Daniel (7 page)

Besides, he had his insects. The jars were slowly starting to fill up. But after seven months he had not yet found any insect that he could say with absolute certainty was unknown.

 

One evening when he had been with Andersson for four months, he found a woman lying on the floor underneath his hammock when he went to bed. She was naked, with only a thin cover over her, and he guessed that she was no more than sixteen years old. He lay down in his hammock and listened to her breathing there below him. That night he slept fitfully and didn't properly fall asleep until dawn. When he opened his eyes she was gone. He asked Andersson who she was.

‘I sent her for you. You can't be without a woman any more. You're starting to act strangely.'

‘I want to choose a woman myself.'

‘She'll stay until you've chosen. And she wants to.'

Andersson's reply made him angry. But he didn't show it.

For another night he slept in the hammock with the woman beneath
him on the floor. The third night he lay down by her side, and after that he spent every night on the floor. She was very warm, with a kind of quiet affection that surprised him, because he had never experienced that with Matilda. She was always serious, kept her eyes closed, and only occasionally touched his back with her hands.

She seemed to fall asleep at the same moment he had his orgasm.

 

Her name was Benikkolua, and he never heard her cry. But she sang almost constantly, when she was cleaning his room, shaking his clothes, and carefully arranging his papers on the desk Andersson had given him.

He wanted her to teach him her language; not just the distinctive clicking sounds. He would point at various objects and she would pronounce the words. He wrote them down and she laughed when he tried to imitate her.

Every night he slipped inside her, and wondered who he actually was. To her. Was he committing an outrage or was she there of her own free will? Was Andersson paying her something that he didn't know about?

He tried to ask Andersson about it. But he kept repeating that she was there because she wanted to be.

Andersson's love life, on the other hand, seemed very complicated. He had a woman in Cape Town who had borne him three children, another family in distant Zanzibar, and several women who at irregular intervals came wandering through the desert to spend one or two nights with him.

All these women were black, of course. On one occasion as they were eating dinner, Andersson suddenly started talking about being in love with a preacher's daughter in Vänersborg when he was very young. But he fell silent as abruptly as he had begun.

The next day he took off into the desert to hunt elephants.

 

Nine months passed. Then Bengler finally found his insect. It was an insignificant beetle that he could not identify. Because it had short, possibly undeveloped legs he was not even sure that it was a beetle at first. But he was convinced by the time he stuffed it into his jar and screwed on the lid.

He had succeeded. He ought to return to Sweden and enter this new discovery in the scientific registers.

The thought upset him. How could he return? And to what?

 

He had found the beetle during an expedition that kept him away from New Vänersborg for two weeks.

When he returned he found Andersson inside the shop. A wagonload of salt had arrived.

But there was something else there as well. On the floor stood something that looked like a calf pen. In it lay a boy who stared at him when he leaned forward to take a look.

When he saw the boy in the pen it was like looking at himself. Why, he didn't know. And yet he was sure: the boy who lay there was himself. He cast an enquiring look at Andersson, who was instructing Geijer on how to stack the sacks of salt to avoid the moisture, which in some strange way even reached this remote outpost in the desert.

‘What's this here?' Bengler asked.

‘I got him in trade for a sack of flour.'

‘Why is he lying here?'

‘I don't know. He has to be somewhere.'

Bengler felt himself getting upset. Andersson and his damned salt. When a boy was lying on the bottom of a filthy crate.

‘Who would trade a live human being for a sack of dead flour?'

‘Some relative. His parents are dead. There was apparently a clan war. Or maybe a feud. Maybe it was the Germans who arranged to hunt down some natives. They often do that. The boy has no one. If I had said no to the trade he would have just disappeared in the sand.'

‘Does he have a name?'

‘Not that I know of. And I don't know what I'm going to do with him either, so he'll have to stay here. Just like you. A temporary visitor who ends up staying.'

Bengler realised at that instant what he had to do. He didn't need any time to think it over. Now he had found his beetle, he would return to Sweden. The dream of insects no longer excited him, but the boy lying there in the crate, or animal pen, was real.

‘I'll adopt him. I'll take him with me.'

For the first time since the conversation began, Andersson was interested. He set down a sack of salt on the planks and looked at Bengler with distaste.

‘What did you say?'

‘You heard me. I'll adopt him.'

‘And?'

‘There isn't any “and”. There's only the future. I'm going home. I'm taking him with me.'

‘Why would you do that?'

‘I can give him a life there. Here he will perish. Just as you said.'

Andersson spat. Instantly Geijer was there, wiping it up with a rag. Bengler recalled with shame how he had once let himself vomit into Geijer's hands.

‘What sort of life do you think you can give him?'

‘Something better than this.'

‘You think he'll survive? A journey by sea? The cold in Sweden? The snow and the wind and all the taciturn people? You're not only crazy, you're conceited too. Have you found that insect yet?'

Bengler showed him his jar. ‘A beetle. With peculiar legs. It hasn't been named.'

‘You're going to kill the boy.'

‘On the contrary. Tell me how much you want for him.'

Andersson smiled. ‘A promise. That some day you come back and tell me what happened to him.'

Bengler nodded. He promised, without thinking it over.

‘I'll keep the crate,' said Andersson. ‘You can have the vermin free.'

