Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

Then he quickly changes his mind, shoves it into first gear, stomps on the accelerator, and speeds straight towards Håkansson. Olofson shuts his eyes as he runs over him. There is only a soft thud and a jolt to the chassis. Without looking back he keeps going towards the gate. The night watchman is asleep, the burnt rubber boot is stinking. Olofson pushes open the gates and leaves Kabwe.

In this country they hang murderers, he thinks in despair. I’ll have to say it was an accident and I got so confused that I just drove off without reporting what happened. I was recently subjected to a terrifying attack myself, I’m tired, burned out. He drives towards Kalulushi with a feeling that he should regret what he’s done, but he can’t. He’s sure that Lars Håkansson is dead.

At dawn he drives off the main road and stops; the sun is rising over an endless moorland. He burns the photos of Peggy and Marjorie and lets the ashes drift away on the warm wind.

He has killed two people, maybe even a third. Peter Motombwane was probably the best man in this country, he thinks. Lars Håkansson was a monster. Killing a human being is something incomprehensible. If I’m going to survive I have to tell myself that I atoned for Peter Motombwane by driving my car straight at Håkansson. Something is restored, even though it changes nothing.

For two weeks he waits for the police; anxiety gnaws at him to the point of dissolution. He leaves as much as he can to his foremen and says he’s suffering from constant malaria attacks. Patel visits his farm and Olofson asks him for some sleeping pills. Then he sleeps dreamlessly and often wakes up only when Luka has been standing at the kitchen door pounding for a long time.

He thinks that he ought to visit Joyce Lufuma, speak to her, but he doesn’t know what to say. I can only wait, he thinks. Wait for the police to come in a broken-down car and get me. Maybe I’ll have to give them some petrol so they can take me away.

One morning two weeks later Luka tells him that Peggy and Marjorie have returned on the bus from Lusaka. Terror paralyses him. Now the police are coming, he thinks. Now it’s all over.

But the only ones who come are Peggy and Marjorie. They stand in the sunshine outside the dark mud hut where he sits with his papers. He goes out to them and asks why they came back from Lusaka.

‘ Mzunguz came and said that Bwana Lars had died,’ says Marjorie. ‘We couldn’t live in our house any more. A man who comes from the same country as you gave us money to come back here. Now we are here.’

He drives them home. ‘Nothing is too late,’ he says. ‘I’ll arrange it some other way. You will have the nursing training as we planned.’

We share a secret even though they don’t know it, he thinks. Maybe they have a feeling that Håkansson’s death has something to do with me and the pictures. Or maybe they don’t.

‘How did Bwana Lars die?’ he asks.

‘An accident, said the man from your country,’ replies Peggy.

‘Didn’t any police officers come?’

‘No police,’ says Peggy.

A sleeping night watchman, he thinks. I didn’t see any other cars. Maybe Håkansson was the only one at the guest house. The night watchman in Lusaka is afraid of getting involved. Maybe he didn’t even say I was there the night it happened. Peggy and Marjorie have certainly not said anything, and nobody has asked them about what happened that night in Kabwe. Maybe there wasn’t even any enquiry. An inexplicable accident, a dead Swedish aid expert is flown home in a coffin. An item in the papers, Sida attends the funeral. People wonder, but say to themselves that Africa is the mysterious continent.

Suddenly he realises that no one is going to accuse him of Lars Håkansson’s death. A Swedish aid expert dies in strange circumstances. The police investigate, find pornographic photos, and the case is quickly closed. The development of a network of link stations for telecommunications will not be served by disclosing suspicions that a crime has been committed. The link stations have set me free, he thinks. He sits underneath the tree at Joyce Lufuma’s mud house. Peggy and Marjorie have gone to collect wood, the youngest daughters fetch water. Joyce is pounding maize with a heavy wooden pole.

The future for Africa depends on the plight of Africa’s women, he thinks. While the men out in the villages sit under the shade of a tree, the women are working in the fields, having children, carrying fifty-kilo sacks of maize for miles on their heads. My farm is not the real picture of Africa, with men making up the primary work force. Africa’s women carry the continent on their heads. Seeing a woman with a large burden on her head gives an impression of power and self-confidence. No one knows the back problems that result from these loads they carry.

Joyce Lufuma is perhaps thirty-five years old. She has borne four daughters and she still has enough strength to pound the maize with a thick pole. In her life there has never been room for reflection, only work, life-sustaining work. She has perhaps vaguely imagined that at least two of her daughters would be granted the chance to live another life. Whatever dreams she has she invests in them. The pole that pounds the maize thumps like a drum. Africa is a woman pounding maize, he thinks. From this starting point, all ideas of the future for this continent must be derived.

Joyce finishes pounding and begins to sieve her corn meal. Now and then she casts a glance at him, and when their eyes meet she laughs and her white teeth shine. Work and beauty go together, he says to himself. Joyce Lufuma is the most beautiful and dignified woman I have ever met. My love for her is born of respect. The sensual reaches me through her unbroken will to live. There her wealth is so much greater than mine. Her toil to keep her children alive, to be able to give them food and not to see them waste away from malnutrition, not to have to carry them to graveyards out in the bush.

Her wealth is boundless. In comparison with her I am a very poor person. It would be wrong to claim that my money would increase her well-being. It would only make her work easier. She would not have to die at the age of forty, worn out by her labours.

The four daughters return in a row, carrying water buckets and wood. This I must remember, he thinks, and abruptly realises that he has decided to leave Africa. After nineteen years the decision has formulated itself. He sees the daughters coming along a path, their black bodies erect to help their heads balance their burdens; he sees them and thinks about the time he lay behind a dilapidated brickworks outside the town in Sweden.

I came here, he thinks. When I lay behind a rusty brick furnace I wondered what the world looked like. Now I know. Joyce Lufuma and her four daughters. It took me over thirty years to reach this insight.

He shares their meal, eating nshima and vegetables. The charcoal fire flares, Peggy and Marjorie tell about Lusaka. They have already forgotten Lars Håkansson and his camera, he thinks. What is past is past. For a long time he sits by their fire, listening, saying little. Now that he has decided to sell his farm, leave, he is no longer in a hurry. He isn’t even upset that Africa has conquered him, devoured him to a point where he can no longer go on. The starry sky above his head is perfectly clear. Finally he is sitting alone with Joyce; her daughters are asleep inside the mud house.

‘Soon it will be morning again,’ he says, and he speaks in her own language, Bemba, which he has learned passably well during all the years he has been in Africa.

‘If God wills, one more day,’ she replies.

He thinks of all the words that don’t exist in her language. Words for happiness, the future, hope. Words that wouldn’t be possible because they do not represent the experiences of these people.