The Eye Of The Leopard by Henning Mankell Read Free Book Online

locomotive is waiting, and he looks despondently
at what awaits him: run-down carriages, already overfilled,
like bursting cardboard boxes with toy figures in them, and broken
windowpanes.
    He notices two white people climbing into the carriage behind
the locomotive. As if all white people were his friends in this black
world, he hurries after them and almost falls on his face when he
trips over a man lying stretched out on the platform asleep.
    He hopes he has bought a ticket that gives him access to this
carriage. He makes his way forward to the compartment where
the white people he has been following are busy stowing their
bags on the baggage racks.
    Entering a compartment on a train in Sweden can often feel
like intruding in someone's private living room, but in this compartment
he is met by friendly smiles and nods. He imagines that
with his presence he is reinforcing a disintegrating and everdiminishing
white army.
    Before him are an older man and a young woman. Father and
daughter, he guesses. He stows his suitcase and sits down,
drenched in sweat. The young woman gives him an encouraging
look as she takes out a book and a pocket torch.
    'I come from Sweden,' he says, with a sudden urge to talk to
someone. 'I assume that this is the train for Kitwe?'
    'Sweden,' says the woman. 'How nice.'
    The man has lit his pipe and leans back in his corner.
    'Masterton,' he says. 'My name is Werner, and this is my wife
Ruth.'
    Olofson introduces himself and feels a boundless gratitude at
finding himself together with people who have decent shoes on
their feet.
    The train starts up with a jolt and the uproar in the station
increases in a violent crescendo. A pair of legs is visible outside
the window as a man climbs up on to the roof. After him come
a basket of chickens and a sack of dried fish which rips open and
spreads a smell of decay and salt.
    Werner Masterton looks at his watch.
    'Ten minutes too early,' he says. 'Either the driver is drunk or
he's in a hurry to get home.'
    Diesel fumes waft by, fires are burning along the tracks, and
the lights of Lusaka slowly fall behind.
    'We never take the train,' says Masterton from the depths of
his corner. 'About once every ten years. But in a few years there
will hardly be any trains left in this country. Since independence
everything has fallen apart. In five years almost everything has
been destroyed. Everything is stolen. If this train suddenly stops
tonight, which it most certainly will do, it means that the driver
is trying to sell fuel from the locomotive. The Africans come with
their oil cans. The green glass in the traffic lights has disappeared.
Children steal them and try to palm them off on tourists as emeralds.
But soon there won't be any tourists left either. The wild
animals have been shot, wiped out. I haven't heard of anyone
seeing a leopard in more than two years.' He gestures out into
the darkness.
    'There were lions here,' he says. 'Elephants wandered free in
huge herds. Today there is nothing left.'
    The Mastertons have a large farm outside Chingola, Olofson
learns during the long night's journey to Kitwe. Werner
Masterton's parents came from South Africa in the early 1950s.
Ruth was the daughter of a teacher who moved back to England
in 1964. They met while visiting friends in Ndola and married
despite the great age difference.
    'Independence was a catastrophe,' says Masterton, offering
whisky from his pocket flask. 'For the Africans, freedom meant
that nobody had to work any more. No one gave orders, no one
considered they might have to do something that wasn't demanded
of them. Now the country survives on its income from copper
mining. But what happens when prices drop on the world
market? No investment has been made in any alternatives. This
is an agricultural country. It could be one of the world's best,
since the soil is fertile and there is water available. But no efforts
are being made. The Africans have grasped nothing, learned
nothing. When the British