‘I heard you yelling,’ she said. ‘Why are you lying here sleeping? You could freeze to death.’
He didn’t know how long he had been asleep. In his dream he had been hanging on two crossed boards. It was the hired hand who had nailed him up, and the milkmaids were lying at his feet, asleep with the covers pulled up to their necks.
‘They will nail me up,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘They will nail me up on boards. And put me in the church.’
Sanna shook her head. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Hallén.’
‘So the pastor is going to nail you up on boards? He can’t do that. It’s forbidden. It’s permitted to chop off people’s heads, but not to nail people up on boards.’
‘He said so.’
Sanna gave him a pensive look. She chewed on her lip while she thought.
‘Maybe it’s not the same for people who are black,’ she said. ‘Maybe they’re allowed to nail up people like you.’
Then she shrieked so shrilly that the black birds lifted off from the treetops.
‘He can’t do that!’
‘I’m going to leave.’
‘Where can you go? They’ll come after you. They’ll catch you.’
‘I’ll hide.’
‘But you’re black. You can’t hide.’
‘I’ll make myself invisible.’
Sanna started chewing on her lip again. ‘Can you do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
She sat down close to him and took his hand.
‘If you start to scream when they nail you up, I promise I’ll scream too. Then it might not hurt as much.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But you can’t hang there too long. Because you’re a human being and dead people smell bad. But I can put flowers on your grave.’
‘Thanks.’
Sanna sat in silence for a moment. Daniel tried to decide when he should make his escape. Should he wait or should he leave tonight? He realised that Sanna would never dare come with him. She certainly didn’t have the patience necessary to learn to walk on water, either. But he would still tell her about it. He had to share his thoughts with somebody. Maybe she could help him by steering the people who would be searching for him in the wrong direction.
He told her the truth. He was going to leave. Maybe even that very night. He would find his way to the sea, and when he had learned what he had to do for the water to support him, he would walk until he reached his home. Sanna listened with her mouth hanging open.
‘You’re crazy,’ she said when he was finished. ‘I don’t understand half of what you’re talking about. But I know this much — you’re just as insane as I am.’
‘What does it mean to be insane?’
‘Like me. I’m stupid in the head. I don’t understand what people say to me. I can’t learn to read or write. Sometimes they say that I’m stupid, sometimes that I’m retarded, but I’m not dumb enough to be locked in a madhouse.’
‘Why did your pappa drag you by the hair?’
Sanna pinched his nose so hard that he got tears in his eyes.
‘He’s not my pappa. My pappa is dead. My mamma too. I live with them because I was auctioned off.’
Daniel didn’t understand the word.
‘Is he your pappa’s brother?’
‘His name is Hermansson and he grabs me under my skirts when Elna isn’t looking. At night he comes and grabs me under the covers. I don’t want to but he tells me I can’t say anything. Otherwise I’ll end up in the madhouse and have to lie all day long in a tub full of cold water.’
Daniel didn’t understand the meaning of her words. But he could see in her face that she bore a pain that reminded him of his own. He thought that when he finally got home he would remember her and he would certainly dream about her at night.
‘I will carve your face in the rock wall,’ he said. ‘Next to the antelope. ’
‘What’s that?’
‘An animal.’
Daniel got up from the dirt, crossing his arms over his head like the crown of a kudu buck.
Sanna laughed. ‘That looks like an animal.’
‘The antelope is an animal.’
‘But you’re a human being. Even though you’re just as crazy as me.’
As she talked she kept looking around. Suddenly she pointed.
‘Someone’s coming up the path.’
Daniel saw that it was Edvin.
‘I’ll come back tonight,’ he said. ‘I want to see you one more time before I leave.’
‘But they’ll find you! They’ll send dogs after you.’
‘They will never find me.’
Sanna ran off down the hill. Daniel went to meet Edvin.
‘Who was that you were talking to?’
‘Nobody.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me. Was it Sanna?’
Daniel didn’t answer.
‘Dr Madsen is here,’ said Edvin. ‘He has two gentlemen from Lund with him. They want to meet you.’
Daniel stopped short.
‘It’s nothing dangerous. They just want to draw you. They’re going to write about you in a book.’
The two men waiting in the kitchen were both young. They stood up, shook Daniel’s hand and smiled kindly. He noticed that they weren’t staring at him. They looked at him with a curiosity that held no fear. Then they said their names. The shorter one, who had a pale face and yellow hair, was named Fredholm, and the other, who was bald with a moustache, was named Edman. Dr Madsen, who frightened Daniel since he was to blame for Father’s departure, squatted down in front of him.
‘Herr Fredholm and Herr Edman are students,’ he said. ‘Do you know what a student is?’
Daniel shook his head. When Madsen was there he didn’t want to say too many words. Every time he spoke he revealed his thoughts. He didn’t want Madsen to know what he was really thinking.
‘They study at the university in Lund,’ Madsen went on. ‘I don’t suppose you know what that means either. But you have been there, and you have certainly heard that people go there to seek knowledge. A biology professor there, Professor Holszten, studies people — why we’re all different. The noticeable differences between the races. Those that are inferior, dying out, and the races that have a future ahead of them. It was Professor Holszten who sent these gentlemen to visit you. The results will be published in a journal of racial biology that has just been started.’
Dr Madsen led Alma and Edvin out of the kitchen. The man named Edman with the bald head took out a drawing pad and began to sketch a likeness of Daniel. Fredholm wrapped a measuring tape around Daniel’s head. Daniel felt like laughing but knew that he should be serious. He couldn’t understand why it was so important to measure his nose or the distance between his eyes. The two men reminded him of Father. They devoted themselves to actions that were difficult to comprehend. Father had almost lost his life in the desert, searching for beetles and butterflies, and here stood grown men measuring his nose in all seriousness.
‘I wonder what he’s thinking,’ said Edman, taking up a new position to draw Daniel’s profile from the left side.
‘If he thinks at all,’ replied Fredholm, noting down the length of Daniel’s left ear.
‘It’s odd to stand before a creature from a race that’s dying out. I wonder if he’s aware of it himself? That soon he will no longer exist?’
Daniel listened absent-mindedly to what they were saying. Suddenly he had an idea. Maybe they could tell him where the sea was. Since they were alone in the room, neither Alma nor Edvin would know that he had asked. He would wait until they were finished, then he could ask, and he would do it in such a way that they wouldn’t realise the purpose of his question.
‘Open your mouth,’ said Fredholm.
Daniel obeyed.