The Eye Of The Leopard (10 page)

Joseph calls out into the darkness, and the three women and
two men return and squat down. They are young.

'My sisters and my brothers,
Bwana
. Magdalena, Sara, and
Salomo. Abraham and Kennedy.'

'Salomo is a man's name.'

'My sister's name is Salomo,
Bwana
. So it's a woman's name too.'

'I don't want to bother you. Tell them that. Tell them I don't
want to bother you.'

Joseph translates and the woman named Sara says something,
casting glances at Olofson.

'What does she want?' he asks.

'She wonders why a
wakakwitau
is visiting an African hut,
Bwana
. She wonders why you drink, since all the whites here say
it is forbidden.'

'Not for me. Explain to her that I'm not a missionary.'

Joseph translates and an intense discussion breaks out. Olofson
watches the women, their dark bodies in relief under their
chitengen
. Maybe Janine will come back to me in a black guise, he
thinks ...

He gets drunk on the drink that tastes like burnt bread and
listens to a discussion he doesn't understand.

'Why are you so excited?' he asks Joseph.

'Why don't all the
mzunguz
drink,
Bwana
? Especially the ones
who preach about their God? Why don't they understand that the
revelation would be much stronger with African whisky? We Africans
have understood this since the days of our first forefathers.'

'Tell them I agree. Ask them what they really think about the
missionaries.'

When Joseph has translated, there is an embarrassed silence.

'They don't know what to say,
Bwana
. They aren't used to a
mzungu
asking such a question. They're afraid of giving the wrong
answer.'

'What would happen?'

'Living at a mission station means food and clothing,
Bwana
.
They don't want to lose that by giving the wrong answer.'

What would happen then?'

'The missionaries might be displeased,
Bwana
. Maybe we would
all be chased off.'

'Does that happen? That anyone who doesn't obey is chased off?'

'Missionaries are like other whites,
Bwana
. They demand the
same submission.'

'Can't you be more clear? What would happen?'

'
Mzunguz
always think that we blacks are unclear,
Bwana
.'

'You speak in riddles, Joseph.'

'Life is mysterious,
Bwana
.'

'I don't believe a word of what you're saying, Joseph. You won't
be chased away by the missionaries!'

'Of course you don't believe me,
Bwana
. I'm just telling you
the truth.'

'You're not saying anything.'

Olofson takes a drink.

'The women,' he says. 'They're your sisters?'

'That's right,
Bwana
.'

'Are they married?'

'They would like to marry you,
Bwana
.'

'Why is that?'

'A white man is not black, unfortunately,
Bwana
. But a
bwana
has money.'

'But they've never seen me before.'

'They saw you when you arrived,
Bwana
.'

'They don't know me.'

'If they were married to you they would get to know you,
Bwana
.'

'Why don't they marry the missionaries?'

'Missionaries don't marry blacks,
Bwana
. Missionaries don't
like black people.'

'What the hell are you saying?'

'I'm just saying the truth,
Bwana
.'

'Stop calling me
Bwana
.'

'Yes,
Bwana
.'

'Of course the missionaries like you! It's for your sake they're
here, isn't it?'

'We blacks believe that the missionaries are here as a penance,
Bwana
. For the man that they nailed to a cross.'

'Why do you stay here then?'

'It's a good life,
Bwana
. We will gladly believe in a foreign god
if we get food and clothing.'

'Is that the only reason?'

'Of course,
Bwana
. We have our own real gods, after all. They
probably don't like it that we fold our hands several times each
day. When we speak to them we beat our drums and dance.'

'Surely you can't do that here.'

'Sometimes we go far out in the bush,
Bwana
. Our gods wait
there for us.'

'Don't the missionaries know about this?'

'Of course not,
Bwana
. If they did they would be very upset.
That wouldn't be good. Especially not now, when I might get a
bicycle.'

Olofson stands up on his unsteady legs. I'm drunk, he thinks.
Tomorrow the missionaries will return. I have to sleep.

'Follow me back, Joseph.'

