He realised, though, that he lacked the knowledge he needed.
In order to return he would have to learn to walk on water.
Chapter 12
In Stockholm Daniel learned that a person’s life is not only organised according to his relationship to doors, but that the movements of light and dark also require rituals that must be followed precisely.
Nearly a month had passed since they left the bent woman and the cat with no tail. With the horse and wagon they travelled towards the east, and finally the forests had reluctantly opened, and they had come to a town called Kalmar. There Daniel had seen the sea again. Father showed him where they came ashore on a map and how they had travelled in the shape of a horseshoe until now they were back by the sea.
The town was small and cramped. When they rolled in past the low houses, the streets were flooded after the long rain, and with the utmost difficulty they made their way down through the clay mud to the seafront, where they took a room in a stone house. Father asked Daniel to see to it that the skinny horse ate plenty of hay, with oats too, and to wash and groom the animal carefully. Then they would sell it and with a little luck perhaps get something for the wagon too. They needed the money to pay for the boat passage to Stockholm, Father explained. It was going to depart in six days, and after the horse had been well fed for four days they would sell it.
The first night they went and looked at the fortress that was located in the town. Daniel was more interested in the water. On this particular evening it lay utterly still and he thought that it might not be too hard to learn to walk on its shiny surface. But he still said nothing to Father. He doubted it would ever be possible to say anything. Father wouldn’t understand. He might go back to tying him up, as he had during their first journey and keeping the doors locked, even though Daniel had learned how to knock, wait, open, bow and close.
On the second night they spent in the town, Father again drank one of the bottles that changed the ground beneath his feet into a ship’s deck. He slept on top of the bed without undressing and even forgot to lock the door and put the key in his pocket.
Daniel waited until it got dark. Then he sneaked out of the room, down the creaky staircase and out to the street. It was raining. Even though the mud was cold under his feet he went barefoot. He hurried through the darkness down to the water. A fire shone by the fortress, and in a house he heard a man yelling and singing by turns. He sounded exactly like Andersson, and Daniel thought that maybe it was someone who knew him, because their voices were so much alike.
He stood for a long time by the shore. Then he raised one foot and placed it carefully on the surface of the water. It held. But when he shifted his weight to the other leg he trod through the water. He wasn’t yet able to make himself light enough through willpower alone for the water to bear him. It was still too soon. He hurried back to the house where they were staying. He was worried that Father might wake up and notice that he had left. But when he cautiously opened the door without knocking, Father was snoring heavily in the bed. Daniel undressed, wiped his feet and crept between the damp sheets.
Two days later they sold the horse to a very fat man who was missing three fingers on one hand. Father explained to Daniel that an angry horse had bitten off the man’s fingers. After that he was known to torment horses. But since he paid better than the others, they were still going to sell the horse to him.
‘Torment? What does that mean?’ asked Daniel.
It was a new word he hadn’t heard before.
‘Like Andersson,’ Father replied. ‘Do you remember him? The one who kept you in a pen?’
Daniel tried to understand what the similarity was between the man who bought the horse and a man who kept him in a pen. He thought he ought to ask, but Father probably wouldn’t answer.
He would miss the horse. He would have liked to take it with him when he learned to walk on water. People could tame animals. Maybe it was possible to teach a horse to walk on the surface of the water without breaking it.
The next day they boarded a small black-tarred coaster. They hadn’t managed to sell the wagon and left it abandoned on the quay. The ship’s hold was filled with dried fish and a large tub full of live eels. Father had supervised the loading of the crates which held his insect displays. He yelled at the crewmen to be careful. In Daniel’s mind they were changed from men in ragged trousers and wooden shoes to ox-drivers in the desert: those who were forced to haul and carry everything the white men needed for their expeditions.
Once, and this was one of his earliest memories, Kiko and Be and the others had passed an expedition of white men who had pitched camp for the night at the edge of the Mountain of the Zebras. He was so small that Be was still carrying him on her back when he couldn’t walk any further. But he remembered quite clearly how the white men had pitched their tents. Between the tents stood tables with white tablecloths. Kiko, who at that time was the leader of the group, chose to skirt round the camp cautiously because sometimes white men in the desert would suddenly start shooting as if they had discovered a herd of animals and not a group of human beings.
The bearers sat by their own fires. When the white men called to them they came running at once. There was a submissive haste about them, and their every movement was an expression of fear. This was something Daniel had understood even though he was so young. When he saw the sailors and heard Father shouting he recognised their behaviour. He was very surprised to see people who had fear in their arms and legs in this country too.
The captain of the ship wore no uniform. He had wrapped a shawl round his head because he had a toothache. He always had a bottle in his hand or on a cord around his neck. Daniel understood that at first the captain had been unwilling to take him along. Later father angrily explained that the captain was superstitious, believed in supernatural evil, and feared the ship would sink if they took aboard a person who looked like a black cat. Finally he had relented, though Father had been forced to pay double fare for him, and they were given a tiny cabin in the stern that stank of rotten fish. Father tossed out all the mattresses and blankets because they were full of fleas.
‘Better that we sleep in our clothes,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we’ll be eaten alive and won’t have enough blood left when we arrive.’
Late that afternoon, when a light breeze was blowing from the south, they cast off the lines, hoisted the sails and left the harbour. They sailed up a strait where an island extended to the east of them. Daniel stood on deck and watched as the sailors pulled and hauled on the lines. They spoke in a dialect that was incomprehensible to Daniel, but he knew they were talking about him and that the words weren’t kind. In the bow he found a worn-out rope. He transformed it at once into a skipping rope and began to skip. The sailors and the captain with his shawl looked at him with great misgivings, but no one said a word.
At dawn the next day, when Daniel went on deck, the island was gone, but the land to the west was still there. A cool wind was blowing. Daniel shivered as he walked across the wet deck. The boat rocked slowly, as if it were actually hanging on the back of the sea like a newborn child. Daniel closed his eyes and thought about Be. His memories awoke.
He was hanging on her back. If he kept his eyes closed he would be in the desert when he opened them. It would be before everything happened that made Be and Kiko lie in the sand with bloody faces and leave him behind.