Maybe tomorrow.'

  She went up to her room. She was completely exhausted. Her thoughts were spinning round inside her head. She ought to go to the dining room and have something to eat, despite the fact that she was not hungry in the least. She also needed to sit down and write out everything that Lucinda had said. It would be the first step towards a deposition. But all that happened in fact was that she stood at the window.

  There were three vehicles parked outside the hotel, two white 4x4 people carriers and Warren's lorry. She frowned. Who was Warren, in fact? Why had his brother, the receptionist, not recognised her? He ought to have done. Had he concealed the fact that he knew who she was? Why did Warren not want to be paid? The questions were racing through her head. Had he been commissioned to keep an eye on her?