Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

In order to shake off his dejection he takes action, picking up the phone to call Room Service. An incomprehensible voice answers just as he’s about to give up. He orders tea and chicken sandwiches. The mumbled voice repeats his order and says it will be brought to his room at once.

After an almost two-hour wait, a waiter appears at his door with a tray. During these two hours he was incapable of doing anything but waiting — with a crushing sense of being someone who does not exist, not even to the person who takes the Room Service orders.

Hans Olofson sees that the waiter has a pair of shoes that are almost falling apart. One heel is missing, and the sole of the other is gaping like a fish gill. Unsure how much to tip, he gives far too much, and the waiter gives him a quizzical look before vanishing silently from the room.

After the meal he takes a nap, and when he awakes it is already evening. He opens the window and looks out into the darkness, surprised that the heat is just as intense as it was that morning, although the white sun is no longer visible.

A few street lamps cast a faint light. Black shadows flit past, a laugh comes from an invisible throat in a car park just below his window.

He looks at the clothes in his suitcase, uncertain what would be proper for the dining room of an African hotel. Without actually choosing, he gets dressed and then hides half of his money in a hole in the cement behind the toilet bowl.

In the bar he sees to his surprise that almost all the guests are white, surrounded by black waiters, all wearing bad shoes. He sits down at a solitary table, sinks down into a chair that reminds him of the seat in the taxi, and is at once surrounded by dark waiters waiting for his order.

‘Gin and tonic,’ he says politely.

One of the waiters replies in a worried voice that there isn’t any tonic.

‘Is there anything else you can mix it with?’ asks Olofson.

‘We have orange juice,’ says the waiter.

‘That will be fine,’ says Olofson.

‘Unfortunately there is no gin,’ says the waiter.

Olofson can feel himself starting to sweat. ‘What do you have then?’ he asks patiently.

‘They don’t have anything,’ a voice replies from a nearby table, and Olofson turns to see a bloated man with a red face, dressed in a worn khaki suit.

‘The beer ran out a week ago,’ the man continues. ‘Today there is cognac and sherry. For a couple of hours yet. Then that’ll be gone too. Rumour has it that there may be whisky tomorrow. Who knows?’

The man finishes his speech by giving the waiter a dirty look and then leaning back in his chair.

Olofson orders cognac. He has the feeling that Africa is a place where everything is just about to run out.

By his third glass of cognac an African woman suddenly sits down in the chair next to him and gives him an inviting smile.

‘Company?’ she asks.

He is flattered, although he realises that the woman is a prostitute. But she arrived too early, he thinks. I’m not ready yet. He shakes his head.

‘No thanks. Not tonight.’

Unfazed and still smiling, she gazes at him.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘But I may be leaving tomorrow.’

The woman gets up and disappears in the darkness by the bar.

‘Whores,’ says the man at the next table, who seems to be watching over Olofson like a guardian angel. ‘They’re cheap here. But they’re better at the other hotels.’

‘I see,’ replies Olofson politely.

‘Here they’re either too old or too young,’ the man goes on. ‘There was a better arrangement before.’

Olofson never finds out what the prior arrangement consisted of, since the man again breaks off the conversation, leans back in his chair, and closes his eyes.

In the restaurant he is surrounded by new waiters, and he sees that they too all have worn-out shoes. One waiter who sets a carafe of water on his table has no shoes at all, and Olofson stares at his bare feet.

After much hesitation he orders beef. Just as the food is set on the table he feels an attack of severe diarrhoea coming on. One of the waiters notices that he has put down his fork.

‘It doesn’t taste good?’ he asks anxiously.

‘I’m sure it tastes excellent,’ says Olofson. ‘It’s just that my stomach is acting up.’

Helplessly he sees the waiters flocking around his table.

‘There’s nothing wrong with the food,’ he says. ‘It’s just my stomach.’ Then he can’t hold out any longer. Astonished guests watch his hasty flight from the table, and he fears he won’t make it to his room in time.

Outside the lift he sees to his surprise that the woman who had previously offered him her company is leaving the hotel with the bloated man in the khaki suit who claimed that the prostitutes weren’t any good at this hotel.

In the lift he shits his pants. A terrible stench begins to spread and the shit runs down his legs. With infinite slowness the lift takes him to his floor. As he stumbles down the corridor he hears a man laughing behind a closed door.

In the bathroom he studies his wretchedness. Then he lies down in his bed and thinks that the assignment he has given himself is either impossible or meaningless. What was he thinking?

In his wallet he has the smudged address of a mission station on the upper reaches of the Kafue. How he’s going to get there he has no idea. He checked that there was a train to Copperbelt before he left. But from there, another 270 kilometres straight out into a pathless, desiccated landscape?

At the library back in his home town he had read about the country where he now found himself. Large parts of it are inaccessible during the rainy season. But when is the rainy season?

As usual, I’m ill-equipped, he thinks. My preparation was cursory, just throwing a few things into a suitcase. Only when it’s too late do I try to make a plan.

I wanted to see the mission station that Janine didn’t have a chance to visit before she died. I took over her dream instead of creating my own...

Hans Olofson falls asleep, sleeps restlessly, and rises at dawn. Out of the hotel window he sees the sun rise like a huge ball of fire over the horizon. Black shadows appear on the street below him. The fragrance of the jacaranda trees blends with the stifling smoke of the charcoal fires. Women with bulging bundles on their heads and children tied on to their backs walk towards goals he cannot fathom.

Without consciously making a decision, he vows to continue, towards Mutshatsha, towards the goal that Janine never reached...

When Hans Olofson awakes in the cold winter morning, and his father lies collapsed over the kitchen table, asleep after a long night’s struggle with his invisible demons, he knows that he is not completely alone in the world. He has a confidant, a warrior with whose help he torments the life out of the Noseless One who lives in Ulvkälla, a cluster of shacks on the south bank of the river. The two of them go searching for the adventure that must exist even in this frozen community.

The wooden house where Hans’s accomplice lives has a mighty fir tree. Fenced in by stone posts and well-polished steel wire stands the district court and courthouse, a white building with a columned portico and wide double doors. The ground floor is the courtroom, and the judge lives upstairs. For over a year the building stood empty, after old Judge Turesson died. Then one day a fully packed Chevrolet drove into the courtyard of the courthouse, and the town peeked expectantly through its curtains. From the gleaming car poured the family of the new district judge. One of the children running around in the yard was named Sture. He became Hans Olofson’s friend.