Free The Eye of the Leopard by Henning Mankell

Werner exchange guesses about who it might be.
    A car comes to a stop before the terrace and a man of indeterminate age steps out. In the light from shaded kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling, Olofson sees that the man has red burn marks on his face. His head is completely bald and he is dressed in a baggy suit. He introduces himself as Elvin Richardson, a farmer like the Mastertons.
    Who am I? Olofson thinks. An accidental travelling companion on the night train from Lusaka?
    ‘Cattle rustlers,’ says Richardson, sitting down heavily with a glass in his hand.
    Olofson listens as if he were a child engrossed in a story.
    ‘Last night they cut the fence down near Ndongo,’ says Richardson. ‘They stole three calves from Ruben White. The animals were clubbed and slaughtered on the spot. The night watchmen didn’t hear a thing, of course. If this goes on, we’ll have to organise patrols. Shoot a couple of them so they know we mean business.’
    Black servants appear in the shadows on the terrace. What are the blacks talking about? Olofson wonders. How does Louis describe me when he sits by the fire with his friends? Does he see my uncertainty? Is he whetting a knife intended expressly for me? There doesn’t seem to be any dialogue between the blacks and the whites in this country. The world is split in two, with no mutual trust. Orders are shouted across the chasm, that’s all.
    He listens to the conversation, observing that Ruth is more aggressive than Werner. While Werner thinks that maybe they should wait and see, Ruth says they should take up arms at once.
    He gives a start when one of the black servants bends over him and fills his glass. All at once he realises that he is afraid. The terrace, the rapidly falling darkness, the restless conversation; all of it fills him with insecurity, that same helplessness he felt as a child when the beams of the house by the river creaked in the cold.
    There are preparations for war going on here, he thinks. What scares me is that Ruth and Werner and the stranger don’t seem to notice it …
    At the dinner table the conversation suddenly shifts character, and Olofson feels more at ease sitting in a room where lamps ward off the shadows, creating a light in which the black servants cannot hide. The conversation at the dinner table turns to the old days, to people who are no longer here.
    ‘We are who we are,’ says Richardson. ‘Those of us who choose to stay on our farms are surely insane. After us comes nothing. We are the last.’
    ‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘You’re wrong. One day the blacks will be begging at our doors and asking us to stay. The new generation can see where everything is headed. Independence was a gaudy rag that was hung on a pole, a solemn proclamation of empty promises. Now the young people see that the only things that work in this country are still in our hands.’
    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 wrought-iron 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