are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available
ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-046-7
ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-053-5
First published as Gelukkige Slaven in the Netherlands in 2013 by Prometheus, Amsterdam
The translation of this book was funded by the Flemish Literature Fund (Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren—www.flemishliterature.be)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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For R.—my light, my life—who turned a country bumpkin into a traveller
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‘He loved his torments like loyal enemies.’
(From Rebellion by Joseph Roth)
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‘When I saw him for the first time, I thought: the way this man is, that’s how I should have been.’
(From Damocles’ Dark Room by W.F. Hermans)
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Prologue
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WE DISCOVER TONY HANSSEN during the dog days of a virulent, suffocating, smouldering summer. Not on the crumbling continent where he first saw the light of day more than forty years ago. It is winter there now, raining filthy sleet on the streets and messages of doom in all the parliaments and stock exchanges. We come across him eleven thousand kilometres away, in the fertile gash beneath Brazil’s tropically swollen belly, the open wound called Rio de la Plata, the Silver River. As wide as a sea, it smells of petrol and entrails, the purgatory of the Atlantic Ocean—a heaving, royal-blue universe full of hidden gas fields, shipwrecks, and whale carcasses.
There is a capital city on each bank of the Rio de la Plata. To the north, Montevideo. To the south, Buenos Aires—a city as big as a country. Here, in San Telmo, one of the oldest neighbourhoods, founded by runaway Italians and escaped black slaves, later the birthplace of tango, arms smuggling, and football madness, we find Tony Hanssen. Puffing and panting away in a kitschy, renovated town house, una casa de turistas, where, on the second floor, at her insistence and against his inclination, he is pleasuring a Chinese matron. A rickety fan turns above their heads; the charmingly antiquated air conditioner creaks and rattles louder than the bed.
Nevertheless, Tony is sweating like a pig. And he’s not the only one, as he can tell from the skin he is thrusting against. He is disgusted at himself and feels sorry for Mrs. Bo Xiang. But he doesn’t stop pleasuring her. She might take it as a rejection. Beware the wrath of an older woman scorned. Tony owes her husband a fortune, so he carries on thrusting.
It’s not yet two in the afternoon. The lampposts outside barely cast a shadow.
Tony Hanssen’s exact namesake is sweating, too—eight thousand kilometres away—though without moving a muscle. He is standing alone on a hilltop, in a remote corner of the private game reserve he infiltrated in a vehicle with false license plates. The park is called Krokodilspruit and has long considered itself the pearl of Mpumalanga, a province in eastern South Africa. Here, night is already approaching. The heat is subsiding, the greenery is losing its lustre, chirping swallows are swooping. Soon, darkness will fall, total and irrevocable, like a machete on a springbok’s neck.
Tony Hanssen didn’t choose this game reserve for its striking name but for the diversity of its wildlife, and its location. The modest airport at Phalaborwa and the border with Mozambique are nearby, the larger Polokwane airport is just two hundred kilometres away, and there are other escape routes, too. He managed to get hold of the fastest four-by-four pickup you could buy for cash on the black market in Johannesburg. There were disappointingly few on offer. The selection of stolen BMWs was larger. Alongside their invitingly chic leather upholstery and tinted windows, most of them had soft-tops. Doubly dangerous—carjackers in Johannesburg, bold lions on the reserve. The carjackers would blast out your brains without so much as a word; the lions would take a nap on your canvas roof before tearing it open with their claws. Before you know it, you’re lunch. You didn’t need to be neurotic, Tony told himself daily, to fear a worst-case scenario. These days, paranoia was another word for common sense.
During his previous stay, barely two years ago—still with his family—he and his wife had been horrified by a newspaper article about a solitary male elephant on the Kruger Game Reserve, not far away. The animal, by way of a feint, had charged at a sports car, trumpeting and flapping its ears. The panicked driver had got himself into the wrong gear. Forward instead of reverse. The elephant interpreted it as a counter-attack. It tore off the canvas roof with its trunk, tipped the vehicle over with its tusks, and stamped on it like a biscuit tin until the screaming under its feet stopped. The newspaper listed other recent fatal attacks in a sidebar. Mother hippos were the worst of the serial killers. It was best not to get between a hippo and her offspring, the item warned. She’d attack you at up to thirty kilometres an hour, as agile as a filly despite her two-and-a-half thousand kilos. She’d stamp you to a pulp, starting with your head, and waddle sedately back to her baby.
Tony has been here for an hour, already. The view continues to intimidate him. A reddish-orange globe, low-hanging and freakishly large, makes the landscape shimmer like a Bible illustration. In front of him, there’s a gateway to nowhere, formed by two rock faces. They rise up hundreds of metres and recede many kilometres into the distance. A majestic scar, a ravine that lives up to its name: God’s Window. The Porch of the Supreme Being.
Closer by, at the foot of his lookout hill, a watering hole beckons, surrounded by rushes and a few clumps of miserable, dusty bush. At the waterline, wading birds peck at bugs. The rising breeze causes the surface to ripple. Or invisible, toothed jaws just under the water do. You can’t be sure of anything here—Africa is still Africa, especially for Europeans. Tony has one last look around and gets out the gun he has yet to use. His four-by-four is parked behind him like a tank.
It’ll be the first shot he’s fired since his military service. He’s worried about the report next to his ear, but even more worried about the echo. How many minutes does he have after the last reverberations die away in God’s Porch? How quickly can he reach the hole he cut in the fence this morning and hastily covered up? He’s a long way from the wildlife paparazzi’s usual routes. He’ll have to use his iPhone as a compass.
He polishes
