The Eye of the Leopard

Chapter Twenty

In Hans Olofson’s dreams the leopard is hunting.

The terrain is a landscape slipping away, the African bush displaced to become his internal space. The perspective is changing constantly. Sometimes he’s in front of the leopard, sometimes behind it, and at times he becomes the leopard himself. In the dream it is always dusk. Surrounded by the tall elephant grass he stands far out on a savannah. The horizon frightens him. A threat coming ever closer is the leopard’s landscape, which returns night after night in his restless mind.

Sometimes he wakes up abruptly and thinks he understands. He is not being pursued by a lone leopard, but two. In his internal landscape the leopard is breaking with its nature as a lone hunter and joining with another animal. He never manages to discern what kind of weapons he is carrying during his recurrent nocturnal hunts. Is he setting out snares or does he carry a spear with a hand-wrought iron point? Or is he following the leopard empty-handed? The landscape stretches away in his dreams as an endless plain where he senses an indistinct river bed at the distant edge of his vision. He burns the tall elephant grass to drive out the leopard. Sometimes he also thinks he spies the leopard’s shadow, like a rapid movement against the moonlit terrain. The rest is silence, his own breathing echoing inside the dream.

The leopard is bringing a message, he thinks when he wakes. A message I haven’t yet managed to decipher.

When the malaria attack forces his mind into hallucinations, he sees the leopard’s watchful eye.

It’s Janine, he thinks in confusion. It’s her eye I see; she’s looking up at me from the bottom of the river as I’m balancing on the span of the iron bridge. She has drawn a leopard skin over her shoulders so I won’t know it’s her.

But she’s dead, isn’t she? When I left Sweden and put all my old horizons behind me, she had already been gone for seven years. Now I’ve been in Africa for almost eighteen years.

The malaria attack flings him up from his lethargy, and when he awakes he doesn’t know where he is. The revolver resting against his cheek makes him remember. He listens to the darkness.

I’m surrounded by bandits, he thinks desperately. It’s Luka who lured them here, severed the telephone line, cut off the electricity. They’re waiting outside in the dark. Soon they will come to tear open my chest and carry off my still beating heart.

Summoning all his remaining strength, he sits up in bed so that his back is resting against the bedstead. Why don’t I hear anything, he wonders. The silence...

Why aren’t the hippos sighing by the river? Where’s that damned Luka? He yells into the dark, but no one answers. He has the pistol in his hands.

He waits.

Chapter Twenty-One

Werner Masterton’s severed head lies in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Two forks are stuck in his eyes. In the dining room sits Masterton’s headless body at the table, the chopped-off hands lie on a tray in front of him, the white tablecloth is drenched in blood.

In the bedroom Olofson finds Ruth Masterton with her throat slit, her head almost detached from her body. She is naked, one of her thighbones smashed by a powerful axe-blow. Flies swarm over her body and he thinks that what he is seeing can’t be real.

He notices that he is weeping from terror, and when he comes out of the house he collapses to the ground. The waiting Africans shrink back, and he screams at them not to go in. He calls to Robert to fetch the neighbours, call the police, and suddenly in despair he fires his shotgun into the air.

Late in the afternoon he returns home, paralysed, apathetic. He still can’t face the rage that he knows will come. For the whole long day the rumour has spread in the white colony, cars have come and gone, and one opinion is soon discernible. Ruth and Werner Masterton did not fall victim to normal bandits. Even though their car is gone, valuables vanished, this senseless double murder is something more, a dammed-up hatred that has found its release. This is a racial murder, a political murder. Ruth and Werner Masterton have met their fate at the hands of self-appointed black avengers.

At the house of one of the Mastertons’ neighbours the white colony quickly gathers for a meeting to discuss broader security measures. But Olofson doesn’t attend; he says he can’t face it. Someone at the meeting suggests visiting Olofson that evening to report on what has been decided. But he refuses the visit; he has his dogs and his weapons, he knows how to be careful.

When he returns to his house it has started to rain, a torrential pounding rain that cuts visibility almost to zero. He thinks he glimpses a black shadow disappearing behind the house as he turns into the courtyard. For a long time he stays sitting in the car with the windscreen wipers working frantically. I’m afraid, he realises. More afraid than I’ve ever been before. The ones who murdered Ruth and Werner have also stabbed their knives into me. He takes the safety off his gun and runs through the rain, unlocks the door and slams it hard behind him.

The rain booms on the sheet-metal roof, the German shepherd he was given when he turned forty is sitting strangely motionless on the kitchen floor. Immediately he has the feeling that someone has been inside the house while he was gone. Something in the dog’s behaviour troubles him. Usually it meets him with energetic joy, but now it is inexplicably quiet.

He looks at the dog given to him by Ruth and Werner Masterton and realises that real life is turning into a nightmare. He squats down in front of the dog and scratches behind his ear.

‘What is it?’ he whispers. ‘Tell me what it is, show me if something has happened.’

He walks through his house, still with his pistol ready, and the dog follows him quietly. The feeling that someone has been inside the house doesn’t leave him, even though he can’t see that anything is missing or has been moved. And yet he knows.

He lets the dog out to join the others.

‘Keep watch now,’ he says.

All night long he sits in a chair with his weapons close by. There is a hatred that is boundless, a hatred for the whites which he only now comprehends. Nothing suggests that he would be spared from being enveloped by this hatred. The price he pays for the good life he has led in Africa is that he now sits awake with his weapons next to him.

At dawn he dozes off in his chair. Dreams take him back to his past. He sees himself laboriously trudging through snow metres deep, a pack on his back and wearing ski boots that are always too big. Somewhere he glimpses Janine’s face, Célestine in her case.

He wakes up with a jolt and realises that someone is pounding on the kitchen door. He takes the safety off his gun and opens the door. Luka stands outside. Out of nowhere comes the fury and he points his gun at Luka, presses the cold barrel against his chest.

‘The best explanation you’ve ever given me,’ he shouts. ‘That’s what I want. And I want it now. Otherwise you’ll never come inside my house again.’

His outburst, the pistol with the safety off, doesn’t seem to faze the dignified black man standing before him.

‘A white snake cast itself at my breast,’ he says. ‘Like a flame of fire it bored through my body. In order not to die I was forced to seek out a kashinakashi. He lives a long way from here, he’s hard to find. I walked without stopping for a day and a night. He welcomed me and freed me of the white snake. I came back at once, Bwana.’

‘You’re lying, you damned Negro,’ says Olofson. ‘A white snake? There aren’t any white snakes, and there aren’t any snakes that can bore through a person’s chest. I’m not interested in your superstitions, I want to know the truth.’

‘What I’m saying is true, Bwana,’ says Luka. ‘A white snake forced its way through my chest.’

In rage Olofson strikes him with the barrel of his pistol. Blood runs from the torn skin on Luka’s cheek, but he still fails to disturb the man’s unflappable dignity.

‘It’s 1987,’ Olofson says. ‘You’re a grown man, you’ve lived among mzunguz your whole life. You know that the African superstition is your own backwardness, ancient notions that you are too weak to free yourself from. This too is something the whites have to help you with. If we weren’t here, you would all kill each other with your illusions.’

‘Our president is an educated man, Bwana,’ says Luka.

‘Perhaps,’ says Olofson. ‘He has banned sorcery. A witch doctor can be sent to prison.’

‘Our president always has a white handkerchief in his hand, Bwana,’ Luka goes on, unperturbed. ‘He keeps it to make himself invulnerable, to protect himself from sorcery. He knows that he can’t prevent what is real just by prohibiting it.’

He’s unreachable, Olofson thinks. He’s the one I should fear most, since he knows my habits.

‘Your brothers have murdered my friends,’ he says. ‘But you know that, don’t you?’

‘Everyone knows it, Bwana,’ says Luka.

‘Good people,’ Olofson says. ‘Hard-working people, innocent people.’

‘No one is innocent, Bwana,’ says Luka. ‘It’s a sad event, but sad events must happen sometimes.’

‘Who killed them?’ Olofson asks. ‘If you know anything, tell me.’

‘Nobody knows anything, Bwana,’ Luka replies calmly.

‘I think you’re lying,’ says Olofson. ‘You always know what’s going on, sometimes even before it happens. But now you don’t know anything, all of a sudden nothing at all. Maybe it was a white snake that killed them and cut off their heads?’

‘Maybe it was, Bwana,’ says Luka.

‘You’ve worked for me almost twenty years,’ Olofson says. ‘I’ve always treated you well, paid you well, given you clothes, a radio, everything you asked for and even things you didn’t ask for. And yet I don’t trust you. What is there to prevent you from smashing a panga into my head one morning instead of serving me my coffee? You people cut the throats of your benefactors, you talk about white snakes, and you turn to witch doctors. What do you think would happen if all the whites left this country? What would you eat?’

‘Then we would decide, Bwana,’ Luka says.

Olofson lowers his pistol. ‘One more time,’ he says. ‘Who killed Ruth and Werner Masterton?’

‘Whoever did it knows, Bwana,’ says Luka. ‘No one else.’

‘But you have an idea, don’t you?’ says Olofson. ‘What’s going on in your head?’

‘It’s an unsettled time, Bwana,’ Luka replies. ‘People have nothing to eat. Our lorries filled with eggs are hijacked. Hungry people are dangerous just before they become completely powerless. They see where the food is, they hear about the meals the whites eat, they are starving.’

‘But why Ruth and Werner?’ Olofson asks. ‘Why them of all people?’

‘Everything must begin somewhere, Bwana,’ Luka says. ‘A direction must always be chosen.’

Of course he’s right, Olofson thinks. In the dark a bloody decision is reached, a finger points in an arbitrary direction, and there stands Ruth and Werner Masterton’s house. Next time the finger could be pointing at me.

‘One thing you should know,’ he tells Luka. ‘I’ve never killed anyone. But I won’t hesitate. Not even if I have to kill you.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, Bwana,’ says Luka.

A car comes slowly along the muddy, rutted road from the hen houses. Olofson recognises Peter Motombwane’s rusty Peugeot.

‘Coffee and tea,’ he says to Luka. ‘Motombwane doesn’t like coffee.’

They sit on the terrace.

‘You’ve been expecting me, of course,’ Motombwane says, as he stirs his tea.

‘Actually, no,’ Olofson replies. ‘Right now I’m expecting both everything and nothing.’

‘You forget that I’m a journalist,’ says Motombwane. ‘You forget that you’re an important person yourself. You were the first to see what happened.’

Without warning Hans Olofson begins to sob; a violent outburst of sorrow and fear is released from inside him. Motombwane waits with his head bowed, his gaze directed at the cracked stone floor of the terrace.

‘I’m tired,’ Olofson says when the fit has passed. ‘I see my friends dead, the first people I met when I came to Africa. I see their maimed bodies, an utterly inconceivable violence.’

‘Or perhaps not,’ Motombwane says slowly.

‘You’ll get your details,’ Olofson says. ‘You’ll get all the gore you think your readers can stand. But first you have to explain to me what happened.’

Motombwane throws out his hands. ‘I’m no policeman,’ he says.

‘You’re an African,’ Olofson says. ‘Besides, you’re intelligent, you’re educated, and you surely don’t believe in superstition any longer. You’re a journalist. You have the background to explain this to me.’

‘Much of what you say is true,’ Motombwane replies. ‘But you’re wrong if you think I’m not superstitious. I am. With my mind I turn away from it, but in my heart it will always be part of me. One can move to a foreign land, as you have done, one can seek his fortune, shape his life. But no one can ever totally leave his origins behind. Something will always remain, as more than a memory, as a living reminder of who you really are. I don’t pray to the gods carved from wood, I go to doctors in white coats when I get sick. But I also listen to the voices of my ancestors; I wrap a black band around my wrist as protection before I board an aeroplane.’

‘Why Werner and Ruth?’ Olofson asks. ‘Why this senseless bloodbath?’

‘You’re on the wrong track,’ replies Motombwane. ‘You’re not thinking logically because you’ve chosen the wrong starting point. Your white brain is deceiving you. If you want to understand you have to think black thoughts. And that’s not something you can do, in the same way that I can’t formulate white thoughts. You ask why it should be Werner and Ruth who were killed. You might just as well ask why not. You talk about a senseless double murder. I’m not altogether sure that it was. Decapitation prevents people from haunting, severed hands prevent people from taking revenge. It’s perfectly obvious that they were killed by Africans, but it was not as senseless as you imagine.’

‘So you think it was a normal robbery-murder,’ says Olofson.

Motombwane shakes his head. ‘If it had occurred a year ago I would have thought so,’ he replies. ‘But not now, not with the unrest that is growing in our country with each day that passes. Opposing political forces grow in this unrest. I think that Ruth and Werner fell victim to killers who actually wanted to sink their pangas into the heads of the black leaders in this country. There are also black mzunguz. You erroneously think that it means white man, when it actually means rich man. Because it was natural to associate wealth with whites, the original meaning of the word has been lost. Today I think it’s important to reclaim the real meaning of the word.’

‘Give me an explanation,’ Olofson says. ‘Draw me a political weather map, a conceivable picture, of what might have happened.’

‘The first thing you have to understand is that what I do is dangerous,’ says Motombwane. ‘The politicians in our country are unscrupulous. They guard their power by letting their dogs run free. There is one single efficient organ in this country, well organised and constantly active, and that is the president’s secret police. The opposition is watched by a fine-meshed net of informers. In every town, in every company there is someone who is connected to this secret police. Even on your farm there is at least one man who once a week reports to an unknown superior. That’s what I mean when I say it’s dangerous. Without your knowing it, Luka could be the man who reports from here.

‘No opposition must be permitted to grow. The politicians who rule today regard our land as prey. In Africa it’s easy simply to disappear. Journalists who have been too critical and didn’t listen to the words of warning have vanished; newspaper editors have been selected for their loyalty to the party, and this means that nothing is printed about the vanished journalists in the papers. I can’t make it any plainer than that. There is an undercurrent of events in this country that nobody knows about. Rumours spread, but there is no way to confirm them. People are murdered through arranged suicides. Massacred corpses on railway tracks, soaked with alcohol, become accidents due to drunkenness. Alleged robbers who are shot down during escape attempts may be people who tried to take over the state-controlled labour unions. The examples are endless.

‘But the unrest is there all the time. In the dark the discontent whispers. People wonder about the corn meal that is suddenly gone, despite the fact that a succession of record harvests has been going on for several years. The rumour spreads that lorries belonging to the authorities drive across the borders at night to smuggle out corn meal. Why are there no more vaccines and medicines in the hospitals, even though millions of dollars’ worth are donated to this country every year? People have travelled to Zaire and been able to buy medicines at a chemist’s with the text ‘Donation to Zambia’ printed on the box. The rumours spread, the discontent grows, but everyone is afraid of the informers.

‘The opposition are forced to make detours. Perhaps some people have looked at their despair, their hungry children, and their insight into the betrayal by the politicians, and decided that the only chance of getting to the rulers is by taking a detour: murder white people, create instability and insecurity. Execute whites and thereby warn the black rulers. That may have been how it happened. Because something is going to happen in this country. Soon. For over twenty years we have been an independent nation. Nothing has really improved for the people. It’s only the few who took over from the white leaders that have amassed unheard-of fortunes. Maybe we have now reached a breaking point, maybe an uprising is approaching? I don’t know anything for sure; we Africans follow impulses that come out of nowhere. Our actions are often spontaneous; we replace the lack of organisation with violence in our wrath. If this is how it happened, then we will never know who murdered Ruth and Werner Masterton. Many people will know their names, but they will be protected. They will be surrounded at once by a superstitious respect and awe, as if our ancestors had returned in their form. The warriors of the past will return. Maybe the police will drag some insignificant thieves out of the dark, say they’re the killers, and shoot them during alleged escape attempts. Faked interrogation records and confessions can be arranged. Only gradually will we find out whether or not what I believe is correct.’

‘How?’ asks Olofson.

‘When the next white family is murdered,’ replies Motombwane softly. Luka passes across the terrace; they follow him with their gaze, see him go out to the German shepherds with some meat scraps.

‘An informer on my farm,’ says Olofson. ‘Of course I ought to start wondering who it might be.’

‘Let’s assume that you succeed in finding out,’ says Motombwane. ‘What happens then? Someone else will be selected at once. No one can refuse, because payment is also involved. You’ll wind up chasing your own shadow. If I were you I’d do something entirely different.’

‘What?’ asks Olofson.

‘Keep a watchful eye on the man who actually manages the work on your farm. There’s so much you don’t know. You’ve been here for almost twenty years, but you have no idea what’s really going on. You could live here another twenty years and you still wouldn’t know anything. You think you have divided up power and responsibility by appointing a foreman. But you don’t know that you have a sorcerer on your farm, a witch-master who in reality is the one in control. An insignificant man who never reveals the influence he possesses. You view him as one of many workers who have been on the farm for a long time, one of those who never cause you any problems. But the other workers fear him.’

‘Who?’ asks Olofson.

‘One of your workers who gathers eggs,’ says Motombwane. ‘Eisenhower Mudenda.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ says Olofson. ‘Eisenhower Mudenda came here right after Judith Fillington left. It’s just as you say, he has never caused me any problems. He has never missed work because he was drunk, never been reluctant to work overtime if necessary. When I encounter him he bows almost to the ground. Sometimes I’ve even felt annoyed by his subservience.’

