The Eye Of The Leopard (33 page)

'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 take 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 ...