Daniel

Chapter 10

The one who had taught him about the dreams was Be. They coiled like tracks through people; the paths were not footprints they trod in the desert, but something that was inside them, in the spaces where only the gods had access. Be was his mother; her smile still burned inside him, even though the last thing he remembered was the blood that ran from her eyes and the scream that was abruptly cut off.

The boy named Molo lay awake by the side of the man whose eyes were always shifting. He was no longer afraid of him, afraid that he might have a spear hidden somewhere behind his back, like the ones who killed Be and Kiko. Besides, this evening he had been funny, almost tempting him to laugh. They had been sitting in the big room eating and he had drunk something that made his feet move the way they did when they were on the ship. He didn’t know what was in the bottles, but he stored it in his memory. In this peculiar country where the sun never seemed to go down, the rolling waves of the sea were kept in bottles. He had memorised the labels in his head for the day when he would be able to go back across the water and return to the desert.

He lay quite still in the bed. The man next to him hadn’t begun to snore yet. He still lay on his side. It wasn’t until he turned over on his back that he started snoring. Molo listened in the darkness. Someone laughed down on the street. Shoes clacked on the paving stones. He thought about all the sounds he was forced to house in his head. In the desert people’s footsteps were never heard. The wind might whine, but footsteps were always silent. They could hear voices at great distances and the antelope bucks bellowing with what Be called rut, which meant that they were looking for females to mate with. Molo thought about the shoes he was forced to learn to use on board the ship. Big and heavy, made of wood. His feet had cried in the shoes, curled inward like animals that would soon die, and he wondered why he wasn’t allowed to go barefoot as he had always done. His feet didn’t want to have shoes, and the shoes didn’t want to have his feet. That’s why he had flung one of them into the sea, to placate his feet and himself and to show that he didn’t need to have anything on his feet to be able to walk. He didn’t want to shuffle along, didn’t want to lose the joy of walking. But he had made a mistake. That was the first time the man who was still not snoring had got angry. A line had appeared on his forehead right above his eyebrows. His eyes grew narrow and Molo thought the man was going to hit him, maybe throw him overboard. But nothing happened except that the next day he got new shoes that were even heavier. Then he thought of something that Kiko had told him, about the slave caravans he had once seen when he was young at the far northern end of the desert. Hiding behind a rock, he had seen a white man whipping people who were chained together, all black, driving them towards the coast. When he came back he told Be about it. Much later, when Molo was born, he was told the story too. The memory had returned when he was forced to wear the shoes that made him heavy and lose the desire to move.

Molo got up from the bed and walked carefully over to the door. He had drunk a lot of water at dinner. Now he had to pee. In the desert you could pee anywhere, just not in the fire or anywhere Kiko was flaying an animal or Be was preparing food. But here it was different. On the ship he had stood by the railing. The man next to him had always held on to him. Molo had wondered if he was stupid enough to think that he would jump overboard. When they came ashore, peeing became a big problem, not to mention when he had to relieve himself of heavier things. There were special rooms with small wooden boxes where he was supposed to sit. He hadn’t seen any box like that here in this house. He had learned that you had to pee when no one was watching and that you should pee in such a way that all traces disappeared instantly. He stood naked in the middle of the room and looked around. There was a potted palm on the table. He stuck his finger in the pot and sniffed. The dirt was wet and smelled of rain.

If he peed there it would surely run over the edge and the man would be angry when he woke up. The white pitcher that had water in it earlier was empty. He could pee there. But the pee would still be there the next day. If he tried to pee out of the window the man who was sleeping would wake up and think he had turned into a bird. He went carefully over to the door and opened it. There was a kerosene lamp on the wall in the corridor. He closed the door behind him without a sound. That was something else he had learned. Doors were supposed to be opened so they were heard but closed without a sound. The corridor was empty and all the doors were shut. He walked carefully along the soft carpet. It was like walking in sand, he thought. Behind a door he heard a woman crying. It sounded like Be when she had given birth to a dead baby, the last one she bore before the man with the spear came and killed her. He stopped and peed on the carpet. The fabric would soak up the urine, the same way sand did. Then one of the doors suddenly opened. A man without a shirt and a big paunch that hid his sex came out. He had a bottle in his hand. He gave a start when he caught sight of Molo. Then he started to yell. Molo tried to stop peeing but he wasn’t finished. Other doors opened; a man came running up the steps. Everyone stared at him. He still couldn’t break off the stream. He wondered what was so strange. Didn’t children pee in this country? Then he heard a door open behind him. It was the sleeping man who had woken up. He finished peeing.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked the man excitedly. ‘Are you pissing on the hotel’s carpet?’

Molo didn’t understand what he said, just that he had made another mistake. The fabric under his feet wasn’t like the sand. The man grabbed hold of his arm so hard that it hurt, and dragged him back into the room. He sat him down on the bed. Molo understood that he wasn’t allowed to move. The man went back out of the door. Molo could see that the man gave money to someone who came running up the stairs. Molo thought that the best thing he could do now was to get in between the sheets and pretend to be asleep.

The man came in and closed the door silently. But Molo knew that he was angry and shut his eyes tight. He felt the man’s breath close to his face. It smelled sweet. Molo knew without opening his eyes that the man was thinking about hitting him. His breath grew more sour, more dangerous. Molo tensed. But nothing happened.

‘Damned kid,’ muttered the man.

Molo didn’t understand the words. Sometimes he thought that the language the man spoke was like the sound of an axe splitting old dried wood. Sometimes it sounded like Kiko hitting a rock with a tree branch to see if there were any hollows in it where snakes could hide.

The man crept into bed and sighed. Molo waited until his breathing grew calm. Soon the man would start to snore. Molo opened his eyes again. He was tired. He didn’t know what awaited him in the morning. But Be had taught him about the dreams. They were not only hiding places, they could also predict what was going to happen. Molo searched among the images streaming through his head. He stopped when Kiko appeared before him.

It had been the last time he was allowed to accompany Kiko to the rocks that stuck up out of the sand and looked like a resting lion. He knew that the hills were sacred. A long time ago the gods had lived among these rocks. They had lit their fires and sat there, and one evening after they had eaten their fill and were in a good mood, they had decided to create a new kind of animal, which would later be called a human being. Kiko had told the story very precisely and kept asking if Molo had understood. He had repeated the same thing several times, talked about the gods in different ways, as if he were a bird who saw everything from above, or a snake who silently coiled around their legs. Molo had understood. It was among these rocks that everything had begun. Gradually the gods had tired of the humans, let them take care of themselves, and left for other hills. But so that the gods would not become impatient and take their food from them, or the rain, the humans had carved their images into the rocks.

Kiko had been working on an antelope the last time they went to the hill together. Anamet, the old man who had died the year before, had started carving the antelope, but when he withdrew, slowly isolating himself from life, and finally stopped breathing, Kiko was chosen to continue. He was not as talented as Anamet, nor would he ever be. Anamet had had a special ability to depict animals so that at any moment they might tear themselves loose from the rocks and vanish among the sand dunes. Kiko had coloured the animal’s body this last time. The antelope was in the middle of a leap. Anamet had made the eye very large, and Kiko worried for a long time about whether to make it red from the colour of a crushed beetle or to make it yellow with the sap from a bush that grew near the hill. Kiko could be taciturn sometimes when he was working on the antelope. He was the least talkative in the entire group of seven families who lived and travelled together. In contrast to Be, who was always talking and laughing, Kiko could be silent so long that they wondered if he had been taken ill. Molo also knew that it was only wise to ask Kiko questions occasionally. Sometimes he would answer, but if Molo chose the wrong time, Kiko might grow tired, maybe even angry. But this last time they went to the hill together Kiko had been in a good mood. Molo knew that it would be a good day, when he could ask all the questions he wanted.

They set off early at daybreak. When they reached the hill and the crevice in the rocks where the antelope was carved, the sun had just begun to pour in. It looked like the antelope was on fire.

‘Anamet was very skilled,’ said Kiko. ‘He not only knew how the hands should shape the antelope, he also thought about which spot on the rock he should choose.’

‘What does it mean to be skilled?’ asked Molo.

Kiko didn’t answer. Molo knew that this was an answer too. If Kiko said nothing it meant that the question had no answer.

Kiko decided that the antelope’s eye should be red. In a little leather pouch he had brought along some of the beetles that made the colour. He poured them onto the ground and the beetles tried to crawl off. He crushed them with a rock and began to squeeze out the colour in the shell. With a twig he then carefully filled in the incisions that Anamet had carved with his little chisel. Molo watched his father. The rays of the sun were slowly rising. The light was coming from below. The antelope’s eye glistened.

‘Where are the gods?’

Kiko laughed.

‘Inside the rock,’ he replied. ‘Their voices are the heart that beats in the antelope’s body.’

‘I try to draw in the sand. Antelopes, zebras. But they aren’t any good.’

‘You’re too impatient. You’re only a child. The moment will come some day when you only see in one direction at a time. Then you’ll be able to make an antelope too.’

Kiko worked all day. Not until it began to get dark did he put down the red-coloured twig.

‘It’ll be done soon,’ he said. ‘One day when you’re older the colours will have disappeared. Then you can come here and fill them in again. It will be your turn to make the antelope come alive.’

They returned to the camp. From a distance they saw the fires and smelled the meat cooking. The day before, the hunters had managed to kill a zebra and now they had meat for several days. That’s why Kiko had time to devote to the antelope.

‘Tomorrow we’ll continue,’ said Kiko. ‘And the next day too. Then the food will be gone and we’ll have to hunt again.’

But did they ever go back to the hill? Molo lay with his eyes open next to the man who still hadn’t started snoring. He could no longer remember.

He had been asleep when the men with the spears and rifles came. They had horses and white helmets, though not all the men had white skin, some were black. They surrounded the camp during the night and when the women woke up in the morning the shooting and slaughtering had begun. Molo had been drenched with blood and looked as though he was already dead. Through half-closed eyelids, with his heart pumping in his body as if he were in wild flight, he saw Be impaled by a spear and Kiko shot through the head.

The men who attacked them had laughed the whole time; they had acted like they were out hunting animals. And when everything was silent and everyone was dead except Molo, they drank from their bottles, cut off a few ears, and then rode away until they were swallowed up by the sand and the sun.

Molo had no memory of what happened next. When he woke to life again he was lying on boards of a shaking wagon. Andersson was leaning over him, and Molo thought that he must be dead and that it was Evil himself who was looking down at him.

He gave a start. For a brief moment he was in a landscape that was somewhere between dream and reality. Then he noticed that the man next to him had started to snore. Molo turned over on his side. He was tired now. The meeting with Kiko and the dream about the antelope had been exhausting. He curled up and fell asleep after he finally managed to change his insides to a white and completely empty desert.

In the morning when Bengler woke he had a headache and was very thirsty. He recalled what had happened the night before and decided not to discuss it with Daniel for the moment. But there was something else he knew couldn’t wait. Daniel had already got up and dressed. He was sitting still on a chair by the wall. Bengler drank some water and then leaned back against the pillows. He made a sign to Daniel to come and sit next to him.

‘You are my son,’ said Bengler. ‘Your name is Daniel and I am your father. And that’s what you will call me from now on: Father.’

Daniel looked at him.

‘Father. That’s what you must call me. Father.’

‘Faather.’

‘Don’t draw out the letter “a”. It should be short. Father.’

‘Faather.’

‘You’re still drawing out the “a”. One more time. Father.’

‘Father.’

‘That sounds better. I am your father. So that’s what you have to call me. We two are Father and Daniel.’

‘Faather and Daniel.’

‘You’re having a hard time with the letter “a”, but it will get better. Now you can go back to the chair.’

Molo didn’t move. Bengler pointed at the chair. Molo got up. When he sat down on the chair he knew that his name would be Daniel from now on.

Then the man he had to call Father lay down and watched him with only one eye open.

‘This damned town,’ he said.

Daniel nodded. He didn’t understand the words, but he knew Father didn’t like something. Daniel was always on guard when Father started chopping with his mouth like an axe against dry wood. Was he talking about him or to him? He never knew for sure.

This morning it was taking a long time for Father to get out of bed. Daniel sat on his chair and waited. After they ate breakfast Father took him into town. It was warm and Daniel carried the shoes in his hand so he could walk more easily. They stopped outside a house quite near to the hotel. There were pictures of people in a window. They stared straight at Daniel. Father opened the door. A bell rang. Inside it was dark, just like at Andersson’s trading post or on board the ship. White people live in dimly lit rooms, Daniel thought. Everywhere there were doors that had to be opened or closed, walls to keep people from seeing, ceilings that hung heavy as blocks of stone over people’s heads.

They entered a room where a lone chair and a table stood in front of a grey wall with painted flowers on it. Father sat down in the chair and placed Daniel next to him. The man who greeted them disappeared underneath a black cloth that hung on the back of something that looked like a cannon. Daniel had seen one of those once, the year before Kiko and Be and the others were killed. They had travelled through the desert and seen white soldiers dragging these weapons behind oxen. Daniel cast a glance at Father. Were they about to die? Father sensed his apprehension.

‘We’re only going to be photographed,’ he said.

Father smiled and said something to the man under the cloth, who laughed. We’re not going to die, thought Daniel. I’ll have to put up with all this while I wait for an opportunity to return home. I’ll think about the antelope that could break loose at any time from the rock face and become prey that we could kill and eat. I’ll wait until I can take the same leap as the antelope. Or see wings grow from my back.

There was a flash of lightning. Daniel crouched down but Father just smiled. For an instant Daniel was afraid that Father could read his thoughts, but he had already got up from his chair and was busy talking to the man who had hidden underneath the cloth and fired the shot that didn’t hit them.

