The Eye Of The Leopard

by Mankell Henning

  Impatiently he waits for daybreak. He walks through the silent rooms and stops in front of the mirrors and looks at his face. He utters a moan that echoes through the empty house.

  At dawn he opens the door. Faint bands of mist are drifting over the river. Luka is waiting outside, as well as the gardeners and the woman who washes his clothes. When he sees their silent faces he shudders. Their thoughts are clear enough ...

  Eighteen years later he remembers that morning. As if the memory and the present have merged. He can recall the mist that drifted over the Kafue, Luka's inscrutable face, the shudder that went through his body.

  When almost everything is already past, he returns to that moment, October 1970. He remembers wandering through the silent house and the plans he made for the future. In the reflection of that night he looks back on the many years, a lifetime of eighteen years in Africa.

  Judith Fillington never came back. In December 1970 he has a visit from her lawyer, to his surprise an African and not a white man, who delivers a letter from Naples, asking for his decision. He gives it to Mr Dobson, who promises to telegraph it to her and return as soon as possible with the papers to be signed. At the New Year, signatures are exchanged between Naples and Kalulushi. At the same time Mr Pihri comes to visit with his son.

  'Everything will be the same as always,' says Hans Olofson.

  'Trouble should be avoided,' replies Mr Pihri with a smile. 'My son, young Mr Pihri, saw a used motorcycle for sale in Chingola a few days ago.'

  'My visa will have to be renewed soon,' says Olofson. 'Of course young Mr Pihri needs a motorcycle.'

  In mid-January a long letter arrives from Judith, postmarked Rome. I have understood something, she writes. Something I never dared realise before. During my whole life in Africa, from my earliest childhood, I grew up in a world that depended on the differences between blacks and whites. My parents took pity on the blacks, on their poverty. They saw the necessary development, they taught me to understand that the whites' situation would only prevail for a limited time. Maybe two or three generations. Then an upheaval would take place; the blacks would take over the whites' functions, and the whites would see their imagined importance reduced. Maybe they would even dwindle to an oppressed minority. I learned that the blacks were poor, their lives restricted. But I also learned that they have something we don't have. A dignity that will someday turn out to be the deciding factor. I realise now that I have denied this insight, perhaps especially after my husband disappeared without a trace. I blamed the blacks for his disappearance; I hated them for something they didn't do. Now that Africa is so far away, now that I have decided to live the rest of my life here, I can dare once more to acknowledge the insight I previously denied. I have seen the brute in the African, but not in myself. A point will always come in everyone's life when the most important thing must be turned over to someone else.

  She asks him to write and let her know when Duncan Jones dies, and gives him the address of a bank on the island of Jersey.

  Mr Dobson comes with men who pack up Judith's belongings in huge wooden crates. He checks them off meticulously on a list.

  'Whatever is left is yours,' he tells Olofson.

  They go into the room that is filled with bones.

  'She doesn't mention anything about this,' says Mr Dobson. 'So it's yours.'

  'What am I going to do with it?' asks Olofson.

  'That's hardly a matter for a lawyer,' replies Mr Dobson amiably. 'But I suppose there are two choices. Either you leave it be, or you get rid of it. The crocodile can easily be taken back to the river.'

  Together with Luka he carries the remains down to the river and watches as they sink to the bottom. The femur of an elephant glints through the water.

  'We Africans will avoid this spot, Bwana,' says Luka. 'We see dead animals who still live on the bottom. The crocodile's skeleton may be more dangerous than the living crocodile.'

  'What are you thinking?' asks Olofson.

  'I think what I think, Bwana,' replies Luka.

  Olofson stretches taut his eighteen-year arc of time, filled with transforming his farm into a political model.

  Early one Saturday morning he gathers all the workers outside the mud hut that is his office, climbs up on a petrol tank, and tells them that now he is the one, not Judith Fillington, who owns the farm. He sees their guarded faces but he is determined to carry out what he has decided to do.

  During the years that follow, years of ceaseless work, he tries to implement what he has taken on as his great task. He singles out the most industrious workers as foremen and gives them all more responsible assignments. He introduces drastic wage increases, builds new housing, and overseas the construction of a school for the workers' children. From the start he is met by opposition from the other white farmers.

  'You're undermining your own position,' Werner Masterton tells him when they visit one evening.

  'You don't have a clue,' says Ruth. 'I hope it isn't too late when you come to your senses.'

  'Too late for what?' Olofson asks.

  'For everything,' Ruth replies.

  Sometimes Duncan Jones stands like a phantom and watches him. Olofson sees how the blacks fear him. One night when he is again awakened by the night watchmen to fight a fierce battle against invading hunter ants, he hears Duncan Jones wailing from his fortified house.

