Daniel (13 page)

 

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.

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.