The Eye Of The Leopard

by Henning Mankell

  Her wealth is boundless. In comparison with her I am a very poor person. It would be wrong to claim that my money would increase her well-being. It would only make her work easier. She would not have to die at the age of forty, worn out by her labours.

  The four daughters return in a row, carrying water buckets and wood. This I must remember, he thinks, and abruptly realises that he has decided to leave Africa. After nineteen years the decision has formulated itself. He sees the daughters coming along a path, their black bodies erect to help their heads balance their burdens; he sees them and thinks about the time he lay behind a dilapidated brickworks outside the town in Sweden.

  I came here, he thinks. When I lay behind a rusty brick furnace I wondered what the world looked like. Now I know. Joyce Lufuma and her four daughters. It took me over thirty years to reach this insight.

  He shares their meal, eating nshima and vegetables. The charcoal fire flares, Peggy and Marjorie tell about Lusaka. They have already forgotten Lars Håkansson and his camera, he thinks. What is past is past. For a long time he sits by their fire, listening, saying little. Now that he has decided to sell his farm, leave, he is no longer in a hurry. He isn't even upset that Africa has conquered him, devoured him to a point where he can no longer go on. The starry sky above his head is perfectly clear. Finally he is sitting alone with Joyce; her daughters are asleep inside the mud house.

  'Soon it will be morning again,' he says, and he speaks in her own language, Bemba, which he has learned passably well during all the years he has been in Africa.

  'If God wills, one more day,' she replies.

  He thinks of all the words that don't exist in her language. Words for happiness, the future, hope. Words that wouldn't be possible because they do not represent the experiences of these people.

  'Who am I?' he asks her.

  'A bwana mzungu,' she replies.

  'Nothing more?' he asks.

  She looks at him and doesn't understand. 'Is there anything more?' she asks.

  Maybe not, he thinks. Maybe that's all I am, a bwana mzungu. A strange bwana who doesn't have any children, not even a wife. He decides to tell her the absolute truth.

  'I will be going away from here, Joyce. Other people will take over the farm. But I will take care of you and your daughters. Maybe it's better if you return with your children to the regions around Luapula where you came from. There you have family, your origins. I will give you money so you can build a house and buy enough limas of farmland so that you can live a good life. Before I leave I have to arrange for Peggy and Marjorie to finish their nursing studies. Maybe it would be better if they went to the school in Chipata. It isn't too far from Luapula, and not as big as Lusaka. But I want you to know that I'm leaving, and I want to ask you not to tell anyone yet. The people on the farm might be worried, and I don't want that.'

  She listens to him attentively, and he speaks slowly to show her that he is serious.

  'I'm going back to my homeland,' he goes on. 'In the same way as you might return to Luapula.'

  All at once she smiles at him, as if she has understood the real meaning of his words.

  'Your family is waiting for you there,' she says. 'Your wife and your children.'

  'Yes,' he says. 'They are waiting there, and they have waited a long time.'

  She asks eagerly about his family, and he creates one for her, three sons and two daughters, a wife. She could never understand anyway, he thinks. The white man's life would be incomprehensible to her.

  Late in the night he gets up and walks to his car. In the beam of the headlights he sees her close the door to the mud house. Africans are hospitable, he thinks. And yet I have never been inside her house.

  The German shepherds come to meet him outside his house. He will never have dogs again, he thinks. I don't want to live surrounded by noisy sirens and animals trained to go for the throat. It's not natural for a Swede to keep a revolver under his pillow, to check every night that it's loaded, that the magazine rotates its cartridges. He walks through the silent house and wonders what there is for him to go back to. Eighteen years might be too long. He has little idea what has happened in Sweden in all these years. He sits down in the room he calls his work room, turns on a lamp and checks that the curtains are drawn.

  When I sell the farm I will have stacks of kwacha banknotes that I can't take with me or even exchange. Patel can surely help me with some, but he will see the opportunity and demand an exchange fee of at least fifty per cent. I have money in a bank in London, even though I don't really know how much. When I leave I will do so empty-handed.

  Again he doubts that his departure is necessary. I could accept the revolver under the pillow, he thinks. The terror that is always present, the uncertainty that I have lived with this long. If I stay here another fifteen years I can retire, maybe move to Livingstone or Sweden. Others besides Patel can help me get the money out to secure my remaining years.

  I have nothing to go back to in Sweden. My father is long dead, and hardly anyone in my home town will remember who I am. How will I survive in a winter landscape now that I've grown used to Africa's heat – exchange my sandals for ski boots?

  For a moment he toys with the thought of returning to his studies, using his middle years to complete his law degree. For twenty years he has worked at shaping his life, yet he has remained in Africa because of chance events. Going back to Sweden would not be a return. I would have to start all over again. But with what?

