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.
‘I just might miss your company,’ Andersson said. ‘But I know that sooner or later some other Swedish madman will come marching this way. With yet another meaningless task to perform.’
‘My task has not been meaningless. Besides, I’ve acquired a son.’
‘The hell you’ve acquired a son. You’re going to kill that boy. Maybe he’ll survive the boat trip. But then? What are you going to do then?’
‘I’ll see to it that he has a good life.’
‘How are you going to do that? Are you going to pin him down the way people pin down insects? Are you going to paste him into one of your volumes of prints?’
Bengler wanted to counter these shameless accusations, but he didn’t know how. Andersson was still too strong for him. It was their last evening, and these accusations or insults would never be repeated, they would merely fall lifeless when his wagon rolled away. Yet he would have liked to have resised him more firmly.
‘Your life is not merely peculiar,’ he said. ‘Above all, it’s miserable. You pretend to oppose what is going on in this desert. This hunting down of people who have done nothing but live in this place. You pretend to be upset, pretend to love your fellow man, pretend to be a good person. But from what I’ve seen you’re just as rotten as all the other whites here. Except for one person: myself.