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