Daniel

by Henning Mankell

  Daniel went out and closed the door. Then he knocked and opened it.

  ‘Wrong,’ said Father. ‘What didn’t I do?’

  ‘The gentleman said nothing.’

  ‘You mustn’t call me the gentleman. I’m your father. So call me that. Father.’

  ‘Faather.’

  ‘Don’t draw out the letter “a”. How many times have I told you that? One more time.’

  ‘Father.’

  ‘That’s better. Practise with the door again.’

  Daniel went out and closed the door. Once again he caught a quick glimpse in his mind of how Kiko had painted the eye of the antelope red, then he knocked on the door again. There was no answer. He knocked again.

  Father opened the door.

  ‘Too hard,’ he said.

  He showed Daniel how to do it.

  ‘It has to be like a determined drumbeat. Not like a bird pecking.’

  Father closed the door. Daniel saw the antelope again and knocked. Father answered. Daniel opened the door, went in and closed the door behind him.

  ‘You forgot to bow this time,’ said Father.

  They continued practising every day. When Father was busy with his insects, Daniel spent his time with the animals. The bent woman still didn’t speak to him, but she let him feed the animals, wash the horse and lock up the chickens in the evening.

  During this time Daniel wondered why there were no people around. He never saw anyone except for the man who was called Father and the bent woman. He realised that the people who lived in this country had very small families but that their deserts covered with forests were unimaginably vast. Behind the house there was a hill where he would sometimes stand and listen to the wind. The forest was everywhere, and it never seemed to end. He tried to listen for sounds that he recognised. The wind that passed through the trees was different from the wind in the desert. He found a tree that made the same rustling sound with its leaves that the sand made when it passed over a rock. He asked Father to say the name of the tree and found out that it was called aspen. He decided to venerate that tree. Every day he ran to it and peed next to the trunk. But there were other sounds he didn’t recognise. Even the rain that fell so frequently in this country had a different sound. He listened to the birds he glimpsed among the trees, but their songs were not like any he had heard before. He wondered if his ears were still too small to catch the familiar sounds that must exist here. The sound of the drums, of the women laughing, the men telling their stories, and the occasional roar of a lion. Sometimes he thought he heard the distant sound of a drum, but he could never tell where it was coming from. And then there were the birds that Father had called crows; they broke apart the sounds he did manage to distinguish.

  Almost every night he dreamed about Be. Sometimes Kiko was there too, but most often it was only Be. She was very close to him in the dreams, so close that he could feel her breath, touch her hair, see her teeth, lie close to her on the raffia mat where they slept. She spoke to him and said that she missed him.

  Daniel woke up early every morning. He always woke when day was breaking and the bent woman and Father were still asleep. Since the door was locked he couldn’t get out; he would lie in bed and think about what he had dreamed. Be had spoken to him and said that she missed him. I’m a little boy, he thought. I have travelled much too far away. My parents and the other people I lived with are dead. And yet they live. They are still closer to me than the man called Father and the woman who doesn’t dare come close enough for me to grab her. My journey has been much too long. I am in a desert I do not recognise, and the sounds that surround me are foreign.

  In the mornings Daniel often wondered whether he shouldn’t just die too. Then he could search for Kiko and Be and the others. In his dreams he could always feel the warm sand under his feet. The only sand he had here were the grains he had found in the crates with the insects.

  He often cried himself awake in the morning. He decided that he would have to tell Father how important it was that he go home as soon as he had learned to chop the right words with the right axe. Father would have to understand. He didn’t want to end up like all the strange insects, pinned behind a pane of glass. The difference between the locked door and the glass that covered the insects was very slight.

  When he heard the door being unlocked he usually pretended to be asleep. Only when he felt lonely again would he sneak out of the door, down the stairs and out to the animals.

  A black cat with its tail missing had become his friend. She followed him wherever he went, when he pissed by the tree or gave hay to the horse.

  By the middle of the month called October he had learned the language well enough that he would soon be able to explain to Father that he had to set off for home. It was now beginning to get dark early in the evenings.

  He slept more and the dreams became drawn out, and more distinct. He had long conversations with Be, who was beginning to worry that he would never come back. Sometimes he also followed Kiko to the rock where the antelope was frozen in its leap.

  One morning Father explained that his work with the insects was done and they would be leaving in a few days.

  ‘Shall we travel back?’ asked Daniel and felt his heart start pumping faster with joy.

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘To the desert?’

  ‘You will never return to the desert. Your life is here. You will learn to speak, you will learn to knock, bow and enter when you are invited in. Now we are going to travel to a city where I shall exhibit my insects. But I’m also going to exhibit you.’

  Daniel did not reply.

  That night, the last before they were to depart, he decided that he had to keep his thoughts to himself. He wouldn’t tell anyone that he planned to return to Be and Kiko even though they were dead.

  He realised, though, that he lacked the knowledge he needed.

  In order to return he would have to learn to walk on water.

