After two weeks in the desert he had caught his first insect. It was Amos who found it. A very small beetle with a greenish-blue shell that was walking slowly through the sand. He identified it in one of the British entomological lexicons that he had brought along. To his astonishment he read that the Bushmen made a lethal poison from the secretion of this beetle. He stuffed it into one of his jars, filled it with alcohol and labelled it. Slowly he had begun to convert his wagon into a museum.
But the journey itself was still what was most important. He had decided that the trading post somewhere ahead of them would serve as the base for his expedition. From there he could organise his hunt for ostriches; from there he could plan, in an entirely different manner, his search for the unknown insect. There would be people he could converse with. He imagined that everything would be there that made a life possible. A hymn book, an old pump organ, ledgers and regular meals. He vaguely hoped that there would also be a woman waiting for him, someone who, like Matilda, might visit him once a week, sit on him and then drink a glass of port.
That had been among the last of his purchases in Cape Town before he said farewell to Wackman: two bottles of Portuguese port.
But the damned maps weren’t right. Or else the constantly drifting sand was a landscape that was impossible to map. In vain he had sought along the horizon for a folded mountain range that was supposed to be there, according to the map. But he hadn’t found it. He wondered whether there was some mysterious disturbance in the sand that made his compass unreliable. Sometimes he was confused at daybreak, thinking that the sun was rising over the horizon at a point where east had not been the day before. Since he had no one to talk to he started talking aloud to himself. So that the ox-drivers wouldn’t think he was losing his mind, he disguised his conversations with himself as religious rituals. He folded his hands, and sometimes he knelt, while out loud he argued with himself about why in hell that mountain range wasn’t where it should be. Why neither the landscape nor the maps were correct. During these sham rituals the ox-drivers would always keep their distance. Occasionally he would also remember to scold them for their laziness, for their unwashed bodies, as he knelt there with folded hands.
The days were uneventful. The sun burned with its blinding light from a cloudless sky. The oxen moved sluggishly, as if the sand were a bog. Now and then the silence was broken by the crack of a whip. The ox-drivers might also break out into incomprehensible songs that could last for hours or end abruptly after only a few minutes.
He wondered what they thought of him. How had Wackman managed to convince them to leave their families and follow him into the desert? What prophecy or payment did they think he would be able to give them? Their wages were poor, the food meagre, the water strictly rationed. And yet they followed him towards a goal that he had not succeeded in pointing out on the map. One day it will come to an end, he wrote to Matilda. People can only put up with so much. When they realise that the journey is meaningless they may turn against me. There are four of them and only one of me. I have decided to shoot Amos first if they turn hostile. He seems to be their leader, the strongest one. I’ll shoot him with the rifle. Then the important thing is not to miss the other three with my revolver. Every morning and evening I check my weapons to make sure no sand has got into the moving parts.
He also wondered whether they could read his thoughts. More and more often the ox-drivers would halt the second before he had planned to raise his hand to give the sign that it was time to stop for their midday rest or to pitch camp for the night. He had written to Matilda about this too. About the invisible language that had been created between himself and the four men who shared his existence.
Sometimes he tried to imagine that she could read what he was writing. Would she understand? Would she be interested at all? He felt a vague fear and a pang of jealousy when the only answer he could give himself was an image: the way she sat with her breasts bare and her dress pulled up, on top of some other, unknown man.
On the twenty-eighth day something happened that would have crucial significance for the man from Hovmantorp. (He had started calling himself that in his mind, a designation of a geographical starting point rather than a meaningless name. He felt that the name Bengler no longer existed. He was Hans Hovmantorp, or simply a man who had once run along the stream that flowed through that little, insignificant village in Småland.)
On precisely this day, the twenty-eighth since their departure from Cape Town, a strong wind had passed through during the morning hours. He had been forced to tie a handkerchief around his face and shade his eyes with his hand to keep out the sand. A little before ten o’clock the wind vanished and the silence returned. He had just taken off the handkerchief when the oxen suddenly came to a halt. Amos, who was guiding the leading ox, had made his whip whistle through the air, but the oxen refused to budge. Even after three or four blows on the lead ox’s back, none of the animals moved. It was as if they had run into an invisible wall or were standing on the edge of a ravine. He saw that the unexpected behaviour of the oxen made the ox-drivers uneasy. He didn’t know how best to intervene. There was no logic to what had happened, nothing in the path of the oxen. And yet they had stopped abruptly. He took the rifle from his shoulder and went over to them. They were standing quite still and he thought he could see fear in their big heavy eyes. But there was nothing on the ground before them: no snake, no crevasse. The sand was flat. There were some rocks sticking up. That was all. He called Amos over and threw his arms out as if to ask why the oxen weren’t moving. Amos shook his head, he didn’t know. Bengler felt sweat streaming over him. Not the sweat that came from the burning sun, but sweat from his growing uncertainty. It was his responsibility to get the oxen moving. He walked around the animals and the wagon again, pretending to inspect the wheels as he tried to work out a solution. But there was no solution, because the problem was unknown. The oxen had stopped for reasons he could not discern.