Late that afternoon they went back to the shop. They stopped outside the window. Daniel saw his own face inside. It was staring right into the muzzle of the cannon.

I don’t recognise myself, he thought. My eyes are those of another person. The man who hid under the cloth fired a shot at me that reminded me of when Kiko had his head blown to bits.

I’m dead too.

I just haven’t noticed it yet.

Chapter 11

It took some time for Daniel to understand that the terrible land they had come to was the place on earth where Father had been born. After they left the town where the cannon was aimed at his face, they travelled through endless forests for weeks. Father had bought a horse and wagon, but Daniel realised very soon that he didn’t know how to handle the horse, which mostly did whatever it wanted to do. It rained almost the whole way. The wagon was open and Daniel lay underneath something that was like sailcloth along with the boxes where Father kept his insects, his books and his instruments. Father caught a fever and a bad cough from all the rain. For about ten days they had to stay in a town called Växjö, where Father was put to bed and sweated hard in a house called an inn. Daniel bathed his forehead and gave him water. On several occasions he was convinced that Father was going to die. A medicine man in a dark coat visited him and watched Daniel with great curiosity. He gave Father a bottle that he was supposed to drink from when the cough grew too severe. Every time he visited Father he ordered Daniel to take off all his clothes. Then he squeezed his body, looked in his mouth, counted his teeth and cut off a piece of his hair.

During this time Daniel made friends with the horse. If Father died, the horse would be all he had.

While Father was sick a strange thing happened. When Father was delirious from the fever, Daniel understood what he said for the first time. Before, he could only identify certain words in the language, but now he understood whole sentences. It was as if he could look into Father’s troubled dreams, and only then did the words take on meaning.

He still had a hard time understanding the new name he had been given. Daniel. His real name was Molo. But no one, neither Andersson nor Father, had bothered to ask. They had simply given him the long name Daniel, which meant nothing and which he could pronounce only with great difficulty.

The other word he was quite sure of was the word damn.

It could be pronounced quietly or in a yell, snarling or with great anger. Daniel understood that it was a holy word for Father, a word that meant he was talking with some of his gods. Since the horse was the most important thing for Daniel, he gave him the name Damn. He would stroke him on the muzzle when he gave him hay and whisper Damn in his ear.

Father did not die. Eighteen days after they left Lund the fever began to abate. He stopped raving and sank into a deep sleep. Daniel waited. He gave hay to the horse and got soup from the woman who ran the house where they were living. Often people came, some of them very drunk, to look at the boy as he sat watching over the sick man. They would stand in the doorway, breathing heavily as if he made them excited, and then go away.

After eleven days had passed they could resume their journey. By then it had finally stopped raining. Once again, Father’s words became incomprehensible to Daniel. The clarity he had experienced when Father was delirious had evaporated.

The horse pulled the wagon into an almost impenetrable forest. The road was very narrow, they encountered no one, and Daniel looked around incessantly because he was afraid that the forest would swallow up the road behind them. When he wasn’t sitting on the driver’s seat next to Father he walked alongside the wagon. He had made a skipping rope from a rope he had found in the stable at the inn. Occasionally Father would start to sing, but he stopped when he began to cough. Sometimes Daniel would venture a few metres into the thick trees. He studied the ground carefully before he dared set down his feet. He suspected that the snakes in this country were very poisonous.

They stayed overnight in leaky barns and lived on dry bread and dried meat. They found water to drink in streams that ran next to the road. Daniel was always searching for signs that there was sand somewhere. Since they had travelled so far, surely they would have to come back to the desert soon. From Kiko he had learned that a long journey always ended at the point where it began. But he found no sand, only brown earth that was full of grey stones.

Late one afternoon, what Daniel had been waiting for finally happened: the forest opened up. The landscape brightened. Father pulled on the reins. Daniel watched his face. It was as if Father was airing out. He perked up, his eyes searched. Then he turned to Daniel.

‘My desert,’ he said. ‘This is where I was born.’

He didn’t think that Daniel had understood what he said. He handed him the reins and shaped a baby in the air and rocked it. Then he pointed to himself.

Daniel looked around. A green meadow stretched before him with a broken-down, crooked gate.

Then he saw the house. A whitewashed wall was visible behind a clump of tall trees. Father pointed at the gate and Daniel hopped down and opened it for the horse. When he tried to close it the gate fell off the rotten post. Father didn’t seem to care, and Daniel hopped up on the wagon again. They stopped in the courtyard. Father sat still on the driver’s seat. Daniel noticed that he was holding his breath. Then the door opened and a woman came out. In her arms she was carrying a little pig. Her clothes were ragged and her back was hunched as she walked over to the wagon.

‘There’s nobody home,’ she squawked ‘They’re all dead.’

‘I’ve come back,’ said Father.

The woman didn’t seem to hear what he said.

‘Dead,’ she yelled. ‘And I’m not buying anything.’

Father shook his head.

‘I knew it,’ he muttered, thinking of the night he woke up when his father’s grinding jaws suddenly stopped.

He climbed down from the wagon.

‘It’s me,’ he yelled into the woman’s ear. ‘Hans.’

The pig jumped in fear and wriggled loose. It ran off squealing and vanished among the bushes. As if Father had stolen the pig from her, the woman started hitting him, pounding furiously on his chest.

Daniel held the reins. The horse didn’t move. Father took hold of the woman’s wrists.

‘Hans,’ he shouted in her ear. Then he turned her round and shouted in the other ear.

She stopped yelling but began hitting him again.

‘Why have you come back?’ she shouted. ‘There’s nothing here to come back to.’

‘My father?’

‘He’s dead.’

Then she caught sight of Daniel and shrieked as if another pig had escaped.

‘What in the Lord’s name is that you’re dragging with you?’

‘His name is Daniel. I’ve adopted him. He’s my son.’

The woman began rushing around the courtyard and making sounds as if she were a pig herself. Daniel laughed. Finally he had found a person he thought he could understand. She was playing the way Be had played, and Anima, her sister, and all the other women, unless they were so old that they were about to go away to die.

‘Leonora,’ said Father, pointing at her.

Leonora, thought Daniel. That’s her name. Just as long, just as hard to pronounce as Daniel.

The woman vanished with a wail into the bushes. Father gestured to Daniel to climb down from the driver’s seat. They went inside through the draughty door. Torn curtains hung in front of the windows, chickens had nested in the rafters and under the stairs, and shabby cats lay on chairs and sofas. The floor was covered with excrement. Both Father and Daniel grimaced at the stench. In the far corner stood a calf. Daniel broke out laughing again. He had come into a house that was alive.

But Father was angry.

‘This damned misery is nothing to laugh at. It’s enough to make me cry.’

Damn. There was that word again. Daniel cringed from the blow he was sure Father was about to give him. But instead he grabbed a shovel that was leaning on a sofa, which had once been red but was now greyish-white from chicken shit. He started swinging at the cats and the chickens. They fled hissing and cackling in every direction. The calf slipped on the filth and Father kicked open the door and chased the animals out until only one hen was left, which flapped up onto a rafter. The effort had made him start coughing and the attack was so violent that he staggered outside to the courtyard and threw up. Daniel followed him. When it was over, Father sank down on the front steps.

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ he said. ‘That damn old woman has gone crazy.’

He lay on his back and covered his face with one arm. Daniel went over to the horse, removed the traces and led it to the grass. The woman was gone. The horse looked at him with weary eyes. On the steps behind him Daniel could hear Father muttering like a child.

Father sat up with a bellow. His clothes, which were dirty to begin with, were now filthy from the dung of the animals. He started crawling on all fours across the grass. Daniel followed at a distance with the horse. They reached a clump of dense bushes. There was a hole in it. Father crawled in among the bushes and disappeared. Daniel wondered if he wanted to be alone. But in his experience crying, crawling people seldom wanted to be alone. He crept into the hole in the bushes. Inside there was a space with no roof. For the first time Daniel realised that in this country rooms could be found without doors, and open to the sky overhead. Inside among the bushes, stood a rickety wooden table and a chair. Next to the chair on the ground lay a white clay pipe, the same kind Daniel had seen Geijer smoke at Andersson’s trading post. Father pulled himself up onto the chair. Tears were running down his cheeks. Daniel supposed that this visit was a ritual, perhaps a method of sacrificing to a god. The woman who had run off screaming and the animals that lived in the temple were part of this ritual. The chair where Father was now sitting was a throne. And one of the gods must have forgotten his pipe.

This is a land where all the gods have fled, Daniel thought. They don’t hide behind the rocks, their hearts don’t beat behind these bushes.

Father coughed again, hacking and hoarse. Then he wiped his face with his dirty shirt.

‘This is where my father sat,’ he yelled. ‘My father. Can you understand? My father, old Bengler who was good for nothing, sat here with his wasted life, with syphilis all through his body. Syphilis. And I yearned to come back to this hellhole. When I was wandering about in the desert I longed for this place. In my dreams, while the mosquitoes bit me, I longed for this place. Can you understand that, Daniel? Can you understand?’

Father was talking very fast. Daniel assumed he was saying some kind of prayer.

Father sat still on the chair until evening fell. Insects began to suck blood from Daniel’s arms. Father was asleep. Daniel waited.

They stayed at the farm in Hovmantorp until the middle of October. With an energy that resembled rage, Father, with the help of the bent woman, cleaned the filthy ground floor. Daniel was given his own room upstairs. Father nailed a lattice of planks in front of the two windows, and every night he locked the door. Before they started the cleaning they had visited a churchyard and a gravestone shaped like a cross. Daniel understood that the ones who lay dead with their names on the cross were Father’s parents. He was amazed by this churchyard, where dead people lay in rows beneath stones and crosses. The dead wanted to be in peace, they didn’t want any traces to be left. No one was supposed to return to a grave in the desert until he had forgotten where it was. Kiko had taught him that. Here it was just the opposite. Father had also behaved strangely at the grave. He had wept. Daniel didn’t understand why. You could cry for people who were sick or had been injured by some animal — they were in pain — but the dead had only gone their way.

The bent woman named Leonora had changed after her screaming fit on the first day. She never came near Daniel, never touched him, but she gave him food and sewed a new sailor suit for him, and she didn’t yell at him when he went barefoot. She let him spend time with the chickens, the cats, the calf, the horse and the pigs. After the house had been cleaned and the stink faded, Father began unpacking his wooden cases. Daniel was astonished at all the insects he had dragged home. Why did he need all these dead creatures? He began to wonder if Father was a sorcerer, whether he had a special relationship to the powers that controlled people’s lives. Could he talk to the dead? Daniel watched him as he arranged the insects in various groups, pinned them down and built display boxes with glass tops.

Father began to teach Daniel his language in earnest. Every morning and afternoon they would sit in the arbour, or in an upstairs room if it was raining. Father had great patience, and Daniel fell that he had nothing to lose by learning the odd language. He let the axes drop inside his throat, learned the words, and realised there was something there that even he could comprehend. Father never lost his temper or scolded him. Now and then he would stroke his hand over Daniel’s cheek and say that he was learning fast.

Besides the language, Daniel also had to learn how to open and close doors. The practical training was done with the door that led into Father’s workroom. By the time the practice sessions began, Daniel was already starting to understand the language.

‘Door are just as important as shoes,’ Father said. ‘People wear shoes on their feet to protect them from the cold and wet. But they also have shoes to show their dignity as human beings. Animals don’t have shoes, but people do. The same is true of doors. You knock before you walk through a door. You don’t go in if you don’t receive an answer. Then you knock again, possibly a little harder. But not impatiently, not at all. You can even knock a third time without losing your patience. Go ahead and try it. Knock, wait for an answer, open the door, bow, close it behind you.’

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, down 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 the 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.

‘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. The 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.

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 never 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 time 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?’

Daniel nodded. He hadn’t understood a thing, but Father had spoken in a friendly tone of voice. There was something about him that was reminiscent of Be, when she and Kiko were angry with each other and she wanted them to make peace.

The rest of the day Father sorted his insects. He talked as if there were many people in the room, and when the insects were sorted and packed up in the little case where he usually kept his combs and brushes he practised with Daniel. My name is Daniel. I believe in God. He corrected his intonation, asked him to speak louder. He practised the way he would get up from his chair, bow and say his piece.

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

‘You’re talking too fast. And the word God doesn’t sound right. It sounds like Good. It’s God.’

‘Good.’

‘One more time. God.’

‘Good.’

‘One more time.’

Daniel practised until Father was satisfied.

That day they ate nothing but a little dry bread and water. Father brushed his hair for a long time and made a careful inspection of Daniel’s fingernails.

It was already dark when they left their room. Daniel noticed that Father was nervous, and he set his mind to doing exactly as he was told. He didn’t know who Father was, or why he had taken him from the desert, but he hadn’t done it out of ill will.

He also decided to make his own suggestion about what cliff face they should live in. He had never done that before. Now he would explain that he would feel better if they lived where he could see the big water.

They stopped outside a door where torches were burning. A short man in a tall hat was waiting for them. He stared with anxious fascination at Daniel.

‘This will be a great success,’ he said. ‘The Torch Workers’ Association has never before had the opportunity of exhibiting anything like this. Terrifying insects and this black child. A real Hottentot.’

The man leaned in close to Daniel’s face to study him. His eyes were yellow and sweat ran down his brow.

‘The boy must be treated well,’ said Father. ‘He may be black, but he’s a human being.’

‘But of course. A real human being. There is great anticipation for your lecture.’

