Daniel (9 page)

 

Before he went to sleep he lay still and listened to Daniel's breathing. It was irregular and restless. He felt Daniel's forehead but could detect no sign of fever. He's dreaming, he thought. Some day he'll be able to tell me what he was thinking when we left Cape Town.

The odours from the holds were very strong. In the distance he could hear some of the sailors laughing. Then it was quiet again apart from occasional footsteps on deck and the ship creaking against the swells.

 

The journey to Le Havre took a little over a month. They went through two storms and were becalmed for six days in between them. The African continent could be glimpsed now and then like an evasive mirage in the east. The heat was relentless. The captain was worried about his cargo of spices and several times went below deck to check that nothing was getting damp.

On the very first day Bengler had decided that Daniel needed a routine. After eating the breakfast that Raul brought in to them, they began taking walks on deck. The man from Devonshire seldom appeared. According to Raul he was in severe pain and ate almost nothing but strong medicines, which left him constantly in a trance-like state. The merchant's daughter from Rouen played badminton with her chambermaid when the weather permitted. Bengler noticed that the ship then seemed to breathe in a different way. The crew devoutly hoped that the girls' skirts would blow up and expose a leg or perhaps a bit of their undergarments. During their walks, Bengler talked to Daniel constantly. He pointed and explained and alternated speaking German and Swedish. Slowly he thought he could feel the tension in Daniel begin to relax. He was still somewhere else, with parents who were still alive, far away from Andersson's pen and the ship that rose and fell, but he's getting closer, Bengler thought. The further away from Africa, the closer to me.

 

Bengler realised that he had to show Daniel that the harness was a temporary solution for what he hoped would be an equally temporary problem. The rope situation could only be solved by a growing trust. On the second day aboard, Bengler left the scissors he had borrowed from the sailmaker on the table and let Daniel stay alone in the cabin. He waited outside the closed door, ready for Daniel to cut the rope and then rush out of the door to try to cast himself into the sea.

After half an hour nothing had happened.

When Bengler went into the cabin the scissors lay on the table. Daniel was sitting on the floor drawing with his finger in the sand that still covered the floorboards. Bengler decided to take the harness off the boy. The feeling that he had committed an injustice filled him once again with discomfort. But he also experienced something that could only be vanity. He didn't want to admit that Wilhelm Andersson was right. That he should not have taken the boy with him. He didn't want to have his good intentions questioned, even if only by a man he would never meet again. A man who lived in the midst of far-reaching hypocrisy at a remote trading post in the Kalahari Desert.

Bengler went out on deck. The
Chansonette
was sailing in a light wind. The sails were full. He remembered how it had been when he came to Africa on Robertson's black schooner, when he had felt masts and sails inside himself. He stood by the railing and looked down at the water. The sails flapped like birds' wings above his head, a play of sunshine and shadow.

 

For the first time he seriously asked himself the question: what would he actually do when he got back to Sweden? The beetle with the peculiar legs lay in its jar. And he had Daniel too. In two big leather trunks he had 340 different insects he had collected, prepared and arranged according to Linnaeus's system. But the question remained unanswered. The thought of returning to Lund was not only repugnant to him, it was impossible. It was tempting to see Matilda again. But it also frightened him, because he was convinced that she had already forgotten him, forgotten their hours of lovemaking, which were never passionate, and the port wine afterwards. He didn't even know if she was still alive. Maybe she had wound up under Professor Enander's scalpel too. He didn't know, and he realised that he didn't want to know.

The only thing he knew for sure would be waiting for him was the obligatory trip to Hovmantorp to confirm that his father had really died the same night he had the premonition. But then what?

He sought the answer in the sea foaming in the wake of the
Chansonette
.

 

A seaman had silently stepped up next to him. He scratched out his pipe, spat, and stared at Bengler. The skin on his face was like leather, his nose was wide, his mouth dry with cracked lips and his eyes squinted.

‘What do you want that damned boy for?' asked the sailor.

He spoke Norwegian. Bengler had once been friends with a young man from Røros who studied theology in Lund. He had been amused by the language and had learned to imitate it.

He thought he ought to ignore the question, which largely came from the squinty eyes and not out of the cracked lips.

‘Are you going to kill the boy?'

Bengler considered complaining to the captain. As a paying passenger he shouldn't have to associate with the crew except on his own terms.

‘I can't see that it's any of your business.'

The sailor's eyes were steady. Bengler got the feeling that he was facing a reptile that might strike him at any time. Just as Daniel had sunk his teeth into his nose.

‘I can't bear it,' said the sailor. ‘Africa is a continent from hell. There we make our whips whistle, we cut off the ears and hands of people who don't work at the pace we determine. And now we're starting to drag home their children even though slavery is forbidden.'