  CHAPTER 12

  In Stockholm Daniel learned that a person’s life is not only organised according to his relationship to doors, but that the movements of light and dark also require rituals that must be followed precisely.

  Nearly a month had passed since they left the bent woman and the cat with no tail. With the horse and wagon they travelled towards the east, and finally the forests had reluctantly opened, and they had come to a town called Kalmar. There Daniel had seen the sea again. Father showed him where they came ashore on a map and how they had travelled in the shape of a horseshoe until now they were back by the sea.

  The town was small and cramped. When they rolled in past the low houses, the streets were flooded after the long rain, and with the utmost difficulty they made their way down through the clay mud to the seafront, where they took a room in a stone house. Father asked Daniel to see to it that the skinny horse ate plenty of hay, with oats too, and to wash and groom the animal carefully. Then they would sell it and with a little luck perhaps get something for the wagon too. They needed the money to pay for the boat passage to Stockholm, Father explained. It was going to depart in six days, and after the horse had been well fed for four days they would sell it.

  The first night they went and looked at the fortress that was located in the town. Daniel was more interested in the water. On this particular evening it lay utterly still and he thought that it might not be too hard to learn to walk on its shiny surface. But he still said nothing to Father. He doubted it would ever be possible to say anything. Father wouldn’t understand. He might go back to tying him up, as he had during their first journey and keeping the doors locked, even though Daniel had learned how to knock, wait, open, bow and close.

  On the second night they spent in the town, Father again drank one of the bottles that changed the ground beneath his feet into a ship’s deck. He slept on top of the bed without undressing and even forgot to lock the door and put the key in his pocket.

  Daniel waited until it got dark. Then he sneaked out of the room, dow
n the creaky staircase and out to the street. It was raining. Even though the mud was cold under his feet he went barefoot. He hurried through the darkness down to the water. A fire shone by the fortress, and in a house he heard a man yelling and singing by turns. He sounded exactly like Andersson, and Daniel thought that maybe it was someone who knew him, because their voices were so much alike.

  He stood for a long time by the shore. Then he raised one foot and placed it carefully on the surface of the water. It held. But when he shifted his weight to the other leg he trod through the water. He wasn’t yet able to make himself light enough through willpower alone for the water to bear him. It was still too soon. He hurried back to the house where they were staying. He was worried that Father might wake up and notice that he had left. But when he cautiously opened the door without knocking, Father was snoring heavily in the bed. Daniel undressed, wiped his feet and crept between the damp sheets.

  Two days later they sold the horse to a very fat man who was missing three fingers on one hand. Father explained to Daniel that an angry horse had bitten off the man’s fingers. After that he was known to torment horses. But since he paid better than the others, they were still going to sell the horse to him.

  ‘Torment? What does that mean?’ asked Daniel.

  It was a new word he hadn’t heard before.

  ‘Like Andersson,’ Father replied. ‘Do you remember him? The one who kept you in a pen?’

  Daniel tried to understand what the similarity was between the man who bought the horse and a man who kept him in a pen. He thought he ought to ask, but Father probably wouldn’t answer.

  He would miss the horse. He would have liked to take it with him when he learned to walk on water. People could tame animals. Maybe it was possible to teach a horse to walk on the surface of the water without breaking it.

  The next day they boarded a small black-tarred coaster. They hadn’t managed to sell the wagon and left it abandoned on the quay. The ship’s hold was filled with dried fish and a large tub full of live eels. Father had supervised the loading of the crates which held his insect displays. He yelled at the crewmen to be careful. In Daniel’s mind they were changed from men in ragged trousers and wooden shoes to ox-drivers in the desert: those who were forced to haul and carry everything the white men needed for their expeditions.

  Once, and this was one of his earliest memories, Kiko and Be and the others had passed an expedition of white men who had pitched camp for the night at the edge of the Mountain of the Zebras. He was so small that Be was still carrying him on her back when he couldn’t walk any further. But he remembered quite clearly how the white men had pitched their tents. Between the tents stood tables with white tablecloths. Kiko, who at that time was the leader of the group, chose to skirt round the camp cautiously because sometimes white men in the desert would suddenly start shooting as if they had discovered a herd of animals and not a group of human beings.

  The bearers sat by their own fires. When the white men called to them they came running at once. There was a submissive haste about them, and their every movement was an expression of fear. This was something Daniel had understood even though he was so young. When he saw the sailors and heard Father shouting he recognised their behaviour. He was very surprised to see people who had fear in their arms and legs in this country too.

  The captain of the ship wore no uniform. He had wrapped a shawl round his head because he had a toothache. He always had a bottle in his hand or on a cord around his neck. Daniel understood that at first the captain had been unwilling to take him along. Later father angrily explained that the captain was superstitious, believed in supernatural evil, and feared the ship would sink if they took aboard a person who looked like a black cat. Finally he had relented, though Father had been forced to pay double fare for him, and they were given a tiny cabin in the stern that stank of rotten fish. Father tossed out all the mattresses and blankets because they were full of fleas.