‘Where did he come from?’ Motombwane asks.

‘I can’t recall,’ Olofson replies.

‘Actually you don’t know a thing about him,’ says Motombwane. ‘But what I’m telling you is true. If I were you I’d keep an eye on him. Above all, show him that you’re not frightened by what happened to Ruth and Werner Masterton. But never reveal that you now know that he is a sorcerer.’

‘We’ve known each other a long time,’ Olofson says. ‘And only now you’re telling me something you must have known for many years?’

‘It wasn’t important until now,’ Motombwane replies. ‘Besides, I’m a cautious man. I’m an African. I know what can happen if I’m too generous with my knowledge, if I forget that I’m an African.’

‘If Eisenhower Mudenda knew about what you’re telling me,’ Olofson asks, ‘what would happen then?’

‘I would probably die,’ says Motombwane. ‘I would be poisoned, the sorcery would reach me.’

‘There isn’t any sorcery,’ Olofson says.

‘I’m an African,’ replies Motombwane.

Again they fall silent as Luka passes by.

‘To fall silent is to talk to Luka,’ Motombwane says. ‘Twice he has passed by and both times we were silent. So he knows we’re talking about something he’s not supposed to hear.’

‘Are you afraid?’ Olofson asks.

‘Right now it’s smart to be afraid,’ says Motombwane.

‘What about the future?’ Olofson asks. ‘My close friends have been slaughtered. Next time a finger in the darkness could point at my house. You’re an African, you’re a radical. Even though I don’t believe you could chop people’s heads off, you’re still a part of the opposition that exists in this country. What do you hope will happen?’

‘Once more you’re wrong,’ says Motombwane. ‘Once more you draw the wrong conclusion, a white’s conclusion. In a certain situation I could easily raise a panga and let it fall over a white man’s head.’

‘Even over my head?’

‘Maybe that’s where the boundary lies,’ Motombwane replies softly. ‘I think I would ask a good friend to chop off your head instead of doing it myself.’

‘Only in Africa is this possible,’ Olofson says. ‘Two friends sit drinking tea or coffee together and discussing the possibility that in a certain situation one might chop off the other’s head.’

‘That’s the way the world is,’ Motombwane says. ‘The contradictions are greater than ever. The new empire builders are the international arms dealers who fly between wars offering their weapons for sale. The colonisation of the poor peoples by superior powers is just as great today as any time before. Billions in so-called aid flows from the rich countries, but for every pound that comes in, two pounds wander back out. We’re living in the midst of a catastrophe, a world that is burning with thousanddegree flames. Friendships can still form in our time. But often we don’t see that the common ground we stand on is already undermined. We are friends but we both have a panga hidden behind our backs.’

‘Take it a step further,’ Olofson says. ‘You hope for something, you dream about something. Your dream might be my nightmare, if I understand you correctly?’

Peter Motombwane nods.

‘You’re my friend,’ he says, ‘at least for the time being. But of course I wish all the whites were out of this country. I’m not a racist, I’m not talking about skin colour. I view violence as necessary; faced with the prolongation of my people’s pain there is no other way out. African revolutions are most often appalling bloodbaths; the political struggle is always darkened by our past and our traditions. Possibly, if our despair is great enough, we can unite against a common foe. But then we point our weapons at our brothers by our side, if they are from a different tribe. Africa is a seriously wounded animal; in the bodies of us all hang spears that were cast by our own brothers. And yet I have to believe in a future, another time, an Africa that is not ruled by tyrants who imitate the European men of violence who have always been there. My anxiety and my dream coincide with the anxiety that you are noticing right now in this country. You have to understand that this anxiety is ultimately the expression of a dream. But how does one re-establish a dream that has been beaten out of people by the secret police? By leaders who amass fortunes by stealing vaccines that are supposed to protect our children against the most common diseases?’

‘Give me a word of advice,’ Olofson says. ‘I’m not sure I’ll follow it, but I’d still like to hear what you have to say.’

Motombwane looks out across the yard. ‘Leave,’ he says. ‘Leave before it’s too late. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it will be many years before the sun goes down for mzunguz of various skin colours on this continent. But if you’re still here by then it will be too late.’

Olofson follows him to his car.

‘The bloody details,’ he says.

‘I’ve already got those,’ Motombwane replies. ‘I can imagine.’

‘Come back,’ Olofson says.

‘If I didn’t come, people on your farm would start to wonder,’ says Motombwane. ‘I don’t want people to wonder for nothing. Especially not in such uneasy times.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

‘In a world on fire, anything can happen,’ says Motombwane.

The car with its coughing engine and its worn-out shock absorbers disappears. When Olofson turns around he sees Luka on the terrace. He stands motionless, watching the car drive away.

Two days later Olofson helps carry Ruth and Werner Masterton’s coffins to their common grave, right next to the daughter who died many years before. The pallbearers are white. Pale, resolute faces watch the coffins being lowered into the red earth. At a distance stand the black workers. Olofson sees Robert, motionless, alone, his face expressionless. The tension is there, a shared rage that flows through the whites who are gathered to say farewell to Ruth and Werner Masterton. Many of them are openly bearing arms, and Olofson feels that he is in the midst of a funeral procession that could quickly be transformed into a well-equipped army.

The night after the burial the Mastertons’ house burns down. In the morning only the smoking walls remain. The only one they trusted, Robert the chauffeur, has vanished. Only the workers are left, expectantly waiting for something, no one knows what.

Olofson builds barricades in his house. Each night he sleeps in a different room, and he barricades the doors with tables and cabinets. In the daytime he tends to his work as usual. In secret he watches Eisenhower Mudenda, and receives his still equally humble greetings.

Yet another egg transport is plundered by people who have built a roadblock on the way to Ndola. Indian shops in Lusaka and Livingstone are stormed and burned down.

After darkness falls, nobody visits their neighbours. No headlights play through the darkness. Pouring rain washes over the isolated houses; everyone is waiting for a finger to point to them out of the darkness. Violent thunderstorms pass over Kalulushi. Olofson lies awake in the dark with his weapons next to him in bed.

One morning soon after Ruth and Werner’s funeral, Olofson opens the kitchen door for Luka after yet another sleepless night and sees at once from Luka’s face that something has happened. The inscrutable and dignified face is changed. Olofson sees for the first time that even Luka can be frightened.

‘Bwana,’ he says. ‘Something has happened.’

‘What?!’ shouts Olofson and feels the panic rising.

Before Luka can reply, he discovers it for himself. Something is nailed to the mangrove tree that stands facing the drive, a windbreak planted by Judith Fillington and her husband many years earlier. At first he can’t see what it is; then he has an idea but doesn’t want to believe what he suspects. With his revolver in his hand he slowly approaches the tree.

Lashed fast with barbed wire to the tree trunk is the severed head of a German shepherd. The dog he received from Ruth and Werner, the one he named Sture. The head grins at him, the tongue cut out, the eyes open and staring.

Olofson feels terror well up inside him. The finger has pointed in the dark. Luka’s terror — he must know what it means. I’m living among insane savages, he thinks desperately. I can’t read them; their barbaric signs are unintelligible.

Luka is sitting on the stone steps to the terrace. Olofson can see that he’s so scared he’s shaking. The sweat is glinting on his black skin.

‘I don’t intend to ask you who did this,’ Olofson says. ‘I know what answer I will get — that you don’t know. Nor do I think it was you, since I can see that you’re afraid. I don’t think you would be trembling over your own actions. Or at least you wouldn’t reveal yourself to me. But I want you to tell me what it means. Why would someone chop off the head of my dog and lash it to a tree during the night? Why would someone cut out the tongue of a dog that’s already dead and can’t bark any more? Whoever did this wants me to understand something. Or is the intention just to frighten me?’

Slowly Luka’s answer comes, as if each word he utters were a mine threatening to explode.

‘The dog is a gift from dead people, Bwana. Now the dog is dead too. Only the owner lives. A German shepherd is what mzunguz most often use to protect themselves, since Africans are afraid of dogs. But he who kills a dog shows that he is not afraid. Dead dogs protect no mzungu. Cutting out the tongue prevents the dead dog from barking.’

‘The people who gave him to me are dead,’ Olofson says. ‘The gift has had his head cut off. Now only the owner remains. The last link in this chain is still alive, but he is defenceless. Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘The leopards are hunting at daybreak,’ Luka mutters.

Olofson sees his eyes, wide open from something he carries inside him.

‘It wasn’t a leopard that did this,’ he says. ‘It was people like you, black people. No mzungu would fasten a severed dog’s head to a tree.’

‘The leopards are hunting,’ Luka mumbles again, and Olofson sees that his terror is real.

A thought occurs to him.

‘Leopards,’ he says softly. ‘People who have turned themselves into leopards? Dressed in their skins to make themselves invulnerable? Maybe it was people in leopard skins who came in the night to Ruth and Werner Masterton.’

His words increase Luka’s anxiety.

‘Leopards see without being seen,’ Olofson says. ‘Maybe they can hear at long distances too. Maybe they can read people’s lips. But they can’t see or hear through stone walls.’

He gets up and Luka follows him. We have never been this close to each other, Olofson thinks. Now we are sharing the burden of each other’s fear. Luka senses the threat. Perhaps because he works for a white man, has the trust of a white man, and receives many advantages? Maybe a black man who works for a mzungu is unreliable in this country. Luka sits down on the edge of a kitchen chair.

‘Words travel in the dark, Bwana,’ he says. ‘Words that are hard to understand. But they are there, and they come back. Someone speaks them, and no one knows whose voice it is.’

‘What are the words?’ Olofson asks.

‘They speak of unusual leopards,’ says Luka. ‘Leopards who have begun to hunt in packs. The leopard is a lone hunter, dangerous in his loneliness. Leopards in packs are many more times as dangerous.’

‘Leopards are predators,’ Olofson says. ‘Leopards are looking for the prey?’

‘The words speak of people who gather in the dark,’ says Luka. ‘People who turn into leopards that will chase all the mzunguz out of the country.’

Olofson remembers something that Peter Motombwane told him.

‘Mzunguz,’ he says. ‘Rich men. But there are both black and white men that are rich, aren’t there?’

‘The whites are richer,’ says Luka.

One question remains, even though Olofson already knows what Luka’s answer will be.

‘Am I a rich man?’ he asks.

‘Yes, Bwana,’ Luka replies. ‘A very rich man.’

And yet I will stay here, he thinks. If I’d had a family I would have sent them away. But I’m alone. I have to stay put or else give up completely. He puts on a pair of gloves, takes down the dog’s head, and Luka buries it down by the river.

‘Where’s the body?’ Olofson asks.

Luka shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, Bwana. In a place where we can’t see it.’

At night he stands guard. He dozes fitfully in a chair behind barricaded doors. Guns with their safeties off lie across his knee, stacks of extra ammunition are stashed at various spots in the house. He pictures himself making his last stand in the room where the skeletons were once stored.

In the daytime he visits the surrounding farms, telling people Luka’s vague story about the pack of leopards. His neighbours supply him with other pieces to the puzzle, even though no one else has received a warning sign.

Before independence, during the 1950s, there was something known as the leopard movement in certain areas of the Copperbelt; an underground movement that mixed politics and religion and threatened to take up arms if the federation was not dissolved and Zambia gained independence. But no one had heard of the leopard movement using violence.

Olofson learns from the farmers who have spent long lives in the country that nothing ever actually dies. For a long-vanished political and religious movement to reappear is not unusual; it only increases the credibility of Luka’s words. Olofson declines to take on volunteers as reinforcements in his own house. At twilight he barricades himself in and eats his lonely dinner after he has sent Luka home.

He waits for something to happen. The exhaustion is a drain on him, the fear is eating deep holes in his soul. And yet he is determined to stay. He thinks about Joyce and her daughters. People who live outside all underground movements, people who each day must fight for their own survival.

The rain is intense, thundering against his sheet-metal roof through the long, lonely nights.

One morning a white man stands outside his house, a man whom he has never seen before. To Olofson’s astonishment he addresses him in Swedish.

‘I was prepared for that,’ says the stranger with a laugh. ‘I know you’re Swedish. Your name is Hans Olofson.’

He introduces himself as Lars Håkansson, an aid expert, sent out by Sida, the Swedish aid agency, to monitor the development of satellite telecommunications stations paid for by Swedish aid funds. His mission turns out to be more than merely stopping by to say hello to a countryman who happens to live in Kalulushi. There is a hill on Olofson’s property that is an ideal location for one of the link stations. A steel tower topped by a satellite dish. A fence, a passable road. A total area of 400 square metres.

‘Naturally there is payment involved, if you’re prepared to relinquish your property,’ Håkansson says. ‘We can arrange for you to get your money in real currency, of course: dollars, pounds or D-marks.’

Olofson can think of no reason to refuse. ‘Telecommunications,’ he says. ‘Telephone lines or TV?’

‘Both,’ says Håkansson. ‘The satellite dishes transmit and receive the radio frequency waves desired. TV signals are captured by television receivers, telephone impulses are bounced off a satellite in stationary orbit over the prime meridian, which then sends the signals on to any conceivable telephone in the whole world. Africa will be incorporated into a network.’

Olofson offers his visitor some coffee.

‘You’ve got a nice place here,’ Håkansson says.

‘There’s trouble in the country,’ Olofson replies. ‘I’m not so sure any more that it’s good to live here.’

‘I’ve been abroad for ten years,’ Håkansson says. ‘I’ve staked out communications links in Guinea Bissau, Kenya and Tanzania. There’s unrest everywhere. As an aid expert you don’t notice much of it. You’re a holy man because you dispense millions from up your khaki sleeves. Politicians bow, soldiers and police officers salute when you arrive.’

‘Soldiers and police officers?’ Olofson asks.

Håkansson shrugs his shoulders and grimaces. ‘Links and satellite dishes,’ he says. ‘All types of messages can be sent by the new technology. The police and the army then have greater opportunities to check what’s going on in remote border regions. In a crisis situation the men who hold the keys can cut off an unruly section of the country. Swedish aid workers are forbidden by the parliament from getting involved in anything beyond civilian objectives. But who’s going to check what these link stations are used for? Swedish politicians have never understood a thing about the actual realities of the world. Swedish businessmen, on the other hand, have understood much more. That’s why businessmen never become politicians.’

Lars Håkansson is resolute and determined. Olofson envies his self-assurance.

Here I sit with my eggs, he thinks. The chicken shit is growing under my fingernails. He looks at Lars Håkansson’s polished hands, his well-tailored khaki jacket. He imagines that Håkansson is a happy man, about fifty years old.

‘I’ll be here for two years,’ he says. ‘I’m based in Lusaka, in an excellent house on Independence Avenue. It’s comforting to live where you can see the president pass by almost daily in his well-guarded convoy. I assume that sooner or later I’ll be invited to the State House to present this wonderful Swedish gift. To be Swedish in Africa today is better than being Swedish in Sweden. Our foreign aid munificence opens doors and palace gates.’

Olofson gives him selected excerpts from his African life.

‘Show me the farm,’ Håkansson says. ‘I saw something in the papers about a robbery-murder on a farm in this area. Was it nearby?’

‘No,’ says Olofson. ‘Quite far from here.’

‘Farmers also get murdered in Småland,’ says Håkansson. They climb into his almost brand-new Land Cruiser, and drive around the farm, look at one of the hen houses. Olofson shows him the school.

‘Like a mill owner in the olden days,’ says Håkansson. ‘Do you also sleep with the daughters before they’re allowed to get married? Or have you stopped now that all of Africa has AIDS?’

‘I’ve never done it,’ Olofson says, registering that Håkansson’s remarks upset him.

Outside Joyce Lufuma’s house two of the eldest daughters stand and wave. One is sixteen, the other fifteen.

‘A family I take special care of,’ says Olofson. ‘I’d like to send these two girls to school in Lusaka. I just don’t know quite how to arrange it.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Håkansson asks.

‘Everything,’ says Olofson. ‘They grew up here on this isolated farm, their father died in an accident. They’ve barely been to Chingola or Kitwe. How would they get along in a city like Lusaka? They have no relatives there, I’ve checked. As girls they’re vulnerable, especially without family to provide a protective environment. The best thing would be if I could have sent the whole family, the mother and four children. But she doesn’t want to go.’

‘What would they study?’ asks Håkansson. ‘Teaching or nursing?’

Olofson nods. ‘Nursing. I assume they’d be good at it. The country needs nurses, and both are very dedicated.’

‘For an aid expert nothing is impossible,’ Håkansson says quickly. ‘I can arrange the whole thing for you. My house in Lusaka has two servants’ quarters, and only one of them is being used. They can live there, and I’ll keep an eye on them.’

‘I could hardly put you out like that,’ Olofson says.

‘In the world of foreign aid we talk about “mutual benefit”,’ says Håkansson. ‘You give Sida and the Zambians your hill in return for a reasonable compensation. I put an unused servants’ dwelling at the disposal of two girls eager to learn. It will also contribute to Zambia’s development. You can rest easy. I have daughters myself, older of course, but I remember when they were that age. I belong to a generation of men who watch over their daughters.’

‘I would support them, naturally,’ Olofson says.

‘I know that,’ says Håkansson.

