The Eye Of The Leopard

by Mankell Henning

  When he returns to his house it has started to rain, a torrential pounding rain that cuts visibility almost to zero. He thinks he glimpses a black shadow disappearing behind the house as he turns into the courtyard. For a long time he stays sitting in the car with the windscreen wipers working frantically. I'm afraid, he realises. More afraid than I've ever been before. The ones who murdered Ruth and Werner have also stabbed their knives into me. He takes the safety off his gun and runs through the rain, unlocks the door and slams it hard behind him.

  The rain booms on the sheet-metal roof, the German shepherd he was given when he turned forty is sitting strangely motionless on the kitchen floor. Immediately he has the feeling that someone has been inside the house while he was gone. Something in the dog's behaviour troubles him. Usually it meets him with energetic joy, but now it is inexplicably quiet.

  He looks at the dog given to him by Ruth and Werner Masterton and realises that real life is turning into a nightmare. He squats down in front of the dog and scratches behind his ear.

  'What is it?' he whispers. 'Tell me what it is, show me if something has happened.'

  He walks through his house, still with his pistol ready, and the dog follows him quietly. The feeling that someone has been inside the house doesn't leave him, even though he can't see that anything is missing or has been moved. And yet he knows.

  He lets the dog out to join the others.

  'Keep watch now,' he says.

  All night long he sits in a chair with his weapons close by. There is a hatred that is boundless, a hatred for the whites which he only now comprehends. Nothing suggests that he would be spared from being enveloped by this hatred. The price he pays for the good life he has led in Africa is that he now sits awake with his weapons next to him.

  At dawn he dozes off in his chair. Dreams take him back to his past. He sees himself laboriously trudging through snow metres deep, a pack on his back and wearing ski boots that are always too big. Somewhere he glimpses Janine's face, Célestine in her case.

  He wakes up with a jolt and realises that someone is pounding on the kitchen door. He takes the safety off his gun and opens the door. Luka stands outside. Out of nowhere comes the fury and he points his gun at Luka, presses the cold barrel against his chest.

  'The best explanation you've ever given me,' he shouts. 'That's what I want. And I want it now. Otherwise you'll never come inside my house again.'

  His outburst, the pistol with the safety off, doesn't seem to faze the dignified black man standing before him.

  'A white snake cast itself at my breast,' he says. 'Like a flame of fire it bored through my body. In order not to die I was forced to seek out a kashinakashi. He lives a long way from here, he's hard to find. I walked without stopping for a day and a night. He welcomed me and freed me of the white snake. I came back at once, Bwana.'

  'You're lying, you damned Negro,' says Olofson. 'A white snake? There aren't any white snakes, and there aren't any snakes that can bore through a person's chest. I'm not interested in your superstitions, I want to know the truth.'

  'What I'm saying is true, Bwana,' says Luka. 'A white snake forced its way through my chest.'

  In rage Olofson strikes him with the barrel of his pistol. Blood runs from the torn skin on Luka's cheek, but he still fails to disturb the man's unflappable dignity.

  'It's 1987,' Olofson says. 'You're a grown man, you've lived among mzunguz your whole life. You know that the African superstition is your own backwardness, ancient notions that you are too weak to free yourself from. This too is something the whites have to help you with. If we weren't here, you would all kill each other with your illusions.'

  'Our president is an educated man, Bwana,' says Luka.

  'Perhaps,' says Olofson. 'He has banned sorcery. A witch doctor can be sent to prison.'

  'Our president always has a white handkerchief in his hand, Bwana,' Luka goes on, unperturbed. 'He keeps it to make himself invulnerable, to protect himself from sorcery. He knows that he can't prevent what is real just by prohibiting it.'

  He's unreachable, Olofson thinks. He's the one I should fear most, since he knows my habits.

  'Your brothers have murdered my friends,' he says. 'But you know that, don't you?'

  'Everyone knows it, Bwana,' says Luka.

  'Good people,' Olofson says. 'Hard-working people, innocent people.'

  'No one is innocent, Bwana,' says Luka. 'It's a sad event, but sad events must happen sometimes.'

  'Who killed them?' Olofson asks. 'If you know anything, tell me.'

  'Nobody knows anything, Bwana,' Luka replies calmly.

  'I think you're lying,' says Olofson. 'You always know what's going on, sometimes even before it happens. But now you don't know anything, all of a sudden nothing at all. Maybe it was a white snake that killed them and cut off their heads?'

  'Maybe it was, Bwana,' says Luka.

