The man came in and closed the door silently. But Molo knew that he was angry and shut his eyes tight. He felt the man’s breath close to his face. It smelled sweet. Molo knew without opening his eyes that the man was thinking about hitting him. His breath grew more sour, more dangerous. Molo tensed. But nothing happened.
‘Damned kid,’ muttered the man.
Molo didn’t understand the words. Sometimes he thought that the language the man spoke was like the sound of an axe splitting old dried wood. Sometimes it sounded like Kiko hitting a rock with a tree branch to see if there were any hollows in it where snakes could hide.
The man crept into bed and sighed. Molo waited until his breathing grew calm. Soon the man would start to snore. Molo opened his eyes again. He was tired. He didn’t know what awaited him in the morning. But Be had taught him about the dreams. They were not only hiding places, they could also predict what was going to happen. Molo searched among the images streaming through his head. He stopped when Kiko appeared before him.
It had been the last time he was allowed to accompany Kiko to the rocks that stuck up out of the sand and looked like a resting lion. He knew that the hills were sacred. A long time ago the gods had lived among these rocks. They had lit their fires and sat there, and one evening after they had eaten their fill and were in a good mood, they had decided to create a new kind of animal, which would later be called a human being. Kiko had told the story very precisely and kept asking if Molo had understood. He had repeated the same thing several times, talked about the gods in different ways, as if he were a bird who saw everything from above, or a snake who silently coiled around their legs. Molo had understood. It was among these rocks that everything had begun. Gradually the gods had tired of the humans, let them take care of themselves, and left for other hills. But so that the gods would not become impatient and take their food from them, or the rain, the humans had carved their images into the rocks.
Kiko had been working on an antelope the last time they went to the hill together. Anamet, the old man who had died the year before, had started carving the antelope, but when he withdrew, slowly isolating himself from life, and finally stopped breathing, Kiko was chosen to continue. He was not as talented as Anamet, nor would he ever be. Anamet had had a special ability to depict animals so that at any moment they might tear themselves loose from the rocks and vanish among the sand dunes. Kiko had coloured the animal’s body this last time. The antelope was in the middle of a leap. Anamet had made the eye very large, and Kiko worried for a long time about whether to make it red from the colour of a crushed beetle or to make it yellow with the sap from a bush that grew near the hill. Kiko could be taciturn sometimes when he was working on the antelope. He was the least talkative in the entire group of seven families who lived and travelled together. In contrast to Be, who was always talking and laughing, Kiko could be silent so long that they wondered if he had been taken ill. Molo also knew that it was only wise to ask Kiko questions occasionally. Sometimes he would answer, but if Molo chose the wrong time, Kiko might grow tired, maybe even angry. But this last time they went to the hill together Kiko had been in a good mood. Molo knew that it would be a good day, when he could ask all the questions he wanted.
They set off early at daybreak. When they reached the hill and the crevice in the rocks where the antelope was carved, the sun had just begun to pour in. It looked like the antelope was on fire.
‘Anamet was very skilled,’ said Kiko. ‘He not only knew how the hands should shape the antelope, he also thought about which spot on the rock he should choose.’
‘What does it mean to be skilled?’ asked Molo.
Kiko didn’t answer. Molo knew that this was an answer too. If Kiko said nothing it meant that the question had no answer.
Kiko decided that the antelope’s eye should be red. In a little leather pouch he had brought along some of the beetles that made the colour. He poured them onto the ground and the beetles tried to crawl off. He crushed them with a rock and began to squeeze out the colour in the shell. With a twig he then carefully filled in the incisions that Anamet had carved with his little chisel. Molo watched his father. The rays of the sun were slowly rising. The light was coming from below. The antelope’s eye glistened.
‘Where are the gods?’
Kiko laughed.
‘Inside the rock,’ he replied. ‘Their voices are the heart that beats in the antelope’s body.’
‘I try to draw in the sand. Antelopes, zebras. But they aren’t any good.’
‘You’re too impatient. You’re only a child. The moment will come some day when you only see in one direction at a time. Then you’ll be able to make an antelope too.’
Kiko worked all day. Not until it began to get dark did he put down the red-coloured twig.
‘It’ll be done soon,’ he said. ‘One day when you’re older the colours will have disappeared. Then you can come here and fill them in again. It will be your turn to make the antelope come alive.’
They returned to the camp. From a distance they saw the fires and smelled the meat cooking. The day before, the hunters had managed to kill a zebra and now they had meat for several days. That’s why Kiko had time to devote to the antelope.
‘Tomorrow we’ll continue,’ said Kiko. ‘And the next day too. Then the food will be gone and we’ll have to hunt again.’
But did they ever go back to the hill? Molo lay with his eyes open next to the man who still hadn’t started snoring. He could no longer remember.
He had been asleep when the men with the spears and rifles came. They had horses and white helmets, though not all the men had white skin, some were black. They surrounded the camp during the night and when the women woke up in the morning the shooting and slaughtering had begun. Molo had been drenched with blood and looked as though he was already dead. Through half-closed eyelids, with his heart pumping in his body as if he were in wild flight, he saw Be impaled by a spear and Kiko shot through the head.
The men who attacked them had laughed the whole time; they had acted like they were out hunting animals. And when everything was silent and everyone was dead except Molo, they drank from their bottles, cut off a few ears, and then rode away until they were swallowed up by the sand and the sun.
Molo had no memory of what happened next. When he woke to life again he was lying on boards of a shaking wagon. Andersson was leaning over him, and Molo thought that he must be dead and that it was Evil himself who was looking down at him.
He gave a start. For a brief moment he was in a landscape that was somewhere between dream and reality. Then he noticed that the man next to him had started to snore. Molo turned over on his side. He was tired now. The meeting with Kiko and the dream about the antelope had been exhausting. He curled up and fell asleep after he finally managed to change his insides to a white and completely empty desert.
In the morning when Bengler woke he had a headache and was very thirsty. He recalled what had happened the night before and decided not to discuss it with Daniel for the moment. But there was something else he knew couldn’t wait. Daniel had already got up and dressed. He was sitting still on a chair by the wall. Bengler drank some water and then leaned back against the pillows. He made a sign to Daniel to come and sit next to him.
‘You are my son,’ said Bengler. ‘Your name is Daniel and I am your father. And that’s what you will call me from now on: Father.’