Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

Mr Pihri thinks for a long time before he replies. ‘I don’t quite understand.’

Well, that would be the first time, Olofson thinks.

‘In all friendliness,’ he continues. ‘I wonder only whether you and your son have done me such great favours as I have believed.’

Mr Pihri looks distressed; his son lowers his eyes.

‘We have avoided trouble,’ replies Mr Pihri. ‘In Africa our aim is always mutual benefit.’

I’ll never know how much he has fooled me, Olofson thinks. How much of my money he in turn has paid to other corrupt civil servants. I’ll have to live with that riddle.

The same day Patel drives up to the farm in his rusty car.

‘Naturally a farm like this would not be hard to sell,’ he says with a smile.

His humility conceals a predator, thinks Olofson. Right now he’s calculating percentages, preparing his solemn speech about how dangerous it is to make illegal deposits of currency outside the control of the Zambian National Bank. People like Mr Pihri and Patel are among this continent’s most deplorable individuals. Without them nothing functions. The price of corruption is the usual: the impotence of the poor. Olofson mentions his difficulties and the price he had in mind.

‘Of course it’s a scandalously low price,’ he says.

‘These are uncertain times,’ replies Patel.

Two days later a letter arrives in which Patel informs him that he will be bidding on the farm, but that the price seems a bit high to him, in view of the difficult times. Now I have two bidders, Olofson thinks. Both are ready to talk me down, using my own money.

He writes a letter to the bank in London notifying them that he’s selling his farm. The contract that was prepared with the lawyer in Kitwe stipulates that the entire sale price now falls to him. The law firm in Kitwe no longer exists; his lawyer has moved to Harare in Zimbabwe. A reply comes from the bank in London a couple of weeks later, advising him that Judith Fillington died in 1983. Since the bank no longer had any business associated with the old or new owners, it had not deemed it necessary to inform him of her death.

For a long time he sits with the letter in his hand, remembering their helpless act of love. Every life is always a completed whole, he thinks. Afterwards no retouching is permitted, no additions. No matter how hollow it may have been, at the end it is still a completed whole.

One day in late November, a few months before he leaves Africa, Olofson drives Joyce Lufuma and her daughters to Luapula. They load her few possessions into one of the egg lorries. Mattresses, cooking implements, bundles of clothes. Outside Luapula he follows Joyce’s instructions, turning down a barely passable bush track, and finally stops by a cluster of mud houses.

Instantly the car is surrounded by dirty, skinny children. Swarms of flies engulf Olofson as he climbs out. After the children come the adults, enclosing Joyce and her children in their community. The African family, Olofson thinks. In some way they are all related to each other, prepared to share even though they possess virtually nothing. With the money I gave Joyce she will be the most well-to-do person in this community. But she will share it all; in the remote villages a sense of solidarity lives on that is otherwise not visible on this continent.

On the outskirts of the village Joyce shows him where she will build her house, keep her goats, and plant her plots of maize and cassava. Until the house is built she will live with her daughters in the house of one of her sisters. Peggy and Marjorie will finish their studies in Chipata. A missionary family that Olofson contacted has promised to take care of them, letting them stay in their house. More I cannot do, he thought. The missionaries will hardly let them be photographed naked and send their pictures to Germany. Maybe they will try to convert the girls, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

He has transferred 10,000 kwacha into a bank account for Joyce, and taught her how to write her name. He has also transferred 10,000 kwacha to the missionaries of Mutshatsha. He knows that 20,000 kwacha is what one of his workers earns in an entire lifetime. Everything is unreasonable, he tells himself. Africa is a continent where everything is out of proportion to what I once was accustomed to. It’s quite easy to make a rich woman of Joyce Lufuma. I’m sure she doesn’t realise how much money I have given her. Maybe it’s best that way. With tears in his eyes he says goodbye. Now is when I’m really leaving Africa, he thinks. Whatever binds me to this continent ceases with Joyce and her daughters.

When he gets into the car, the daughters are dancing around him. Joyce beats a drum and the sound follows him away. The outcome of the future depends on these women, he thinks again. I can only pass on a part of the money I still have in abundance. The future is their own.

He assembles his foremen and promises to do what he can so that the new owner will keep them all on. He buys two oxen and prepares for a party. A lorry comes to the farm with 4,000 bottles of beer. The party goes on all night; the fires flare up and drunken Africans dance to a seemingly endless number of drums. Olofson sits with the old men and watches the dark bodies moving around the fires. Tonight nobody hates me, he thinks. Tomorrow the usual reality will resume. This is a night when no knife blades glisten. The whetstones are at rest.

Tomorrow reality is once again as it must be, filled to bursting point with contradictions that one day will explode in a necessary revolt. In the shadows he thinks he sees Peter Motombwane. Which one of these people will carry on his dream? Someone will do it, I’m certain of that.

One Saturday in December he sells off the furniture in the house at an improvised auction. The white colony has come, along with a few blacks. Mr Pihri and his son are an exception, Patel another. None of them places any bids. The books that he once took over from Judith Fillington are purchased by a mining engineer from Luansha. His shotgun goes to one of his neighbours. He decides to keep his revolver. The furniture he once used for barricades is carried off to vehicles which then drive to various farms. He keeps two wicker chairs that sit on the terrace. On this Saturday he receives innumerable invitations to farewell dinners. He accepts them all.

When the auction is over only his empty house remains, and the question of who will take over the farm. Mr Pihri and Patel make identical offers, as if they had entered into a secret pact. But Olofson knows that they are bitter enemies, and he decides once and for all to play them off against each other. He sets a date, 15 December at midday. Whoever gives him the highest bid by that deadline will take over the farm.

With a lawyer he has brought in from Lusaka he waits on the terrace. A few minutes before twelve both Patel and Mr Pihri arrive. Olofson asks them to write down their bids on slips of paper. Mr Pihri excuses himself for not having a pen and has to borrow one from the lawyer. Patel’s bid is higher than Mr Pihri’s. When Olofson reads the result, he sees the hatred for Patel flash in Mr Pihri’s eyes. Patel won’t have an easy time of it with him, Olofson thinks. With him or with his son.

‘There is one unwritten condition,’ Olofson tells Patel when they are alone. ‘One condition that I do not hesitate to impose, since you have bought this farm for a shamelessly low price.’

‘The times are hard,’ says Patel.

‘The times are always hard,’ Olofson interrupts him. ‘If you don’t take good care of the employees I will haunt you in your dreams. It’s the workers who know how to run this farm, and it’s they who have fed me all these years.’