The man opened the door. They entered a room full of chairs that were still empty. On a podium stood a table with a green tablecloth and next to it a speaker’s lectern from which hung the association’s banner, a semi-nude woman with a shining lamp in her hand.

‘The board members of the association will be here shortly,’ said the man, bowing. ‘They’re eating dinner at the moment.’

‘Who is on the board?’

‘Head Forester Renström, Baron Hake and Law Clerk Wiberg. The founder of the association, Colonel Håkansson, has also said he will come. We’re expecting many guests.’

‘And the workers?’

‘They’re coming. At least a blacksmith is.’

‘But this is a workers’ association, isn’t it? For the instruction and edification of people of limited means?’

‘Naturally. Colonel Håkansson was quite firm on that point.’

‘But what if they don’t come?’

The man threw out his arms.

‘One can hardly blame the colonel for that. He has the best intentions. ’

‘That sounds like a typical evasion. You form a workers’ association to which workers are not admitted.’

‘We don’t prevent anyone from attending.’

‘But you don’t encourage anyone either. The blacksmith will be here as an exception. Who is he?’

‘He’s employed at one of Baron Hake’s ironworks in Roslagen.’

‘What about the public? It will be a full house, won’t it?’

‘A number of lieutenants. Women, of course, are not admitted. A journalist or two looking for something useful to write about. It will fill up. There are so many people out and about, and soon they’ll be sitting here.’

After half an hour the hall was almost full. Father had set out his insect cases and covered them with a linen tablecloth. Daniel sat on a chair in the corner and practised his sentences. He was in the dark, since Father had put a tablecloth over him too when people in the audience began stamping their feet.

‘We’re going to surprise them,’ he told Daniel. ‘I’ll uncover you. They can see the shape of a person under the linen. And when I pull off the cover it will make a big impression.’

Daniel could hear people coming into the hall, banging chairs about, laughing and coughing. The smell in the room had changed, it was filled with the odour of dampness and tobacco. He assumed that it had started raining. Now and then Father would whisper to him.

‘The place will be full soon. There are just a few empty seats at the back of the hall. Practise your sentences.’

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

‘God. Not Good.’

‘I believe in God.’

‘That’s better.’

Daniel could hear that Father was nervous. He was talking fast and stumbling over his words. It was hard to understand everything he said.

Then the audience fell silent. Someone banged a club on a table right next to him. The man who began speaking kept clearing his throat. Daniel didn’t understand what he was talking about. A couple of words were repeated over and over that he didn’t know the meaning of: worker, education, I give the floor to, and then a name. He began to grow warm under the linen. Daniel decided to remember that: if it was very cold he could sit underneath a linen tablecloth in a room full of people. Then it would feel as if the sun were rising over the horizon in the desert.

Suddenly he heard Father’s name. Some people applauded, briefly, and then Father’s voice began speaking. The words came uncertainly at first, fumbling their way out of his dry mouth. Daniel prepared himself but he had to wait. Father had a lot to say about the insects. Finally he heard his own name and Father pulled away the linen.

Daniel wasn’t prepared for what he saw: the room so full of people, the faces so close. Father nodded at him and he stood up. It was dead silent in the room and he said his words.

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

He pronounced them all correctly. He could see that from Father’s face. He was pleased. That was the most important thing.

Suddenly he thought he saw Kiko’s face way at the back of the room, where the light was dimmest. He had to go to him. Kiko had come to get him. He jumped down from the platform and started climbing over the people sitting in their chairs. A tumult broke out; people tried to get out of the way or grab hold of him. But Daniel knew that he had to reach Kiko before he disappeared. He struck at the hands trying to grab hold of him, clawing at the faces in his way.

When he reached the back of the room Kiko was gone.

Someone hit him on the back of the neck and everything went black. He was forced to the floor and the last thing he heard was Father screaming in the background.

Chapter 15

When Daniel woke up he was lying on a table covered in green felt. Over his head hung a chandelier on which several of the wax candles had already burned down. He turned his face and saw Father sitting on one of the straight-backed chairs, wiping the sweat from his brow. His memory slowly came back. He had seen Kiko somewhere in the darkness behind all the people staring at him, and he had tried to get to him. It had been like throwing himself into a whirlpool in a river. But Kiko wasn’t there, he had vanished into the darkness the same way Daniel was dragged down by the maelstrom, and now he had washed up on a beach consisting of a table covered with green felt.

‘He’s awake now,’ said a voice quite close to his ear.

Daniel gave a start and sat up. The man who spoke was the same one who had met them on the street in a filthy hat and who bowed and scraped as though Father were a man with great power.

Father got up and came over to him. Daniel could see at once that he was disappointed. His eyes were weary and there were white flecks on his lapels from the skin that fell from his scalp whenever he was upset and scratched at his brow. He shook his head.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he said. ‘We practised this. They listened when I was talking about the insects. Then I raised the cloth and you went completely crazy. They thought I had let loose a wild ape in the hall. You kicked a cavalry lieutenant in the head and bit a court of appeals judge. There was utter chaos, and I didn’t even get paid.’

‘Most unfortunate,’ muttered the man, who had now taken off his hat and was cradling it to his breast like a baby.

‘I still think I should get paid,’ said Father. ‘That was the agreement.’

The man with the hat hung his head morosely.

‘The secretary left with the cash box. There was nothing I could do. The head forester yelled that it was scandalous and demanded that the hall be cleared. The next meeting a month from now will deal with the distribution of free hymnals to the unfortunate people in the poorhouse. Things will be calmer then. The only topic of discussion will be how to determine who is poor enough to be given a hymnal.’

At that moment the doors to the hall were thrown open. Two men came in and marched in a determined column up to the podium.

‘The baron,’ the man with the hat whispered nervously. ‘Now someone will be taken down a peg.’

Father sprang up and stood as if he were about to meet a god. The man marching in front had a long moustache. He struck at the chairs with his walking stick so they flew to either side, and then stopped in front of the table. Behind him stood a man wearing simple clothes, and Daniel looked at his hands, which were very big. Something made him think of an elephant, the one Kiko had shot with three arrows after they had gone without meat for almost a month.

‘I don’t believe we have ever been properly introduced,’ said the man with the moustache. ‘Baron Hake. Factory owner and patron of the Torch Workers’ Association.’

Father said his name and bowed.

‘I beg your pardon. The boy lost his head.’

‘Actually it was an amusing sight,’ replied Hake. ‘But rather bad form. Besides, he climbed on one of my shoulders. I have rheumatism and the pain immediately returned.’

‘I beg your pardon once again.’

The man pointed with his stick at Daniel.

‘I once saw a Negro in Berlin, but he was full-grown, and a different type. Broader lips and peculiar tattoos on his face. That was in a menagerie. It may have been in Hamburg at Herr Hagenbeck’s and not in Berlin. My memory fails me.’

‘I can do nothing more than beg your pardon.’

Hake thumped his stick on the floor.

‘All these excuses,’ he said angrily. ‘I’ve lived my entire life surrounded by excuses. I can’t stand them. The boy should have been on a lead, of course.’

Hake kept staring at Daniel.

‘What’s going through his head?’ he asked.

‘Hard to know,’ replied Father.

‘He’s wondering why the hell he’s here and being put on display,’ said the man with the big hands, who had been quiet until now.

Hake turned to him.

‘If I chose to do so I might regard that comment as insubordination.’

The man seemed about to leave, but stayed where he was.

‘One of my long-time blacksmiths,’ Hake explained to Father. ‘Nils Hansson. Highly skilled. Made the new wrought-iron gates at Drottningholm Castle, for one thing. That’s why he’s here representing the workers.’

‘I was wondering’, said Father, ‘whether this really is a workers’ association. The hall was filled with lieutenants and foresters.’

‘The important thing is not what we talk about,’ said Hake. ‘The important thing is what we don’t talk about. We encourage peace of mind in the country. No political preaching, no insubordination. On the other hand, insects are a good topic. If the workers’ lot is to be improved, it should be done by deepening the connections among various groups in society, not by changing them.’

‘Too bloody right,’ said the blacksmith.

Hake didn’t seem to have heard that. Or else he chose not to reply. He turned to the man with the hat, who seemed to cringe even more.

‘The insects were excellent,’ said Hake. ‘Being able to hear about and look at fascinating creatures can be useful. But the boy should have been restrained.’

‘Naturally,’ said the man who had shrunk as much as possible without disappearing entirely.

‘I was promised an honorarium,’ said Father.

‘The secretary will see to it.’

‘But he left.’

Hake gave the shrinking man a cross look.

‘Herr Wiberg left?’

‘He was one of the first to vacate the premises. He has weak nerves.’

‘Then he’ll be replaced at the next meeting,’ Hake said firmly. ‘A workers’ association must set an example, don’t you think?’

This last was directed at the blacksmith, who was trying to cheer Daniel up by smiling at him.

‘Naturally,’ Hansson replied. ‘But if I were black like this boy I would also have felt my soul crack and tried to run for the exit.’

‘We’re speaking of the secretary.’

‘I know. But it’s possible to answer more than one question at a time.’

Hake reached into his breast pocket and took out some banknotes, which he handed to Father.

‘Finances at the plant are poor at the moment,’ he admonished. ‘There’s too little war in the world. This is all I can give you. And besides, there are the hymnals to pay for.’

He turned on his heel and left. The blacksmith lingered behind.

‘How the devil can you exhibit people as if they’re in a menagerie?’ he said. ‘Insects you can stick on pins. But people? No, damn it.’

He placed one of his big hands on Daniel’s head before he left. Hake had already vanished from the hall. The man with the hat had now regained his original size.

‘Everything worked out,’ he said with a satisfied look. ‘I have a calling card here, from one of those present this evening. He said he will contact you tomorrow. He has a proposal for you.’

‘A proposal for what?’

‘Business. What else would one propose?’

Father stuck the card in his pocket. The banknotes had improved his mood. He took his bag of insects and headed for the door. Daniel followed him. They went out into the city, which was dark. Daniel longed for the water. In the darkness he thought he could glimpse Kiko now and then, but it was nothing but weary, huddled people who had never seen an antelope.

Early the next day, as Father was busy shaving and Daniel sat by the window looking down at the street, there was a knock at the door. Father nodded to Daniel to open it. A man who was very fat and had short legs came into the room. He was wearing a red overcoat and was bareheaded. Over his shoes he wore multicoloured spats. Even though he was fat and swollen, he seemed quite agile. His face was childlike, utterly lacking in character.

‘Herr Bengler perhaps received my calling card last night?’

Father wiped off his shaving soap and picked up the card lying next to the washbasin.

‘August Wickberg, Master of Ceremonies,’ he read.

The fat man had already taken the liberty of sitting down, placing his large behind on the only cushioned chair in the room.

‘I hope I haven’t come too early.’

‘The poor do not have the luxury of sleeping in.’

‘Precisely. That’s why I’m here.’

Father sat down on the edge of the bed. He motioned for Daniel to sit next to him.

‘A lovely couple,’ said Wickberg. ‘If a bit mismatched.’

‘What exactly does a “master of ceremonies” do?’

‘I handle persons such as you two, who have something unusual to offer but who have no idea how to turn a profit.’

Father shook his head warily. ‘So you’re some sort of fairground barker?’

‘Not at all. I work only with serious propositions. Insects, yes, but not high-kicking dwarfs who turn somersaults. Displaying people who are black is educational, in contrast to seductive ladies rolling about with lazy pythons wrapped round their necks. We live in an age in which serious matters are assuming more and more importance.’

Father burst out laughing. ‘That’s hardly my impression.’

‘You’ve been away a long time. Things are changing fast. A couple of years ago one could travel about the country and gather audiences who would pay to see a man who poked in the ground for old bronze as a main attraction. That may no longer be possible but some day it will be again. People are not merely looking for diversion, Herr Bengler, but culture.’

‘Just like Baron Hake, then?’

‘That man is a hypocrite, if you’ll pardon the expression. He ingratiates himself with the real friends of the workers, but actually he hates them. Conditions at his ironworks in Roslagen are said to be outrageous. People are treated like slaves. In order not to become a topic in parliament, he undertook to protect the workers’ association. A few months ago there was supposed to be a lecture and discussion about “The Meaning of Life”. Invited speakers were a journeyman tailor and a Lutheran pastor. The tailor was never given the floor, since the pastor was busy preaching. The lieutenants had called in their orderlies to fill the seats. The tailor’s friends had to stand out in the rain and freeze. But Baron Hake had lured one of those radical members of parliament to come, and he later went home and wrote a motion to introduce a bill against irresponsible attacks on the owners of Swedish ironworks.’

Wickberg fell silent, out of breath after his long speech. He pulled out a hip flask and took a swallow and then offered it to Father.

‘French cognac.’

Father drank and smacked his lips contentedly.

‘It tastes like morning. Especially when the evening before ended in chaos,’ said Wickberg.

‘You had a proposal of some sort?’

‘Most definitely.’

Again Wickberg began to speak. He spoke for a long time. Daniel tried to follow his words, but they rattled out of his mouth and finally became only a pressure in his ears. Daniel had moved close to Father. In the mornings he needed to feel his body warmth to stay calm. Father put his arm around him as he listened. When Wickberg stopped talking he asked some questions and received answers. Then Wickberg handed him some papers which he read through carefully. In the meantime Wickberg pulled out a wad of banknotes from one of his stockings and placed it on the table. From one of the voluminous pockets in his coat he then took out a small wooden box in which he kept an inkwell and pen. Father signed one of the papers. Then they drank again from the hip flask before Wickberg got up, bowed and left. Father picked Daniel up in his arms.