By sheer chance he finally found the answer to the riddle. He had walked a few steps to the side, right in front of the lead ox, and kicked a rock that stuck up from the sand, revealing a piece of dark wood. With his foot he moved the sand and to his surprise found that what he was uncovering was part of a bow. He called the ox-drivers over and pointed at the tip of the bow. They immediately began an intense conversation with each other, first seriously, then more relieved, and finally they broke out laughing. Amos and one of the men he privately called the Consonants knelt down and began shovelling away the sand. Soon they uncovered the bow, a quiver, some arrows, braided leather thongs, and finally the skeleton. Now he understood that they had come across a Bushman grave. One evening at the brothel Wackman had told him that the Bushmen would bury their dead anywhere, and they returned to the area only when they could no longer remember exactly where the grave was located. The oxen had stopped because there was a grave in front of them. And they would have stood there until they fell over dead if the grave had not been discovered.
The grave belonged to a woman. Even though only parts of the skeleton remained, he could tell that it was a woman because he knew the difference between a male and a female pelvis. The teeth in the cranium were in very good condition. The seams in the skull’s parietal bone indicated that the woman was young when she died. He was struck by a sudden desire to explain all this to the ox-drivers, but since he didn’t have any language in which to communicate, he refrained. They dug a hole about fifty metres away, moved the skeleton, and filled it in. The oxen began to move again.
That evening he wrote a long letter to Matilda. I have discovered that I am a very lonely person. When I stood before the open grave and saw the skeleton of the woman who apparently died very young, it was as if I had finally found companionship. The feeling is hard to explain, and I won’t hesitate to say that it scares me too. For twenty-eight days I have conversed only with myself. In another twenty-eight days I need to meet a person with whom I can carry on a civilised conversation. Otherwise I’
m afraid that it isn’t the desert and the heat that will kill me, but my loneliness.
Nineteen days after they first sighted the Bushmen they again saw a group of them moving like black dots along the horizon. The next day the first ox died. They butchered it and camped at the place where it fell. That night they heard the hyenas laughing in the dark.
When he woke in the morning and stepped out of his tent, Neka and one of the Consonants had vanished. They had taken large amounts of meat with them and half of the remaining water. For the first time he succumbed to a fit of rage and fired his revolver. He aimed straight at the sun and fired three times. The oxen grew restless but Amos managed to calm them. To avoid being abandoned in the middle of the desert, he took forceful measures that night. He tied both Amos and the other ox-driver to separate wagon wheels. He did it carefully and was surprised that they let him do it. Several times during the night he woke and dashed out of the tent because he was afraid they had got loose. But the men were sitting by the wheels, fast asleep.
He realised that the desert had already partially vanquished him. Now he no longer followed the maps: they went where the oxen led them. Soon the water and food would be gone. He took inventory and then wrote down a calculation in a letter to Matilda. The truth is now quite simple. If we don’t reach the trading post within ten days the journey will be over. My visit to the Kalahari Desert will then be finished. The question is whether I will have the courage to shoot myself or whether I will end up lying in the sand, being burned to death by the sun.
Apart from the beetle he had found only two other insects. A millipede that was close to twenty centimetres long, and a moth that lay dead next to the campfire one morning. He had identified both insects in his reference books. He forsaw that his museum would consist of these three jars. Someone who might come across the wagon buried in the sand would wonder who the madman was who had wandered around in this hell collecting insects in glass jars from which the alcohol had long since evaporated.
He counted down the days. When they were three days from the end, when all the food and all the water would be gone, Amos came down with a high fever. For a day and a night they were forced to remain encamped. Amos was delirious, whimpering like a baby, and Bengler was sure that they would soon have the expedition’s first burial. But by morning his fever had vanished as quickly as it came.
They pressed on. Just before the midday rest the second ox-driver began waving excitedly and pointing towards a spot that lay west of their route. It took a long time before Bengler managed to understand what the ox-driver had seen. At first it seemed that the sand was only quivering. But then he saw that there was a clump of trees and some houses. He heard a horse whinny in the distance. The oxen replied with dull bellowing.
At that instant he burst into tears. He turned away so that Amos and the other man would not see his weakness.
After a while he pulled himself together, dried off the traces of tears and urged on the oxen. They were now heading in a different direction. For the first time he had a goal.
Long afterwards he would try to recall what he had thought or felt at the moment they discovered the houses and heard the horse whinny. But there was only a vacuum of relief.
A little before three in the afternoon they arrived.
A man stood on the steps of the biggest house, waiting for them. He was missing two fingers on his right hand.
In resounding Swedish he said that his name was Wilhelm Andersson.
For him there was no doubt that Hans Bengler was Swedish.
No one but a Swedish shoemaker could have made leather boots as fine as those he was wearing.
CHAPTER 5
Wilhelm Andersson welcomed Bengler warmly. His handshake was so powerful that it felt like he was trying to crush his hand. Then Andersson took off his shirt, turned his back, and asked Bengler to cut open a boil between his shoulder blades that was inaccessible to his own hands. Bengler stared at the distended boil and recalled the time he had fainted in the Anatomy Theatre. He stroked the scar above his eye.
