The Eye Of The Leopard (18 page)

But he also realises that even as he starts out he is prosperous.
The farm represents a fortune. Even if he doubles the
workers' wages the hens will keep laying directly into his own
pockets.

Impatiently he waits for daybreak. He walks through the silent
rooms and stops in front of the mirrors and looks at his face. He
utters a moan that echoes through the empty house.

At dawn he opens the door. Faint bands of mist are drifting
over the river. Luka is waiting outside, as well as the gardeners
and the woman who washes his clothes. When he sees their silent
faces he shudders. Their thoughts are clear enough ...

Eighteen years later he remembers that morning. As if the
memory and the present have merged. He can recall the mist
that drifted over the Kafue, Luka's inscrutable face, the shudder
that went through his body.

When almost everything is already past, he returns to that
moment, October 1970. He remembers wandering through the
silent house and the plans he made for the future. In the reflection
of that night he looks back on the many years, a lifetime of
eighteen years in Africa.

Judith Fillington never came back. In December 1970 he has a
visit from her lawyer, to his surprise an African and not a white
man, who delivers a letter from Naples, asking for his decision.
He gives it to Mr Dobson, who promises to telegraph it to her
and return as soon as possible with the papers to be signed. At
the New Year, signatures are exchanged between Naples and
Kalulushi. At the same time Mr Pihri comes to visit with his son.

'Everything will be the same as always,' says Hans Olofson.

'Trouble should be avoided,' replies Mr Pihri with a smile. 'My
son, young Mr Pihri, saw a used motorcycle for sale in Chingola
a few days ago.'

'My visa will have to be renewed soon,' says Olofson. 'Of course
young Mr Pihri needs a motorcycle.'

In mid-January a long letter arrives from Judith, postmarked
Rome.
I have understood something,
she writes.
Something I never
dared realise before. During my whole life in Africa, from my earliest
childhood, I grew up in a world that depended on the differences between
blacks and whites. My parents took pity on the blacks, on their poverty.
They saw the necessary development, they taught me to understand that
the whites' situation would only prevail for a limited time. Maybe two
or three generations. Then an upheaval would take place; the blacks would
take over the whites' functions, and the whites would see their imagined
importance reduced. Maybe they would even dwindle to an oppressed
minority. I learned that the blacks were poor, their lives restricted. But
I also learned that they have something we don't have. A dignity that
will someday turn out to be the deciding factor. I realise now that I have
denied this insight, perhaps especially after my husband disappeared
without a trace. I blamed the blacks for his disappearance; I hated them
for something they didn't do. Now that Africa is so far away, now that
I have decided to live the rest of my life here, I can dare once more to
acknowledge the insight I previously denied. I have seen the brute in the
African, but not in myself. A point will always come in everyone's life
when the most important thing must be turned over to someone else.

She asks him to write and let her know when Duncan Jones
dies, and gives him the address of a bank on the island of Jersey.

Mr Dobson comes with men who pack up Judith's belongings
in huge wooden crates. He checks them off meticulously on a list.

'Whatever is left is yours,' he tells Olofson.

They go into the room that is filled with bones.

'She doesn't mention anything about this,' says Mr Dobson.
'So it's yours.'

'What am I going to do with it?' asks Olofson.

'That's hardly a matter for a lawyer,' replies Mr Dobson amiably.
'But I suppose there are two choices. Either you leave it be, or you
get rid of it. The crocodile can easily be taken back to the river.'

Together with Luka he carries the remains down to the river
and watches as they sink to the bottom. The femur of an elephant
glints through the water.

'We Africans will avoid this spot,
Bwana
,' says Luka. 'We see
dead animals who still live on the bottom. The crocodile's skeleton
may be more dangerous than the living crocodile.'

'What are you thinking?' asks Olofson.

'I think what I think,
Bwana
,' replies Luka.

Olofson stretches taut his eighteen-year arc of time, filled with
transforming his farm into a political model.

Early one Saturday morning he gathers all the workers outside
the mud hut that is his office, climbs up on a petrol tank, and
tells them that now he is the one, not Judith Fillington, who owns
the farm. He sees their guarded faces but he is determined to
carry out what he has decided to do.