Once again Olofson finds no reason to refuse an offer from Lars Håkansson. And yet something is bothering him, something he can’t put his finger on. There are no simple solutions in Africa, he thinks. Swedish efficiency is unnatural here. But Håkansson is convincing, and his offer is ideal.

They return to the starting point. Håkansson is in a hurry, he has to drive on to another possible location for a link station.

‘It’ll be harder there,’ he says. ‘I’ll have to deal with a whole town and a local chieftain. It’s going to take time. Aid work would be easy if we didn’t have to deal with Africans.’

He tells Olofson that he’ll be back to Kalulushi in about a week.

‘Think about my offer. The daughters are welcome.’

‘I’m grateful to you,’ Olofson says.

‘An absolutely meaningless feeling,’ says Håkansson. ‘When I solve practical dilemmas, it gives me the sense that life is manageable in spite of everything. One time long ago I was climbing up power poles with spikes on my boots. I fixed telephone lines and connected voices. It was a time when Zambian copper streamed out to the world’s telecom industries. Then I studied to be an engineer, divorced my wife, and went out into the world. But whether I’m here or climbing up poles, I solve practical problems. Life is what it is.’

Olofson feels a sudden joy at having met Lars Håkansson. He has encountered Swedes regularly during his years in Africa, most often technicians employed by large international corporations, but the meetings were always brief. Maybe Håkansson is different.

‘You’re welcome to stay here when you’re in the Copperbelt,’ Olofson tells him. ‘I have plenty of room. I live alone.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ says Håkansson.

They shake hands, Håkansson gets into his car, and Olofson waves as he departs.

His energy has returned. Suddenly he’s ready to fight his fear, no longer tempted to surrender to it. He gets into his car and makes a comprehensive inspection of the farm, checking fences, feed supplies, and the quality of the eggs. Together with his drivers he studies maps and plans alternative routes to avoid the hijacking of their lorries. He studies foremen’s reports and orders, issues warnings, and fires a night watchman who has come to work drunk on numerous occasions.

I can do this, he thinks. I have 200 people working on the farm, over a thousand people are dependent on the hens laying their eggs. I take responsibility and make the whole thing work. If I let myself be scared off by the meaningless murders of Ruth and Werner and my dog, a thousand people would be thrown into uncertainty, poverty, maybe even starvation.

People who dress like leopards don’t know what they’re doing. In the name of political discontent they’re pushing their brothers down the precipice.

He shoves the dirty foremen’s reports away, puts his feet up on a pile of egg cartons, and lets his mind work on an idea.

I’ll start a back fire, he thinks. Even if the Africans are evidently no longer afraid of German shepherds, they have great respect and fear of people who show courage. Maybe Werner Masterton’s fate was brought about by the fact that he had softened, turned vague and yielding; an old man who worried about the trouble he was having pissing.

He finds himself thinking a racist thought. The African’s instinct is like the hyena’s, he tells himself. In Sweden the word ‘hyena’ is an insult, an expression for contemptuous weakness, for a parasitic person. For the Africans the hyena’s hunting methods are natural. Prey left behind or lost by others is something desirable. A wounded and defenceless animal is something to pounce on. Perhaps Werner Masterton appeared a wounded man after all these years in Africa. The blacks could see it and they attacked. Ruth could never have put up any resistance.

He thinks back to his conversation with Peter Motombwane, and makes his decision. He calls in one of the clerks waiting outside the hut.

‘Go and fetch me Eisenhower Mudenda,’ he says. ‘At once.’

The man stands there, uncertain.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Olofson shouts. ‘Eisenhower Mudenda! Sanksako! You’ll get a kick in the mataku if he isn’t here in five minutes.’

A few minutes later Eisenhower Mudenda stands inside the dark hut. He’s breathing hard and Olofson can tell that the man has been running.

‘Sit down,’ says Olofson, pointing at a chair. ‘But wipe yourself off first. I don’t want chicken shit on the chair.’

Mudenda quickly wipes himself off and sits down on the edge of the chair. His disguise is excellent, Olofson thinks. An insignificant old man. But none of the Africans on this farm dares cross him. Even Motombwane is afraid of him.

For a brief moment he hesitates. The risk is too great, he thinks. If I start this back fire, there will be chaos. And yet he knows it is necessary; he has made his decision.

‘Someone has killed one of my dogs,’ he says. ‘His head was nailed to a tree. But you probably know this already, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Bwana,’ replies Mudenda.

The lack of expression, Olofson thinks. It says everything.

‘Let’s speak openly, Eisenhower,’ Olofson says. ‘You’ve been here for many years. For thousands of days you have gone to your hen house, and countless eggs have passed through your hands. Of course I know you’re a sorcerer, a man who can do muloji. All the blacks are afraid of you, and none of them will say a word against you. But I’m a bwana, a mzungu that your muloji won’t work on. Now I’m thinking of asking you for something, Eisenhower. You must regard this as an order, in the same way as if I tell you to work on your day off. Someone on this farm killed my dog. I want to know who it was. Maybe you already know. But I want to know too, and I want to know soon. If you don’t tell me, I’ll have to assume that you were the one who did it. And then you’ll be sacked. Not even your muloji can prevent that. You’ll have to leave your house, and you will never be allowed to show your face on the farm again. If you do, the police will take you away.’

I should have talked to him outside in the sun, thinks Olofson. I can’t see his face in here.

‘I can give Bwana his answer right now,’ says Mudenda, and Olofson thinks he can hear something hard in his voice.

‘Even better. I’m listening.’

‘Nobody on this farm killed a dog, Bwana,’ Mudenda says. ‘People came in the night and then left again. I know who they are, but I can’t say anything.’

‘Why not?’ Olofson asks.

‘My knowledge comes to me in visions, Bwana,’ Mudenda replies. ‘Only sometimes can one reveal his visions. A vision can be turned into a poison that will kill my brain.’

‘Use your muloji,’ Olofson says. ‘Create a counter-poison, tell me about your vision.’

‘No, Bwana,’ Mudenda says.

‘Then you are fired,’ says Olofson. ‘At this instant your work on my farm is ended. By tomorrow, at dawn, you and your family must be out of your house. Now I’ll pay you the wages I owe you.’

He places a pile of notes on the table.

‘I will go, Bwana,’ says Eisenhower Mudenda. ‘But I will come back.’

‘No,’ Olofson says. ‘Not if you don’t want the police to take you away.’

‘The police are black too, Bwana,’ says Eisenhower Mudenda.

He picks up the stack of bank notes and vanishes into the white sunlight. A test of power between reality and superstition, thinks Olofson. I have to believe that reality is stronger.

That night he barricades himself in his house and again waits for something to happen. He sleeps fitfully on top of the covers of his bed. The dead and dismembered bodies of Werner and Ruth wake him time and time again. Exhausted and pale, he lets Luka in at dawn. Black rain clouds are looming on the horizon.

‘Nothing is as it should be, Bwana,’ Luka says gravely.

‘What?’ Olofson asks.

‘The farm is silent, Bwana,’ replies Luka.

Olofson gets into his car and drives quickly towards the hen houses. The work stations are abandoned. Not a person in sight. The eggs are ungathered, the feed chutes empty. Empty egg cartons lean against the wheels of the lorries. The keys are in the ignition.

The test of power, he thinks. The witch doctor and I appear in the arena. In a rage he gets back into his car. With screeching brakes he stops among the low mud houses. The men are sitting in groups at their fires, the women and children in the doorways. Naturally they’ve been waiting for me, he thinks. He calls over some of the older foremen.

‘Nobody is working,’ he says. ‘Why not?’

The reply is silence, hesitant glances, fear.

‘If everyone returns to work at once I won’t even ask the reason,’ he says. ‘No one will be fired, no one will have his wages docked. But everyone has to return to work now.’

‘We can’t, Bwana,’ says one of the oldest foremen.

‘Why not?’ Olofson asks again.

‘Eisenhower Mudenda is no longer on the farm, Bwana,’ the foreman goes on. ‘Before he left he called us together and said that every egg that is now laid is a snake egg. If we touch the eggs we will be bitten by poisonous fangs. The farm will be overrun with snakes.’

Olofson thinks for a moment. Words won’t help, he realises. He has to do something, something they can see with their own eyes.

He gets into his car and returns to the hen houses and gathers a carton of eggs. When he comes back he assembles the foremen around him. Without a word he crushes egg after egg, letting the whites and the yolks drip to the ground. The men shrink back, but he continues.

‘No snakes,’ he says. ‘Normal eggs. Who sees a snake?’

But the foremen are unreachable.

‘When we touch the eggs, Bwana, there will be snakes.’

Olofson holds out an egg, but no one dares touch it.

‘You will lose your jobs,’ he says. ‘You will lose your houses, everything.’

‘We don’t believe that, Bwana.’

‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’

‘The hens must have feed, Bwana.’

‘I’ll find other workers. People are queueing up to work on a white farm.’

‘Not when they hear about the snakes, Bwana.’

‘There aren’t any snakes.’

‘We think there are, Bwana. That’s why we’re not working.’

‘You’re afraid of Eisenhower Mudenda. You’re afraid of his muloji.’

‘Eisenhower Mudenda is a smart man, Bwana.’

‘He’s no smarter than any of you.’

‘He speaks to us through our forefathers, Bwana. We’re Africans, you’re a white bwana. You can’t understand.’

‘I’ll sack you all if you don’t go back to work.’

‘We know that, Bwana.’

‘I’ll get workers from another part of the country.’

‘Nobody will work on a farm where the hens lay snake eggs, Bwana.’

‘I’m telling you, there are no eggs with snakes in them!’

‘Only Eisenhower Mudenda can take away the snakes, Bwana.’

‘I’ve fired him.’

‘He’s waiting to come back, Bwana.’

I’m losing, Olofson thinks. I’m losing the way the white man always loses in Africa. There’s no way to start a back fire against superstition.

‘Send for Mudenda,’ he says and walks back to his car and drives to his mud hut.

Suddenly Mudenda stands like a silhouette in the doorway against the bright white sunlight.

‘I won’t ask you to sit down,’ says Olofson. ‘You have your job back. Actually I ought to force you to show the workers that there aren’t any snakes in the eggs. But I won’t do that. Tell the workers you have lifted your muloji. Go back to work, that’s all.’

Eisenhower Mudenda walks out into the sun, and Olofson follows him.

‘One more thing you should know. I don’t admit that I’m defeated. One day there won’t be any more muloji, and the blacks will turn against you and crush your head with their wooden clubs. I don’t intend to come to your rescue.’

‘That will never happen, Bwana,’ says Eisenhower Mudenda.

‘Hens will never lay eggs with snakes inside,’ replies Olofson. ‘What will you do when someone asks to see one of these snakes?’

The next day a dead cobra is lying on the front seat of Olofson’s car. Eggshells are scattered around the dead snake...

Chapter Twenty-Two

Africa is still far away. But Hans Olofson is on his way. He still visits new, hostile territories, he has left the house by the river far behind, passed a student examination in the county seat and is now at the university in Uppsala, where he is supposed to be studying law.

To finance his studies he works three afternoons a week at Johannes Wickberg’s gun shop in Stockholm. He knows more about the philosophy of skeet shooting than about the Code of Land Laws. He knows much more about the history of superior Italian shotguns, about the viscosity of weapons grease at low temperatures, than he does about Roman Law, which is the foundation of everything.

Now and then big-game hunters come into the gun shop, and they ask different and considerably odder questions than those he has to answer in the introductory law course. Are there black lions? He doesn’t think so. But one day a man stands before him who claims to be called Stone, and insists that the black lion exists in the remote Kalahari Desert. Stone has come from Durban to see Wickberg. But Wickberg has gone to the customs house to solve a problem with the import of ammunition from the United States, and Hans Olofson is alone in the shop.

Stone’s real name is Stenberg, and even though he has lived in Durban for many years, he comes originally from Tibro. For more than an hour he stays in the shop and tells Hans how he imagines his death. For many years he has suffered from a mysterious itch on his legs that keeps him wide awake at night. He has shown his affliction to doctors and to tall witch doctors, but nothing has helped. When he discovers that most of his internal organs have been severely attacked by parasites, he realises that his time is limited.

In the early 1920s he ventured out into the world as one of the promoters of Swedish ballbearings. He wound up staying in South Africa, dumbfounded by all the night sounds and the endless plains of the Transvaal. Eventually he left ballbearings behind and established an office for big-game hunting, Hunters Unlimited, and changed his name to Stone. But he still buys his guns from Wickberg, and so he travels to Sweden once a year, to Tibro to tend his parents’ grave, and to Stockholm to buy weapons. He stands there in the shop telling all this to Hans Olofson. And when he leaves, Hans is certain that black lions do exist.

It’s a day in the middle of April, 1969, as Stone stands there telling Hans about his life. For nine months Hans has travelled back and forth between Uppsala and Stockholm, between future studies and making a living. After nine months he still feels that he is in enemy territory, that he came from the north as an illegal immigrant and that one day he will be unmasked and chased back to his origins.

When he left the county seat behind, it was like finally climbing out of his own personal Iron Age. His tools were sharp and cold, and the teachers’ questions hung over his head like raised axes. He had experienced the four years of study as if he were living on the dole. The scent of elkhound had never left him, the rented room had eaten its way into him, the flowered wallpaper had been carnivorous. He had made few friends in this scrubbed emptiness. But he had forced himself to persevere, and finally he passed an exam that surprised everyone, including himself. He felt as though his marks did not reflect his knowledge but instead were proof of his determination, as if he were an orienteer or an athlete.

That’s also where the idea of studying law originates. Since he has no desire to be a woodcutter, he decides that maybe he can be a lawyer. He has a vague sense that the law might give him the tools to survive. The laws are rules that have been tested and interpreted down through the generations. They clarify the boundaries of decency, specify how the unimpeachable person may act. But perhaps another horizon is also hiding there. Maybe he could become the sworn spokesman of mitigating circumstance?

He once felt as though his whole life ought to be viewed as a mitigating circumstance. From my upbringing I received neither self-knowledge nor a sense of purpose, he thought. Now I try to move through hostile terrain without surrendering to confusion. Maybe the fact that I didn’t remain in the place of my birth could be regarded as a mitigating circumstance. But why didn’t I stay there? Why didn’t I grab a pickaxe and bury the roots, marry one of the bridesmaids?

My inheritance is a dusty full-rigger in a glass case, the smell of wet woollen socks drying over the stove. A mother who couldn’t stand it any longer and vanished on a train heading south; a haggard seaman who managed to drift ashore where there wasn’t any sea.

As the defender of mitigating circumstance perhaps I can remain unnoticed. I, Hans Olofson, possess an incontrovertible talent. The art of finding the best hiding places.

The summer after his examination he returns to the house by the river. There is no one to meet him at the station, and when he enters the kitchen it smells newly scrubbed, and his father is sitting at the table regarding him with glazed eyes.

He sees that he is beginning to resemble his father more and more. The face, the tangled hair, the stooping spine. But do I also resemble him inside? If so, where will I drift ashore?

In a surge of responsibility he tries to take care of his father, who is obviously drinking more often and more than before. He sits down across from him at the kitchen table and asks if he isn’t going to take off soon. What happened to the boat that sailed along the coast?

He barely receives an answer. His father’s head hangs as if his neck were already broken.

One single time Hans crosses the bridge to Janine’s house. It’s late at night, the bright Norrland night, and he thinks he hears her trombone for a brief dreadful moment. The neglected currant bushes glow. He leaves the place and never returns. He avoids her grave in the churchyard.

One day he bumps into Nyman the courthouse caretaker. On an impulse he asks about Sture. Nyman knows. After ten years Sture is still lying motionless in bed in a hospital for the incurable outside Västervik.

Restlessly he wanders along the river. He walks with his tornup roots in his hand, searching for a suitable plot of ground to set them down in. But in Uppsala it’s all pavement, isn’t it? How can he plant them there?

At the beginning of August he can finally take off, and he does so with a great sense of relief. Again circumstances lead him further away. If he hadn’t had Ture Wickberg as a classmate he wouldn’t have been given the chance to finance his studies by working in Ture’s uncle’s gun shop in Stockholm.

His father accompanies him to the station, and stands on the platform carefully watching his son’s two suitcases. Suddenly Hans feels a great fury. Who would steal his luggage?

The train lurches forward and Erik Olofson raises his hand awkwardly to wave goodbye. Hans sees him moving his mouth but he can’t hear what he’s saying. As the train rattles across the iron bridge, Hans is standing at the window. The iron beams whirl past, the water of the river runs towards the sea. Then he closes the window, as if he were lowering an iron curtain. He is alone in the gloom of the compartment. He has a fleeting sensation that he is in a hiding place where no one will ever find him.

But the conductors of Swedish Railways do not place philosophical importance on closed, dark compartments. The door flies open and Hans feels caught out in the depths of a great secret, and he hands over his ticket as if begging for mercy. The conductor punches it and tells him how to change trains in the early dawn.

In a wounded and lacerated world there is no room for the scared rabbits of anxiety, he thinks. The feeling refuses to let him go, even when he has commuted back and forth between Uppsala and Stockholm for almost ten months.

Hans finds a place to live with a man who has a passionate love of fungi and works as a lecturer in biology. A lovely attic room in an old wooden building becomes his new hiding place. The building lies in an overgrown garden, and he decides that the lecturer has planted his own private jungle.