'Yes,
Bwana
.'

'And stop calling me
Bwana
!'

'Yes,
Bwana
. I'll stop calling you
Bwana
after you leave.'

Olofson gives Joseph some money. 'Your sisters are beautiful.'

'They would like to marry you,
Bwana
.'

Olofson crawls into his hard bed. Before he falls asleep he
hears Joseph already snoring outside the door.

He wakes up with a start. The pale man is standing over him.

'Father LeMarque has returned,' he says in a toneless voice.
'He would like to meet you.'

Olofson dresses hastily. He feels bad, his head is pounding
from the African whisky. In the early dawn he follows the pale
man across the red dirt. So the missionaries travel by night, he
thinks. What is he going to tell me about why he came here?

He enters one of the grey buildings. At a simple wooden table
sits a young man with a bushy beard. He is dressed in a torn
undershirt and dirty shorts.

'Our guest,' he says with a smile. 'Welcome.'

Patrice LeMarque comes from Canada, he tells Hans Olofson.
The lame man has brought two cups of coffee and they sit at the
back of the building in the shade of a tree. At the Mutshatsha
mission station there are missionaries and health care personnel
from many countries.

'But none from Sweden?' Olofson asks.

'Not at the moment,' replies LeMarque. 'The last one was here
about ten years ago. A Swedish nurse who came from a city I
think was called Kalmar.'

'The first one came from Röstånga. Harry Johanson.'

'Have you really come all this way to see his grave?'

'I stumbled upon his story when I was quite young. I won't
be finished with him until I have seen his grave.'

'Harry Johanson sat in the shade of this very tree,' LeMarque
says. 'When he wanted to be alone and meditate, he used to
come here, and no one was allowed to bother him. I've also seen
a photograph of him sitting in this spot. He was short but he
was physically very strong. He also had a keen sense of humour.
Some of the older Africans still remember him. When he was
angry he could lift a baby elephant over his head. That's not
true, of course, but as an illustration of his strength the image
is good.'

He sets down his coffee cup. 'I'll show you his grave. Then I
must go back to my work. Our pumping station has broken down.'

They walk along a winding path that leads up a hill. Through
the dense thickets they glimpse the reflection of the river.

'Don't go there without Joseph,' says LeMarque. 'There are
many crocodiles in the river.'

The terrain levels out and forms a mesa on top of the high
hill. Olofson finds himself facing a simple wooden cross.

'Harry Johanson's grave,' says LeMarque. 'Every four years we
have to put up a new cross because the termites eat them. But he
wanted to have a wooden cross on his grave. We comply with his
wish.'

'What did he dream about?' asks Olofson.

'I don't think he had much time for dreaming. A mission station
in Africa requires constant practical work. One has to be a
mechanic, carpenter, farmer, businessman. Harry Johanson was
good at all those things.'

'What about religion?'

'Our message is planted in the maize fields. The gospel is an
impossibility if it is not involved in daily life. Conversion is a
matter of bread and health.'

'But in spite of everything, conversion is the crucial thing?
Conversion from what?'

'Superstition, poverty, and sorcery.'

'Superstition I can understand. But how can one convert
someone from poverty?'

'The message instils confidence. Wisdom requires the courage
to face life.'

Hans Olofson thinks of Janine. 'Was Harry Johanson happy?'
he asks.

'Who knows the innermost thoughts of another human being?'
says LeMarque.

They head back the way they came.

'I never met Harry Johanson, after all,' says LeMarque. 'But
he must have been a colourful and wilful person. The older he
got, the less he felt he understood. He accepted that Africa
remained a foreign world.'

'Can a person live long in a foreign world without trying to
recreate it so that it resembles the world he left behind?'

'We had a young priest from Holland here once. Courageous
and strong, self-sacrificing. But one day, with no warning, he got
up from the dinner table and walked straight out into the bush.
Purposefully, as if he knew where he was going.'

'What happened?'

'He was never seen again. His goal must have been to be swallowed
up, never to return. Something in him snapped.'

