Daniel

by Henning Mankell

  They entered an apartment that was very large. A woman in a white apron asked them to wait. She gave a start when she first saw Daniel, even though he remembered to bow.

  After a while a man in a long red dressing gown with a pipe in his mouth came in through a curtained entrance. He moved soundlessly. Daniel discovered to his surprise that the man was barefoot. He had no hair on his head but his face was covered by a beard. He smiled.

  ‘Hans Bengler,’ he said. ‘Six years ago we sat on a bench outside the cathedral in Lund.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I told you the truth. Do you remember?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘That nothing would ever become of you.’

  Father laughed.

  ‘You had no dreams. You didn’t want to do anything. But something must have happened.’

  ‘I began to take an interest in insects.’

  ‘I read what you wrote in your letter. Is your vain father dead?’

  ‘He is gone.’

  ‘And you inherited?’

  ‘Almost nothing.’

  ‘That’s a shame. Parents who don’t leave anything to their children are worthless. My father was a very unimportant man who nevertheless was clever enough to speculate in British railway stock. That’s why I can now forgive him for his otherwise wretched life.’

  The man with no hair knocked his pipe out in a silver bowl.

  ‘I said back then that you would never amount to anything.’

  ‘Nor have I. But I did discover a hitherto unknown insect in the Kalahari Desert.’

  ‘And you have a black boy with you. Do you sleep between his legs?’

  Father was upset. Daniel didn’t understand why.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Just what I said. Some men prefer their own sex. Particularly if they’re exotic young men. I had a professor of geology who was forced to cut his own throat. Stable boys used to be called up to his flat. The matter was hushed up, naturally. But everyone knew about it.’

  ‘He’s an orphan. I’ve adopted him. There’s nothing improper in what I’m doing.’

  ‘I’m known for asking impertinent questions. Surely you haven’t forgotten that?’

  Father threw his arms out and then put one of them protectively around Daniel’s shoulders.

  ‘I’m leaving him here.’

  Father squatted down in front of Daniel and said to him, ‘This man’s name is Alfred Boman, and he’s an artist. He does pictures of people. He draws them. He is also interested in how people look in another way. A scientific way. He measures their heads, the length of their feet, the distance between their mouth and eyes. I’ll leave you here and you must do as he says. I’ll come to get you this evening.’

  Then he was alone with the man named Alfred. He smiled and walked all the way round Daniel. Then he turned and went back the other way. His pipe smoke smelled rank. The man was also surrounded by a smell of perfume, but above all he was barefoot. Daniel had sores from the new shoes he had been given before they left the house in the forest.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ said the man.

  Daniel followed him. The walls were covered with pictures. Stiff, pale people stood on some tables, but compared to the man on the horse they were small and white as if their skeletons had come out through their skin. They entered a room with a big window in the ceiling. Along the walls hung various pictures. On a table lay paints in tubes and tins.

  Daniel noticed that one of the pictures showed an animal that resembled the antelope that Kiko had worked on. Unlike the picture that Kiko had carved into the rock, this animal was utterly still. Its face was turned towards Daniel and it looked directly into his eyes. The man who had made the picture was very skilled.

  ‘A stag,’ said the man. ‘I painted it when I didn’t have anything else to do. I only paint animals when people make me too discouraged.’

  Daniel couldn’t tear himself away from the picture.

  ‘It’s telling you something,’ said the man with the pipe. ‘The only question is what.’

  Daniel didn’t reply. He cautiously touched the picture with his fingertips. The eyes were very dark, not red like Kiko’s antelope.

  Suddenly Kiko was there with him. Daniel could hear him breathing. Then a cloud of smoke from the pipe hit his face and the breathing was gone.

  ‘You must stand on this blue cloth,’ said the man, who had put down his pipe. ‘You can put your clothes there on the chair.’

  Daniel undressed. There was a fire burning in a stove right next to where he was supposed to stand. The man had put on a pair of gloves and was holding a paintbrush in his hand. He walked around Daniel again, touched his arm, and asked him to stand with his legs further apart.

