Daniel

by Henning Mankell

  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 vent
ure 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.

&
nbsp; 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.’