Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

‘Who am I?’ he asks her.

‘A bwana mzungu ,’ she replies.

‘Nothing more?’ he asks.

She looks at him and doesn’t understand. ‘Is there anything more?’ she asks.

Maybe not, he thinks. Maybe that’s all I am, a bwana mzungu . A strange bwana who doesn’t have any children, not even a wife. He decides to tell her the absolute truth.

‘I will be going away from here, Joyce. Other people will take over the farm. But I will take care of you and your daughters. Maybe it’s better if you return with your children to the regions around Luapula where you came from. There you have family, your origins. I will give you money so you can build a house and buy enough limas of farmland so that you can live a good life. Before I leave I have to arrange for Peggy and Marjorie to finish their nursing studies. Maybe it would be better if they went to the school in Chipata. It isn’t too far from Luapula, and not as big as Lusaka. But I want you to know that I’m leaving, and I want to ask you not to tell anyone yet. The people on the farm might be worried, and I don’t want that.’

She listens to him attentively, and he speaks slowly to show her that he is serious.

‘I’m going back to my homeland,’ he goes on. ‘In the same way as you might return to Luapula.’

All at once she smiles at him, as if she has understood the real meaning of his words.

‘Your family is waiting for you there,’ she says. ‘Your wife and your children.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘They are waiting there, and they have waited a long time.’

She asks eagerly about his family, and he creates one for her, three sons and two daughters, a wife. She could never understand anyway, he thinks. The white man’s life would be incomprehensible to her.

Late in the night he gets up and walks to his car. In the beam of the headlights he sees her close the door to the mud house. Africans are hospitable, he thinks. And yet I have never been inside her house.

The German shepherds come to meet him outside his house. He will never have dogs again, he thinks. I don’t want to live surrounded by noisy sirens and animals trained to go for the throat. It’s not natural for a Swede to keep a revolver under his pillow, to check every night that it’s loaded, that the magazine rotates its cartridges. He walks through the silent house and wonders what there is for him to go back to. Eighteen years might be too long. He has little idea what has happened in Sweden in all these years. He sits down in the room he calls his work room, turns on a lamp and checks that the curtains are drawn.

When I sell the farm I will have stacks of kwacha banknotes that I can’t take with me or even exchange. Patel can surely help me with some, but he will see the opportunity and demand an exchange fee of at least fifty per cent. I have money in a bank in London, even though I don’t really know how much. When I leave I will do so empty-handed.

Again he doubts that his departure is necessary. I could accept the revolver under the pillow, he thinks. The terror that is always present, the uncertainty that I have lived with this long. If I stay here another fifteen years I can retire, maybe move to Livingstone or Sweden. Others besides Patel can help me get the money out to secure my remaining years.

I have nothing to go back to in Sweden. My father is long dead, and hardly anyone in my home town will remember who I am. How will I survive in a winter landscape now that I’ve grown used to Africa’s heat — exchange my sandals for ski boots?

For a moment he toys with the thought of returning to his studies, using his middle years to complete his law degree. For twenty years he has worked at shaping his life, yet he has remained in Africa because of chance events. Going back to Sweden would not be a return. I would have to start all over again. But with what?

He wanders restlessly about his room. A hippo bellows from the Kafue. How many cobras have I seen during my years in Africa? he asks himself. Three or four a year, countless crocodiles, hippos and pythons. In all these years only a single green mamba, which had sneaked into the hen house. I ran over an ape with my car outside Mufulira once, a big male baboon. In Luangwa I saw lions and thousands of elephants, pocos and kudus have leaped high through the grass and sometimes crossed my path. But I have never seen a leopard, only sensed its shadow on that night Judith Fillington asked me to help her with her farm.

When I leave here Africa will fade away like an extraordinary dream, stretched out to encompass a decisive part of my life. What am I actually going to take with me? A hen and an egg? That tree branch with inscriptions that I found down by the river one time, a witch doctor’s forgotten staff? Or will I take Peter Motombwane’s holy panga with me, and show people the weapon that sliced up two of my friends and that one night was going to be raised over my own throat? Should I fill my pockets with the red dirt?

I carry Africa inside me, drums pounding distantly in the night. A starry sky whose clarity I have never before experienced. The variations of nature on the seventeenth parallel. The scent of charcoal, the ever-present smell of ingrained sweat from my workers. Joyce Lufuma’s daughters walking in a row with bundles on their heads.

I can’t leave Africa before I make peace with myself, he thinks. With the fact that I stayed here for almost twenty years. Life is the way it is, and mine became what it became. I probably would have been no happier if I had finished my studies and spent my time in the world of Swedish justice. How many people dream of venturing out? I did it, and one might also say that I succeeded with something. I’ll keep brooding over meaningless details if I don’t accept my eighteen years in Africa as something I’m grateful for, in spite of everything.

Deep inside I also know that I have to leave. The two men I killed, Africa which is devouring me, make it impossible to stay. Maybe I’ll simply flee, maybe that’s the most natural leave-taking. I have to start planning my departure right away, tomorrow. Give myself the time required, but no more.

After he goes to bed he reflects that he has absolutely no regrets at having run over Lars Håkansson. His death hardly affects him. But Peter Motombwane’s blasted head aches inside him. In his dreams he is watched by a leopard’s vigilant eye.

Olofson’s final days in Africa stretch out to half a year. He offers his farm to the white colony, but to his astonishment no one bids on it. When he asks why, he realises that the location is too isolated. It’s a profitable farm, but nobody dares take it over. After four months he has only two offers, and he realises that the price he will get for it is very poor.

The two bidders are Patel and Mr Pihri and his son. When word gets out that he is leaving his farm, they both come to visit; only chance keeps them from appearing on his terrace at precisely the same moment. Mr Pihri and his son regret his departure. Naturally, Olofson thinks. Their best source of income is disappearing. No used cars, no sewing machines, no back seat stacked full of eggs.

When Mr Pihri enquires about the asking price for the farm, Olofson thinks it’s merely the man’s eternal curiosity. Only later does he understand to his surprise that Mr Pihri is a bidder. Did I give him that much money over the years? So many bribes that now he can afford to buy my farm? If that’s the case, it’s a perfect summation of this country, perhaps of Africa itself.

‘I have a question,’ Olofson says to him. ‘And I mean this in a friendly way.’

‘Our conversations are always friendly,’ says Mr Pihri.

‘All those documents,’ Olofson says. ‘All those documents that had to be stamped so I wouldn’t have problems. Were they necessary?’