The Eye Of The Leopard

by Mankell Henning

  When he turns around he sees Luka standing below the terrace. Immediately he raises the gun and walks towards him.

  'You're still alive,' he says. 'But you won't be much longer. This time I won't miss.'

  'What has happened, Bwana?' asks Luka.

  'You're asking me?'

  'Yes, Bwana.'

  'When did you take off the window grating?'

  'What grating, Bwana?'

  'You know what I mean.'

  'No I don't, Bwana.'

  'Put your hands on your head and walk ahead of me!'

  Luka does as he says and Olofson orders him upstairs. He shows him the gaping hole where the window has been shot away.

  'You almost pulled it off,' says Olofson. 'But only almost. You knew that I never go in this room. You broke off the steel grating when I was away. I wouldn't have heard when you all sneaked inside. Then you could have crept down the stairs in the dark.'

  'The grating is gone, Bwana. Someone has taken it off.'

  'Not someone, Luka. You took it off.'

  Luka looks him in the eyes and shakes his head.

  'You were here last night,' Olofson says. 'I saw you and I took a shot at you. Peter Motombwane is dead. But who was the third man?'

  'I was sleeping, Bwana,' Luka says. 'I woke up to shots from an uta. Many shots. Then I lay awake. Not until I was sure that Bwana Olofson had come out did I come here.'

  Olofson raises the shotgun and takes off the safety.

  'I'm going to shoot you,' he says. 'I'll shoot you if you don't tell me who the third man was. I'll kill you if you don't tell me what happened.'

  'I was sleeping, Bwana,' Luka replies. 'I don't know anything. I see that Peter Motombwane is dead and that he has a leopard skin around his shoulders. I don't know who took off the grating.'

  He's telling the truth, Olofson thinks suddenly. I'm sure that I saw him last night. No one else would have had the opportunity to take off the grating, no one else knew that I seldom go into that room. And yet I believe he's telling the truth.

  They go back downstairs. The dogs, Olofson thinks. I forgot about the dogs. Just behind the water reservoir he finds them. Six bodies stretched out on the ground. Bits of meat are hanging out of their mouths. A powerful poison, he thinks. One bite and it was over. Peter Motombwane knew what he was doing.

  He looks at Luka, who is staring at the dogs in disbelief. Of course there must be a plausible explanation, he tells himself. Peter Motombwane knows my house. Sometimes he waited for me alone. The dogs too. The dogs knew him. It could be as Luka says, that he was sleeping and woke up when I fired the gun. I could have been mistaken. I imagined that Luka would be there, so I convinced myself that I saw him.

  'Don't touch anything,' he says. 'Don't go in the house, wait outside until I come back.'

  'Yes, Bwana,' says Luka.

  They push the car to get it started, the diesel engine catches, and Olofson drives to his mud hut. The black workers stand motionless, watching him. How many belong to the leopards? he wonders. How many thought I was dead?

  The telephone in the office is working. He calls the police in Kitwe.

  'Tell everybody that I'm alive,' he says to the black clerks. 'Tell them all that I killed the leopards. One of them might be only wounded. Tell them that I'll pay a year's wages to anyone who finds the wounded leopard.'

  He goes back to his house. A swarm of flies hovers over Peter Motombwane lying under the tablecloth. As he waits for the police he tries to think. Motombwane came to kill me, he tells himself. In the same way that one night he went to Ruth and Werner Masterton. His only mistake was that he came too early. He underestimated my fear, he thought that I had begun to sleep at night again.

  Peter Motombwane came to kill me, and that's not something I should ever forget. That is the starting point. He would have chopped off my head, turned me into a slaughtered animal carcass. Motombwane's single-mindedness must have been very great. He knew that I had guns, so he was prepared to sacrifice his life. At the same time I realise now that he tried to warn me, get me to leave here to avoid the inevitable. Perhaps his insight had been transformed to a sorrowful desperation, a conviction that the ultimate sacrifice was required.

  The man who crept across my roof was no bandit. He was a dedicated man who gave himself what he thought was a necessary assignment. That too is important for me to remember. When I killed him, I killed perhaps one of the best people in this wounded land. Someone who possessed more than a dream for the future, someone with a readiness to act. When I killed Peter Motombwane I killed the hope of many people.

  He, in turn, viewed my death as crucial. He didn't come here because he thirsted for revenge. I believe that Motombwane ignored such feelings. He crept up on my roof because he was in despair. He knew what was going on in this country, and he saw no other way out than to join the leopards'movement, begin a desperate resistance, and perhaps one day have the chance to experience the necessary revolt. Maybe he was the one who created the leopards' movement. Did he act alone, with a few co-conspirators, or did he recruit a new generation before he took up his own panga?