‘So, something good came of last night after all. I knew it. When I was in the desert I learned never to lose faith. Now we can leave this damn room and move to decent quarters. But first we have to do a little travelling.’

Daniel knew what travelling meant. It made him nervous. Maybe they would head into the forest again, where there was no water.

A few hours later they moved out of the attic room after Father argued with the landlord about the rent. Again their luggage was pulled on a cart through the narrow alleyways. By now Daniel was used to having people stare at him. He didn’t look down and he noticed that if he returned their stares they would turn their faces away.

They didn’t go far. The alley opened onto a body of water, and Daniel felt his worry ebb away. They went across a bridge and then stopped at a boat by the dock that was puffing smoke from its black smokestack. The baggage was stowed on board and Daniel stood at Father’s side when the lines were cast off.

‘We’re not going far,’ said Father. ‘We’ll be there this evening. This isn’t a sea, but a lake.’

Daniel tried to figure out what the difference could be between a sea and a lake. The water looked the same. He wanted to ask, but Father had lain down behind the luggage, pulled his coat over his head and gone to sleep. Daniel stood and looked at the city slowly disappearing behind them. Around him there were always curious people looking and pointing, but he didn’t care any more. Father seemed to be content, and they were close to water. That was the only thing that was important.

When Father woke up they went below deck and sat at a table with a white tablecloth and ate lunch. Daniel noticed that Father always acted differently when he had money. He was no longer hesitant, his movements were resolute.

‘We’re going to display the insects,’ he said when they had finished eating. ‘Wickberg is a good man. He’s setting up a tour for us, I’m being well paid, and if it goes well we can keep doing it. But now you have to promise me not to start climbing on people’s heads when I lift up the cloth. Otherwise Wickberg will take back his money and we’ll have to move back to the room in the attic. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You promise that it won’t happen again?’

‘Yes, Father.’

Father reached out his hand and placed it on Daniel’s.

‘What actually happened? I saw something in your eyes. As if you had discovered something.’

‘It was Kiko,’ Daniel replied.

He thought that now he could now explain everything to Father, and he wouldn’t get angry or shake his head.

‘Kiko?’

Daniel realised that Father didn’t know who Kiko was. He had never asked about the life Daniel had lived before he ended up in the pen at Andersson’s. How was he going to explain that before him there was a man named Kiko?

‘Kiko,’ Father said again.

‘He and Be were the ones who raised me. Kiko painted an antelope on a rock. He taught me about the gods. One day he was dead, like Be.’

Daniel spoke very slowly. He searched for the right words and tried to pronounce them as clearly as possible. Father looked at him in astonishment.

‘You’re talking,’ he said. ‘Whole sentences!’

It was as if he had forgotten about Kiko and hadn’t heard what Daniel said.

‘You’re a remarkable boy,’ Father went on. ‘You’ve already begun to learn Swedish. You talk like me, with a Småland dialect. And yet you come from a desert far, far away.’

Daniel waited for Father to ask about Kiko, but he went on and on about the language, about the fact that Daniel could speak. What he said was of no importance.

Late in the afternoon they arrived at a small town where they put ashore. Wickberg stood waiting on the quay. Next to him were two boys with a cart. Wickberg had turned his red coat inside out so that the grey lining was on the outside. He nodded with pleasure as he shook Father’s hand and patted Daniel on the head.

‘Everything will be fine. The mayor, who is an amateur botanist, is lending us the meeting room in the town hall. He promises a large turnout. Handwritten posters have been put up. But for Strängnäs they’re going to be printed. A ghastly snake swallowing a person. A black man with a spear. To draw people in, it looks like the black man is naked.’

Daniel saw Father frown.

‘I’m not showing any snakes.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘I want it to be truthful and scientific.’

‘Snakes are good. They bring in the crowds. In Strängnäs we can use a smaller snake.’

Wickberg broke off the conversation and they set off for town.

‘It’s important to look up,’ Father muttered.

Daniel wondered what he meant. He looked up at the rooftops, at the clouds. But he didn’t see any danger threatening.

That evening Daniel was sitting under his linen tablecloth again. He practised what he was going to say and promised himself not to run towards Kiko even if he was there.

Father gave a better speech that evening. Daniel could hear that. He wasn’t nervous and his voice was steady and firm. Sometimes he also managed to get a laugh from the audience. Daniel thought he ought to feel grateful to Father. Even though he had taken him along on this unbelievable journey, kidnapped him, he did have good intentions towards Daniel, although it wasn’t clear what they were. On occasion he used to hear the grown-ups talking about trials that made people stronger. Kiko’s brother Uk had once been wounded by a leopard, and he dragged himself a long way with a broken leg. That had been a trial. It had taught not only Uk but the others in the family to be even more careful when any of the big cats were in the area. But he had no idea what trial he himself would have to go through. Maybe it was as simple a task as learning something that only one white man had been able to do before: to walk on water.

He felt Father’s hand on his head, the firm grip around the cloth. When it was slowly pulled away he was ready. A murmur passed through the hall. He heard a woman laugh hysterically, but he didn’t lose his composure. He bowed, said his words and stood quite still. Kiko wasn’t in the hall. Father smiled at him and then opened Daniel’s mouth so everyone could see his teeth. Father squeezed and pulled on his arms, but not so hard that it hurt. When Daniel puffed out his cheeks the audience applauded. Afterwards he sat quietly when people came forward to look at him.

I wonder what it is they see, he thought. Judging by their eyes I think they see something that fills them with uneasiness. Not fear, not amazement, but uneasiness.

At last it was all over. Wickberg strutted about rubbing his hands. His stockings were bulging with money.

‘This is going to go well,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow in Strängnäs we might extend the performance and stay two days.’

‘But no snakes,’ said Father, closing his bag.

‘No big ones, at least,’ replied Wickberg, vanishing out of the door.

Father nodded to Daniel.

‘Tonight we’re staying at a hotel,’ he said. ‘And now dinner awaits.’

At the same moment the door at the back of the hall opened and a woman came in. She was dressed in black but with a red veil around her hat.

When Daniel saw her face he knew at once that something important was about to happen.

But he couldn’t say what it was.

Chapter 16

Once Be, who liked to play games, had put a piece of kudu skin over her head and wrapped red strips of cloth around her face so the skin wouldn’t blow off. When Daniel saw the black-clad woman walking down the centre aisle between the red plush seats, he thought she was sent by Be. The night before, Kiko had been there in the dark. He must have told Be and now she was the one who came, but not in person; she had sent someone in her place. The woman was young, younger than Father and Be and Kiko. He was sure that she didn’t have any children of her own yet. She smiled when she looked at him. Father had straightened up and was flexing his fingers. He was just like Kiko, Daniel thought. If a beautiful woman crossed Kiko’s path he would tense his leg muscles and rub his nose. Be always used to laugh at him. Sometimes she would bite him on the arm. Then Kiko would blush and say that the woman walking by might be good-looking but she didn’t spark his desire in the least.

Father was just the same. Something happened when the woman with the red veil came up to the podium.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she said. ‘I saw your presentation, or perhaps one should call it a lecture. I liked what I heard. And what I saw.’

‘Insects are neglected creatures,’ replied Father. ‘They can teach us a lot about life. And not merely the industriousness of the bee and the strength of the ant. There are grasshoppers that exhibit a good deal of cunning. And a special hymenopteran which has the remarkable ability to transform itself into a stone.’

‘And the boy,’ said the woman, looking at Daniel, ‘he aroused many thoughts.’

Father straightened his necktie.

‘My name is Hans Bengler,’ he said. ‘As I announced before the lecture. With whom do I have the honour of speaking?’

‘Ina Myrén. I’m a correspondent for one of the newspapers in the capital.’

‘Excellent,’ said Father. ‘I hope you are favourably disposed.’

‘Actually I came to hear more about your journey,’ said the woman. ‘About how you met the boy in the desert. I had a feeling that your story was recounted only in broad outline.’

‘Quite right,’ replied Father. ‘But people tire quickly. One must always be aware of holding their attention, and not go on too long.’

‘That’s something that preachers should learn.’

Father laughed. Daniel thought it was an ingratiating laugh.

‘It’s unusual to meet a female correspondent,’ he said. ‘Before, they were always men. So something seems to be changing after all.’

‘Women are seeking positions in society,’ she said. ‘An old, rotten stronghold is about to collapse. Men are on the barricades, except for the fearless and young, but we shall not give in.’

‘I understand that Fru Myrén is a radical, then?’

‘Not Fru, Fröken.’

‘So, Mamselle Myrén.’

‘Not Mamselle either. That’s French and shouldn’t be used in this country. I am Fröken and thus unmarried. And self-supporting.’

‘Are correspondents paid so well?’

‘I am also a milliner with seven employees.’

‘Here in Mariefred? Can you make a living at that?’

‘We fill orders for shops in Stockholm. We have made hats for the Royal Court. That gained us a clientele among the aristocracy.’

Daniel noticed that she pronounced certain words with great emphasis, as if she didn’t like what she was talking about. In his ears, the words ‘Royal Court’ sounded almost the same as when Father said the word ‘damn’.

‘So Fröken Myrén wants to write an article? Naturally I will be at your service.’

‘I would also like to speak with the boy. I hear he has already learned the language, which surprises me.’

‘He speaks very little. But of course I can tell you his story. May I suggest that Fröken Myrén accompany us to the dinner that awaits us at the inn?’

‘That would not be proper. It could be misconstrued.’

‘I understand. Rumour spreads quickly in such a small town. Just as it does in a big desert. In that case, we’ll have to do the interview right now. We’re leaving Mariefred early in the morning for an engagement in Strängnäs.’

The woman removed her hat, opened a small handbag, and took out a notebook and a pencil. Father opened the case with the insects in it, took out the skipping rope, and handed it to Daniel.

‘Out in the foyer,’ he said. ‘And be quiet. I know you can.’

‘I would like to talk to him too,’ said the woman.

‘Then we’ll call him in.’

Daniel understood that Father wanted to be left alone. He took the skipping rope and went out into the foyer. An old woman sat asleep with her knitting by the front door. Daniel walked around and looked at things. On the ceiling were paintings of angels playing among the clouds. He thought that it must be just as hard to float among the clouds as it was to walk on water. But neither was impossible. He started to skip. The old woman slept on. His feet scarcely touched the stone floor. He tried to imagine that it was water. One day he would be so skilled that he would not only walk on water, he would be able to skip on it too.

After a while he grew tired. The old woman was still sleeping. He peeked through the door into the big hall. Father was standing there lecturing the woman, who was writing it all down. Daniel entered cautiously and sat down at the back of the hall. He could hear everything Father was saying, because he was speaking quite loudly. Now and then the woman would ask a question. She also spoke loudly enough for Daniel to understand the words. They were talking about insects. Daniel leaned his head against the seat in front of him and closed his eyes. He wondered when he would have time to practise keeping his feet on the surface of the water. Kiko had appeared to him the night before: that had to mean that they were waiting for him.

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard his name. He looked at Father. He was standing still now, and he was talking about him. Daniel began to listen. Then he became confused. Who was Father actually talking about? He was telling about a lion that had been wounded by a gunshot and had dragged an unconscious boy into the bushes to eat him. Was he the boy in the story? Daniel had never in his life seen a lion. Nor had Be. Kiko thought he had seen one at a distance once. Was he supposed to have been dragged off by a wounded lion? He got up and sneaked forward among the chairs to come closer. He sat down on the floor and peeked through the chairs. The floor was filthy. The sailor suit that Father had sewn for him would get dirty, but it couldn’t be helped.

There was no doubt. Father was talking about him, and nothing he said was true. According to his story, Father had saved him from the lion and then carried him for four days without water through the desert. There they had been attacked by a band of robbers, but Father had not only saved their lives, he also managed to convert the robbers to the Christian faith, and after that Daniel had been his faithful apostle.

Daniel had heard that exact word before: apostle. He understood that it meant he had followed along voluntarily across the sea, that it had been his own wish, a desperate desire to accompany Father when he told him that it was time for him to return with the insects he had collected.

Not a word of what Father was telling her was true! Daniel wondered whether he was talking about some other boy who had followed him across the sea. Someone who no longer existed, whom Father never talked about? But that couldn’t be right. Father was talking about him, and what the woman was writing in her notebook was all lies.

Father was lying.

He was making up a story that was not true at all.

Daniel sat on the floor and felt a strong impulse to start screaming. That’s not right, that’s not how it happened. I’ve never even seen a lion. But he held his tongue. He couldn’t scream because he didn’t understand why Father was telling this story about him. What he said about the insects was right: there was not one detail that was untrue.

Father finished and wiped the sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. Daniel crept back out to the foyer. There he began skipping, furiously. He slammed his feet against the stone floor as hard as he could. The old woman suddenly opened her eyes and stared at him. But she didn’t believe what she saw and went back to sleep. Father came out to him.

‘Didn’t you hear me calling you?’ he asked. ‘And didn’t I tell you to skip quietly?’

Daniel didn’t answer.

‘She wants to talk to you, though I’ve already told her most of the story. Just tell her your name and that you believe in God. That will be enough.’

Daniel followed Father into the hall. The woman had taken off her gloves to write. Her fingers were very slender and white. Daniel wanted to grab hold of them and hold on tight, so tight that Father wouldn’t be able to pull him loose.

‘I’ve heard your story,’ she said and smiled. ‘It’s quite a remarkable account, which will thrill many readers. In contrast to all the terrible things we read about slavery and injustice, this is a story that tells us something good.’

‘Goodness is necessary,’ said Father mildly. ‘Without goodness, life is a wasted effort.’

The woman looked at Daniel.

