The Eye Of The Leopard Read Free Page B

ocean, or taking a bearing, or
gazing at distant horizons.
    Out there, he chops down the forest. Plodding through the
heavy snow, chopping down tree after tree, stripping the bark
from the trunks and slowly opening the landscape to the endless
horizon. The sailor driven ashore has set himself a task – to clear
a path back to a distant shoreline.
    But Hans Olofson's life is more than just melancholy motherlessness
and a woodcutter's bouts of alcoholism. Together they
study his father's detailed world maps and sea charts, go ashore in
ports his father has visited, and explore in their imagination places
that still await their arrival. The sea charts are taken down from
the wall, rolled out, and weighted down with ashtrays and chipped
cups. The evenings can be long, because Erik Olofson is a good
storyteller. By the age of twelve Hans possesses an exhaustive
knowledge of places as distant as Pamplemousse and Bogamaio;
he has glimpsed the innermost secrets of seafaring, mysterious
ships that vanished in their own enigma, pirate captains and sailors
of the utmost benevolence. The secret world and the construct of
regulations, so difficult to grasp, with which trading companies and
private shippers have to live and comply, he has stratified in his
mind without fully understanding them; yet it is as though he has
touched on a great and decisive source of wisdom. He knows the
smell of soot in Bristol, the indescribable sludge in the Hudson
River, the Indian Ocean's variable monsoons, the threatening beauty
of icebergs, and the rattle of palm fronds.
    'Here the wind murmurs in the trees,' says Erik Olofson. 'But
in the tropics there is no murmuring. The palm leaves rattle.'
    He tries to imagine the difference, striking his fork against a
glass, but the palms simply refuse to clatter or rattle. They still
murmur in his ears, like the firs he is surrounded by.
    But when he tells his teacher that palms clatter and that
there are water lilies as big as the centre circle on the ice-hockey
rink outside the elementary school, he is ridiculed and called
a liar. Red in the face, Headmaster Gottfried comes storming
out of the musty office where he quells his distaste for teaching
by imbibing vermouth assiduously. He grabs Hans by the hair
and threatens him with what happens to anyone who is on an
excursion to the land of lies.
    Afterwards, alone in the schoolyard in the spotlight of derision,
he decides never again to share any of his exotic knowledge.
In this hellhole of filthy snow and wooden houses, no one understands
a thing about the truths that must be sought at sea.
    His eyes red and swollen, he comes home, boils potatoes, and
waits for his father. Maybe this is when he makes his decision.
That his life will be an unbroken journey. Standing over the pot
of potatoes, the holy spirit of his journey takes possession of him.
His father's smelly rag socks hang on the stove.
    Sails, he thinks. Patched, mended sails ...
    That night, as he lies in bed, he asks his father to tell him one
more time about the water lilies on Mauritius. And he falls asleep,
assured that Headmaster Gottfried will burn in hell for not
believing a sailor's report.
    Later that evening, Erik Olofson drinks his coffee, sunk in the
rickety chair next to the radio. He lets the waves of the ether
hiss softly, as if he doesn't really want to listen. As if the hissing
is message enough. The breathing of the sea, far away. The photographs
burn in the logbook. All alone, he must guide his son.
And no matter how much he reveals to the boy, the forest still
seems to tighten around him. Sometimes he thinks that this is
the true great defeat of his life, that despite everything he endures.
    But for how long? When will he splinter, like a glass that has
been heated for too long?
    The ether waves hiss and he thinks again about why she left
him, left their son. Why did she act like a man? he wonders. Fathers
are the ones who leave and disappear. Not mothers. Least of all
after