Then he knew.
It was the man who had killed Kiko. The pig was the same man who had shot Kiko and then kicked his dead body. Daniel looked around for a weapon, but there was nothing in the yard apart from him and the pig that kept coming closer and closer. He tore off one of his wooden shoes and slammed it hard on the pig’s head. It shrieked. He hit it again. Now the pig’s legs began to give way. The yard was slippery. It tried to get away but Daniel kept hitting it. Somewhere behind him he heard Alma yelling. Then the hired hand and Edvin came running up. The milkmaids stood in the doorway of the barn. And Daniel kept hitting. He didn’t stop even when Edvin tossed him aside. By then the pig was dead. Its blood had run out onto the white ground. In the moment of death the pig had shut its eyes. Daniel knew that he had conquered the man who killed Kiko. He now had his revenge. Kiko would have been proud of him.
Edvin stared in astonishment at the dead animal.
‘He beat it to death with his wooden shoe,’ said Alma.
‘But why?’
‘I don’t know.’
Edvin looked at Daniel. Daniel could feel that he had his shell on now. Edvin couldn’t see into him.
‘Why did you do it?’
Daniel didn’t answer. Edvin wouldn’t understand anyway. No one would understand.
‘Why did you do it? Why kill a little piglet with a wooden shoe?’
‘He’s crazy,’ the hired hand blurted out. ‘He’s crazy and he doesn’t belong here.’
‘He lives here,’ shouted Edvin. ‘I’m getting ten riksdaler a month for him. He lives here and he will stay here.’
The hired hand spat but didn’t dare reply.
Edvin looked at Daniel again. Daniel moved away.
‘He saw what you were thinking,’ said Alma. ‘He saw that you were thinking of hitting him. And you did.’
‘I haven’t touched him.’
‘But he could feel the blow you were thinking of giving him.’
Edvin motioned the hired hand to take away the dead animal. Alma called to the milkmaids to go back inside the barn.
‘This won’t do any longer. We’ll have to talk to the pastor. Maybe he can get him to say why he did it.’
‘He wants to go home,’ said Alma. ‘It can’t be anything else. He wants to go home.’
‘But he doesn’t have a home, does he? Aren’t they all dead? That’s what Bengler said.’
‘That man is a big windbag. I didn’t believe half of what he said.’
Edvin looked at his hands. He said no more. Then he went back out in the field.
‘What harm did the pig do you?’ asked Alma.
From her hand Daniel could feel that she wasn’t angry with him. He put his fingers cautiously around her wrist to feel her pulse and sensed that it beat just as calmly as Be’s heart used to do. But at the same time he knew that he couldn’t answer her question. He could say something that wasn’t true, of course, that he didn’t know why he felt compelled to kill the pig, but she would never understand that the evil man who had once killed Kiko had searched for him and changed himself into a pig.
So he said the only words he knew would never be misunderstood.
‘My name is Daniel. I believe in God.’
He put on his wooden shoes and left Alma. One shoe was bloody. He could feel his foot sticking to it. Alma stood and looked at him. She’s the one who can see inside me, Daniel thought. I have to watch out for her. But at the same time she’s the one who understands that I’m not actually here, I am somewhere else.
He went up onto the hill behind the house. Far out in the fields he could see Edvin and the hired hand. They were busy moving away a large stone. The wind had begun to blow. The black birds sat motionless and silent in the clump of trees. Daniel searched for the seagull. He listened. Sometimes he thought he could hear drums in the distance, but then he realised that it was only the wind that blew across the fields and then was gone.
He was cold and his nose was running. No matter how much he sniffled, his nose was always full. In the desert he had never had a cold. There he was sometimes struck by fever or had a stomach ache, but he had never had a runny nose.
He kept on gazing at the horizon. Edvin and the hired hand had managed to get the stone onto a wooden sledge. The two horses were pulling and straining at the sledge. Daniel had noticed that Edvin never hit his horses. Father had whipped his oxen. Sometimes he had loosed some unknown wrath on them, even though they were pulling as best they could, but Edvin never struck the horses. He might slap the reins, but never so hard that it hurt the animals.
Daniel continued to scan the horizon as he slowly turned round.
He saw something moving on a cart track on the other side of the hill. It led to a neighbouring farm where a family named Hermansson lived. Soon after Father had left, people from this farm had come to have a look at him. He had shaken hands, bowed and avoided looking them in the eye. They were young people, and they stood silently with mouths agape, watching him. Finally it was too much for Alma, who told Daniel to go out to the barn, and then served coffee to the guests. He had stayed in the barn until he heard the clop of hooves in the yard. He had peeked through a crack in the barn wall, and when the neighbours were gone he came out.
‘They’ll get used to you,’ Alma said. ‘But it’s terrible the way people can stare.’
Daniel fixed his gaze on what was moving along the cart track. At first he thought it was an animal. Then he saw that it was a person. A woman. She was running. He hadn’t seen her before. She was heading towards the hill. He moved aside and hid behind some bushes.
When she reached the top of the hill he saw that it was a girl. He guessed that she was older than the girls who had skipped in the courtyard in Simrishamn. He lay motionless behind the bushes and watched her. Her clothes were dirty and she had clumps of mud in her blonde hair. Daniel wondered what she was up to. She was squatting down and scratching with her fingers in the mud. After a while he realised she was searching for something. As she dug she muttered, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He could see that she was in a hurry. She gave up on the first hole she scratched. Then she put her ear to the ground and crawled about until she stopped and began digging again.
Daniel sneezed.
It came on him so quickly that he couldn’t stifle the sound. The girl gave a start and saw him at once behind the bushes. She’s going to scream, he thought. It’ll be the same way as with the pig. Edvin and Alma will come dashing over and this time Edvin will do what he’s thinking of doing. His heavy hand will fall like a stone on my head and it will hurt.
Daniel stood up. But the girl didn’t scream. She didn’t even stare. She smiled and started to laugh. She got up out of the mud and came over to him. He could smell the urine and dirt on her. On her forehead along the hairline he saw dried mud.
‘I’ve heard about you,’ said the girl. ‘But they wouldn’t let me come along and see you. They thought I’d behave badly.’
She spoke rapidly and her words sounded mushy in her thick dialect. Yet he could still understand what she said.
She grabbed hold of his hand.
‘You’re completely black,’ she said. ‘In the church there’s a devil on the wall. He’s black too. Do you come from hell?’
‘I come from the desert.’
‘I don’t know what that is. But your name is Daniel?’
‘I believe in God.’
‘I don’t. But you can’t tell anyone that.’
The girl was still holding his hand. He took hold of her wrist, just as he had done with Alma. The girl’s heart was beating hard.