Sometimes Andersson disappeared and might be away for several weeks at a time. During these periods the place was supervised by Geijer, who never seemed to take off his folk costume. The trading post carried salt, sugar, some grains, simple fabrics and ammunition. No money changed hands, everything was done on the barter system. The black men who showed up like lone ships in all that white came bearing tortoise shells or tusks. He never saw anything else. Then they vanished with their fabrics and their sacks. With Geijer he could hold simple conversations in Swedish. Andersson had taught him the language. For some strange reason Geijer spoke in the Gothenburg dialect. But since his vocabulary was limited and he always seemed to be struck by sadness when he didn’t understand what was said, Bengler never entered into very complicated discussions.
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.
Chapter 6
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.’