‘You’re far from home,’ he said. ‘If I understand rightly, you are the foster-child of the man sitting and drinking with the captain. What happened?’
Daniel thought about the fact that this was the first time anyone had asked him who he was. He bowed and said thank you.
‘You don’t have to bow and say thank you.’
‘I’m going to learn to walk on water,’ said Daniel. ‘Then I’ll walk home.’
‘Nobody can walk on water,’ Tobias replied, astonished. ‘The fools who try just sink. There was only one man could do it. If what they say is true.’
Daniel perked up. ‘Who was that?’
‘Jesus.’
Daniel knew who Jesus was. Be and Kiko had sometimes talked about the odd habit white people had of nailing up their gods on boards. That’s how enemies who had committed terrible deeds should be treated. To nail up a god on a pair of crossed boards was both peculiar and frightening. Especially since the whites believed that it was the only god that existed. Daniel had seen pictures of the emaciated man with the crown of thorns but he didn’t know that he could supposedly walk on water.
‘Of course no one knows if it’s true or not. It’s called a miracle. And certainly the impossible can happen. We once ran aground on a reef in the Black Swan. We knew that we were going to go under in the storm. But suddenly it died down, and when we got the ship loose it stayed afloat.’
Tobias spat a stream of tobacco juice over the railing.
Daniel felt a great anxiety. It sat like a knot just below his heart. Could a person walk on water if a god did?
One of the lanterns went out. Tobias went over to relight it. From the aft cabin shouts were heard. Father was drunk now, Daniel could hear. His voice was harsh and he laughed joylessly.
Tobias came back.
‘You can always perform at fairs,’ he said. ‘People would pay for that.’
‘What’s a fair?’
‘A place where they exhibit deformed people, fat ladies, men with hair all over their bodies, men who can lift horses, children that are attached to each other, calves with two heads.’
Daniel still didn’t understand what a fair was. But something made him decide to hold back his questions.
The wind had subsided. It was colder too. Daniel went to the cabin and lay down on his bunk. He decided to tell Be in his dreams about what Tobias had said, that the man on the boards was able to walk on water.
But Be was not in his dream that night, nor the next. When he woke in the morning he couldn’t remember anything but darkness. It was as if an invisible mountain range had been raised inside his head. Somewhere behind it were Be and Kiko, but he couldn’t see them.
On the fifth day they turned in towards land. They sailed among islands, across fjords and down narrow straits. Daniel noticed that Father had begun to grow restless and worried that it was because of him, that it might be because of something he had done. To show that he liked him, Daniel put on the heavy wooden shoes, but Father didn’t even seem to notice. Several times when Daniel entered the cabin he was sitting counting the money that was left from the horse. Daniel had also heard him arguing with the captain about the money he was supposed to get back for pulling the rotten tooth.
They sailed through a strait and Daniel could see a tower in the distance. Father appeared by his side at the railing.
‘What’s that?’ Daniel asked, pointing.
‘A church tower. The capital. Stockholm.’
Father sounded irritated when he answered. Daniel decided not to ask any more questions.
They tied up next to another coaster in a forest of vessels. Far off, between the sails and the hulls of the ships, Daniel saw tall houses, and he counted five church towers. Because it was already evening, Father decided that they would stay on board for another night. Daniel wondered what would happen after that, but he didn’t ask. When he lay down to sleep he hoped that Be would come. But the next morning too he woke with no memory but darkness.
They left the ship late in the afternoon.
Father had been ashore and two men came aboard to fetch his crates. When everything had been loaded onto two handcarts, Daniel was allowed to go ashore. He noticed at once that everyone was staring at him. But something was different; here they stepped forward, stared him right in the face, touched him, pinched his arms, and commented on his hair and his skin. He felt embarrassed and afraid, and he did something he had never done before: he took Father’s hand and burrowed his head into his stomach. Father was astonished but stroked his hair.
‘These are riff-raff,’ he said. ‘They work here in the harbour. Riff-raff who don’t know any better.’
‘What are riff-raff?’ muttered Daniel.
‘Uneducated people. Stevedores. Sump cleaners. People will look at you, Daniel, but these people stare. That’s the difference.’
Father lifted him up onto the cart and shouted at the staring people to leave him in peace. Then the two men who had carried the heavy crates ashore pulled the carts away from the harbour. There were stones in the road that made the carts bounce and shake. Daniel had to hold on so he wouldn’t fall off. They pulled the carts down a narrow street where the houses were very tall. Daniel had to breathe through his mouth because the smell was terrible.
Suddenly he couldn’t bear to see any more. He shut his eyes and kept them closed as tightly as he could. The wheels rattled and clattered, people shouted, dogs barked, and Father bellowed at the men pulling the carts to be more careful. The sounds grew into a strong wind inside Daniel’s head, but he couldn’t make out what they meant. Somewhere far away he thought he could hear Kiko’s voice, and Be’s.
It was 3 November 1877.
Daniel had arrived in Stockholm. He shut his eyes as the cart full of insects rolled through the alleyways of the old town, Gamla Stan.
