‘Now you’re not going out again!’ he shouted. ‘Not without clothes and not without shoes. You live here, and we are responsible for you until Bengler comes back.’
Daniel didn’t answer. He knew that Father would never come back. He also realised that if he ran outside again Edvin might hit him. And he didn’t want that. He let Alma wrap the blanket around him again and rub his feet.
‘If only I understood,’ said Edvin, who had sat down in the chair again. ‘But I can’t see into his head.’
‘We have taken on responsibility for him,’ Alma said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether we understand or not.’
‘But how can you raise a child you can’t understand?’
Alma didn’t reply. Daniel thought about being the only child in the house. Alma and Edvin didn’t have any children of their own, even though they were already starting to get old. Maybe the children were already dead or were so big that they had left. He wanted to know, but he didn’t dare ask.
‘We’ll have to talk to the pastor,’ said Alma. ‘Maybe he can give us some advice.’
‘What will Hallén understand that we don’t?’
‘He is a pastor.’
‘He’s a bad pastor. Sometimes I wonder if he really believes in what he preaches.’
‘Don’t blaspheme. He’s a man of God. Besides, he’s not stuck-up.’
‘Somebody said he was the son of a town whore up in Småland.’
‘Don’t blaspheme. I want you to talk to him.’
Edvin got up from the table. ‘Things might get better when he starts school. It’s not working the way it is now.’
Alma kneaded and rubbed. ‘We must have patience,’ she said. ‘And we have to give it time.’
Daniel looked into the fire again. The flames were dancing. When he closed his eyes the dance continued inside his eyelids. The cold had made him tired. Every night since Father left, Daniel had woken up in the darkness. He had dreamed that Father was standing outside the house, but nobody heard him knocking. But when he opened his eyes there was no one at the door. There was only the snoring hired hand, the milkmaids, and himself sleeping alone in a corner of the kitchen.
Edvin went outside. Daniel closed his eyes. Alma kept rubbing his feet. Daniel tried to imagine Father’s face, but he was gone. Maybe he wasn’t even alive any longer. Then Daniel would have lost two fathers. First Kiko and then Father. Daniel often tried to work out what had happened that evening when the woman with the buttons was alone with Father. Everything that took place after that, the plans that were changed, had been affected by something that happened then. Daniel searched for an answer that he couldn’t find. How could Father just leave him here? In a place where there wasn’t even any sea? There were only the ponds in the beech woods and the puddles in the fields after a long rain.
Daniel didn’t know how long Father had been away. He knew that days, weeks, and months had passed. The only thing he was sure of was that the moon had been full four times since he left. It had grown colder, and the earth had changed and turned white.
For the first few days Daniel thought that he had been left far from the sea so that he would die. Maybe he had also hoped during that time that Father might come back. But late one evening, when Edvin had been drinking and was tipsy, Daniel had listened to a conversation between him and Alma in the bedroom. They were talking about Father. The first payment of ten riksdaler had arrived. It had been sent to Hornman the organist, who often handled estate inventories and was an honest man. Edvin had said that Father would probably never come back, but as long as the money arrived on time they didn’t have to worry. Alma asked about the future. What would happen when Daniel was bigger? And Edvin replied that he would be a farmhand like the others.
In that instant Father had vanished for good. He had been transformed into a shadow. And Daniel started to hate him. He was an evil man behind all his friendly words.
That was also when Daniel started to make a plan.
It had come to him from a bird.
Every morning when the hired hand was working with Edvin out in the fields and the girls were milking, Daniel went up onto a hill behind the house. From there he could see the horizon. Black birds that always seemed restless were riding on the updraughts or screeching in a clump of trees in the middle of the nearest field.
On this particular morning a lone seagull had joined the flock. The black birds chased it off, and as it left, the gull sailed right over Daniel’s head. He remembered that bird. There had been flocks of them around the ship that brought him here. Whenever they approached land the birds had appeared. Daniel realised that the gull had come to remind him that the sea was still there, even if he couldn’t see it.
He had to prepare for his escape. Without attracting attention, he had to find out in which direction the sea lay. Then he would take off. He would find somewhere he could be alone and learn to walk on the water. No one would find him, even though they would surely look for him.
There was no danger from the two milkmaids and the hired hand, but Edvin and Alma were always trying to see inside him and read his thoughts. He had to build a shell around himself that their eyes could not penetrate.
The most important thing was for him to act friendly and humour them. Even though he hated the shoes he was forced to wear, he would try to avoid showing his disgust. Only when he was alone would he kick them off and walk barefoot on the ground, which was growing colder all the time. He would do as he was told. Whenever Alma or Edvin asked him for help he would do more than they asked of him.
But this morning he was unsuccessful. He woke up and saw all that whiteness and he couldn’t control himself. Now he had to be careful so that Edvin and Alma would not discover his secret.
Alma finished rubbing his feet. She had bad teeth but he liked her smile anyway.
‘Are you warm now?’
Daniel nodded.
‘Then you can get dressed and go and play.’
Daniel went outside. The white on the ground had been trampled. He stood completely still in the yard and looked at the smoke that came out of his mouth every time he breathed. As soon as the girls were finished milking he would go into the barn. It was warm in there. He would have liked to sleep there with the animals, bedded down in their straw.
One of the piglets had escaped from its pen and was snuffling around in all the white. Daniel didn’t like the pigs, though he didn’t know why. He liked their smell but he was afraid of their eyes. They looked at him as if they wanted to do him harm. He was sure that they had once been people who had died and now had come back to live another life. But they must have been evil people, since they didn’t come back as horses or cows.
He looked at the pig snuffling closer and closer to him. He took a step to the side. But the pig followed him. Suddenly it began to change. It had a human face now, a face that Daniel had seen before. He jumped out of the way but the pig kept following him. He yelled. It was Kiko who had taught him that loud noises could keep beasts of prey away. He also knew that you should never look a beast of prey in the eye or it might attack. Kiko had taught him that animals had to be handled in different ways. If a snake raised its head to spit poison, you should stand motionless and hold your breath.
But Kiko had never seen a pig. Daniel’s shouting didn’t help. The pig kept coming closer. Daniel searched his memory in vain for where he had seen this face before.