  'You've worked for me almost twenty years,' Olofson says. 'I've always treated you well, paid you well, given you clothes, a radio, everything you asked for and even things you didn't ask for. And yet I don't trust you. What is there to prevent you from smashing a panga into my head one morning instead of serving me my coffee? You people cut the throats of your benefactors, you talk about white snakes, and you turn to witch doctors. What do you think would happen if all the whites left this country? What would you eat?'

  'Then we would decide, Bwana,' Luka says.

  Olofson lowers his pistol. 'One more time,' he says. 'Who killed Ruth and Werner Masterton?'

  'Whoever did it knows, Bwana,' says Luka. 'No one else.'

  'But you have an idea, don't you?' says Olofson. 'What's going on in your head?'

  'It's an unsettled time, Bwana,' Luka replies. 'People have nothing to eat. Our lorries filled with eggs are hijacked. Hungry people are dangerous just before they become completely powerless. They see where the food is, they hear about the meals the whites eat, they are starving.'

  'But why Ruth and Werner?' Olofson asks. 'Why them of all people?'

  'Everything must begin somewhere, Bwana,' Luka says. 'A direction must always be chosen.'

  Of course he's right, Olofson thinks. In the dark a bloody decision is reached, a finger points in an arbitrary direction, and there stands Ruth and Werner Masterton's house. Next time the finger could be pointing at me.

  'One thing you should know,' he tells Luka. 'I've never killed anyone. But I won't hesitate. Not even if I have to kill you.'

  'I'll keep that in mind, Bwana,' says Luka.

  A car comes slowly along the muddy, rutted road from the hen houses. Olofson recognises Peter Motombwane's rusty Peugeot.

  'Coffee and tea,' he says to Luka. 'Motombwane doesn't like coffee.'

  They sit on the terrace.

  'You've been expecting me, of course,' Motombwane says, as he stirs his tea.

  'Actually, no,' Olofson replies. 'Right now I'm expecting both everything and nothing.'

  'You forget that I'm a journalist,' says Motombwane. 'You forget that you're an important person yourself. You were the first to see what happened.'

  Without warning Hans Olofson begins to sob; a violent outburst of sorrow and fear is released from inside him. Motombwane waits with his head bowed, his gaze directed at the cracked stone floor of the terrace.

  'I'm tired,' Olofson says when the fit has passed. 'I see my friends dead, the first people I met when I came to Africa. I see their maimed bodies, an utterly inconceivable violence.'

  'Or perhaps not,' Motombwane says slowly.

  'You'll get your details,' Olofson says. 'You'll get all the gore you think your readers can stand. But first you have to explain to me what happened.'

  Motombwane throws out his hands. 'I'm no policeman,' he says.

  'You're an African,' Olofson says. 'Besides, you're intelligent, you're educated, and you surely don't believe in superstition any longer. You're a journalist. You have the background to explain this to me.'

  'Much of what you sa
y is true,' Motombwane replies. 'But you're wrong if you think I'm not superstitious. I am. With my mind I turn away from it, but in my heart it will always be part of me. One can move to a foreign land, as you have done, one can seek his fortune, shape his life. But no one can ever totally leave his origins behind. Something will always remain, as more than a memory, as a living reminder of who you really are. I don't pray to the gods carved from wood, I go to doctors in white coats when I get sick. But I also listen to the voices of my ancestors; I wrap a black band around my wrist as protection before I board an aeroplane.'

  'Why Werner and Ruth?' Olofson asks. 'Why this senseless bloodbath?'

  'You're on the wrong track,' replies Motombwane. 'You're not thinking logically because you've chosen the wrong starting point. Your white brain is deceiving you. If you want to understand you have to think black thoughts. And that's not something you can do, in the same way that I can't formulate white thoughts. You ask why it should be Werner and Ruth who were killed. You might just as well ask why not. You talk about a senseless double murder. I'm not altogether sure that it was. Decapitation prevents people from haunting, severed hands prevent people from taking revenge. It's perfectly obvious that they were killed by Africans, but it was not as senseless as you imagine.'

  'So you think it was a normal robbery-murder,' says Olofson.

  Motombwane shakes his head. 'If it had occurred a year ago I would have thought so,' he replies. 'But not now, not with the unrest that is growing in our country with each day that passes. Opposing political forces grow in this unrest. I think that Ruth and Werner fell victim to killers who actually wanted to sink their pangas into the heads of the black leaders in this country. There are also black mzunguz. You erroneously think that it means white man, when it actually means rich man. Because it was natural to associate wealth with whites, the original meaning of the word has been lost. Today I think it's important to reclaim the real meaning of the word.'

  'Give me an explanation,' Olofson says. 'Draw me a political weather map, a conceivable picture, of what might have happened.'

