The Eye Of The Leopard (8 page)

The alcohol makes Olofson feel able to speak.

'Is everyone this hospitable?' he asks. 'I might be a hunted criminal.
Anyone at all, with the darkest of pasts.'

'You're white,' says Werner. 'In this country that's enough of a
guarantee.'

Elvin Richardson leaves when the meal is over, and Olofson
realises that Ruth and Werner retire early. Doors with wroughtiron
gates are carefully barred shut, German shepherds bark
outside in the darkness, and Olofson is instructed how to turn
off the alarm if he goes into the kitchen at night. By ten o'clock
he is in bed.

I'm surrounded by a barrier, he thinks. A white prison in a
black country. The padlock of fear around the whites' property.
What do the blacks think, when they compare our shoes and their
own rags? What do they think about the freedom they have gained?

He drifts off into a restless slumber.

He jumps awake when a sound pierces his consciousness. In
the dark, he doesn't know for a moment where he is.

Africa, he thinks. I still know nothing about you. Perhaps this
is exactly how Africa looked in Janine's dreams. I no longer recall
what we talked about at her kitchen table. But I have a feeling that
my normal judgements and thoughts are insufficient or perhaps
not even valid out here. Another kind of seeing is required ...

He listens to the darkness. He wonders whether it is the silence
or the sound that is imagined. Again he is afraid.

There is a catastrophe enclosed within Ruth and Werner
Masterton's friendliness, he thinks. This entire farm, this white
house, is enclosed by an anxiety, an anger that has been dammed
up for much too long.

He lies awake in the dark and imagines that Africa is a wounded
beast of prey that still does not have the strength to get up. The
breathing of the earth and the animals coincides, the bush where
they hide is impenetrable. Wasn't that the way Janine imagined
this wounded and mangled continent? Like a buffalo forced to its
knees, but with just enough power left to keep the hunters at bay.

Maybe she with her empathy could probe more deeply into
reality than I can, tramping about on the soil of this continent.
Maybe she made a journey in her dreams that was just as real
as my meaningless flight to the mission station in Mutshatsha.

There may be another truth as well. Is it true that I hope I'll
meet another Janine at this mission station? A woman who can
replace the one who is dead?

He lies awake until dawn suddenly breaks through the dark.
Out the window he sees the sun rise like a red ball of fire over
the horizon. Suddenly he notices Louis standing by a tree,
watching him. Even though the morning is already quite warm,
he shivers. What am I afraid of? he thinks. Myself or Africa?
What is Africa telling me that I don't want to know?

At a quarter past seven he bids farewell to Ruth and takes his
place next to Werner in the front seat of the Jeep.

'Come back again,' says Ruth. 'You're always welcome.'

As they drive out through the farm's big gate where the two
Africans helplessly salute, Olofson notices an old man standing
in the tall elephant grass next to the road, laughing. Half hidden,
he flashes past. Many years later this image will resurface in his
consciousness.

A man, half hidden, laughing soundlessly in the early
morning ...

Would the great Leonardo have wasted his time picking
flowers?

They're sitting in the attic room of the courthouse,
and suddenly the great silence is there between them. It's
late spring in 1957 and school is almost over for the year.

For Sture, elementary school is at an end, and middle school
awaits. Hans Olofson has another year before he has to make up
his mind. He has toyed with the idea of continuing his studies.
But why? No child wants to stay a child; they all want to be
grown-ups as soon as possible. Yet what does the future actually
have to offer him?

For Sture, the path already seems laid out. The great Leonardo
hangs on his wall, urging him on. Ashamed, Hans crouches over
his own hopeless dream, to see the wooden house cast off its moorings
and drift away down the river. When Sture plies him with
questions, he has no idea how to answer. Will he go out in the
forest and chop his way to the horizon like his father? Hang up
his wet rag socks to dry eternally over the stove? He doesn't know,
and he feels envy and unrest as he sits with Sture in the attic room,
and the late spring blows in through the open window. Hans has
come to suggest that they pick flowers for the last day of school.

Sture sits leaning over an astronomical chart. He makes notes,
and Hans knows that he has decided to discover an unknown star.

When Hans suggests flowers, the silence spreads. Leonardo
didn't waste his time going out in the fields hunting for table
decorations.

Hans wonders with suppressed fury how Sture can be so
damned certain. But he doesn't say a word. He waits. Waiting
for Sture to finish one of the important tasks he has set himself
has become more and more common this spring.

Hans senses that the distance between them is growing. Soon
the only thing left of their old familiar friendship will be the
visits to Janine. He has a feeling that Sture is about to leave. Not
the town, but their old friendship. It bothers him. Mostly because
he doesn't understand why, what has happened.

Once he asks Sture straight out.

'What the hell is supposed to have happened?' Sture replies.

After that he doesn't ask again.

But Sture is also changeable. Now, he suddenly flings aside
the astronomical chart impatiently and gets up.

'Shall we go then?' he says.

