Daniel

by Henning Mankell

  Edvin went outside. Daniel closed his eyes. Alma kept rubbing his feet. Daniel tried to imagine Father’s face, but he was gone. Maybe he wasn’t even alive any longer. Then Daniel would have lost two fathers. First Kiko and then Father. Daniel often tried to work out what had happened that evening when the woman with the buttons was alone with Father. Everything that took place after that, the plans that were changed, had been affected by something that happened then. Daniel searched for an answer that he couldn’t find. How could Father just leave him here? In a place where there wasn’t even any sea? There were only the ponds in the beech woods and the puddles in the fields after a long rain.

  Daniel didn’t know how long Father had been away. He knew that days, weeks, and months had passed. The only thing he was sure of was that the moon had been full four times since he left. It had grown colder, and the earth had changed and turned white.

  For the first few days Daniel thought that he had been left far from the sea so that he would die. Maybe he had also hoped during that time that Father might come back. But late one evening, when Edvin had been drinking and was tipsy, Daniel had listened to a conversation between him and Alma in the bedroom. They were talking about Father. The first payment of ten riksdaler had arrived. It had been sent to Hornman the organist, who often handled estate inventories and was an honest man. Edvin had said that Father would probably never come back, but as long as the money arrived on time they didn’t have to worry. Alma asked about the future. What would happen when Daniel was bigger? And Edvin replied that he would be a farmhand like the others.

  In that instant Father had vanished for good. He had been transformed into a shadow. And Daniel started to hate him. He was an evil man behind all his friendly words.

  That was also when Daniel started to make a plan.

  It had come to him from a bird.

  Every morning when the hired hand was working with Edvin out in the fields and the girls were milking, Daniel went up onto a hill behind the house. From there he could see the horizon. Black birds that always seemed restless were riding on the updraughts or screeching in a clump of trees in the middle of the nearest field.

  On this particular morning a lone seagull had joined the flock. The black birds chased it off, and as it left, the gull sailed right over Daniel’s head. He remembered that bird. There had been flocks of them around the ship that brought him here. Whenever they approached land the birds had appeared. Daniel realised that the gull had come to remind him that the sea was still there, even if he couldn’t see it.

  He had to prepare for his escape. Without attracting attention, he had to find out in which direction the sea lay. Then he would take off. He would find somewhere he could be alone and learn to walk on the water. No one would find him, even though they would surely look for him.

  There was no danger from the two milkmaids and the hired hand, but Edvin and Alma were always trying to see inside him and read his thoughts. He had to build a shell around himself that their eyes could not penetrate.

  The most important thing was for him to act friendly and humour them. Even though he hated the shoes he was forced to wear, he would try to avoid showing his disgust. Only when he was alone would he kick them off and walk barefoot on the ground, which was growing colder all the time. He would do as he was told. Whenever Alma or Edvin asked him for help he would do more than they asked of him.

  But this morning he was unsuccessful. He woke up and saw all that whiteness and he couldn’t control himself. Now he had to be careful so that Edvin and Alma would not discover his secret.

  Alma finished rubbing his feet. She had bad teeth but he liked her smile anyway.

  ‘Are you warm now?’

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘Then you can get dressed and go and play.’

  Daniel went outside. The white on the ground had been trampled. He stood completely still in the yard and looked at the smoke that came out of his mouth every time he breathed. As soon as the girls were finished milking he would go into the barn. It was warm in there. He would have liked to sleep there with the animals, bedded down in their straw.

  One of the piglets had escaped from its pen and was snuffling around in all the white. Daniel didn’t like the pigs, though he didn’t know why. He liked their smell but he was afraid of their eyes. They looked at him as if they wanted to do him harm. He was sure that they had once been people who had died and now had come back to live another life. But they must have been evil people, since they didn’t come back as horses or cows.

  He looked at the pig snuffling closer and closer to him. He took a step to the side. But the pig followed him. Suddenly it began to change. It had a human face now, a face that Daniel had seen before. He jumped out of the way but the pig kept following him. He yelled. It was Kiko who had taught him that loud noises could keep beasts of prey away. He also knew that you should never look a beast of prey in the eye or it might attack. Kiko had taught him that animals had to be handled in different ways. If a snake raised its head to spit poison, you should stand motionless and hold your breath.

  But Kiko had never seen a pig. Daniel’s shouting didn’t help. The pig kept coming closer. Daniel searched his memory in vain for where he had seen this face before.

  Then he knew.

  It was the man who had killed Kiko. The pig was the same man who had shot Kiko and then kicked his dead body. Daniel looked around for a weapon, but there was nothing in the yard apart from him and the pig that kept coming closer and closer. He tore off one of his wooden shoes and slammed it hard on the pig’s head. It shrieked. He hit it again. Now the pig’s legs began to give way. The yard was slippery. It tried to get away but Daniel kept hitting it. Somewhere behind him he heard Alma yelling. Then the hired hand and Edvin came running up. The milkmaids stood in the doorway of the barn. And Daniel kept hitting. He didn’t stop even when Edvin tossed him aside. By then the pig was dead. Its blood had run out onto the white ground. In the moment of death the pig had shut its eyes. Daniel knew that he had conquered the man who killed Kiko. He now had his revenge. Kiko would have been proud of him.

