The Eye Of The Leopard (17 page)

Does time have a face?

How can one tell when it's waving and saying
goodbye?

One day he realises that he has been with Judith Fillington
for a year. The rainy season has passed. Again the motionless
heat presses down on him and the African earth.

And the questions he asked himself? They're still there, but
one puzzlement has only been exchanged for another. After a
year he is no longer surprised that he is where he is, but instead
by how the time could have passed so quickly. After her malaria
attack Judith had been stricken by a long drawn-out fatigue that
lasted half a year. A parasite, identified far too late, bored into
her internal organs and made this fatigue even worse. Olofson
saw no possibility of leaving. It would have meant abandoning
her, the exhausted woman who lay in the bed that was much too
large. He considered it mysterious that she dared to turn over
the care of the farm, just like that, to his untrained hands.

One day he discovers that he is waking in the mornings with
a quite new and unfamiliar happiness. For the first time in his
life he feels he has an objective, even if it's only to see the lorries
full of eggs pull away in a cloud of red dust. Maybe there's nothing
more important than this, he thinks. To produce food and know
that someone is always waiting for it.

After a year he also has thoughts that seem frivolous to him.
I'll stay, he thinks. As long as Judith is powerless, as long as the
successor doesn't show up. I'll teach myself something about all
this. About the eggs and the constant feed problem. About leading
200 Africans by the hand. Surely something of this will be meaningful
even after I go back home.

After half a year he writes to his father and tells him that he
will be staying in Africa for an indefinite period. Of his studies and
his ambition to become the defender of mitigating circumstances,
he writes only:
I'm still young
. The letter is an epistle of digression,
a personal tall tale, in which he twists and distorts the facts.

It's a belated thank you, he thinks. A thank you for all the
escapades with the sea charts in the house by the river.

I'm involved in an adventure
, he writes.
An adventure that grew
from the energy source that is possibly the true essence of adventure: coincidences
that became intertwined, in which I was permitted to take part.

As a worthy cargo to lower down into
Célestine
's hold, he sends
a crocodile tooth.

Here the reptile's teeth protect against danger
, he writes.
I'm sending
you an amulet that can protect you from misplaced blows of your axe or
a falling tree you otherwise wouldn't have escaped.

One night he can't sleep. When he goes to the kitchen to get
a drink of water, he hears Judith crying in her locked room. And
maybe this is when the first inkling flits past, as he stands in the
warm darkness outside her door. The idea that he will stay in
Africa. A door that stands ajar in his mind, a glimpse into a
future that was never intended.

A year has passed. The hippo that he never sees sighs down
by the river. A shiny cobra coils one morning in the wet grass
before his feet. In the night he can see fires burning on the horizon,
and the distant sound of drums reaches him like a language that
is hard to decipher.

The elephant grass burns and the animals flee. He imagines
that he is watching a distant battlefield, a war that has gone on
since the mists of prehistoric time.

I, he thinks, I, Hans Olofson, am just as afraid of the unknown
as I was when I stepped out of the plane into a world made
utterly white by the sun. I realise that I'm surrounded by catastrophe,
a temporarily postponed end of time, as two epochs
collide. I know that I'm white, one of the candles that is seen
much too clearly, one of those who must perish on this continent.
And yet I stay.

I've tried to safeguard myself, to remain a nonentity in this
test of strength. I stand outside, a temporary visitor, without
involvement or guilt. Could it be pointless? The white man's ultimate
fancy? Yet I can see quite clearly that my fear is not the same
as when I first stood in this white sun.

I no longer believe that every black is whetting his
panga
so
he can slit my throat while I sleep. Today my fear is directed:
against the murderous gangs that ravage this land, against the hit
men who might also be hiding on this farm. But I don't justify
my lack of understanding by seeing a murderer in every black I
meet. The workers on the farm are no longer nameless, threatening
faces that all look the same.

One evening after Judith has begun to get her strength back,
Ruth and Werner Masterton come to visit. It's a lengthy dinner,
and they sit for a long time behind the locked doors and empty
their glasses.

