‘A church tower. The capital. Stockholm.’
Father sounded irritated when he answered. Daniel decided not to ask any more questions.
They tied up next to another coaster in a forest of vessels. Far off, between the sails and the hulls of the ships, Daniel saw tall houses, and he counted five church towers. Because it was already evening, Father decided that they would stay on board for another night. Daniel wondered what would happen after that, but he didn’t ask. When he lay down to sleep he hoped that Be would come. But the next morning too he woke with no memory but darkness.
They left the ship late in the afternoon.
Father had been ashore and two men came aboard to fetch his crates. When everything had been loaded onto two handcarts, Daniel was allowed to go ashore. He noticed at once that everyone was staring at him. But something was different; here they stepped forward, stared him right in the face, touched him, pinched his arms, and commented on his hair and his skin. He felt embarrassed and afraid, and he did something he had never done before: he took Father’s hand and burrowed his head into his stomach. Father was astonished but stroked his hair.
‘These are riff-raff,’ he said. ‘They work here in the harbour. Riff-raff who don’t know any better.’
‘What are riff-raff?’ muttered Daniel.
‘Uneducated people. Stevedores. Sump cleaners. People will look at you, Daniel, but these people stare. That’s the difference.’
Father lifted him up onto the cart and shouted at the staring people to leave him in peace. Then the two men who had carried the heavy crates ashore pulled the carts away from the harbour. There were stones in the road that made the carts bounce and shake. Daniel had to hold on so he wouldn’t fall off. They pulled the carts down a narrow street where the houses were very tall. Daniel had to breathe through his mouth because the smell was terrible.
Suddenly he couldn’t bear to see any more. He shut his eyes and kept them closed as tightly as he could. The wheels rattled and clattered, people shouted, dogs barked, and Father bellowed at the men pulling the carts to be more careful. The sounds grew into a strong wind inside Daniel’s head, but he couldn’t make out what they meant. Somewhere far away he thought he could hear Kiko’s voice, and Be’s.
It was 3 November 1877.
Daniel had arrived in Stockholm. He shut his eyes as the cart full of insects rolled through the alleyways of the old town, Gamla Stan.
Chapter 13
Daniel opened his eyes when the cart came to a stop. Father touched his shoulder. The alleyway they were in was very narrow. In front of them was a church. The light had begun to dim. They moved into a little attic room at the top of a steep stairway. From the window Daniel could look straight in through another window across the alley. A candle stood on a table, with a great number of people sitting around it shovelling down food from a wooden trencher. Suddenly a boy his own age caught sight of him. He shrieked and pointed. Daniel quickly moved away from the window. Father came through the door after arguing with the men who had pulled the carts about how much they should be paid. The crates stood stacked in the room and it was almost impossible to move. Father looked around in disgust.
‘If a fire starts here, everything will be in vain.’
He set down a little wooden box right next to the door.
‘This must be saved if there’s a fire. There’s a beetle in it that no one has ever seen.’
He then proceeded to examine the bed. He shook the blankets and shone a candle between the boards.
‘There are lice here,’ he said. ‘We’re going to get bitten. But we’ll only stay a few days. Then everything will be better.’
He set the candle on the table and sat down on a rickety chair.
‘Living in this city and being poor is like living with an iron lid over your head. The only consolation is that we came at the right time. They had a smallpox epidemic here last year but it seems to be over.’
He took out his money pouch and poured the contents onto the table. There was one banknote and some coins.
‘I’ll leave you here,’ he said when he finished counting. ‘You have to keep watch. If a fire starts, you have to save the little box. I’ll go out and find something for us to eat. I won’t be gone long.’
He got up from the table. Daniel wasn’t sure whether he was angry or worried. Then he left the room and his footsteps disappeared down the stairs.
Daniel was alone. Father hadn’t locked the door when he left. Daniel could hear someone singing and someone else crying downstairs. The odour of food wafted up through the floor. It smelled rancid, like old animal fat. Daniel peeked cautiously out of the window. Across the alley a woman was making a bed for two children on the table where the wooden trencher had stood. Daniel had never seen this before, that a table could also be a bed. The people in this country live in strange ways, he thought. Either they live alone or they are so crowded together that no one has any room. Daniel carefully opened the box that he was supposed to save if a fire broke out. A beetle was pinned to a piece of stiff white paper. He had seen beetles like it many times when he searched for roots, snakes and small creatures with Be and the other women. They used to call the beetle the Sand Hopper, because when it was alarmed it would stop crawling and throw itself to one side. Be had been very skilled at catching them. It was like a game: hold out your hand and guess precisely where it would land. Daniel tried to understand why it was so important to save it. A little dead animal pinned to a piece of paper. It wasn’t edible. Nor did it have any poison that was good for putting on arrowheads. Father was a very strange man. He was on a journey and had taken Daniel with him. People were always on the move. Travel meant the constant search for food. Now Father had gone out to find some. But where were they actually headed?
Daniel felt confined in the room. The ceiling was low; there were people beneath him that he could hear but not see. He searched for his skipping rope to keep himself from worrying. He began to skip, first slowly, then faster. The rope slapped on the floor in an even rhythm. It was like walking. He closed his eyes and imagined that the heat had returned. Somewhere he could hear Kiko’s voice, his sudden laughter, and Be who talked so fast and always had a story to tell.
He was interrupted by banging on the door. He decided not to say anything so that whoever was standing outside would go away. But the door was flung open and a big man with a bare torso stood there staring at him.
‘I didn’t say “Come in”.’
Daniel still spoke the language poorly. But he could pronounce some words.
The man stared at him.
‘I didn’t say “Come in”,’ Daniel repeated.
The man exuded a foul smelclass="underline" from his body, his clothes, his mouth. Daniel breathed through his mouth so he wouldn’t throw up. He was afraid. He hadn’t said that the man could open the door and come in and yet he had done so. Daniel had thought that was a rule that no one could break.
‘My head is pounding,’ said the man. ‘There’s pounding from up here too. Are you the one who’s stomping on the floor?’
Daniel looked at his skipping rope. It had been hitting the floorboards.
The man followed his look.
‘Are you completely possessed? A little black devil who skips on my head?’
He took a step forward and snatched the rope. Daniel tried to hold on to it, but the man was very strong and Daniel knew that he would lose it if he didn’t use his teeth. He leaned forward and bit the man’s hand. The man yelled in pain, but Daniel couldn’t let go. He had a cramp in his jaws. The man howled and thrashed. Finally Daniel managed to loosen his jaws. The man stared at his hand, which was bleeding profusely. He had dropped the rope, and it now lay on the floor.