The Eye Of The Leopard

by Mankell Henning

  As he checked in he suddenly felt an urge to snatch the ticket back, yell that it was all a mistake, and leave the airport. But he said thank you when they handed the ticket back to him, along with his boarding card and the wish for a pleasant trip.

  His first stop on the way to foreign horizons was London. Then Cairo, Nairobi, and finally Lusaka.

  He imagined that he might just as well be on his way to a distant constellation, the Lyre or one of the faintly glowing fixed stars in Orion's Belt.

  All he knew about Lusaka was that the city was named after an African elephant hunter.

  My objective is as unreasonable as it is ridiculous, he thought. Who in the world but me is on his way to a strange mission station deep in the bush of northwest Zambia, far beyond the roads to Kinshasa and Chingola? Who travels to Africa with a fleeting impulse as his only carry-on luggage? I have no detailed itinerary, nobody accompanied me to the airport, nobody will be meeting me. This journey I am about to begin is merely an escape ...

  He remembers that this is what he thought, and then there are only the vague shadows of memory. The way he sat in the plane holding on to himself with a cramplike grip. The vibrating fuselage, the whine of the jet engines, the machine gathering speed.

  With a slight bow Hans Olofson made the climb into the air.

  Twenty-seven hours later, precisely according to the schedule, he landed at Lusaka International Airport.

  Naturally there was no one there to meet him.

  Chapter Four

  There is nothing remarkable about Hans Olofson's first encounter with the African continent, nothing unusual. He is the European visitor, the white man with his pride and his fear, who defends himself against what is foreign by instantly condemning it.

  At the airport, disorder and chaos reign: incredibly complicated entry documents to fill out, badly spelled instructions, African immigration officers who seem unfazed by anything as mundane as time or organisation. Hans Olofson stands in a queue for a long time, only to be brusquely shunted to another queue when he finally reaches the brown counter on which black ants are hauling invisible particles of food. He realises that he has joined the queue intended for returning residents, those with Zambian passports or residence permits. Sweat pours out, strange foreign smells fill his nose, and the stamp he finally obtains in his passport is upside down, and he sees that the date of his arrival is wrong. He is handed a new form by an unbelievably beautiful African woman, brushes her hand quickly, and then truthfully fills in the amount of foreign cash he is bringing in.

  At customs there is seemingly insurmountable chaos; suitcases are tossed off noisy carts pushed along by excited Africans. Among the pile of cardboard boxes he finally finds his suitcase, half squashed, and when he bends down to pull it out someone bumps into him and sends him sprawling. When he turns around there is no one apologising, no one seems to have noticed that he fell, only a billowing mass of people pushing towards the customs agents who are angrily ordering everyone to open their bags. He is sucked into this human surge, shoved back and forth like a pawn in some game, and then suddenly all the customs agents vanish and no one asks him to open his battered suitcase. A soldier with a submachine gun and a frayed uniform scratches his forehead with the muzzle of his weapon, and Olofson sees that he is hardly more than seventeen. A creaky swinging door opens and he steps out on to African soil in earnest. But there is no time for reflection; porters grab at his suitcase and his arms, taxi drivers yell out offers of their services. He is dragged off to an indescribably dilapidated car on which someone has painted the word TAXI on one of the doors in sloppy, garish letters. His bag is stuffed into a baggage compartment which already contains two hens with their feet tied together, and the boot lid is held in place by an ingeniously bound steel wire. He tumbles into a back seat with no springs at all, so that it feels as if he is sitting right on the floor. A leaky plastic container of petrol is leaning against one knee, and when the taxi driver climbs into the driver's seat with a burning cigarette in his mouth, Olofson for the first time begins to hate Africa.

  This car will never start, he thinks in desperation. Before we even get out of the airport it will explode ... He watches the driver, who can't be more than fifteen years old, join two loose wires next to the steering wheel; the engine responds reluctantly, and the driver turns to him with a smile and asks where he wants to go.

  Home, he wants to answer. Or at least away, away from this continent that makes him feel totally helpless, that has ripped from him all the survival tools he had acquired during his previous life ...

  His thoughts are interrupted by a hand groping at his face, stuck in through the window which has no glass in it. He gives a start, turns around, and looks straight into two dead eyes, a blind woman who is feeling his face with her hand and wants money.

  The driver shouts something in a language that Olofson doesn't understand, the woman replies by starting to screech and wail, and Olofson sits on the floor of the car unable to do a thing. With a screech of tyres the driver leaves the begging woman behind, and Olofson hears himself yelling that he wants to be taken to a hotel in the city.

  'But not too expensive!' he shouts.

  He never hears the driver's reply. A bus with stinking exhaust and a violently racing engine squeezes past and drowns out the driver's voice.