Time reigns supreme in the house. Clocks hang on all the walls. Hans imagines the clockwork menagerie, a ticking, rattling, sighing orchestra that calibrates time and the noble insignificance of life. In window niches the sand runs through hourglasses that are constantly turned over. An elderly mother wanders about in the ticking rooms, taking care of the clocks.

The clocks were inherited, he is told. The lecturer’s father, an eccentric inventor who in his youth made a fortune on combine harvesters, spent his life passionately collecting timepieces.

The first months of that autumn he will remember as a long drawn-out agony when he seemed to understand nothing. The law seems an unknown cuneiform script for which he completely lacks a personal code. Each day he is prepared to give up, but he mobilises his maximum endurance and finally succeeds, in early November, in cracking the shell and penetrating into the darkness behind the words.

At about the same time he decides to change his appearance. He grows a beard and clips his hair to a downy fringe all over his skull. In photo booths he turns the stool into position, feeds in one-krona coins, and then studies his features. But behind his new look he can still see the face of Erik Olofson.

He imagines dejectedly how his coat of arms might look. A snowdrift, a chained elkhound, against a background of infinite forests. He will never escape it.

One time when he is alone in the ticking house he decides to investigate the secrets of the fungus-loving lecturer and his timekeeping mother. Perhaps I could raise this to a lifelong mission, he thinks. Peeping. I will take on the form of a field mouse and break out of my ingenious system of secret passages. But he finds nothing in the chiffoniers and chests of drawers.

He sits down among the ticking clocks and with an utter seriousness attempts to understand himself. He has wound up here, from the brickworks, via the span of the iron bridge. But after that? Onward, to become a lawyer, the defender of mitigating circumstance, simply because he wouldn’t be any good as a woodcutter. I possess neither meekness nor impatience, he thinks. I was born into a time when everything is splitting apart. I have to make a decision. I must make up my mind to continue with what I decided to do. Maybe I will find my mother. My indecision is in itself a hiding place, and there’s a risk that I’ll never find my way out.

On precisely this day in April when Stone from Tibro has told Hans about his internal parasites and the black lions in the Kalahari, a telegram lies waiting for him when he returns to the house of the clocks. It’s from his father, telling him that he’s coming to Stockholm on the morning train.

His rage is instant. Why is he coming here? He’d thought that his father was securely chained up beyond the fir ridges. Why is he on his way here? The telegram gives no reason.

Early in the morning he hurries to Stockholm and is waiting on the platform when the Norrland train pulls in. He sees his father cautiously peering out from one of the last cars. In his hand he holds the bag that Hans himself used when he travelled to the county seat. Under his arm he has a package wrapped in brown paper.

‘Well now, there you are,’ says Erik Olofson when he spies his son. ‘I didn’t know if the telegram had arrived.’

‘What would you have done then? And what are you doing here?’

‘It’s those Vaxholm boats again. They need seamen now.’

Hans leads him to a cafeteria in the station.

‘Do they serve pilsner here?’ his father asks.

‘No, no pilsner. You’ll have coffee. Now tell me!’

‘There isn’t much to tell. I wrote and got an answer. I have to be at their office at nine o’clock.’

‘Where are you going to live?’

‘I thought there might be some sort of boarding house.’

‘What have you got in the package? It’s leaking!’

‘A moose steak.’

‘A moose steak?’

‘Yep.’

‘It’s not hunting season now, is it?’

‘Well, it’s a moose steak anyway. I brought it for you.’

‘There’s blood dripping out of the package. People will think you murdered somebody.’

‘Who would that be?’

‘Good Lord.’

They find a room at the Central Hotel. Hans watches his father unpack his clothes. He recognises them all, has seen them all before.

‘Make sure you give yourself a good shave before you go there. And no pilsners!’

His father hands him a letter and Hans sees that the Vaxholm boats have an office on Strandvägen.

After Erik has shaved they set off.

‘I borrowed a picture of Nyman’s children. It’s so fuzzy you can’t really see anything. So it’ll do fine.’

‘Do you still think you can show pictures of other people’s children?’

‘Sailors are supposed to have a lot of children. It’s expected.’

‘Why didn’t you tell my mother that?’

‘I thought I’d ask around about her. You haven’t seen her, by any chance, have you?’

Hans stops dead in his tracks. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Just wondering.’

‘Why would I have seen her? Where would I have seen her?’

‘There are a lot of people living here. She must be somewhere.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘Then we won’t talk about it any more.’

‘I don’t even know what she looks like.’

‘You’ve seen pictures, though.’

‘But they’re twenty-five years old. People change. Would you recognise her if she came walking down the street?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘The hell.’

‘Then we won’t talk about it any more.’

‘Why have you never tried to find her?’

‘You don’t run after people who just up and leave like that.’

‘But she was your wife! My mother!’

‘She still is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We never got divorced.’

‘You’re still married?’

‘I should think so.’

When they reach Strandvägen and there’s still half an hour to go before nine o’clock, Hans takes his father into a café.

‘Do they serve pilsner here?’

‘No pilsners. You’ll have coffee. And now let’s take it from the top. I’m twenty-five years old, I’ve never seen my mother other than in bad photographs. I don’t know a thing about her except that she got fed up and left. I’ve wondered, I’ve worried, I’ve missed her and I’ve hated her. You’ve never said a word. Not one word.’

‘I’ve been thinking about her too.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not that good with words.’

‘Why did she leave? You must know. You must have brooded about it for as long as I have. You didn’t get a divorce, didn’t remarry. In some way you’ve continued to live with her. Deep inside you’ve been waiting for her to come back. You must have some explanation, don’t you?’

‘What time is it?’

‘You have to answer!’

‘She must have been someone else.’

‘What do you mean, “someone else”?’

‘Someone other than I thought.’

‘And what exactly did you think?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Good Lord.’

‘It won’t do any good to worry about it.’

‘For twenty-five years you haven’t had a woman.’

‘What do you know about that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That has nothing to do with it. What time is it? You have to show up on the dot with ship owners.’

‘So who?’

‘If you really want to know, I’ve met Nyman’s wife from time to time. But you keep your mouth shut about it. Nyman’s a nice bloke.’

Hans can’t believe his ears. ‘Are those my sisters and brothers?’

‘Who?’

‘Nyman’s children. Are they my sisters and brothers?’

‘Those are Nyman’s children.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘We only saw each other when she was pregnant,’ Erik says simply. ‘You learn these things. There can never be shared paternity.’

‘And you expect me to believe this?’

‘I don’t expect anything. I’m just telling you the truth.’

Hans stays in the café while his father visits the ship owner. My father, he thinks. I evidently never knew a thing about him.

After half an hour Erik comes back.

‘How’d it go?’

‘Good. But I didn’t get a job.’

‘So it didn’t go so well then.’

‘They said they’d let me know.’

‘When?’

‘When they need seamen.’

‘I thought they needed to hire people now?’

‘They must have hired someone else.’

‘Are you satisfied with that?’

‘I’ve been waiting for years,’ says Erik with sudden sharpness. ‘I’ve waited and wished and almost given up. But now at least I’ve tried.’

‘What are we going to do now?’

‘I’m going home tonight. But now I want to have a pilsner.’

‘What are we going to do for the rest of the day?’

‘I thought you were studying at the university.’

‘I am. But now you’re here in town and we haven’t seen each other for a long time.’

‘How are your studies?’

‘All right.’

I see.’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘What question?’

‘What do you want to do today?’

‘I already told you. I want a pilsner. Then I’ll go home.’

They spend the day in the hotel room. A pale autumn sun shines through the curtains.

‘If I find her,’ says Hans, ‘what should I say?’

‘Nothing from me,’ Erik says firmly.

‘What was her name before you married?’

‘Karlsson.’

‘Mary Karlsson or Mary Olofson from Askersund? Anything else?’

‘She had a dog named Buffalo when she was a child. I remember she told me that.’

‘That dog must have been dead for fifty years by now.’

‘Its name was Buffalo anyway.’

‘Is that all you know?’

‘Yep.’

‘A goddamn dog named Buffalo?’

‘That’s what it was called, I remember that clearly.’

Hans accompanies him to the train. I’m going to look for her, he thinks. I can’t have a mother who’s a riddle. Either he’s lying, hiding something, or else my mother is a strange woman.

‘When are you coming home?’ his father asks.

‘In the summer. Not before. Maybe you’ll be a seaman again before that, what do you think?’

‘Could be. Could be.’

Hans takes the train with him as far as Uppsala. He has the moose steak under his arm.

‘So who’s poaching?’ he asks.

‘Nobody you know,’ says Erik.

Hans goes back to the house of the clocks. I can’t give up, he thinks. Nothing can really prevent me from becoming the defender of mitigating circumstance. I’ll build barricades inside of me.

I can’t give up.

Chapter Twenty-Three

He sees the dead snake.

What is it saying? What message does it bring? Sorcerers interpret their ancestors’ voices, and the black masses huddle in terrified submission. He knows he should get going, leave the farm, leave Africa.

Suddenly it’s incomprehensible to him. Almost twenty years in Africa. An unreal, unbelievable life. What was it I thought I could achieve? Superstition is real, that’s what I always forget. I keep deceiving myself with the white point of view. I’ve never been able to grasp the way the blacks think. I have lived here for almost twenty years without realising on what ground I’m actually standing. Ruth and Werner Masterton died because they refused to understand.

With a feeling that he is no longer able to cope, he gets into his car and drives to Kitwe. So he can get some sleep he checks into the Hotel Edinburgh, pulls the curtains and lies naked on top of the sheet. A violent thunderstorm passes through and the lightning flashes flicker across his face. The torrent pounds like the surf against the window.

Suddenly he longs for home, a melancholy hunger for the clear water of the river, the motionless ridges of firs. Maybe that was what the white snake wanted to tell him. Or was it giving him his last warning?

I ran away from my own life, he thinks. In the beginning there was possibility; growing up with the smell of elkhounds, that may have been meagre but that was still my very own heritage. I could have worked towards realising an ambition, watching over the mitigating circumstance. Chance events that were stronger than I was created my confusion. I accepted Judith Fillington’s offer without understanding what it really involved. Now that I’ve already taken off my shoes in the vestibule of middle age, I’m afraid that my life is shipwrecked. There is always something else I want. Right now to go back, to start over from the beginning if it were possible.

Restlessly he gets dressed and goes down to the hotel bar. He nods to some familiar faces and discovers Peter Motombwane in a corner, bent over a newspaper. He sits down at his table without telling him about the events at the farm.

‘What’s going on?’ he asks. ‘New riots? New plundering raids? When I came to Kitwe everything seemed calm.’

‘The authorities have released an emergency store of maize,’ Motombwane says. ‘Sugar is on the way from Zimbabwe, Canadian wheat is in Dar-es-Salaam. The politicians have decided not to have any more riots. Many people have been put in jail, and the president is hiding in the State House. Everything will calm down again, unfortunately. A mountain of sacks of corn meal is enough to delay an African riot for quite a while. The politicians can sleep securely with their fortunes, and you can take down your barricades from the doors and sleep soundly again.’

‘How do you know that I build barricades?’ Olofson asks.

‘Even with no imagination I would guess that,’ replies Motombwane.

‘But Werner and Ruth Masterton will not get their lives back,’ Olofson says.

‘At least that’s something,’ replies Motombwane.

Olofson starts. He feels the rage coming. ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

‘I was thinking of driving out to see you someday,’ Motombwane says unperturbed. ‘I’m a journalist, and I’ve investigated the twilight land that Rustlewood Farm has become. Truths are coming to light, and no one is afraid that the dead will come back to haunt them since their heads were cut off their bodies. The black workers are talking, an unknown world is emerging. I thought I’d drive out to see you someday and tell you about it.’

‘Why not now?’ Olofson asks.

‘I like it on your farm,’ replies Motombwane. ‘I would have liked to live there. On your terrace one can talk about everything.’

Olofson realises that there is a subtext to Peter Motombwane’s words. I don’t know him, he thinks. Beyond our conversations, evenings spent in each other’s company, the fundamental fact keeps returning that he’s black and I’m a white European. The differences between the continents are never so great or blatant as when they are represented by two individuals.

‘Two dead, dismembered bodies,’ says Motombwane. ‘Two Europeans who lived here for many, many years, murdered and cut to bits by unknown blacks. I decided to work backwards, to search for light among the shadows. Perhaps because I might have been wrong, it mightn’t have been pure chance that it was the Mastertons who were killed. I start my investigations and an underlying world begins to surface. A farm is always a closed system; the white owners put up both visible and invisible fences around themselves and their workers. I talk with the blacks, put together fleeting rumours into something that suddenly starts to be readable and clear. I stand before an assumption that is slowly confirmed. Werner and Ruth Masterton were hardly murdered by chance. I can never be sure; coincidences and conscious decisions can also be woven together with invisible threads.’

‘Tell me,’ says Olofson. ‘Tell me the story of the shadows.’

‘A picture began to emerge,’ says Motombwane. ‘Two people with an unreasoning hatred of black people. A terror regime with constant threats and punishments. In earlier times we were beaten with whips made from hippopotamus skins. Today that would be an impossibility. The whips are invisible; they leave their marks only in the sensitive skin of the mind and the heart. The blacks who worked at Rustlewood Farm endured a constant barrage of humiliations and threats of dismissal, degrading transfers, fines, and lockouts. A South African territory reveals itself right here, in this country, an utterly unbounded racism. Ruth and Werner Masterton’s primary nourishment was the contempt they cultivated.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ says Olofson. ‘I knew them. You can’t see through the lies you’re dragging up out of the shadow world you’ve been visiting.’

‘I’m not asking you to believe me,’ says Motombwane. ‘What I’m giving you is the black truth.’

‘A lie will never be true, no matter how many times you repeat it,’ Olofson replies. ‘Truths don’t follow race; at least they shouldn’t do so in a friendly conversation.’

‘The various accounts coincided,’ Motombwane says. ‘Individual details were confirmed. According to what I now know, I have to shrug my shoulders at their fate. I believe it was justified.’

‘That conclusion makes our friendship impossible,’ says Olofson, getting to his feet.

‘Has it ever really been possible?’ asks Motombwane, unmoved.

‘I thought so,’ Olofson says. ‘At least it was my sincere hope.’

‘I’m not the one who’s making something impossible,’ says Motombwane. ‘You’re the one who prefers to deny a truth about dead people when it’s right in front of you, instead of choosing a friendship with a living person. What you’re doing now is taking a racist position. Actually, it surprises me.’

Olofson feels an urge to hit Motombwane. But he controls himself.

‘What would you do without us?’ he asks. ‘Without the whites this country would fall apart. Those aren’t my words, they’re yours.’

‘And I agree with them. But the collapse wouldn’t be as great as you imagine. It would be extensive enough that a necessary transformation would have to be pushed through. A revolt that has been suppressed for far too long might break out. In the best case, we would succeed in ripping away all the European influences that continue to oppress us even though we ourselves are not aware of them. Then perhaps we could finally achieve our African independence.’

‘Or else you’ll chop each other’s heads off,’ says Olofson. ‘Tribe against tribe, Bemba against Luvale, Kaonde against Luzi.’

‘Anyway, that’s our own problem,’ says Motombwane. ‘A problem that wasn’t imposed on us by you.’

‘Africa is sinking,’ Olofson says excitedly. ‘The future of this continent is already over. The only thing that remains is a deeper and deeper decay.’

‘If you live long enough you’ll realise that you’re wrong,’ replies Motombwane.

‘According to all available calculations my life span is superior to yours,’ says Olofson. ‘No one will shorten it by raising a panga over my head, either.’

Theirs is a ragged and weary parting of ways. Olofson merely walks away, leaving Motombwane huddled in the shadows. When he returns to his room and has slammed the door behind him, he feels sad and forlorn. The lonely dog barks inside him, and he suddenly sees his father’s impotent scrubbing. Ending a friendship, he thinks. It’s like breaking your own fingers. With Peter Motombwane I lose my most important link to Africa. I will miss our conversations, his clarification of why the black man’s thoughts look the way they do. He lies down on the bed to think. Motombwane could be absolutely right, of course. What do I really know about Ruth and Werner? Almost twenty years ago we shared a compartment on the night train between Lusaka and Kitwe; they helped me along, took care of me when I came back from Mutshatsha. They never made a secret of their opposition to the transformation that Africa is undergoing; they always referred to the colonial times as the era that could have led Africa forward. They felt both betrayed and disappointed. But what about the brutality that Motombwane thought he had traced to their daily life?

Maybe he’s right, Olofson thinks. Maybe there is a truth that I’m pushing away. He hurries back to the bar to try and reconcile with Peter Motombwane.

But the table is empty; one of the waiters says that he got up and left. Exhausted and sad, Olofson sleeps in his hotel bed.

When he eats breakfast in the morning, he is again reminded of Ruth and Werner. One of their neighbours, an Irishman named Behan, comes into the dining room and stops by his table. A will has been found in the blood-drenched house; a steel safe survived the fire. A law firm in Lusaka is authorised to sell the farm and transfer the remaining profit to the British retirement home in Livingstone.

Behan tells him that the auction of the farm will be held in a fortnight. Many whites are prospective bidders; the farm will not be allowed to fall into black hands.

There’s a war going on, Olofson thinks. A war that only occasionally becomes visible. But everywhere the racial hatred is alive — whites against the blacks and blacks against whites.