During the years that follow, years of ceaseless work, he tries
to implement what he has taken on as his great task. He singles
out the most industrious workers as foremen and gives them all
more responsible assignments. He introduces drastic wage
increases, builds new housing, and overseas the construction of
a school for the workers' children. From the start he is met by
opposition from the other white farmers.

'You're undermining your own position,' Werner Masterton
tells him when they visit one evening.

'You don't have a clue,' says Ruth. 'I hope it isn't too late when
you come to your senses.'

'Too late for what?' Olofson asks.

'For everything,' Ruth replies.

Sometimes Duncan Jones stands like a phantom and watches
him. Olofson sees how the blacks fear him. One night when he
is again awakened by the night watchmen to fight a fierce battle
against invading hunter ants, he hears Duncan Jones wailing from
his fortified house.

Two years later he is dead. During the rainy season the house
begins to smell, and when they break in they find Jones's halfdecayed
body on the floor among bottles and half-eaten meals.
The house is full of insects, and yellow moths swarm over the
dead body. In the night he hears the drums pounding. The spirit
of the holy man is already hovering over the farm.

Duncan Jones is buried on a little hill by the river. A Catholic
priest comes from Kitwe. Other than Olofson there is no white
man at the coffin, only the black workers.

He writes a letter care of the bank in Jersey, announcing that
Duncan Jones is dead. He never hears a word from Judith.

The house stands empty for a long time before Olofson decides
to tear down the wall and set up a health centre for the workers
and their families.

With infinite slowness he seems to sense a change. Metre by
metre he attempts to eradicate the boundary between himself
and the 200 workers.

The first hint that everything has gone totally wrong, that all
his good intentions have backfired, comes after a trip he takes to
Dar-es-Salaam. The production figures begin to fall inexplicably.
Complaints come in about broken eggs or eggs that are never
delivered. Spare parts start disappearing, chicken feed and tools
vanish unaccountably. He discovers that the foremen are falsifying
roll call lists, and during a night check he finds half of the
watchmen asleep, some dead drunk. He calls in the foremen and
demands an explanation, but all he gets are peculiar excuses.

He had made the trip to Dar-es-Salaam to buy spare parts
for the farm's tractor. Then the day after the tractor is repaired,
it's gone. He calls the police and fires all the night watchmen,
but the tractor remains missing.

This is when he makes a serious mistake. He sends for Mr
Pihri and they drink tea in the mud hut.

'My tractor is gone,' says Olofson. 'I made the long journey to
Dar-es-Salaam to buy spare parts that are unavailable in this
country. I made this long trip so that my tractor would function
again. Now it's gone.'

'That is naturally very troublesome,' replies Mr Pihri.

'I don't see why your colleagues can't track down the tractor.
In this country there aren't that many tractors. A tractor is hard
to hide. It must also be difficult to drive it over the border to
Zaire to sell it in Lubumbashi. I don't understand why your
colleagues can't find it.'

Mr Pihri all at once becomes very serious. In the dim light
Olofson thinks he sees a dangerous glint in his eyes. The silence
lasts a long time.

'The reason my colleagues can't find the tractor is because it is
no longer a tractor,' replies Mr Pihri at last. 'Perhaps it's already
been taken apart? How can one distinguish one screw from another?
A gear shift has no face. My colleagues would be very upset if they
found out that you are displeased with their work. Very, very upset.
It would mean trouble that even I could do nothing about.'

'But I want my tractor back!'

Mr Pihri serves himself more tea before he answers.

'Not everyone is in agreement,' he says.

'In agreement about what?'

'That whites should still own most of the best land without
even being citizens of our country. They don't want to exchange
their passports, but still they own our best land.'

'I don't understand what that has to do with my tractor.'

'Trouble should be avoided. If my colleagues can't find your
tractor, it means that there is no longer a tractor to be found.
Naturally it would be quite unfortunate if you were also to upset
my colleagues. We have much patience. But it can come to an
end.'

He follows Mr Pihri out into the sun. His farewell is unusually
brief, and Olofson realises that he has stepped over an invisible
boundary. I have to be careful, he thinks. I should never have
mentioned the tractor.

In the night he wakes abruptly, and as he lies in the dark
listening to the dogs' restless patrolling of his house, he feels that
he is ready to give up. Sell the farm, transfer the profits to Judith,
and take off. But there is always something that needs to be done
first. The drop in production halts after he takes all decisions
into his own hands for a while.