CHAPTER 13
Daniel opened his eyes when the cart came to a stop. Father touched his shoulder. The alleyway they were in was very narrow. In front of them was a church. The light had begun to dim. They moved into a little attic room at the top of a steep stairway. From the window Daniel could look straight in through another window across the alley. A candle stood on a table, with a great number of people sitting around it shovelling down food from a wooden trencher. Suddenly a boy his own age caught sight of him. He shrieked and pointed. Daniel quickly moved away from the window. Father came through the door after arguing with the men who had pulled the carts about how much they should be paid. The crates stood stacked in the room and it was almost impossible to move. Father looked around in disgust.
‘If a fire starts here, everything will be in vain.’
He set down a little wooden box right next to the door.
‘This must be saved if there’s a fire. There’s a beetle in it that no one has ever seen.’
He then proceeded to examine the bed. He shook the blankets and shone a candle between the boards.
‘There are lice here,’ he said. ‘We’re going to get bitten. But we’ll only stay a few days. Then everything will be better.’
He set the candle on the table and sat down on a rickety chair.
‘Living in this city and being poor is like living with an iron lid over your head. The only consolation is that we came at the right time. They had a smallpox epidemic here last year but it seems to be over.’
He took out his money pouch and poured the contents onto the table. There was one banknote and some coins.
‘I’ll leave you here,’ he said when he finished counting. ‘You have to keep watch. If a fire starts, you have to save the little box. I’ll go out and find something for us to eat. I won’t be gone long.’
He got up from the table. Daniel wasn’t sure whether he was angry or worried. Then he left the room and his footsteps disappeared down the stairs.
Daniel was alone. Father hadn’t locked the door when he left. Daniel could hear someone singing and someone else crying downstairs. The odour of food wafted up through
the floor. It smelled rancid, like old animal fat. Daniel peeked cautiously out of the window. Across the alley a woman was making a bed for two children on the table where the wooden trencher had stood. Daniel had never seen this before, that a table could also be a bed. The people in this country live in strange ways, he thought. Either they live alone or they are so crowded together that no one has any room. Daniel carefully opened the box that he was supposed to save if a fire broke out. A beetle was pinned to a piece of stiff white paper. He had seen beetles like it many times when he searched for roots, snakes and small creatures with Be and the other women. They used to call the beetle the Sand Hopper, because when it was alarmed it would stop crawling and throw itself to one side. Be had been very skilled at catching them. It was like a game: hold out your hand and guess precisely where it would land. Daniel tried to understand why it was so important to save it. A little dead animal pinned to a piece of paper. It wasn’t edible. Nor did it have any poison that was good for putting on arrowheads. Father was a very strange man. He was on a journey and had taken Daniel with him. People were always on the move. Travel meant the constant search for food. Now Father had gone out to find some. But where were they actually headed?
Daniel felt confined in the room. The ceiling was low; there were people beneath him that he could hear but not see. He searched for his skipping rope to keep himself from worrying. He began to skip, first slowly, then faster. The rope slapped on the floor in an even rhythm. It was like walking. He closed his eyes and imagined that the heat had returned. Somewhere he could hear Kiko’s voice, his sudden laughter, and Be who talked so fast and always had a story to tell.
He was interrupted by banging on the door. He decided not to say anything so that whoever was standing outside would go away. But the door was flung open and a big man with a bare torso stood there staring at him.
‘I didn’t say “Come in”.’
Daniel still spoke the language poorly. But he could pronounce some words.
The man stared at him.
‘I didn’t say “Come in”,’ Daniel repeated.
The man exuded a foul smell: from his body, his clothes, his mouth. Daniel breathed through his mouth so he wouldn’t throw up. He was afraid. He hadn’t said that the man could open the door and come in and yet he had done so. Daniel had thought that was a rule that no one could break.
‘My head is pounding,’ said the man. ‘There’s pounding from up here too. Are you the one who’s stomping on the floor?’
Daniel looked at his skipping rope. It had been hitting the floorboards.
The man followed his look.
‘Are you completely possessed? A little black devil who skips on my head?’
He took a step forward and snatched the rope. Daniel tried to hold on to it, but the man was very strong and Daniel knew that he would lose it if he didn’t use his teeth. He leaned forward and bit the man’s hand. The man yelled in pain, but Daniel couldn’t let go. He had a cramp in his jaws. The man howled and thrashed. Finally Daniel managed to loosen his jaws. The man stared at his hand, which was bleeding profusely. He had dropped the rope, and it now lay on the floor.
He’s going to kill me, Daniel thought. He’s going to bite me in the throat and shake me until I’m dead.
The man was breathing in heavy, panting gasps. He looked at his hand as if he didn’t comprehend what had happened, then turned and staggered out of the door. Daniel closed it and wiped the blood from his mouth. There was no sound below him now. He didn’t understand what had happened. Why did the man open the door without having permission to come in?
He stood still in the middle of the room.
From the street he heard a horse whinny. Then a dog barked and a girl shrieked.
He heard footsteps on the stairs. He recognised them at once. It was Father coming back. He was walking slowly, putting down his feet carefully, not stamping. There was a knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
Father stood in the doorway smiling.
