Daniel (40 page)

 

That night his condition grew worse. Only once during the time that remained did he get up from the bed and go out into the yard. It was when he dreamed that Be and Kiko had come and were waiting for him. When he went outside and felt the cold from the ground seep into his body, there was no one there. He went back into the barn and searched for the wooden shoes that he was carving and the knife that lay in the straw. He stuffed them under his nightshirt and returned to the yard. He called out to them, shouted their names, but got no reply. Alma and Edvin came out, roused from their sleep. After he had moved into the bedroom they slept in the kitchen with the milkmaid. He didn't resist when Edvin lifted him up and carried him back inside.

That was the only time he got out of bed. It was a brief interruption in his decline, which would not end until he was dead.

 

Now and then he was struck with severe coughing fits that bloodied the sheets, but most of the time he lay quietly in the borderland where dreams and reality meet. He never said a word, never met anyone's eyes, and recognised only Alma and Edvin. Hallén came to visit regularly, as did Dr Madsen. On one occasion Alma also called in a wise woman from Kivik who, it was said, could cure people of consumption by greasing their chests with cow fat. But Daniel continued to decline. He was not in pain, felt no hunger, had no idea whether it was day or night.

 

As his condition worsened, he discovered that the way back did not go towards the horizon but inwards, downwards, towards a deep that was drawing him in. There Be and Kiko were waiting. In his dreams he could already glimpse the sand that was completely white in the blazing sun. He was utterly calm now. Nothing would keep him from returning. Be and Kiko had not abandoned him. Kiko would be angry because he had taken so long to come, but not even this worried him. For a few hours every day he managed to keep carving the wooden shoe. He thought that Kiko would be pleased. He had become a better carver. One day Kiko would be able to entrust the antelope and the rock wall to him.

 

In the last days, after he had already slipped very far towards the desert that awaited him, he finally began to hear their voices. Now they were quite close to him. Gradually he was able to distinguish their faces as well. A boy who was a few years older than Daniel was the first to come up to his bed. Daniel no longer remembered his name, but there was no doubt that it was him, the third son that was born to one of Kiko's older sisters. When Daniel asked his first question, - whether it would be long before Be and Kiko came - the boy replied that they were out hunting, but they would be back soon.

 

Just as the boy reached him, Edvin opened the door and carried in a wooden mug of milk. He set it on the table next to the bed and stood
there. Then he went over to the door and called Alma in a low voice. Daniel explained to the boy who they were, Edvin and Alma, and when Alma came in the boy was sitting on the bed by Daniel's feet.

‘They're here again,' said Edvin.

‘Who?'

‘The voices! Can't you hear them? He isn't alone in here.'

Alma listened. ‘You're imagining things. There's nobody here.'

‘Can't you hear them? He isn't alone here. Damn it all.'

‘You're tired,' Alma said, taking Edvin by the hand. ‘You're not sleeping well because you're worrying. I'm worried too. But we have to trust in God.'

‘God?' Edvin said angrily. ‘What does he know?'

‘Don't blaspheme.'

 

They left the room. The boy got up from the bed, waved to Daniel and vanished. Daniel closed his eyes and continued to sink. He could feel the warm sand under his feet. If he shaded his eyes with his hand he could see some zebras moving in the shimmering sunlight. Even though he wasn't hungry, he had an urge to sink his teeth into some meat again from an animal that Kiko had killed.

 

Only once during these last days did he think that he saw Father again. By then he had already sunk so far that he was surrounded by sand and low bushes. Near a dried-up stream lay a whitened skeleton scraped clean. Right next to one hand, where the finger bones were splayed, was a little wooden box. Daniel recognised it at once. It was the same box that Father had asked Daniel on several occasions to guard because it contained the insects that Father would give his name to one day. Daniel opened it and found a desiccated butterfly that had once been blue. When he touched its wings it disintegrated into a bluish powder. He put the box back next to Father's skeleton and hoped that someone, maybe the woman with the buttons, would one day find Father and take him back home.

 

At last he was there. First he saw the hills with the cave where the antelope was carved. In the distance two people were approaching. He waited. Finally he saw that it was Be and Kiko, and Be was carrying a
new baby on her back, and she told him that a sister had arrived while he was gone. Kiko wasn't angry. Daniel held out his present and at the same moment forgot that his name had been Daniel. Now he was Molo again. Nothing more. Kiko admired for a long time what he was holding in his hands.

‘You have gained patience,' he said then. ‘You have grown up.'

Molo smiled. He was home now. Everything that had happened would soon vanish from his mind.

 

Daniel died early one summer morning. By then he had lain in a coma for several weeks. Dr Madsen hadn't been able to do anything for him. There was no hope.

 

Not until they were about to lay him in the coffin did Alma discover the wooden sculpture. She showed it to Edvin.

‘He carved a deer out of a wooden shoe,' he said. ‘Why did he do that?'

