Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

And yet he doesn’t seem to care whether the malaria kills him or the bandits. He listens to the night. The frogs are croaking. A hippopotamus sighs down by the river.

Is Luka sitting outside the door, on his haunches, waiting? His black face concentrating, turned inward, listening to his forefathers speaking inside him? And the bandits? Where are they waiting? In the dense thickets of hibiscus beyond the gazebo that blew down last year in a violent storm that came after everyone thought the rainy season was over?

One year ago, he thinks. For ten years he has lived here by the Kafue River. Or fifteen years, maybe more. He tries to tally them up but he’s too tired. And he was only supposed to stay here two weeks. What actually happened? Even time is betraying me, he thinks.

He can see himself descend from the aeroplane at Lusaka International Airport that day so inconceivably long ago. The concrete was completely white, the heat hung like a mist over the airport, and an African pushing a baggage cart laughed as he stepped on to Africa’s burning soil.

He remembers his anxiety, his instant suspicion towards Africa. Back then he left behind the adventure he had imagined ever since childhood. He had always imagined that he would step out into the unknown with a consciousness that was open and utterly free of anxiety.

But Africa crushed that idea. When he stepped out of the aeroplane and found himself surrounded by black people, foreign smells, and a language he didn’t understand, he longed to go straight back home.

The trip to Mutshatsha, the dubious pilgrimage to the final goal of Janine’s dream — he carried it out under a compulsion he had imposed on himself. He still recalls the humiliating feeling that terror was his only travelling companion; it overshadowed everything else in his mind. The money sticking to him inside his underpants, the terrified creature huddled in the hotel room.

Africa conquered the sense of adventure within him as soon as he took his first breath on the soil of this foreign continent. He began planning his return at once.

Fifteen or ten or eighteen years later, he is still there. His return ticket is somewhere in a drawer full of shoes and broken wristwatches and rusty screws. Many years ago he discovered it when he was looking for something in the drawer; insects had attacked the envelope and made the ticket illegible.

What actually happened?

He listens to the darkness. Suddenly he feels as if he’s lying in his bed in the wooden house by the river again. He can’t tell if it’s winter or summer. His father is snoring in his room and he thinks that soon, soon, the moorings of the wooden house will be cut and the house will drift away down the river, off towards the sea...

What was it that happened? Why did he stay in Africa, by this river, on this farm, where he was forced to witness the murder of his friends, where he soon felt he was surrounded only by the dead?

How has he been able to live so long with a revolver under his pillow? It isn’t normal for a person who grew up by a river in Norrland — in a town and a time where nobody ever thought of locking the door at night — to check that his revolver is loaded every night, that no one has replaced the cartridges with blanks. It isn’t normal to live a life surrounded by hate...

Once again he tries to understand. Before the malaria or the bandits have conquered him he wants to know...

He can feel that a new attack of fever is on its way. The whining in his head has stopped abruptly. Now he can hear only the frogs and the sighing hippo. He takes a grip on the sheet so he can hold on tight when the fever rolls over him like a storm surge.

I have to hang on, he thinks in despair. As long as I keep my will the fever won’t be able to vanquish me. If I put the pillow over my face they won’t hear me yell when the hallucinations torment me.

The fever drops its cage around him. He thinks he sees the leopard, which only visits him when he’s sick, lying at the foot of the bed. Its cat face is turned towards him. The cold eyes are motionless.

It doesn’t exist, he tells himself. It’s just racing around in my head. With my will I can conquer the cat as well. When the fever is gone the leopard won’t exist any more. Then I’ll have control over my thoughts and dreams. Then it won’t exist any more...

What happened? he wonders again.

The question echoes inside him. Suddenly he no longer knows who he is. The fever drives him away from his consciousness. The leopard watches by the bed, the revolver rests against his cheek.

The fever chases him out on to the endless plains...

One day in late September 1969.

He has promised to stay and help Judith Fillington with her farm, and when he wakes up the first morning in the room with the odd angles, he sees that some overalls with patched knees are lying on his chair.

Luka, he thinks. While I sleep he carries out her orders. Silently he places the overalls on a chair, looks at my face, disappears.

He looks out the window, out over the vast farm. An unexpected elation fills him. For a brief moment he seems to have conquered his fear. He can stay for a few weeks and help her. The trip to Mutshatsha is already a distant memory. Staying on Judith’s farm is no longer following in Janine’s footsteps...

During the hot morning hours Olofson listens to the gospel according to chickens. He and Judith sit in the shade of a tree and she instructs him.

‘Fifteen thousand eggs per day,’ she says. ‘Twenty thousand laying hens, additional colonies of at least 5,000 chicks who replace the hens that no longer lay and then go to slaughter. Every Saturday morning at dawn we sell them. The Africans wait in silent queues all night long. We sell the hens for four kwacha , and they resell the hens at the markets for six or seven kwacha ...’

She looks like a bird. A restless bird who keeps expecting the shadow of a falcon or eagle to drop down over her head. He has put on the overalls that lay on the chair when he awoke. Judith is wearing a pair of faded, dirty khaki trousers, a red shirt that is far too big, and a hat with a wide brim. Her eyes are inaccessible in the shadow of the brim.

‘Why don’t you sell them at the markets yourself?’ he asks.

‘I concentrate on survival,’ she says. ‘I’m already close to cracking under the workload.’

She calls to Luka and says something that Olofson doesn’t understand. Why do all the whites act impatient, he wonders, as if every black man or woman were insubordinate or stupid?

Luka returns with a dirty map, and Olofson squats down next to Judith. With one finger she shows him on the map where her farm delivers its eggs. He tries to remember the names: Ndola, Mufulira, Solwezi, Kansanshi.

Judith’s shirt is open at the neck. When she leans forward he can see her skinny chest. The sun has burned a red triangle down towards her navel. Suddenly she straightens up, as if she were aware that he was no longer looking at the map. Her eyes remain hidden under the hat.

‘We deliver to the shops of the state cooperative,’ she says. ‘We deliver to the mining companies, always big orders. At most a thousand eggs per day go to local buyers. Every employee gets one egg a day.’

‘How many people work here?’ Olofson asks.

‘Two hundred,’ she replies. ‘I’m trying to learn all their names by paying out the wages myself. I take deductions for drunkenness and for those who miss work without having a good excuse. I give out warnings and fines, I hire and fire, and I rely on my memory to guarantee that no one who is sacked comes back under a false name to be hired again. Of the 200 who work here, twenty are night watchmen. We have two laying houses, each manned by an assistant foreman and ten workers in shifts. In addition we have butchers, carpenters, drivers, and manual labourers. Only men, no women.’