  ‘Better that we sleep in our clothes,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we’ll be eaten alive and won’t have enough blood left when we arrive.’

  Late that afternoon, when a light breeze was blowing from the south, they cast off the lines, hoisted the sails and left the harbour. They sailed up a strait where an island extended to the east of them. Daniel stood on deck and watched as the sailors pulled and hauled on the lines. They spoke in a dialect that was incomprehensible to Daniel, but he knew they were talking about him and that the words weren’t kind. In the bow he found a worn-out rope. He transformed it at once into a skipping rope and began to skip. The sailors and the captain with his shawl looked at him with great misgivings, but no one said a word.

  At dawn the next day, when Daniel went on deck, the island was gone, but the land to the west was still there. A cool wind was blowing. Daniel shivered as he walked across the wet deck. The boat rocked slowly, as if it were actually hanging on the back of the sea like a newborn child. Daniel closed his eyes and thought about Be. His memories awoke.

  He was hanging on her back. If he kept his eyes closed he would be in the desert when he opened them. It would be before everything happened that made Be and Kiko lie in the sand with bloody faces and leave him behind.

  He gave a start and opened his eyes. A musty smell overpowered him and drove away the memories. The captain was standing there. He had red eyes and his cheeks under the shawl were swollen.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything so bloody awful?’ he said, opening his mouth wide.

  Daniel understood that he was supposed to look in his mouth. He stood on tiptoe to see. The teeth in the captain’s mouth, the few that were left, were either black or rotted stumps.

  ‘It’s like having a snake in your jaw,’ said the captain. ‘Do you think that the man you’re travelling with could pull it? He’s a scientist, if I understand rightly.’

  Daniel went back to the cabin. Father lay yawning in one of the two bunks with no mattresses.

  ‘The captain wonders if Father can pull a tooth,’ he said.

  ‘Only if he pays us back and lets you travel free.’

  Father got up and rummaged through his bag of instruments and finally found a pair of pliers that he used to bend the nails which fastened the back plates of the insect boxes. The captain sat on a hatch, swaying back and forth. He was in severe pain.

  ‘I can pull the tooth,’ said Father. ‘I could also rip out your tongue if you like.’

  ‘The tooth will suffice.’

  ‘The price is free passage for Daniel.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  The captain opened his mouth wide. Father looked.

  ‘A molar,’ he said. ‘Someone will have to hold on to you when I pull.’

  The captain called over a crewman who was almost two metres tall and had powerful biceps.

  ‘You have to hold me tight,’ said the captain. ‘And don’t let go no matter how much I howl.’

  The man muttered something in reply and then took a firm hold around the captain’s body from behind. Father stuck in the pliers, found a grip and pulled. The captain roared but at last the tooth came out. The crewman released his hold, the captain spat blood, and Father asked Daniel to rinse off the pliers.

  ‘I’ve seen his teeth,’ the captain said. ‘I’ve never seen anything so white. And strong, like the teeth of beasts of prey.’

  ‘That’s only your imagination,’ replied Father. ‘The reason is the absence of sugar in his diet.’

  ‘I thought blackies were like children and loved sweets?’

  ‘Then you thought wrong.’

  The captain kept on spitting out blood. The cook announced that breakfast was ready, and Daniel returned the cleaned pliers to the bag.

  That evening Father sat down to have a drink with the captain. Daniel stayed on deck, even though the wind was cold. The tall sailor stood at the helm, while another man who was his complete opposite, short and thin, lit the lanterns and then sat in the bow on watch. Daniel saw lights glimmering somewhere out in th
e dark. From the aft cabin he heard the captain’s loud laughter. The thought struck Daniel that Father must actually be quite fond of him. Although it had certainly been a lot of trouble, he had brought Daniel with him on this long journey. He had had clothing sewn for him, taught him the language, and above all instructed him on how to open and close doors. Even though Be and Kiko came to him at night, Father was there in the day and took care of him. He had even tied him up so he wouldn’t vanish into the sea. It wouldn’t be fair if Daniel didn’t tell him, when the time was ripe, that he had learned to walk on water and that he intended to go back to the sand and the warmth under his feet. He would promise him never to forget how to open and close doors, even if there were few doors at the places where they pitched camp.

  The sailor who lit the lanterns came over to Daniel.

  They stood by the railing.

  The starry sky was crystal clear.

  He said his name was Tobias. Tobias Näver. He had been a soldier, he told Daniel, but he had been stricken from something called the rolls because during training he had taken a bayonet through his thigh and almost bled to death. After that he had become a seaman. Once he had sailed very far, to distant Australia, on an English barque named the Black Swan. He had almost decided to stay in Australia but changed his mind at the last minute and came back. After that he had only worked on small coasters working the inland sea called the Baltic.

  Daniel listened. Tobias Näver spoke slowly and Daniel understood almost everything he said.