Secrets in the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  ‘You’re not scared of birds, are you?’ she wondered. ‘You can’t work for me if you are.’

  Sofia shook her head. She wasn’t afraid of birds. It was just so astonishing to enter a house where there were more birds than people.

  ‘I’ve always dreamt about waking up one morning with wings on my back,’ Fatima said. ‘It will probably never happen. So I surround myself with birds instead. Thousands of wings flapping and fluttering and rising towards the grey and blue skies.’

  She beckoned Sofia to follow her into the next room. It was large and round and had tall windows around the walls. Sofia had never been inside such a large and light room before. In the middle stood a large sewing table with several sewing machines. Along the walls there were shelves with different coloured fabric. Dolls, as big as people, stood in various parts of the room. Fabric and half-finished dresses hung on the dolls. They looked at Sofia with glassy eyes.

  Fatima laughed.

  ‘When you’ve stopped gaping, you can sit down at this bench,’ she said, pointing. ‘Then we can get to work.’

  When Sofia met Fatima, it was just as if she had met Muazena’s sister. Although she was younger and stouter than Muazena, Fatima was as full of the same hidden strength as Muazena had been. She told stories and explained things as she sewed with the same manner in which Muazena would stubbornly hoe the soil or pull weeds while she talked. Time seemed to stand still during the period Sofia spent with Fatima, among the birds and the fabric they transformed into clothes.

  Fatima was a strict teacher. She was angry when Sofia was neglectful or didn’t do what she had been told. But Sofia noticed that she never raised her voice or sighed and complained without reason. And she always praised Sofia when she did something well.

  Above all, she taught Sofia the secrets of the sewing needle.

  One evening they were working late, even though it was already dark. They were working on a white silk wedding dress that had to be ready the next day. Fatima had promised Sofia that she could stay the night when they were finished. She had hired a boy to clean out the birdcages, and she sent him over to Hermengarda with the message that Sofia would not be back until the following day.

  It grew late. The evening had turned into night by the time the white dress was finally ready. Fatima nodded happily and put an arm around Sofia’s shoulders.

  ‘It can’t get any better than this,’ she said.

  Then they had tea on the verandah. The birds were quiet in their cages, a light breeze wafted through the silence.

  Fatima and Sofia sat next to each other on a swinging sofa, balancing their cracked cups in their hands.

  ‘It was an old man who taught me how to sew,’ Fatima said suddenly. Her voice was low, as if she didn’t want to disturb the silence.

  ‘He taught me that everything in life is about seams,’ she continued. ‘Seams bind things together. There are invisible seams between people. Our dreams use our waking thoughts to stitch our memories firmly to us. If you want to be wise and learn about people, you should sew. If you embroider your longings and sorrows onto a piece of fabric, you will soon feel your burdens growing lighter.’

  That was what Fatima told Sofia that night. And Sofia never forgot it. The very next day, she started sewing together two leftover pieces of fabric. One of them was Maria, and the other one was herself. She embroidered a design of different-coloured threads to form the name ‘Lydia’, which meant that she missed her mother. She embroidered a road, which meant that she waited every day for Lydia to come and tell her that Isaias was gone and that she could come home.

  From that night, she knew that sewing was what she wanted to do in life. And when Fatima began praising her more often, and giving her more advanced things to do, she started believing that she would be able to do it.

  Time passed. Lydia didn’t come to get her. Every day, Sofia hoped that Doctor Raul would knock at Hermengarda’s door to say that Lydia had been looking for her at the hospital. But he never had any news of Lydia. She didn’t come. Doctor Raul noticed that Sofia was growing sad, and so he told her instead how happy he was that she had become so good at sewing.

  Sofia tried not to think about Lydia and Alfredo and Faustino, even though it was hard. She had brought home the two pieces of fabric that represented Maria and herself. Whenever she had difficulties sleeping, she got out of bed and worked on her sewing by the gleam of the streetlights. Gradually, it made things feel easier. But the longing was always there. Why didn’t Lydia come? Had she forgotten she had a daughter called Sofia?