  ‘Humans are strange animals,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll call this picture Black Saviour.’

  Then he grabbed a piece of paper, stretched it on a wooden easel, and began choosing among drawing pencils and paintbrushes. Daniel stood motionless. Now and then he was given a chance to rest. The woman who had answered the door brought in some food. She avoided looking at Daniel’s naked body. Daniel was hungry, so he ate a lot very fast. The man, who kept smiling all the time, observed his appetite.

  ‘If I could, I’d help you go back,’ he said. ‘Here you’ll be merely a strange creature that other people pay to look at, not a human being who really exists.’

  He kept drawing. Daniel tried to understand what he meant. But it was taking all his strength to stand still.

  Late in the afternoon the man put down his brushes and fetched some instruments that he fastened on various parts of Daniel’s head. He made notes in a book, asked Daniel to open his mouth wide, stuck his fingers in his armpits, tickled him on the soles of his feet, spread his buttocks, and pulled on his member to see how long it could stretch, and the whole time he took notes.

  Afterwards Daniel was told to put his clothes on. He left off the shoes. The man nodded to him to come and look at what he had drawn.

  Daniel went over to the easel. He saw his own face and body.

  There he was on the paper. Under his feet was the blue cloth. It was his hair, his eyes, his mouth.

  Now I’m like the antelope in the rock, he thought.

  I am untouchable.

  Behind me are the gods. And they are waiting for me to come back.

  CHAPTER 14

  On their second night Daniel left the room in the attic, slipped like a shadow down the stairs and vanished into the darkness outside. Father had not locked the door. He had come home late with shiny eyes and he was reeling. With a guilty conscience he looked at Daniel, but he didn’t say a word before he tumbled into bed, as if he had returned from a long, unsuccessful hunt. Daniel realised that he had to start preparing for his journey back to the desert very soon. The antelope was crying to become complete inside him, and he had to learn to walk on water, before he was completely swallowed up by the world where he was now. He went out at night to look for the water. Each time Father took him out he tried to memorise the many streets, and where the water glistened and where it was swallowed up by the tall buildings that spread out like a shapeless mountain range. He had understood that he was in a ravine; the people in this country lived in caves hollowed out of cliffs which they seemed to build themselves. They hadn’t risen up from underground, hadn’t been cast out of the gods’ invisible ribcages, like the mountains he had known before. He had to find his way out of the ravine, he had to do it himself, and he needed water so he could practise walking on the thin surface.

  When he reached the cobblestone street he stopped. The air was cool, in a different way from what he was used to. The nights in the desert could be cold, but there was always the lingering scent of the sun that sooner or later would come up on the horizon and spread warmth again. Here he couldn’t find that scent. The cold came from underground, beneath the soles of his feet. For a moment he almost changed his mind. He would get lost in the dark and the cold, maybe nev
er find his way back. The hissing gaslights illuminated patches of the street. A rat ran quickly past his feet and vanished into a hole in the cliff. He took care not to enter the circles of light. The people who stared at him in the daytime might think he was an animal at night and chase him.

  He stood utterly still and tried to remember where the water was. The shortest way was to follow the street in the direction it sloped. He had gone there earlier in the day when Father took him along to a cellar to get food. Just before they went into the cellar he had glimpsed the water. He hadn’t been that close since they arrived in the city.

  He huddled up against the stone wall when a horse and carriage rattled past. The man on the coach box was asleep. The horse walked slowly with its head down. Then two men came staggering the way Father did. They groaned and leaned against the walls of the buildings, as if they were sick or wounded by spears or snakebite.

  Daniel picked up the smell from their bodies. It was a sweetish stench, as from dead animals.

