Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

‘What’s going on?’ he asks. ‘New riots? New plundering raids? When I came to Kitwe everything seemed calm.’

‘The authorities have released an emergency store of maize,’ Motombwane says. ‘Sugar is on the way from Zimbabwe, Canadian wheat is in Dar-es-Salaam. The politicians have decided not to have any more riots. Many people have been put in jail, and the president is hiding in the State House. Everything will calm down again, unfortunately. A mountain of sacks of corn meal is enough to delay an African riot for quite a while. The politicians can sleep securely with their fortunes, and you can take down your barricades from the doors and sleep soundly again.’

‘How do you know that I build barricades?’ Olofson asks.

‘Even with no imagination I would guess that,’ replies Motombwane.

‘But Werner and Ruth Masterton will not get their lives back,’ Olofson says.

‘At least that’s something,’ replies Motombwane.

Olofson starts. He feels the rage coming. ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

‘I was thinking of driving out to see you someday,’ Motombwane says unperturbed. ‘I’m a journalist, and I’ve investigated the twilight land that Rustlewood Farm has become. Truths are coming to light, and no one is afraid that the dead will come back to haunt them since their heads were cut off their bodies. The black workers are talking, an unknown world is emerging. I thought I’d drive out to see you someday and tell you about it.’

‘Why not now?’ Olofson asks.

‘I like it on your farm,’ replies Motombwane. ‘I would have liked to live there. On your terrace one can talk about everything.’

Olofson realises that there is a subtext to Peter Motombwane’s words. I don’t know him, he thinks. Beyond our conversations, evenings spent in each other’s company, the fundamental fact keeps returning that he’s black and I’m a white European. The differences between the continents are never so great or blatant as when they are represented by two individuals.

‘Two dead, dismembered bodies,’ says Motombwane. ‘Two Europeans who lived here for many, many years, murdered and cut to bits by unknown blacks. I decided to work backwards, to search for light among the shadows. Perhaps because I might have been wrong, it mightn’t have been pure chance that it was the Mastertons who were killed. I start my investigations and an underlying world begins to surface. A farm is always a closed system; the white owners put up both visible and invisible fences around themselves and their workers. I talk with the blacks, put together fleeting rumours into something that suddenly starts to be readable and clear. I stand before an assumption that is slowly confirmed. Werner and Ruth Masterton were hardly murdered by chance. I can never be sure; coincidences and conscious decisions can also be woven together with invisible threads.’

‘Tell me,’ says Olofson. ‘Tell me the story of the shadows.’

‘A picture began to emerge,’ says Motombwane. ‘Two people with an unreasoning hatred of black people. A terror regime with constant threats and punishments. In earlier times we were beaten with whips made from hippopotamus skins. Today that would be an impossibility. The whips are invisible; they leave their marks only in the sensitive skin of the mind and the heart. The blacks who worked at Rustlewood Farm endured a constant barrage of humiliations and threats of dismissal, degrading transfers, fines, and lockouts. A South African territory reveals itself right here, in this country, an utterly unbounded racism. Ruth and Werner Masterton’s primary nourishment was the contempt they cultivated.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ says Olofson. ‘I knew them. You can’t see through the lies you’re dragging up out of the shadow world you’ve been visiting.’

‘I’m not asking you to believe me,’ says Motombwane. ‘What I’m giving you is the black truth.’

‘A lie will never be true, no matter how many times you repeat it,’ Olofson replies. ‘Truths don’t follow race; at least they shouldn’t do so in a friendly conversation.’

‘The various accounts coincided,’ Motombwane says. ‘Individual details were confirmed. According to what I now know, I have to shrug my shoulders at their fate. I believe it was justified.’

‘That conclusion makes our friendship impossible,’ says Olofson, getting to his feet.

‘Has it ever really been possible?’ asks Motombwane, unmoved.

‘I thought so,’ Olofson says. ‘At least it was my sincere hope.’

‘I’m not the one who’s making something impossible,’ says Motombwane. ‘You’re the one who prefers to deny a truth about dead people when it’s right in front of you, instead of choosing a friendship with a living person. What you’re doing now is taking a racist position. Actually, it surprises me.’

Olofson feels an urge to hit Motombwane. But he controls himself.

‘What would you do without us?’ he asks. ‘Without the whites this country would fall apart. Those aren’t my words, they’re yours.’

‘And I agree with them. But the collapse wouldn’t be as great as you imagine. It would be extensive enough that a necessary transformation would have to be pushed through. A revolt that has been suppressed for far too long might break out. In the best case, we would succeed in ripping away all the European influences that continue to oppress us even though we ourselves are not aware of them. Then perhaps we could finally achieve our African independence.’

‘Or else you’ll chop each other’s heads off,’ says Olofson. ‘Tribe against tribe, Bemba against Luvale, Kaonde against Luzi.’

‘Anyway, that’s our own problem,’ says Motombwane. ‘A problem that wasn’t imposed on us by you.’

‘Africa is sinking,’ Olofson says excitedly. ‘The future of this continent is already over. The only thing that remains is a deeper and deeper decay.’

‘If you live long enough you’ll realise that you’re wrong,’ replies Motombwane.

‘According to all available calculations my life span is superior to yours,’ says Olofson. ‘No one will shorten it by raising a panga over my head, either.’

Theirs is a ragged and weary parting of ways. Olofson merely walks away, leaving Motombwane huddled in the shadows. When he returns to his room and has slammed the door behind him, he feels sad and forlorn. The lonely dog barks inside him, and he suddenly sees his father’s impotent scrubbing. Ending a friendship, he thinks. It’s like breaking your own fingers. With Peter Motombwane I lose my most important link to Africa. I will miss our conversations, his clarification of why the black man’s thoughts look the way they do. He lies down on the bed to think. Motombwane could be absolutely right, of course. What do I really know about Ruth and Werner? Almost twenty years ago we shared a compartment on the night train between Lusaka and Kitwe; they helped me along, took care of me when I came back from Mutshatsha. They never made a secret of their opposition to the transformation that Africa is undergoing; they always referred to the colonial times as the era that could have led Africa forward. They felt both betrayed and disappointed. But what about the brutality that Motombwane thought he had traced to their daily life?

Maybe he’s right, Olofson thinks. Maybe there is a truth that I’m pushing away. He hurries back to the bar to try and reconcile with Peter Motombwane.

But the table is empty; one of the waiters says that he got up and left. Exhausted and sad, Olofson sleeps in his hotel bed.

When he eats breakfast in the morning, he is again reminded of Ruth and Werner. One of their neighbours, an Irishman named Behan, comes into the dining room and stops by his table. A will has been found in the blood-drenched house; a steel safe survived the fire. A law firm in Lusaka is authorised to sell the farm and transfer the remaining profit to the British retirement home in Livingstone.