Olofson thinks of Joseph and his sisters and brothers. 'What
do the blacks really think?' he asks.

'They get to know us through the God we give them.'

'Don't they have their own gods? What do you do with them?'

'Let them disappear on their own.'

Wrong, Olofson thinks. But maybe a missionary has to ignore
certain things in order to endure.

'I'll find someone who can show you around,' says LeMarque.
'Unfortunately almost everyone who works here is out in the
bush right now. They're visiting the remote villages. I'll ask
Amanda to show you around.'

Not until evening is Olofson shown the infirmary. The pale
man, whose name is Dieter, informs him that Amanda Reinhardt,
who LeMarque thought would show him around, is busy and
asks his forgiveness.

When he returns from Johanson's grave Joseph is sitting by
his door. He notices at once that Joseph is frightened.

'I won't say anything,' he says.

'
Bwana
is a good
bwana
,' says Joseph.

'Stop calling me
Bwana
!'
'Yes,
Bwana
.'

They walk down to the river and search for crocodiles without
seeing any. Joseph shows him Mutshatsha's extensive maize cultivation.
Everywhere he sees women with hoes in their hands, bent
over the earth.

'Where are all the men?' he asks.

'The men are making important decisions,
Bwana
. Maybe they
are also busy preparing the African whisky.'

'Important decisions?'

'Important decisions,
Bwana
.'

After eating the food served to him by the lame man, he sits
down in the shade of Harry Johanson's tree. He doesn't understand
the emptiness that pervades the mission station. He tries
to imagine that through him Janine really has accomplished her
long journey. The inactivity makes him restless. I have to return
home, he thinks. Return to what I'm supposed to do, whatever
that might be ...

In the twilight, Amanda Reinhardt suddenly appears in his
doorway. He had been lying on top of his bed and dozed off. She
has a kerosene lamp in her hand, and he sees that she is short and
chubby. From her broken English he gathers that she is German.

'I am sorry you are left alone,' she says. 'But we are so few here
just now. There is so much to do.'

'I've been lying here thinking of Harry Johanson's tree,' Olofson
says.

'Who?' she asks.

At that moment an excited African appears from the shadows.
He exchanges a few sentences with the German woman in the
language Olofson doesn't understand.

'A child is about to die,' she says. 'I must go.'

In the doorway she stops short and turns around. 'Come with
me,' she says. 'Come with me to Africa.'

He gets up from the bed and they hurry towards the infirmary,
which lies at the foot of Johanson's hill. Olofson shrinks back
as he steps into a room full of iron beds. A few kerosene lamps
cast a dim light over the room. Olofson sees that there are sick
people lying everywhere. On the beds, between the beds, under
the beds. In several beds lie mothers intertwined with their sick
children. Cooking vessels and bundles of clothing make the room
almost impassable, and the intense smell of sweat and urine and
excrement is stupefying. In a bed made of bent iron pipes tied
together with steel wire lies a child of three or four years old.
Around the bed women are squatting.

Olofson sees that even a black face can radiate pallor.

Amanda Reinhardt bends over the child, touches his forehead,
talking all the while with the women.

The anteroom of death, he thinks. The kerosene lamps are
the flames of life ...

Suddenly a shriek breaks out from all the women squatting
around the bed. One of the women, hardly more than eighteen
years old, throws herself over the child in the bed, and her wail
is so penetrating and shrill that Olofson feels the need to flee.
The lamentation, the roars of pain that fill the room, strike him
with a paralysing effect. With a giant leap he wants to leave Africa
behind.

'So does death look,' says Amanda Reinhardt in his ear. 'The
child has died.'

'From what?' asks Olofson.

'Measles,' she replies.

The women's shrieking rises and falls. Never before has he
experienced the voice of grief as in this dirty room with its
unearthly light. Someone is pounding on his eardrums with
sledgehammers.

'They will scream all night,' says Amanda Reinhardt. 'In this
heat the burial must take place tomorrow. Then the women will
lament for some more days. Maybe they faint from exhaustion,
but they continue.'