  Olofson walks over to the terrace, trying not to look at the body under the tablecloth. Behind some African roses he finds what he is looking for. Motombwane's panga is polished to a shine, and the handle has various symbols carved into it. Olofson thinks he sees a leopard head, an eye which is deeply incised in the brown wood. He places the panga back among the roses and kicks some dead leaves over it so it can't be seen.

  A rusty police car comes along the road, its motor coughing. At the drive it comes to a complete stop; it seems to be out of petrol. What would have happened if I had called them last night, he wonders, if I had asked them to come to my rescue? Would they have informed me that they had no petrol? Or would they have asked me to come and fetch them in my car?

  Suddenly he recognises the police officer coming towards him ahead of four constables. The officer who once stood in front of his house with an erroneous search warrant in his hand. Olofson recalls his name: Kaulu.

  Olofson shows him the dead body, the dogs, and describes the chain of events. He also says that he knew Peter Motombwane. The officer shakes his head forlornly.

  'Journalists can never be trusted,' he says. 'Now it's proven.'

  'Peter Motombwane was a good journalist,' says Olofson.

  'He was far too interested in things that he shouldn't have stuck his nose into,' says the officer. 'But now we know that he was a bandit.'

  'What about the leopard skin?' Olofson asks. 'I've heard vague rumours about some political movement.'

  'Let's go inside,' says the officer hastily. 'It's better to speak in the shade.'

  Luka serves tea and they sit in silence for a long time.

  'Regrettable rumours spread much too easily,' says the police officer. 'There is no leopard movement. The president himself has declared that it doesn't exist. Therefore it doesn't exist. So it would be regrettable if new rumours should arise. Our authorities would not be pleased.'

  What is he actually trying to convey? Olofson thinks. A piece of information, a warning? Or a threat?

  'Ruth and Werner Masterton,' Olofson says. 'It would have looked like their house here if I hadn't shot him and maybe another man too.'

  'There is absolutely no connection,' says the officer.

  'Of course there is,' says Olofson.

  The police officer slowly stirs his tea.

  'Once I came here with a mistakenly issued order,' he says. 'You offered great cooperation on that occasion. It's a great pleasure for me to be able to return the favour now. No leopard movement exists; our president has determined this. Nor is there any reason to see connections where there are none. In addition, it would be extremely unfortunate if rumours should spread that you knew the man who tried to kill you. That would create suspicion among the authorities. People might start to think that it was some type of vendetta. Vague connections between a white farmer and the sources of rumour
s about the leopard movement. You could very easily land in difficulties. It would be best to write a simple, clear report about a regrettable attack which fortunately ended well.'

  There it is, Olofson thinks. After a rambling explanation I'm supposed to realise that it will all be covered up. Peter Motombwane will not be allowed to live on as a desperate resistance fighter; his memory will be that of a bandit.

  'The immigration authorities might be concerned,' the officer goes on. 'But I shall repay your previous helpfulness by burying this case as quickly as possible.'

  He's unreachable, Olofson thinks. His directive is obvious: no political resistance exists in this country.

  'I presume that you have licences for your weapons,' says the officer in a friendly tone.

  'No,' Olofson says.

  'That might have been troublesome,' says the officer. 'The authorities take a serious view of unlicensed weapons.'

  'I never thought about it,' replies Olofson.

  'This too it would be my pleasure to ignore,' says the police officer, getting to his feet.

  Case closed, Olofson thinks. His argument was better than mine. No one will die in an African prison. When they go outside the body is gone.

  'My men have sunk it in the river,' the officer tells him. 'That's the easiest way. We took the liberty of using some scrap iron we found on your farm.'

  The policemen are waiting by the car. 'Unfortunately our petrol ran out,' says the officer. 'But one of my men borrowed a few litres from your fuel supply while we drank tea.'

  'Of course,' says Olofson. 'You're welcome to stay a while and take some cartons of eggs when you go.'

  'Eggs are good,' says the officer, extending his hand. 'It's not often that it's so easy to conclude a crime scene investigation.'

  The police car leaves and Olofson tells Luka to burn the bloody tablecloth. He watches him while he burns it. It still might have been him, Olofson thinks. How can I keep living with him near me? How can I keep living here at all?

  He gets into his car and stops outside the hen house where Eisenhower Mudenda works. He shows him Peter Motombwane's panga.

  'Now it's mine,' he says. 'Anyone who attacks my house will be killed with the weapon that could not vanquish me.'

  'A very dangerous weapon, Bwana,' says Mudenda.

  'It's good if everybody knows about it,' says Olofson.

  'Everyone will soon know, Bwana,' says Mudenda.

  'Then we understand each other,' says Olofson and goes back to his car.