  His shirt is sticky with sweat, his back already aches from the uncomfortable sitting position, and he thinks he should have settled on the price before he let himself be forced into the car.

  The incredibly hot air, filled with mysterious smells, blows into his face. A landscape drenched with sun as if it were an overexposed photograph rushes past his eyes.

  I'll never survive this, he thinks. I'm going to be killed in a car crash before I've even understood that I'm really in Africa. As if he had unconsciously made a prophecy, the car loses one of its front wheels at that instant and careens off the road into a ditch. Olofson strikes his head against the steel edge of the front seat and then heaves himself out of the car, afraid that it's going to explode.

  The driver gives him a surprised look and then squats down in front of the car and looks at the axle, which is bereft and gaping. From the roof of the car he then takes a spare tyre, patched and completely bald. Olofson leans over the red dirt and watches the driver put on the spare tyre as if in slow motion. Ants are crawling on his legs and the sun is so sharp that the world turns white before his eyes.

  In order to hold on, regain an inner balance, he searches for something he can recognise. Something that reminds him of Sweden and the life he is used to. But he finds nothing. Only when he closes his eyes are the foreign African odours mixed with vague memories.

  The spare tyre is put on and the journey continues. With wobbly movements of the steering wheel the driver pilots the car towards Lusaka, which will be the next stage in the nightmare that Olofson's first meeting with African soil has become. The city is a clamorous chaos of broken-down cars, swerving cyclists, and peddlers who seem to have laid out their wares in the middle of the street. There's a stench of oil and exhaust, and at a traffic light Olofson's taxi stops next to a lorry piled high with flayed animal carcasses. Black and green flies instantly swarm into the taxi, and Olofson wonders if he will ever find a hotel room, a door to close behind him.

  But finally there is a hotel. The taxi comes to a stop under blooming jacaranda trees; an African in an outgrown, frayed uniform succeeds in prising open the door and helping Olofson to his feet. He pays the driver what he asks, even though he realises the amount is preposterous. Inside he has to wait for a long time at the front desk before they can work out whether there are any vacant rooms. He fills out an endless registration form and thinks that he'd better learn his passport number by heart, since this is already the fourth time he has had to repeat it. He keeps his suitcase between his legs, certain that thieves are lurking everywhere. Then he waits for half an hour in a queue to exchange money, and fills out another form with the feeling that
he has seen it before.

  A rickety lift transports him upwards and a porter in worn-out shoes carries his suitcase. Room 212 at the Ridgeway Hotel at last becomes his first breathing space on this new continent, and in impotent rebellion he strips off his clothes and crawls naked between the sheets.

  The world traveller, he thinks. Nothing but a scared rabbit.

  There's a knock at the door and he jumps up as if he had committed a crime by getting into bed. He wraps the bedspread around him and opens the door.

  An old, shrunken African woman in a cleaning smock asks if he has any laundry to be done. He shakes his head, replies with exaggerated politeness, and suddenly realises he has no idea how he is expected to behave towards an African.

  He lies down in bed again after drawing the curtains. An air-conditioning unit rattles and all of a sudden he begins to sneeze.

  My wet socks in Sweden, he thinks. The wetness I brought with me. I'm nothing but an endless string of weaknesses. Anxiety is hereditary in my life. From the snowstorm a figure has emerged, someone who is continually threatened by his lack of inner direction.

  In order to shake off his dejection he takes action, picking up the phone to call Room Service. An incomprehensible voice answers just as he's about to give up. He orders tea and chicken sandwiches. The mumbled voice repeats his order and says it will be brought to his room at once.

  After an almost two-hour wait, a waiter appears at his door with a tray. During these two hours he was incapable of doing anything but waiting – with a crushing sense of being someone who does not exist, not even to the person who takes the Room Service orders.

  Hans Olofson sees that the waiter has a pair of shoes that are almost falling apart. One heel is missing, and the sole of the other is gaping like a fish gill. Unsure how much to tip, he gives far too much, and the waiter gives him a quizzical look before vanishing silently from the room.

  After the meal he takes a nap, and when he awakes it is already evening. He opens the window and looks out into the darkness, surprised that the heat is just as intense as it was that morning, although the white sun is no longer visible.

  A few street lamps cast a faint light. Black shadows flit past, a laugh comes from an invisible throat in a car park just below his window.

  He looks at the clothes in his suitcase, uncertain what would be proper for the dining room of an African hotel. Without actually choosing, he gets dressed and then hides half of his money in a hole in the cement behind the toilet bowl.

  In the bar he sees to his surprise that almost all the guests are white, surrounded by black waiters, all wearing bad shoes. He sits down at a solitary table, sinks down into a chair that reminds him of the seat in the taxi, and is at once surrounded by dark waiters waiting for his order.

