Daniel (10 page)

Bengler poured himself a glass of port to muster his courage for the future and to celebrate the fact that the coal lighter had not sunk during the voyage from Le Havre. In the courtyard children could be heard shrieking and laughing. He was sitting on the creaky bed with the glass in his hand when Daniel suddenly stood up and went over to the window. Bengler started to move from the bed because he was afraid the boy might jump out, but Daniel walked very slowly, almost stalking as if on the hunt, cautiously approaching a quarry. He stopped by the window, half hidden behind the curtain, to watch what was happening in the courtyard. He stood utterly motionless. Bengler cautiously got up and stood next to him.

Down in the courtyard two girls were skipping. They were about the same age as Daniel. One of the girls was fat, the other very thin. They had a rope, possibly a line from a small sailing boat which they had cut off to a suitable length. They took turns jumping, laughing when they stumbled, and then starting over again. For a long time Daniel stood quite still, as if turned to stone. Bengler watched him and tried to interpret his attentive observation of the game in the courtyard.

Then Daniel turned to him, looked him straight in the eye, and his face broke into a grin.

 

That was the first time Bengler saw his adopted son smile. It was not a broad, pasted-on mask, but a smile that came from within. For Bengler it was as though a long-awaited miracle had finally occurred. At last Daniel had severed the invisible line that bound him to the pen at Andersson's trading post. A line that bound him to memories which Bengler knew nothing about, except that they contained blood, terror, dead bodies, chopped-up body parts, desperate screams, and then a silence in which all that was heard was the sand rustling in the desert.

 

They went down to the courtyard. The girls stopped skipping when they caught sight of Daniel. Bengler realised that they had never seen a black person before. He knew that there was a brand of shoe polish whose lid was decorated with a black man with a broad grin and thick lips, but now these young girls were looking at a real live black person. Here in this dirty courtyard Bengler discovered something that might be a new task for him. To show the unenlightened Swedes that people actually existed who were black. Living people, not just decorated lids on tins.

He began talking to the girls. They were poorly dressed and their constant jumping had made them smell strongly of sweat. He asked their names and had a hard time understanding what they said. One of them was named Anna, the thin one, and the fat one was called Elin or possibly Elina. Bengler explained that the boy next to him was named Daniel and that he had just landed in Simrishamn from a faraway desert in Africa.

‘What's he doing here?' asked the girl called Anna.

Bengler was at a loss for words. To this simple question, he had no answer.

‘He's on a temporary visit to Sweden,' he said finally.

He wasn't sure if the girls really understood what he said because of his thick Småland dialect.

‘Why does he have such curly hair? Did he have it curled?' It was still the girl called Anna who was asking.

‘It's naturally curly,' Bengler replied.

‘Can we touch it?'

Bengler looked at Daniel. He was still smiling, so Bengler nodded. The girls came forward warily and touched Daniel's head. Bengler was constantly on guard, as if he were watching a dog that without warning might turn hostile and bite. But Daniel continued to smile. When the fat girl who was maybe named Elin put her hand on his head, he stretched out his hand and carefully stroked her mousy-coloured hair. She gave a shriek and jumped away. Daniel kept smiling.

‘He wants to watch while you skip,' said Bengler. ‘Won't you show him?'

The girls skipped. When the fat girl stumbled Daniel started to laugh. It was a lusty laugh that came from deep inside, a dammed-up volcano that had finally found its release.

‘Can he skip?'

Bengler nodded at Daniel and pointed at the rope. Without hesitation Daniel took it in his hands. He jumped very lightly, did double hops and turned the rope backwards and forwards at a rapid tempo. Bengler was astonished. He had never imagined that Daniel could skip. The experience filled him with shame. Had he really believed that Daniel could master nothing but silence and introversion? Had he regarded him more as an animal than a human being?

‘He doesn't even get sweaty,' shrieked the fat girl.

Daniel kept on skipping. He never seemed to tire. Bengler had a feeling that Daniel wasn't really hopping up and down, but that he was on his way somewhere, as if he were actually running.

He's back in the desert, thought Bengler. That's where he is. Not here, in a filthy back courtyard in Simrishamn.

 

When the game was over, Daniel wasn't even out of breath. He put down the rope and took Bengler's hand. That was something that hadn't happened before either. Before it was always Bengler who took his hand. Something has happened, Bengler thought. From now on
something will be different between us. But what has changed, I don't know.

 

That evening, after Daniel had fallen asleep, Bengler started a new diary. He decided to call it ‘Daniel's Book' and printed the title carefully on the cover. From a nearby inn he could hear a tremendous racket of bellowing voices and a screeching fiddle. Daniel was asleep. Through the thin walls Bengler could hear a couple making love in the room next door. He tried to shut out the sounds, but they were loud and he started to feel excited. He tried to imagine the bodies, the man grunting and the woman squealing, picturing himself in there with Matilda or Benikkolua. After he had printed the title he took off his trousers and masturbated. He tried to follow the rhythm from the creaking bed and came at the same time as the squealing and grunting reached a crescendo.

 

Then he began to write. The book was going to be a study of the encounter between Daniel and Europe. The starting point was a distant desert and a dirty courtyard where a black boy was skipping with two girls.

What is a human being exactly?
Bengler wrote at the top of the first page. That question could not be answered. God was inscrutable, He was a mystery, in the same way the Holy Scriptures were labyrinths and riddles that concealed more riddles. The only answer that existed was that which could be proven, which could be deduced from observations.

 

The example of Daniel
, he continued.
Today, 2 September 1877, I have seen a black boy from the desert playing with two girls in a back courtyard in the town of Simrishamn. From this point a journey begins, perhaps it can be called an expedition, which deals with Daniel and his meeting with a specific country in Europe.

