Free The Eye of the Leopard by Henning Mankell Page B

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 The spring flood surges past their feet; the usual soft gurgle has been replaced by the roar of the river’s whirlpools.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 But now he’s loud and talking in a harsh, brusque way, as if his tongue had been replaced by a piece of pine bark.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