Olofson gets drunk that evening. He doesn't say much, huddling
in a corner, feeling like an outsider again. Late that evening Ruth
and Werner decide to spend the night. The attacks on solitary cars
have increased again, and at night the white man is a hunted quarry.

On his way to bed, Hans meets Judith outside her door. He
convinces himself that she is standing there waiting for him; she
is tipsy too, with wandering eyes that remind him of his father.

She holds out her hand, grabs him, pulls him into her room,
and they perform a love act on the cold stone floor that is equally
helpless and violent. As he grasps her skinny body, he thinks of
the room upstairs, the dead animals' bone yard.

Afterwards she pulls away as if he had struck her. Not a
single word, he thinks. How can one make love without saying
a single word?

The next day he has a hangover and feels terrible, and he
recalls her body as something harsh and repulsive. In the dawn
they say goodbye to Ruth and Werner. She avoids his eye, pressing
the broad-brimmed hat down on her brow.

One year has passed.

The nightly web of sound of the cicadas has become familiar.
The smells of charcoal, dried fish, sweat, and stinking rubbish
heaps surround him as though they had always been there. But
the entirety, the black continent, becomes increasingly elusive the
more he thinks he understands. He senses that Africa is not actually
a unified entity; at least not something that he, with his
ingrained notions, can comprehend and penetrate.

There are no simple passwords here. Wooden gods and forefathers
speak as distinctly here as the living people. European
truth loses its validity on the endless savannah.

He still sees himself as an apprehensive traveller, not as one
of those purposeful and well-equipped pathfinders. And yet he
is where he is. Beyond the ridges of fir trees, beyond the Finnish
forests, on the other side of the river and the bridge.

One day in October, when he has worked for Judith for a year,
she comes walking towards him in the overgrown garden. It's
Sunday, and there is only an old man busy watering the garden.
Olofson is spending the day trying to fix an attachment to the
pump that brings the water from the Kafue to their house.

Against the light he sees her face and is instantly worried. I
don't want to hear what she has to say, he thinks. They sit down
in the shade of the big tree, and he can tell that she has prepared
this conversation, for Luka shows up with coffee.

'There is a point of no return,' she says, 'in every person's life.
Something one does not want, something one fears but can't avoid.
I have come to the realisation that I can't do this any more: not the
farm, not Africa, or this life. That's why I'm making you a proposal
now. Something you can think about, you don't have to decide right
away. I'll give you three months, and what I tell you will require you
to make a decision. Soon I will be leaving here. I'm still sick, the
fatigue is suffocating me, and I don't think I'll ever regain my strength.
I'm going to Europe, maybe to Italy. Beyond that I have no plans.
But my offer is that you take over my farm. It makes a profit, there's
no mortgage on it, and there are no indications that it will lose its
value. Forty per cent of the profits will be mine for as long as I live.
That's the price you have to pay me if you take over the farm. If
you should sell the farm within ten years, seventy-five per cent of
the profits will go to me. After ten years the amount is reduced to
fifty per cent, and after twenty years to nothing. It would be easiest
for me, of course, to sell the farm immediately. But something is
preventing me: a sense of responsibility, I think, to those who work
here. Maybe I can't stand the thought of Duncan being forced off
the land that will one day be his grave. For a year I've seen you on
my farm. I know that you'll be able to take it over ...'

She falls silent and Olofson feels that he wants to sign a deed
of transfer at once. An absolutely unreserved joy fills him. The
voice from the brickworks which he carries inside him begins to
speak. To be needed, to be somebody ...

'This is unexpected,' is all he says.

'I'm afraid of losing the only thing that is irreplaceable,' she
says. 'My will to live. The simple power that makes me get out
of bed when the sun comes up. Everything else can probably be
replaced. But not that.'

'It's still unexpected,' he says. 'I realise you're tired, I see it every
day. But at the same time I can tell that your strength is coming
back.'

