He huddled up against the stone wall when a horse and carriage rattled past. The man on the coach box was asleep. The horse walked slowly with its head down. Then two men came staggering the way Father did. They groaned and leaned against the walls of the buildings, as if they were sick or wounded by spears or snakebite.
Daniel picked up the smell from their bodies. It was a sweetish stench, as from dead animals.
Afterwards it was quiet. He cautiously started down the street, watching carefully where he put his feet. Even in this ravine there could be snakes, poisonous lizards, or scorpions. He hadn’t seen any yet, but in the desert he was used to animals who only came out at night. He stepped in something slimy and saw that it was excrement, but not from an animal. He could tell from the smell; it wasn’t a dog, but a person. In the desert they always covered up their leavings. Why did they have to put stones on the streets so people couldn’t hide their excrement? He didn’t understand, and he knew that Father wouldn’t be able to explain it to him either. He dipped his foot in a puddle of old rainwater and scraped it clean against the rough stones. Very close to him, across the street, someone coughed. Again it was as if Kiko were right next to him. He thought he could hear him breathing into his ear. But there was no antelope carved into the wall, only a god who sat there coughing.
Daniel went on.
Under one of the hissing lamps he glimpsed a lone woman. She was walking back and forth, as if she were waiting for someone. Her clothes were dirty but had once been colourful. She reminded Daniel of a bird in a cage, like those he had seen at Andersson’s: chickens before they were sold or slaughtered. She was wearing a hat with a plume, and he could see from her face that she was very young, but she had dressed like someone who wanted to seem older. When she turned her face away and for a brief moment stepped out of the light, he hastened on. He noticed that he had begun to shiver. Maybe there were already hunters after him that he couldn’t hear. He picked up speed. He was at the cellar now, where they had gone down to eat. It was lit up and smelled of roasted meat from the door that stood ajar. Now he had to turn left, follow a ravine that was very narrow, and then he would be at the sea.
He hurried on and soon picked up the scent of the water. There were vessels packed tightly along the quay. On some of them there were men pulling on lines to keep the boats moving. Earlier in the day Father had explained that there were fish in those boats, fish that looked like snakes, which would die if the boats didn’t rock back and forth and fresh seawater didn’t flow in through the holes in the hulls. Lamps with flickering lights hung on the masts. Daniel almost stumbled over a man who lay sleeping next to some barrels. He moved carefully along at the edge of the light from the fires on the quay where men were sitting and playing cards. At last he found a staircase among the stones that led down to the water’s surface. Close by there were some small rowing boats tied up. In one of them lay an old woman curled up asleep. Daniel moved cautiously so he wouldn’t wake her. He felt the water with his hand. It was cold. He tried to make his hand light, turn his fingers into feathers, so that they wouldn’t sink into the water. Then he tried with his foot. The water is like an animal, he thought. I have to be able to caress its pelt without making it twitch. Only then will it let me walk without everything breaking and me falling through. He still hadn’t mastered the art. The animal’s pelt kept twitching. His hand was like an insect irritating the animal. He realised that it would take a long time for the sea to get used to his hands and then his feet.
The woman in the rowing boat moved. Daniel held his breath. She muttered something and went back to sleep. The water was very cold now, and it kept twitching. Daniel whispered to it, the way Be had taught him to whisper to anxious dogs who scented beasts of prey. For a moment he thought the animal seemed to be listening. His hand was floating on the water. It was holding. But then the pelt twitched again. Still, he was satisfied. He would be able to learn this. It would take time, but he would come back to the water every night; he would make the wet pelt grew accustomed to him, and one day he would succeed.
He stood up to go back to the attic room where Father lay sleeping. The woman in the rowing boat was snoring. Daniel looked at the mooring line. It was a worn rope, brushy and fraying, that was carelessly looped round a stone post. He wondered what would happen if he loosened the rope. Be was there at once to warn him. He often did things that weren’t permitted. Loosened ropes so that people tripped over them, put strong herbs in the food, scared people by painting the white bones of death on his face. Be was never really angry. She would first pull him by the arm, maybe slap him on the cheek, but then she always burst out laughing. She will end up laughing now too, he thought. Carefully he loosened the rope and the boat slid slowly away from the quay. He couldn’t manage to stifle a laugh. Since there was no one about, he let it burst out. He laughed straight out into the night as he hadn’t done since the day the men came and killed Be and Kiko. He flung the laugh into the darkness, and he knew that they would hear him.
Then he went back the same way he had come. When he reached the hissing lamp where the girl who looked like a bird had stood waiting, he saw that she was gone. Something made him cross the street to the other side. Then he heard her, she was panting somewhere nearby, in the dark, behind some barrels. It sounded like she was having a hard time breathing. He crept deeper into the darkness until he saw her, in the pale light from a window. She stood leaning against the wall with her skirt hitched up, and a man was leaning heavily against her. He was the one who was moaning. Daniel thought at first that the man was trying to slaughter her, that she actually was a bird. Then he realised that they were doing the same thing that Be and Kiko used to do, though they hadn’t panted, they had laughed, talked, and then grown silent.
At that moment the woman turned her face to him. Her eyes were open. Then she screamed. The man didn’t want to let her go, but she scratched him on the face, pointed at Daniel and screamed again.
Daniel rushed off in the dark with her screams behind him. Somewhere a bell began to toll. He crossed the street again and ran along the cliff so fast that he almost missed the door that led to the staircase and the room where Father was sleeping. He knew that they were hunting him now, all those people who stared at him when he walked at Father’s side during the daylight hours.
When he came into the room Father was lying in the same position as when Daniel had left, but he must have been awake, because he had thrown up on the floor. No one was coming up the stairs, no hunters, no dogs. Daniel wiped his feet with a rag and cleaned up the vomit by the bed. Then he crept into bed behind Father’s back, curled up and closed his eyes tightly so that the antelope would dare come out. It loosened itself from the rock, took a leap and stood before him with nostrils flaring.
Daniel woke up because someone was crying.
The sound forced its way into his dreams. At first he thought it was one of the many children belonging to Be’s sister Kisa. They were always falling down, and they cried often. Then the sand and the heat disappeared and when he woke up from the dream it was Father he saw. He had taken off all his clothes and was sitting naked on a chair, crying with a bottle in his hand. Daniel looked at him through half-closed eyes. It wasn’t the first time he had seen Father cry after coming home with shiny eyes. Whatever he drank had weeping in it. Daniel knew it would pass, that he would suddenly stop and then stand for a long time examining his face in the mirror. He would scold the mirror and sometimes shout. Usually he said the first word Daniel had ever learned, damn, damn, like a long chant, more and more furious.