He motioned to Geijer to lift the boy out of the pen. He was very small. Bengler guessed that he was eight or nine years old. He squatted down in front of him. When he smiled the boy closed his eyes, as if he wanted to make himself invisible. Bengler decided to give the boy a name. That was the most important thing of all. A person without a name did not exist. He thought first of his own last name. What would go with it?

‘You can call him Lazarus,' suggested Andersson, who had read his thoughts again. ‘Wasn't he the one who was raised from the dead? Or why not Barabbas? Then he can hang by your side on the cross you nail together for him.'

Bengler felt like killing Andersson. If he were strong enough. But Andersson would only shake him off like an insect.

‘You don't think Barabbas is a good suggestion?'

Bengler could feel himself sweating. ‘Barabbas was a thief. We're talking about giving an abandoned child a name.'

‘What does he know about what's written in the Bible?'

‘One day he will know. Then how will I explain why I named him after a thief?'

Andersson burst out laughing. ‘I believe you mean what you say. That you'll take the boy across the sea and that he'll survive. To think that I've had such a damned idiot under my roof.'

‘I'll be leaving soon.'

Andersson threw out his arms as if in a gesture of peace.

‘Perhaps I could call him David,' said Bengler.

Andersson frowned. ‘I don't remember him. What did he do?'

‘He fought Goliath.'

Andersson nodded.

‘Might be suitable. Because he will have to fight against a Goliath.'

‘Joseph,' Andersson said suddenly. ‘The one who was cast out. Joseph is a fine name.'

Bengler shook his head. His father's middle name was Joseph.

‘No good.'

‘Why not?'

‘It brings back unpleasant memories,' Bengler replied hesitantly.

Andersson didn't ask why.

While they were speaking the boy stood motionless. Bengler realised that he was waiting for something terrible to happen. He expected to be beaten, maybe killed.

‘Did he see what happened to his parents?'

Andersson shrugged his shoulders. He had returned to the salt. Geijer was balancing at the top of a ladder.

‘It's possible. I didn't ask much. Why ask about something like that when it's better not to know? I've seen the way the Germans hunt these people the way you hunt rats.'

Bengler placed his hand on the boy's head. His body was tense. He still had his eyes shut.

At that moment Bengler knew.

The boy would be called Daniel. Daniel who had sat in the lions' den. That was a fitting name.

‘Daniel,' Bengler said. ‘Daniel Bengler. It sounds like a Jew. But since you're black you can't be a Jew. Now you have a name.'

‘He's crawling with lice. And besides, he's undernourished. Fatten him
up and wash him. Otherwise he'll be dead before you even get to Cape Town. Before he even knows that he's been given a Christian name.'

 

That night Bengler burned the boy's clothes. He scrubbed him in a wooden tub and put one of his shirts on him that reached to his ankles. Benikkolua was always close by. She had wanted to wash the boy but Bengler wanted to do it himself. That way the boy's mute fear might subside. So far he hadn't said a single word. His mouth was closed tight. Even when Bengler wanted to give him food he refused to open it. He thinks that his life will fly away if he opens his lips, Bengler thought.

He asked Benikkolua to try. But the boy still wouldn't open his mouth.

Andersson stood aside and watched it all.

‘Take a pair of pliers and prise it open,' he said. ‘I don't understand this coddling. If you want to save his life you can't treat him with kid gloves.'

Bengler didn't reply. It would be a relief to get away from Andersson. In spite of all the help he had received, Bengler realised that he hadn't liked him right from their very first meeting, when he was forced to poke a hole in the boil on his back. He thought that Andersson was no different from the Germans or the Portuguese or the Englishmen who tormented the blacks and hunted them like rats. Except that Andersson exercised his brutality with discretion. What difference was there between clapping a person in irons and dressing someone up in a ridiculous Swedish folk costume? He thought that he ought to tell Andersson all this, to show him, in parting, that he saw right through him. But he knew that he lacked the courage. Andersson was too strong for him. Compared to him, Bengler belonged to an insignificant caste that would never have power over the desert.

 

That night Benikkolua had to sleep outside the door. Bengler left the boy alone on the mattress with the plate of food by his side. Then he put out the lamp and lay down in his hammock. Unlike Benikkolua, whose breathing he could always hear, the boy was silent. A sudden apprehension made him get up. He lit the lamp. The boy was awake, but his jaws were still clamped tightly shut. Bengler placed a beam across the door and returned to his hammock.

In the morning when he woke the boy had eaten all the food. Now he was asleep. His mouth was slightly open.

 

Three days later Bengler made his last preparations before leaving. He had loaded and lashed down his possessions on the wagon. The boy had still not said a single word. He sat mute on the floor or in the shade with his eyes closed. Bengler stroked his head now and then. His body was very tense.

 

Bengler had tried to explain to Benikkolua that he had to leave. Whether she understood or not he couldn't tell. How could he explain what an ocean was? Like expanses of sand but made out of rainwater? What was a distance, really? How far away was Sweden anyway? He realised that he would miss her, even though he didn't know a thing about her. Her body, he knew, but not who she was.

 

He spent his last evening with Andersson. They ate ostrich meat boiled in a herbal stock. Andersson had brought out a pot of wine. As if to indicate that it was an important day, he had put on a clean shirt. The while time that Bengler stayed at the trading post he had never seen Andersson wash, but he had grown used to the stench and didn't notice it any more. Andersson soon got drunk. Bengler drank cautiously. He was afraid of having a hangover the next day when he set off across the desert.