Chapter Ten

After a journey of two hours on his way to the mission station in Mutshatsha, the distributor of the car Hans is riding in becomes clogged with silt.

They have stopped in a forlorn and desiccated landscape. Olofson climbs out of the car, wipes his filthy, sweaty face, and lets his gaze wander along the endless horizon.

He senses something of the great loneliness that it is possible to experience on the dark continent. Harry Johanson must have seen this, he thinks. He came from the other direction, from the west, but the landscape must have been the same. Four years his journey took. By the time he arrived his entire family had perished. Death defined the distance in time and space. Four years, four dead ...

In our time the journeys have ceased, he thinks. Like stones with passports we are flung in gigantic catapults across the world. The time allotted to us is no more than that of our forefathers, but we have augmented it with our technology. We live in an era when the mind is less and less often allowed to be amazed by distance and time ... And yet that's not true, he laments. In spite of everything, it has been ten years since I heard Janine for the first time tell the story of Harry Johanson and his wife Emma, and their trek towards the mission station of Mutshatsha.

Now I'm almost there and Janine is dead. It was her dream, not mine. I'm a pilgrim in disguise, following someone else's tracks. Friendly people are helping me with lodging and transportation, as if my task were important.

Like this David Fischer, bent over the distributor of his car. Early that morning Werner Masterton had turned into David's courtyard. A couple of hours later they were on their way to Mutshatsha. David Fischer is about his own age, thin and balding. He reminds Olofson of a restless bird. He keeps looking around, as if he thinks he's being followed. But of course he will help Hans Olofson make it to Mutshatsha.

'To the missionaries at Mujimbeji,' he says. 'I've never been there, but I know the way.'

Why doesn't anybody ask me? Olofson wonders. Why does no one want to know what I'm going to do in Mutshatsha?

They travel through the bush in David Fischer's rusty military Jeep. The top has been put up, but the dust seeps in through the cracks. The Jeep pitches and skids in the deep sand.

'The distributor will probably silt up again,' yells Fischer over the roar of the engine.

The bush surrounds Hans Olofson. Now and then he glimpses people in the tall grass. Or maybe it's only shadows, he thinks. Maybe they're not really there.

Then the distributor silts up, and Olofson stands in the oppressive heat and listens to the African silence. Like a winter night in my home town, he thinks. Just as still and deserted. There it was the cold, here it's the heat. And yet they are so similar. I could live there, could have endured. So I can probably live here too. Having grown up in Norrland, in the interior of Sweden, seems to be an excellent background for living in Africa ...

Fischer slams down the bonnet, casts a glance over his shoulder, and sets about taking a piss.

'What do Swedes know about Africa?' he asks out of the blue.

'Not a thing,' Olofson replies.

'Even those of us who live here don't understand it,' says Fischer. 'Europe's newly awakened interest in Africa, after you've already abandoned us once. Now you're coming back, with a guilty conscience, the saviours of the new age.'

All at once Olofson feels personally responsible. 'My visit is utterly futile,' he replies. 'I'm not here to save anyone.'

'Which country in Africa receives the most support from Europe?' asks Fischer. 'It's a riddle. If you guess right you'll be the first.'

'Tanzania,' Olofson suggests.

'Wrong,' says Fischer. 'It's Switzerland. Anonymous numbered accounts are filled with contributions that make only a quick round trip to Africa. And Switzerland is not an African country ...'

The road plunges steeply down towards a river and a ramshackle wooden bridge. Groups of children are swimming in the green water, and women are kneeling and washing clothes.

'Ninety per cent of these children will die of bilharzia,' Fischer yells.

'What can be done?' Olofson asks.

'Who wants to see a child die for no reason?' Fischer shouts. 'You have to understand that this is why we're so bitter. If we had been allowed to continue the way we were going, we probably would have got the better of the intestinal parasites as well. But now it's too late. When you abandoned us, you also abandoned the possibility for this continent to create a bearable future.'

Fischer has to slam on the brakes for an African who jumps on to the road and waves his arms, trying to get a ride. Fischer honks the horn angrily and yells something to the man as they pass.

'Three hours, then we'll be there,' Fischer shouts. 'I hope you'll at least think about what I said. Of course I'm a racist. But I'm not a stupid racist. I want the best for this country. I was born here and I hope to be allowed to die here.'

Olofson tries to do as Fischer asks, but his thoughts slip away, lose their hold. It's as if I'm travelling in my own recollections, he thinks. Already this journey seems remote, as if it were a distant memory ...

Afternoon arrives. The sun shines straight into the car's front windscreen. Fischer comes to a stop and shuts off the engine.

'Is it the distributor again?' asks Olofson.

'We're here,' says Fischer. 'This must be Mutshatsha. The river we just crossed was the Mujimbeji.'

When the dust settles, a cluster of low, grey buildings appears, grouped round an open square with a well. So this is where Harry Johanson ended up, he thinks. This is where Janine headed in her lonely dream ... From a distance he sees an old white man approaching with slow steps. Children flock round the car, naked or wearing only rags.