  He wanders restlessly about his room. A hippo bellows from the Kafue. How many cobras have I seen during my years in Africa? he asks himself. Three or four a year, countless crocodiles, hippos and pythons. In all these years only a single green mamba, which had sneaked into the hen house. I ran over an ape with my car outside Mufulira once, a big male baboon. In Luangwa I saw lions and thousands of elephants, pocos and kudus have leaped high through the grass and sometimes crossed my path. But I have never seen a leopard, only sensed its shadow on that night Judith Fillington asked me to help her with her farm.

  When I leave here Africa will fade away like an extraordinary dream, stretched out to encompass a decisive part of my life. What am I actually going to take with me? A hen and an egg? That tree branch with inscriptions that I found down by the river one time, a witch doctor's forgotten staff? Or will I take Peter Motombwane's holy panga with me, and show people the weapon that sliced up two of my friends and that one night was going to be raised over my own throat? Should I fill my pockets with the red dirt?

  I carry Africa inside me, drums pounding distantly in the night. A starry sky whose clarity I have never before experienced. The variations of nature on the seventeenth parallel. The scent of charcoal, the ever-present smell of ingrained sweat from my workers. Joyce Lufuma's daughters walking in a row with bundles on their heads.

  I can't leave Africa before I make peace with myself, he thinks. With the fact that I stayed here for almost twenty years. Life is the way it is, and mine became what it became. I probably would have been no happier if I had finished my studies and spent my time in the world of Swedish justice. How many people dream of venturing out? I did it, and one might also say that I succeeded with something. I'll keep brooding over meaningless details if I don't accept my eighteen years in Africa as something I'm grateful for, in spite of everything.

  Deep inside I also know that I have to leave. The two men I killed, Africa which is devouring me, make it impossible to stay. Maybe I'll simply flee, maybe that's the most natural leave-taking. I have to start planning my departure right away, tomorrow. Give myself the time required, but no more.

  After he goes to bed he reflects that he has absolutely no regrets at having run over Lars Håkansson. His death hardly affects him. But Peter Motombwane's blasted head aches inside him. In his dreams he is watched by a leopard's vigilant eye.

  Olofson's final days in Africa stretch out to half a year. He offers his farm to the white colony, but to his astonishment no one bids on it. When he asks wh
y, he realises that the location is too isolated. It's a profitable farm, but nobody dares take it over. After four months he has only two offers, and he realises that the price he will get for it is very poor.

  The two bidders are Patel and Mr Pihri and his son. When word gets out that he is leaving his farm, they both come to visit; only chance keeps them from appearing on his terrace at precisely the same moment. Mr Pihri and his son regret his departure. Naturally, Olofson thinks. Their best source of income is disappearing. No used cars, no sewing machines, no back seat stacked full of eggs.

  When Mr Pihri enquires about the asking price for the farm, Olofson thinks it's merely the man's eternal curiosity. Only later does he understand to his surprise that Mr Pihri is a bidder. Did I give him that much money over the years? So many bribes that now he can afford to buy my farm? If that's the case, it's a perfect summation of this country, perhaps of Africa itself.

  'I have a question,' Olofson says to him. 'And I mean this in a friendly way.'

  'Our conversations are always friendly,' says Mr Pihri.

  'All those documents,' Olofson says. 'All those documents that had to be stamped so I wouldn't have problems. Were they necessary?'

  Mr Pihri thinks for a long time before he replies. 'I don't quite understand.'

  Well, that would be the first time, Olofson thinks.

  'In all friendliness,' he continues. 'I wonder only whether you and your son have done me such great favours as I have believed.'

  Mr Pihri looks distressed; his son lowers his eyes.

  'We have avoided trouble,' replies Mr Pihri. 'In Africa our aim is always mutual benefit.'

  I'll never know how much he has fooled me, Olofson thinks. How much of my money he in turn has paid to other corrupt civil servants. I'll have to live with that riddle.

  The same day Patel drives up to the farm in his rusty car.

  'Naturally a farm like this would not be hard to sell,' he says with a smile.

  His humility conceals a predator, thinks Olofson. Right now he's calculating percentages, preparing his solemn speech about how dangerous it is to make illegal deposits of currency outside the control of the Zambian National Bank. People like Mr Pihri and Patel are among this continent's most deplorable individuals. Without them nothing functions. The price of corruption is the usual: the impotence of the poor. Olofson mentions his difficulties and the price he had in mind.

  'Of course it's a scandalously low price,' he says.

  'These are uncertain times,' replies Patel.

  Two days later a letter arrives in which Patel informs him that he will be bidding on the farm, but that the price seems a bit high to him, in view of the difficult times. Now I have two bidders, Olofson thinks. Both are ready to talk me down, using my own money.