  'The first thing you have to understand is that what I do is dangerous,' says Motombwane. 'The politicians in our country are unscrupulous. They guard their power by letting their dogs run free. There is one single efficient organ in this country, well organised and constantly active, and that is the president's secret police. The opposition is watched by a fine-meshed net of informers. In every town, in every company there is someone who is connected to this secret police. Even on your farm there is at least one man who once a week reports to an unknown superior. That's what I mean when I say it's dangerous. Without your knowing it, Luka could be the man who reports from here.

  'No opposition must be permitted to grow. The politicians who rule today regard our land as prey. In Africa it's easy simply to disappear. Journalists who have been too critical and didn't listen to the words of warning have vanished; newspaper editors have been selected for their loyalty to the party, and this means that nothing is printed about the vanished journalists in the papers. I can't make it any plainer than that. There is an undercurrent of events in this country that nobody knows about. Rumours spread, but there is no way to confirm them. People are murdered through arranged suicides. Massacred corpses on railway tracks, soaked with alcohol, become accidents due to drunkenness. Alleged robbers who are shot down during escape attempts may be people who tried to take over the state-controlled labour unions. The examples are endless.

  'But the unrest is there all the time. In the dark the discontent whispers. People wonder about the corn meal that is suddenly gone, despite the fact that a succession of record harvests has been going on for several years. The rumour spreads that lorries belonging to the authorities drive across the borders at night to smuggle out corn meal. Why are there no more vaccines and medicines in the hospitals, even though millions of dollars' worth are donated to this country every year? People have travelled to Zaire and been able to buy medicines at a chemist's with the text 'Donation to Zambia' printed on the box. The rumours spread, the discontent grows, but everyone is afraid of the informers.

  'The opposition are forced to make detours. Perhaps some people have looked at their despair, their hungry children, and their insight into the betrayal by the politicians, and decided that the only chance of getting to the rulers is by taking a detour: murder white people, create instability and insecurity. Execute whites and thereby warn the black rulers. That may have been how it happened. Because something is going to happen in this country. Soon. For over twenty years we have been an independent nation. Nothing has really improved for the people. It's only the few who took over from the white leaders that have amassed unheard-of fortunes. Maybe we have now reached a breaking point, maybe an uprising is approaching? I don't know anything for sure; we Africans follow impulses that come out of nowhere. Our actions are often spontaneous; we replace the lack of organisation with violence in our wrath. If this is how it happened, then we will never know who murdered Ruth and Werner Masterton. Many people will know their names, but they will be protected. They will be surrounded at once by a superstitious respect and awe, as if our ancestors had returned in their form. The warriors of the past will return. Maybe the police will drag some insignificant thieves out of the dark, say they're the killers, and shoot them during alleged escape attempts. Faked interrogation records and confessions can be arranged. Only gradually will we find out whether or not what I believe is correct.'

  'How?' asks Olofson.

  'When the next white family is murdered,' replies Motombwane softly. Luka passes across the terrace; they follow him with their gaze, see him go out to the German shepherds with some meat scraps.

  'An informer on my farm,' says Olofson. 'Of course I ought to start wondering who it might be.'

  'Let's assume that you succeed in finding out,' says Motombwane. 'What happens then? Someone else will be selected at once. No one can refuse, because payment is also involved. You'll wind up chasing your own shadow. If I were you I'd do something entirely different.'

  'What?' asks Olofson.

  'Keep a watchful eye on the man who actually manages the work on your farm. There's so much you don't know. You've been here for almost twenty years, but you have no idea what's really going on. You could live here another twenty years and you still wouldn't know anything. You think you have divided up power and responsibility by appointing a foreman. But you don't know that you have a sorcerer on your farm, a witch-master who in reality is the one in control. An insignificant man who never reveals the influence he possesses. You view him as one of many workers who have been on the farm for a long time, one of those who never cause you any problems. But the other workers fear him.'

  'Who?' asks Olofson.

  'One of your workers who gathers eggs,' says Motombwane. 'Eisenhower Mudenda.'

  'I don't believe you,' says Olofson. 'Eisenhower Mudenda came here right after Judith Fillington left. It's just as you say, he has never caused me any problems. He has never missed work because he was drunk, never been reluctant to work overtime if necessary. When I encounter him he bows almost to the ground. Sometimes I've even felt annoyed by his subservience.'

  'Where did he come from?' Motombwane asks.

  'I can't recall,' Olofson replies.

  'Actually you don't know a thing about him,' says Motombwane. 'But what I'm telling you is true. If I were you I'd keep an eye on him. Above all, show him that you're not frightened by what happened to Ruth and Werner Masterton. But never reveal that you now know that he is a sorcerer.'

  'We've known each other a long time,' Olofson says. 'And only now you're telling me something you must have known for many years?'