The man walking towards him has a pale, sunken face. Olofson senses at once that he is not at all welcome. I'm breaking into a closed world. A matter for the blacks and the missionaries ... He quickly decides to reveal at least part of the truth.

'I'm following in Harry Johanson's footsteps,' he says. 'I come from his homeland and I'm searching for his memory.'

The pale man looks at him for a long time. Then he nods for Olofson to follow him.

'I'll stay until you tell me to leave,' says Fischer. 'I can't get back before dark anyway.'

Olofson is shown into a room containing a bed with a crucifix hanging above it, and a cracked washbasin. A lizard scurries into a hole in the wall. A sharp smell that he can't identify pricks his nose.

'Father LeMarque is on a trip,' says the pale man with the reticent voice. 'We expect him back tomorrow. I'll send someone over with sheets and to show you where to get some food.'

'My name is Hans Olofson,' he says.

The man nods without introducing himself.

'Welcome to Mutshatsha,' he says in a sombre voice before he leaves.

Silent children stand in the doorway, watching him attentively. Outside a church bell rings. Olofson listens. He feels a creeping fear inside. The smell that he can't identify stings his nose. I'll just leave, he thinks agitatedly. If I take off right now, I never will have been here. At the same moment David Fischer comes in carrying his suitcase.

'I understand you'll be staying,' he says. 'Good luck with whatever it is you're doing. If you want to come back, the missionaries have cars. And you know where I live.'

'How can I thank you?' Olofson says.

'Why do people always have to thank each other?' says Fischer, and leaves.

Olofson watches the car go down the road. The children stand motionless and stare at him.

Suddenly he feels dizzy from the intense heat. He goes inside the cell assigned to him, stretches out on the hard bed and closes his eyes.

The church bells fall silent and everything is still. When he opens his eyes the children are still standing in the doorway watching him. He stretches out his hand and motions to them. In an instant they are gone.

He has to go to the toilet. He walks out through the door and the heat strikes him hard in the face. The big sandy area is deserted, and even the children are gone. He walks around the building in his search for a toilet. At the rear he finds a door. When he pushes the handle the door opens. He steps inside and in the darkness he is blind. The sharp smell makes him feel sick. When he gets used to the dark he realises that he's in a morgue.

In the dark he can distinguish two dead Africans lying stretched out on wooden benches. Their naked bodies are scarcely covered by dirty sheets. He recoils and slams the door behind him. The dizziness returns at once.

On the steps outside his door sits an African, looking at him.

'I am Joseph, Bwana,' he says. 'I will guard your door.'

'Who told you to sit here?'

'The missionaries, Bwana.'

'Why?'

'In case something happens, Bwana.'

'What would that be?'

'In the dark many things can happen, Bwana.'

'Like what?'

'You'll know it when it happens, Bwana.'

'Has anything happened before?'

'There's always a lot happening, Bwana.'

'How long are you supposed to sit here?'

'As long as Bwana stays here, Bwana.'

'When do you sleep?'

'When there is time, Bwana.'

'There is only night and day.'

'Now and then other times arise, Bwana.'

'What do you do while you're sitting here?'

'I wait for something to happen, Bwana.'

'What?'

'You'll know when it happens, Bwana.'

Joseph shows him where there is a toilet and where he can take a shower under an old petrol tank with a dripping hose. After he has changed his clothes, Joseph accompanies him to the mission station's mess hall. An African with one leg shorter than the other walks around the empty tables wiping them with a dirty rag.

'Am I the only one here?' he asks Joseph.

'The missionaries are on a trip, Bwana. But tomorrow they may return.'

Joseph waits outside the door. Olofson sits down at a table. The lame African brings a bowl of soup. Olofson eats, swatting at flies that buzz around his mouth. An insect stings him on the back of the neck and when he starts, he spills the soup on the table. The lame man comes at once with his rag.

Something is wrong on this continent, he thinks. When someone cleans up, the dirt is just spread even more.

The brief twilight is almost over as he leaves the mess hall. Joseph is waiting for him outside the door. In the distance fires are gleaming. He notices that Joseph is standing rocking on his feet, that he can hardly keep his balance.

'You're drunk, Joseph,' he says.

'I'm not drunk, Bwana.'

'I can see that you're drunk!'

'I'm not drunk, Bwana. At least not much. I only drink water, Bwana.'

'You can't get drunk on water. What have you been drinking?'

'African whisky, Bwana. But it's not allowed. I won't be permitted to stand watch here if any of the mzunguz find out about it.'

'What would happen if someone saw that you were drunk?'

'Sometimes in the morning we have to line up and breathe at a wakakwitau, Bwana. If anyone smells of anything but water he is punished.'

'Punished how?'

'In the worst case he would have to leave Mutshatsha with his family, Bwana.'

'I won't say a thing, Joseph. I'm no missionary. I'm only here on a visit. I'd like to buy a little of your African whisky.'

He watches Joseph trying to assess the situation and make a decision.

'I'll pay you well for your whisky,' he says.

He follows Joseph's wobbly figure creeping through the dark, close to the building walls, over towards an area with grass huts. Faces he cannot see laugh in the darkness. A woman scolds an invisible man, children's eyes shine near a fire.