He writes to his father, asking him to visit. Only once does
he get an answer, and the inarticulate letter tells him that Erik
Olofson is drinking more heavily and more often. Maybe someday
I'll understand it, he thinks. Maybe when I understand why I'm
staying here. He looks at his suntanned face in the mirror. He
has changed his appearance, let his beard grow.

One morning he realises that he no longer recognises himself.
The face in the mirror belongs to someone else. He gives a start.
Luka is standing behind him, and as usual he hasn't heard his
bare feet on the stone floor.

'A man has come to visit,
Bwana
,' he says.

'Who?'

'Peter Motombwane,
Bwana
.'

'I don't know anyone by that name.'

'He has still come,
Bwana
.'

'Who is he and what does he want?'

'Only he knows,
Bwana
.'

Olofson turns around and looks at Luka.

'Ask him to have a seat and wait, Luka. I'll be right there.'

Luka leaves. Something is making Olofson nervous. Not until
many years later will he understand why.

Who whispers the password in his ear? Who reveals
what his Goal will be? How does he find a direction
in life that is not merely a point of the compass?
This year too, 1959, springtime finally breaks through the obstinate
barriers of cold, and Hans Olofson has decided that one more
leave-taking is necessary. His decision is vague and hesitant, but he
knows that he can't escape the admonition that he has given himself.

One Saturday evening in May, when Under comes roaring up
in his Buick in a cloud of dust, Hans screws up his courage and
goes out to meet him. At first the horse dealer doesn't understand
what the boy is muttering about. He tries to brush him
off, but Hans is stubborn and doesn't back down before he has
delivered his message. When Under grasps that the boy is standing
there stammering out his resignation, he flies into a rage. He
raises his hand to deal a box on the ear, but the boy is quick to
scamper away. The only thing left for Under is to dispense a
symbolic humiliation, and he pulls out a wad of money and peels
off one of the lowest value, a fiver, and tosses it in the gravel.

'You're being paid according to your services. But it's a damned
shame that the authorities don't print notes worth even less. You're
being overpaid ...'

Hans picks up the note and goes into the stable to say goodbye
to the horses and the Holmström twins.

'What will you do now?' ask the brothers, who are washing
themselves under the cold tap in preparation for Saturday night.

'I don't know,' he replies. 'Something will turn up.'

'We're going to move on next winter too,' the brothers tell him
as they change their mucking-out boots for black dancing shoes.

They offer him aquavit.

'That damned horse dealer,' they say, passing around the bottle.
'If you see a Saab, it's us! Don't forget it.'
He runs across the river bridge in the spring night to tell Janine
of his decision. Because she hasn't yet returned from one of
Hurrapelle's Joyous Spring Fellowships, he strolls about in her
garden and thinks about the time he and Sture splashed varnish
all over her currant bushes. He shudders at the memory, wishing
he hadn't been reminded of that thoughtless act.

Is there anything that can be understood? Isn't life, which is
so difficult to manage, nothing but a series of incomprehensible
events lurking behind the corners as one passes? Who can ever
deal with the dark impulses hidden inside? Secret rooms and
wild horses, he thinks. That's what you have to carry around.

He sits down on the steps and wonders about Sture. He's out
there somewhere. But is he in a distant hospital or on one of the
furthest stars in the universe? Many times he thought of asking
Nyman the courthouse caretaker, but it never came to anything.
There are many reasons not to find out. He doesn't want to know
for sure. He can see the horrifying images far too clearly in his
mind. An iron pipe, thick as the pipe on a coffee pot, rammed
down his throat. And the iron lung? What can that be? He sees
a big black beetle opening up its body and enclosing Sture under
its shiny wings.

But not to be able to move? Day after day? For his whole life?
He tries to imagine it by sitting on Janine's porch, completely
still, but it doesn't work. He can't comprehend it. That's why it's
good that he doesn't know for sure. Then a little door still remains
to be pushed open. A little door to the idea that Sture may have
recovered, or that the iron bridge and the river and the red jacket
were all a dream.

There's a crunching on the gravel, and Janine appears. He has
been so deep in thought that he didn't hear her open the gate.
Now he jumps up as if he has been caught in the act of doing
something forbidden.

Janine stands there in her white coat and light-blue dress. In
the dusk the light falls so that her white nose handkerchief under
her eyes takes on the same colour as her skin.

