Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

At the house of one of the Mastertons’ neighbours the white colony quickly gathers for a meeting to discuss broader security measures. But Olofson doesn’t attend; he says he can’t face it. Someone at the meeting suggests visiting Olofson that evening to report on what has been decided. But he refuses the visit; he has his dogs and his weapons, he knows how to be careful.

When he returns to his house it has started to rain, a torrential pounding rain that cuts visibility almost to zero. He thinks he glimpses a black shadow disappearing behind the house as he turns into the courtyard. For a long time he stays sitting in the car with the windscreen wipers working frantically. I’m afraid, he realises. More afraid than I’ve ever been before. The ones who murdered Ruth and Werner have also stabbed their knives into me. He takes the safety off his gun and runs through the rain, unlocks the door and slams it hard behind him.

The rain booms on the sheet-metal roof, the German shepherd he was given when he turned forty is sitting strangely motionless on the kitchen floor. Immediately he has the feeling that someone has been inside the house while he was gone. Something in the dog’s behaviour troubles him. Usually it meets him with energetic joy, but now it is inexplicably quiet.

He looks at the dog given to him by Ruth and Werner Masterton and realises that real life is turning into a nightmare. He squats down in front of the dog and scratches behind his ear.

‘What is it?’ he whispers. ‘Tell me what it is, show me if something has happened.’

He walks through his house, still with his pistol ready, and the dog follows him quietly. The feeling that someone has been inside the house doesn’t leave him, even though he can’t see that anything is missing or has been moved. And yet he knows.

He lets the dog out to join the others.

‘Keep watch now,’ he says.

All night long he sits in a chair with his weapons close by. There is a hatred that is boundless, a hatred for the whites which he only now comprehends. Nothing suggests that he would be spared from being enveloped by this hatred. The price he pays for the good life he has led in Africa is that he now sits awake with his weapons next to him.

At dawn he dozes off in his chair. Dreams take him back to his past. He sees himself laboriously trudging through snow metres deep, a pack on his back and wearing ski boots that are always too big. Somewhere he glimpses Janine’s face, Célestine in her case.

He wakes up with a jolt and realises that someone is pounding on the kitchen door. He takes the safety off his gun and opens the door. Luka stands outside. Out of nowhere comes the fury and he points his gun at Luka, presses the cold barrel against his chest.

‘The best explanation you’ve ever given me,’ he shouts. ‘That’s what I want. And I want it now. Otherwise you’ll never come inside my house again.’

His outburst, the pistol with the safety off, doesn’t seem to faze the dignified black man standing before him.

‘A white snake cast itself at my breast,’ he says. ‘Like a flame of fire it bored through my body. In order not to die I was forced to seek out a kashinakashi . He lives a long way from here, he’s hard to find. I walked without stopping for a day and a night. He welcomed me and freed me of the white snake. I came back at once, Bwana .’

‘You’re lying, you damned Negro,’ says Olofson. ‘A white snake? There aren’t any white snakes, and there aren’t any snakes that can bore through a person’s chest. I’m not interested in your superstitions, I want to know the truth.’

‘What I’m saying is true, Bwana ,’ says Luka. ‘A white snake forced its way through my chest.’

In rage Olofson strikes him with the barrel of his pistol. Blood runs from the torn skin on Luka’s cheek, but he still fails to disturb the man’s unflappable dignity.

‘It’s 1987,’ Olofson says. ‘You’re a grown man, you’ve lived among mzunguz your whole life. You know that the African superstition is your own backwardness, ancient notions that you are too weak to free yourself from. This too is something the whites have to help you with. If we weren’t here, you would all kill each other with your illusions.’

‘Our president is an educated man, Bwana ,’ says Luka.

‘Perhaps,’ says Olofson. ‘He has banned sorcery. A witch doctor can be sent to prison.’

‘Our president always has a white handkerchief in his hand, Bwana ,’ Luka goes on, unperturbed. ‘He keeps it to make himself invulnerable, to protect himself from sorcery. He knows that he can’t prevent what is real just by prohibiting it.’

He’s unreachable, Olofson thinks. He’s the one I should fear most, since he knows my habits.

‘Your brothers have murdered my friends,’ he says. ‘But you know that, don’t you?’

‘Everyone knows it, Bwana ,’ says Luka.

‘Good people,’ Olofson says. ‘Hard-working people, innocent people.’

‘No one is innocent, Bwana ,’ says Luka. ‘It’s a sad event, but sad events must happen sometimes.’

‘Who killed them?’ Olofson asks. ‘If you know anything, tell me.’

‘Nobody knows anything, Bwana ,’ Luka replies calmly.

‘I think you’re lying,’ says Olofson. ‘You always know what’s going on, sometimes even before it happens. But now you don’t know anything, all of a sudden nothing at all. Maybe it was a white snake that killed them and cut off their heads?’

‘Maybe it was, Bwana ,’ says Luka.

‘You’ve worked for me almost twenty years,’ Olofson says. ‘I’ve always treated you well, paid you well, given you clothes, a radio, everything you asked for and even things you didn’t ask for. And yet I don’t trust you. What is there to prevent you from smashing a panga into my head one morning instead of serving me my coffee? You people cut the throats of your benefactors, you talk about white snakes, and you turn to witch doctors. What do you think would happen if all the whites left this country? What would you eat?’

‘Then we would decide, Bwana ,’ Luka says.

Olofson lowers his pistol. ‘One more time,’ he says. ‘Who killed Ruth and Werner Masterton?’

‘Whoever did it knows, Bwana ,’ says Luka. ‘No one else.’

‘But you have an idea, don’t you?’ says Olofson. ‘What’s going on in your head?’

‘It’s an unsettled time, Bwana ,’ Luka replies. ‘People have nothing to eat. Our lorries filled with eggs are hijacked. Hungry people are dangerous just before they become completely powerless. They see where the food is, they hear about the meals the whites eat, they are starving.’

‘But why Ruth and Werner?’ Olofson asks. ‘Why them of all people?’

‘Everything must begin somewhere, Bwana ,’ Luka says. ‘A direction must always be chosen.’

Of course he’s right, Olofson thinks. In the dark a bloody decision is reached, a finger points in an arbitrary direction, and there stands Ruth and Werner Masterton’s house. Next time the finger could be pointing at me.

‘One thing you should know,’ he tells Luka. ‘I’ve never killed anyone. But I won’t hesitate. Not even if I have to kill you.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, Bwana ,’ says Luka.

A car comes slowly along the muddy, rutted road from the hen houses. Olofson recognises Peter Motombwane’s rusty Peugeot.

‘Coffee and tea,’ he says to Luka. ‘Motombwane doesn’t like coffee.’

They sit on the terrace.

‘You’ve been expecting me, of course,’ Motombwane says, as he stirs his tea.

‘Actually, no,’ Olofson replies. ‘Right now I’m expecting both everything and nothing.’