  The wet season pulled in over the city. It rained non-stop for days and weeks. The city filled with so much water that the streets were almost invisible. But every morning Sofia went over to Fatima and the birds’ house. And every night she returned to Hermengarda’s.

  One evening as the rain poured down, someone knocked at the door. It was Doctor Raul. Sofia leapt out of her chair. At last he’d come to tell her that Lydia had been looking for her at the hospital. She gazed at him with anticipation as he stood dripping rain on the floor from his face and clothes.

  ‘A man came to the hospital today asking for you,’ he said.

  Sofia went cold inside. It must have been Isaias. Had he come to force her back home?

  ‘It was an old man,’ Doctor Raul said.

  She looked at him in confusion. Isaias wasn’t old. Who could it have been?

  ‘He said his name was Totio,’ Doctor Raul said. ‘And he’ll be back tomorrow. He’s coming here to visit you.’

  Totio? The man with the sewing machine? What could he want with her?

  Sofia slept badly that night. And the day after she was so sloppy with the seams that Fatima wondered whether she were ill. But Sofia was just waiting for Totio. She could hardly wait to find out what he wanted.

  Then Totio arrived.

  Late that evening, he knocked at the door of Hermengarda’s house.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WHEN SOFIA SAW old Totio standing in the rain outside Hermengarda’s house, she was so happy that she surprised herself. She’d only known Totio briefly and yet he had come to visit her. She tried to read his wrinkled face for a clue to what he wanted. Hermengarda invited him to come inside instead of standing out in the rain, but Totio refused. It was already late. He was staying with relatives in a suburb far away and he still had a long way to walk.

  ‘I just wanted to see that Sofia was here,’ he said. ‘If it’s all right, I was hoping to visit her tomorrow.’

  Hermengarda gave him the directions to Fatima’s house. Then Totio lifted his ragged old hat and disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘Who was that?’ Hermengarda asked.

  ‘Totio,’ Sofia answered. ‘He’s got a sewing machine.’

  Sofia was annoyed with him for not having told her what he wanted. He wouldn’t have travelled all the way to the city just to ask her how she was. It couldn’t have been Lydia who sent him, either. They didn’t even know each other.

  She slept restlessly and dreamt that Totio was lost in the city and would never return.

  When she woke up at dawn, it was still raining. But Hermengarda was in a hurry as usual. She was cranky with Sofia for being slow. Sofia pulled a plastic bag over her hair, wrapped an old capulana around her body and hobbled along in the water that had risen high on the streets. She was splashed with water several times by careless drivers.

  When she arrived at Fatima’s house, there was a surprise waiting for her. Totio had already arrived. He was sheltering from the rain under a tree. Sofia hoped Fatima wouldn’t mind that a man, one who also owned a sewing machine and knew the secrets of thread and fabric, had come to visit her.

  ‘You shouldn’t stand here in the rain, Uncle Totio,’ she said. ‘We’ll go inside.’

  Sofia pushed the door open and they went in. The birds were flapping and cheeping everywhere. Totio was just as stunned as Sofia had been the first time she came to Fatima’s house. He looked around in amazement.r />
  ‘A phsi nyenhana a ku shonga,’ he said.*

  ‘Ina,’ Sofia answered and smiled.**

  Fatima was busy cutting a piece of fabric for a blouse when Sofia came in with Totio. They greeted one another and started chatting straight away. Fatima told him to take off his wet clothes and wrap a blanket around himself, but Totio said he was all right. However, he gently dried off his ragged hat and laid it carefully on a chair.

  Then, for the rest of the day, he sat on the chair beside the hat and watched Sofia work. He still hadn’t mentioned why he had come. Sofia knew that old people often took a long time to ask a question or relate a piece of news. Now that Totio had arrived, she would have to wait. But when the afternoon arrived, and he had still done nothing other than closely follow Sofia’s work, she began to feel impatient. Why didn’t he say anything?

  It seemed he was particularly interested in watching her sew on Fatima’s machines. Sofia felt proud that she made no mistakes while Totio was there.

