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sense the vague shimmer of beauty when they succeed in looking past and beyond the gaping hole below her eyes. They sense a heartbeat and lively thoughts, desires and dreams. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world she pilots them through her life story, lets them accompany her to the appalling moment when she realises that the surgeon has carved off her entire nose, follow her twice into the black water of the river and feel the ropes from the weights snap just at the instant her lungs are about to burst. They follow her like invisible shadows to Hurrapelle’s penitent bench, listen to the mysterious embrace of salvation, and finally stand next to her when she discovers the ants crawling across the kitchen floor.
    That year a strange love blooms among those three. A wild-flower in the house just south of the river …

Chapter Six
    O n a dirty map Hans Olofson puts his finger on the name Mutshatsha.
    ‘How do I get there?’ he asks.
    It is his second morning in Africa, his stomach is unsettled, and the sweat is running down inside his shirt.
    He is standing at the front desk of the Ridgeway Hotel. Behind the desk is an elderly African with white hair and tired eyes. His shirt collar is frayed and his uniform unwashed. Olofson can’t resist the temptation of leaning over the counter to see what the man has on his feet.
    On the way down in the lift he’d thought, if the condition of the African continent is the same as the shoes of its inhabitants, the future is already over and all is irretrievably lost. He senses a vague unrest growing inside him from all the worn-out shoes he has seen.
    The old man is barefoot. ‘Maybe there’s a bus,’ he says. ‘Maybe a lorry. Sooner or later a car will come by, I’m sure.’
    ‘How do I find the bus?’ asks Olofson.
    ‘You stand by the side of the road.’
    ‘At a bus stop?’
    ‘If there is a bus stop. Sometimes there is. But usually not.’
    Olofson realises that the vague answer is the most detailed one he will get. He senses something tentative, ephemeral in the lives of the blacks, so distant and foreign from the world he comes from.
    I’m afraid, he thinks. Africa scares me, with its heat, its odours, its people with bad shoes. I’m much too visible here. My skin colour shines as if I were a burning candle in the dark. If I leave the hotel I’ll be swallowed up, vanish without leaving a trace …
    The train to Kitwe is supposed to depart in the evening. Olofson spends the day in his room. He stands at the window for long stretches. He sees a man in ragged clothes cutting grass around a big wooden cross with a long, broad-bladed knife. People pass by with shapeless bundles on their heads.
    At seven in the evening he leaves his room and has to pay for the night he won’t be spending in it. When he emerges from the hotel screaming taxi drivers fall upon him.
    Why do they make such a damned racket? he thinks, and the first wave of contempt washes over him.
    He walks towards the car that seems the least dilapidated and puts his suitcase in the back seat with him. He has hidden his money in his shoes and underwear. When he sits down in the back seat he immediately regrets his choice of hiding places. The banknotes are sticky and cling to his body.
    At the railway station there is, if possible, even greater chaos than at the airport. The taxi lets him off in the midst of a surging sea of humanity, bundles of clothes, chickens and goats, water sellers, fires, and rusted cars. The station is almost completely dark. What few lightbulbs there are have burned out or have been stolen.
    He barely manages to pay the taxi driver before he is surrounded by filthy children offering their services as porters or begging for money. Without knowing what direction he shouldtake, he hurries off, his feet already hurting from the wads of notes. He discovers a gaping hole in a wall above which a rickety sign says Ticket Counter. The waiting room is packed with people, it