Humlin saw scandalous newspaper headlines in his mind. First he had stroked an immigrant girl’s cheek and been knocked out. If Tea-Bag started screeching that he had forced her into his bed then all the country’s journalists would come after him like a pack of wolves and rip him to shreds. He walked over to her. She lay with her eyes closed.
‘What do you think you’re doing? You can’t lie in my bed! And you’re lying on Andrea’s side. What do you think she’s going to say about that?’
There was no answer. He repeated his question and noticed that he was starting to sweat. Andrea could appear at any moment. Her work schedule was always changing. He grabbed Tea-Bag’s shoulder and shook it. No reaction. He wondered if it was even possible to fall asleep as soon as one put one’s head down on the pillow. But she didn’t seem to be trying to trick him, she had actually fallen asleep. He shook her harder. Irritated, without waking up, she threw out her arm and hit the side of his face that Haiman had earlier visited with his fist.
The phone rang. Humlin flinched as if he had received an electric shock. He ran into the living room and answered it. It was Andrea.
‘Why are you out of breath?’ she asked.
‘I’m not out of breath. Where are you?’
‘I just wanted to tell you I’m going to a lecture tonight.’
‘What lecture? How long is it?’
‘Why do you want to know how long it is?’
‘I want to know when you’re going to come. If you’re coming. I don’t like to be here all alone, you know that.’
‘I don’t know anything of the sort. I’m going to a reading by some young poets. You should be going too. I’m hoping to get inspiration for the book I’m writing.’
‘I don’t want you to write a book about us.’
‘I’ll be coming when it’s over.’
‘And when is that?’
‘How should I know?’
Humlin heard that she was starting to get suspicious.
‘I thought maybe we could eat together,’ he said. ‘If I know when you’re coming I’ll have dinner ready.’
‘Not before nine.’
Humlin breathed a sigh of relief. That gave him three hours to get Tea-Bag out of the apartment. He didn’t like Andrea listening to the work of other poets, but for once his young rivals had actually helped him out. He hung up and returned to the bedroom.
She still refused to wake up when he shook her. He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to understand what was happening. Who was she and why had she come here? What was the monkey she had talked about? He looked down at her puffy coat and her trousers on the floor. He had a sudden impulse to lift the covers and see if she was naked underneath them, but resisted.
He searched all her pockets. There were no keys or money. It was a mystery to him that anyone could get by without keys or money. He found a little plastic sleeve in the inside pocket of her coat. It contained a Sudanese passport in the name of Florence Kanimane, with a photograph of Tea-Bag. Humlin flipped through it but did not find any stamps or visas. Not even for Sweden. But she had talked of Ghana and Togo. And Kazakstan. Hadn’t she claimed to be a Kurd?
The only other thing he found in the passport was a dried insect — large and rather frightening — as well as a pressed yellow flower. The flower looked like a heart, a compressed heart. He thought about the heart that Tanya had drawn. There was also a black-and-white photo in the plastic sleeve, showing an African family with a mother, father and six children. The picture had been taken outside with a hut in the background. There were no shadows so the sun must have been very high at the time. The picture was a bit blurry and even with good lighting Humlin could not tell if one of the children was Tea-Bag. Or Taita. Or Florence, as the name she apparently also went by.
The plastic sleeve also contained a scrap of paper on which someone had written ‘Sweden’ and the name ‘Per’. There was nothing else. When he held the scrap of paper up to the light he saw that it had a watermark that said ‘Madrid’. He frowned. Who was she, this woman who had asked him a question in Mölndal, then turned up on his doorstep and ended up in his bed?
He searched her clothes again but didn’t find anything except sand. What I have in my hands is a story, he thought. A girl who most probably has entered Sweden illegally and who talks about a monkey, a girl whose name I can’t be sure of and who has neither money nor keys. He sat down closer to her. She was sleeping deeply, peacefully. He carefully brushed her cheek with his fingers. She was very warm. He looked at the time. It was ten to six. He could let her sleep another hour, then he had to get her up and out of the apartment.
The phone rang. He walked out into the living room and listened to the answering machine. The caller was Viktor Leander. ‘I’m just calling to see what you’re up to. We should get together. Call me, or better yet, pick up if you’re there. I think you are.’
