The Eye Of The Leopard (27 page)

'People used to talk about Sweden as the self-appointed
conscience of the world,' says Olofson from his chair in the dark.

'Those days are long gone,' says Håkansson. 'Sweden's role is
insignificant; the Swedish prime minister who was murdered
was possibly an exception. Swedish money is sought after, of
course; political naïveté results in the fact that a huge number
of black politicians and businessmen have amassed large private
fortunes with Swedish aid funds. In Tanzania I talked with a
politician who had retired and was old enough to say what he
liked. He owned a castle in France which he had partially financed
with Swedish aid money intended for water projects in the
poorest parts of the country. He talked about an informal
Swedish association among the politicians in the country. A group
of men who met regularly and reported on how they most easily
had been able to put aid money from Sweden into their own
pockets. I don't know if this story is true, but it's possible, of
course. That politician wasn't particularly cynical, either. To be
an African politician is a legitimate opportunity for developing
capital. The fact that it eventually hurts the poorest people in
the country is merely an unwritten rule of the game.'

'I have a hard time believing what you're saying,' Olofson says.

'That's precisely why it's possible for it to continue year after
year,' says Håkansson. 'The situation is too incredible for anyone
to believe, let alone do something about.'

'One question is still unanswered,' says Olofson. 'Why did you
come out here yourself?'

'A divorce that was a mental bloodbath. My wife left me in
the most banal way. She met a Spanish estate agent in Valencia.
My life, which until then I had never questioned, was shattered
as if a lorry had driven right into my consciousness. For two years
I lived in a state of emotional paralysis. Then I left, went abroad.
All my courage to face life had rusted away. I think I intended
to go abroad and die. But I'm still alive.'

'What about the two girls?' Olofson asks.

'It's like I said. They're most welcome. I'll watch out for them.'

'It's a while yet before their courses start,' Olofson says. 'But I
imagine they'll need time to get settled. I thought I'd drive them
down to Lusaka in a few weeks.'

'Please do,' says Håkansson.

What is it that's bothering me? Olofson wonders. An uneasy
feeling that scares me. Lars Håkansson is a reassuring Swede,
honest enough to tell me that he's taking part in something that
could only be described as scandalous. I recognise his Swedish
helpfulness. And yet there's something that makes me nervous.

The next day they both go to visit Joyce Lufuma and her
daughters. When Olofson tells the eldest daughters, they start
dancing with joy. Håkansson stands by, smiling, and Olofson
realises that a white man's solicitude is a guarantee for Joyce
Lufuma. I'm worrying for nothing, he thinks. Maybe because I
don't have any children of my own. But this too represents a
truth about this contradictory continent. For Joyce Lufuma, Lars
Håkansson and I are the best conceivable guarantee for her daughters.
Not merely because we are
mzunguz
, rich men. She has an
utterly unwavering trust in us, because of our skin colour.

Two weeks later Olofson drives the two daughters to Lusaka.
Marjorie, the eldest, sits next to him in the front seat, Peggy
behind him. Their beauty is blinding, their joy in life brings a
lump to his throat. Still, I'm doing something, he thinks, I'm
seeing to it that these two young people are not forced to have
their lives thwarted for no reason, subjected to far too many childbirths
in far too few years, to poverty and privation, to lives that
end too soon.

Their reception at Håkansson's house is reassuring. The cottage
he puts at the disposal of the two girls is freshly painted and well
equipped. Marjorie stands looking at the light switch as if in a
dream; for the first time in her life she will have electricity.

Olofson decides that the vague unease he felt means nothing.
He is projecting his own anxiety on to other people. He spends
the evening at Håkansson's house. Through his bedroom window
he can see Marjorie and Peggy, shadows glimpsed behind thin
curtains. He remembers arriving in the county seat from his hometown,
his first time away, possibly the most crucial journey of all.

The next day he signs a deed of conveyance for his hill, and
leaves his English bank account number. Before he leaves Lusaka
he stops on a whim outside the Zambia Airways office on Cairo
Road and picks up a timetable of the airline's European flights.