‘You’ve learned,’ he said.
Before Daniel could reply there was a racket on the stairs. The man Daniel had bitten stood in the doorway with a bloody rag wrapped round his hand.
‘Are you the one who dragged this troll from hell here? He tried to bite off my hand!’
Father looked confused. He had a greasy brown-paper packet with him that smelled like food.
‘I don’t believe I understand,’ he replied.
The man pointed at Daniel in a rage.
‘That black monkey tried to bite off my hand. Look!’
He unwound the bloody rag and showed him the wound, which dripped blood onto the floor.
Father stared at his hand and then at Daniel.
‘Did you do this?’
Daniel nodded. His tongue had swollen in his mouth. He couldn’t squeeze out any words.
‘I’m a coal carrier,’ said the man. ‘I work twelve hours a day. The sacks can weigh up to two hundred kilos. I carry them and I drag them. And I have to sleep. Then this thundering starts up here.’ He grabbed the rope from Daniel’s hand. ‘He’s skipping. As if he was hopping on my forehead. I have to have quiet if I’m going to get any sleep.’
Father still didn’t seem to grasp what had happened.
‘He’s not used to things,’ he said. ‘He’s not used to floors and walls and ceilings. It won’t happen again.’
The man wrapped the rag round his hand. Slowly he seemed to be calming down.
‘He looks like a human being. But he has teeth like a wild animal. I’ve been with women who have bitten me, but nothing like this.’
‘He’s a human being from another part of the world. He’s on a temporary visit.’
The man looked at Daniel. ‘Does he eat human flesh?’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘It felt like he was trying to tear off a piece of my hand.’
‘He eats exactly the same food as you or I.’
The man shook his head. ‘Life gets odder and odder. All this work. And then one night you meet a black boy who’s skipping on your head. Will it ever end?’
‘Will what end?’
The man shrugged his shoulders and cast about with his bandaged hand in the air, as if searching for a word that was actually an insect.
‘Life. Which doesn’t make much sense as it is.’
Then another thought occurred to him.
‘He isn’t sick, is he?’
‘Why should he be sick?’
‘What do you know about the diseases he might be carrying? Last year smallpox raged through the city, and this spring the children were shitting themselves to death.’
‘He’s not infectious. You won’t turn black if you touch him.’
The man shook his head and disappeared down the stairs. Father closed the door.
‘I can understand that you were scared but you mustn’t bite people.’
‘He came in and I didn’t say “Come in”.’
Father nodded slowly.
‘You still have a lot to learn,’ he said. ‘But I’ll protect you as best I can.’
In the packet he had fish that tasted strongly of salt. Daniel almost threw up after the first bite.
‘You have to eat,’ Father said. ‘I don’t have any other food.’
Daniel took another bite. But when Father turned away to sneeze, he spat the food into his hand and kept it clenched under the table.
After the meal Father lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Daniel tried to enter his head and see his thoughts. He knew it was possible, Be had told him about it. A person you knew well did not have to say much, you could work out what she was thinking.
But Father was far away. Daniel imagined he could see him lying stretched out on a mattress in Andersson’s house, in the room that had smelled so rank from the ivory.
The light from the candle flickered over his face. Daniel wondered about the pinched and often so sombre faces he encountered in this country. T
he girls who had skipped in the courtyard had laughed, even the one who was very fat, but the grown-ups here were not like Be or Kiko. Life must be hard if they couldn’t even manage a smile. Or their thoughts made it impossible for them to laugh.
But he knew that this wasn’t true. From the street he kept hearing people laughing. He thought about Kiko, who sometimes grew tired of all his questions. Now he felt that he was growing tired of himself. He could have been lying there in the sand, with his limbs hacked off and the blood flowing, but he was alive, and one day he would finish painting the antelope that Kiko had started. The gods were waiting there inside the rock, and he couldn’t forsake them. That would be like forsaking Be and Kiko and the others who had been killed, or all those who had died before them.
The candle had almost burned down. Father was asleep. Daniel blew out the flame, waited until its glowing wick was swallowed up by the darkness, and then undressed and crept into bed. Far below him he could hear a man snoring. He didn’t regret biting the man on the hand. It had been necessary to defend his rope. But maybe he had bitten too hard.
The next day Father led him through the narrow, stinking alleys to a square where a man was sitting on a horse.
‘That’s a statue,’ Father said. ‘A man who will never move. He will always sit there and point. Until someone tips the statue over one day.’
They cut across the square and went through a big, tall gateway. The staircase was very wide. When they got halfway up the stairs Father stopped and put his hands on Daniel’s shoulders.
‘The most important thing now is to get some money,’ he said. ‘A man lives here who wants to measure and draw you. For that he will pay us money. I wrote to him from Hovmantorp. He’s waiting for us.’
Daniel didn’t know what the word measure meant, Or the word draw either, but he knew that what he was supposed to do now was something good. Father looked at him with a smile. His eyes were wide open now, not absent-looking as they were so often when he spoke to him.
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