'Each day brings nothing but revulsion,' she replies. 'And you
can't see that. Only I can feel it. You must understand that I've
been preparing for this moment for a long time. For years I've been
putting money into banks in London and Rome. My lawyer in
Kitwe has been informed. If you say no, I'll sell the farm. There
will be no shortage of prospective buyers.'

'Mr Pihri will miss you,' he says.

'You can take over Mr Pihri,' she says. 'His eldest son will become
a policeman too. You can also take over the young Mr Pihri.'

'It's a big decision,' he says. 'I really should have gone home
long ago.'

'I haven't seen you leave,' she says. 'I've seen you stay. Your three
months begin right now, here in the shadow of this tree.'

'Then you'll come back?' he asks.

'To sell or to pack,' she replies. 'Or both.'

Her preparations have been thorough. Four days after their
conversation, Olofson drives her to the airport in Lusaka. He
accompanies her to the check-in counter and then stands in the
warm night on the roof terrace and watches the big jet plane
accelerate with a roar and take off towards the stars.

Their leave-taking was simple. It should have been me, he
thinks. In all fairness it should have been me who finally left this
place ... He stays overnight at the hotel he once hid inside. To
his surprise he discovers that he has been given the same room,
212. Magic, he thinks. I forget that I'm in Africa.

A restless anxiety sends him down to the bar, and he looks
for the black woman who offered herself to him last time. When
he isn't noticed quickly enough, he shouts sharply at one of the
waiters who is standing idle by the bar.

'What have you got today?' he asks.

'There isn't any whisky,' replies the waiter.

'So there's gin? But is there any tonic?'

'We have tonic today.'

'So you have gin and tonic?'

'There is gin and tonic today.'

He gets drunk and renames the property in his mind:
Olofson
Farm
.

Soon a black woman is standing next to his table. In the dim
light he has a hard time making out her face.

'Yes,' he says. 'I would like company. Room 212. But not now,
not yet.'

He sees her hesitate, wondering if she should wait at his table
or not.

'No,' he says. 'When you see me go up the stairs, wait for
another hour. Then come.'

After he has eaten, he starts up the stairs, but doesn't see her.
She sees me though, he thinks.

When she knocks on the door he discovers that she is very
young, hardly more than seventeen. But she is experienced. She
walks into the room and demands an immediate agreement.

'Not the whole night,' he says. 'I want you to go.'

'A hundred
kwacha
,' she says. 'Or ten dollars.'

He nods and asks her name.

'Whatever name you want,' she says.

'Maggie,' he suggests.

'My name is Maggie,' she says. 'Tonight my name is Maggie.'

He has sex with her, and feels the meaninglessness. Beyond
the arousal there is nothing, a room that has been empty for far
too long. He breathes in the scents from her body, the cheap
soap, the perfume that reminds him of something sour. She smells
like an apple, he thinks. Her body is like a musty flat I remember
from my childhood.

It is over quickly; he gives her the money and she gets dressed
in the bathroom.

'I'll be here another time,' she says.

'I like the name Janine,' he says.

'Then my name will be Janine,' she replies.

'No,' he says. 'Never again. Now go.'

When he goes into the bathroom he discovers she has taken
the toilet paper and his soap. They steal, he thinks. They would
cut out our hearts if only they could.

By twilight of the next day he is back on the farm. He eats
the dinner Luka has prepared for him. I'm going to run this
farm differently, he thinks. Through my example the constant
arguments about the necessity of the whites will disappear. The
man I appoint to be my overseer must be black. I will build my
own school for the workers' children, I won't offer them help
only when they're to be buried.

The truth about this farm today, or Ruth and Werner's farm,
is the underpaid labour, the worn-out workers. Judith's money in
the European banks is the wages that were never paid.

I'm going to transform this farm, and I'll dedicate the school
I'm going to build to Janine. When I leave the farm it will be in
commemoration of the moment when the ideas of the white
farmers were finally refuted.