The long trip back to Kalulushi is interrupted by thunderstorms
that erase all visibility. Not until late that night does he
turn in through the gates of his farm. The night watchman comes
towards him in the glare of the headlights. He doesn't recognise
the man, and has a fleeting thought that it's a bandit dressed in
the night watchman's uniform. My guns, he thinks desperately.
But the night watchman is the person he says he is, and at close
range Olofson knows him.

'Welcome home,
Bwana
,' he says.

I'll never know if he really means it, Olofson thinks. His words
could just as well mean that he's welcoming me so that he'll have
a chance to cut my heart right out of my body.

'Everything quiet?' he asks.

'Nothing has happened,
Bwana
.'

Luka is waiting for him, and dinner is waiting. He sends Luka
home and sits down at the table. The meal might be poisoned –
the thought comes out of nowhere. I'll be found dead, a sloppy
autopsy will be done, and no poison will ever be detected.

He shoves the tray away, turns out the light, and sits in the
dark. From the attic he can hear the scraping of bat wings. A
spider hurries across his hand. He suddenly knows that his
breaking point is near. Like an attack of dizziness, an approaching
whirlwind of unresolved feelings and thoughts.

He sits for a long time in the dark before he grasps that he is
about to have an attack of malaria. His joints start to ache, his
head is pounding, and the fever shoots up in his body. Quickly
he builds his barricades, pulls cupboards in front of the front
door, checks the windows, and picks a bedroom where he lies
down with his pistol. He takes a quinine pill and slowly drifts
off to sleep.

A leopard is chasing him in his dreams. He sees that it is
Luka, dressed in a bloody leopard skin. The malaria attack chases
him into a chasm. When he wakes in the morning, he realises
that the attack was mild. He gets out of bed, dresses quickly, and
goes to open the door for Luka. He pushes away a cupboard and
realises that he still has his pistol in his hand. He has slept with
his finger on the trigger all night. I'm starting to lose control, he
thinks. Everywhere I sense threatening shadows, invisible
pangas
constantly at my throat. My Swedish background leaves me unable
to handle the fear I keep repressing. My terror is an enslaved
emotion that is about to break free once and for all. The day that
happens, I will have reached my breaking point. Then Africa will
have conquered me, finally, irrevocably.

He forces himself to eat breakfast and then drive to the mud
hut. The black clerks, who are hunched over delivery reports and
orders, stand up and say good morning to him.

That day Olofson realises that the most simple actions are
causing him great difficulty. Each decision causes him abrupt
attacks of doubt. He tells himself that he's tired, that he ought
to turn over responsibility to one of his trusted foremen and take
a trip, give himself some time off.

In the next moment he begins to suspect that Eisenhower
Mudenda is slowly poisoning him. The dust on his desk becomes
a powder that gives off noxious vapours. Quickly he decides to
put an extra padlock on the door of the mud hut at night. An
empty egg carton falling from the top of a stack provokes a meaningless
outburst of rage. The black workers watch him with
inquisitive eyes. A butterfly that lands on his shoulder makes
him jump, as if someone had put a hand on him in the dark.

That night he lies awake. Emptiness spreads out its desolate
landscape inside him. He starts to cry, and soon he is shouting
out loud into the darkness. I'm losing control, he thinks when the
weeping has passed. These feelings come out of nowhere, attacking
me and distorting my judgement. He looks at his watch and sees
it's just past midnight. He gets up, sits in a chair, and begins to
read a book taken at random from the collection Judith Fillington
left behind. The German shepherds pace back and forth outside
the house; he can hear their growling, the cicadas, lone birds calling
from the river. He reads page after page without understanding a
word, looks at his watch often, and waits for daybreak.

Just before three he falls asleep in the chair, the revolver resting
on his chest. He wakes up abruptly and listens into the darkness.
The African night is still. A dream, he thinks. Something I
dreamed yanked me up to the surface. Nothing happened, everything
is quiet. The silence, he thinks. That's what woke me up.
Something has happened, the silence is unnatural. He feels the
fear coming, his heart is pounding, and he grabs his pistol and
listens into the darkness.

