‘I wanted to ask if you’d seen a notebook here, sir,’ Krüger said. He held up his hands, palms facing, and made a width. ‘About this size. I left it here earlier.’

Mr Hendrik shook his head. ‘You sound hopeful. I am sorry. Was it important?’

Krüger sat down, defeated. ‘Thoughts,’ he said. ‘Ideas.’

‘Maybe it is for the best then.’ The Negro pointed at the soup. ‘Eat.’

The invitation seemed so normal and familiar that Krüger dragged the bowl over and picked up the spoon.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and began to tear at the bread that came with the soup, dropping the pieces into the bowl.

They introduced themselves, and after they’d eaten the soup they ordered mugs of beer. They asked polite questions of each other. Naturally, the talk turned to electrical eels.

‘Can they kill a man?’ Krüger said.

Mr Hendrik nodded. ‘It is an unpleasant death.’

‘How do you catch them?’

‘There are different ways. The Indians use wild horses to drive them out of the mud, then push them into baskets with reeds.’

‘What happens to the horses?’

‘They panic and fall. Some are killed, some drown.’

Krüger sat back, wrists on the table edge. He tried to imagine it. At the same time, he suddenly fathomed just how truly vast the world was.

‘You’ve come a long way,’ he said. ‘Collectors must pay handsomely.’

Mr Hendrik smiled. The whites of his eyes were yellowish in the lamplight of the inn.

‘Power,’ Krüger said. ‘To own rarities.’

‘They believe it exists in things.’

Krüger picked up his beer and drank. The ale was dark and strong and made him feel expanded. ‘Sometimes believing is enough to make things true,’ he said.

Wesley Lewis Jr mumbled in his sleep.

‘In Surinam, the rebel slaves wear obia around their necks, for protection,’ Mr Hendrik said. ‘You would call them talismans. The rebel slaves believe muskets cannot harm them when they wear the obia. They charge the Dutch without fear. Of those who are shot dead, they say he did not believe enough.’

‘Do you believe?’

Mr Hendrik opened his coat and undid two buttons on his shirt. He pulled out a corded necklace of coarse woven grass. There was a knot tied into it, with a thick finger of carved bone through the middle, strange markings down its length.

‘A gift from my sister,’ he said.

Krüger saw scars across the man’s chest, like lines of jagged candle wax. He stared at them, shocked at the silent violence they contained.

‘You were a slave,’ Krüger said.

‘I am still a slave.’

Krüger looked at the sleeping man. ‘Is he your master?’

Mr Hendrik shook his head. ‘Not even of himself,’ he said. ‘My master is in Surinam.’

‘He let you come?’