  Two years later he is dead. During the rainy season the house begins to smell, and when they break in they find Jones's halfdecayed body on the floor among bottles and half-eaten meals. The house is full of insects, and yellow moths swarm over the dead body. In the night he hears the drums pounding. The spirit of the holy man is already hovering over the farm.

  Duncan Jones is buried on a little hill by the river. A Catholic priest comes from Kitwe. Other than Olofson there is no white man at the coffin, only the black workers.

  He writes a letter care of the bank in Jersey, announcing that Duncan Jones is dead. He never hears a word from Judith.

  The house stands empty for a long time before Olofson decides to tear down the wall and set up a health centre for the workers and their families.

  With infinite slowness he seems to sense a change. Metre by metre he attempts to eradicate the boundary between himself and the 200 workers.

  The first hint that everything has gone totally wrong, that all his good intentions have backfired, comes after a trip he takes to Dar-es-Salaam. The production figures begin to fall inexplicably. Complaints come in about broken eggs or eggs that are never delivered. Spare parts start disappearing, chicken feed and tools vanish unaccountably. He discovers that the foremen are falsifying roll call lists, and during a night check he finds half of the watchmen asleep, some dead drunk. He calls in the foremen and demands an explanation, but all he gets are peculiar excuses.

  He had made the trip to Dar-es-Salaam to buy spare parts for the farm's tractor. Then the day after the tractor is repaired, it's gone. He calls the police and fires all the night watchmen, but the tractor remains missing.

  This is when he makes a serious mistake. He sends for Mr Pihri and they drink tea in the mud hut.

  'My tractor is gone,' says Olofson. 'I made the long journey to Dar-es-Salaam to buy spare parts that are unavailable in this country. I made this long trip so that my tractor would function again. Now it's gone.'

  'That is naturally very troublesome,' replies Mr Pihri.

  'I don't see why your colleagues can't track down the tractor. In this country there aren't that many tractors. A tractor is hard to hide. It must also be difficult to drive it over the border to Zaire to sell it in Lubumbashi. I don't understand why your colleagues can't find it.'

  Mr Pihri all at once becomes very serious. In the dim light Olofson thinks he sees a dangerous glint in his eyes. The silence lasts a long time.

  'The reason my colleagues can't find the tractor is because it is no longer a tractor,' replies Mr Pihri at last. 'Perhaps it's already been taken apart? How can one distinguish on
e screw from another? A gear shift has no face. My colleagues would be very upset if they found out that you are displeased with their work. Very, very upset. It would mean trouble that even I could do nothing about.'

  'But I want my tractor back!'

  Mr Pihri serves himself more tea before he answers.

  'Not everyone is in agreement,' he says.

  'In agreement about what?'

  'That whites should still own most of the best land without even being citizens of our country. They don't want to exchange their passports, but still they own our best land.'

  'I don't understand what that has to do with my tractor.'

  'Trouble should be avoided. If my colleagues can't find your tractor, it means that there is no longer a tractor to be found. Naturally it would be quite unfortunate if you were also to upset my colleagues. We have much patience. But it can come to an end.'

  He follows Mr Pihri out into the sun. His farewell is unusually brief, and Olofson realises that he has stepped over an invisible boundary. I have to be careful, he thinks. I should never have mentioned the tractor.

  In the night he wakes abruptly, and as he lies in the dark listening to the dogs' restless patrolling of his house, he feels that he is ready to give up. Sell the farm, transfer the profits to Judith, and take off. But there is always something that needs to be done first. The drop in production halts after he takes all decisions into his own hands for a while.

  He writes to his father, asking him to visit. Only once does he get an answer, and the inarticulate letter tells him that Erik Olofson is drinking more heavily and more often. Maybe someday I'll understand it, he thinks. Maybe when I understand why I'm staying here. He looks at his suntanned face in the mirror. He has changed his appearance, let his beard grow.

  One morning he realises that he no longer recognises himself. The face in the mirror belongs to someone else. He gives a start. Luka is standing behind him, and as usual he hasn't heard his bare feet on the stone floor.

  'A man has come to visit, Bwana,' he says.

  'Who?'

  'Peter Motombwane, Bwana.'

  'I don't know anyone by that name.'

  'He has still come, Bwana.'

  'Who is he and what does he want?'

  'Only he knows, Bwana.'

  Olofson turns around and looks at Luka.

  'Ask him to have a seat and wait, Luka. I'll be right there.'