  He locks himself in his bedroom and pulls the curtains. Outside the window he sees Luka burying the dead dogs. I'm living in an African graveyard, he thinks. On the roof of the terrace is Peter Motombwane's blood. Once he was my friend, my only African friend. The rain will wash away his blood, the crocodiles will tear his body to bits at the bottom of the Kafue. He sits down on the edge of the bed; his body aches with weariness. How will I be able to endure what has happened? he thinks again. How do I move out of this hell?

  During the following month Olofson lives with an increasing sense of powerlessness. The rainy season is nearing its end, and he keeps a watchful eye on Luka. The rumour of the attack brings his neighbours to visit him, and he repeats his story about the night Peter Motombwane and his dogs died. The second man was never found; the blood trail ended in thin air. In his imagination the third man becomes even more of a shadow; Luka's face disappears slowly.

  He is struck by repeated bouts of malaria and hallucinates again that he is being attacked by bandits. One night he thinks he's going to die. When he wakes up the electricity is off; the fever makes him lose all his internal bearings. He shoots his revolver straight out into the darkness.

  When he wakes again the malaria has passed, and Luka waits as usual outside his door in the dawn. New German shepherds are running around his house; his neighbours have brought them as the obvious gifts of the white community.

  He attends to the daily work on the farm as usual. Egg lorries are no longer being plundered; quiet has settled over the land. He wonders how he will endure. I could not have avoided killing Peter Motombwane, he thinks. He never would have allowed it. If he could he would have sliced off my head. His despair must have been so strong that he could no longer live with the idea of waiting for the time to be ripe, for the revolt slowly to emerge. He must have thought that this ripening process had to be hastened along, and he took to the only weapon he had. Maybe he was also aware that he would fail.

  He compares himself to Motombwane, wandering through his entire life in a long sorrowful procession. My life is built of bad cement, he thinks. The cracks run deep, and someday it will all come crashing down. My ambitions have always been superficial and flawed. My moral gestures are sentimental or impatient. I have almost never made real demands on myself.

  I studied to find a way out, a way to get by. I came to Africa because I carried another person's dream. A farm was placed in my hands. When Judith Fillington left here the work was already done. All that was left was to repeat routines that were already in practice. Finally I was assigned the shocking role of killing one or maybe two people, people who were prepared to do what I would never have dared do. I can hardly be blamed for defending my own life. And yet I blame myself.

  More and more often he gets drunk in the evenings and staggers around the empty rooms. I have to get away, he thinks. I'll sell the farm, burn it down, take off.

  He can think of only one more task he has left to do. Joyce Lufuma's daughters. I can't abandon them, he thinks. Even if Lars Håkansson is there, I have to stay until I'm sure that they're safe enough to complete their education.

  After a month he decides to drive to Lusaka and visit them. He doesn't call ahead; he gets into his car and drives off towards Lusaka. He arrives there late one Sunday evening.

  As he drives into the city he realises that for the first time in a very long time he feels happy. I should have had children of my own, he thinks. In this respect too, my life is unnatural. But maybe it's not too late.

  The night watchman opens the gates for him and he turns into the gravel courtyard in front of the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  At the moment of defeat Hans Olofson wishes that he could at least play a flute carved for him of birchwood.

  But he cannot. He has no flute, he has only his pulledup roots in his hands.

  It is Hans Fredström, son of a pastry chef from Danderyd, who hands down the verdict on Hans Olofson. The students are sitting in a beer café in Stockholm in early September 1969. He doesn't know who came up with the idea that they take the train to Stockholm that Wednesday evening to drink beer, but he follows along anyway; there are five of them, and they met several years before in the introductory law course.

  In the spring Hans Olofson had gone home with the embittered feeling that he would never finish his studies. By then he had lived in the house of the clocks and suffered through his lectures and homework long enough to know that he didn't fit in anywhere. The ambition he'd had, to be the defender of mitigating circumstance, had dissolved and vanished like a fleeting mirage. With a growing sense of unreality the clocks went on ticking around him, and finally he realised that the university was just an excuse for the afternoons he spent in Wickberg's gun shop.

  The salvation of the summer was the Holmström twins, who had not yet found their wives-to-be, but were still racing around through the bright summer woods in their old Saab. Hans squeezed into their back seat, shared their schnapps, and watched the forests and lakes glide by. On a distant dance floor he found a bridesmaid and fell immediately and fiercely in love. Her name was Agnes, nicknamed Agge, and she was studying to be a hairdresser at a salon called 'The Wave', which stood between the bookshop and Karl-Otto's used motorcycle shop. Her father was one of the men he had worked with at the Trade Association warehouse. She lived with an older sister in a small flat above the Handelsbank, and after her sister took off with a man and his house trailer to Höga Kusten, they had the f
lat to themselves. The Holmström brothers showed up there in their Saab, plans were made for the evening, and it was to there that they all returned.