  It wasn’t until they were finishing their work for the day that Totio finally spoke up. Fatima had disappeared into the kitchen and was banging saucepans around when Sofia suddenly heard his voice.

  ‘I see that you can now sew,’ he said. ‘You’ve already learnt how to use a sewing machine. It was to see this that I came.’

  Sofia sat listening with her hands on her thighs.

  ‘I’ve grown old,’ Totio continued. ‘My eyesight is very poor. I don’t want to sew my seams so sloppily that my customers will start complaining. For that reason, I have decided to stop sewing. Fernanda and I are moving back to Mueda. I’ve come here to ask if you would like to take over my hut and my sewing machine.’

  Sofia thought she had heard wrongly.

  ‘I don’t have any money to pay you,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you could send us money when you had some to spare,’ Totio said. ‘We old folks don’t need too much.’

  Sofia was still wondering whether there was something she hadn’t understood. Did Totio mean that he would give her his sewing machine? That she would take over the job as seamstress and tailor in the village outside Boane? She, who wasn’t even thirteen years old yet?

  Totio understood her surprise.

  ‘I haven’t made this long journey to tell you something that isn’t true,’ he continued.

  Sofia realised he meant what he was saying. Thoughts flitted around in her head like the birds in Fatima’s house.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why can’t you?’

  Sofia told him about Isaias – about why she had returned to the city. When she was finished, Totio nodded long and slowly.

  ‘I understand how it could be difficult,’ he said. ‘But you have to remember that you can take over my and Fernanda’s hut. You’ll be working and taking care of yourself. You would only see Isaias when you wanted to see him.’

  ‘Never,’ Sofia said.

  ‘That might well be. You can decide that for yourself.’

  He got up with some difficulty and put the old hat back on his head. His grey hair showed through the broken brim.

  ‘I have seen that you can sew,’ he said again. ‘You’ve still got a lot to learn. But now I can return and tell Fernanda that Sofia will be able to take over the sewing machine. That will make the road home shorter.’

  He came across and put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘You’re not going to stay here in the city,’ he said. ‘You’re just visiting. You belong to the village. You know now that you have something to return to. Come back in a couple of weeks. Don’t be too long.’

  Then he left.

  Sofia stood by the window and watched him disappear into the rain. She had no doubt that it was Muazena who had sent him to her.

  She pressed her face against the foggy glass. At that moment she missed Maria more than ever.

  Suddenly Fatima was standing beside her. Sofia hadn’t heard her come.

  ‘Did what he said make you happy or sad?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sofia answered.

  ‘I didn’t hear everything,’ Fatima said. ‘But I agree with him that you are a good seamstress. I think you should return to your village. That’s where you belong. Not here.’

  That night, Sofia sat huddled for a long time in a corner of the bed in Hermengarda’s house, thinking about what Totio had said. She could already imagine herself on the bench in the shade of the tree, eagerly treadling the black sewing machine. The thread would run, the needle would make its straight and even seams, customers would nod contentedly and others would wait in line to ask her about one thing and another. But the image disappeared as soon as she thought about Isaias. How could she live in the same village as Lydia, when Lydia had given up her own daughter in favour of a mean man who drank tontonto? It would be so difficult that it would ruin the joy of Totio’s sewing machine.

  She remembered something Muazena had said a long, long time ago: Without your family, you are nothing.

  That was what she had said. And Sofia knew she was right. Disappointed as she was in Lydia, her longing was greater. She missed Lydia every day.

  The days passed without Sofia being able to make up her mind. Fatima asked her but she replied evasively and bent over her work. On Sunday, she went to visit Doctor Raul and Dolores. They were happy to see her. She told them about Totio’s visit, but when she came to the hard part and tried to explain to them how much she missed Lydia, she mumbled and went silent.

  ‘When are you going home?’ Doctor Raul asked. ‘If you dare to ride with me one more time, I’ll drive you.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sofia answered.

  ‘Let us know a couple of days beforehand,’ Dolores said. ‘I actually think I would like to come along, too.’

