Mr Hendrik tucked the obia back inside his shirt, did up the buttons. ‘He has my sister,’ he said, and felt the longing for Josephine.

‘So you’ll go back.’

‘Of course.’

‘When?’

Mr Hendrik and Wesley Lewis Jr were due to leave for Rotterdam in the morning. The money for the electrical eels would be deposited at the master’s bank there, and then a few days later they’d board the Hoogendijk and sail back to Paramaribo.

The two men ordered more beer and spoke of different things and sometimes sat through comfortable silences.

Back in his room, Krüger lay down on the bed. He sank heavily into the straw mattress and his head spun wildly. There’s nothing for me in Berlin, he thought.

Without Hilde, there was nothing for him anywhere in dead, bloody Europe.

Why not Paramaribo? Why not?

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Captain Willem van der Velde stood in loose, cool, fine silk clothes, wearing a wide-brimmed hat against the glare, a long thin pipe in his hand which he smoked with quick puffs. His cheeks glowed, flushed with gin, his blue eyes squinting. He belched and swayed in the heat. Hamstringing was a standard punishment, but he always liked to supervise.

Beside him stood a young female slave, tray in hand with more supply of liquor. Her name was Anja. Her naked breasts were scratched and her bottom lip was swollen and bruised, the work of the master’s wife that morning when she found Anja in the master’s bed, a position she should have vacated before sunrise (these were the rules) but hadn’t due to her inebriation. And now, like her master, she stood there beneath the torturous sun and fought the nauseous agitations of her body, trying desperately to hold the trembling tray straight. Her lip throbbed and sweat stung at the raw fingernail marks striping her breasts.

She put her mind in her toes. She concentrated on the mouldering dark green leaves and the rich moist soil; she squeezed it between her toes. She put her mind in her toes and didn’t think about the boy being hamstrung, who was her son. And she didn’t think about the butcher, who was her half-brother. And she didn’t think about her belly, where a child by the master now grew.