The Eye Of The Leopard (9 page)

The taxi that is also used as an ambulance comes skidding
through the gravel down towards the iron bridge. The district judge
and his wife are informed about what has happened, and at the
hospital the lone and always weary doctor begins to examine Sture.

He's alive, he's breathing. The concussion will pass. But his
spine is broken; he is paralysed from the neck down. The doctor
stands for a moment at the window and looks across the ridges
of the forest before he goes out to the waiting parents.

At the same time Hans Olofson is vomiting into the toilet of
the police station. A policeman holds him by the shoulders, and
when it's over, a cautious interview begins.

'The red jacket,' he keeps repeating over and over. 'I saw the
jacket lying in the river.'

At long last his father comes hurrying from the forest. Rönning
the junk dealer drives them home and Hans crawls into bed. Erik
Olofson sits on the edge of his bed until long after midnight,
when his son finally falls asleep.

All night long the lights are burning in the spacious upper
floor of the courthouse.

A few days after the accident, Sture disappears from town.

Early one morning Sture is carried out on a stretcher to a waiting
ambulance which quickly drives off to the south. The vehicle
sprays gravel when it passes through Ulvkälla. But the hour is
early, Janine is asleep, and the car disappears towards the endless
forests of Orsa Finnmark.

Hans Olofson never gets a chance to visit his fallen brother
in arms. At dusk on the day before Sture is driven away, he
wanders restlessly around the hospital, trying to figure out which
room Sture is lying in. But everything is secret, concealed, as if
the broken spine were contagious.

He leaves the hospital and wanders down towards the river,
drawn inexorably to the bridge, and inside he feels a great burden
of guilt. The accident was his creation ...

When he discovers that Sture has been driven out of town
early one morning, to a hospital far away, he writes a letter that
he stuffs into a bottle and flings into the river. He watches it float
down towards the point at People's Park and then he runs across
the river to the house where Janine lives.

There is A Joyous Spring Fellowship at her church that
evening, but now that Hans is standing like a white shadow in
her doorway, of course she stays home. He sits down on his usual
chair in the kitchen. Janine sits down across from him and looks
at him.

'Don't sit on that chair,' he says. 'That's Sture's.'

A God that fills the earth with meaningless suffering, she
thinks. Breaking the back of a young boy just as summertime is
bursting forth?

'Play something,' he says without raising his head to look at her.

She takes out her trombone and plays 'Creole Love Call' as
beautifully as she can.

When she finishes and blows the saliva out of the instrument,
Hans gets up, takes his jacket, and leaves.

Far too small a person in a far too large and incomprehensible
world, she thinks. In a sudden flare-up of wrath she puts
the mouthpiece to her lips and plays her lament, 'Siam Blues'.
The notes bellow like tortured animals and she doesn't notice
Hurrapelle step through the doorway and gaze at her in dismay
as she rocks on her bare feet in time with her music. When she
discovers him she stops playing and pounces on him with furious
questions. He is forced to listen to her doubts in the God of
reconciliation, and he has a sudden sense that the hole below her
eyes is threatening to swallow him up.

He squats there in silence and lets her talk herself out. Then
he carefully chooses his words and coaxes her back to the true
path once again. Even though she doesn't put up any resistance,
he's still not sure whether he has succeeded in infusing the powers
of faith into her again. He decides at once to keep her under
close observation for a while, and then asks her whether she isn't
going to take part in the evening's Joyous Fellowship. But she is
mute, just shakes her head and opens the door for him to go. He
nods and vanishes out into the summertime.

Janine is far away in her own thoughts and it will be a long
time before she comes back ...

Hans plods homeward through the dandelions and moist grass.
When he stands underneath the beams of the river bridge he
clenches his fists.

'Why didn't you wait?' he yells.

The message in the bottle rocks towards the sea ...

After a journey of two hours on his way to the mission
station in Mutshatsha, the distributor of the car Hans
is riding in becomes clogged with silt.

