Then he started coughing. Edvin took a step back, while Alma did the opposite. She leaned towards his face and fluffed up the pillow behind his head.
Afterwards, when Alma explained to him what had happened, he realised that he had been asleep for a very long time. She held up a mirror so that he could see why his face hurt and he saw that he had big wounds on his forehead and across his nose that had not yet healed.
‘You hit an ice floe,’ said Alma. ‘It cut up your face. But you didn’t sink. For that, I have thanked God every day and every night.’
Daniel tried to recall what had happened. He wondered where all his dreams had gone. He couldn’t remember a thing. The last thing he had seen was the black water coming towards him like the open mouth of a beast of prey.
He stopped talking during the months he lay in bed. The hired hand moved out to a room that was hastily prepared in the barn. Alma set up two screens in front of the milkmaids’ beds. Even though she strictly forbade it, they used to peek at him from behind the screens. Daniel didn’t mind. He listened to his heart, which was still in flight. Even though his legs had stopped, his heart kept on running. Now and then Dr Madsen would come to visit. He felt and listened to Daniel’s chest and rubbed salves on his face. Daniel always closed his eyes when he came into the room. He didn’t want to see the doctor’s face because he hadn’t let him stay on the ship.
At the end of each visit Dr Madsen would repeat the same words.
‘The boy has a bad cold. And a cough that I don’t much like.’
The fever made Daniel tired. Most of the time he slept.
What was hardest for those around him was his silence. Even though he didn’t want to make Alma sad, he couldn’t speak. In his dreams, which slowly returned, he had reverted to his old language.
Pastor Hallén came to visit once a week. Daniel knew when he was coming because Alma always cleaned beforehand. Hallén would sit down on a chair a short distance from the bed and ask to be left alone with Daniel. Then he would fold his hands and say a prayer. Through his half-closed eyelids Daniel would try to see if he had a hammer and nails in his pocket, but the fact that he was sick and lying in bed seemed to have saved him from the boards.
Hallén prayed that Daniel would get well and regain his ability to speak. Each time he asked Daniel the same question, whether he wanted to hear about the time when Jesus walked on the water, but Daniel closed his eyes and lay motionless.
He thought he had heard enough. Only Be or Kiko could give him the words he longed for.
The only person he really wanted to see during those months he lay in bed never came. That was Sanna. Once he heard Alma whispering to Edvin that maybe they ought to ask the girl to come, since Daniel obviously liked her. But Edvin was hesitant. Dr Madsen had said she was not suitable company for him. She might make him upset because she was unpredictable.
Daniel slept during the day and lay awake at night when the house was quiet and the milkmaids were snoring behind the screens. Sometimes he would get up, especially when the moon was out, take his skipping rope and silently skip in the kitchen until he used up all his strength.
One night Alma opened the door. She saw him skipping but didn’t say a word, just closed the door again, and he knew that she would never tell anyone, not even Edvin.
Spring was already on the way when Daniel got out of bed one day and moved to the barn. He could no longer stand the snoring of the milkmaids. Alma and Edvin were standing in he yard when he came out of the door early one morning and walked straight over to the barn. He made himself a bed underneath the stairs that led up to the hayloft and lay down. After a while Alma came in. She chased out the curious milkmaids, and for the first time Daniel heard the way she yelled at them.
‘You don’t have to stare as if you’d never seen him before!’ she shouted.
When the milkmaids were gone, she squatted down beside Daniel. She had a bad back and her knees were stiff.
‘You can’t sleep here,’ she said. ‘If you do, you’ll never get rid of your cough.’
Daniel pulled the blanket he had taken with him over his head. He refused to answer. Then he heard Edvin come in.
‘Why does he have to sleep out here?’ said Edvin. ‘And how can we find out if he won’t answer, and we have no idea what he’s thinking? He isn’t lonely. He seems to be surrounded by people I can’t see.’
‘There’s nobody else here but you and me. You’re imagining things.’
‘Can’t you feel it? It’s like a fog around him.’
‘He’s dying of longing,’ said Alma. ‘Bengler has to take him back to the desert.’
‘That man is never coming back,’ Edvin said. ‘We can’t even be sure that he’s still alive.’
Daniel jerked the blanket down from his face.
‘At least he can still hear,’ Edvin said. ‘Just don’t ask me to carry him inside, or he’ll sink his teeth into my throat.’
‘The hired hand can move back into the house and the boy can take his room.’
‘If he lay down here then it’s because this is where he wants to be.’
Daniel turned his head and looked into Edvin’s eyes.
‘I feel like I’m looking at an old man,’ said Edvin. ‘And yet he’s only nine or ten years old.’
‘He’s dying of longing.’
‘But what is it he’s longing for? Parents who are dead? Sand that burns under his feet?’
‘He’s longing for home. Whatever it is, that’s where he longs to be.’
The hired hand moved back to the kitchen but his room remained empty. Daniel continued to sleep underneath the stairs to the hayloft. Alma came and gave him food, and shouted at the milkmaids when they were too inquisitive.