They slide down the riverbank and sit under the wide expanse
of the river bridge's iron beams and stone caissons. The spring
flood surges past their feet; the usual soft gurgle has been replaced
by the roar of the river's whirlpools. Sture heaves a rotten tree
stump into the river, and it floats away like a half-drowned troll.

Without knowing where it comes from, Hans is attacked by
a sudden fury. The blood pounds in his temples and he feels that
he has to make himself visible to the world.

He has often fantasised about completing a test of manhood,
climbing across the river on one of the curved bridge spans that
are only a couple of decimetres thick. Climbing up to a giddy
height, knowing full well that a fall would mean his death.

Undiscovered stars, he thinks furiously. I'll climb closer to the
stars than Sture ever will.

'I was thinking I'd climb across the bridge span,' he says.

Sture looks at the gigantic iron arches.

'It can't be done,' he says.

'The hell it can't,' says Hans. 'You just have to do it.'

Sture looks at the bridge span again.

'Only a child would be that stupid,' he says.

Hans's heart turns a somersault in his chest. Does he mean
him? That climbing across bridge spans is for little children?

'You don't dare,' he says. 'God damn it, you don't dare.'

Sture looks at him in astonishment. Usually Hans's voice is
almost soft. But now he's loud and talking in a harsh, brusque
way, as if his tongue had been replaced by a piece of pine bark.
And then the challenge, that he doesn't dare ...

No, he wouldn't dare. To climb up on one of the bridge arches
would be to risk his life for nothing. He wouldn't get dizzy; he
can climb a tree like a monkey. But this is too high; there's no
safety net if he should slip.

Of course he doesn't say this to Hans. Instead he starts to
laugh and spits contemptuously into the river.

When Hans sees the gob of spit he decides. Sture's derisive
accusation of childishness can only be countered on the iron
beams.

'I'm going to climb it,' he says in a quavering voice. 'And damned
if I won't stand up on the span and piss on your head.'

The words rattle around in his mouth, as if he were already
in the utmost distress.

Sture looks at him incredulously. Is he serious? Even if the trembling
Hans, on the verge of tears, looks nothing like a grown-up, an
intrepid climber prepared to scale an impossible mountain face, there
is something in his shaking obsession that makes Sture hesitate.

'Go ahead and do it,' he says. 'Then I'll do it after you.'

Now, of course, there's no turning back. Quitting now would
expose Hans to boundless humiliation.

As though on his way to his execution, Hans scrambles up
the riverbank until he reaches the bridge abutment. He takes off
his jacket and climbs up on one of the iron spans. When he raises
his eyes he sees the gigantic iron arch vanish into the distance,
merging with the grey cloud cover. The distance is endless, as if
he were on his way up to heaven. He tries to persuade himself
to be calm, but it only makes him more agitated.

Desperately, he starts slithering upwards, and deep down in
his gut he realises that he has no idea why he needs to climb
across this damned bridge span. But now it's too late, and like a
helpless frog he crawls up the iron arch.

It has finally dawned on Sture that Hans is serious, and he
wants to yell to him to come down. But at the same time he feels
the forbidden desire to wait and see. Maybe he will witness how
somebody fails in attempting the impossible.

Hans closes his eyes and climbs further. The wind sings in
his ears, the blood pounds in his temples, and he is utterly alone.
The bridge span is cold against his body, the heads of the rivets
scrape against his knees, and his arms and fingers have already
gone completely numb. He forces himself not to think, just to
keep climbing, as if it were one of his usual dreams. And yet he
seems to be climbing up over the axis of the earth itself ...

He feels the bridge span under him begin to flatten out, but
this doesn't calm him, it only increases his terror. Now he sees
in his mind's eye how high up he is, how far away in his great
loneliness. If he falls now, nothing can save him.

Desperately he keeps crawling forward, clinging to the span,
floundering his way metre by metre back towards the ground.
His fingers grip the steel like claws, and for a dizzying second he
thinks that he has been turned into a cat. He feels something
warm but doesn't know what it is.

When he reaches the bridge abutment on the other side of
the river and cautiously opens his eyes and realises that it's true,
that he has survived, he hugs the bridge span as if it were his
saviour. He lies there before jumping down to the ground.

He looks at the bridge and knows he has conquered it. Not
as some external enemy, but as an enemy within himself. He
wipes off his face, flexes his fingers to get the feeling back, and
sees Sture come walking across the bridge with his jacket in his
hand.

'You forgot to piss,' says Sture.

Did he? No, he didn't! Now he knows where the sudden
warmth came from up on the cold steel span. It was his body
giving way. He points at the dark patch on his trousers.

'I didn't forget,' he says. 'Look here! Or do you want to smell it?'

Then comes his revenge.

'It's your turn now,' he says, sitting down on his jacket.

But Sture has already prepared his escape. When he realised
that Hans would make it down from the bridge span without
falling into the river, he searched feverishly for a way to get out
of it.