They have stopped in a forlorn and desiccated landscape.
Olofson climbs out of the car, wipes his filthy, sweaty face, and
lets his gaze wander along the endless horizon.

He senses something of the great loneliness that it is possible
to experience on the dark continent. Harry Johanson must have
seen this, he thinks. He came from the other direction, from the
west, but the landscape must have been the same. Four years his
journey took. By the time he arrived his entire family had perished.
Death defined the distance in time and space. Four years, four
dead ...

In our time the journeys have ceased, he thinks. Like stones
with passports we are flung in gigantic catapults across the
world. The time allotted to us is no more than that of our forefathers,
but we have augmented it with our technology. We live
in an era when the mind is less and less often allowed to be
amazed by distance and time ... And yet that's not true, he
laments. In spite of everything, it has been ten years since I
heard Janine for the first time tell the story of Harry Johanson
and his wife Emma, and their trek towards the mission station
of Mutshatsha.

Now I'm almost there and Janine is dead. It was her dream,
not mine. I'm a pilgrim in disguise, following someone else's tracks.
Friendly people are helping me with lodging and transportation,
as if my task were important.

Like this David Fischer, bent over the distributor of his car.
Early that morning Werner Masterton had turned into David's
courtyard. A couple of hours later they were on their way to
Mutshatsha. David Fischer is about his own age, thin and balding.
He reminds Olofson of a restless bird. He keeps looking around,
as if he thinks he's being followed. But of course he will help
Hans Olofson make it to Mutshatsha.

'To the missionaries at Mujimbeji,' he says. 'I've never been
there, but I know the way.'

Why doesn't anybody ask me? Olofson wonders. Why does
no one want to know what I'm going to do in Mutshatsha?

They travel through the bush in David Fischer's rusty military
Jeep. The top has been put up, but the dust seeps in through
the cracks. The Jeep pitches and skids in the deep sand.

'The distributor will probably silt up again,' yells Fischer over
the roar of the engine.

The bush surrounds Hans Olofson. Now and then he glimpses
people in the tall grass. Or maybe it's only shadows, he thinks.
Maybe they're not really there.

Then the distributor silts up, and Olofson stands in the oppressive
heat and listens to the African silence. Like a winter night
in my home town, he thinks. Just as still and deserted. There it
was the cold, here it's the heat. And yet they are so similar. I
could live there, could have endured. So I can probably live here
too. Having grown up in Norrland, in the interior of Sweden,
seems to be an excellent background for living in Africa ...

Fischer slams down the bonnet, casts a glance over his shoulder,
and sets about taking a piss.

'What do Swedes know about Africa?' he asks out of the blue.

'Not a thing,' Olofson replies.

'Even those of us who live here don't understand it,' says Fischer.
'Europe's newly awakened interest in Africa, after you've already
abandoned us once. Now you're coming back, with a guilty
conscience, the saviours of the new age.'

All at once Olofson feels personally responsible. 'My visit is
utterly futile,' he replies. 'I'm not here to save anyone.'

'Which country in Africa receives the most support from
Europe?' asks Fischer. 'It's a riddle. If you guess right you'll be the
first.'

'Tanzania,' Olofson suggests.

'Wrong,' says Fischer. 'It's Switzerland. Anonymous numbered
accounts are filled with contributions that make only a quick
round trip to Africa. And Switzerland is not an African
country ...'

The road plunges steeply down towards a river and a
ramshackle wooden bridge. Groups of children are swimming in
the green water, and women are kneeling and washing clothes.

'Ninety per cent of these children will die of bilharzia,' Fischer
yells.

'What can be done?' Olofson asks.

'Who wants to see a child die for no reason?' Fischer shouts.
'You have to understand that this is why we're so bitter. If we
had been allowed to continue the way we were going, we probably
would have got the better of the intestinal parasites as well.
But now it's too late. When you abandoned us, you also abandoned
the possibility for this continent to create a bearable future.'