  Luka leaves. Something is making Olofson nervous. Not until many years later will he understand why.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Who whispers the password in his ear? Who reveals what his Goal will be? How does he find a direction in life that is not merely a point of the compass? This year too, 1959, springtime finally breaks through the obstinate barriers of cold, and Hans Olofson has decided that one more leave-taking is necessary. His decision is vague and hesitant, but he knows that he can't escape the admonition that he has given himself.

  One Saturday evening in May, when Under comes roaring up in his Buick in a cloud of dust, Hans screws up his courage and goes out to meet him. At first the horse dealer doesn't understand what the boy is muttering about. He tries to brush him off, but Hans is stubborn and doesn't back down before he has delivered his message. When Under grasps that the boy is standing there stammering out his resignation, he flies into a rage. He raises his hand to deal a box on the ear, but the boy is quick to scamper away. The only thing left for Under is to dispense a symbolic humiliation, and he pulls out a wad of money and peels off one of the lowest value, a fiver, and tosses it in the gravel.

  'You're being paid according to your services. But it's a damned shame that the authorities don't print notes worth even less. You're being overpaid ...'

  Hans picks up the note and goes into the stable to say goodbye to the horses and the Holmström twins.

  'What will you do now?' ask the brothers, who are washing themselves under the cold tap in preparation for Saturday night.

  'I don't know,' he replies. 'Something will turn up.'

  'We're going to move on next winter too,' the brothers tell him as they change their mucking-out boots for black dancing shoes.

  They offer him aquavit.

  'That damned horse dealer,' they say, passing around the bottle. 'If you see a Saab, it's us! Don't forget it.' He runs across the river bridge in the spring night to tell Janine of his decision. Because she hasn't yet returned from one of Hurrapelle's Joyous Spring Fellowships, he strolls about in her garden and thinks about the time he and Sture splashed varnish all over her currant bushes. He shudders at the memory, wishing he hadn't been reminded of that thoughtless act.

  Is there anything that can be understood? Isn't life, which is so difficult to manage, nothing but a series of incomprehensible events lurking behind the corners as one passes? Who can ever deal with the dark impulses hidden inside? Secret rooms and wild horses, he thinks. That's what you have to carry around.

  He sits down on the steps and wonders about Sture. He's out there somewhere. But is he in a distant hospital or on one of the furthest stars in the universe? Many times he thought of asking Nyman the courthouse caretaker, but it never came to anything. There are many reasons not to find out. He doesn't want to know for sure. He can see the horrifying images far too clearly in his mind. An iron pipe, thick as the pipe on a coffee pot, rammed down his throat. And the iron lung? What can that be? He sees a big black beetle opening up its body and enclosing Sture under its shiny wings.

  But not to be able to move? Day after day? For his whole life? He tries to imagine it by sitting on Janine's porch, completely still, but it doesn't work. He can't comprehend it. That's why it's good that he doesn't know for sure. Then a little door still remains to be pushed open. A little door to the idea that Sture may have recovered, or that the iron bridge and the river and the red jacket were all a dream.

  There's a crunching on the gravel, and Janine appears. He has been so deep in thought that he didn't hear her open the gate. Now he jumps up as if he has been caught in the act of doing something forbidden.

  Janine stands there in her white coat and light-blue dress. In the dusk the light falls so that her white nose handkerchief under her eyes takes on the same colour as her skin.

  Something passes by, a shiver. Something that is more important than all the world's evil horse dealers. How long ago was it? Two months already. One morning, Under had flung a terrified stable girl in among the horses, a girl he had found on a lonely horse farm deep in the forests of Hälsingland. A girl who wanted to get away, who knew about horses, and who he'd stuffed in the back seat of his Buick.

  Hans Olofson had loved her boundlessly. For the month she was at the stable he had circled round her like an attentive butterfly, and every evening he had stayed behind just to be alone with her. But one day she was gone. Under had taken her back, cursing her parents for pestering him with calls about how she was doing.

  Hans had loved her, and in the twilight when he can't see the nose handkerchief he loves Janine too. But he's afraid of her ability to read his thoughts. So he gets up quickly, spits in the gravel, and asks where the hell she has been.

  'We had a spring fellowship,' she says.

  She sits down next to him on the steps and they watch a sparrow hopping about in a footprint in the gravel. Her thigh touches his leg. The stable girl, he thinks. Marie, or Rimma as they called her. One time he stayed behind, hiding behind the hay, and watched her take off her clothes and wash naked by the water pump. He was just about to rush forward, force himself on her, and let himself be swallowed up by the inconceivable mystery.

  The sparrow crouches in the footprint. Janine hums and touches her leg to his. Doesn't she understand what she's doing? The wild horses are tugging and twitching where they are chained in his secret stalls. What will happen if they break loose? What can he do then?