The Eye Of The Leopard (26 page)

'The hell.'

'Then we won't talk about it any more.'

'Why have you never tried to find her?'

'You don't run after people who just up and leave like that.'

'But she was your wife! My mother!'

'She still is.'

'What do you mean?'

'We never got divorced.'

'You're still married?'

'I should think so.'

When they reach Strandvägen and there's still half an hour
to go before nine o'clock, Hans takes his father into a café.

'Do they serve pilsner here?'

'No pilsners. You'll have coffee. And now let's take it from the
top. I'm twenty-five years old, I've never seen my mother other
than in bad photographs. I don't know a thing about her except
that she got fed up and left. I've wondered, I've worried, I've
missed her and I've hated her. You've never said a word. Not one
word.'

'I've been thinking about her too.'

'What?'

'I'm not that good with words.'

'Why did she leave? You must know. You must have brooded
about it for as long as I have. You didn't get a divorce, didn't
remarry. In some way you've continued to live with her. Deep
inside you've been waiting for her to come back. You must have
some explanation, don't you?'

'What time is it?'

'You have to answer!'

'She must have been someone else.'

'What do you mean, "someone else"?'

'Someone other than I thought.'

'And what exactly did you think?'

'I don't remember.'

'Good Lord.'

'It won't do any good to worry about it.'

'For twenty-five years you haven't had a woman.'

'What do you know about that?'

'What do you mean?'

'That has nothing to do with it. What time is it? You have to
show up on the dot with ship owners.'

'So who?'

'If you really want to know, I've met Nyman's wife from time
to time. But you keep your mouth shut about it. Nyman's a nice
bloke.'

Hans can't believe his ears. 'Are those my sisters and brothers?'

'Who?'

'Nyman's children. Are they my sisters and brothers?'

'Those are Nyman's children.'

'How can you be sure?'

'We only saw each other when she was pregnant,' Erik says
simply. 'You learn these things. There can never be shared paternity.'

'And you expect me to believe this?'

'I don't expect anything. I'm just telling you the truth.'

Hans stays in the café while his father visits the ship owner.
My father, he thinks. I evidently never knew a thing about him.

After half an hour Erik comes back.

'How'd it go?'

'Good. But I didn't get a job.'

'So it didn't go so well then.'

'They said they'd let me know.'

'When?'

'When they need seamen.'

'I thought they needed to hire people now?'

'They must have hired someone else.'

'Are you satisfied with that?'

'I've been waiting for years,' says Erik with sudden sharpness.
'I've waited and wished and almost given up. But now at least
I've tried.'

'What are we going to do now?'

'I'm going home tonight. But now I want to have a pilsner.'

'What are we going to do for the rest of the day?'

'I thought you were studying at the university.'

'I am. But now you're here in town and we haven't seen each
other for a long time.'

'How are your studies?'

'All right.'

I see.'

'You didn't answer my question.'

'What question?'

'What do you want to do today?'

'I already told you. I want a pilsner. Then I'll go home.'

They spend the day in the hotel room. A pale autumn sun
shines through the curtains.

'If I find her,' says Hans, 'what should I say?'

'Nothing from me,' Erik says firmly.

'What was her name before you married?'

'Karlsson.'

'Mary Karlsson or Mary Olofson from Askersund? Anything
else?'

'She had a dog named Buffalo when she was a child. I remember
she told me that.'

'That dog must have been dead for fifty years by now.'

'Its name was Buffalo anyway.'

'Is that all you know?'

'Yep.'

'A goddamn dog named Buffalo?'

'That's what it was called, I remember that clearly.'

Hans accompanies him to the train. I'm going to look for her,
he thinks. I can't have a mother who's a riddle. Either he's lying,
hiding something, or else my mother is a strange woman.

'When are you coming home?' his father asks.

'In the summer. Not before. Maybe you'll be a seaman again
before that, what do you think?'

'Could be. Could be.'

Hans takes the train with him as far as Uppsala. He has the
moose steak under his arm.

'So who's poaching?' he asks.

'Nobody you know,' says Erik.

Hans goes back to the house of the clocks. I can't give up, he
thinks. Nothing can really prevent me from becoming the defender
of mitigating circumstance. I'll build barricades inside of me.

I can't give up.

He sees the dead snake.

What is it saying? What message does it bring?
Sorcerers interpret their ancestors' voices, and the black
masses huddle in terrified submission. He knows he should get
going, leave the farm, leave Africa.

Suddenly it's incomprehensible to him. Almost twenty years
in Africa. An unreal, unbelievable life. What was it I thought I
could achieve? Superstition is real, that's what I always forget. I
keep deceiving myself with the white point of view. I've never
been able to grasp the way the blacks think. I have lived here for
almost twenty years without realising on what ground I'm actually
standing. Ruth and Werner Masterton died because they
refused to understand.

With a feeling that he is no longer able to cope, he gets into
his car and drives to Kitwe. So he can get some sleep he checks
into the Hotel Edinburgh, pulls the curtains and lies naked on
top of the sheet. A violent thunderstorm passes through and the
lightning flashes flicker across his face. The torrent pounds like
the surf against the window.

