Read Online The Eye Of The Leopard by Henning Mankell - Free Book Online Page B

responsible
for this? It has to be fixed within the hour. And Nkuba
must be here in an hour.'
    Werner shoves the man aside and returns to the Jeep.
    'I can be away for two weeks,' he says. 'More than two weeks,
and the whole farm would fall apart, not just a bit of fence.'
    They stop by a small rise in the midst of a vast grazing pasture,
where Brahma cattle move in slow herds. On top of the small
hill is a grave.
    JOHN MCGREGOR, KILLED BY BANDITS 1967, Olofson reads on
a flat gravestone.
    Werner squats down and lights his pipe. 'The first thing a man
thinks about when settling on a farm is to choose his gravesite,'
he says. 'If I'm not chased out of the country I'll lie here one day
too, along with Ruth. John McGregor was a young Irishman who
worked for me. He was twenty-four years old. Outside Kitwe they
had set up a fake roadblock. When he realised he had been stopped
by bandits and not police, he tried to drive off. They shot him
down with a submachine gun. If he had stopped they would only
have taken the car and his clothes. He must have forgotten he
was in Africa; you don't defend your car here.'
    'Bandits?' Olofson asks.
    Werner shrugs. 'The police came and said they had shot some
suspects during an escape attempt. Who knows if they were the
same people? The important thing for the police was that they
could record somebody as the guilty party.'
    A lizard stands motionless on the gravestone. From a distance
Olofson sees a black woman moving with infinite slowness along
a gravel road. She seems to be on her way directly into the sun.
    'In Africa death is always close by,' says Werner. 'I don't know
why that is. The heat, everything rotting, the African with his
rage just beneath the skin. It doesn't take much to stir up a crowd
of people. Then they'll kill anyone with a club or a stone.'
    'And yet you live here,' says Olofson.
    'Perhaps we'll move to Southern Rhodesia,' Werner replies.
'But I'm sixty-four years old. I'm tired, I have difficulty pissing
and sleeping, but maybe we'll move on.'
    'Who will buy the farm?'
    'Maybe I'll burn it down.'
    They return to the white house and out of nowhere a parrot
flies and perches on Olofson's shoulder. Instead of announcing
that his journey to Mutshatsha is no longer necessary, he looks
at the parrot nipping at his shirt. Sometimes timidity is my main
psychological asset, he thinks in resignation. I don't even dare
speak the truth to people who don't know me.
    The tropical night falls like a black cloth. Twilight is an
ephemeral, hastily passing shadow. With the darkness he feels as
though he is also taken back in time.
    On the big terrace that stretches along the front of the house,
he drinks whisky with Ruth and Werner. They have just sat down
with their glasses when headlights begin to play over the grazing
meadows, and he hears Ruth and Werner exchange guesses about
who it might be.
    A car comes to a stop before the terrace and a man of indeterminate
age steps out. In the light from shaded kerosene
lamps hanging from the ceiling, Olofson sees that the man has
red burn marks on his face. His head is completely bald and he
is dressed in a baggy suit. He introduces himself as Elvin
Richardson, a farmer like the Mastertons.
    Who am I? Olofson thinks. An accidental travelling companion
on the night train from Lusaka?
    'Cattle rustlers,' says Richardson, sitting down heavily with a
glass in his hand.
    Olofson listens as if he were a child engrossed in a story.
    'Last night they cut the fence down near Ndongo,' says
Richardson. 'They stole three calves from Ruben White. The
animals were clubbed and slaughtered on the spot. The night
watchmen didn't hear a thing, of course. If this goes on, we'll
have to organise patrols. Shoot a couple of them so they know
we mean business.'
    Black servants appear in the shadows on the terrace. What are
the blacks talking about? Olofson wonders. How does Louis
describe me when he sits by the fire with his friends? Does he
see my uncertainty? Is he