‘It’s probably best I don’t. I can’t tolerate the sight of blood.’
‘There won’t be any blood coming out, just greenish-yellow pus and maybe some worms or maggots.’
Andersson spat on a knife with an ivory handle and handed it to Bengler. His back was covered in odd cracks and swellings. It was as if the desert landscape had carved its presence into his skin.
‘I’ve never lanced a boil before.’
‘Stick the point in the middle and press. When it opens, cut downwards. And turn face your away so it doesn’t squirt in your eyes.’
Bengler put the knife point against the purple boil, shut his eyes and pressed. Then he squinted quickly and cut downwards. A viscous mess ran down Andersson’s back.
‘Take this towel here and wipe it off. Then we’ll eat.’
Still without looking, Bengler wiped off the mess and dropped the towel on the floor. Blood was trickling out of the incision now. Andersson gave him a piece of white cloth.
‘Put this over the cut. It’ll stick and stay on. The sweat makes it sticky.’
Bengler kept swallowing and swallowing so he wouldn’t vomit. Andersson wriggled into his shirt and buttoned it wrongly so that one edge hung down. He noticed but didn’t do anything about it.
Only now did Bengler realise that Andersson gave off a horrible stench. He tried to pull back a step and breathe through his mouth. But at the same time he remembered that he hadn’t been anywhere near a bath in almost two months. Water for washing was the first thing he had rationed, only a week after they left Cape Town.
Andersson led him into a room that was filled with animal trophies. The odour of decay and formalin was very strong. In the middle of the room was a hammock, identical to the one Bengler had slept in during the passage on Robertson’s schooner. It took a moment before he noticed that a short black man was standing motionless in the corner of the room. At first he thought it was a stuffed animal, but then he realised it was a live human being.
‘My only form of homesickness,’ said Andersson. ‘Or possibly it’s a sign of disgust. I’ve never been able to work out why I brought along a folk costume from Vänersborg and dressed my servant in it.’
This was a situation that Bengler had no background to help him understand. After two months in the desert he had reached a trading post where there was a Swede named Wilhelm Andersson who came from Vänersborg and dressed his valet in a Swedish folk costume.
‘I’ve tried to teach him to dance the polka,’ he said. ‘But he refuses. They prefer to leap. I’ve tried to explain that God doesn’t approve of leaping people. God is a higher being, higher than me, but we have the same view, that if there is dancing to be done it should take place in regular forms, in 3/4 time or 4/4 time. But they continue to leap and wiggle the most unexpected parts of the body.’
He offered Bengler a whisky and water. Bengler thought of his ox-drivers. Andersson instantly read his thoughts.
‘They will be taken care of,’ he said. ‘They’ll get water, food, conversation, be allowed to laugh, and at night there will be women who are warm and open. But you ought to shoot the oxen. You’ve driven the life out of them. Which brings me to the question: what are you doing here?’
Bengler felt the dizziness come as soon as he sipped the whisky. How can I explain something I can’t even explain to myself? he thought. Then, surprisingly even for him, he excused himself by fainting.
When he woke up he was lying in the hammock. The black man in the folk costume was fanning him with something that looked like a piece of oxhide above his head. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Andersson singing a hymn, off-key and vehement, as if he hated the tune. Bengler closed his eyes and thought that in a sense he had now arrived. He had no idea where he was, nor did he have any idea who the strange man was whose boil he had lanced, but he had indeed arrived. He had crept ashore on a strip of beach in this endless sea of sand. I ought to say a praye
r, he thought. One that’s not as insincere as the hymn I’m hearing now. But who should I pray to? Matilda? She doesn’t believe in God. She’s afraid of God the same way she’s scared of the Devil. She’s just as terrified by heaven as by hell.
He didn’t say a prayer. He tried to catch the eye of the black man fanning him, but his gaze was far away, above Bengler’s head.
He suddenly had the feeling that he was in the very centre of the world. Right in the middle of something that for the first time in his life was completely real. Something that demanded he take a stand, have an opinion, make a choice.
He got no further with his thoughts. He noticed that the real reason why he had woken up was violent nausea. He leaned over the side of his hammock to throw up. The black man stopped fanning and cupped his hands to catch the vomit. Bengler didn’t manage to turn away. He sensed a kind of love in the fact that an unknown man in a folk costume from Västergötland accepted his spew in his cupped hands. He knew that his conclusion was wrong, that he would eventually change it, but right now he believed it was love. It was a mercy to be able to throw up into another person’s hands.
Exhausted, he sank back on the pillow. The black man wiped his face. Andersson was still out there somewhere bawling his hymn, which seemed to have an unlimited number of verses. Or was he repeating them? Or singing the hymn in different languages? Even though Bengler was very tired, very close to dropping off to sleep, he tried to listen. Then he realised that Andersson wasn’t singing the proper text. He was filling the verses of the hymn with his own words. He yelled at somebody named Lukas, who was supposed to have fixed a fence long ago. Then he sang about a raft that he once built on Lake Vänern, but soon returned to cursing Lukas, and Bengler realised that Andersson was either insane or drunk.
Daniel Page 4