‘My name is Ina,’ she said. ‘Can you say my name?’

‘Ina.’

‘Do you understand what a remarkable experience this is? To hear my name spoken by a person who was born far away in a desert?’

‘I have never seen a lion.’

Daniel hadn’t prepared this. The words came out by themselves. I have never seen a lion.

Father frowned. ‘He thinks that “lion” is the name of a Swedish animal,’ he explained. ‘Maybe an elk. Isn’t that right, Daniel?’

‘I have never seen a lion.’

‘Now, answer her questions,’ said Father. ‘Dinner won’t wait for ever. We can’t go to bed hungry.’

Daniel was just about to commit his third act of rebellion and say again that he had never seen a lion, but he could see in the woman’s eyes that she already knew that what he said was true.

‘Actually, I don’t have anything else to ask you about,’ she said after a brief silence. ‘But perhaps I can come to Strängnäs tomorrow and listen one more time. If that’s all right?’

‘You won’t have to buy a ticket, of course,’ said Father. ‘And naturally you are more than welcome. Perhaps I could invite you to dinner? It might not be so improper there.’

‘Perhaps.’

The woman put away her notebook, pulled on her gloves and fastened her hat on her curly hair.

‘It was a real pleasure,’ said Father. ‘Permit me to say as well that you are a very beautiful woman. Surely it cannot be considered improper for me to say that?’

‘And you are a very remarkable man,’ she replied, looking at Daniel.

She has a message for me, Daniel thought. She is sitting behind a rock and whispering to me.

Father stood and watched her as she left the hall. The door closed.

‘She is very beautiful,’ he said. ‘When I saw her I realised that I’m lonely. I have you, of course, but this loneliness is something else. A loneliness you can’t understand.’

But Daniel understood. To be lonely was to be without. How could Father say that he didn’t understand what loneliness was? He who needed to learn the art of walking on water to find the people who were the most important in his life.

It had rained. They walked along a cobblestone street towards the inn. Daniel usually held Father’s hand, but now he didn’t want to. Nor did Father seem to want him to. Daniel stole a glance at him. He’s thinking about the woman with the slender hands. He thought he could see her in Father’s eyes.

The dining room at the inn was empty, but there was a table set for them. Daniel wasn’t hungry. The knot in his stomach didn’t leave room for any food. He thought about the lion and the fact that Father had told a story about him that wasn’t true.

‘Why aren’t you eating?’

Father gave him a stern look. His eyes were glazed because he had drunk many glasses during the meal.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t like your tone of voice. You’re answering as if you don’t want to talk to me.’

Daniel said nothing.

‘One can’t always tell the truth,’ said Father. ‘Maybe there wasn’t any lion. But she liked it. She’s going to write about it. And maybe that will also make her like me.’

Father emptied his glass, shook his head and looked at Daniel.

‘Do you understand what I mean?’

Daniel nodded. He didn’t understand, but it made Father feel good when he nodded.

‘A very beautiful woman,’ Father said. ‘Unmarried. Perhaps radical, but that usually passes. I have to think about the future.’

So do I, Daniel said silently to himself.

When Father had fallen asleep, Daniel got up, dressed and vanished quietly out of the door. A lone dog barked as he hurried along the deserted street down to the quay where they had landed. It was a clear, moonlit night. Daniel climbed down the side of the wooden pier and took off his shoes. He hated those shoes. Every time he came near the water he wanted to throw them as far out into the dark as he could. He would put stones in them so they would sink. There was a clammy smell from the water. Somewhere further out a fish jumped. The dog kept barking. Daniel rolled up his trouser legs and carefully placed one foot on the water surface. When he pressed down the water broke apart. He tried with the other foot. The surface of the water broke again. I can’t do it, he thought furiously. I’m doing something wrong. He closed his eyes and tried to tempt Kiko or Be to come to him. He had to ask them how he should do it. But the desert he carried inside him was empty. The moon was shining there too. He called out for Kiko and then for Be, but all that came back was an echo.

He tried one more time to make the water obey him. First he stroked his hand over its wet pelt. Then he put his foot on the same spot. But the water broke, the pelt twitched.

He began to cry. The tears ran slowly down his cheeks. He wiped them away and dipped his hands into the water. Maybe that would help. But on this night as well the water refused to bear him.

When he came back and cautiously opened the door, Father was awake. He had lit a paraffin lamp and was sitting upright in the bed.

‘I woke up and you weren’t here,’ he said. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I went out,’ said Daniel.

‘That’s no answer. Don’t you understand that I worry about you?’

‘I had to pee.’

Father looked at his watch.

‘You’ve been gone for almost an hour. So you’re lying.’

‘I peed two times.’

‘I should really spank you,’ said Father. ‘If it happens again I’ll have to start tying you up again. What did you do?’

Daniel considered telling the truth, but something held him back, something was warning him. Father wouldn’t understand. The worst thing that could happen would be for him to start tying him up again.

‘I went out to look at the moon,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know I shouldn’t. My name is Daniel. I believe in God. I beg your pardon.’

Father looked at him in silence.

‘As strange as it seems, you’re probably telling the truth,’ he said at last. ‘But if you do it again it’ll be the rope.’

Daniel lay down behind Father’s back.

The lamp was blown out.

Daniel no longer felt any safety behind Father’s huge back. Now it was like a rock that threatened to fall over on top of him.

In his dreams he finally found Be and Kiko once more. Be had a red veil over her face, she was playing again, and Kiko sat carving new arrows. It was as if Daniel had never been gone. But he had grown, he was older now. Old enough to accompany the men on the hunt. He tried to explain to Kiko that he was still a child, but Kiko wouldn’t listen, or else he laughed, and Be slapped him playfully on the back and told him to stop dreaming. Then Kiko shook him by the arm and he woke up, and Father was leaning over him telling him it was time to get up.

‘You were yelling in your dream,’ he said. ‘You were calling for Kiko.’

‘Kiko is the man I grew up with,’ Daniel said.

‘You have no other father but me. Everything that happened back then is gone. It no longer exists.’

‘The same way there was never any lion.’

Father’s face darkened.

‘I won’t permit that,’ he said. ‘I ask very little of you, but if I say that there was a lion, then there was one. That lion will make us money. It will draw the public. More than those real lions that people sometimes exhibit in cages or pits.’

He held up Daniel’s trousers.

‘They’re dirty. I don’t know what you’ve been doing. We don’t have time to get them cleaned now. We’ll have to wait until we get to Strängnäs.’

Daniel got out of bed. His legs were heavy. His feet were still sticky from the muddy water. Father stood in front of his shaving mirror, humming. Daniel could see the woman in his eyes.

They went on board the same boat that had brought them the day before and sailed across a fjord that narrowed and turned into a strait between low islands. On board the vessel were two horses. A boy Daniel’s age sat holding them by two ropes. He looked at Daniel but he didn’t stare. Daniel sat down next to him. The boy touched his hair and laughed. Daniel pointed at the horses.

‘They’re going to be slaughtered,’ said the boy. ‘In Strängnäs they’ll get clubbed on the head.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re old.’

‘I’ve seen a lion,’ said Daniel. ‘A lion that dragged me off to tear me to pieces.’

The boy gave Daniel a close look.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I think you’re lying.’

‘Thank you,’ said Daniel, and held out his hand.

The boy took it. His grip was very strong.

That afternoon they landed at a quay and disembarked. Wickberg was waiting for them and further off, behind some stacks of timber, Daniel saw the woman with the red veil.

At that instant he decided that she was someone he could tell the truth to: she would listen to what he had to say.

Chapter 17

As soon as they stepped ashore on the quay amid the screeching of gulls, an argument broke out between Wickberg and Father. Wickberg had unrolled the finished printed poster, and Father was furious. There was not only a dangerous snake with a forked tongue, but Daniel was depicted as a grinning, evil wild man with fangs.

‘I can’t approve this!’ Father yelled. ‘This goes against everything we agreed on!’

Wickberg seemed to have been prepared for this reaction.

‘But it will pull in the public. If it draws a crowd you get a percentage. That’s the agreement. If nobody comes the whole thing might go into liquidation.’

‘We don’t have a company. This is a lecture tour with serious content.’

‘What difference does the content make if people don’t turn up? As soon as they get there they’ll forget about the snake. When they see the boy their hearts will melt. They won’t see a wild man but a scared little Negro slave.’

Father gave a start as if Wickberg had stuck him with a needle.

‘Negro slave?’

Wickberg drew Father aside because people on the quay were beginning to show more interest in their loud argument than in Daniel.

‘You’ve been away a long time, Hans Bengler. Black people in this backward country are either wild men or slaves. They either boil missionaries or are kept in chains. If you want to change this impression, you have to get them to come.’

Daniel understood that they were talking about him, but he was more interested in the woman who was still hiding behind the timber. He wanted to run over and grab hold of one of her slender hands, but he knew that she was standing there because she didn’t want to be seen.

Wickberg rolled up the poster.

‘You’ll realise that I’m right soon enough,’ he said, nodding meaningfully towards the money stuffed in his stockings.

‘You’re a scoundrel,’ said Father. ‘But the rest of the contract is all right.’

Wickberg went red in the face.

‘Don’t ever call me a scoundrel. Anything else, but not that!’

‘Everyone is afraid of his real name,’ said Father. ‘But I’m be content to call you a brigand.’

Wickberg grabbed his heart and then felt his wrist to take his pulse.

‘Don’t play games with your heart,’ said Father. ‘There’s no queen of hearts inside your coat. There’s a spade with a low number. When people start coming by themselves, the snake and the wild man go.’

Wickberg nodded, resigned.

The baggage was transported to a hotel, a building of red brick. Wickberg booked a private room for them. After they got settled in the room, Father took Daniel to a shop that sold sailor suits. The man behind the counter started shaking when he had to measure Daniel’s waist. Father was tired and annoyed.

‘Damn fumbling!’ he shouted. ‘The boy is perfectly normal. Narrow waist.’

A pair of trousers was selected, tried on, and they fitted without alterations. They went back to the hotel room, where Wickberg was waiting.

The woman with the red veil was gone. Daniel turned time after time on the street to check if she was there.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Father.

‘Nothing,’ said Daniel.

Wickberg had ordered a large supper. Father’s mood instantly improved when he saw the table.

‘Tonight we’re not working,’ said Wickberg. ‘It’s important to rest up. Besides, Strängnäs is a slow town. People have to have time to think about it, make up their minds, air out their clothes. But tomorrow it’ll be a full house.’

‘Which hall?’

‘The bishop is terrified of everything that doesn’t come from on high. He forbade the use of the diocese’s large hall. The mayor is afraid of the bishop, so he closed the town hall. All that was left was the Freemasons’ hall. It’s got poor acoustics, but we’ll hang a cloth from the ceiling.’

Father tossed back one of the glasses that Daniel had learned was called a shot. He smacked his lips and looked pleased.

‘Tomorrow there will be a dinner after the performance as well. A writer named Ehrenhane is the host.’

‘What does he write?’

‘Rubbish. Heartfelt tributes to the Royal House. But he doesn’t take his convictions seriously. He visits whores in Copenhagen, conspires with the radicals, and sometimes invites tramps to dinner.’

‘Are you referring to me?’

‘Not at all. But not many travellers from foreign lands ever pass through this town. As a young man he was also passionate about pressing plants. He has a colossal collection of oak leaves at home.’

Daniel picked at his food. He still had a knot in his stomach. Somewhere nearby was the woman with the veil, he knew it.

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ asked Father, who noticed he wasn’t eating.

‘I have a stomach ache.’

‘He’s tired,’ said Wickberg. ‘He can have a sandwich in the room.’

‘Yes, please.’

Father scrutinised him. ‘No going out at night!’

‘No,’ Daniel replied. ‘I’m going to bed.’

He found his way up the stairs by himself. When he entered the room he stood by the window and looked down at the street. There was a single lamp post with a flickering light. He knew that Father would tie him up if he went out. That would ruin everything. The water would be forbidden to him. At the same time he knew that he had to meet the woman who had stood behind the wood and waited. She had come for his sake, he was convinced of that. Maybe she would speak to Father about his travels, continue listening to his lies, but she had understood that there was never any lion. She had come to hear his story, and maybe she would be able to help him walk on water.

He remained standing at the window. A lone dog ran through the light towards some unknown destination. Then a man came staggering by. He leaned against the lamp post and vomited. Then he too disappeared.

There was a knock at the door. Daniel gave a start. He thought it was Father testing him to see if he would say Come in or if he would open the door without finding out who was standing there. He waited. The knock came again. It was very cautious. Daniel pictured the hand. Without gloves, it was white with slender fingers. He rushed to the door and opened it.

Ina Myrén stood there, and she had no gloves on. Daniel grabbed her hand and pressed it to his face. He couldn’t help crying. He suddenly remembered a pain that he had felt long ago when Be had been seized by inconceivable rage and slapped him hard on the face. He had started bleeding, and then she had pressed his face so hard into the sand that he almost suffocated. Someone had grabbed hold of her, torn her away, and afterwards she had vanished and hadn’t come back until two days later. She never said a word, never explained what had driven her to hit him. For a long time the whole family had stayed silent. Kiko had retreated. Only later did Daniel understand that Be had been seized by evil demons. No one knew where they had come from. Maybe she had thought forbidden thoughts. Nobody knew. Not until she gave birth to Daniel’s little sister did everything go back to normal. Be seemed to forget everything that had happened. Kiko slept close by her side at night, and she caressed Daniel’s hair as she had always done.

Now the tears were flowing, but the woman didn’t pull away her hand. She closed the door behind her and sat down on a chair, and Daniel buried his head between her breasts.

