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

flag was struck and they raised their
own, it was the beginning of a funeral procession that is still
going on.'
    'I know almost nothing about Africa,' says Olofson. 'What
little I do know I've already begun to doubt. And I've only been
here two days.'
    They give him an inquisitive look and he suddenly wishes he
could have offered a different reply.
    'I'm supposed to visit a mission station in Mutshatsha,' he says.
'But I don't really know how to get there.'
    To his surprise, the Mastertons immediately take up the question
of how he can complete his expedition. He quickly surmises
that perhaps he has presented a problem that can be solved, in
contrast to the one Werner Masterton has just laid out. Perhaps
black problems have to be solved by the blacks, and the whites'
problems by the whites?
    'We have some friends in Kalulushi,' says Werner. 'I'll take you
there in my car. They can help you to continue from there.'
    'That's too much to ask,' replies Olofson.
    'That's the way it is,' says Ruth. 'If the mzunguz don't help each
other, no one will. Do you think that any of the blacks climbing
on the roof of this train car would help you? If they could, they'd
steal your trousers right off you.'
    Ruth lays out a meal from her baggage and invites Hans to
join them.
    'Didn't you even bring water with you?' she asks. 'The train
could be a day late. There's always something that breaks down,
something missing, something they forgot.'
    'I thought there would be water on the train.'
    'It's so filthy that not even a munto will drink it,' says Werner,
spitting into the darkness. 'This would be a good country to live
in if it weren't for the blacks.'
    Olofson decides that all whites in Africa probably espouse
racist views just to survive. But is that true of missionaries too?
    'Isn't there any conductor coming?' he asks, to avoid responding
to this last remark.
    'There may not be one,' replies Ruth. 'He may have missed his
train. Or else some distant relative died and he went to the funeral
without letting anyone know. The Africans spend a great deal of
their lives going to and from funerals. But maybe he will come.
Nothing is impossible.'
    These people are the remnants of something utterly lost, thinks
Olofson. Colonialism is completely buried today, with the exception
of South Africa and the Portuguese colonies. But the people
remain. A historical epoch always leaves behind a handful of
people for the following period. They keep looking backwards,
dreaming, aggrieved. They look at their empty hands and wonder
where the instruments of power have gone. Then they discover
these instruments in the hands of the people they previously only
spoke to when giving out orders and reprimands. They live in
the Epoch of Mortification, in the twilight land of ruin. The
whites in Africa are a wandering remnant of a people that no
one wants to think about. They have lost their foundation, what
they thought was permanent for all eternity ...
    One question remains obvious. 'So things were better before?'
    'What answer can we give to that?' says Ruth, looking at her
husband.
    'Answer with the truth,' says Werner.
    A weak, flickering lamp casts the compartment in darkness.
Hans sees a lampshade covered with dead insects. Werner follows
his gaze.
    'For a lampshade like that a cleaning woman would have been
given the sack,' he says. 'Not the next day, not after a warning,
but instantly, kicked out on the spot. A train as filthy as this one
would have been an impossibility. In a few hours we'll be in
Kabwe. Before, it was called Broken Hill. Even the old name was
better. The truth, if you want to know, is that nothing has been
maintained or become better. We're forced to live in the midst of
a process of decay.'
    'But –' says Olofson, before he is interrupted.
    'Your "but" is premature,' says Ruth. 'I have a feeling that you
want to ask whether the blacks' lives are better. Not even that is
true. Who could take over from all the Europeans who left the
country