visit would turn out to be so brief, but she might well need to fly back home, possibly even today.
When they reached the hotel Warren still refused to accept any payment. If she wanted him, all she needed to do was ring. He was now going to have a nap in the shadow of his lorry, then go down to the sea for a swim.
'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