Daniel still slept during the day. At night when he was alone with the animals, he would get up and skip between the stalls. Edvin had hung up two lanterns in the barn, which he lit every evening. Sometimes, when it rained, Daniel would go outside and feel the raindrops striking his face. The fever was gone but he still had the cough. And a strange weariness that never went away no matter how much he slept.
The nights had gradually grown lighter and shorter. Daniel started going up to the hill when it was quiet in the house. He had a feeling that Alma was standing like an invisible shadow behind a window, watching him. But he trusted her, her and Sanna, and maybe even Edvin. All the others had betrayed him. He still hoped that Sanna would come back. He left signs for her on the hill, wrote his name in the dirt, left his shoes there, but whenever he returned there was never any trace of her. One night he ventured down to the house where she lived. He tried to look in through the low windows, find the place where she slept. But the only thing he could hear through the wall was someone snoring, and Daniel knew it was the man who had dragged her off by the hair.
He calculated that three full moons had come and gone by the time he felt able to think again. He would run away one more time. If he didn’t succeed in getting home he would die. If they caught him again he would be tied up and he would never have the strength to get loose.
He thought that death might not be so frightening. Kiko was dead, and Be too, but he could still talk to them. Even though they lay buried in the sand, they could still laugh. He also remembered how Be had given birth to him in the treetop and then changed her arms into wings. He decided that he wasn’t afraid to die, even though he was still just a child. The cough that never left him was a sign that death had already hidden away in some corner of his body. Kiko had once told him about all the caves there were inside a human being. Somewhere in a hole, death was hiding, and one day it would drive the living spirits out of his body. Daniel knew that the cough didn’t come from his lungs; it had the musty smell of a secret grotto deep inside him.
What scared him was not death. It was the thought of having to be dead for so long. And even longer if he was buried here in the mud, by the church where Hallén preached. Kiko and Be would never find him. He couldn’t imagine anything w
orse than lying dead surrounded by strangers. Who would he talk to? Who would he have for company when he set out on the long migration through the desert?
The most important thing of all was the antelope that had never been completed.
He couldn’t leave it. Kiko had said that he was the one who had to finish it, see that it lived on. The gods would also abandon him if he died here in the mud.
He no longer believed that he would be able to learn to walk on water. The death he carried inside him made him too heavy. He also didn’t believe that he would be able to find his way back to the harbour where the ship was waiting.
The thoughts he was thinking were so heavy that he could barely manage to carry them. He was still too little for all that was loaded on his shoulders. And the weight wasn’t only on his shoulders, it was inside him too.
One night as he was sitting on the hill he realised that he would never succeed if he didn’t get some help. The only ones who could help him were Alma and Sanna. Maybe Edvin too, but Edvin was afraid of Hallén. He almost never dared look up at the sky. His gaze was always fixed on the ground. He was afraid of everything that was unexpected. Even the fact that he had taken Daniel in might be a sign of fear about staying in Dr Madsen’s good graces: some day the doctor might refuse to help him or Alma if they fell ill. But Alma was different. The only thing she was afraid of was that Daniel might be treated badly. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that she was old. She had pain in her back and her legs were stiff.
That left only Sanna. And she had disappeared. Despite the fact that he had left signs for her on the hill, she didn’t reply.
Maybe she was dead. Maybe the man who had dragged her by the hair had killed her. Sanna wasn’t like anyone else. She might have done something dangerous and then been punished with death. Maybe Hallén had nailed her up on the boards instead of Daniel.
He had to find out whether Sanna was still alive. Without her he might as well lie down and die. Then he would vanish into the depths of the brown fields, and anyone who searched for him would search in vain.
And the antelope would weep.
That night he walked up the long path to the church. The big door was locked, but he managed to prise open a window to the sacristy and climb in. He lit a candle and shivered with cold. Hallén was there in the darkness, breathing towards him. Daniel growled like an animal and Hallén’s shadow disappeared. He went into the sanctuary. He found no boards anywhere with Sanna nailed up on them. For the first time he dared go inside the altar rail. He stood on tiptoe and stroked the chipped knee of the figure hanging there. When he felt it with his fingers he noticed that a sliver of wood was coming loose. He carefully pulled it out and put it in his pocket.
He blew out the candle and left the church.
It was already starting to get light. Mist was drifting across the field.
He ran as fast as he could along the road. Somewhere in the distance he heard a cock crow. When he reached Alma and Edvin’s house it was still quiet. He turned off the road and continued along the cart track until he reached the top of the hill. He could see at once that Sanna hadn’t been there. He took the piece of wood out of his pocket and buried it. As he ran all the way from the church he had decided to make use of his memories. Memories from the time when he was so small that Be still carried him bound to her back; the memories of her movements when she danced. With his bare feet he drew a circle around the place where he had planted the piece of wood from Jesus’ broken knee. Then he began to search in his body for Be’s rocking motions. Even though he started to cough, he danced around the circle. He also wanted to sing, but thought that Edvin would hear him. A hare sat motionless out in the field watching him. He danced until the coughing fits were about to choke him.
