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 selfappointed 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 wellguarded 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 ...