  Afterwards it was quiet. He cautiously started down the street, watching carefully where he put his feet. Even in this ravine there could be snakes, poisonous lizards, or scorpions. He hadn’t seen any yet, but in the desert he was used to animals who only came out at night. He stepped in something slimy and saw that it was excrement, but not from an animal. He could tell from the smell; it wasn’t a dog, but a person. In the desert they always covered up their leavings. Why did they have to put stones on the streets so people couldn’t hide their excrement? He didn’t understand, and he knew that Father wouldn’t be able to explain it to him either. He dipped his foot in a puddle of old rainwater and scraped it clean against the rough stones. Very close to him, across the street, someone coughed. Again it was as if Kiko were right next to him. He thought he could hear him breathing into his ear. But there was no antelope carved into the wall, only a god who sat there coughing.

  Daniel went on.

  Under one of the hissing lamps he glimpsed a lone woman. She was walking back and forth, as if she were waiting for someone. Her clothes were dirty but had once been colourful. She reminded Daniel of a bird in a cage, like those he had seen at Andersson’s: chickens before they were sold or slaughtered. She was wearing a hat with a plume, and he could see from her face that she was very young, but she had dressed like someone who wanted to seem older. When she turned her face away and for a brief moment stepped out of the light, he hastened on. He noticed that he had begun to shiver. Maybe there were already hunters after him that he couldn’t hear. He picked up speed. He was at the cellar now, where they had gone down to eat. It was lit up and smelled of roasted meat from the door that stood ajar. Now he had to turn left, follow a ravine that was very narrow, and then he would be at the sea.

  He hurried on and soon picked up the scent of the water. There were vessels packed tightly along the quay. On some of them there were men pulling on lines to keep the boats moving. Earlier in the day Father had explained that there were fish in those boats, fish that looked like snakes, which would die if the boats didn’t rock back and forth and fresh seawater didn’t flow in through the holes in the hulls. Lamps with flickering lights hung on the masts. Daniel almost stumbled over a man who lay sleeping next to some barrels. He moved carefully along at the edge of the light from the fires on the quay where men were sitting and playing cards. At last he found a staircase among the stones that led down to the water’s surface. Close by there were some small rowing boats tied up. In one of them lay an old woman curled up asleep. Daniel moved cautiously so he wouldn’t wake her. He felt the water with his hand. It was cold. He tried to make his hand light, turn his fingers into feathers, so that they wouldn’t sink into the water. Then he tried with his foot. The water is like an animal, he thought. I have to be able to caress its pelt without making it twitch. Only then will it let me walk without everything breaking and me falling through. He still hadn’t mastered the art. The animal’s pelt kept twitching. His hand was like an insect irritating the animal. He realised that it would take a long time for the sea to get used to his hands and then his feet.

  The woman in the rowing boat moved. Daniel held his breath. She muttered something and went back to sleep. The water was very cold now, and it kept twitching. Daniel whispered to it, the way Be had taught him to whisper to anxious dogs who scented beasts of prey. For a moment he thought the animal seemed to be listening. His hand was floating on the water. It was holding. But then the pelt twitched again. Still, he was satisfied. He would be able to learn this. It would take time, but he would come back to the water every night; he would make the wet pelt grew accustomed to him, and one day he would succeed.

  He stood up to go back to the attic room where Father lay sleeping. The woman in the rowing boat was snoring. Daniel looked at the mooring line. It was a worn rope, brushy and fraying, that was carelessly looped round a stone post. He wondered what would happen if he loosened the rope. Be was there at once to warn him. He often did things that weren’t permitted. Loosened ropes so that people tripped over them, put strong herbs in the food, scared people by painting the white bones of death on his face. Be was never really angry. She would first pull him by the arm, maybe slap him on the cheek, but then she always burst out laughing. She will end up laughing now too, he thought. Carefully he loosened the rope and the boat slid slowly away from the quay. He couldn’t manage to stifle a laugh. Since there was no one about, he let it burst out. He laughed straight out into the night as he hadn’t done since the day the men came and killed Be and Kiko. He flung the laugh into the darkness, and he knew that they would hear him.