'I will,' he replies. 'But not now. I didn't say when.'

'When will you do it?' asks Hans.

'I'll let you know.'

They head home in the spring evening. Hans has forgotten
all about the flowers. There are plenty of flowers, but only one
bridge span ...

The silence grows between them. Hans wants to say something,
but Sture is lost in his own thoughts and impossible to
reach. They part quickly outside the courthouse gate ...

The last day of school comes with a light, hovering fog that
rapidly thins and vanishes in the sunrise. The schoolrooms
smell newly scrubbed, and Headmaster Gottfried has been
sitting in his room since five in the morning preparing his
commencement address for the pupils he will now be sending
out into the world. He is cautious with the vermouth this
morning, so filled is he with melancholy and reflection. The
last day of the school year is a reminder of his own mortality
in the midst of all the effervescent anticipation that his pupils
feel ...

At seven-thirty he walks out on the steps. He sincerely hopes
he won't see a pupil arrive without a relative. Nothing makes him
so upset as to see a child arrive alone on the last day of school.

At eight o'clock the school bell rings and the classrooms are
brimming with expectant silence. Headmaster Gottfried walks
down the corridor to visit all the classes. Schoolmaster Törnkvist
appears before him and announces that a pupil is missing from
the commencement class. Sture von Croona, the son of the district
judge. Headmaster Gottfried looks at his watch and decides to
ring the district judge.

But not until it's time to march over to the church does he
hurry into his office and ring the district court. His hands are
sweaty and no matter how he tries to tell himself that there will
be an explanation, he feels very uneasy ...

Sture left in plenty of time that morning. Unfortunately his
mother couldn't go with him because she was struck by a bad
migraine. Of course Sture went to school, says the judge over the
telephone.

Headmaster Gottfried hurries to the church. The last children
are already on their way into the vestibule with their parents
and he stumbles and practically runs as he tries to understand
what could have happened to Sture von Croona.

But it isn't until he is holding in his hand the prize book that
is intended for Sture that he seriously begins to fear that something
might have happened.

At the same moment he sees the doors to the vestibule
cautiously being opened. Sture, he thinks, until he sees that
the father is standing there, District Judge von Croona.

Headmaster Gottfried speaks about a deserved rest, the
mustering of strength and preparation for the coming year of
study; he calls on them to consider all of life's shifting situations,
and then there is no more. In a few minutes the church is empty.

The district judge looks at him, but Headmaster Gottfried
can only shake his head. Sture did not show up for graduation.

'Sture doesn't just disappear,' says the district judge. 'I'll contact
the police.'

Headmaster Gottfried nods hesitantly and feels the torment
increasing.

'Perhaps he still ...'

He gets no further. The district judge is already leaving the
church with determined steps.

But no search needs to be organised. Only an hour after the
end of school, Hans Olofson finds his missing friend.

His father, who had attended the graduation, has already
changed into his work clothes again and headed out to his logging.
Hans is enjoying the great freedom that lies before him, and he
strolls down to the river.

It occurs to him that he hasn't seen Sture today. Maybe he
just played truant on the last day and devoted himself to coaxing
an unknown star from the heavens.

He sits down on his usual boulder by the river and decides
that he's pleased to be alone. The coming summer requires a good
deal of reflection. Ever since he conquered the huge span of the
iron bridge he feels that it's easier to be by himself.

His gaze is caught by something shining red underneath the
bridge. He squints, thinking that it's a scrap of paper caught on
the branches along the bank.

But when he goes over to investigate what the shining red
thing is, he finds Sture. It's his red summer jacket, and he is lying
there at the edge of the river. He has fallen from one of the bridge
spans and broken his back. Helpless, he has lain there since the
early morning hours when he awoke and decided to conquer the
bridge span in secret. He had wanted to explore any hidden difficulties
in solitude, and once it was done he planned to accompany
Hans to the bridge and show him that he too could conquer the
iron beams.

He hurried down to the bridge in the damp dawn. For a long
time he regarded the huge spans before he started to climb.

Somewhere along the way he was gripped by pride. Much too
rashly he raised his upper body. A gust of wind came out of
nowhere and he swayed, lost his grip, and plunged from the bridge.
He hit the water hard, and one of the stones in the riverbed
cracked his spine. Unconscious, he was carried by an eddy towards
the shore, where his head lolled above the water surface. The cold
water of the river gave him hypothermia, and when Hans found
him he was almost dead.

Hans pulls him out of the water, calls to him without getting
an answer, and then runs screeching up to the streets of town.
As he runs along the riverbank, summer dies. The great adventure
vanishes in a gigantic cloud passing before the sun. Howling,
he reaches the town. Frightened people draw back as if he were
a mad dog.

But Rönning the junk dealer, who was a volunteer in the Winter
War in Finland and has experienced much worse situations than
a wildly gesticulating young man, grabs hold of him and bellows
at him to tell him what has happened. Then the townsfolk rush
to the river.