When he rubbed his hand across his mouth he found blood on it. The cold wind from the grotto of death had come all the way out to his mouth. He squatted down and spat onto the ground. Now both the piece of wood and his blood were there. He sat on the ground and fought for breath. It ripped and tore at his chest, but now he was sure. Sanna would come back. And she would understand that he was searching for her.
As he came down from the hill he was struck by a sudden weakness that made him collapse. He lay there on his back and looked up at the sky, which was covered by low clouds. His heart was beating fast, and his lungs were fighting to take in air. I have to make it, he thought. I can’t die here in the mud.
After a while he got up and continued home. There was still no smoke coming out of the chimney. He went into the barn, curled up in the straw, and fell asleep.
He woke up when the hired hand poked him.
‘Vanja is sick,’ said the hired hand. ‘Alma is taking care of her. Here’s your food.’
Daniel didn’t reply. He merely took the dish and began to eat his porridge. He didn’t like the hired hand. Jonas had never dared look him in the eye. Even when he said his name it sounded as though he were saying something that wasn’t true. Daniel assumed that Jonas hated him because his skin was a different colour. Jonas had red hair and his skin was almost as white as snow. Several times he had heard Edvin complaining about him to Alma, that he was lazy.
Vanja was the older of the two milkmaids, and the fatter one, compared to Serja who was very thin. As he ate he thought that Vanja must be seriously ill for Alma not to bring him his food. Serja had always been the one who stared at him, the one who most often made Alma cross. Vanja moved slowly and heavily, and would suddenly break out in violent laughing fits that no one understood and then sit silently and rub her hands over her heavy breasts. The hired hand always wanted Daniel to pull the covers off her when she lay alone in bed. It was her big body that he most wanted to see.
Daniel put down the dish. The cows were waiting impatiently to be milked. A hen came near his blanket pecking the ground. The door slammed. It was Serja coming in. She had pails in her hands and stopped before Daniel with tears in her eyes.
‘Vanja sick,’ she said in broken Swedish. ‘She raving.’
Daniel didn’t know what raving meant, but he could tell that Serja was scared. He decided to break his silence.
‘Does she hurt?’
‘It is in her throat. She cannot breathe.’
‘Does she hurt?’
‘She cannot breathe! Hurt can one. But if one cannot breathe one die.’
Then she began to clank the pails against each other as if she were losing her mind.
‘I have to milk!’ she screeched. ‘But Vanja sick. And I am afraid. I sleep in same bed. Maybe it catching.’
She vanished among the cows. Daniel could hear her crying. Late in the afternoon Jonas came back with more food.
‘She’s even sicker now,’ he said, and Daniel could see that his shivers of fear were somehow mixed with glee.
‘The doctor has come,’ he went on. ‘But not even Madsen can do anything.’
Jonas left. Daniel pushed the plate away. He wasn’t hungry. Nearby lay someone who was very ill, who might die. And he knew that it had something to do with him.
That evening Alma came out to the barn. She was pale and moved with extreme difficulty.
‘You know that Vanja is sick,’ she said. ‘The illness has progressed quickly, and we don’t know if she’ll survive. She has an abscess in her throat. Dr Madsen can’t cut it out because she might bleed to death.’
‘Why is she sick?’ Daniel asked.
Alma seemed not to hear.
‘The girl is only nineteen years old. That’s not an age for dying. That’s a time to live.’
Alma left him. Serja was doing the evening milking. Daniel waited. When everything was quiet he left the barn. Through the window of the house he could see Alma sitting on a chair next to Vanja’s bed. Alma had fallen asleep. Her hands were resting in her lap, and her head had drooped forward. Carefully he opened the door and went in. Vanja was breathing with a wheezing sound. There were brown medicine bottles on the table. Daniel looked at her face. She was both p
ale and red at the same time. Her breast was heaving violently. He carefully lifted the covers. He had to know if her knee had swollen up. Whether she was about to die because he had pulled a splinter of wood out of the wooden body that hung on the cross in the church. Her knee looked normal. The abscess in her throat had nothing to do with him. And yet he knew it was a warning. Death was searching, and soon it would find him.
Two days later Vanja died. It was Alma who came out to the barn and told him. She was crying. Daniel thought that he didn’t have much time left. If he was ever going to make it home it would have to be now.
That same night he went up to the hill. Sanna still hadn’t been there, but he knew that she would come soon.
On Saturday the coffin was taken on a wagon to the church. It was raining. Alma brought food for him out to the barn. She was dressed in black. Daniel reached out his hand and took hold of her wrist. He hadn’t done that in a long time.
‘The girl was so young,’ Alma said. ‘So young and now she’s dead.’
Daniel waited until the wagon was gone, then he got up. While the funeral was in progress he would leave Alma and Edvin’s house for the last time. He walked around in the barn and patted the cows.
When he reached the top of the hill, Sanna was sitting there waiting for him.
CHAPTER 26
Sanna hadn’t noticed the splinter of wood. She hadn’t come to the hill to wait for him - she had gone there to be alone.
Daniel Page 25