Free The Eye Of The Leopard by Henning Mankell Page B

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way, as if his tongue had been replaced by a piece of pine bark.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