  'Gin and tonic,' he says politely.

  One of the waiters replies in a worried voice that there isn't any tonic.

  'Is there anything else you can mix it with?' asks Olofson.

  'We have orange juice,' says the waiter.

  'That will be fine,' says Olofson.

  'Unfortunately there is no gin,' says the waiter.

  Olofson can feel himself starting to sweat. 'What do you have then?' he asks patiently.

  'They don't have anything,' a voice replies from a nearby table, and Olofson turns to see a bloated man with a red face, dressed in a worn khaki suit.

  'The beer ran out a week ago,' the man continues. 'Today there is cognac and sherry. For a couple of hours yet. Then that'll be gone too. Rumour has it that there may be whisky tomorrow. Who knows?'

  The man finishes his speech by giving the waiter a dirty look and then leaning back in his chair.

  Olofson orders cognac. He has the feeling that Africa is a place where everything is just about to run out.

  By his third glass of cognac an African woman suddenly sits down in the chair next to him and gives him an inviting smile.

  'Company?' she asks.

  He is flattered, although he realises that the woman is a prostitute. But she arrived too early, he thinks. I'm not ready yet. He shakes his head.

  'No thanks. Not tonight.'

  Unfazed and still smiling, she gazes at him.

  'Tomorrow?'

  'Perhaps,' he says. 'But I may be leaving tomorrow.'

  The woman gets up and disappears in the darkness by the bar.

  'Whores,' says the man at the next table, who seems to be watching over Olofson like a guardian angel. 'They're cheap here. But they're better at the other hotels.'

  'I see,' replies Olofson politely.

  'Here they're either too old or too young,' the man goes on. 'There was a better arrangement before.'

  Olofson never finds out what the prior arrangement consisted of, since the man again breaks off the conversation, leans back in his chair, and closes his eyes.

  In the restaurant he is surrounded by new waiters, and he sees that they too all have worn-out shoes. One waiter who sets a carafe of water on his table has no shoes at all, and Olofson stares at his bare feet.

  After much hesitation he orders beef. Just as the food is set on the table he feels an attack of severe diarrhoea coming on. One of the waiters notices that he has put down his fork.

  'It doesn't taste good?' he asks anxiously.

  'I'm sure it tastes excellent,' says Olofson. 'It's just that my stomach is acting up.'

  Helplessly he sees the waiters flocking around his table.

  'There's nothing wrong with the food,' he says. 'It's just my stomach.' Then he can't hold out any longer. Astonished guests watch his hasty flight from the table, and he fears he won't make it to his room in time.

  Outside the lift he sees to his surprise that the woman who had previously offered him her company is leaving the hotel with the bloated man in the khaki suit who claimed that the prostitutes weren't any good at this hotel.

  In the lift he shits his pants. A terrible stench begins to spread and the shit runs down his legs. With infinite slowness the lift takes him to his floor. As he stumbles down the corridor he hears a man laughing behind a closed door.

  In the bathroom he studies his wretchedness. Then he lies down in his bed and thinks that the assignment he has given himself is either impossible or meaningless. What was he thinking?

  In his wallet he has the smudged address of a mission station on the upper reaches of the Kafue. How he's going to get there he has no idea. He checked that there was a train to Copperbelt before he left. But from there, another 270 kilometres straight out into a pathless, desiccated landscape?

  At the library back in his home town he had read about the country where he now found himself. Large parts of it are inaccessible during the rainy season. But when is the rainy season?

  As usual, I'm ill-equipped, he thinks. My preparation was cursory, just throwing a few things into a suitcase. Only when it's too late do I try to make a plan.

  I wanted to see the mission station that Janine didn't have a chance to visit before she died. I took over her dream instead of creating my own ...

  Hans Olofson falls asleep, sleeps restlessly, and rises at dawn. Out of the hotel window he sees the sun rise like a huge ball of fire over the horizon. Black shadows appear on the street below him. The fragrance of the jacaranda trees blends with the stifling smoke of the charcoal fires. Women with bulging bundles on their heads and children tied on to their backs walk towards goals he cannot fathom.

  Without consciously making a decision, he vows to continue, towards Mutshatsha, towards the goal that Janine never reached ...

  Chapter Five

  When Hans Olofson awakes in the cold winter morning, and his father lies collapsed over the kitchen table, asleep after a long night's struggle with his invisible demons, he knows that he is not completely alone in the world. He has a confidant, a warrior with whose help he torments the life out of the Noseless One who lives in Ulvkälla, a cluster of shacks on the south bank of the river. The two of them go searching for the adventure that must ex
ist even in this frozen community.