  Edvin stared in astonishment at the dead animal.

  ‘He beat it to death with his wooden shoe,’ said Alma.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Edvin looked at Daniel. Daniel could feel that he had his shell on now. Edvin couldn’t see into him.

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  Daniel didn’t answer. Edvin wouldn’t understand anyway. No one would understand.

  ‘Why did you do it? Why kill a little piglet with a wooden shoe?’

  ‘He’s crazy,’ the hired hand blurted out. ‘He’s crazy and he doesn’t belong here.’

  ‘He lives here,’ shouted Edvin. ‘I’m getting ten riksdaler a month for him. He lives here and he will stay here.’

  The hired hand spat but didn’t dare reply.

  Edvin looked at Daniel again. Daniel moved away.

  ‘He saw what you were thinking,’ said Alma. ‘He saw that you were thinking of hitting him. And you did.’

  ‘I haven’t touched him.’

  ‘But he could feel the blow you were thinking of giving him.’

  Edvin motioned the hired hand to take away the dead animal. Alma called to the milkmaids to go back inside the barn.

  ‘This won’t do any longer. We’ll have to talk to the pastor. Maybe he can get him to say why he did it.’

  ‘He wants to go home,’ said Alma. ‘It can’t be anything else. He wants to go home.’

  ‘But he doesn’t have a home, does he? Aren’t they all dead? That’s what Bengler said.’

  ‘That man is a big windbag. I didn’t believe half of what he said.’

  Edvin looked at his hands. He said no more. Then he went back out in the field.

  ‘What harm did the pig do you?’ asked Alma.

  From her hand Daniel could feel that she wasn’t angry with him. He put his fingers cautiously around her wrist to feel
her pulse and sensed that it beat just as calmly as Be’s heart used to do. But at the same time he knew that he couldn’t answer her question. He could say something that wasn’t true, of course, that he didn’t know why he felt compelled to kill the pig, but she would never understand that the evil man who had once killed Kiko had searched for him and changed himself into a pig.

  So he said the only words he knew would never be misunderstood.

  ‘My name is Daniel. I believe in God.’

  He put on his wooden shoes and left Alma. One shoe was bloody. He could feel his foot sticking to it. Alma stood and looked at him. She’s the one who can see inside me, Daniel thought. I have to watch out for her. But at the same time she’s the one who understands that I’m not actually here, I am somewhere else.

  He went up onto the hill behind the house. Far out in the fields he could see Edvin and the hired hand. They were busy moving away a large stone. The wind had begun to blow. The black birds sat motionless and silent in the clump of trees. Daniel searched for the seagull. He listened. Sometimes he thought he could hear drums in the distance, but then he realised that it was only the wind that blew across the fields and then was gone.

  He was cold and his nose was running. No matter how much he sniffled, his nose was always full. In the desert he had never had a cold. There he was sometimes struck by fever or had a stomach ache, but he had never had a runny nose.

  He kept on gazing at the horizon. Edvin and the hired hand had managed to get the stone onto a wooden sledge. The two horses were pulling and straining at the sledge. Daniel had noticed that Edvin never hit his horses. Father had whipped his oxen. Sometimes he had loosed some unknown wrath on them, even though they were pulling as best they could, but Edvin never struck the horses. He might slap the reins, but never so hard that it hurt the animals.

  Daniel continued to scan the horizon as he slowly turned round.

  He saw something moving on a cart track on the other side of the hill. It led to a neighbouring farm where a family named Hermansson lived. Soon after Father had left, people from this farm had come to have a look at him. He had shaken hands, bowed and avoided looking them in the eye. They were young people, and they stood silently with mouths agape, watching him. Finally it was too much for Alma, who told Daniel to go out to the barn, and then served coffee to the guests. He had stayed in the barn until he heard the clop of hooves in the yard. He had peeked through a crack in the barn wall, and when the neighbours were gone he came out.

  ‘They’ll get used to you,’ Alma said. ‘But it’s terrible the way people can stare.’

  Daniel fixed his gaze on what was moving along the cart track. At first he thought it was an animal. Then he saw that it was a person. A woman. She was running. He hadn’t seen her before. She was heading towards the hill. He moved aside and hid behind some bushes.

  When she reached the top of the hill he saw that it was a girl. He guessed that she was older than the girls who had skipped in the courtyard in Simrishamn. He lay motionless behind the bushes and watched her. Her clothes were dirty and she had clumps of mud in her blonde hair. Daniel wondered what she was up to. She was squatting down and scratching with her fingers in the mud. After a while he realised she was searching for something. As she dug she muttered, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He could see that she was in a hurry. She gave up on the first hole she scratched. Then she put her ear to the ground and crawled about until she stopped and began digging again.

  Daniel sneezed.

  It came on him so quickly that he couldn’t stifle the sound. The girl gave a start and saw him at once behind the bushes. She’s going to scream, he thought. It’ll be the same way as with the pig. Edvin and Alma will come dashing over and this time Edvin will do what he’s thinking of doing. His heavy hand will fall like a stone on my head and it will hurt.