Something passes by, a shiver. Something that is more important
than all the world's evil horse dealers. How long ago was it?
Two months already. One morning, Under had flung a terrified
stable girl in among the horses, a girl he had found on a lonely
horse farm deep in the forests of Hälsingland. A girl who wanted
to get away, who knew about horses, and who he'd stuffed in the
back seat of his Buick.

Hans Olofson had loved her boundlessly. For the month she
was at the stable he had circled round her like an attentive butterfly,
and every evening he had stayed behind just to be alone with her.
But one day she was gone. Under had taken her back, cursing
her parents for pestering him with calls about how she was doing.

Hans had loved her, and in the twilight when he can't see the
nose handkerchief he loves Janine too. But he's afraid of her ability
to read his thoughts. So he gets up quickly, spits in the gravel,
and asks where the hell she has been.

'We had a spring fellowship,' she says.

She sits down next to him on the steps and they watch a
sparrow hopping about in a footprint in the gravel. Her thigh
touches his leg. The stable girl, he thinks. Marie, or Rimma as
they called her. One time he stayed behind, hiding behind the
hay, and watched her take off her clothes and wash naked by the
water pump. He was just about to rush forward, force himself
on her, and let himself be swallowed up by the inconceivable
mystery.

The sparrow crouches in the footprint. Janine hums and
touches her leg to his. Doesn't she understand what she's doing?
The wild horses are tugging and twitching where they are chained
in his secret stalls. What will happen if they break loose? What
can he do then?

Suddenly she gets up, as if she understood his thoughts.

'I'm cold,' she says. 'The church is draughty, and today he talked
for so long.'

'Hurrapelle?'

She laughs at him. 'He's probably the only one who doesn't
know his nickname,' she says. 'He would certainly be upset if he
did.'

In the kitchen he tells her about quitting his job with the
horse dealer. But what is really the truth? How did it all happen?
He hears himself describe how he was excited and shouting, while
the horse dealer was puny as a trembling dwarf. But wasn't he
the one who squeaked and mumbled, hardly able to make himself
understood? Is he the one who's too little, or is it that the world
is too big?

'What are you going to do now?' she asks.

'I'll probably have to go to high school and think a little,' he
replies.

And that is precisely what he decides to do. He knows his
marks are good enough: Headmaster Gottfried told him that,
although it might be hard to convince Erik Olofson of the usefulness
of going back to a worn-out school bench.

'Do it,' she says. 'I'm sure you'll do well.'

But he's still feeling defensive. 'If it doesn't work out then I'll
leave town,' he says. 'There's always the sea. I'll never go back to
the horse dealer. He can get somebody else to torture his horses.'

On the way home from Janine's house he goes down to his
boulder. The spring flood is roaring and a huge log has lodged
on the point at People's Park. Life is hard, he thinks.

Tonight is as good as any other to tell his father about his
decision. He'll sit there until the tram rattles across the river
bridge and disappears into the woods. The springtime river
dances.

Erik Olofson is sitting polishing his little pearl-handled revolver
when Hans comes home. He bought the revolver from a Chinese
man he met in Newport; it cost him nine dollars cash and a
jacket. Hans sits down across the kitchen table from his father
and watches him carefully rub the gleaming handle.

'Will it fire?' he asks.

'Of course it'll fire,' replies his father. 'Do you think I'd buy a
weapon I couldn't use?'

'How should I know?'

'No, how would you know?'

'Exactly.'

'What do you mean?'

'Nothing. But I quit that damned horse dealer.'

'You never should have started working for him. What did I
tell you?'

'You didn't tell me anything, did you?'

'I told you to stay at the Trade Association!'

'What does that have to do with it?'

'You're not listening to what I'm saying.'

'Well, what does it have to do with anything?'

'Here you come home and say I never tell you anything.'

'I never should have started at that warehouse. And now I'm
finished with that damned horse dealer.'

'What did I tell you?'

'You didn't say a thing.'

'Didn't I tell you to stay at the warehouse?'

'You should have told me never to start!'

'Why would I say that?'

'I already told you! Aren't you going to ask what I plan to do
instead?'

'Sure.'

'Then ask me!'

'I shouldn't have to ask. If you've got something to say, then
say it. This handle will never get clean.'

