He undressed and sat down in the chair where the chambermaid had been sitting. Without inviting it, the feeling of arousal returned. Matilda was gone, just like Benikkolua. Only the woman with her lips pressed together was left. Daniel was asleep. He sat down at the desk. The kerosene lamp burned with a low flame. He turned it up and then took out ‘Daniel’s Book’. But the words wouldn’t come. Instead he drew something, and at first he didn’t know what it was. Then he realised that he was trying to depict the wagon and the oxen when the wheel broke and he had been forced to take charge. He drew poorly; the wheel was oval, the wagon sunken in, the oxen looked like sway-backed cows and the ox-drivers only thin lines. He closed the book, turned off the lamp and crept into bed next to Daniel. In the morning we have to be off, he thought. The money I have will get us to Hovmantorp and then on to Stockholm. Beyond that I can’t imagine what will happen.
He turned his head and looked at Daniel lying curled up with his back to him. His breathing was very calm. Bengler carefully pressed two fingers to his carotid artery and counted silently to himself.
Fifty-one. Daniel’s pulse was very regular. And he still wasn’t in the deepest sleep: then his pulse would be between forty-five and fifty.
Bengler closed his eyes. The woman who was inside him pressed her lips together. Slowly he returned to the desert. The sun burned in his dreams.
Daniel lay wide awake at his side. When he was sure that Bengler was asleep he got up and carefully opened the notebook lying next to the kerosene lamp. The drawing depicted nothing. It was like an unfinished petroglyph on a rock wall.
Part II
The Antelope
Chapter 10
The one who had taught him about the dreams was Be. They coiled like tracks through people; the paths were not footprints they trod in the desert, but something that was inside them, in the spaces where only the gods had access. Be was his mother; her smile still burned inside him, even though the last thing he remembered was the blood that ran from her eyes and the scream that was abruptly cut off.
The boy named Molo lay awake by the side of the man whose eyes were always shifting. He was no longer afraid of him, afraid that he might have a spear hidden somewhere behind his back, like the ones who killed Be and Kiko. Besides, this evening he had been funny, almost tempting him to laugh. They had been sitting in the big room eating and he had drunk something that made his feet move the way they did when they were on the ship. He didn’t know what was in the bottles, but he stored it in his memory. In this peculiar country where the sun never seemed to go down, the rolling waves of the sea were kept in bottles. He had memorised the labels in his head for the day when he would be able to go back across the water and return to the desert.
He lay quite still in the bed. The man next to him hadn’t begun to snore yet. He still lay on his side. It wasn’t until he turned over on his back that he started snoring. Molo listened in the darkness. Someone laughed down on the street. Shoes clacked on the paving stones. He thought about all the sounds he was forced to house in his head. In the desert people’s footsteps were never heard. The wind might whine, but footsteps were always silent. They could hear voices at great distances and the antelope bucks bellowing with what Be called rut, which meant that they were looking for females to mate with. Molo thought about the shoes he was forced to learn to use on board the ship. Big and heavy, made of wood. His feet had cried in the shoes, curled inward like animals that would soon die, and he wondered why he wasn’t allowed to go barefoot as he had always done. His feet didn’t want to have shoes, and the shoes didn’t want to have his feet. That’s why he had flung one of them into the sea, to placate his feet and himself and to show that he didn’t need to have anything on his feet to be able to walk. He didn’t want to shuffle along, didn’t want to lose the joy of walking. But he had made a mistake. That was the first time the man who was still not snoring had got angry. A line had appeared on his forehead right above his eyebrows. His eyes grew narrow and Molo thought the man was going to hit him, maybe throw him overboard. But nothing happened except that the next day he got new shoes that were even heavier. Then he thought of something that Kiko had told him, about the slave caravans he had once seen when he was young at the far northern end of the desert. Hiding behind a rock, he had seen a white man whipping people who were chained together, all black, driving them towards the coast. When he came back he told Be about it. Much later, when Molo was born, he was told the story too. The memory had returned when he was forced to wear the shoes that made him heavy and lose the desire to move.
Molo got up from the bed and walked carefully over to the door. He had drunk a lot of water at dinner. Now he had to pee. In the desert you could pee anywhere, just not in the fire or anywhere Kiko was flaying an animal or Be was preparing food. But here it was different. On the ship he had stood by the railing. The man next to him had always held on to him. Molo had wondered if he was stupid enough to think that he would jump overboard. When they came ashore, peeing became a big problem, not to mention when he had to relieve himself of heavier things. There were special rooms with small wooden boxes where he was supposed to sit. He hadn’t seen any box like that here in this house. He had learned that you had to pee when no one was watching and that you should pee in such a way that all traces disappeared instantly. He stood naked in the middle of the room and looked around. There was a potted palm on the table. He stuck his finger in the pot and sniffed. The dirt was wet and smelled of rain.
If he peed there it would surely run over the edge and the man would be angry when he woke up. The white pitcher that had water in it earlier was empty. He could pee there. But the pee would still be there the next day. If he tried to pee out of the window the man who was sleeping would wake up and think he had turned into a bird. He went carefully over to the door and opened it. There was a kerosene lamp on the wall in the corridor. He closed the door behind him without a sound. That was something else he had learned. Doors were supposed to be opened so they were heard but closed without a sound. The corridor was empty and all the doors were shut. He walked carefully along the soft carpet. It was like walking in sand, he thought. Behind a door he heard a woman crying. It sounded like Be when she had given birth to a dead baby, the last one she bore before the man with the spear came and killed her. He stopped and peed on the carpet. The fabric would soak up the urine, the same way sand did. Then one of the doors suddenly opened. A man without a shirt and a big paunch that hid his sex came out. He had a bottle in his hand. He gave a start when he caught sight of Molo. Then he started to yell. Molo tried to stop peeing but he wasn’t finished. Other doors opened; a man came running up the steps. Everyone stared at him. He still couldn’t break off the stream. He wondered what was so strange. Didn’t children pee in this country? Then he heard a door open behind him. It was the sleeping man who had woken up. He finished peeing.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked the man excitedly. ‘Are you pissing on the hotel’s carpet?’
Molo didn’t understand what he said, just that he had made another mistake. The fabric under his feet wasn’t like the sand. The man grabbed hold of his arm so hard that it hurt, and dragged him back into the room. He sat him down on the bed. Molo understood that he wasn’t allowed to move. The man went back out of the door. Molo could see that the man gave money to someone who came running up the stairs. Molo thought that the best thing he could do now was to get in between the sheets and pretend to be asleep.