Father began to teach Daniel his language in earnest. Every morning and afternoon they would sit in the arbour, or in an upstairs room if it was raining. Father had great patience, and Daniel fell that he had nothing to lose by learning the odd language. He let the axes drop inside his throat, learned the words, and realised there was something there that even he could comprehend. Father never lost his temper or scolded him. Now and then he would stroke his hand over Daniel’s cheek and say that he was learning fast.
Besides the language, Daniel also had to learn how to open and close doors. The practical training was done with the door that led into Father’s workroom. By the time the practice sessions began, Daniel was already starting to understand the language.
‘Door are just as important as shoes,’ Father said. ‘People wear shoes on their feet to protect them from the cold and wet. But they also have shoes to show their dignity as human beings. Animals don’t have shoes, but people do. The same is true of doors. You knock before you walk through a door. You don’t go in if you don’t receive an answer. Then you knock again, possibly a little harder. But not impatiently, not at all. You can even knock a third time without losing your patience. Go ahead and try it. Knock, wait for an answer, open the door, bow, close it behind you.’
Daniel went out and closed the door. Then he knocked and opened it.
‘Wrong,’ said Father. ‘What didn’t I do?’
‘The gentleman said nothing.’
‘You mustn’t call me the gentleman. I’m your father. So call me that. Father.’
‘Faather.’
‘Don’t draw out the letter “a”. How many times have I told you that? One more time.’
‘Father.’
‘That’s better. Practise with the door again.’
Daniel went out and closed the door. Once again he caught a quick glimpse in his mind of how Kiko had painted the eye of the antelope red, then he knocked on the door again. There was no answer. He knocked again.
Father opened the door.
‘Too hard,’ he said.
He showed Daniel how to do it.
‘It has to be like a determined drumbeat. Not like a bird pecking.’
Father closed the door. Daniel saw the antelope again and knocked. Father answered. Daniel opened the door, went in and closed the door behind him.
‘You forgot to bow this time,’ said Father.
They continued practising every day. When Father was busy with his insects, Daniel spent his time with the animals. The bent woman still didn’t speak to him, but she let him feed the animals, wash the horse and lock up the chickens in the evening.
During this time Daniel wondered why there were no people around. He never saw anyone except for the man who was called Father and the bent woman. He realised that the people who lived in this country had very small families but that their deserts covered with forests were unimaginably vast. Behind the house there was a hill where he would sometimes stand and listen to the wind. The forest was everywhere, and it never seemed to end. He tried to listen for sounds that he recognised. The wind that passed through the trees was different from the wind in the desert. He found a tree that made the same rustling sound with its leaves that the sand made when it passed over a rock. He asked Father to say the name of the tree and found out that it was called aspen. He decided to venerate that tree. Every day he ran to it and peed next to the trunk. But there were other sounds he didn’t recognise. Even the rain that fell so frequently in this country had a different sound. He listened to the birds he glimpsed among the trees, but their songs were not like any he had heard before. He wondered if his ears were still too small to catch the familiar sounds that must exist here. The sound of the drums, of the women laughing, the men telling their stories, and the occasional roar of a lion. Sometimes he thought he heard the distant sound of a drum, but he could never tell where it was coming from. And then there were the birds that Father had called crows; they broke apart the sounds he did manage to distinguish.
Almost every night he dreamed about Be. Sometimes Kiko was there too, but most often it was only Be. She was very close to him in the dreams, so close that he could feel her breath, touch her hair, see her teeth, lie close to her on the raffia mat where they slept. She spoke to him and said that she missed him.
Daniel woke up early every morning. He always woke when day was breaking and the bent woman and Father were still asleep. Since the door was locked he couldn’t get out; he would lie in bed and think about what he had dreamed. Be had spoken to him and said that she missed him. I’m a little boy, he thought. I have travelled much too far away. My parents and the other people I lived with are dead. And yet they live. They are still closer to me than the man called Father and the woman who doesn’t dare come close enough for me to grab her. My journey has been much too long. I am in a desert I do not recognise, and the sounds that surround me are foreign.
In the mornings Daniel often wondered whether he shouldn’t just die too. Then he could search for Kiko and Be and the others. In his dreams he could always feel the warm sand under his feet. The only sand he had here were the grains he had found in the crates with the insects.
He often cried himself awake in the morning. He decided that he would have to tell Father how important it was that he go home as soon as he had learned to chop the right words with the right axe. Father would have to understand. He didn’t want to end up like all the strange insects, pinned behind a pane of glass. The difference between the locked door and the glass that covered the insects was very slight.
When he heard the door being unlocked he usually pretended to be asleep. Only when he felt lonely again would he sneak out of the door, down the stairs and out to the animals.
A black cat with its tail missing had become his friend. She followed him wherever he went, when he pissed by the tree or gave hay to the horse.
By the middle of the month called October he had learned the language well enough that he would soon be able to explain to Father that he had to set off for home. It was now beginning to get dark early in the evenings.
He slept more and the dreams became drawn out, and more distinct. He had long conversations with Be, who was beginning to worry that he would never come back. Sometimes he also followed Kiko to the rock where the antelope was frozen in its leap.
One morning Father explained that his work with the insects was done and they would be leaving in a few days.
‘Shall we travel back?’ asked Daniel and felt his heart start pumping faster with joy.
‘Back where?’
‘To the desert?’
‘You will never return to the desert. Your life is here. You will learn to speak, you will learn to knock, bow and enter when you are invited in. Now we are going to travel to a city where I shall exhibit my insects. But I’m also going to exhibit you.’
Daniel did not reply.
That night, the last before they were to depart, he decided that he had to keep his thoughts to himself. He wouldn’t tell anyone that he planned to return to Be and Kiko even though they were dead.