Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

‘Why are they doing this, anyway?’ asks Judith. ‘Waiting all night for the leopard, when it probably won’t show up?’

‘Maybe I’ll figure out an answer myself before dawn,’ says Olofson.

‘Wake me up if I fall asleep,’ she says.

‘What is required of a foreman on your farm?’ he asks.

‘Everything,’ she replies. ‘Fifteen thousand eggs have to be gathered, packed, and delivered each day, including Sundays. Feed has to be found; 200Africans must be taken by the ear. Every day involves preventing a number of crises from developing into catastrophes.’

‘Why not a black foreman?’ he asks.

‘If only it were that easy. But it isn’t.’

‘Without Musukutwane there will be no leopard. To me it’s inconceivable that an African cannot be promoted to foreman in this country. They have a black president, a black government.’

‘Come and work for me,’ she says. ‘All Swedes are farmers, aren’t they?’

‘Not exactly,’ he replies. ‘Maybe in the old days, but not any longer. And I don’t know anything about chickens. I don’t even know what 15,000 hens eat. Tons of breadcrumbs?’

‘Waste from the corn mills,’ she says.

‘I don’t think I have the temperament to take someone by the ear,’ he says.

‘I must find someone to help me.’

‘In two days I’ll be leaving on a plane. I can’t imagine I’ll be coming back.’

Olofson swats at a mosquito singing in front of his face. I could do it, he thinks hastily. At least I could try until she finds someone suitable. Ruth and Werner have opened their house to me and given me a breathing space. Maybe I could do the same for her. What tempts him is the possibility of escaping his sense of emptiness. But at the same time he mistrusts the temptation; it could just be another hiding place.

‘Is there a lot of paperwork?’ he asks. ‘Residence permit, work permit?’

‘An unbelievable amount of paperwork is required,’ she says. ‘But I know a colonel in the Immigration Department in Lusaka. Five hundred eggs delivered to his door will procure the required stamps.’

‘But I don’t know anything about chickens,’ he says again.

‘You already know what they eat,’ she replies.

A grass blind and a hiring office, he thinks, and he feels as though he has become involved in something very unusual...

Cautiously he shifts his position. His legs are aching and a rock is pressing against the small of his back. A night bird screeches a sudden complaint in the dark. The frogs fall silent and he listens to the different people breathing around him. The only one he can’t hear is Musukutwane. Werner moves his hand, a faint metallic sound comes from the rifle. Like in the trenches, he thinks. Waiting for the invisible foe...

Just before dawn Musukutwane suddenly emits a faint throaty sound.

‘Starting now,’ whispers Werner. ‘Not a sound, not a movement.’

Olofson turns his head cautiously and pokes a little hole in the grass wall. Judith is breathing close to one ear. A faint sound tells them that Werner has taken the safety off his gun. The light of dawn comes softly, like a vague reflection of a distant fire. The cicadas fall silent, the screeching night bird is gone. The night is suddenly soundless.

The leopard, he thinks. When it approaches it is preceded by silence. Through the hole in the wall he tries to make out the tree to which the cadaver is tied.

They wait, but nothing happens. Suddenly it is full daylight; the countryside is revealed. Werner locks the safety on his rifle.

‘Now we can go home,’ he says. ‘No leopard tonight.’

‘It has been here,’ says Musukutwane. ‘It came just before dawn. But it sensed something and disappeared again.’

‘Did you see it?’ asks Werner suspiciously.

‘It was dark,’ says Musukutwane. ‘But I know he was here. I saw him in my head. But he was suspicious and never climbed up in the tree.’

‘If the leopard was here there must be some tracks,’ says Werner.

‘There are tracks,’ says Musukutwane.

They crawl out of the grass blind and walk over to the tree. Flies are buzzing around the dead calf. Musukutwane points at the ground. The leopard’s tracks.

He came from a dense thicket just behind the tree, made a circuit to observe the calf from different directions, before he approached the tree. Then he turned and quickly vanished back into the thicket. Musukutwane reads the tracks as if they were written words.

‘What scared it off?’ asks Judith.

Musukutwane shakes his head and touches the track carefully with his palm.

‘He didn’t hear anything. But he still knew it was dangerous. It’s an old, experienced male. He has lived long because he is smart.’

‘Will he come back tonight?’ asks Olofson.

‘Only the leopard knows that,’ replies Musukutwane.

Ruth is waiting for them with breakfast.

‘No shots last night,’ she says. ‘No leopard?’

‘No leopard,’ says Judith. ‘But I may have found myself a foreman.’

‘Really?’ says Ruth, looking at Hans. ‘Are you thinking of staying?’

‘A short time,’ he replies. ‘While she looks for the right person.’

After breakfast he packs his bag and Louis carries it out to the waiting Land Rover.

In surprise he realises that he has no regrets at all. I’m not making any commitment, he tells himself. I’m just allowing myself an adventure.

‘Maybe the leopard will come tonight,’ he says to Werner when they say goodbye.

‘Musukutwane thinks so,’ says Werner. ‘If the leopard has any weakness it’s the same as that of a human being: an unwillingness to lose prey that is already caught.’

Werner promises to cancel Olofson’s return trip for him.

‘Come back soon,’ says Ruth.

Judith pulls a dirty cap over her brown hair and with great difficulty jams the car into first gear.

‘We never had children, my husband and I,’ she blurts out as they drive through the gates of the farm.

‘I couldn’t help overhearing,’ says Olofson. ‘What actually happened?’

‘Stewart, my husband, came out to Africa when he was fourteen,’ Judith says. ‘His parents left England during the Depression in 1932, and their savings were just enough for a one-way trip to Capetown. Stewart’s father was a butcher, and he did well. But his mother suddenly began going out in the middle of the night and preaching to the black workers in the shanty towns. She went insane and committed suicide only a few years after they arrived in Capetown. Stewart was always afraid that he would wind up like his mother. Every morning when he woke up he searched for signs that he was starting to lose his mind. He would often ask me if I thought he was doing or saying anything odd. I never thought he had inherited anything from his mother; I think he fell ill from his own fear. After independence here, with all the changes, and the blacks who could now make their own decisions, he lost heart. Still, I was unprepared when he disappeared. He left no message, nothing...’

After a little over an hour they arrive. ‘Fillington Farm’ Olofson reads on a cracked wooden sign nailed to a tree. They turn in through a gate opened by an African in ragged clothes, pass by rows of low incubation buildings, and stop at last outside a house of dark-red brick. A house that was never completed, Olofson can see.

‘Stewart was always fixing up the house,’ she says. ‘He would tear things down and add things on. I don’t think he ever liked the house; he probably would rather have pulled it down and started again.’

‘A castle out in the African bush,’ says Olofson. ‘A strange house. I didn’t think there were any like this.’

‘Welcome,’ she says. ‘Call me Judith and I’ll call you Hans.’