Fischer has to slam on the brakes for an African who jumps
on to the road and waves his arms, trying to get a ride. Fischer
honks the horn angrily and yells something to the man as they
pass.

'Three hours, then we'll be there,' Fischer shouts. 'I hope you'll
at least think about what I said. Of course I'm a racist. But I'm
not a stupid racist. I want the best for this country. I was born
here and I hope to be allowed to die here.'

Olofson tries to do as Fischer asks, but his thoughts slip away,
lose their hold. It's as if I'm travelling in my own recollections,
he thinks. Already this journey seems remote, as if it were a
distant memory ...

Afternoon arrives. The sun shines straight into the car's front
windscreen. Fischer comes to a stop and shuts off the engine.

'Is it the distributor again?' asks Olofson.

'We're here,' says Fischer. 'This must be Mutshatsha. The river
we just crossed was the Mujimbeji.'

When the dust settles, a cluster of low, grey buildings appears,
grouped round an open square with a well. So this is where Harry
Johanson ended up, he thinks. This is where Janine headed in
her lonely dream ... From a distance he sees an old white man
approaching with slow steps. Children flock round the car, naked
or wearing only rags.

The man walking towards him has a pale, sunken face. Olofson
senses at once that he is not at all welcome. I'm breaking into a
closed world. A matter for the blacks and the missionaries ...
He quickly decides to reveal at least part of the truth.

'I'm following in Harry Johanson's footsteps,' he says. 'I come
from his homeland and I'm searching for his memory.'

The pale man looks at him for a long time. Then he nods for
Olofson to follow him.

'I'll stay until you tell me to leave,' says Fischer. 'I can't get back
before dark anyway.'

Olofson is shown into a room containing a bed with a crucifix
hanging above it, and a cracked washbasin. A lizard scurries into a
hole in the wall. A sharp smell that he can't identify pricks his nose.

'Father LeMarque is on a trip,' says the pale man with the reticent
voice. 'We expect him back tomorrow. I'll send someone over
with sheets and to show you where to get some food.'

'My name is Hans Olofson,' he says.

The man nods without introducing himself.

'Welcome to Mutshatsha,' he says in a sombre voice before he
leaves.

Silent children stand in the doorway, watching him attentively.
Outside a church bell rings. Olofson listens. He feels a creeping
fear inside. The smell that he can't identify stings his nose. I'll
just leave, he thinks agitatedly. If I take off right now, I never will
have been here. At the same moment David Fischer comes in
carrying his suitcase.

'I understand you'll be staying,' he says. 'Good luck with whatever
it is you're doing. If you want to come back, the missionaries
have cars. And you know where I live.'

'How can I thank you?' Olofson says.

'Why do people always have to thank each other?' says Fischer,
and leaves.

Olofson watches the car go down the road. The children stand
motionless and stare at him.

Suddenly he feels dizzy from the intense heat. He goes inside
the cell assigned to him, stretches out on the hard bed and closes
his eyes.

The church bells fall silent and everything is still. When he
opens his eyes the children are still standing in the doorway
watching him. He stretches out his hand and motions to them.
In an instant they are gone.

He has to go to the toilet. He walks out through the door
and the heat strikes him hard in the face. The big sandy area is
deserted, and even the children are gone. He walks around the
building in his search for a toilet. At the rear he finds a door.
When he pushes the handle the door opens. He steps inside and
in the darkness he is blind. The sharp smell makes him feel sick.
When he gets used to the dark he realises that he's in a morgue.

In the dark he can distinguish two dead Africans lying stretched
out on wooden benches. Their naked bodies are scarcely covered
by dirty sheets. He recoils and slams the door behind him. The
dizziness returns at once.

On the steps outside his door sits an African, looking at him.

'I am Joseph,
Bwana
,' he says. 'I will guard your door.'

'Who told you to sit here?'

'The missionaries,
Bwana
.'

'Why?'

'In case something happens,
Bwana
.'

'What would that be?'

