Now the tears were flowing, but the woman didn’t pull away her hand. She closed the door behind her and sat down on a chair, and Daniel buried his head between her breasts.
Afterwards he sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the floor. She didn’t say anything, just sat there waiting. Finally he dared to look at her. She was smiling.
‘There wasn’t any lion,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But what was there instead?’
‘An antelope. That Kiko carved into the rock. An antelope that was about to take a leap.’
‘What else was there?’
He realised all of a sudden that he couldn’t sit on the bed any longer. Telling a story meant sitting on the ground. Not on the sand, since there wasn’t any, but on the wooden floorboards, the dark red carpet. He sat down, and to his astonishment she got out of her chair and sat down facing him with her legs crossed.
‘There should be a fire here, I’m sure,’ she said.
Daniel nodded. He was dumbfounded. How could she know that?
‘I’m sitting facing you. But actually someone else is sitting here.’
He nodded again. She was conjuring with him, saying precisely what he hadn’t expected her to say but was hoping for. Still, he wasn’t afraid.
‘Be,’ he said. ‘Or Kiko, or Undu, or Rigva who was lame and only had one eye.’
‘But there wasn’t any lion?’
‘No lion.’
Suddenly he was frightened. She knew too much she couldn’t know. He had learned enough to mistrust friendly, well-meaning people with slender white fingers. They always wanted something from him that he couldn’t give.
‘Can you skip?’ he asked, to defend himself.
Since he didn’t know whether he had been polite enough, he added, ‘My name is Daniel. I believe in God.’
‘I can skip,’ she replied. ‘Maybe not with these skirts on, but I can.’
‘There wasn’t any lion,’ he said again.
Suddenly the woman stood up. She grabbed his skipping rope, tied up her skirts so that her stockings and a bit of her naked thighs were showing, and started jumping. Her feet thumped hard against the floor. Daniel saw that it was a long time since she had skipped but she hadn’t forgotten how.
She stopped, pulled down her skirts and sat down again. Daniel was disappointed for a moment. He had wanted to lean against her body where her stockings ended, where the skin was just as white as her fingers. She was out of breath. Her chest was heaving and he saw Be again, although she had never had anything covering her upper body. Kiko liked to play with her breasts. He had given them names, and Be had laughed and replied that she was already with child and didn’t need to hear friendly words about her breasts. Daniel wondered whether he could ask the woman sitting on the floor to take off her clothes, at least above the waist. Since she had skipped and knew that there hadn’t been any lion, maybe it wouldn’t be dangerous to ask. He pointed at the black buttons that held her clothes fastened across her breasts. She gave him a quizzical look.
‘Those are called buttons.’
Daniel already knew that. Every morning Father would yell at his damn collar buttons, especially if he had been drinking the night before.
‘Open up,’ he said.
She gave him a long look and straightened her back as she sat there. Daniel already knew he had done something wrong. But then she changed her mind, unbuttoned the buttons, nine of them, one by one, and then unbuttoned her white linen so he could see her breasts. To his surprise they were like Be’s breasts. All women had different breasts, the same way all men had different chests, but the woman sitting facing him had the same breasts as Be. Daniel couldn’t resist his desire, and he leaned hard against her, and she didn’t pull away even though she stiffened.
‘I am your mother,’ said the woman. ‘She is here right now.’
‘Be is dead,’ replied Daniel. ‘She died in blood that ran through the sand. When Kiko came she had already stopped breathing. I was lying behind a hill under a kudu hide and the ones who came with spears and guns never found me. But Kiko came too soon. One of them who was left and cutting the ears off those he had killed saw Kiko and shot him in the head.’
The woman put her arms around him. Daniel felt that Be was very close just now.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. The men came riding, they were white and had a flag with an eagle. They laughed a lot and they shot everybody and didn’t say why. If we had been animals they would have skinned us. If we had been animals they would have eaten us. But the only thing they did was to kill us and cut off our ears. I heard at Andersson’s once that our ears were stiffened with tallow and then used as bowls for sugar and chocolate.’
‘Who was Andersson?’
‘He saved my life. He gave me a crate to live in. Then Father came and took me. He called me Daniel, told me to wear shoes on my feet, and brought me here across the sea.’
Daniel felt a great peace as he told his story pressed against her warm breasts. He could feel her heart beating and smell the sweetish scent of sweat. Something made him remember an experience he had had when he was very small. One night he had woken and gone out to pee in the sand. That night the stars in the sky over the desert were very clear. The stars were eyes that looked at him, saw him pee and saw him yawn. Suddenly he was aware that the stars were looking at him. He had been pulled up from the sand, sucked in as if by an invisible whirlwind towards all these points of light glittering, and he had understood that they were actually very close, the eyes of the gods, and would always be with him. Now he remembered that night as he felt the warmth from her breast, and he knew that he would scream, maybe bite her, if she suddenly pulled away and began to close up her buttons again.
‘Then you came here.’
‘I came to a town where two girls were skipping in a back courtyard. Father had his bag full of insects, and he used to tie me up when he was afraid I would run away.’
‘Where would you go?’
Daniel thought about that. He knew that there was a word for what he was dreaming of. He knew that there was a place where the water would bear him. A short word. He thought for a long time.
‘Home,’ he said eventually. ‘I think it’s called home.’
She hugged him tenderly and he pressed against her as hard as he could. One of her nipples came close to his mouth and he grasped it with his lips, not to get milk but to stay calm.
He closed his eyes and dreamed. Her heart was beating. Be was humming somewhere in the background. Kiko had already gone to sleep. The smells were no longer coming from the carpet and Father’s shaving lotion. Now he could sense the black coals from the fire burning down, the rancid smell of the old bark from pilko branches.
‘I’ve never held a man close to me,’ she said. ‘Many men have wanted to, they have grabbed for my buttons and looked right through my clothes, but I’ve never held anyone as close as you.’
Daniel didn’t understand what she meant. He didn’t want to, either. He was already deep in his dreams. The nipple he held in his mouth was Kiko’s hand that led him away towards the mountain where the antelope waited. There was also sleep, Be’s hand against his cheek, the bodies of the whole family pressed tight together, the night that was still long and the dawn that waited beyond all the dreams they would talk about when they were awake again.