Bengler grew angry.

‘He has no parents. I'm looking after him. What's so bad about helping a person survive?'

‘Is that why you have him on a lead like a dog? Have you taught him to bark?'

Bengler moved off down the railing. For a brief moment he felt dizzy. The sun was suddenly very strong. He wished he had his revolver. Then he would have shot the damned Norwegian. The sailor was still standing there, his eyes squinting. He had on a striped jumper, trousers cut off just below the knees, and shoes with gaping holes in them.

‘The times are changing,' said the sailor, moving closer.

‘You have no right to bother me like this.'

‘Let me guess: you bought him. Maybe to exhibit him at the variety show? Or in marketplaces? A Hottentot. Maybe you're intending to make him puff himself up like an ape. Could be money in that.'

Bengler was at a loss for words. He thought the sailor must be a revolutionary, a rock-thrower, an iconoclast. Maybe he belonged to that new movement they had discussed during the late nights in Lund. An anarchist? Someone who didn't throw bombs but flung words at him with the same power?

The sailor lit his pipe.

‘One day people like you won't exist,' he said. ‘People have to be free. Not tied up like lap dogs.'

 

During the rest of the journey to Le Havre Bengler did not exchange another word with the sailor. He found out that his name was Christiansen and was regarded by most as a competent and friendly man. He also had the virtue of never imbibing strong drink. This
information was gathered by Raul, who Bengler had soon learned was a reliable reporter.

 

When he took the harness off Daniel he imagined that there would be a reaction of joy, of liberation. But Daniel's only response was immediately to crawl up into the hammock and go to sleep. As always he had some grains of sand gripped in his fist. Bengler was puzzled. If he saw himself in Daniel, how would he decipher the fact that the boy was sleeping?

A great pain has left him, he thought. It's natural to rest when an affliction is over, be it a toothache, colic or headache. That's what he's doing, sleeping it off now that the pain has left him.

 

Two days before they docked at Le Havre, the man with cancer who was going to Devonshire died. Since the captain was worried about his spices and they were becalmed that day, a burial at sea was arranged. Bengler was very depressed when he thought that the man would never return home. During the funeral itself he locked Daniel in the cabin.

 

Besides their regular promenades, Bengler had given Daniel instruction every day. There were two subjects. First, he had to learn Swedish if possible. Second, he had to learn to wear shoes. Initially Daniel was amused by the shoes, but after a while he grew tired of them. On one occasion he flung one of the simple wooden shoes over the railing. Bengler was angry but managed to control himself. He had been given another pair of small worn-out shoes by a carpenter, and he started again. Daniel showed no interest whatsoever, but he did not throw the shoes overboard.

With the language, on the other hand, no progress was made at all. Bengler realised that Daniel simply refused to take in the words. And he could find no way to counter his refusal.

When they docked at Le Havre on a foggy morning in early August, Bengler felt a growing unrest inside. Why in hell had he let his impulses get the better of him and dragged this boy along?

At first he had been afraid that the boy would jump overboard. Now he was afraid that he would throw the boy overboard himself.

The last thing he saw when he went ashore was the sailor squinting at him. His look was as cold as the fog.

 

In the middle of August Bengler and Daniel boarded a coal lighter heading for Simrishamn. Bengler was granted passage if he helped with various tasks on board. The ship was dilapidated and smelled foul. For the entire trip Bengler worried that they would never arrive.

 

On 2 September the vessel docked at Simrishamn. By then Bengler had been away from Sweden for almost a year and a half.

When he stepped ashore he realised that the fear he felt was shared by Daniel.

They had grown closer to each other.

The day they landed a strange thing happened. For Bengler it was a sign. For the first time he seriously thought he had deciphered something from all the unclear and often contradictory signals that Daniel sent out.

From the dock they had walked straight across the muddy harbour square and into a little inn located in one of the alleyways leading down to the water. The innkeeper, who was drunk, had looked in consternation at Daniel, who was standing at Bengler's side. Could it be a little black-coloured monster that had hopped out of his delirious brain? But the man standing next to the boy spoke in a refined manner. Even though he had arrived from Cape Town, he didn't seem to be infected with any tropical disease that might prove worrisome. The man gave them a room facing the courtyard. The room was very dark and cramped. It smelled of mould, and Bengler searched his memory; somewhere he had smelled exactly this same smell. Then he recalled that it was the coat worn by an itinerant Jewish liniment pedlar he had met during his last visit to Hovmantorp. He opened the window to air out the room. It was early autumn, just after a heavy rain, and there was a wet smell from the courtyard. Daniel sat motionless on a chair in his sailor suit. He had kicked off the wooden shoes.