 

That night Bengler slept peacefully. In his dreams the bed moved as if he were still on board a ship. Occasionally he woke up and opened his eyes. In the light autumn night he could see Daniel's face quite clearly against the white sheet. He was sleeping. His breathing was calm. Just before three o'clock Bengler got up and sat next to Daniel and took his pulse.

It was regular, fifty-five beats per minute.

After a difficult and bumpy journey they arrived in Lund two days later. During the trip Bengler had been struck several times by acute diarrhoea. His stomach had always been the most sensitive organ in his body. At the slightest sign of anxiety it rebelled. He remembered this from when he was very small: from the fear of certain teachers at Växjö Cathedral School to his years at the university in Lund. Without explanation, these stomach cramps had almost entirely vanished during his time in the desert. But now that he was approaching Lund the pain and cramping were coming back. Daniel sat next to the cart driver and a few times was allowed to hold the reins. Sometimes he ran alongside the cart, sometimes in front of the horses. Bengler realised that something decisive had happened to Daniel since he had skipped in the back courtyard in Simrishamn.

He still didn't speak, but now he had a smile on his face, a smile that came from very far away, and Bengler believed that he would understand soon enough what sort of miracle had played out in that back courtyard. Even if there was a rational explanation, if Daniel was simply happy to meet some children his own age, Bengler suspected that the boy's reaction was based on something alien. Something which he did not as yet understand.

 

Just before they reached Lund it began to rain. A heavy thunderstorm was passing through. They stopped at a dilapidated inn and took shelter from the weather. People gaped at Daniel, as usual, but he didn't seem to notice. Not even when a drunk farmhand came up and stood there staring at him.

‘What the hell is this?' he asked. ‘What the hell is this?'

The farmhand stank of dirt and aquavit. His eyes were red.

‘His name is Daniel,' replied Bengler. ‘He's a foreigner on a visit to our country.'

The farmhand kept staring.

‘What the hell is this?' he repeated.

Daniel looked at him and then continued drinking the glass of water in front of him.

‘Is it some kind of animal?'

‘He's a human being from a desert in Africa called the Kalahari.'

‘What's he doing here?'

‘He's on the way to Lund in my company.'

The farmhand kept on staring. Then he placed his rough hand very lightly and carefully on Daniel's head.

‘I've never seen anything like it,' he said. ‘I've seen dwarfs and giant women and Siamese twins at fairs. But not this.'

‘He's here so that we can look at him,' said Bengler. ‘Human beings are made in different forms. But they're all the same inside.'

 

An hour later, just before five in the afternoon, the thunderstorm moved on. They continued into the city. The farmer, who had let them ride along for free, dropped them off near the cathedral. Bengler had no more than a few copper coins in his pocket. He had left his baggage in Simrishamn as a guarantee that he would return and pay the bill. He took Daniel with him into the grove of trees by the cathedral. Since the ground was wet he spread out his coat for them to sit on.

‘What we need now is money,' he said to Daniel. ‘The first thing we need is money.'

Daniel listened. He seemed preoccupied, but Bengler suspected that he must have begun to understand a few words.

‘Before I travelled to the desert I learned many things from a professor of botany named Alfred Herrnander,' he went on. ‘He was a good man, an old man. I'm considering asking him for a loan. We can only hope that he's still alive.'

Bengler had visited Herrnander once at his home north of the cathedral. They went there now. People passing by stopped and turned round.

‘Everyone who sees you will remember you,' Bengler said. ‘They will tell their families tonight about what they saw. You're already famous. Merely by walking down the street you've become a well-known person. You will be the object of curiosity, suspicion and, unfortunately, also some ill will. People are afraid of what's foreign to them. And you are foreign, Daniel.'

They stopped outside the low grey house. When the door was opened by a serving woman with a limp, Bengler prayed that Herrnander was still alive.

He was.

But the year before he had had a stroke, the serving woman told him.

‘He's not seeing visitors. He just lies there drumming his fingers on the blankets.'

‘Does he grind his jaws?' Bengler asked.

The serving woman shook her head.

‘Why should he do that?'

‘I don't know. It was only a question. But please go in and tell him that Hans Bengler is out here on the street. In his company he has a boy from the San people, nomads who live in the Kalahari Desert.'

‘Am I supposed to remember all that? All those strange words?'

‘Please try.'

‘Wait just a minute.'

She closed the door. Daniel jumped. Bengler thought that a door being slammed might remind him of a gunshot.

Then she was back with a pen and paper. Bengler wrote everything down. She did not invite them in.

‘The boy has oversensitive ears,' said Bengler. ‘I would appreciate it if you would not slam the door so hard when you close it.'

They waited. By the time the door opened again, Bengler had begun to lose hope.

‘He will see you. But he can't speak; with great effort he can write a few words on a slate.'

‘If he can listen that will be sufficient.'

 

Herrnander lay on a sofa of dark red plush in his study. The curtains were drawn and the room was low-ceilinged, cramped and stuffy. There were bookshelves up to the ceiling, full of etchings and manuscripts. Herrnander looked like a bird under the covers. On a table next to the sofa stood water and a brown bottle of medicine. It took a while before he noticed that they had come into the room. He slowly turned his head; his eyes scanned Bengler's face and then stopped at Daniel's. The serving woman who had followed them into the room stood guard by the door. Bengler made an effort to be firm and motioned for her to leave, which she reluctantly did. But she left the door ajar, so Bengler went and closed it. Then he stuffed his handkerchief in the keyhole and returned to the sofa. In order not to tire Herrnander, he summed up his journey in as few words as possible. The whole time Herrnander was gazing at Daniel's face.