The Eye Of The Leopard

by Mankell Henning

  'The times are hard,' says Patel.

  'The times are always hard,' Olofson interrupts him. 'If you don't take good care of the employees I will haunt you in your dreams. It's the workers who know how to run this farm, and it's they who have fed me all these years.'

  'Of course, everything will remain as it has always been,' Patel replies humbly.

  'That's the best way,' says Olofson. 'Otherwise I'll come back and impale your head on a pole.'

  Patel blanches and crouches on the stool where he's sitting at Olofson's feet. Papers are signed, the title is transferred. Olofson signs his name quickly to get it over with.

  'Mr Pihri kept my pen,' says the lawyer gloomily as he gets up to go.

  'You'll never see it again,' says Olofson.

  'I know,' says the lawyer. 'But it was a nice pen.'

  Now he is alone with Patel. The transfer is dated 1 February 1988. Patel promises to transfer as much money as he can to the bank in London. The difficulties and risks he estimates as equivalent to forty-five per cent.

  'Don't you show yourself here before the morning I leave,' says Olofson. 'When you drive me to Lusaka you can have your keys.'

  Patel quickly gets to his feet and bows.

  'Go now,' says Olofson. 'I'll let you know when you can come to pick me up.'

  Olofson uses the time that remains to say goodbye to his neighbours. He visits farm after farm, gets drunk, returns to his empty house.

  The waiting period makes him restless. He books his ticket, sells his car cheap to Behan the Irishman, on the condition that he can use it until he leaves.

  When his neighbours ask what he's going to do, he tells them the truth, that he doesn't know. To his astonishment he discovers that many of them envy his leaving. Their terror, he thinks. Their utterly understandable terror. They know that their time is up, just like mine. And yet they aren't able to leave.

  A few days before his departure he has a visit from Eisenhower Mudenda, who gives him a stone with blue veins running through it and a brown leather pouch containing a powder.

  'Yes,' says Olofson. 'Over me there will be a different starry sky. I'm travelling to a strange world where the sun sometimes shines, even at night.'

  Mudenda thinks a long time about what Olofson has said.

  'Carry the stone and the pouch in your pocket, Bwana,' he says at last.

  'Why?' Olofson asks.

  'Because I give them to you, Bwana,' says Mudenda. 'They will give you a long life. But it also means that our spirits will know when you no longer exist. Then we can dance for you when you return to your forefathers.'

  'I shall carry them,' says Olofson.

  Mudenda prepares to go.

  'My dog,' says Olofson. 'One morning someone chopped off its head and lashed it to a tree with barbed wire.'

  'The one who did that is dead, Bwana,' says Mudenda.

  'Peter Motombwane?' Olofson asks.

  Eisenhower Mudenda looks at him for a long time before he replies.

  'Peter Motombwane is alive, Bwana,' he says.

  'I understand,' says Olofson.

  Mudenda walks away and Olofson looks at his ragged clothes. At least I'm not leaving Africa with his curses, he thinks. At least I wasn't one of the worst. And besides, I'm doing what they want, leaving, acknowledging that I'm defeated.

  Olofson is alone in his empty house, alone with Luka. The end has come. He gives Luka 1,000 kwacha.

  'Don't wait until I'm gone,' Olofson says. 'Leave now. But where will you go?'

  'My roots are in Malawi, Bwana,' replies Luka. 'Beyond the mountains by the long lake. It is a long way to go. But I am strong enough to make the long journey. My feet are ready.'

  'Go in the morning. Don't wait by my door at dawn.'

  'Yes, Bwana. I will go.'

  The next day he is gone. I never knew what was in his thoughts, Olofson thinks. I'll never find out whether he was the one I saw the night I killed Peter Motombwane.

  On the last night he sits for a long time on the terrace. Insects buzz their farewell around his face. The German shepherds are gone; his neighbours have adopted them. He listens into the darkness, feels the warm wind caress his face. Again it's the rainy season, again the torrents pound on his roof. But on his last evening the sky is clear.

  Now, Hans Olofson, he thinks. Now you are leaving here. You will never return. A stone with blue veins, a brown leather pouch, and some crocodile teeth are all you take with you from this place.

  He tries to think of what he might do. The only thing that occurs to him is to search for his mother. If I find her I can tell her about Africa, he thinks. About this wounded and lacerated continent. About the superstition and the boundless wisdom. About the poverty and the plague that was created by us, the white men and women. But I can also tell her about the future that is here, which I have seen for myself. Joyce Lufuma and her daughters, the dignified resistance which survives in this most trampled of worlds. There's one thing I understand after all these years: Africa has been sacrificed on a Western altar, robbed of its future for one or two generations. But no more, no longer, I have also understood that.