Afterwards he sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the floor. She didn’t say anything, just sat there waiting. Finally he dared to look at her. She was smiling.

‘There wasn’t any lion,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But what was there instead?’

‘An antelope. That Kiko carved into the rock. An antelope that was about to take a leap.’

‘What else was there?’

He realised all of a sudden that he couldn’t sit on the bed any longer. Telling a story meant sitting on the ground. Not on the sand, since there wasn’t any, but on the wooden floorboards, the dark red carpet. He sat down, and to his astonishment she got out of her chair and sat down facing him with her legs crossed.

‘There should be a fire here, I’m sure,’ she said.

Daniel nodded. He was dumbfounded. How could she know that?

‘I’m sitting facing you. But actually someone else is sitting here.’

He nodded again. She was conjuring with him, saying precisely what he hadn’t expected her to say but was hoping for. Still, he wasn’t afraid.

‘Be,’ he said. ‘Or Kiko, or Undu, or Rigva who was lame and only had one eye.’

‘But there wasn’t any lion?’

‘No lion.’

Suddenly he was frightened. She knew too much she couldn’t know. He had learned enough to mistrust friendly, well-meaning people with slender white fingers. They always wanted something from him that he couldn’t give.

‘Can you skip?’ he asked, to defend himself.

Since he didn’t know whether he had been polite enough, he added, ‘My name is Daniel. I believe in God.’

‘I can skip,’ she replied. ‘Maybe not with these skirts on, but I can.’

‘There wasn’t any lion,’ he said again.

Suddenly the woman stood up. She grabbed his skipping rope, tied up her skirts so that her stockings and a bit of her naked thighs were showing, and started jumping. Her feet thumped hard against the floor. Daniel saw that it was a long time since she had skipped but she hadn’t forgotten how.

She stopped, pulled down her skirts and sat down again. Daniel was disappointed for a moment. He had wanted to lean against her body where her stockings ended, where the skin was just as white as her fingers. She was out of breath. Her chest was heaving and he saw Be again, although she had never had anything covering her upper body. Kiko liked to play with her breasts. He had given them names, and Be had laughed and replied that she was already with child and didn’t need to hear friendly words about her breasts. Daniel wondered whether he could ask the woman sitting on the floor to take off her clothes, at least above the waist. Since she had skipped and knew that there hadn’t been any lion, maybe it wouldn’t be dangerous to ask. He pointed at the black buttons that held her clothes fastened across her breasts. She gave him a quizzical look.

‘Those are called buttons.’

Daniel already knew that. Every morning Father would yell at his damn collar buttons, especially if he had been drinking the night before.

‘Open up,’ he said.

She gave him a long look and straightened her back as she sat there. Daniel already knew he had done something wrong. But then she changed her mind, unbuttoned the buttons, nine of them, one by one, and then unbuttoned her white linen so he could see her breasts. To his surprise they were like Be’s breasts. All women had different breasts, the same way all men had different chests, but the woman sitting facing him had the same breasts as Be. Daniel couldn’t resist his desire, and he leaned hard against her, and she didn’t pull away even though she stiffened.

‘I am your mother,’ said the woman. ‘She is here right now.’

‘Be is dead,’ replied Daniel. ‘She died in blood that ran through the sand. When Kiko came she had already stopped breathing. I was lying behind a hill under a kudu hide and the ones who came with spears and guns never found me. But Kiko came too soon. One of them who was left and cutting the ears off those he had killed saw Kiko and shot him in the head.’

The woman put her arms around him. Daniel felt that Be was very close just now.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. The men came riding, they were white and had a flag with an eagle. They laughed a lot and they shot everybody and didn’t say why. If we had been animals they would have skinned us. If we had been animals they would have eaten us. But the only thing they did was to kill us and cut off our ears. I heard at Andersson’s once that our ears were stiffened with tallow and then used as bowls for sugar and chocolate.’

‘Who was Andersson?’

‘He saved my life. He gave me a crate to live in. Then Father came and took me. He called me Daniel, told me to wear shoes on my feet, and brought me here across the sea.’

Daniel felt a great peace as he told his story pressed against her warm breasts. He could feel her heart beating and smell the sweetish scent of sweat. Something made him remember an experience he had had when he was very small. One night he had woken and gone out to pee in the sand. That night the stars in the sky over the desert were very clear. The stars were eyes that looked at him, saw him pee and saw him yawn. Suddenly he was aware that the stars were looking at him. He had been pulled up from the sand, sucked in as if by an invisible whirlwind towards all these points of light glittering, and he had understood that they were actually very close, the eyes of the gods, and would always be with him. Now he remembered that night as he felt the warmth from her breast, and he knew that he would scream, maybe bite her, if she suddenly pulled away and began to close up her buttons again.

‘Then you came here.’

‘I came to a town where two girls were skipping in a back courtyard. Father had his bag full of insects, and he used to tie me up when he was afraid I would run away.’

‘Where would you go?’

Daniel thought about that. He knew that there was a word for what he was dreaming of. He knew that there was a place where the water would bear him. A short word. He thought for a long time.

‘Home,’ he said eventually. ‘I think it’s called home.’

She hugged him tenderly and he pressed against her as hard as he could. One of her nipples came close to his mouth and he grasped it with his lips, not to get milk but to stay calm.

He closed his eyes and dreamed. Her heart was beating. Be was humming somewhere in the background. Kiko had already gone to sleep. The smells were no longer coming from the carpet and Father’s shaving lotion. Now he could sense the black coals from the fire burning down, the rancid smell of the old bark from pilko branches.

‘I’ve never held a man close to me,’ she said. ‘Many men have wanted to, they have grabbed for my buttons and looked right through my clothes, but I’ve never held anyone as close as you.’

Daniel didn’t understand what she meant. He didn’t want to, either. He was already deep in his dreams. The nipple he held in his mouth was Kiko’s hand that led him away towards the mountain where the antelope waited. There was also sleep, Be’s hand against his cheek, the bodies of the whole family pressed tight together, the night that was still long and the dawn that waited beyond all the dreams they would talk about when they were awake again.

‘I see your sorrow,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know if you know what that word means.’

Daniel didn’t answer. He was dreaming.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

‘I have to learn to walk on water,’ he said. ‘I’m going to walk home across the back of the sea and I have to learn to move so carefully that the animal won’t be upset and swallow me.’

She asked what he meant. But by then he was already asleep.

A thunderclap came out of nowhere. The lightning and the rumbling crashed right above his head. He gave a start.

Father was standing in the doorway.

He had glazed eyes and stared incredulously at the scene before him. Daniel had raised his head from the woman’s breast. She still had her arms around him.

Father started yelling.

‘Intolerable!’ he shouted. ‘A woman is devouring my son. What the hell is this?’

Daniel bored his face into her embrace again. Now her breasts were rocks that could give him a hiding place. Be was still close to him. The warmth came from her, and he thought it would soon catch fire and scare Father into flight the way animals were scared with burning torches.

‘I’ve been talking to the boy,’ said the woman. ‘I have listened to his story. It isn’t the same as what you told me.’

‘Then he’s lying. He’s only a child. A Hottentot from the desert. What does he know about truth and lies? He’s telling you what he thinks you want to hear. Besides, he can’t tell a story. His vocabulary is too limited. What did he say?’

‘The truth.’

‘Which truth?’

‘His own.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That there wasn’t any lion.’

Daniel was listening. He could hear from Father’s voice that he was uncertain, but the woman was utterly calm. He could feel that her heart wasn’t beating any faster than before.

‘One might regard this situation as extremely indecent,’ said Father. ‘A grown woman who undresses and seduces a child. A black child, besides, who might be carrying diseases no one knows about. If this came out, a trial or mental hospital would be a likely consequence.’

‘I’m not afraid.’

She carefully moved Daniel’s head so that it rested on the carpet. Then she stood up and buttoned her dress.

‘I call this sick and dangerous,’ said Father. ‘You have a man close at hand but you are raping a child.’

Daniel heard the smack and he knew at once what it was. She had slapped Father in the face with her slender white hand.

But what happened after that he couldn’t have imagined. A man who is slapped by a woman is supposed to collapse, draw back, cringe. But Father cast himself over her with a roar. He didn’t try to unbutton her dress, but tore and ripped at her clothes so the seams split open. Daniel got up. He tried to get between them but Father tossed him aside and dragged her towards the bed. Daniel thought he should defend her but at the same time he remembered the men who came riding and killed Be and Kiko and then cut off their ears. Father was the same. He would kill her and cut off her ears, and there was nothing for Daniel to do but hide again.

He rushed out of the room, down the stairs and into the street. It was raining but he didn’t feel it. He ran down towards the water and when he came to the quay he waded out.

He would never learn to walk on this water. Father would cut off his ears and then there wouldn’t be anything but a dead Daniel far away from those who lay buried in the sand waiting for him.

He waded into the water. He might as well plunge his head under the surface and then be gone.

The cold penetrated his body.

The last thing he thought of was the antelope.

Chapter 18

The water spoke to him.

He had expected that death would be a silence, or perhaps the faint echo of rustling grains of sand, but the water had a powerful voice that forced him upwards, forced him to keep breathing. He had walked straight out, deeper and deeper, and he had turned his back to the town and to Father, but when the water forced his head above the surface, his body turned round and he saw the faint lights that still glittered in the darkened streets.

Then came the cold. He was so cold he was shaking. His muscles cramped and knotted up. He waded ashore as fast as he could and hurried back towards the red-brick building where Father had thrown himself at the woman and torn at her buttons. He had no idea what awaited him but he had to get out of his cold, wet clothes. The water had spoken to him and told him he wasn’t supposed to die. He had to learn to walk on its surface, return to the desert and tell his strange story to all those who might be dead but were still waiting for him. He was alive and had to keep on living. That’s what he understood when his head went under the water. A dead person could never learn to stroke the wet pelt so carefully that he would be allowed to walk on the surface without breaking through. He had to go on living.

When he reached the red-brick building he saw Father standing outside the gate. A covered coach with two horses hitched to it had driven up. Father stared at him as if he were seeing a ghost.

‘Into the coach,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving.’

‘I need dry clothes,’ said Daniel.

Father shook his head. ‘You can change later. We have to leave.’

The old night porter stood holding a piece of paper and waited for Father to notice him. Without looking at the paper he gave the man some banknotes. The last of the baggage was loaded. Father looked about nervously.

‘We’re heading for Örebro,’ he told the man who took the money. ‘To Örebro. Nowhere else.’

A young boy sat on the coach box. He had an odd-looking fur cap pulled down over his forehead, and Daniel couldn’t see his eyes. Father shoved Daniel into the coach, shouting to the boy on the driver’s seat.

‘To Örebro. The main road.’

Daniel wondered what had happened. A small lamp was lit inside the coach. The flame flickered over Father’s sweaty face and Daniel saw that he had a bloody wound just above one eye. He killed her, Daniel thought. He killed her and now he’s running away.

Father looked at him. Then he tore open one of the bags inside the coach and pulled out some dry clothes.

‘I don’t know what you did,’ he said. ‘Whether you fell into the water or jumped in. Right now I only know one thing.’

Daniel took off his clothes in the rattling coach. The whole time he heard Father muttering. It sounded like some sort of prayer, but he was just repeating that single word, damn, damn, damn.

After they had left the town behind, Father pounded on the roof of the coach. The boy stopped the horses. Father opened the door and yelled at him.

‘Turn round. We’re going to Stockholm.’

‘I haven’t been paid for that,’ replied the boy.

‘You will be,’ Father roared in fury. ‘More money than you’ve ever seen in your life.’

The boy began to pull the reins so the coach turned round. One of the horses whinnied. Daniel shivered. He was still freezing. Father took out one of the bottles he always carried in his luggage.

‘Drink this,’ he said.

Daniel tasted it. It was strong and burned his throat, but he swallowed it and felt the warmth quickly come back into his body. Father wrapped him up in a blanket. His hands were rough and shaking. The coach picked up speed. Now and then they would hear the sound of a whip cracking. Father kept muttering and hissing between tight lips. Daniel waited. What had happened? Why did they have to leave in the middle of the night? He knew it had something to do with the woman, with the buttons that Father had torn off.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

Father didn’t answer. Daniel pulled the blanket over his head so that he was completely enveloped in his own body heat. Inside the warm darkness he imagined that Father was far away. He was sitting next to him but he was in a completely different world. The coach that shook and rocked gave him the same feeling he had during the long voyage across the sea. The horses were transformed into sails that were stretched taut, the boy on the coach box held not reins in his hands but a wheel. He heard the clink of a bottle. Father was drinking. The whip cracked. The coach shook.

Daniel didn’t know what time it was, but what Father usually called a long time must have passed before the coach came to a stop. Daniel unwrapped himself from the blanket. It was still dark. Father had opened the door of the coach.

‘Why are we stopping?’ he shouted.

‘The horses need rest. They need to eat and have some water.’

‘We don’t have time.’

‘I can’t run them to death.’

‘I know about oxen. They could do it.’

The boy would not relent.

‘Oxen and horses aren’t the same thing. In half an hour we’ll drive on.’

Father slammed the coach door furiously. But he said nothing. He looked at Daniel. His eyes were glazed, but there was something else too, a fear that Daniel had never seen before.

‘I did something I shouldn’t have done,’ said Father. ‘I tried to touch her. She scratched me and broke free. We had to leave in a hurry.’

Daniel waited for more, but it never came. Because he had to pee he climbed out of the coach. The ground was cold under his feet. They were deep in a dense forest. The trees stood black, watching him. He peed. The boy was busy watering the horses.