'I can see it shining.'

'What do you know about mother-of-pearl revolver handles?
Do you know what mother-of-pearl is?'

'Not really.'

'See what I mean?'

'I'm going to start at secondary school. I've already applied.
And my grades are good enough.'

'All right.'

'Is that all you have to say?'

'What do you want me to say?'

'Do you think it's a good idea?'

'I'm not the one going there.'

'God damn it ...'

'Don't swear.'

'Why not?'

'You're too young.'

'How old do you have to be to swear?'

'Well ...'

'So what do you think?'

'I think you should have stayed at the warehouse. That's what
I've always said ...'

The spring, the summer, are so short, so fleeting, and now it's
time for the rowan berries, when Hans Olofson will be walking
through the gates of the secondary school. What sort of ambition
does he have? Not to be the best, but not the worst either.
To be somewhere in the middle of the stream, always far from
the deep current. He doesn't intend to take the lead and swim
on ahead.

Hans will be a pupil that teachers forget. He sometimes seems
slow, almost sluggish. A pupil who can usually answer, and be
right most of the time. But why doesn't he ever raise his hand,
even when he knows the answer? In geography he possesses
knowledge about the oddest places. He can talk about
Pamplemousse as though he has been there. And Lourenço
Marques, wherever that is.

Hans never drowns in the flood of knowledge through which
he swims for four long years. He makes himself inaccessible and
as invisible as possible in the middle ranks of the class. There he
stakes out his territory and arranges his hiding place. It serves as
a protective cover against a strange hesitant feeling.

What does he actually hope to get out of these four years? It's
not as though he had any plans for the future. The dreams he
harbours are so different. With quiet obsession he hopes that
each lesson will reveal the Goal to him. He dreams of the decisive
moment, when he can close his books, get up and leave,
never to return. Attentively he watches the teachers, searching
for his signpost.

But life being what it is, many other fires are also burning
inside him during those last years he lives by the river. He is
entering that age when every person is his own pyromaniac,
equipped with a piece of flint in an otherwise incomprehensible
world. It's the passions that flare up and die down, that again
gather speed to devour him, yet always let him climb out of the
ashes alive.

The passions release powers that leave him bewildered. This
is the time when he seems to burst the final membranes that
bind him to his childhood, to the time that perhaps both began
and ended in the ruins of the brickworks, when he discovered
that he was precisely himself and no one else, a specific 'I' and
no other.

And these passions flame to the insipid music of Kringström's
band. They have a bass and drums, clarinet, guitar and accordion.
With a sigh they strike up 'Red Sails in the Sunset', weary
unto death, after a thousand years of incessant playing in the
draughty dance rotunda of the People's Hall. Kringström, who
barely remembers his own first name, suffers from chronic bronchitis
caused by a lifetime standing in the heat of the smoky
stoves and the cross-draught of doors eternally opened and closed.
Once, in his lost youth, he had intended to be a composer. Not
a heavy-hipped man of gravity who wrote down notes for posterity,
but the creator of light and popular tunes – he would be a master
of pop songs. But what did he become? What remains of life's
wan smile? The melodies were utterly lost, they never appeared
on his accordion, no matter how much he prayed for inspiration,
how much he practised his fingering. Everything had already been
written, and so he put together his band in order to survive.
People are now stomping on the boards of the dance rotunda,
where they will play until the moment that eternity shoves them
off the last precipice. The music that once was a dream has become
an affliction.

Kringström coughs and envisions a horrendous death from
lung cancer. But he plays on, and when the last note dies out he
receives his listless applause. Below the bandstand, as usual,
hooting and drunken youngsters hang around, not knowing any
dance steps, but all the more willing to hurl jeers if the music
isn't to their liking. Long ago Kringström's band stopped throwing
pearls before swine; his music falls from the instruments like
granite. With ear plugs he mutes the sound as best he can, hearing
only enough so he doesn't lose the beat. They take a break as
often as they can, and drag it out as long as they dare. In a dreary
back room where a single lightbulb dangles from the ceiling and
a torn poster depicting a snake charmer is peeling from the wall,
they drink coffee laced with schnapps, sitting in silence, and
take turns peeking out the door and keeping an eye on the
instruments. If any of the drunken youths were to get the idea
of staggering up on to the bandstand and sinking their teeth
into a clarinet ...