  An owl hoots in the dark. Powerful wings flap past. Invisible cicadas play near his feet. When he at last gets up and goes inside, he leaves the door open behind him.

  He awakes at daybreak. It is 2 February 1988, and he is about to leave Africa, a departure that has been postponed for nearly nineteen years.

  Through his bedroom window he sees the red sun rise above the horizon. Mists are floating slowly over the Kafue. From one river he is returning to another. From the Kafue and Zambezi he returns to Ljusnan. The sighing hippo he will take with him, and he knows that in his dreams the crocodiles will live in the Norrland river. Two river arteries diverge in my life, he thinks. A Norrland Africa I carry in my heart.

  One last time he walks through the silent house. My departure is always empty-handed, he thinks. Maybe that's an advantage after all, something that makes it easier for me.

  He opens the door. The ground is wet. Barefoot he walks down to the river. He thinks he can see the elephant's thigh bone on the bottom. He flings his revolver into the water.

  He walks back to the house and picks up his bag. In his jacket he has his passport and cash in a plastic case. Patel is sitting on the terrace, waiting. He gets to his feet hastily and bows when Olofson comes out.

  'Give me five minutes,' he says. 'Wait in the car.'

  Patel hurries down the steps with his trouser legs flapping. Olofson tries to compress almost nineteen years into one last moment. Maybe I'll be able to understand it later, he thinks. What did all these years in Africa mean? Those years that passed so indescribably fast and which flung me unprepared into my middle age. It's as if I have lived in a weightless vacuum. Only my passport confirms that I still exist.

  A bird with wings like a purple cloak flies past. I will remember that, he thinks. He gets into the car where Patel is waiting.

  'Drive carefully,' he says.

  Patel gives him a worried look. 'I always drive carefully, Mr Olofson.'

  'You live a life that makes your hands sweaty all the time,' Olofson says. 'Greed is your inheritance, nothing more. Not your worried, well-meaning, lying face. Drive now, don't say a word!'

  That afternoon he steps out of the car at the Ridgeway Hotel. He tosses the keys to his house on to the seat and leaves Patel. He sees that the African holding the door open is wearing shoes in just as bad condition as the workers he'd seen when he arrived almost nineteen years ago.

  As he requested, he is given room 212, but he doesn't recognise it. The room has changed, the angles are different. He undresses and spends his waiting time in bed. After many attempts he manages to get his booking confirmed by telephone. A seat is reserved for him under the stars.

  Relief and anxiety, he thinks, that's what I experience. Those emotions are my mental shield. They should be included in my epitaph. From the smell of elkhounds and African charcoal fires I ta
ke the basic elements of my peculiar life. And yet there is also something else. People like Patel or Lars Håkansson learn to understand the world so they can exploit it. Peter Motombwane understood it in order to change it. He possessed the knowledge but he chose the wrong weapon at the wrong time. Still, we resemble each other. Between Patel and me there is a chasm. And Lars Håkansson is dead. Peter Motombwane and I are the survivors, even though my heart is the only one still beating. That knowledge no one can take away from me.

  In the twilight of the hotel room he thinks of Janine and her dream of Mutshatsha. Her lonely vigil on the street corner between the People's Hall and the hardware shop.

  Peter Motombwane, he thinks. Peter, Janine and me.

  A rusty taxi takes him to the airport. Olofson gives the last of his kwacha notes to the driver, who is very young.

  At the check-in, almost no one but white people are queueing. This is where Africa ends, he thinks. Europe is already closer than the plains with the tall elephant grass. In the murmur at the counter he listens for the sighing hippo. Behind the pillars he thinks he sees the leopard's eye watching him. Then he walks through the various checkpoints.

  Distant drums suddenly begin to rumble inside him. Marjorie and Peggy dance and their black faces glisten. No one met me, he thinks. On the other hand, I met myself. No one is accompanying me to my departure except the man I was back then, the man I now leave behind. He sees his own image in one of the airport's huge windows. Now I'm going home, he thinks. There's nothing remarkable about it, yet it's remarkable enough.

  The big aeroplane shines with rainwater and floodlights. Far out on the runway, lit by a yellow lamp, stands a lone African. Utterly motionless, enfolded by a thought. For a long time Olofson looks at him before he boards the aeroplane that will take him away from Africa.

  Nothing more, he thinks. Now it's over.

  Mutshatsha, farewell ...