He returns to his farm. A violent downpour makes visibility through the windscreen nonexistent and forces him to stop on the verge just before the farm. A black woman with two small children crosses the road in front of the car, covered with mud and water. He recognises her as the wife of one of the workers on the farm. She doesn’t ask for a ride, he thinks. Nor do I offer her one. Nothing unites us, not even a fierce downpour, when only one of us has an umbrella. People’s barbaric behaviour always has a human face, he thinks vaguely to himself. That’s what makes the barbarity so inhumane.

The rain drums on the roof of the car; he waits alone for it to ease. I could decide here and now, he thinks. Decide to leave. Sell the farm, go back to Sweden. Exactly how much money Patel has weaseled out of me I have no idea, but I’m not penniless. This egg farm has given me a few years’ breathing space. Something about Africa scares me just as much now as the day I stepped out of the plane at Lusaka International Airport. Twenty years’ experience of this continent hasn’t changed a thing, since I never questioned white assumptions. What would I actually say if someone asked me to explain what is happening on this continent? I have my memories — adventurous, gruesome, exotic. But I don’t have any real knowledge.

The rain stops abruptly, a wall of clouds rises and the landscape starts to dry out again. Before he starts the engine he decides to spend an hour each day planning his future.

A perfect calm rests over the farm; nothing seems to have happened. By chance he encounters Eisenhower Mudenda, bowing to the ground. A white man in Africa is someone who takes part in a play he knows nothing about, he thinks. Only the blacks know the next line. Every evening he builds his barricades, checks his weapons, and chooses a different bedroom. Daybreak is always a relief, and he wonders how long he’ll be able to endure. I don’t even know my own breaking point, he thinks. But it must exist.

Lars Håkansson returns one afternoon, pulling up in his shiny car outside the mud hut. Olofson discovers that he’s glad to see him. Håkansson says he’ll stay two nights, and Olofson quickly decides to arrange his internal barricades in silence. They sit on the terrace at dusk.

‘Why does anyone come to Africa?’ Olofson asks. ‘Why does anyone force himself out of his own environment? I assume that I’m asking you because I’m so tired of asking myself.’

‘I hardly think that an aid expert is the right person to ask,’ Håkansson replies. ‘At any rate not if you want an honest answer. Behind the slick surface with its idealistic motives there’s a landscape of selfish and economic reasons. Signing a contract to work overseas is like getting a chance to become well-to-do while at the same time living a pleasant life. The Swedish welfare state follows you everywhere and is elevated to undreamed-of heights when it comes to well-paid aid experts. If you have children the Swedish state takes care of the best education opportunities; you live in a marginal world where practically anything is possible. Buy a car with duty-free import when you arrive in a country like Zambia, sell it on contract, and then you have money to live on and don’t need to touch your salary, which swells and flourishes in a bank account somewhere else in the world. You have a house with a pool and servants, you live as if you had shipped a whole Swedish manor house with you. I’ve calculated that in one month I earn as much as my maid in the house would make in sixty years. I’m counting what my foreign currency is worth on the black market. Here in Zambia there is probably not a single Swedish expert who goes to a bank and changes his money at the official rate. We don’t do as much good as our incomes would lead you to believe. The day the Swedish taxpayers fully realise what their money is going on, the sitting government will be toppled at the next election. The taxpaying Swedish working class has after many years accepted what is called ‘aid to underdeveloped countries’. Sweden, after all, is one of the few countries in the world where the concept of solidarity still holds power. But naturally they want their taxes used in the proper way. And that happens very rarely. The history of Swedish aid is a reef with innumerable shipwrecked projects on it, many scandalous, a few noticed and exposed by journalists, and even more buried and hushed up. Swedish aid smells like a pile of dead fish. I can say this because I feel that my own conscience is clear. After all, helping to develop communications is a way to bring Africa closer to the rest of the world.’

‘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.

The terrace roof is covered in blood. He bends down for the shotgun, turns off the light, and shuts the door. Then he sits down on the floor in the hallway and starts to reload. His hands are shaking, his heart is thudding in his chest, and he is concentrating with all his might on feeding new ammunition into his guns. What he wants most of all is to be able to sleep.

He sits in the hallway and waits for dawn. In the first morning light he moves aside the cabinet and opens the kitchen door to the outside. The headlights of the car are out, the battery dead. Luka isn’t there. Slowly he walks towards the terrace, still holding the shotgun in one hand.

The body is hanging by one foot from a rain gutter with its head in some of the cactuses that Judith Fillington once planted. A bloody leopard skin is draped around the shoulders of the dead African. With the handle of a rake Olofson pokes at the foot, loosening it so the body falls down. Even though almost the whole face has been shot off, he sees at once that it is Peter Motombwane. Flies are already buzzing in the blood. From the terrace he fetches a tablecloth and flings it over the body. By the car there is a pool of blood. A trail of blood leads away into the dense bush. There it suddenly stops.

When he turns around he sees Luka standing below the terrace. Immediately he raises the gun and walks towards him.

‘You’re still alive,’ he says. ‘But you won’t be much longer. This time I won’t miss.’

‘What has happened, Bwana?’ asks Luka.

‘You’re asking me?’

‘Yes, Bwana.’

‘When did you take off the window grating?’

‘What grating, Bwana?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No I don’t, Bwana.’

‘Put your hands on your head and walk ahead of me!’

Luka does as he says and Olofson orders him upstairs. He shows him the gaping hole where the window has been shot away.

‘You almost pulled it off,’ says Olofson. ‘But only almost. You knew that I never go in this room. You broke off the steel grating when I was away. I wouldn’t have heard when you all sneaked inside. Then you could have crept down the stairs in the dark.’

‘The grating is gone, Bwana. Someone has taken it off.’

‘Not someone, Luka. You took it off.’

Luka looks him in the eyes and shakes his head.

‘You were here last night,’ Olofson says. ‘I saw you and I took a shot at you. Peter Motombwane is dead. But who was the third man?’

‘I was sleeping, Bwana,’ Luka says. ‘I woke up to shots from an uta. Many shots. Then I lay awake. Not until I was sure that Bwana Olofson had come out did I come here.’

Olofson raises the shotgun and takes off the safety.

‘I’m going to shoot you,’ he says. ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t tell me who the third man was. I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me what happened.’

‘I was sleeping, Bwana,’ Luka replies. ‘I don’t know anything. I see that Peter Motombwane is dead and that he has a leopard skin around his shoulders. I don’t know who took off the grating.’

He’s telling the truth, Olofson thinks suddenly. I’m sure that I saw him last night. No one else would have had the opportunity to take off the grating, no one else knew that I seldom go into that room. And yet I believe he’s telling the truth.

They go back downstairs. The dogs, Olofson thinks. I forgot about the dogs. Just behind the water reservoir he finds them. Six bodies stretched out on the ground. Bits of meat are hanging out of their mouths. A powerful poison, he thinks. One bite and it was over. Peter Motombwane knew what he was doing.

He looks at Luka, who is staring at the dogs in disbelief. Of course there must be a plausible explanation, he tells himself. Peter Motombwane knows my house. Sometimes he waited for me alone. The dogs too. The dogs knew him. It could be as Luka says, that he was sleeping and woke up when I fired the gun. I could have been mistaken. I imagined that Luka would be there, so I convinced myself that I saw him.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ he says. ‘Don’t go in the house, wait outside until I come back.’

‘Yes, Bwana,’ says Luka.

They push the car to get it started, the diesel engine catches, and Olofson drives to his mud hut. The black workers stand motionless, watching him. How many belong to the leopards? he wonders. How many thought I was dead?

The telephone in the office is working. He calls the police in Kitwe.

‘Tell everybody that I’m alive,’ he says to the black clerks. ‘Tell them all that I killed the leopards. One of them might be only wounded. Tell them that I’ll pay a year’s wages to anyone who finds the wounded leopard.’

He goes back to his house. A swarm of flies hovers over Peter Motombwane lying under the tablecloth. As he waits for the police he tries to think. Motombwane came to kill me, he tells himself. In the same way that one night he went to Ruth and Werner Masterton. His only mistake was that he came too early. He underestimated my fear, he thought that I had begun to sleep at night again.

Peter Motombwane came to kill me, and that’s not something I should ever forget. That is the starting point. He would have chopped off my head, turned me into a slaughtered animal carcass. Motombwane’s single-mindedness must have been very great. He knew that I had guns, so he was prepared to sacrifice his life. At the same time I realise now that he tried to warn me, get me to leave here to avoid the inevitable. Perhaps his insight had been transformed to a sorrowful desperation, a conviction that the ultimate sacrifice was required.

The man who crept across my roof was no bandit. He was a dedicated man who gave himself what he thought was a necessary assignment. That too is important for me to remember. When I killed him, I killed perhaps one of the best people in this wounded land. Someone who possessed more than a dream for the future, someone with a readiness to act. When I killed Peter Motombwane I killed the hope of many people.

He, in turn, viewed my death as crucial. He didn’t come here because he thirsted for revenge. I believe that Motombwane ignored such feelings. He crept up on my roof because he was in despair. He knew what was going on in this country, and he saw no other way out than to join the leopards’ movement, begin a desperate resistance, and perhaps one day have the chance to experience the necessary revolt. Maybe he was the one who created the leopards’ movement. Did he act alone, with a few co-conspirators, or did he recruit a new generation before he took up his own panga?

Olofson walks over to the terrace, trying not to look at the body under the tablecloth. Behind some African roses he finds what he is looking for. Motombwane’s panga is polished to a shine, and the handle has various symbols carved into it. Olofson thinks he sees a leopard head, an eye which is deeply incised in the brown wood. He places the panga back among the roses and kicks some dead leaves over it so it can’t be seen.

A rusty police car comes along the road, its motor coughing. At the drive it comes to a complete stop; it seems to be out of petrol. What would have happened if I had called them last night, he wonders, if I had asked them to come to my rescue? Would they have informed me that they had no petrol? Or would they have asked me to come and fetch them in my car?

Suddenly he recognises the police officer coming towards him ahead of four constables. The officer who once stood in front of his house with an erroneous search warrant in his hand. Olofson recalls his name: Kaulu.

Olofson shows him the dead body, the dogs, and describes the chain of events. He also says that he knew Peter Motombwane. The officer shakes his head forlornly.

‘Journalists can never be trusted,’ he says. ‘Now it’s proven.’

‘Peter Motombwane was a good journalist,’ says Olofson.

‘He was far too interested in things that he shouldn’t have stuck his nose into,’ says the officer. ‘But now we know that he was a bandit.’

‘What about the leopard skin?’ Olofson asks. ‘I’ve heard vague rumours about some political movement.’

‘Let’s go inside,’ says the officer hastily. ‘It’s better to speak in the shade.’

Luka serves tea and they sit in silence for a long time.

‘Regrettable rumours spread much too easily,’ says the police officer. ‘There is no leopard movement. The president himself has declared that it doesn’t exist. Therefore it doesn’t exist. So it would be regrettable if new rumours should arise. Our authorities would not be pleased.’

What is he actually trying to convey? Olofson thinks. A piece of information, a warning? Or a threat?

‘Ruth and Werner Masterton,’ Olofson says. ‘It would have looked like their house here if I hadn’t shot him and maybe another man too.’

‘There is absolutely no connection,’ says the officer.

‘Of course there is,’ says Olofson.

The police officer slowly stirs his tea.

‘Once I came here with a mistakenly issued order,’ he says. ‘You offered great cooperation on that occasion. It’s a great pleasure for me to be able to return the favour now. No leopard movement exists; our president has determined this. Nor is there any reason to see connections where there are none. In addition, it would be extremely unfortunate if rumours should spread that you knew the man who tried to kill you. That would create suspicion among the authorities. People might start to think that it was some type of vendetta. Vague connections between a white farmer and the sources of rumours about the leopard movement. You could very easily land in difficulties. It would be best to write a simple, clear report about a regrettable attack which fortunately ended well.’

There it is, Olofson thinks. After a rambling explanation I’m supposed to realise that it will all be covered up. Peter Motombwane will not be allowed to live on as a desperate resistance fighter; his memory will be that of a bandit.

‘The immigration authorities might be concerned,’ the officer goes on. ‘But I shall repay your previous helpfulness by burying this case as quickly as possible.’

He’s unreachable, Olofson thinks. His directive is obvious: no political resistance exists in this country.

‘I presume that you have licences for your weapons,’ says the officer in a friendly tone.

‘No,’ Olofson says.

‘That might have been troublesome,’ says the officer. ‘The authorities take a serious view of unlicensed weapons.’

‘I never thought about it,’ replies Olofson.

‘This too it would be my pleasure to ignore,’ says the police officer, getting to his feet.

Case closed, Olofson thinks. His argument was better than mine. No one will die in an African prison. When they go outside the body is gone.

‘My men have sunk it in the river,’ the officer tells him. ‘That’s the easiest way. We took the liberty of using some scrap iron we found on your farm.’

The policemen are waiting by the car. ‘Unfortunately our petrol ran out,’ says the officer. ‘But one of my men borrowed a few litres from your fuel supply while we drank tea.’

‘Of course,’ says Olofson. ‘You’re welcome to stay a while and take some cartons of eggs when you go.’

‘Eggs are good,’ says the officer, extending his hand. ‘It’s not often that it’s so easy to conclude a crime scene investigation.’

The police car leaves and Olofson tells Luka to burn the bloody tablecloth. He watches him while he burns it. It still might have been him, Olofson thinks. How can I keep living with him near me? How can I keep living here at all?

He gets into his car and stops outside the hen house where Eisenhower Mudenda works. He shows him Peter Motombwane’s panga.

‘Now it’s mine,’ he says. ‘Anyone who attacks my house will be killed with the weapon that could not vanquish me.’

‘A very dangerous weapon, Bwana,’ says Mudenda.

‘It’s good if everybody knows about it,’ says Olofson.

‘Everyone will soon know, Bwana,’ says Mudenda.

‘Then we understand each other,’ says Olofson and goes back to his car.

He locks himself in his bedroom and pulls the curtains. Outside the window he sees Luka burying the dead dogs. I’m living in an African graveyard, he thinks. On the roof of the terrace is Peter Motombwane’s blood. Once he was my friend, my only African friend. The rain will wash away his blood, the crocodiles will tear his body to bits at the bottom of the Kafue. He sits down on the edge of the bed; his body aches with weariness. How will I be able to endure what has happened? he thinks again. How do I move out of this hell?

During the following month Olofson lives with an increasing sense of powerlessness. The rainy season is nearing its end, and he keeps a watchful eye on Luka. The rumour of the attack brings his neighbours to visit him, and he repeats his story about the night Peter Motombwane and his dogs died. The second man was never found; the blood trail ended in thin air. In his imagination the third man becomes even more of a shadow; Luka’s face disappears slowly.

He is struck by repeated bouts of malaria and hallucinates again that he is being attacked by bandits. One night he thinks he’s going to die. When he wakes up the electricity is off; the fever makes him lose all his internal bearings. He shoots his revolver straight out into the darkness.

When he wakes again the malaria has passed, and Luka waits as usual outside his door in the dawn. New German shepherds are running around his house; his neighbours have brought them as the obvious gifts of the white community.

He attends to the daily work on the farm as usual. Egg lorries are no longer being plundered; quiet has settled over the land. He wonders how he will endure. I could not have avoided killing Peter Motombwane, he thinks. He never would have allowed it. If he could he would have sliced off my head. His despair must have been so strong that he could no longer live with the idea of waiting for the time to be ripe, for the revolt slowly to emerge. He must have thought that this ripening process had to be hastened along, and he took to the only weapon he had. Maybe he was also aware that he would fail.

He compares himself to Motombwane, wandering through his entire life in a long sorrowful procession. My life is built of bad cement, he thinks. The cracks run deep, and someday it will all come crashing down. My ambitions have always been superficial and flawed. My moral gestures are sentimental or impatient. I have almost never made real demands on myself.

I studied to find a way out, a way to get by. I came to Africa because I carried another person’s dream. A farm was placed in my hands. When Judith Fillington left here the work was already done. All that was left was to repeat routines that were already in practice. Finally I was assigned the shocking role of killing one or maybe two people, people who were prepared to do what I would never have dared do. I can hardly be blamed for defending my own life. And yet I blame myself.

More and more often he gets drunk in the evenings and staggers around the empty rooms. I have to get away, he thinks. I’ll sell the farm, burn it down, take off.

He can think of only one more task he has left to do. Joyce Lufuma’s daughters. I can’t abandon them, he thinks. Even if Lars Håkansson is there, I have to stay until I’m sure that they’re safe enough to complete their education.

After a month he decides to drive to Lusaka and visit them. He doesn’t call ahead; he gets into his car and drives off towards Lusaka. He arrives there late one Sunday evening.

As he drives into the city he realises that for the first time in a very long time he feels happy. I should have had children of my own, he thinks. In this respect too, my life is unnatural. But maybe it’s not too late.

The night watchman opens the gates for him and he turns into the gravel courtyard in front of the house.

Chapter Twenty-Four

At the moment of defeat Hans Olofson wishes that he could at least play a flute carved for him of birchwood.

But he cannot. He has no flute, he has only his pulledup roots in his hands.