‘Why are you black?’ asked the boy. ‘Were you burned? Or are you made of coal?’

Father flung open the door.

‘Don’t talk. Give the horses what they need so we can get moving.’

The boy came over to the door. He was short but broad-shouldered. He had taken off his fur cap. Daniel saw that his hair was cut short and very light.

‘I want to see the money,’ he said. ‘Or else I won’t go on.’

Father held up a fistful of notes. The boy tried to snatch them but Father was ready and held them high.

‘When we get to Stockholm,’ he said. ‘Not before.’

The boy kept staring at the money.

‘I’ve never seen that much money in my life. So much money and in such a hurry. What’s going on here?’

He walked back to the horses. Daniel climbed into the coach. Father leaned towards him and whispered, ‘Everything will be all right. I made a mistake, so we had to change our plans. You can’t always follow a path you plan in advance.’

‘Did she die?’ asked Daniel.

Father stared at him.

‘She ran,’ he said. ‘And she might report me. It will be a scandal. I’ll be hunted down. So the plan had to change.’

Daniel tried to pronounce the name of the man in the red coat. He couldn’t do it. There were too many letters. But Father understood.

‘Wickberg will be chasing me too. I don’t know which is worse, ripping off a woman’s clothes or breaking an agreement.’

He drank from the bottle again. Daniel could see that his hand was shaking.

‘We have to start a new life,’ Father said. ‘That life starts tonight.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’ll tell you when I know.’

The coach began to roll again.

‘Try to get some sleep,’ said Father. ‘I have to think.’

Daniel wrapped himself in the blanket again. He soaked up his own warmth and stroked his face and imagined it was the woman with the slender hands who was touching him.

Daniel woke up because the coach had stopped. He was alone. Father was standing outside talking to the boy. It was beginning to get light. They were still in a forest, but it was more open now. He could see fields and pastures. A lake glimmered between the trees. There was fog. Daniel felt cold and wrapped the blanket tighter around him. He had been dreaming. The antelope had been inside him. But Kiko wasn’t there. It was as if the antelope had been searching for him, searching for someone who could finish the work, paint its eyes and finish carving the last strokes in its leap.

Father opened the coach door.

‘We’re getting out here,’ he said. ‘The baggage is continuing on to the harbour, but we’re getting out here.’

Daniel climbed out. His body was stiff. Father seemed just as frightened as he was earlier that night but his eyes were no longer glazed, and Daniel knew that he had made a decision. The boy took down one of the bags that was tied onto the roof.

‘I’ll follow you all the way to hell if you don’t do as I told you,’ Father said to the boy.

‘For that much money, anyone will do as he’s told.’

‘Now off with you.’

The boy clucked at the horses and the coach vanished down the winding road.

They were alone. Daniel was shivering. Father was in a hurry. He yanked open the bag, tossing clothes and combs and brushes onto the ground. Finally he found what he was looking for: a white shirt, which, to Daniel’s astonishment, he began tearing apart. He didn’t stop until he had shredded the whole shirt into strips. The collar lay like a dead bird on the ground. Father sat down on the bag and wiped the sweat from his brow.

‘When this is all over I’ll explain,’ he said. ‘But now we have started a new life. As quickly as possible, we have to put some distance between us and everything that happened before. We’re travelling through a desert again. In order to reach our destination you have to do as I say.’

Daniel waited for the rest. He still couldn’t understand what had happened.

‘People will come and try to catch me,’ said Father. ‘They know that you and I are travelling together. And you are black. That’s why you have to let me do what is necessary. I’m going to wind these strips of cloth around your head and just leave holes for your mouth, nose and eyes. You have been severely injured in a fire. You have to keep your hands inside your coat. We’ll put a cap on your head. Then nobody will be able to see that you’re black. And no one can find me either.’

Father didn’t wait for him to answer, but began winding the rags around Daniel’s head. All at once he had the feeling that Father was going to suffocate him and started pulling at the cloth to get it off.

‘I’m only doing what I have to do,’ Father shouted. ‘It’s only for a few days. Until we escape. I once saved your life. So you can do this for me.’

Daniel suddenly noticed that Father was not only scared and sweating but he also had tears in his eyes. Daniel stopped pulling at the cloths. No matter what had happened, he had to help Father now. There was no other way out.

Father cut holes for Daniel’s eyes, nose and mouth with a little knife that he kept with his brushes and comb.

‘Pull in your hands,’ he said.

Daniel did as he was told.

‘No one can tell that underneath all this you have black skin. Now we have to get moving.’

They started walking. Daniel could feel his skin beginning to itch underneath all the material. Father walked fast with his bag in his hand. He was panting. It was morning now, and the sky was heavily overcast.

‘As long as it doesn’t rain,’ Father said. ‘I’ll lose my mind if it does.’

Daniel didn’t answer. He couldn’t talk. He could breathe through his mouth but couldn’t move his lips.

The forest grew thinner and soon there were open fields all around them. Father stopped now and then to catch his breath. At the same time he was listening and kept turning round to look behind them. Daniel wondered who was following them.

They had reached a crossroads when Father saw a wagon approaching. He raised his hat and yelled. The man sitting at the reins stopped the horses. Big sacks of flour lay on the bed of the wagon.

‘My son has had an accident,’ Father said. ‘He has terrible burns on his face. We’re on our way to the city to see the doctors.’

The man holding the reins stared aghast at Daniel.

‘Whine,’ Father whispered. ‘Whimper and moan.’

Daniel whined. The man shook his head.

‘So the boy has burned his face, eh? Then he won’t have long to live.’

Father lifted Daniel up onto the sacks and climbed up after him. The man clucked at the horses and urged them into a trot.

‘Of course I can pay you for your trouble,’ Father said. ‘If possible we’d like to go down to the Stadsgård Harbour.’

The man turned round in surprise. ‘Are there doctors there? Are there hospitals among the dockers?’

Father didn’t reply. Instead he took out a banknote and stuffed it into the man’s coat pocket.

When they entered the town Father told Daniel to lie down and pull his coat up around his head. He did as he was told. The man with the reins looked at him.

‘Is he dead?’ he asked.

‘He’ll be all right,’ replied Father. ‘But I’m too tired to answer any more questions.’

‘My name is Eriksson,’ said the man. ‘My horses are called Stork and Giant. Not very good names, but I’ve never been good with names, even though I’ve had a lot of horses.’

‘My name is Hult,’ said Father. ‘I come from Västerås, where I sell hardware. My son, my only son who’s lying here, is called Olle.’

Daniel listened, but nothing Father said surprised him any more. After he had left the desert and travelled across the sea he had become part of a story: the story that Father had in his head, in which nothing was really true. Daniel wondered what would happen if he stood up in the wagon and tore off all the strips of cloth. Then there wouldn’t be any more story. Then he would be himself again.

But who would Father be?

He lay there looking up at the sky. Kiko had taught him that a hunter always had to have patience, always had to be prepared to wait until the right moment. Daniel imagined that he was a hunter who was waiting. Some day the moment would come when he could finally teach himself to walk on water.

It was already evening by the time they arrived. When the horses stopped, Daniel could smell the water, but when he tried to sit up, Father pushed him back down.

‘It’s best that you lie down,’ he said softly. ‘At least for a while longer, until it gets really dark.’

The man with the reins gave him a worried look.

‘I think he’s paler now,’ he said. ‘Is he dying?’

‘How can you see that he’s paler?’ asked Father. ‘His face is covered with bandages.’

‘It’s just a feeling,’ said Eriksson. ‘But I won’t ask any more. I have to get going now. The flour has to be unloaded. And I have a way to go yet.’

Father took a few more banknotes out of his pocket. Daniel had a feeling that the money he had received from Wickberg would soon be gone. He wondered how these pieces of paper could have such great value.

‘I need help,’ said Father. ‘In a few hours there’s a passenger ferry leaving for Kalmar. We need a cabin.’

‘Kalmar?’

‘There’s an excellent skin doctor there,’ said Father. ‘The best in the country. He’s often called to the royal residences all over Europe.’

The man shook his head doubtfully. ‘Will the boy be able to manage the trip?’

‘He has to. I’ll watch the horses and the flour if you would be so kind as to procure a cabin and tickets.’

Eriksson vanished into the darkness.

‘Soon it will be over,’ Father said. ‘Just as long as we get out of here.’

‘It itches,’ said Daniel.

‘I understand. But soon. Just as soon as we get on board and close the door to our cabin. Then I’ll take off the bandages and explain what has happened. Everything will be all right. We have started a new life.’

When Eriksson returned he had the tickets in his hand. Father gave him another banknote and asked him to drive them to the gangway. The boat was illuminated by paraffin lamps.

‘I said they were for Herr Hult and his son,’ said Eriksson.

‘Excellent,’ replied Father. ‘You’re a clever man. And your horses have lovely names. Unusual, but lovely.’

When they reached the boat Father told Daniel to wait by the wagon. A man in uniform was standing by the gangway and checking the passengers’ tickets. On the foredeck they were busy stowing baggage. Father went up and spoke to the man in uniform. Eriksson stood stroking one of his horses on the back while he looked at Daniel.

‘It can’t be easy,’ he said. ‘It must hurt a lot. But you’re very patient.’

‘My name is Olle,’ said Daniel. ‘I believe in God.’

Eriksson nodded slowly. ‘That’s probably for the best,’ he said, ‘even though it doesn’t help. But in the end it’s all you’ve got. Hope. And someone called God.’

Father came back. ‘Keep your hands inside,’ he whispered.

Eriksson lifted Daniel down from the wagon.

‘I hope all goes well,’ said Eriksson.

Father nodded and gave him one of his last banknotes.

The man by the gangway shook his head in alarm when he saw Daniel’s bandaged face.

‘There might be rough weather south of Landsort,’ he said. ‘Can the boy stand the rough seas?’

‘I’ve given him some medicine,’ said Father. ‘He’ll be asleep.’

They went down to their cabin and Father locked the door and sank exhausted onto the bunk. The cabin was cramped. Daniel remembered how it had been on the ship during the long journey from the desert.

Suddenly his heart began beating very fast. Could it be possible that they were on their way back to the desert and he wouldn’t have to learn how to walk on water?

‘You’ve been good,’ said Father as he loosened the cloth stuck to Daniel’s sweaty face. ‘You’ve been very good, and I’ll never forget it.’

Daniel waited. But Father still didn’t say anything about where they were going.

The boat gave a lurch. There was a snap of mooring lines and the sound of commands. Then the boat began to vibrate.

Daniel sat down next to Father.

Now he’ll tell me, he thought.

But Father just put his hands to his face and began to weep without a sound.

Chapter 19

They had tickets to Kalmar, but they got off the evening before in Västervik when the boat landed at Slottsholmen. Because it was dark, Daniel didn’t have to put the bandages over his face. While Father ventured into the night to find someone with a horse and wagon, Daniel sat and watched the baggage. A lone dog wandered about by his legs but then vanished into the darkness. A light misty rain was falling but there was no wind at all. Only a few people were boarding or leaving the boat. An argument arose by the gangway when a drunken man was refused passage even though he had a ticket. Finally he left, cursing, and he too disappeared into the darkness that seemed to swallow up everyone.

Daniel felt a cold breeze from the sea. It brought with it the same smell he remembered from the evening he had walked into the water and hoped he would die. It was only a few days ago, but it felt as though he had dreamed it.

During the boat trip Father didn’t say a word. His silence finally hardened into a mask over his face. It was a silence that Daniel could not penetrate. He had no idea what Father was thinking. Now and then he would burst into tears but only for brief spells. Daniel merely waited. He still didn’t know where they were or where they were headed. During the journey he was not allowed to leave the cabin and no one but Father came in. He brought Daniel food and then took away the empty plates.

The boat rolled heavily the first night, and Father got seasick and threw up several times. Daniel lay in his bunk and imagined he was a very small child rocking on Be’s back, wrapped in a piece of cloth that smelled of her body. Occasionally the boat shook violently when it was struck by a big wave. For a few hours they hove to and waited for the wind to die down. Daniel heard cows mooing on deck and people moaning in the cabin next door, but he was completely calm. He was waiting. His only thought was that they were on their way back across the sea.

Their departure happened very suddenly. Daniel was sleeping and dreaming about the smell of roasted meat when Father shook him awake.

‘We have to get off soon,’ he said. ‘You’d better get dressed.’

Daniel looked out through the gilded porthole. Outside it was black. Waves sloshed up towards his face and broke against the glass. He suddenly developed a stomach ache. The trip had gone too quickly, they couldn’t be there yet. Besides, it was much too cold. When he pressed his hand against the glass with the drops of water running down the outside, he could feel the cold. He turned and looked at Father, who was busy closing one of their bags.

‘Are we there yet?’ Daniel asked.

‘We’re going to get off,’ said Father. ‘In a town called Västervik. Then we’ll continue our journey.’

He put down the bag and stood up. Daniel could see from his eyes that he’d been drinking.

‘We’ve begun a new life,’ he said. ‘But now we have to get off this boat. Everything will be all right.’

Father vanished into the night. The gangplank was pulled up and the boat turned slowly in the small harbour basin and then disappeared into the darkness. The last thing Daniel saw was the white lantern that sat atop the foremast. The quay was now deserted. He pulled the blanket round him and huddled down. Father was gone. The lone dog came back and sniffed his legs, but when he tried to pet it, the dog gave a twitch and went away.