Joseph stops outside one of the grass huts and calls something in a low voice. Two men and three women emerge from the hut, all drunk. Olofson has a hard time distinguishing them in the dark. Joseph makes a sign to him to enter the hut. An ingrained stench of urine and sweat meets him in the darkness within.

I ought to be afraid, he thinks briefly. Yet I feel quite safe in Joseph's company ...

At the same moment he stumbles over something on the floor, and when he feels with his hand he finds that it's a sleeping child. Shadows dance across the walls, and Joseph motions him to sit down. He sinks down on to a raffia mat and a woman hands him a mug. What he drinks tastes like burnt bread and it's very strong.

'What am I drinking?' he asks Joseph.

'African whisky, Bwana.'

'It tastes bad.'

'We're used to it, Bwana. We distil lituku from maize waste, roots, and sugar water. Then we drink it. When it's gone we make more. Sometimes we drink honey beer too.'

Olofson can feel himself becoming intoxicated.

'Why did the others leave?' he asks.

'They're not used to a mzungu coming here, Bwana. No mzungu has ever been inside this hut before.'

'Tell them to come back. I'm no missionary.'

'But you're white, Bwana. A mzungu.'

'Tell them anyway.'

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.'

'I never thought such a wailing existed,' says Olofson. 'This must be the ancient sound of pain.'

'Measles,' says Amanda Reinhardt. 'You have surely had this disease. But here children die of it. They came from a distant village. The mother walked five days and carried her child. Had she come earlier we could have maybe saved him, but she went first to the witch doctor in the village. When it was too late she came here. Actually it is not measles that kills. But the children are malnourished, their resistance is poor. When the child dies it is the end of a long chain of causes.'

Olofson leaves the infirmary alone. He has borrowed her kerosene lamp and tells her he will find his own way. He is followed by the screams of the wailing women. Outside his door sits Joseph by his fire.

This man I will remember, Olofson thinks. This man and his beautiful sisters ...

The next day he drinks coffee again with Patrice LeMarque.

'What do you think of Harry Johanson now?' he asks.

'I don't know,' says Olofson. 'Mostly I'm thinking about the child who died yesterday.'

'I've already buried him,' replies LeMarque. 'And I've got the pumping station going too.'

'How do I get out of here?' Olofson asks.

'Tomorrow Moses is driving to Kitwe in one of our cars. You can ride along with him.'

'How long will you stay here?' Olofson asks.

'As long as I live,' says LeMarque. 'But I probably won't live as long as Harry Johanson. He must have been very special.'

At dawn Olofson is awakened by Joseph.

'Now I'm travelling home,' he tells him. 'To another part of the world.'

'I will wait at the white men's doors, Bwana,' replies Joseph.

'Say hello to your sisters!'

'I already have, Bwana. They are sad that you're leaving.'

'Why don't they come and say goodbye then?'

'They are, Bwana. They're saying goodbye, but you don't see them.'

'One last question, Joseph. When will you chase the whites out of your country?'

'When the time is ripe, Bwana.'

'And when is that?'

'When we decide that it is, Bwana. But we won't chase all the mzunguz out of the country. Those who want to live with us can stay. We aren't racists like the whites.'

A Jeep drives up to the building. Olofson puts his suitcase in it. The driver, Moses, nods to him.

'Moses is a good driver, Bwana,' says Joseph. 'He just drives off the road once in a while.'

Olofson gets into the front seat and they turn on to the road. Now it's over, he thinks. Janine's dream and Harry Johanson's grave ...

After a few hours they stop to rest. Olofson discovers that the two dead bodies he'd seen in the morgue are packed in the boot of the Jeep. At once he feels sick.

'They're going to the police in Kitwe,' says Moses, noticing his distress. 'All murder victims must be examined by the police.'

'What happened?'

'They are brothers. They were poisoned. Their maize field was probably too big. Their neighbours were jealous. Then they died.'

'How?'

'They ate something. Then they swelled up and their stomachs burst open. It smelled terrible. The evil spirits killed them.'

'Do you really believe in evil spirits?'

'Of course,' says Moses with a laugh. 'We Africans believe in sorcery and evil spirits.'

The journey continues.

Olofson tries to convince himself that he is going to go back to his legal studies. He clings once more to his decision to become the defender of extenuating circumstance. But I've never clarified what it would mean to spend my life in courtrooms, he thinks. Where I'd have to try to distinguish what is a lie from what is truth. Maybe I should do as my father did. Maybe I should go and chop down horizons in a forest of paragraphs. I'm still searching for a way out of the confusion that marks my beginning ...

The long trip from Mutshatsha is coming to an end. I must decide before I land at Arlanda again, he thinks. That's all the time I have left.

He shows Moses the way to Ruth and Werner's farm.

'First I drive you, then I drive the corpses,' says Moses.

Olofson is glad that he doesn't call him Bwana.

'Say hello to Joseph when you return.'

'Joseph is my brother. I'll say hello to him.'

Just before two o'clock in the afternoon they arrive ...