  Daniel stood up. But the girl didn’t scream. She didn’t even stare. She smiled and started to laugh. She got up out of the mud and came over to him. He could smell the urine and dirt on her. On her forehead along the hairline he saw dried mud.

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ said the girl. ‘But they wouldn’t let me come along and see you. They thought I’d behave badly.’

  She spoke rapidly and her words sounded mushy in her thick dialect. Yet he could still understand what she said.

  She grabbed hold of his hand.

  ‘You’re completely black,’ she said. ‘In the church there’s a devil on the wall. He’s black too. Do you come from hell?’

  ‘I come from the desert.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is. But your name is Daniel?’

  ‘I believe in God.’

  ‘I don’t. But you can’t tell anyone that.’

  The girl was still holding his hand. He took hold of her wrist, just as he had done with Alma. The girl’s heart was beating hard.

  ‘What were you searching for?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Sometimes I hear voices in the mud. As if someone is trapped down there. I try to help them. But I never find anyone.’

  She let go of his hand and spat out some pebbles.

  ‘I like to chew on pebbles. Sometimes I can make them clack. Do you chew on pebbles?’

  Daniel shook his head.

  ‘My name is Sanna,’ said the girl. ‘And I’m crazy.’

  Then she ran off. Daniel watched her go. For the first time since Father left him he felt like laughing.

  She ran along the cart track.

  He watched her until she disappeared.

  CHAPTER 21

  Every morning David Hallén repeated the same ritual. Just after seven he would leave the dilapidated parsonage and walk across the road to the church. Inside the sacristy he swept out the mouse droppings that always awaited him. During the night the mice usually tried to nibble at the hymnals and the Bible on the table in the whitewashed room.

  Then he would stand in front of the mirror with his head bowed, take a deep breath, and look at his face. Every morning he hoped that it wouldn’t be his own face that met him, but the face of the God he served. But it was his own features that looked back at him with eyes wide, a nose that was growing redder all the time and those pale cheeks that were always poorly shaven.

  This morning too he encountered his own face in the mirror. Since he still hadn’t given up hope that a miracle might occur, he felt the same disappointment he had felt so many mornings before. He had now been the pastor of the congregation for eighteen years. When he was young he had dreamed of the mission, that his poor congregation far out on the wind-lashed plain of Skåne would be one step on a long journey. But he had never gone any further. The fields had become his ocean. He had never reached the foreign lands where the heat was strong, the diseases perilous and the black people thirsted for salvation. He had remained here. The children had come too quickly and there were far too many of them. The years had passed before he actually noticed and now he was too old to start over. The mud would hold him here until he dropped.

  David Hallén was a stern pastor, and he had an energy that could sometimes drive him to rage. He was impatient, couldn’t stand the inertia he felt all around him, and often wondered whether there was actually any difference between saving black souls and dealing with these dull farmers. Sometimes he felt like giving up, but the face he met in the mirror each morning reminded him of why he was standing there. He was a servant who could finish his service only when he was dead or so paralysed that he could no longer climb into the pulpit.

  He heard the church door close and knew who had come in. Alma, who never fell asleep during a sermon and always sang loudly even if she was off-key, had stood and curtsied in the doorway of the parsonage and told him about the black boy who was living with her and Edvin. Hallén hadn’t met him yet. He knew that the boy had come, he knew Dr Madsen well, but he had been away on a long trip to Dalarna to bury his sister when the boy had arrived. Alma had stood there and asked for help. The boy had killed a pig, he refused to wear shoes
, and nobody knew exactly what to do with him.

  Hallén had told Alma to send the boy to the church by himself. He had also admonished her not to frighten him, just say that the pastor was a friendly man who wanted to meet everyone who lived in the parish.

  He stepped out of the sacristy. The light filtering in through the windows was still faint. It was hard to see in the gloom. Then he noticed Daniel standing at the very back by the church entrance. He started down the centre aisle. The boy didn’t move. Hallén saw that he had shoes on his feet. When he had almost reached the boy he saw him raise his hand and knock as if there were a door.

  ‘Come in,’ said Hallén. ‘But you don’t need to knock when there’s no door.’

  Daniel fell to his knees and grabbed hold of one of Hallén’s muddy shoes.

  ‘You don’t have to kneel down either,’ said Hallén. ‘Get up.’

  Daniel did as he was told. Hallén looked him over. The boy’s eyes were alert. He seemed to be ready for something to happen to him. Hallén hadn’t heard the whole story about why the boy had been lodged with Alma and Edvin. All he really knew was that the boy had been adopted by a man who was searching for rare insects and who suddenly felt compelled to set out on a long journey.

  ‘So you’re Daniel,’ said Hallén.

  ‘My name is Daniel and I believe in God.’

  Hallén looked at the boy thoughtfully. The boy seemed to be taking his measure. His gaze made him uncertain for a moment. The boy wasn’t looking directly at him, but slightly to the side. Hallén turned round. It was the altarpiece the boy was looking at. The image of Jesus had hung there since the 1700s. A chip of wood had come off one knee but it had never been repaired.