It is Hans Fredström, son of a pastry chef from Danderyd, who hands down the verdict on Hans Olofson. The students are sitting in a beer café in Stockholm in early September 1969. He doesn’t know who came up with the idea that they take the train to Stockholm that Wednesday evening to drink beer, but he follows along anyway; there are five of them, and they met several years before in the introductory law course.

In the spring Hans Olofson had gone home with the embittered feeling that he would never finish his studies. By then he had lived in the house of the clocks and suffered through his lectures and homework long enough to know that he didn’t fit in anywhere. The ambition he’d had, to be the defender of mitigating circumstance, had dissolved and vanished like a fleeting mirage. With a growing sense of unreality the clocks went on ticking around him, and finally he realised that the university was just an excuse for the afternoons he spent in Wickberg’s gun shop.

The salvation of the summer was the Holmström twins, who had not yet found their wives-to-be, but were still racing around through the bright summer woods in their old Saab. Hans squeezed into their back seat, shared their schnapps, and watched the forests and lakes glide by. On a distant dance floor he found a bridesmaid and fell immediately and fiercely in love. Her name was Agnes, nicknamed Agge, and she was studying to be a hairdresser at a salon called ‘The Wave’, which stood between the bookshop and Karl-Otto’s used motorcycle shop. Her father was one of the men he had worked with at the Trade Association warehouse. She lived with an older sister in a small flat above the Handelsbank, and after her sister took off with a man and his house trailer to Höga Kusten, they had the flat to themselves. The Holmström brothers showed up there in their Saab, plans were made for the evening, and it was to there that they all returned.

By then he had decided to stay, to get a job and not go back south when automn arrived. But love was illusory too, just another hiding place, and finally he went back south just to escape. In her eyes he could read his betrayal. But maybe he also went back because he couldn’t stand to watch his father fighting with his demons more and more often; now even water couldn’t vanquish them. Now he simply boozed, a single-minded genuflection before his inability to return to the sea.

That summer Erik Olofson finally became a woodcutter. He was no longer the seaman who toiled among bark and brushwood to open the horizon and take his bearings. One day Célestine fell to the floor, as if she had been shipwrecked in a mighty hurricane. Hans found her while his father was sleeping it off on the sofa. He recalls that moment as a raging helplessness, two opposing forces wrestling with each other.

He returned to Uppsala and now he’s sitting in a beer café in Stockholm, and Hans Fredström is dribbling beer on his hand. Fredström possesses something enviable: he has a calling. He wants to become a prosecutor.

‘Hooligans have to be taken by the ears and punished,’ he says. ‘Being a prosecutor means pursuing purity. The body of society is purged.’

Once Olofson had revealed to him what he planned to be: a spokesman for the weak, thereby instantly winding up in Fredström’s disfavour. He mobilises a hostility that Olofson cannot deflect. His conversation is so fiery and prejudiced that it makes Olofson sick. Their discussions always finish just on the verge of a fistfight. Olofson tries to avoid him. If he fights with him he always loses. When Fredström dribbles beer on his hand he pulls it away.

I have to stand up to him, he thinks. The two of us will be defending law and order together for our generation. The thought suddenly seems impossible to him. He ought to be able to do it, he ought to force himself to resist, otherwise Hans Fredström will have free reign to ravage through the courtrooms like a predator, crushing with an elephant foot the mitigating circumstance that may still be there. But he can’t do it. He is too alone, too poorly equipped.

Instead he stands up and leaves. Behind him he hears Fredström sniggering. He wanders restlessly through the city, heading down streets at random. His mind is empty, like deserted halls in an abandoned palace. First he thinks there isn’t anything at all, only the peeling wallpaper and the echo of his footsteps.

But in one of the rooms lies Sture in his bed, with a rough blackened tube sticking out of his throat. The iron lung folds its shiny wings around him and he hears a wheezing sound, like a locomotive letting off steam. In another room echoes a word, Mutshatsha, Mutshatsha, and perhaps he also hears the faint tones of ‘Some of These Days’. He decides to visit Sture, to see him again, dead or alive.

A few days later he is in Västervik. Late in the afternoon he gets off the bus he boarded in Norrköping, which will now continue on to Kalmar. At once he smells the sea, and like an insect driven by its sense of smell he finds his way to Slottsholmen.

An autumn wind blows in off the sea as he walks along the wharves and looks at the boats. A lone yacht runs before the wind into the harbour, and the sail flaps as a woman takes it in.

He can’t find a boarding house, and in a fit of recklessness he checks in at the City Hotel. Through the wall of his room he can hear someone talking excitedly and at length. He thinks it might be a man practising for a play. At the front desk a friendly man with a glass eye helps him find the hospital where Sture is presumed to be.

‘Fir Ridge,’ says the man with the glass eye. ‘That’s probably it. That’s where they take people who weren’t lucky enough to die instantly. Traffic accidents, motorcycles, broken backs. That must be it.’

‘Fir Ridge’ is a deeply misleading name, Olofson realises as he arrives in a taxi the next morning. The forest opens up, he sees a manor house surrounded by a well-tended garden and a glimpse of the sea shining behind one wing of the manor house. Outside the main entrance a man with no legs sits in a wheelchair. He is wrapped in a blanket, sleeping with his mouth open.

Olofson walks in through the tall door; the hospital reminds him of the courthouse where Sture once lived. He is shown to a small office. A lamp glows green and he enters to find a man who introduces himself as Herr Abramovitch. He speaks in a muted, scarcely audible voice, and Olofson imagines that his primary task in life is to preserve the silence.

‘Sture von Croona,’ whispers Herr Abramovitch. ‘He has been with us for ten years or more. But I don’t remember you. I assume you’re a relative?’

Olofson nods. ‘A half-brother.’

‘Some people who come to visit for the first time may be a little distressed,’ whispers Herr Abramovitch. ‘He is pale, naturally, and a little swollen up from constantly lying down. A certain hospital odour is also unavoidable.’

‘I would like to visit him,’ says Olofson. ‘I’ve come a long way to see him.’

‘I’ll ask him,’ says Herr Abramovitch, getting to his feet. ‘What was the name again? Hans Olofson? A half-brother?’

When he returns everything is arranged. Olofson follows him down a long corridor and they stop before a door, on which Herr Abramovitch knocks. A gurgling sound comes in reply.

Nothing is as he imagined in the room he enters. The walls are covered with books, and in the middle of the room, surrounded by pot plants, Sture lies in a blue-painted bed. But there is no tube sticking out of his throat and no giant insect folding its wings around the blue bed.

The door closes silently and they are alone.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ asks Sture, in a voice that is hoarse but still reveals that he is angry.

Hans’s assumptions crumble. He had imagined that a person with a broken spine would be taciturn and softly spoken, not angry like this.

‘Have a seat,’ says Sture, as if to help him through his embarrassment.

Hans lifts a stack of books from a chair and sits down.

‘Ten years you make me wait,’ Sture goes on. ‘Ten years! First I was disappointed, of course. A couple of years, maybe. Since then I’ve mostly been damned angry with you.’

‘I have no explanation,’ says Hans. ‘You know how it is.’

‘How the hell should I know how it is when I’m lying here?’

Then his face breaks out in a smile. ‘Well, you finally came,’ he says. ‘To this place where things are the way they are. If I want a view they set up a mirror so I can see the garden. The room has been painted twice since I came here. At first they would roll me out to the park. But then I said no. I like it better in here. I’ve been taking it easy. Nothing to prevent someone like me from surrendering to laziness.’

Hans listens dumbstruck to the will power emanating from Sture as he lies in the bed. He realises that Sture, despite his terrible disadvantage, has developed a power and sense of purpose that he doesn’t have.

‘Of course, bitterness is my constant companion,’ Sture says. ‘Every morning when I awake from my dreams, every time I shit myself and it starts to smell, every time I realise that I can’t do anything — that’s probably the worst thing, not being able to offer any resistance. It’s my spine that’s severed, that’s true. But something was also broken inside my head. It took me many years to realise that. But then I made a plan for my life based on my opportunities, not the lack of them. I decided to live until I turned thirty, about five more years. By then I’ll have my philosophy worked out, I’ll have clarified my relationship with death. My only problem is that I can’t end my own life because I can’t move. But I have another five years to figure out a solution.’

‘What happened?’ asks Hans.

‘I don’t remember. The memory is completely erased. I can remember things long before and I remember when I woke up here. That’s all.’

A stench suddenly spreads in the room and Sture presses his nose to a call button.

‘Go out for a while. I have to be cleaned up.’

When he comes back, Sture is lying there drinking beer through a straw.

‘I drink schnapps sometimes,’ he says. ‘But they don’t like that. If I start throwing up there’s trouble. And I can get foul-mouthed. My way of getting back at the nurses for everything I can’t do.’

‘Janine,’ says Hans. ‘She died.’

Sture lies quiet a long while. ‘What happened?’

‘She drowned herself in the end.’

‘You know what I dreamed of? Undressing her, making love to her. I still kick myself because I never did it. Did you ever think of that?’

Hans shakes his head. He quickly grabs a book to avoid the topic.

‘With my upbringing I never would have wound up studying radical philosophy,’ says Sture. ‘I dreamed of becoming the Leonardo of my time. I was my own constellation in a private cosmos. But now I know that reason is the only thing that gives me consolation. And reason means understanding that one dies alone, irreparably alone — everyone, even you. I try to think about it when I write. I talk on to tape, and someone else types it up.’

‘What do you write about?’

‘About a broken spine that ventures out into the world. Abramovitch doesn’t look too amused when he reads what the girls type up. He doesn’t understand what I mean, and it makes him nervous. But in five years he’ll be rid of me.’

When Sture asks Hans to tell him about his own life, he doesn’t seem to have anything to say.

‘Do you remember the horse dealer? He died last summer. He was eaten up by bone cancer.’

‘I never met him,’ says Sture. ‘Did I ever meet anyone other than you and Janine?’

‘It’s so long ago.’

‘Five more years,’ says Sture. ‘If I haven’t found the solution to my final problem, would you help me?’

‘If I can.’

‘You can’t break a promise to someone who’s broken his back. If you did I would haunt you until you dropped dead.’

Late in the afternoon they say goodbye. Herr Abramovitch cautiously opens the door a crack and says he can offer Hans a ride into town.

‘Come back once a year,’ says Sture. ‘No more. I don’t have time.’

‘I can write,’ says Hans.

‘No, no letters. I just get upset by letters. Letters are too much for me to stand. Go now.’

Hans leaves the town with a feeling of being king of the unworthy. In Sture he saw his own mirror image. He can’t escape it. Late in the evening he reaches Uppsala. The clocks tick in the impenetrable jungle of time in which he lives.

Mutshatsha, he thinks. What remains other than you?

The Swedish sky is heavy on that early morning in September 1969 when he leaves all his former horizons behind him and flies out into the world. He has spent his savings and bought the ticket that will fling him out into the upper layers of the air, his dubious pilgrimage to the Mutshatsha of Janine’s dreams.

A motionless sky, an endless wall of clouds hangs over his head, as for the first time in his life he boards an aeroplane. When he walks across the tarmac the dampness soaks into his shoes. He turns around as if someone were there after all to wave goodbye to him.

He observes his fellow passengers. None is on his way to Mutshatsha, he thinks. Right now that is the one thing I know for sure. With a slight bow Hans Olofson makes the ascent up into the air. Twenty-seven hours later, precisely according to the timetable, he lands in Lusaka. Africa receives him with intense heat. No one is there to meet him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A night watchman comes towards him with a cudgel in his hand. Olofson can see that he is very afraid. Two big German shepherds are running restlessly back and forth across the poorly lit courtyard.

Suddenly he feels a raging disgust at being always surrounded by nervous watchdogs and high walls with crushed glass cemented on top. I travel from one white bunker to the next, he thinks. Everywhere this terror.

He knocks on the door of the servants’ quarters and Peggy answers. She lets him in, and behind her is Marjorie, and they laugh with joy that he has come. And yet he notices at once that something is wrong. He sits down on a chair and listens to their voices in the tiny kitchen where they are fixing tea for him.

I forget that I’m a mzungu even to them, he thinks. Only with Peter Motombwane did I succeed in experiencing a completely natural relationship with an African. He drinks tea and asks how they’re getting along in Lusaka.

‘It’s going well,’ replies Marjorie. ‘Bwana Lars is taking care of us.’

He doesn’t tell them about the attack in the night, but asks instead whether they are homesick. When they reply that they aren’t, he again senses that something is wrong. There’s an uncertainty behind their usual happiness. Something is troubling them. He decides to wait until Håkansson comes back.

‘Tomorrow I’ll be in town all day,’ he says. ‘We can take the car and drive in to Cairo Road and go shopping.’

As he leaves he can hear them locking the door. In an African village there are no locks, he thinks. It’s the first thing we teach them. Locking a door gives a false sense of security.

The night watchman comes towards him again, his cudgel in hand.

‘Where is Bwana Lars?’ Olofson asks.

‘In Kabwe, Bwana.’

‘When is he coming back?’

‘Maybe tomorrow, Bwana.’

‘I’ll stay here tonight. Open the door for me.’

The night watchman vanishes in the darkness to fetch the keys. I’m sure he’s buried them, Olofson thinks. He strikes one of the German shepherds who sniffs at his leg. Whimpering, it retreats. In this country there are innumerable dogs trained to attack people with black skin, he thinks. How does one train a dog to exhibit racist behaviour?

The night watchman unlocks the house. Olofson takes the keys and locks the door from the inside. First the wrought-iron gate with two padlocks and a crossbar with another lock. Then the outer door with three locks and three deadbolts.

Eight locks, he thinks. Eight locks for my nightly slumber. What was it that was bothering them? A homesickness they’re afraid to admit? Or something else? He turns on the lights in Lars Håkansson’s big house, walks through the tastefully furnished rooms. Everywhere there is shiny stereo equipment, and he lets the music flow from hidden loudspeakers.

He selects a guest room with a bed made up with clean sheets. I feel more secure here than on my own farm, he thinks. At least I think I do, because no one knows where I am.

He takes a bath in a shiny bathroom, turns off the music, and climbs into bed. Just as he is about to slip off into sleep, he is suddenly wide awake. He thinks again about Marjorie and Peggy, and his feeling that something is not quite right. He tries to convince himself that Africa has made him far too sensitive in his judgement, that after all these years he thinks he sees terror in everyone’s face.

He gets up and goes through the house, opening doors, studying the titles in the bookshelves and a drawing of a link station hanging on a wall in Håkansson’s office. Everything is in perfect order. Lars Håkansson has established himself in Africa without a speck of dust, with everything in its place. He pulls out drawers and sees underwear in meticulously arranged piles. One room has been converted to a photography studio; behind another door he finds an exercise bicycle and a table tennis table.

He returns to the big living room. He hasn’t found anything that gives a picture of Håkansson’s past. Nowhere does he see pictures of children or an ex-wife. He imagines that Håkansson makes use of the fact that Africa is a long way from Sweden. The past is the past; nothing needs to remind him unless he wants it to.

He pulls out a drawer in a chiffonier. It contains stacks of photographs. Only when he aims a lamp on them does he see what they depict. Pornographic pictures of black subjects. Pictures of sexual intercourse, individual poses. Everyone in the photos is very young. Peggy and Marjorie are there. Helplessly vulnerable.

Among the pictures is a letter, written in German. Olofson manages to decipher that it’s from a man in Frankfurt thanking Håkansson for the photos he supplied; he wants more and says that three thousand D-marks will be transferred to a bank in Liechtenstein, according to their agreement.

Olofson is scared by his rage. Now I’m capable of anything, he thinks. This fucking man to whom I gave my greatest trust, who has duped or threatened or enticed my black daughters to do this. He doesn’t deserve to live. Maybe he also forces himself on them, maybe one or both are already pregnant.

He takes out the pictures of Peggy and Marjorie and stuffs them in his pocket, slams the drawer shut and decides. Through a window that’s kept open at night he speaks to the night watchman and finds out that Håkansson is staying at the Department Guest House, near the big military bases in Kabwe, on the southern approach to the city.

Olofson gets dressed and leaves the house. The night watchman is surprised to see him get into his car.

‘It’s dangerous to drive that far at night, Bwana,’ he says.

‘What’s dangerous about it?’ Olofson asks.

‘Men steal and murder, Bwana,’ says the night watchman.

‘I’m not afraid,’ Olofson says.

It’s true, too, he thinks as he turns out through the gate. What I’m experiencing now is a feeling that’s stronger than all the terror I’ve lived with for so long.

He leaves the city, forcing himself not to drive too fast; he doesn’t want to risk colliding with an African car with no headlights.

I let myself be deceived so easily, he thinks. I meet a Swede and immediately lean on his shoulder. He stood outside my house, asking to buy a hill on my property, and somehow he gained my trust. He was prepared to place a house at the disposal of Peggy and Marjorie much too readily. What did he give them? Money or threats? Or both? There really isn’t any punishment for it, he thinks. But I want to know how anyone can behave as he does.

Midway between Lusaka and Kabwe he comes to a military roadblock. He slows down and stops at the checkpoint. Soldiers in camouflage uniforms and helmets walk towards him in the floodlights, automatic weapons raised. He rolls down his window and one of the soldiers bends down and looks inside the car. Olofson notices that the soldier is very young and very drunk. He asks where Olofson is heading.

‘Home,’ Olofson answers with a smile. ‘Kalulushi.’