  Sofia returned to Hermengarda’s house. She was annoyed with herself for having mumbled. But she was also angry with Doctor Raul and Dolores for not understanding how difficult it was going to be to return to her home town, knowing her family was there and yet not wanting to see them.

  It’s not going to work, she thought. Totio is going to get tired of waiting for me. He’s going to give the sewing machine to someone else.

  Monday came. Sofia woke and heard the rain thundering on the tin roof. She didn’t want to get up, and pulled her sheet above her head. She could hear Hermengarda out in the kitchen and knew she would soon come in and yell at her for not being up and dressed. Then she heard someone knocking at the front door, and heard Hermengarda calling ‘Come in’. Sofia supposed it was one of the chicken-sellers wanting their money. She pressed her hands over her ears so she wouldn’t have to listen to the cackling hens, squeezed her eyes shut and tried to go back to sleep.

  Then someone tugged at the sheet over her head. Hermengarda had come to scold her, of course.

  But then she noticed it wasn’t Hermengarda’s hand.

  She opened her eyes and pulled the sheet aside.

  And looked straight into Lydia’s face.

  It wasn’t a dream. It really was Lydia. She smiled. And the teeth that had fallen out of her mouth were still missing.

  ‘Sofia,’ said Lydia. ‘Is it really you?’

  Sofia nodded.

  Lydia sat on the floor beside the bed. She had Faustino with her, and he was crying where he hung against Lydia’s back. She started breast-feeding him. Sofia pulled herself down onto the floor and strapped her legs on. Then she got dressed.

  Faustino fell asleep again. Lydia handed him to Sofia, who took him in her arms. He looked like Alfredo.

  ‘You can come back home,’ Lydia said. ‘Isaias is no longer there.’

  Sofia sat holding Faustino while she listened to Lydia.

  ‘Isaias wasn’t a good man,’ she said. ‘He had plenty to say. But it was never connected to what he did. Last week he broke into Señor Padre José-Maria’s place and stole a box of money. Someone saw him but when the police came from Boane to question him, he denied everything. It was Alfredo wh
o found the box with the money. Isaias had buried it behind the old hen cage. When Alfredo arrived carrying the box, Isaias had no choice but to admit to stealing the money. The police took him away with them. He knows that he can never return to us when they release him from prison.’

  Lydia spoke with downcast eyes as if she were ashamed in front of Sofia, even though Sofia was just a child. The anger and grief Sofia had been carrying were suddenly gone. Now she just felt sorry for Lydia, who had grown so old and tired since they had been forced to flee the burnt village.

  But now nothing was difficult any more. Sofia could go back home. And she could accept Totio’s sewing machine. But she had a question for Muazena, which she would ask her the next time she saw her face among the flames. Sofia needed to know how, when things were difficult and hard to bear, so much time could pass without anything happening. And then, how everything would suddenly happen at once. Muazena would surely have an answer for her.

  ‘I had planned to visit Maria’s grave,’ Lydia suddenly said. ‘But maybe you won’t be able to come? I understand that you have a job.’

  Sofia had never thought she would ever visit Maria’s grave.

  ‘I’ll ask Fatima,’ she said. ‘We can go together. But I don’t know where Maria’s grave is.’

  ‘Once we get to the big cemetery by the river, I’ll remember how to find it.’

  They went to Fatima’s house. Lydia didn’t want to come inside because she was ashamed of her plain clothes. Sofia went in and asked Fatima if she could be allowed to visit her sister’s grave with her mother. Fatima was almost angry with Sofia for having asked.

  ‘Of course you can visit the cemetery,’ she said.

  She even gave Sofia some money so that they wouldn’t have to walk all the way through the city to get there.

  Then she explained how Sofia could find a truck that would take them in the right direction.

  Lydia seemed to be afraid of the city. She kept close to Sofia to shield herself from the tall buildings, the cars, and the people who all seemed to be in such a hurry. They arrived at the cemetery in an old reconditioned jeep. Lydia thought for a long time before she indicated the direction they should take.