Suddenly he longs for home, a melancholy hunger for the clear
water of the river, the motionless ridges of firs. Maybe that was
what the white snake wanted to tell him. Or was it giving him
his last warning?

I ran away from my own life, he thinks. In the beginning there
was possibility; growing up with the smell of elkhounds, that
may have been meagre but that was still my very own heritage.
I could have worked towards realising an ambition, watching over
the mitigating circumstance. Chance events that were stronger
than I was created my confusion. I accepted Judith Fillington's
offer without understanding what it really involved. Now that
I've already taken off my shoes in the vestibule of middle age,
I'm afraid that my life is shipwrecked. There is always something
else I want. Right now to go back, to start over from the beginning
if it were possible.

Restlessly he gets dressed and goes down to the hotel bar. He
nods to some familiar faces and discovers Peter Motombwane in
a corner, bent over a newspaper. He sits down at his table without
telling him about the events at the farm.

'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.

Behan tells him that the auction of the farm will be held in
a fortnight. Many whites are prospective bidders; the farm will
not be allowed to fall into black hands.

There's a war going on, Olofson thinks. A war that only occasionally
becomes visible. But everywhere the racial hatred is alive
– whites against the blacks and blacks against whites.

He returns to his farm. A violent downpour makes visibility
through the windscreen nonexistent and forces him to stop on
the verge just before the farm. A black woman with two small
children crosses the road in front of the car, covered with mud
and water. He recognises her as the wife of one of the workers
on the farm. She doesn't ask for a ride, he thinks. Nor do I offer
her one. Nothing unites us, not even a fierce downpour, when
only one of us has an umbrella. People's barbaric behaviour
always has a human face, he thinks vaguely to himself. That's
what makes the barbarity so inhumane.

The rain drums on the roof of the car; he waits alone for it
to ease. I could decide here and now, he thinks. Decide to leave.
Sell the farm, go back to Sweden. Exactly how much money Patel
has weaseled out of me I have no idea, but I'm not penniless.
This egg farm has given me a few years' breathing space.
Something about Africa scares me just as much now as the day
I stepped out of the plane at Lusaka International Airport. Twenty
years' experience of this continent hasn't changed a thing, since
I never questioned white assumptions. What would I actually
say if someone asked me to explain what is happening on this
continent? I have my memories – adventurous, gruesome, exotic.
But I don't have any real knowledge.

The rain stops abruptly, a wall of clouds rises and the landscape
starts to dry out again. Before he starts the engine he decides
to spend an hour each day planning his future.

A perfect calm rests over the farm; nothing seems to have
happened. By chance he encounters Eisenhower Mudenda,
bowing to the ground. A white man in Africa is someone who
takes part in a play he knows nothing about, he thinks. Only the
blacks know the next line. Every evening he builds his barricades,
checks his weapons, and chooses a different bedroom. Daybreak
is always a relief, and he wonders how long he'll be able to endure.
I don't even know my own breaking point, he thinks. But it must
exist.

Lars Håkansson returns one afternoon, pulling up in his shiny
car outside the mud hut. Olofson discovers that he's glad to see
him. Håkansson says he'll stay two nights, and Olofson quickly
decides to arrange his internal barricades in silence. They sit on
the terrace at dusk.

'Why does anyone come to Africa?' Olofson asks. 'Why does
anyone force himself out of his own environment? I assume that
I'm asking you because I'm so tired of asking myself.'

'I hardly think that an aid expert is the right person to ask,'
Håkansson replies. 'At any rate not if you want an honest answer.
Behind the slick surface with its idealistic motives there's a landscape
of selfish and economic reasons. Signing a contract to work
overseas is like getting a chance to become well-to-do while at
the same time living a pleasant life. The Swedish welfare state
follows you everywhere and is elevated to undreamed-of heights
when it comes to well-paid aid experts. If you have children the
Swedish state takes care of the best education opportunities; you
live in a marginal world where practically anything is possible.
Buy a car with duty-free import when you arrive in a country
like Zambia, sell it on contract, and then you have money to live
on and don't need to touch your salary, which swells and flourishes
in a bank account somewhere else in the world. You have
a house with a pool and servants, you live as if you had shipped
a whole Swedish manor house with you. I've calculated that in
one month I earn as much as my maid in the house would make
in sixty years. I'm counting what my foreign currency is worth
on the black market. Here in Zambia there is probably not a
single Swedish expert who goes to a bank and changes his money
at the official rate. We don't do as much good as our incomes
would lead you to believe. The day the Swedish taxpayers fully
realise what their money is going on, the sitting government will
be toppled at the next election. The taxpaying Swedish working
class has after many years accepted what is called 'aid to underdeveloped
countries'. Sweden, after all, is one of the few countries
in the world where the concept of solidarity still holds power.
But naturally they want their taxes used in the proper way. And
that happens very rarely. The history of Swedish aid is a reef
with innumerable shipwrecked projects on it, many scandalous,
a few noticed and exposed by journalists, and even more buried
and hushed up. Swedish aid smells like a pile of dead fish. I can
say this because I feel that my own conscience is clear. After all,
helping to develop communications is a way to bring Africa closer
to the rest of the world.'