  He writes a letter to the bank in London notifying them that he's selling his farm. The contract that was prepared with the lawyer in Kitwe stipulates that the entire sale price now falls to him. The law firm in Kitwe no longer exists; his lawyer has moved to Harare in Zimbabwe. A reply comes from the bank in London a couple of weeks later, advising him that Judith Fillington died in 1983. Since the bank no longer had any business associated with the old or new owners, it had not deemed it necessary to inform him of her death.

  For a long time he sits with the letter in his hand, remembering their helpless act of love. Every life is always a completed whole, he thinks. Afterwards no retouching is permitted, no additions. No matter how hollow it may have been, at the end it is still a completed whole.

  One day in late November, a few months before he leaves Africa, Olofson drives Joyce Lufuma and her daughters to Luapula. They load her few possessions into one of the egg lorries. Mattresses, cooking implements, bundles of clothes. Outside Luapula he follows Joyce's instructions, turning down a barely passable bush track, and finally stops by a cluster of mud houses.

  Instantly the car is surrounded by dirty, skinny children. Swarms of flies engulf Olofson as he climbs out. After the children come the adults, enclosing Joyce and her children in their community. The African family, Olofson thinks. In some way they are all related to each other, prepared to share even though they possess virtually nothing. With the money I gave Joyce she will be the most well-to-do person in this community. But she will share it all; in the remote villages a sense of solidarity lives on that is otherwise not visible on this continent.

  On the outskirts of the village Joyce shows him where she will build her house, keep her goats, and plant her plots of maize and cassava. Until the house is built she will live with her daughters in the house of one of her sisters. Peggy and Marjorie will finish their studies in Chipata. A missionary family that Olofson contacted has promised to take care of them, letting them stay in their house. More I cannot do, he thought. The missionaries will hardly let them be photographed naked and send their pictures to Germany. Maybe they will try to convert the girls, but there's nothing I can do about that.

  He has transferred 10,000 kwacha into a bank account for Joyce, and taught her how to write her name. He has also transferred 10,000 kwacha to the missionaries of Mutshatsha. He knows that 20,000 kwacha is what one of his workers earns in an entire lifetime. Everything is unreasonable, he tells himself. Africa is a continent where everything is out of proportion to what I once was accustomed to. It's quite easy to make a rich woman of Joyce Lufuma. I'm sure she doesn't realise how much money I have given her. Maybe it's best that way. With tears in his eyes he says goodbye. Now is when I'm really leaving Africa, he thinks. Whatever binds me to this continent ceases with Joyce and her daughters.

  When he gets into the car, the daughters are dancing around him. Joyce beats a drum and the sound follows him away. The outcome of the future depends on these women, he thinks again. I can only pass on a part of the money I still have in abundance. The future is their own.

  He assembles his foremen and promises to do what he can so that the new owner will keep them all on. He buys two oxen and prepares for a party. A lorry comes to the farm with 4,000 bottles of beer. The party goes on all night; the fires flare up and drunken Africans dance to a seemingly endless number of drums. Olofson sits with the old men and watches the dark bodies moving around the fires. Tonight nobody hates me, he thinks. Tomorrow the usual reality will resume. This is a night when no knife blades glisten. The whetstones are at rest.

  Tomorrow reality is once again as it must be, filled to bursting point with contradictions that one day will explode in a necessary revolt. In the shadows he thinks he sees Peter Motombwane. Which one of these people will carry on his dream? Someone will do it, I'm certain of that.

  One Saturday in December he sells off the furniture in the house at an improvised auction. The white colony has come, along with a few blacks. Mr Pihri and his son are an exception, Patel another. None of them places any bids. The books that he once took over from Judith Fillington are purchased by a mining engineer from Luansha. His shotgun goes to one of his neighbours. He decides to keep his revolver. The furniture he once used for barricades is carried off to vehicles which then drive to various farms. He keeps two wicker chairs that sit on the terrace. On this Saturday he receives innumerable invitations to farewell dinners. He accepts them all.

  When the auction is over only his empty house remains, and the question of who will take over the farm. Mr Pihri and Patel make identical offers, as if they had entered into a secret pact. But Olofson knows that they are bitter enemies, and he decides once and for all to play them off against each other. He sets a date, 15 December at midday. Whoever gives him the highest bid by that deadline will take over the farm.

  With a lawyer he has brought in from Lusaka he waits on the terrace. A few minutes before twelve both Patel and Mr Pihri arrive. Olofson asks them to write down their bids on slips of paper. Mr Pihri excuses himself for not having a pen and has to borrow one from the lawyer. Patel's bid is higher than Mr Pihri's. When Olofson reads the result, he sees the hatred for Patel flash in Mr Pihri's eyes. Patel won't h
ave an easy time of it with him, Olofson thinks. With him or with his son.

  'There is one unwritten condition,' Olofson tells Patel when they are alone. 'One condition that I do not hesitate to impose, since you have bought this farm for a shamelessly low price.'