The cicadas are chirruping but the German shepherds are quiet.
Suddenly he is sure that something is happening outside his house
in the dark. He runs through the silence to get his shotgun. With
shaking hands he shoves shells into the two barrels and takes off
the safety. The whole time he is listening, but the dogs remain
quiet. Their growling is gone, the sound of their paws has stopped.
There are people outside in the dark, he thinks in desperation.
Now they're coming after me. Again he runs through the empty
rooms and lifts the telephone receiver. The line is dead. Then he
knows, and he's so scared that he almost loses control of his
breathing. He runs up the stairs to the top floor, grabs a pile of
ammunition lying on a chair in the hallway, and continues into
the skeleton room. The single window has no curtains. He peers
cautiously into the darkness. The lamps on the terrace cast a pale
light across the courtyard. He can't see the dogs anywhere.

The lamps suddenly go out and he hears a faint clinking from
one of the glass covers. He stares out into the darkness. For a
few brief seconds he's sure he hears footsteps. He forces himself
to think. They'll try to get in downstairs, he tells himself. When
they realise that I'm up here they'll smoke me out. Again he runs
down the hall, down the stairs, and listens at the two outer doors
that are blockaded by cabinets.

The dogs, he thinks in despair. What have they done to the
dogs? He keeps moving between the doors, imagining that the
attack could come from two directions at once. Suddenly it occurs
to him that the bathroom window has no steel bars on it. It's a
small window, but a thin man could probably squeeze through.
Carefully he pushes open the bathroom door; the shotgun is
shaking in his hands. I can't hesitate, he tells himself. If I see
someone I have to aim and shoot. The bathroom window is
untouched and he goes back to the doors.

A scraping sound comes from the terrace. The roof, he thinks.
They're trying to climb up to the top floor by going on to the
roof of the terrace. Again he runs upstairs. Two guest room
windows face the roof of the terrace, both with steel gratings.
Two rooms that are almost never used. Cautiously he pushes
open the door to the first room, gropes his way over to the window,
and runs his fingers over the thin iron bars that are anchored in
cement. He leaves the room and pushes open the next door. The
scraping noise from the terrace roof is coming closer. He fumbles
through the dark and stretches out his hand to feel the steel
grating. His fingertips touch the windowpane. The steel grating
is gone. Someone has taken it off.

Luka, he thinks. Luka knows that I almost never go into these
rooms. I'm going to kill him. I'll shoot him and throw him to
the crocodiles. Wound him and let the crocs eat him alive. He
retreats to the door, stretches out one hand for a chair that he
knows is there, and sits down.

There are six shells in the shotgun; the pistol's clip holds eight.
That will have to be enough, he thinks desperately. I'll never be
able to reload with my hands shaking like this. The thought of
Luka makes him suddenly calmer; the threat out in the dark has
taken on a face. He feels a strange need growing inside. A need
to point the gun at Luka and pull the trigger. The scraping on
the terrace roof stops. Someone starts to shove a tool into the
windowsill to prise open the window, probably one of his own
tools. Now I'll shoot, he thinks. Now I'll blast both barrels
through the window. His head and torso must be just behind
the glass.

He stands up in the dark, takes a few steps forward, and raises
the gun. His hands are shaking, so much that the barrels of the
shotgun are dancing back and forth.

Hold your breath when you pull the trigger, he remembers.
Now I'm going to kill a man. Even though I'm defending myself
I'm doing it in cold blood. He lifts the gun, aware that he has
tears in his eyes, holds his breath and fires, first one barrel, then
the other.

The explosions thunder in his ears, splintered glass strikes him
in the face. He takes a step back from the recoil and manages to
reach the light switch with his shoulder. Instead of turning it off,
he roars into the night and rushes up to the window he blasted
away. Someone has turned on his car's headlights. He glimpses
two black shadows in front of the car, and he thinks one of them
is Luka. Quickly he aims and fires towards the two shadows. One
of the shadows stumbles and the other disappears. He forgets
that he still has two shells left in the shotgun, drops it to the
floor, and takes his pistol out of his pocket. He fires four shots
at the shadow who stumbled before he realises that it too is gone.