  Then he went back the same way he had come. When he reached the hissing lamp where the girl who looked like a bird had stood waiting, he saw that she was gone. Something made him cross the street to the other side. Then he heard her, she was panting somewhere nearby, in the dark, behind some barrels. It sounded like she was having a hard time breathing. He crept deeper into the darkness until he saw her, in the pale light from a window. She stood leaning against the wall with her skirt hitched up, and a man was leaning heavily against her. He was the one who was moaning. Daniel thought at first that the man was trying to slaughter her, that she actually was a bird. Then he realised that they were doing the same thing that Be and Kiko used to do, though they hadn’t panted, they had laughed, talked, and then grown silent.

  At that moment the woman turned her face to him. Her eyes were open. Then she screamed. The man didn’t want to let her go, but she scratched him on the face, pointed at Daniel and screamed again.

  Daniel rushed off in the dark with her screams behind him. Somewhere a bell began to toll. He crossed the street again and ran along the cliff so fast that he almost missed the door that led to the staircase and the room where Father was sleeping. He knew that they were hunting him now, all those people who stared at him when he walked at Father’s side during the daylight hours.

  When he came into the room Father was lying in the same position as when Daniel had left, but he must have been awake, because he had thrown up on the floor. No one was coming up the stairs, no hunters, no dogs. Daniel wiped his feet with a rag and cleaned up the vomit by the bed. Then he crept into bed behind Father’s back, curled up and closed his eyes tightly so that the antelope would dare come out. It loosened itself from the rock, took a leap and stood before him with nostrils flaring.

  Daniel woke up because someone was crying.

  The sound forced its way into his dreams. At first he thought it was one of the many children belonging to Be’s sister Kisa. They were always falling down, and they cried often. Then the sand and the heat disappeared and when he woke up from the dream it was Father he saw. He had taken off all his clothes and was sitting naked on a chair, crying with a bottle in his hand. Daniel looked at him through half-closed eyes. It wasn’t the first time he had seen Father cry after coming home with shiny eyes. Whatever he drank had weeping in it. Daniel knew it would pass, that he would suddenly stop and then stand for a long t
ime examining his face in the mirror. He would scold the mirror and sometimes shout. Usually he said the first word Daniel had ever learned, damn, damn, like a long chant, more and more furious.

  Afterwards everything would go back to normal. Father would be quieter than usual today, complaining about his headache and becoming impatient if Daniel didn’t immediately grasp what he was saying.

  Suddenly Father turned to face him.

  ‘I see that you’re awake. I also see that you cleaned up after me last night.’

  Daniel sat up in bed.

  ‘I had a strange dream that you were gone,’ Father went on. ‘But when I woke up you were asleep behind my back.’

  He stood up, but did not stop in front of the mirror the way he usually did. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took Daniel’s hand.

  ‘Today’s an important day. I don’t have any money and I can’t pay for this room. That’s why what I’ve decided to do has to be a success - what’s going to happen this evening. I need your help. I need to be sure you will do as I say.’

  Daniel nodded. He understood.

  ‘Tonight I’m going to tell people about my journey through the desert. I’m going to display some of the insects and I’m going to display you. They will pay me for this. If it goes well, other people will ask to see both the insects and you. They will pay for it, and we will be able to move to a better room.’

  Father was still naked. Daniel saw that he had big blue bruises on one arm. Apparently he had fallen down last night on his way home in the dark when he couldn’t make his feet move properly.

  ‘There’s nothing difficult about it,’ Father went on. ‘I’m going to stand up in front of people on a little platform. I’ll show the insects, point at a map and speak in a loud voice so everyone can hear. You will sit on a chair next to me. When I say your name you will stand up, bow and say your name. My name is Daniel. I believe in God. That’s all. When I ask you to open your mouth you will do so, when I ask you to laugh you will laugh, not too long, not too loud, and when I ask you to puff out your cheeks like an animal you will do it. Then you will take your skipping rope and show everyone how skilled you are. And that’s all. If someone wants to come up and touch you, you will let them. Believe me, no one wishes you any harm. But above all you must remember that we will get money so that we can leave this damn room and move somewhere better. Do you understand?’