The soldier orders him to step out of the car. Now I’m going to die, he thinks. He’s going to shoot me dead, for no other reason than it’s the middle of the night and he’s drunk and bored.

‘Why are you driving home in the middle of the night?’ asks the soldier.

‘My mother has taken ill,’ replies Olofson.

The soldier looks at him for a long time with glazed eyes; his automatic weapon is pointed at Olofson’s chest. Then he waves him on.

‘Drive,’ he says.

Olofson gets back into his car, and drives slowly away.

African unpredictability, he thinks. I’ve learned something, at least, after all these years. If it doesn’t help to mention my mother, then nothing else will. He picks up speed and wonders if there is any greater loneliness than being white and helpless at a roadblock in the African night.

It’s almost four o’clock in the morning when he reaches Kabwe. He drives around for almost an hour before he sees a sign that reads Department Guest House.

The only thing he has decided to do is wake up Lars Håkansson and show him the pictures he has in his pocket. Maybe I’ll hit him. Maybe I’ll spit in his face.

A night watchman is asleep outside the gates to the guest house. There’s a smell of burnt rubber from one of the man’s boots that has come too close to the fire. An empty bottle of lituku lies next to him. Olofson shakes him but he doesn’t wake up. He shoves open the gate himself and drives inside. At once he sees Håkansson’s car outside one of the small guest houses. He parks next to the white car, turns off the engine and headlights.

Lars Håkansson, he says to himself. Now I’m coming after you. He knocks on the door three times before he hears Håkansson’s voice.

‘It’s Hans Olofson,’ he says. ‘I have a matter to discuss.’

He must understand, he thinks. Maybe he’s afraid and doesn’t dare open the door. But Håkansson opens the door and lets him in.

‘You,’ he says. ‘This is unexpected. In the middle of the night? How did you find me here?’

‘Your night watchman,’ replies Olofson.

‘There’s a military commander here who has the idea that his brother is a suitable engineer to build the foundations for the link stations all over the country,’ says Håkansson. ‘He smelled money and it’ll take a little time to convince him that it doesn’t really work the way he thinks.’

He puts out a bottle of whisky and two glasses.

‘I drove to Lusaka to say hello to Marjorie and Peggy,’ says Olofson. ‘I suppose I should have called first.’

‘They’re getting along fine,’ says Håkansson. ‘Lively girls.’

‘Yes,’ says Olofson. ‘They’re the future of this country.’

Håkansson takes a drink and gives him a wry smile.

‘That sounds lovely,’ he says.

Olofson looks at his silk pyjamas.

‘I mean what I’m saying,’ he replies.

He takes the pictures out of his pocket and places them on the table, one by one. When he’s finished he sees that Håkansson is staring at him with wide eyes.

‘Of course I ought to be furious that you’re digging through my drawers,’ he says. ‘But I’ll overlook that. Just tell me what you want.’

‘This,’ says Olofson, ‘this.’

‘What about it?’ Håkansson interrupts him. ‘Naked people in pictures, nothing more.’

‘Did you threaten them?’ he asks. ‘Or give them money?’

Håkansson fills his glass and Olofson sees that his hand is steady.

‘You tell me you’ve been in Africa for twenty years,’ Håkansson says. ‘Then you should know about respect for parents. The bonds of blood are flexible. You have been their father, now that role has partially shifted to me. I just ask them to take off their clothes, to do as I say. They’re embarrassed, but respect for father prevails. Why would I make threats? I’m just as concerned as you that they should finish their education. I give them money, of course, just as you do. There is always a dimension of private aid in those of us who venture out.’

‘You promised to take responsibility for them,’ says Olofson, noticing that his voice is shaking. ‘You’re turning them into pornographic models and selling their photos in Germany.’

Håkansson bangs down his glass. ‘You’ve been rooting around in my drawers,’ he says excitedly. ‘I ought to throw you right out, but I won’t. I’ll be polite and patient and listen to what you have to say. Just don’t give me any moral lectures, I can’t tolerate it.’

‘Do you fuck them too?’ asks Olofson.

‘Not yet,’ Håkansson says. ‘I think I’m afraid of AIDS. But they’re probably virgins, aren’t they?’

I’m going to kill him, Olofson thinks. I’ll kill him right here in this room.

‘Let’s conclude this conversation,’ says Håkansson. ‘I was asleep, and I have a troublesome, stupid Negro in a uniform to deal with tomorrow. Pornography interests me, but mostly developing it. The nakedness that appears in the developing bath. It can actually be quite arousing. It pays well too. One day I’ll buy a yacht and disappear to some remote paradise. Those I take pictures of won’t fare badly for it. They get money and the photos are published in countries where nobody knows them. Naturally I know that pornographic pictures are not permitted in this country. But I hold an immunity that is more secure than if I had been the Swedish ambassador. Apart from that idiot of a commander I have here in Kabwe, the military leaders in this country are my friends. I’m building link stations for them, they drink my whisky, now and then they receive some of my dollars. The same with the police, the same with the department. As long as the Swedish state gives out its millions and as long as I’m responsible for it, I’m invulnerable. If you should have the bad idea of going to the police with these pictures, you’d run a great risk of being deported with a simple twenty-four hours’ notice in which to pack up your entire eighteen years. So there’s really not much more to say. If you’re upset I can’t do anything about it. If you want to take the girls home I can’t prevent you, although it would be a shame, in view of their education. Our dealings can be concluded: I got your hill, you’ll get your money. I think it’s a shame that it has to end this way. But I can’t tolerate people who abuse my trust by digging through my drawers.’

‘You’re a pig,’ says Olofson.

‘You have to go now,’ says Håkansson.

‘Sweden sends people like you out into the world,’ Olofson says.

‘I’m a good aid expert,’ replies Håkansson. ‘I’m held in high esteem at Sida.’

‘But if they knew about this?’ says Olofson.

‘Nobody would believe you,’ says Håkansson. ‘No one would care. Results count, and everybody has a private life. Raising moral issues lies outside the realm of political reality.’

‘A person like you doesn’t deserve to live,’ says Olofson. ‘I ought to kill you here and now.’

‘But you won’t,’ says Håkansson, getting to his feet. ‘Now you have to go. Check in at the Elephant’s Head and get some sleep. Tomorrow you won’t be so upset.’

Olofson snatches the pictures back and leaves; Håkansson follows him.

‘I’m going to send some of these pictures to Sida,’ Olofson says. ‘Somebody will have to take action.’

‘The pictures can never be traced to me,’ replies Håkansson. ‘An embarrassing complaint from a Swedish egg farmer who has lived in Africa too long. The matter will be stamped, filed away and disappear.’

Furious, Olofson gets into his car, turns the key and switches on the headlights. Håkansson is standing in his silk pyjamas, gleaming white in the African night. I can’t get to him, thinks Olofson. He puts the car in reverse.

Then he quickly changes his mind, shoves it into first gear, stomps on the accelerator, and speeds straight towards Håkansson. Olofson shuts his eyes as he runs over him. There is only a soft thud and a jolt to the chassis. Without looking back he keeps going towards the gate. The night watchman is asleep, the burnt rubber boot is stinking. Olofson pushes open the gates and leaves Kabwe.

In this country they hang murderers, he thinks in despair. I’ll have to say it was an accident and I got so confused that I just drove off without reporting what happened. I was recently subjected to a terrifying attack myself, I’m tired, burned out. He drives towards Kalulushi with a feeling that he should regret what he’s done, but he can’t. He’s sure that Lars Håkansson is dead.

At dawn he drives off the main road and stops; the sun is rising over an endless moorland. He burns the photos of Peggy and Marjorie and lets the ashes drift away on the warm wind.

He has killed two people, maybe even a third. Peter Motombwane was probably the best man in this country, he thinks. Lars Håkansson was a monster. Killing a human being is something incomprehensible. If I’m going to survive I have to tell myself that I atoned for Peter Motombwane by driving my car straight at Håkansson. Something is restored, even though it changes nothing.

For two weeks he waits for the police; anxiety gnaws at him to the point of dissolution. He leaves as much as he can to his foremen and says he’s suffering from constant malaria attacks. Patel visits his farm and Olofson asks him for some sleeping pills. Then he sleeps dreamlessly and often wakes up only when Luka has been standing at the kitchen door pounding for a long time.

He thinks that he ought to visit Joyce Lufuma, speak to her, but he doesn’t know what to say. I can only wait, he thinks. Wait for the police to come in a broken-down car and get me. Maybe I’ll have to give them some petrol so they can take me away.

One morning two weeks later Luka tells him that Peggy and Marjorie have returned on the bus from Lusaka. Terror paralyses him. Now the police are coming, he thinks. Now it’s all over.

But the only ones who come are Peggy and Marjorie. They stand in the sunshine outside the dark mud hut where he sits with his papers. He goes out to them and asks why they came back from Lusaka.

‘Mzunguz came and said that Bwana Lars had died,’ says Marjorie. ‘We couldn’t live in our house any more. A man who comes from the same country as you gave us money to come back here. Now we are here.’

He drives them home. ‘Nothing is too late,’ he says. ‘I’ll arrange it some other way. You will have the nursing training as we planned.’

We share a secret even though they don’t know it, he thinks. Maybe they have a feeling that Håkansson’s death has something to do with me and the pictures. Or maybe they don’t.

‘How did Bwana Lars die?’ he asks.

‘An accident, said the man from your country,’ replies Peggy.

‘Didn’t any police officers come?’

‘No police,’ says Peggy.

A sleeping night watchman, he thinks. I didn’t see any other cars. Maybe Håkansson was the only one at the guest house. The night watchman in Lusaka is afraid of getting involved. Maybe he didn’t even say I was there the night it happened. Peggy and Marjorie have certainly not said anything, and nobody has asked them about what happened that night in Kabwe. Maybe there wasn’t even any enquiry. An inexplicable accident, a dead Swedish aid expert is flown home in a coffin. An item in the papers, Sida attends the funeral. People wonder, but say to themselves that Africa is the mysterious continent.

Suddenly he realises that no one is going to accuse him of Lars Håkansson’s death. A Swedish aid expert dies in strange circumstances. The police investigate, find pornographic photos, and the case is quickly closed. The development of a network of link stations for telecommunications will not be served by disclosing suspicions that a crime has been committed. The link stations have set me free, he thinks. He sits underneath the tree at Joyce Lufuma’s mud house. Peggy and Marjorie have gone to collect wood, the youngest daughters fetch water. Joyce is pounding maize with a heavy wooden pole.

The future for Africa depends on the plight of Africa’s women, he thinks. While the men out in the villages sit under the shade of a tree, the women are working in the fields, having children, carrying fifty-kilo sacks of maize for miles on their heads. My farm is not the real picture of Africa, with men making up the primary work force. Africa’s women carry the continent on their heads. Seeing a woman with a large burden on her head gives an impression of power and self-confidence. No one knows the back problems that result from these loads they carry.

Joyce Lufuma is perhaps thirty-five years old. She has borne four daughters and she still has enough strength to pound the maize with a thick pole. In her life there has never been room for reflection, only work, life-sustaining work. She has perhaps vaguely imagined that at least two of her daughters would be granted the chance to live another life. Whatever dreams she has she invests in them. The pole that pounds the maize thumps like a drum. Africa is a woman pounding maize, he thinks. From this starting point, all ideas of the future for this continent must be derived.

Joyce finishes pounding and begins to sieve her corn meal. Now and then she casts a glance at him, and when their eyes meet she laughs and her white teeth shine. Work and beauty go together, he says to himself. Joyce Lufuma is the most beautiful and dignified woman I have ever met. My love for her is born of respect. The sensual reaches me through her unbroken will to live. There her wealth is so much greater than mine. Her toil to keep her children alive, to be able to give them food and not to see them waste away from malnutrition, not to have to carry them to graveyards out in the bush.

Her wealth is boundless. In comparison with her I am a very poor person. It would be wrong to claim that my money would increase her well-being. It would only make her work easier. She would not have to die at the age of forty, worn out by her labours.

The four daughters return in a row, carrying water buckets and wood. This I must remember, he thinks, and abruptly realises that he has decided to leave Africa. After nineteen years the decision has formulated itself. He sees the daughters coming along a path, their black bodies erect to help their heads balance their burdens; he sees them and thinks about the time he lay behind a dilapidated brickworks outside the town in Sweden.

I came here, he thinks. When I lay behind a rusty brick furnace I wondered what the world looked like. Now I know. Joyce Lufuma and her four daughters. It took me over thirty years to reach this insight.

He shares their meal, eating nshima and vegetables. The charcoal fire flares, Peggy and Marjorie tell about Lusaka. They have already forgotten Lars Håkansson and his camera, he thinks. What is past is past. For a long time he sits by their fire, listening, saying little. Now that he has decided to sell his farm, leave, he is no longer in a hurry. He isn’t even upset that Africa has conquered him, devoured him to a point where he can no longer go on. The starry sky above his head is perfectly clear. Finally he is sitting alone with Joyce; her daughters are asleep inside the mud house.

‘Soon it will be morning again,’ he says, and he speaks in her own language, Bemba, which he has learned passably well during all the years he has been in Africa.

‘If God wills, one more day,’ she replies.

He thinks of all the words that don’t exist in her language. Words for happiness, the future, hope. Words that wouldn’t be possible because they do not represent the experiences of these people.

‘Who am I?’ he asks her.

‘A bwana mzungu,’ she replies.

‘Nothing more?’ he asks.

She looks at him and doesn’t understand. ‘Is there anything more?’ she asks.

Maybe not, he thinks. Maybe that’s all I am, a bwana mzungu. A strange bwana who doesn’t have any children, not even a wife. He decides to tell her the absolute truth.

‘I will be going away from here, Joyce. Other people will take over the farm. But I will take care of you and your daughters. Maybe it’s better if you return with your children to the regions around Luapula where you came from. There you have family, your origins. I will give you money so you can build a house and buy enough limas of farmland so that you can live a good life. Before I leave I have to arrange for Peggy and Marjorie to finish their nursing studies. Maybe it would be better if they went to the school in Chipata. It isn’t too far from Luapula, and not as big as Lusaka. But I want you to know that I’m leaving, and I want to ask you not to tell anyone yet. The people on the farm might be worried, and I don’t want that.’

She listens to him attentively, and he speaks slowly to show her that he is serious.

‘I’m going back to my homeland,’ he goes on. ‘In the same way as you might return to Luapula.’

All at once she smiles at him, as if she has understood the real meaning of his words.

‘Your family is waiting for you there,’ she says. ‘Your wife and your children.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘They are waiting there, and they have waited a long time.’

She asks eagerly about his family, and he creates one for her, three sons and two daughters, a wife. She could never understand anyway, he thinks. The white man’s life would be incomprehensible to her.

Late in the night he gets up and walks to his car. In the beam of the headlights he sees her close the door to the mud house. Africans are hospitable, he thinks. And yet I have never been inside her house.

The German shepherds come to meet him outside his house. He will never have dogs again, he thinks. I don’t want to live surrounded by noisy sirens and animals trained to go for the throat. It’s not natural for a Swede to keep a revolver under his pillow, to check every night that it’s loaded, that the magazine rotates its cartridges. He walks through the silent house and wonders what there is for him to go back to. Eighteen years might be too long. He has little idea what has happened in Sweden in all these years. He sits down in the room he calls his work room, turns on a lamp and checks that the curtains are drawn.

When I sell the farm I will have stacks of kwacha banknotes that I can’t take with me or even exchange. Patel can surely help me with some, but he will see the opportunity and demand an exchange fee of at least fifty per cent. I have money in a bank in London, even though I don’t really know how much. When I leave I will do so empty-handed.

Again he doubts that his departure is necessary. I could accept the revolver under the pillow, he thinks. The terror that is always present, the uncertainty that I have lived with this long. If I stay here another fifteen years I can retire, maybe move to Livingstone or Sweden. Others besides Patel can help me get the money out to secure my remaining years.

I have nothing to go back to in Sweden. My father is long dead, and hardly anyone in my home town will remember who I am. How will I survive in a winter landscape now that I’ve grown used to Africa’s heat — exchange my sandals for ski boots?

For a moment he toys with the thought of returning to his studies, using his middle years to complete his law degree. For twenty years he has worked at shaping his life, yet he has remained in Africa because of chance events. Going back to Sweden would not be a return. I would have to start all over again. But with what?

He wanders restlessly about his room. A hippo bellows from the Kafue. How many cobras have I seen during my years in Africa? he asks himself. Three or four a year, countless crocodiles, hippos and pythons. In all these years only a single green mamba, which had sneaked into the hen house. I ran over an ape with my car outside Mufulira once, a big male baboon. In Luangwa I saw lions and thousands of elephants, pocos and kudus have leaped high through the grass and sometimes crossed my path. But I have never seen a leopard, only sensed its shadow on that night Judith Fillington asked me to help her with her farm.

When I leave here Africa will fade away like an extraordinary dream, stretched out to encompass a decisive part of my life. What am I actually going to take with me? A hen and an egg? That tree branch with inscriptions that I found down by the river one time, a witch doctor’s forgotten staff? Or will I take Peter Motombwane’s holy panga with me, and show people the weapon that sliced up two of my friends and that one night was going to be raised over my own throat? Should I fill my pockets with the red dirt?

