Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

They drive by a peacock ruffling its gaudy feathers.

‘Magic?’ Olofson asks.

‘An African who is successful always risks being the target of magic,’ says Werner. ‘The witchcraft that is practised here can be extremely effective. If there’s one thing that the Africans can do, it’s mixing up deadly poisons. Salves that are spread on a body, herbs that are camouflaged as common vegetables. An African spends more time cultivating his envy than cultivating his fields.’

‘There’s a lot I don’t know,’ says Olofson.

‘In Africa knowledge does not increase,’ says Werner. ‘It decreases, the more you think you understand.’

Werner breaks off and furiously slams on the brakes.

A piece of fence has broken off, and when an African comes running, Olofson sees to his astonishment that Werner grabs him by the ear. This is a grown man, maybe fifty years old, but his ear is caught in Werner’s rough hand.

‘Why isn’t this fixed?’ he yells. ‘How long has it been broken? Who broke it? Was it Nkuba? Is he drunk again? Who’s responsible for this? It has to be fixed within the hour. And Nkuba must be here in an hour.’

Werner shoves the man aside and returns to the Jeep.

‘I can be away for two weeks,’ he says. ‘More than two weeks, and the whole farm would fall apart, not just a bit of fence.’

They stop by a small rise in the midst of a vast grazing pasture, where Brahma cattle move in slow herds. On top of the small hill is a grave.

JOHN MCGREGOR, KILLED BY BANDITS 1967, Olofson reads on a flat gravestone.

Werner squats down and lights his pipe. ‘The first thing a man thinks about when settling on a farm is to choose his gravesite,’ he says. ‘If I’m not chased out of the country I’ll lie here one day too, along with Ruth. John McGregor was a young Irishman who worked for me. He was twenty-four years old. Outside Kitwe they had set up a fake roadblock. When he realised he had been stopped by bandits and not police, he tried to drive off. They shot him down with a submachine gun. If he had stopped they would only have taken the car and his clothes. He must have forgotten he was in Africa; you don’t defend your car here.’

‘Bandits?’ Olofson asks.

Werner shrugs. ‘The police came and said they had shot some suspects during an escape attempt. Who knows if they were the same people? The important thing for the police was that they could record somebody as the guilty party.’

A lizard stands motionless on the gravestone. From a distance Olofson sees a black woman moving with infinite slowness along a gravel road. She seems to be on her way directly into the sun.

‘In Africa death is always close by,’ says Werner. ‘I don’t know why that is. The heat, everything rotting, the African with his rage just beneath the skin. It doesn’t take much to stir up a crowd of people. Then they’ll kill anyone with a club or a stone.’

‘And yet you live here,’ says Olofson.

‘Perhaps we’ll move to Southern Rhodesia,’ Werner replies. ‘But I’m sixty-four years old. I’m tired, I have difficulty pissing and sleeping, but maybe we’ll move on.’

‘Who will buy the farm?’

‘Maybe I’ll burn it down.’

They return to the white house and out of nowhere a parrot flies and perches on Olofson’s shoulder. Instead of announcing that his journey to Mutshatsha is no longer necessary, he looks at the parrot nipping at his shirt. Sometimes timidity is my main psychological asset, he thinks in resignation. I don’t even dare speak the truth to people who don’t know me.

The tropical night falls like a black cloth. Twilight is an ephemeral, hastily passing shadow. With the darkness he feels as though he is also taken back in time.

On the big terrace that stretches along the front of the house, he drinks whisky with Ruth and Werner. They have just sat down with their glasses when headlights begin to play over the grazing meadows, and he hears Ruth and Werner exchange guesses about who it might be.

A car comes to a stop before the terrace and a man of indeterminate age steps out. In the light from shaded kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling, Olofson sees that the man has red burn marks on his face. His head is completely bald and he is dressed in a baggy suit. He introduces himself as Elvin Richardson, a farmer like the Mastertons.

Who am I? Olofson thinks. An accidental travelling companion on the night train from Lusaka?

‘Cattle rustlers,’ says Richardson, sitting down heavily with a glass in his hand.

Olofson listens as if he were a child engrossed in a story.

‘Last night they cut the fence down near Ndongo,’ says Richardson. ‘They stole three calves from Ruben White. The animals were clubbed and slaughtered on the spot. The night watchmen didn’t hear a thing, of course. If this goes on, we’ll have to organise patrols. Shoot a couple of them so they know we mean business.’

Black servants appear in the shadows on the terrace. What are the blacks talking about? Olofson wonders. How does Louis describe me when he sits by the fire with his friends? Does he see my uncertainty? Is he whetting a knife intended expressly for me? There doesn’t seem to be any dialogue between the blacks and the whites in this country. The world is split in two, with no mutual trust. Orders are shouted across the chasm, that’s all.

He listens to the conversation, observing that Ruth is more aggressive than Werner. While Werner thinks that maybe they should wait and see, Ruth says they should take up arms at once.

He gives a start when one of the black servants bends over him and fills his glass. All at once he realises that he is afraid. The terrace, the rapidly falling darkness, the restless conversation; all of it fills him with insecurity, that same helplessness he felt as a child when the beams of the house by the river creaked in the cold.

There are preparations for war going on here, he thinks. What scares me is that Ruth and Werner and the stranger don’t seem to notice it...

At the dinner table the conversation suddenly shifts character, and Olofson feels more at ease sitting in a room where lamps ward off the shadows, creating a light in which the black servants cannot hide. The conversation at the dinner table turns to the old days, to people who are no longer here.

‘We are who we are,’ says Richardson. ‘Those of us who choose to stay on our farms are surely insane. After us comes nothing. We are the last.’

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘You’re wrong. One day the blacks will be begging at our doors and asking us to stay. The new generation can see where everything is headed. Independence was a gaudy rag that was hung on a pole, a solemn proclamation of empty promises. Now the young people see that the only things that work in this country are still in our hands.’

The alcohol makes Olofson feel able to speak.

‘Is everyone this hospitable?’ he asks. ‘I might be a hunted criminal. Anyone at all, with the darkest of pasts.’

‘You’re white,’ says Werner. ‘In this country that’s enough of a guarantee.’

Elvin Richardson leaves when the meal is over, and Olofson realises that Ruth and Werner retire early. Doors with wroughtiron gates are carefully barred shut, German shepherds bark outside in the darkness, and Olofson is instructed how to turn off the alarm if he goes into the kitchen at night. By ten o’clock he is in bed.

I’m surrounded by a barrier, he thinks. A white prison in a black country. The padlock of fear around the whites’ property. What do the blacks think, when they compare our shoes and their own rags? What do they think about the freedom they have gained?

He drifts off into a restless slumber.

He jumps awake when a sound pierces his consciousness. In the dark, he doesn’t know for a moment where he is.