‘We'll put it in the coffin with him,' Alma said. ‘He won't be lonely any more.'

 

They placed the sculpture next to his head and then screwed down the lid. Many people came to the funeral. Hallén chose not to speak from a Bible text but instead propagandised for the importance of supporting the mission work under way in Africa.

 

No one knew that the coffin they buried was actually empty.

On the road between Francistown in Botswana and Windhoek in Namibia, he spent the night at a hotel in Ghanzi. The village consisted of a collection of wind-tormented houses that lay strewn in the middle of the desert. The hotel was full of sand. Even though the menu at the restaurant offered a great variety of dishes, they consisted mostly of sand. It crunched between his teeth even when he drank water. In the hotel's desolate bar two men sat concluding a deal. They were taking their time and there were frequent long silences before they continued the conversation. In the desert there was no reason to hurry. Since there were no other guests in the bar and the barman had disappeared, he couldn't avoid hearing what they were talking about. One of them had got his lorry stuck just past the Namibian border and was now trying to sell both the vehicle and the load, which apparently included bicycle tyres and various wares, such as children's clothing, stockings and a carton of peaked caps that the man had acquired at a bargain price. The negotiations proceeded slowly, and he didn't stay long enough to hear whether the two men reached an agreement or not.

 

Just before dark he took a walk along the only street. Everywhere the desert was present. He went into a shop, mostly to see what there was to buy. The woman behind the counter, who was black and quite young, asked him at once whether he would marry her and take her away. He had a strong feeling that she was serious, and he quickly left the shop.

In the evening, after eating eggs, potatoes, vegetables and sand, he lay awake in his hotel room fighting with the mosquitoes. The desert that surrounded him roared in the darkness, as if he were actually on an island in the middle of an endless sea.

When he awoke in the morning he was covered with mosquito bites. He lay in bed and counted the days. If he had been infected with malaria during the night, it would take about a fortnight before the illness broke out. By then, if everything went as planned, he would already be far away from the desert.

 

He continued his journey towards the Namibian border. He had been warned that the road was very poor, sometimes almost non-existent, but the jeep with its four-wheel drive and powerful engine drove him on. He wondered when he would pass the lorry that should be out there somewhere, like a shipwrecked boat in the sea of sand.

 

Before he got that far he stopped to take a piss. The desert was flat, not like the desert he had seen in pictures, with dunes that rose up in soft ridges, hiding all the sand that lay beyond them. Here there were no hills. The sand was grey, and there were a few isolated low bushes. At the horizon, heaven and earth met in a colourless mist.

 

When he had buttoned up his flies and turned round to get behind the wheel again, he discovered a group of people walking towards him across the desert. They moved very quickly in single file, and it took a while before he was quite sure that he was seeing people and not animals. He went back to the jeep and leaned against it so that the driver's side gave him shade. He squinted and counted the people approaching. He came up with the number thirty-one.

 

The first to reach him was a skinny old man who had grey hair and bow legs. The man regarded him with inquisitive eyes.

‘I know how to speak English,' he said.

He was surprised. He had been told that the nomads in the desert, the Bushmen, didn't speak any language but their own, which comprised the strange clicking sounds that were almost impossible for others to master.

The jeep was now surrounded by the nomads. All of them gave him friendly looks, and not even the little children seemed afraid of him. Suddenly he realised that he now had an opportunity that might never come again. It was impossible to make an appointment with a nomad. One could never specify a time with a group belonging to the San
people. But here he had happened to meet one of these groups, and there was even a man who spoke English.

He asked the old man whether they had time to stop for a while and let him tell them a story. The man turned to the others and began speaking the language with the clicking sounds. They all seemed quite intrigued that someone wanted to tell them a story. They sat down in the sand, and even though it was quite hot, none of them wanted to sit in the shade next to the jeep.

Then he told the story of a boy who was given the name Daniel and who had come to Sweden about 120 years before. The old man translated his English and he noticed that the people grew very quiet as they sat before him in the sand. It was a quietness that came from within, a concentration that he had never experienced. He told them everything he knew, all the details he had managed to find out about the boy who now lay buried in a churchyard in the southern part of the faraway land called Sweden. He also told them that he was now making the long journey to Windhoek to search through the old German archives, which were now the National Archives of Namibia, to see whether he could find any documents about the people who had taken the boy named Daniel to Sweden.

When he had finished telling the story, he handed the old man the photograph, taken in the photography studio in Lund, that he had managed to find. It had been in the possession of the relatives of Hans Bengler, who were very reluctant to part with it. He had never been able to understand their reluctance, or perhaps it was anguish. The story of Daniel seemed enveloped in a shameful silence.

Now the photograph was passed among the people in the sand. He had a feeling that what was playing out before him was a religious rite.

As he handed back the photograph, the old man began to speak. He searched a long time for the words, as if it was important to him that everything he said was correct.