Daniel was struck by the thought that Father might have left him, just as the dog and the boat had done. Vanished completely into the night. He was alone now. Alone with the baggage and the dark and the misty rain. He thought about the old ones who died in the desert. When they felt that it was time, they went away. Some lay down in their huts, others in the shade, and Daniel remembered one old man whose name he had forgotten who had leaned against a rock wall. There he had sat, without eating or drinking or speaking for more than a week before he died. Maybe Daniel should prepare himself for the same thing to happen to him. When the sun came up he would sit on the bags and do nothing but wait for his heart to thump one last time and then he would be dead.

The thought terrified him. He jumped up from the baggage, threw off the blanket, and began running in the direction Father had gone. He didn’t want to die, not yet, not here. Without Father he would never get back to the desert. He would die without anyone knowing about it. Be and Kiko would search in vain and never find him.

He ran straight into someone standing in the darkness: Father. Behind him came a clattering horse-drawn wagon.

‘I told you to watch the baggage. What are you doing here?’

‘I heard you coming.’

Father grabbed him hard by the arm.

‘We have to leave right now. We must be far away from here by daybreak. We’re already late. I couldn’t find anything but this horse, and it doesn’t look too strong.’

The man sitting on the driver’s seat had only one eye. He was old and his lower lip hung down. He looked at Daniel as if he didn’t really exist. Father loaded the baggage and Daniel climbed up and sat among the bags. Father sat next to the driver and pulled an old fur around his shoulders.

They left the town and after a few hours stopped to rest in a forest. Whenever other wagon-drivers came down the road, Father would take Daniel with him to hide in the woods.

‘Where are we going?’ Daniel asked again. By then it was already afternoon.

‘We’ll be there soon,’ replied Father. ‘Tomorrow night. As long as this damn horse doesn’t fall over.’

They kept going even when it got dark. Now and then Daniel glimpsed the sea on the left side of the road, but it was so far away that he couldn’t smell the water. The only thing he smelled was the fear from Father’s body as he sat in silence on the driver’s seat. When Daniel looked at him from behind, at the fur wrapped around his shoulders, he thought that Father was slowly turning into an animal.

Daniel was asleep when they drove into Simrishamn. He woke when the wagon stopped. He sat up, his body sore all over, and in spite of the darkness he recognised the house where they had spent their first night after they left the coal lighter and came ashore. He wanted to shout. He was right. They were on their way back. There was a ship waiting here that would take them back across the sea. Father turned round. Daniel couldn’t resist the impulse to throw his arms around his neck. He had never done that before. Father shrank back as if afraid that Daniel would bite him. He pushed him away.

‘I’ll see if they have a free room,’ he said. ‘I can’t pay, but I’ll tell them that you’re sick.’

He took the bandage out of his pocket.

‘Moan like you’re in pain when anyone looks at you. I’ll carry you inside.’

Daniel nodded. He had understood the words, but not what they meant.

Father paid the man with the horse. The baggage was lifted down and the wagon rolled off. Daniel wrapped his head in the cloths. When Father came out he had the proprietor with him. The man had his shirt off and was carrying a lantern in his hand.

‘Did he fall?’ he asked.

‘From a cliff.’

The man with the lantern was worried.

‘He’s not going to die, is he? Places where people die can get a bad reputation.’

‘No, he’s not going to die.’

‘But he’s moaning like he’ll expire at any minute.’

Daniel understood and stopped groaning at once.

‘What he needs is sleep,’ said Father. ‘I guarantee he won’t die.’

The man with the lantern nodded dubiously. Then he shouted and a boy sleeping underneath the staircase came stumbling out.

‘Put the baggage in the room with the wood stove.’

They had the same room as last time. Father sat down heavily on the bed after carrying Daniel up the stairs. Daniel could see that he was very tired.

‘When do we travel more?’ he asked.

Father gazed a while at him before he replied.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we’ll set off. Take off the bandage. Lie down and go to sleep.’

Daniel curled up close to Father’s back. Everything was different now. He didn’t know what had happened with the woman and the buttons but it must have been something good, since it made Father realise that they had to return to the desert.

That night Daniel had a hard time sleeping. He kept getting up and standing by the window and looking down into the courtyard where the two girls had been skipping. A single lantern hung by the gate out to the street. He felt completely calm now.

‘I’m coming soon,’ he whispered. ‘I’m coming home soon.’

When Daniel woke up the next day, Father was gone. A heavy rain was falling and the drops drummed against the windowpane. Daniel stayed in bed. He imagined Father was searching for a ship and a captain. Soon they would be on their way. He jumped out of bed and went over to the window. The cobblestone courtyard was flooded. Daniel went back to bed. It was as if the whole building was being turned into a ship. The bed moved, the curtains fluttered as if the ship were slowly starting to roll. He tried to remember everything that had happened since he had lain in this bed the first time. But the memories were gone. He could already see himself wearing only a loincloth, on his way with his family through the desert.

He fell asleep and when he opened his eyes Father was standing by the bed. Next to him stood another man who smiled with kindly eyes.

‘This is Dr Madsen,’ said Father. ‘He works at the hospital here. We met in the city where we visited a man lying in bed who gave us money. Do you remember?’

Daniel remembered vaguely. Not the man in the bed but a woman who slammed the door too hard.

‘We’re going to take a trip together,’ Father went on. ‘We’ll leave as soon as it stops raining. We’ll be there before evening.’

‘On the sea?’ asked Daniel.

Dr Madsen smiled. Father shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not the sea. Once again we have to ride behind a horse. But it’s not a long trip.’

Daniel got out of bed and dressed. The rain had stopped. When he looked out of the window he saw the two girls. He waved at them, but they didn’t see him. They didn’t have a skipping rope.

Once again they sat on a wagon. It rolled out of the town, and Daniel wondered where they were going. All around him lay brown fields. Here and there stood some lonely trees full of screeching flocks of black birds. In some of the fields he saw wagons with horses, and people creeping about in the mud. Father shook his head.

‘Can you imagine anything worse? Slogging through mud up to your chin, picking turnips?’

‘Many of them are Poles,’ replied Madsen. ‘They come here for the season. Live with the pigs in the barns. Get the same food. And yet they’re eager for the work.’

‘Mud,’ Father muttered. ‘All that mud they have to crawl around in. From morning to night.’

‘I thought you were going back to the sand,’ said Madsen.

Father looked at Madsen, who nodded without saying anything more. Daniel wondered why. Something gave him a sudden pain in the stomach. Why didn’t Father want to talk about the desert?

They continued on in silence. The flocks of birds were fighting and screeching above the trees. The people were crawling in the mud. Church bells could be heard in the distance. Daniel realised that the landscape scared him. There was no water anywhere. Only this sticky clay that clung to the bottom of his shoes and made them even heavier on his feet. This was what made this journey unlike all the others.

Daniel tried to think about what Father had said. They were going to start a new life. A life that would be better. The only life that could be any better was in the desert. That’s where they would have to go. Daniel knew that he would find Kiko and Be again. Even if they were dead, he would search for them, and there would be other families he could follow on their nomadic wanderings.

He hopped down from the wagon to stretch his legs. The clay began to clump under his shoes so he took them off and ran barefoot.

‘It’s too cold,’ said Father. ‘You might catch a chill.’

‘The boy is healthy,’ said Madsen. ‘He’ll be fine.’

Daniel stopped and looked at a bird of prey hovering motionless on the wind. It dived and caught a mouse only a few metres away from him. The horse gave a start when the bird dived and the driver pulled on the reins. The bird, which was brown, flapped away with its quarry in its beak.

‘A buzzard,’ said Madsen. ‘There’s good feeding here. There are more of them every year.’

‘Right now I feel more like the mouse,’ said Father. ‘A few days ago it was just the opposite. Everything can change very fast.’

Madsen nodded but didn’t reply. Daniel waited in vain for Father to say more.

That afternoon they turned off the main road and came to a town where the houses were low and the mud seemed to creep all the way up their front steps. Madsen pointed and they made another turn onto a track that was barely navigable. They stopped next to a low house that was only just standing. Madsen climbed down and went into the cobblestone yard and banged on the door. A man with his shirt unbuttoned opened it. Madsen went inside and the door closed. The driver had hopped down from his seat and went behind some bushes to take a piss. Daniel climbed up onto the driver’s seat and Father let him hold the reins.

‘Now we just have to wait,’ said Father. ‘Dr Madsen loves people. That’s why he became a doctor. He could have been a professor at a university. But he wanted to go out into the countryside and take care of sick people.’

‘Is someone sick?’ asked Daniel. ‘In the house?’

‘He’s talking to them,’ replied Father. ‘We’ll wait till he comes back out.’

‘Then we’re going on?’

Father didn’t answer. He climbed down from the driver’s seat and started off along the track. Soon he was so far away that he looked like a lone tree out in the field. Daniel held the reins and followed him with his eyes. He still couldn’t get inside Father’s thoughts. Something was very different, but he didn’t know what. The driver came back and took the reins. His flies were unbuttoned and he smelled like piss.

‘You little black devil,’ he said with a menacing smile. ‘You’re not going to hold my reins.’

Daniel quickly moved off the driver’s seat. Father was still standing out in the field. Slowly, as if he were searching for something, he looked all around. Daniel jumped off the wagon and ran over to him. Father held out his hand and Daniel grabbed it eagerly. It was several days now since Father had voluntarily offered his hand.

‘It’s lonely here,’ said Father. ‘Lonely like in the desert. It’s as if heaven and earth are merging. You can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.’

Daniel didn’t understand what he meant. He knew what the words meant, heaven and earth, but not what Father was trying to tell him.

The farmhouse door slammed. In the distance they could see Madsen coming out. Father kept holding Daniel’s hand. When they reached the house Madsen was not alone. By his side stood a man and a woman. They were wearing grey clothes and had pale faces, but they smiled at Daniel.

‘Everything is fine,’ said Madsen. ‘Ten riksdaler per month. They’re good people. Edvin and Alma Andersson. I helped Alma once when she had the quinsy.’

‘I could have died,’ said the woman. ‘But he cut it out without killing me.’

Father let go of Daniel’s hand.

‘Go and fetch your skipping rope.’

‘I don’t feel like skipping,’ Daniel replied.

Now he was starting to get scared again. Father was far away, even though he was standing right next to him.

‘Do as I say,’ said Father impatiently. ‘It will only take a moment.’

‘Then will we keep going?’

Father didn’t reply. ‘Fetch the rope,’ he said. ‘You’ve been sitting still far too much the past few days. That’s not good for a child.’

Daniel went and fetched the rope from the wagon. The driver stood stroking the horse’s mane.

‘You little black devil,’ he snarled. ‘I know what the Devil’s children look like.’

Daniel took the rope and went off along the track. He watched Father shake hands and knew that a great danger was approaching. But where it was coming from he didn’t know. He tried to skip but stumbled and fell. The rope wound like a snake around his legs. His feet were black with mud and he was freezing cold.

Father called to him and he went back. He yanked on the rope and hoped it would snap.

Father smiled, but the smile was dangerous.

‘I have to go on a trip,’ he said. ‘A short trip. I’ll be back soon. In the meantime you will live here. With Edvin and Alma. They are good people and they will take care of you. What did I teach you to say?’

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

‘That’s right. And you will live here until I come back.’

Daniel felt the terror growing.

‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.

His tears began to flow. It was the secret river that broke through all the dams; the river of pain that everyone carried inside, the one Be had told him about.

‘Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.’

Suddenly it was clear to Daniel that Father was leaving right now. They wouldn’t even have time to say a proper goodbye. Madsen had gone over to the wagon and was standing there waiting.

Daniel yelled and clung to Father. If he left, everything would come to an end. Father was leaving him, and he was lying when he said he would come back. He had driven him here, as far away from the sea as possible.

‘Control yourself,’ said Father. ‘It’s for your own good.’

Daniel screamed. He was like an animal being led to the slaughter. When Father tried to prise his arms away he sank his teeth into his wrist. Father jerked away and they both fell over in the mud. The man named Edvin pulled at Daniel, but he wouldn’t let go. His teeth were the last hold on life he had left.

But he couldn’t keep it up. Father got up from the mud. Blood was running from his wrist.

‘This won’t work,’ said the woman, upset. ‘The boy is grief-stricken.’

‘It will be fine,’ said Father. ‘Parting is always dramatic.’

‘You ought to tell him the truth,’ said the man holding Daniel’s arms. ‘You ought to tell him the truth about how long you’ll be gone.’

‘He knows I’ll come back. When I’m gone he’ll settle down.’

Daniel could feel the grip around his arms slacken. He tore himself loose and clung tight to Father again. He knew his hands weren’t enough; he had to sink his teeth into him, act like a desperate animal, hold on tight, and he tried to get to Father’s throat with his teeth. But Father hit him hard in the face so he fell to the ground. The blow had struck his nose and he started to bleed.

‘Now calm down!’ Father yelled. ‘I’m doing everything for your sake. I want you to live here until I come back.’

‘It’s not going to work!’ shouted the woman.

‘It will work,’ said Father. ‘As soon as I’m gone he’ll calm down.’

Then he turned and started towards the wagon. He pressed a handkerchief to his bleeding wrist. Daniel tried to run after him, but the man named Edvin grabbed his arms. The wagon rolled away. Father didn’t look back. Daniel had stopped screaming. Now he was wailing, but softly, as if he had already crept off into a thicket to die.

He closed his eyes.

The last he saw of Father was an image inside his eyelids. He was holding a rifle in his hand and sighting at an antelope that was taking a leap.

The rifle fired.

The antelope was gone.

Daniel opened his eyes.

The wagon had vanished.

A flock of birds was fighting above a solitary tree far out in a field.

The fog came rolling in and enveloped everything in its white silence.