'In the dark many things can happen,
Bwana
.'

'Like what?'

'You'll know it when it happens,
Bwana
.'

'Has anything happened before?'

'There's always a lot happening,
Bwana
.'

'How long are you supposed to sit here?'

'As long as
Bwana
stays here,
Bwana
.'

'When do you sleep?'

'When there is time,
Bwana
.'

'There is only night and day.'

'Now and then other times arise,
Bwana
.'

'What do you do while you're sitting here?'

'I wait for something to happen,
Bwana
.'

'What?'

'You'll know when it happens,
Bwana
.'

Joseph shows him where there is a toilet and where he can
take a shower under an old petrol tank with a dripping hose.
After he has changed his clothes, Joseph accompanies him to the
mission station's mess hall. An African with one leg shorter than
the other walks around the empty tables wiping them with a
dirty rag.

'Am I the only one here?' he asks Joseph.

'The missionaries are on a trip,
Bwana
. But tomorrow they
may return.'

Joseph waits outside the door. Olofson sits down at a table.
The lame African brings a bowl of soup. Olofson eats, swatting at
flies that buzz around his mouth. An insect stings him on the
back of the neck and when he starts, he spills the soup on the table.
The lame man comes at once with his rag.

Something is wrong on this continent, he thinks. When
someone cleans up, the dirt is just spread even more.

The brief twilight is almost over as he leaves the mess hall.
Joseph is waiting for him outside the door. In the distance fires
are gleaming. He notices that Joseph is standing rocking on his
feet, that he can hardly keep his balance.

'You're drunk, Joseph,' he says.

'I'm not drunk,
Bwana
.'

'I can see that you're drunk!'

'I'm not drunk,
Bwana
. At least not much. I only drink water,
Bwana
.'

'You can't get drunk on water. What have you been drinking?'

'African whisky,
Bwana
. But it's not allowed. I won't be
permitted to stand watch here if any of the
mzunguz
find out
about it.'

'What would happen if someone saw that you were drunk?'

'Sometimes in the morning we have to line up and breathe at
a
wakakwitau
,
Bwana
. If anyone smells of anything but water he
is punished.'

'Punished how?'

'In the worst case he would have to leave Mutshatsha with his
family,
Bwana
.'

'I won't say a thing, Joseph. I'm no missionary. I'm only here
on a visit. I'd like to buy a little of your African whisky.'

He watches Joseph trying to assess the situation and make a
decision.

'I'll pay you well for your whisky,' he says.

He follows Joseph's wobbly figure creeping through the dark,
close to the building walls, over towards an area with grass huts.
Faces he cannot see laugh in the darkness. A woman scolds an
invisible man, children's eyes shine near a fire.

Joseph stops outside one of the grass huts and calls something
in a low voice. Two men and three women emerge from the hut,
all drunk. Olofson has a hard time distinguishing them in the
dark. Joseph makes a sign to him to enter the hut. An ingrained
stench of urine and sweat meets him in the darkness within.

I ought to be afraid, he thinks briefly. Yet I feel quite safe in
Joseph's company ...

At the same moment he stumbles over something on the floor,
and when he feels with his hand he finds that it's a sleeping child.
Shadows dance across the walls, and Joseph motions him to sit
down. He sinks down on to a raffia mat and a woman hands
him a mug. What he drinks tastes like burnt bread and it's very
strong.

'What am I drinking?' he asks Joseph.

'African whisky,
Bwana
.'

'It tastes bad.'

'We're used to it,
Bwana
. We distil
lituku
from maize waste,
roots, and sugar water. Then we drink it. When it's gone we make
more. Sometimes we drink honey beer too.'

Olofson can feel himself becoming intoxicated.

'Why did the others leave?' he asks.

'They're not used to a
mzungu
coming here,
Bwana
. No
mzungu
has ever been inside this hut before.'

'Tell them to come back. I'm no missionary.'

'But you're white,
Bwana
. A
mzungu
.'

'Tell them anyway.'