I carry Africa inside me, drums pounding distantly in the night. A starry sky whose clarity I have never before experienced. The variations of nature on the seventeenth parallel. The scent of charcoal, the ever-present smell of ingrained sweat from my workers. Joyce Lufuma’s daughters walking in a row with bundles on their heads.

I can’t leave Africa before I make peace with myself, he thinks. With the fact that I stayed here for almost twenty years. Life is the way it is, and mine became what it became. I probably would have been no happier if I had finished my studies and spent my time in the world of Swedish justice. How many people dream of venturing out? I did it, and one might also say that I succeeded with something. I’ll keep brooding over meaningless details if I don’t accept my eighteen years in Africa as something I’m grateful for, in spite of everything.

Deep inside I also know that I have to leave. The two men I killed, Africa which is devouring me, make it impossible to stay. Maybe I’ll simply flee, maybe that’s the most natural leave-taking. I have to start planning my departure right away, tomorrow. Give myself the time required, but no more.

After he goes to bed he reflects that he has absolutely no regrets at having run over Lars Håkansson. His death hardly affects him. But Peter Motombwane’s blasted head aches inside him. In his dreams he is watched by a leopard’s vigilant eye.

Olofson’s final days in Africa stretch out to half a year. He offers his farm to the white colony, but to his astonishment no one bids on it. When he asks why, he realises that the location is too isolated. It’s a profitable farm, but nobody dares take it over. After four months he has only two offers, and he realises that the price he will get for it is very poor.

The two bidders are Patel and Mr Pihri and his son. When word gets out that he is leaving his farm, they both come to visit; only chance keeps them from appearing on his terrace at precisely the same moment. Mr Pihri and his son regret his departure. Naturally, Olofson thinks. Their best source of income is disappearing. No used cars, no sewing machines, no back seat stacked full of eggs.

When Mr Pihri enquires about the asking price for the farm, Olofson thinks it’s merely the man’s eternal curiosity. Only later does he understand to his surprise that Mr Pihri is a bidder. Did I give him that much money over the years? So many bribes that now he can afford to buy my farm? If that’s the case, it’s a perfect summation of this country, perhaps of Africa itself.

‘I have a question,’ Olofson says to him. ‘And I mean this in a friendly way.’

‘Our conversations are always friendly,’ says Mr Pihri.

‘All those documents,’ Olofson says. ‘All those documents that had to be stamped so I wouldn’t have problems. Were they necessary?’

Mr Pihri thinks for a long time before he replies. ‘I don’t quite understand.’

Well, that would be the first time, Olofson thinks.

‘In all friendliness,’ he continues. ‘I wonder only whether you and your son have done me such great favours as I have believed.’

Mr Pihri looks distressed; his son lowers his eyes.

‘We have avoided trouble,’ replies Mr Pihri. ‘In Africa our aim is always mutual benefit.’

I’ll never know how much he has fooled me, Olofson thinks. How much of my money he in turn has paid to other corrupt civil servants. I’ll have to live with that riddle.

The same day Patel drives up to the farm in his rusty car.

‘Naturally a farm like this would not be hard to sell,’ he says with a smile.

His humility conceals a predator, thinks Olofson. Right now he’s calculating percentages, preparing his solemn speech about how dangerous it is to make illegal deposits of currency outside the control of the Zambian National Bank. People like Mr Pihri and Patel are among this continent’s most deplorable individuals. Without them nothing functions. The price of corruption is the usual: the impotence of the poor. Olofson mentions his difficulties and the price he had in mind.

‘Of course it’s a scandalously low price,’ he says.

‘These are uncertain times,’ replies Patel.

Two days later a letter arrives in which Patel informs him that he will be bidding on the farm, but that the price seems a bit high to him, in view of the difficult times. Now I have two bidders, Olofson thinks. Both are ready to talk me down, using my own money.

He writes a letter to the bank in London notifying them that he’s selling his farm. The contract that was prepared with the lawyer in Kitwe stipulates that the entire sale price now falls to him. The law firm in Kitwe no longer exists; his lawyer has moved to Harare in Zimbabwe. A reply comes from the bank in London a couple of weeks later, advising him that Judith Fillington died in 1983. Since the bank no longer had any business associated with the old or new owners, it had not deemed it necessary to inform him of her death.

For a long time he sits with the letter in his hand, remembering their helpless act of love. Every life is always a completed whole, he thinks. Afterwards no retouching is permitted, no additions. No matter how hollow it may have been, at the end it is still a completed whole.

One day in late November, a few months before he leaves Africa, Olofson drives Joyce Lufuma and her daughters to Luapula. They load her few possessions into one of the egg lorries. Mattresses, cooking implements, bundles of clothes. Outside Luapula he follows Joyce’s instructions, turning down a barely passable bush track, and finally stops by a cluster of mud houses.

Instantly the car is surrounded by dirty, skinny children. Swarms of flies engulf Olofson as he climbs out. After the children come the adults, enclosing Joyce and her children in their community. The African family, Olofson thinks. In some way they are all related to each other, prepared to share even though they possess virtually nothing. With the money I gave Joyce she will be the most well-to-do person in this community. But she will share it all; in the remote villages a sense of solidarity lives on that is otherwise not visible on this continent.

On the outskirts of the village Joyce shows him where she will build her house, keep her goats, and plant her plots of maize and cassava. Until the house is built she will live with her daughters in the house of one of her sisters. Peggy and Marjorie will finish their studies in Chipata. A missionary family that Olofson contacted has promised to take care of them, letting them stay in their house. More I cannot do, he thought. The missionaries will hardly let them be photographed naked and send their pictures to Germany. Maybe they will try to convert the girls, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

He has transferred 10,000 kwacha into a bank account for Joyce, and taught her how to write her name. He has also transferred 10,000 kwacha to the missionaries of Mutshatsha. He knows that 20,000 kwacha is what one of his workers earns in an entire lifetime. Everything is unreasonable, he tells himself. Africa is a continent where everything is out of proportion to what I once was accustomed to. It’s quite easy to make a rich woman of Joyce Lufuma. I’m sure she doesn’t realise how much money I have given her. Maybe it’s best that way. With tears in his eyes he says goodbye. Now is when I’m really leaving Africa, he thinks. Whatever binds me to this continent ceases with Joyce and her daughters.

When he gets into the car, the daughters are dancing around him. Joyce beats a drum and the sound follows him away. The outcome of the future depends on these women, he thinks again. I can only pass on a part of the money I still have in abundance. The future is their own.

He assembles his foremen and promises to do what he can so that the new owner will keep them all on. He buys two oxen and prepares for a party. A lorry comes to the farm with 4,000 bottles of beer. The party goes on all night; the fires flare up and drunken Africans dance to a seemingly endless number of drums. Olofson sits with the old men and watches the dark bodies moving around the fires. Tonight nobody hates me, he thinks. Tomorrow the usual reality will resume. This is a night when no knife blades glisten. The whetstones are at rest.

Tomorrow reality is once again as it must be, filled to bursting point with contradictions that one day will explode in a necessary revolt. In the shadows he thinks he sees Peter Motombwane. Which one of these people will carry on his dream? Someone will do it, I’m certain of that.

One Saturday in December he sells off the furniture in the house at an improvised auction. The white colony has come, along with a few blacks. Mr Pihri and his son are an exception, Patel another. None of them places any bids. The books that he once took over from Judith Fillington are purchased by a mining engineer from Luansha. His shotgun goes to one of his neighbours. He decides to keep his revolver. The furniture he once used for barricades is carried off to vehicles which then drive to various farms. He keeps two wicker chairs that sit on the terrace. On this Saturday he receives innumerable invitations to farewell dinners. He accepts them all.

When the auction is over only his empty house remains, and the question of who will take over the farm. Mr Pihri and Patel make identical offers, as if they had entered into a secret pact. But Olofson knows that they are bitter enemies, and he decides once and for all to play them off against each other. He sets a date, 15 December at midday. Whoever gives him the highest bid by that deadline will take over the farm.

With a lawyer he has brought in from Lusaka he waits on the terrace. A few minutes before twelve both Patel and Mr Pihri arrive. Olofson asks them to write down their bids on slips of paper. Mr Pihri excuses himself for not having a pen and has to borrow one from the lawyer. Patel’s bid is higher than Mr Pihri’s. When Olofson reads the result, he sees the hatred for Patel flash in Mr Pihri’s eyes. Patel won’t have an easy time of it with him, Olofson thinks. With him or with his son.

‘There is one unwritten condition,’ Olofson tells Patel when they are alone. ‘One condition that I do not hesitate to impose, since you have bought this farm for a shamelessly low price.’

‘The times are hard,’ says Patel.

‘The times are always hard,’ Olofson interrupts him. ‘If you don’t take good care of the employees I will haunt you in your dreams. It’s the workers who know how to run this farm, and it’s they who have fed me all these years.’

‘Of course, everything will remain as it has always been,’ Patel replies humbly.

‘That’s the best way,’ says Olofson. ‘Otherwise I’ll come back and impale your head on a pole.’

Patel blanches and crouches on the stool where he’s sitting at Olofson’s feet. Papers are signed, the title is transferred. Olofson signs his name quickly to get it over with.

‘Mr Pihri kept my pen,’ says the lawyer gloomily as he gets up to go.

‘You’ll never see it again,’ says Olofson.

‘I know,’ says the lawyer. ‘But it was a nice pen.’

Now he is alone with Patel. The transfer is dated 1 February 1988. Patel promises to transfer as much money as he can to the bank in London. The difficulties and risks he estimates as equivalent to forty-five per cent.

‘Don’t you show yourself here before the morning I leave,’ says Olofson. ‘When you drive me to Lusaka you can have your keys.’

Patel quickly gets to his feet and bows.

‘Go now,’ says Olofson. ‘I’ll let you know when you can come to pick me up.’

Olofson uses the time that remains to say goodbye to his neighbours. He visits farm after farm, gets drunk, returns to his empty house.

The waiting period makes him restless. He books his ticket, sells his car cheap to Behan the Irishman, on the condition that he can use it until he leaves.

When his neighbours ask what he’s going to do, he tells them the truth, that he doesn’t know. To his astonishment he discovers that many of them envy his leaving. Their terror, he thinks. Their utterly understandable terror. They know that their time is up, just like mine. And yet they aren’t able to leave.

A few days before his departure he has a visit from Eisenhower Mudenda, who gives him a stone with blue veins running through it and a brown leather pouch containing a powder.

‘Yes,’ says Olofson. ‘Over me there will be a different starry sky. I’m travelling to a strange world where the sun sometimes shines, even at night.’

Mudenda thinks a long time about what Olofson has said.

‘Carry the stone and the pouch in your pocket, Bwana,’ he says at last.

‘Why?’ Olofson asks.

‘Because I give them to you, Bwana,’ says Mudenda. ‘They will give you a long life. But it also means that our spirits will know when you no longer exist. Then we can dance for you when you return to your forefathers.’

‘I shall carry them,’ says Olofson.

Mudenda prepares to go.

‘My dog,’ says Olofson. ‘One morning someone chopped off its head and lashed it to a tree with barbed wire.’

‘The one who did that is dead, Bwana,’ says Mudenda.

‘Peter Motombwane?’ Olofson asks.

Eisenhower Mudenda looks at him for a long time before he replies.

‘Peter Motombwane is alive, Bwana,’ he says.

‘I understand,’ says Olofson.

Mudenda walks away and Olofson looks at his ragged clothes. At least I’m not leaving Africa with his curses, he thinks. At least I wasn’t one of the worst. And besides, I’m doing what they want, leaving, acknowledging that I’m defeated.

Olofson is alone in his empty house, alone with Luka. The end has come. He gives Luka 1,000 kwacha.

‘Don’t wait until I’m gone,’ Olofson says. ‘Leave now. But where will you go?’

‘My roots are in Malawi, Bwana,’ replies Luka. ‘Beyond the mountains by the long lake. It is a long way to go. But I am strong enough to make the long journey. My feet are ready.’

‘Go in the morning. Don’t wait by my door at dawn.’

‘Yes, Bwana. I will go.’

The next day he is gone. I never knew what was in his thoughts, Olofson thinks. I’ll never find out whether he was the one I saw the night I killed Peter Motombwane.

On the last night he sits for a long time on the terrace. Insects buzz their farewell around his face. The German shepherds are gone; his neighbours have adopted them. He listens into the darkness, feels the warm wind caress his face. Again it’s the rainy season, again the torrents pound on his roof. But on his last evening the sky is clear.

Now, Hans Olofson, he thinks. Now you are leaving here. You will never return. A stone with blue veins, a brown leather pouch, and some crocodile teeth are all you take with you from this place.

He tries to think of what he might do. The only thing that occurs to him is to search for his mother. If I find her I can tell her about Africa, he thinks. About this wounded and lacerated continent. About the superstition and the boundless wisdom. About the poverty and the plague that was created by us, the white men and women. But I can also tell her about the future that is here, which I have seen for myself. Joyce Lufuma and her daughters, the dignified resistance which survives in this most trampled of worlds. There’s one thing I understand after all these years: Africa has been sacrificed on a Western altar, robbed of its future for one or two generations. But no more, no longer, I have also understood that.

An owl hoots in the dark. Powerful wings flap past. Invisible cicadas play near his feet. When he at last gets up and goes inside, he leaves the door open behind him.

He awakes at daybreak. It is 2 February 1988, and he is about to leave Africa, a departure that has been postponed for nearly nineteen years.

Through his bedroom window he sees the red sun rise above the horizon. Mists are floating slowly over the Kafue. From one river he is returning to another. From the Kafue and Zambezi he returns to Ljusnan. The sighing hippo he will take with him, and he knows that in his dreams the crocodiles will live in the Norrland river. Two river arteries diverge in my life, he thinks. A Norrland Africa I carry in my heart.

One last time he walks through the silent house. My departure is always empty-handed, he thinks. Maybe that’s an advantage after all, something that makes it easier for me.

He opens the door. The ground is wet. Barefoot he walks down to the river. He thinks he can see the elephant’s thigh bone on the bottom. He flings his revolver into the water.

He walks back to the house and picks up his bag. In his jacket he has his passport and cash in a plastic case. Patel is sitting on the terrace, waiting. He gets to his feet hastily and bows when Olofson comes out.

‘Give me five minutes,’ he says. ‘Wait in the car.’

Patel hurries down the steps with his trouser legs flapping. Olofson tries to compress almost nineteen years into one last moment. Maybe I’ll be able to understand it later, he thinks. What did all these years in Africa mean? Those years that passed so indescribably fast and which flung me unprepared into my middle age. It’s as if I have lived in a weightless vacuum. Only my passport confirms that I still exist.

A bird with wings like a purple cloak flies past. I will remember that, he thinks. He gets into the car where Patel is waiting.

‘Drive carefully,’ he says.

Patel gives him a worried look. ‘I always drive carefully, Mr Olofson.’

‘You live a life that makes your hands sweaty all the time,’ Olofson says. ‘Greed is your inheritance, nothing more. Not your worried, well-meaning, lying face. Drive now, don’t say a word!’

That afternoon he steps out of the car at the Ridgeway Hotel. He tosses the keys to his house on to the seat and leaves Patel. He sees that the African holding the door open is wearing shoes in just as bad condition as the workers he’d seen when he arrived almost nineteen years ago.

As he requested, he is given room 212, but he doesn’t recognise it. The room has changed, the angles are different. He undresses and spends his waiting time in bed. After many attempts he manages to get his booking confirmed by telephone. A seat is reserved for him under the stars.

Relief and anxiety, he thinks, that’s what I experience. Those emotions are my mental shield. They should be included in my epitaph. From the smell of elkhounds and African charcoal fires I take the basic elements of my peculiar life. And yet there is also something else. People like Patel or Lars Håkansson learn to understand the world so they can exploit it. Peter Motombwane understood it in order to change it. He possessed the knowledge but he chose the wrong weapon at the wrong time. Still, we resemble each other. Between Patel and me there is a chasm. And Lars Håkansson is dead. Peter Motombwane and I are the survivors, even though my heart is the only one still beating. That knowledge no one can take away from me.

In the twilight of the hotel room he thinks of Janine and her dream of Mutshatsha. Her lonely vigil on the street corner between the People’s Hall and the hardware shop.

Peter Motombwane, he thinks. Peter, Janine and me.

A rusty taxi takes him to the airport. Olofson gives the last of his kwacha notes to the driver, who is very young.

At the check-in, almost no one but white people are queueing. This is where Africa ends, he thinks. Europe is already closer than the plains with the tall elephant grass. In the murmur at the counter he listens for the sighing hippo. Behind the pillars he thinks he sees the leopard’s eye watching him. Then he walks through the various checkpoints.

Distant drums suddenly begin to rumble inside him. Marjorie and Peggy dance and their black faces glisten. No one met me, he thinks. On the other hand, I met myself. No one is accompanying me to my departure except the man I was back then, the man I now leave behind. He sees his own image in one of the airport’s huge windows. Now I’m going home, he thinks. There’s nothing remarkable about it, yet it’s remarkable enough.

The big aeroplane shines with rainwater and floodlights. Far out on the runway, lit by a yellow lamp, stands a lone African. Utterly motionless, enfolded by a thought. For a long time Olofson looks at him before he boards the aeroplane that will take him away from Africa.

Nothing more, he thinks. Now it’s over.

Mutshatsha, farewell...