At daybreak he went out into the yard.
Thick fog lay over the fields. In the distance he could hear the birds screeching. Edvin came out onto the steps and stood there taking a piss. He didn’t see Daniel until he was finished. He buttoned his trousers and went over to him.
‘Are you starting to get well?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Daniel replied. ‘I will be well soon.’
Chapter 29
Daniel divided up his last days alive by carving notches on his other shoe, the one he wasn’t trying to turn into a sculpture. Each time he put down the whittling knife and each time he picked it up to continue his work, he would cut a notch on the shoe.
He was waiting. Now that he had tested his powers against all the evil that surrounded him and shown that he was stronger, time had lost its significance. His waiting involved something different to seeing the light of dawn creeping in through the windows of the barn or seeing the twilight fall. His waiting meant that he was listening. No matter what direction Be or Kiko came from, he would hear them. Their voices would be faint, almost whispering. Maybe they would sound like the cows snorting in their stalls, or like a hen flapping its wings. He didn’t know, and that’s why he had to pay attention to any sounds that might signal their arrival.
His cough had grown worse from the effort of dragging Sanna’s body through the mud. The fever that came and went made him tired. He slept a lot in these last days.
When he opened his eyes after dozing off one afternoon, Dr Madsen was standing in front of him. He was smiling. In his hand he held a letter.
‘Your father has written,’ he said. ‘A letter has come for you, postmarked Cape Town.’
Daniel no longer had many memories of the man he called Father. They had faded and turned into vague phantoms. Only with difficulty could he remember how he looked. His voice was already completely lost. The images in his mind were shadows.
‘He wrote to me and asked me to read the letter to you.’
Behind Dr Madsen stood Edvin and Alma. They kept their distance as if the letter demanded great respect.
Dr Madsen read:
To my son Daniel far away in Sweden,
I will always think of you as Daniel Bengler. Sometimes I think the name befits a grown man better. But what surname is actually suitable for a child? At present I am in Cape Town, the city where you and I began our journey. Do you remember? The high mountain that looked like a table? The day we walked along the beach and saw dolphins leaping in the sea? The journey here took a long time because I rode in an inferior carriage through almost the whole of Europe in order to board a ship in a French city called Marseille. I have been in Cape Town four months now. At first I lay ill. I had eaten something that bothered my stomach for a long time. For several weeks I was afraid that the illness would get the better of me. But I am healthy now. Soon I will complete all my preparations to return to the desert. But this time I shall travel in a more north-easterly direction. There are large areas that are mostly unknown, and of course I hope to be able to find insects which will later be a pleasure to exhibit to people in Sweden. My journey commenced abruptly, I know. But it was necessary. Now everything is fine, however. I don’t know when I shall be coming home. Father.
‘An excellent letter,’ said Dr Madsen when he had finished reading and stuffed the paper back in the envelope.
‘He doesn’t even ask how the boy is doing,’ said Alma, upset. ‘He doesn’t even ask how he is.’
‘But now we know he’s alive, at least,’ Edvin said. ‘We didn’t know that before. Now we know that it will be a long time before he returns.’
Dr Madsen placed the letter in the straw next to Daniel’s head.
‘A very fine letter,’ he said.
Then he pressed his hand against Daniel’s forehead. He looked into his eyes and listened to his chest. There was a rattling sound when Daniel breathed.
‘It would have been best, of course, if we could have taken him to a sanatorium,’ he said to Alma and Edvin when he finished his examination. ‘But that’s out of the question.’
‘If it will make him well I’ll sell the horses,’ replied Edvin firmly.
Dr Madsen shook his head. ‘We can always find the money,’ he said. ‘Many people would be moved to tears by a black child who is sick. Besides, he has met the King. But it’s not a question of money. It’s a matter of whether he could stand being moved again to a place that’s completely foreign to him.’
Dr Madsen regarded Daniel lying in the straw.
‘Naturally he should be sleeping in the house. The vapours from the animals may not be dangerous, but neither are they healthy. In addition, he ought to have a diet that consists of only eggs and milk.’
‘That will be easier than moving the animals into the house,’ said Edvin. ‘He’ll stay out here whatever we do. And I refuse to tie him up.’
‘You should still think it over,’ said Dr Madsen as he left.
Daniel heard the conversation continuing in the yard. He took out his wooden shoes, which he had hidden behind his head, and went on whittling. The wood was hard and his arm quickly grew tired. The whole time he kept listening for Be and Kiko. They had come closer, he could feel it, but he still couldn’t hear them.
Two days after Dr Madsen’s visit, Alma came to see Daniel at a time when she rarely went to the barn. He saw immediately that she had been crying and was afraid that she was sick. She sank down into the straw, and he wondered whether she was going to start sleeping there too.
‘I have to tell you this,’ she said. ‘And it’s better that you hear it from me than anyone else. Sanna is dead. Something horrible has happened. One of Nilsson’s boys found her out in the field. Somebody killed her.’
Daniel nodded cheerfully. He couldn’t understand why it made Alma so sad. She gave him an appalled look when he couldn’t help laughing.
‘Are you happy that I’ve told you the girl is dead? I thought you liked her, even though she was retarded.’
Daniel didn’t want Alma to be angry with him and stopped laughing at once.
‘Somebody killed her,’ Alma went on. ‘Someone stabbed her with a knife, violated her and buried her under some bushes out in the field. Somewhere there’s a murderer and no one knows who it is.’
Daniel didn’t know what the word murderer meant. but he thought that it would be best not to tell Alma the truth, that Sanna hadn’t been a human being but an animal, a dangerous animal, which they should be happy to be rid of. There was so much that Alma and Edvin and perhaps even Dr Madsen didn’t understand, about the powers that could conceal themselves in the earth, among the trees, and above all in human beings.
For the next few days no one talked about anything else. Everyone seemed to be afraid of what they called the murderer. Several times Daniel nearly told them, but something held him back.
One morning Edvin stood before him as he lay in the straw.
‘There’s a man sitting in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘He wants to talk to you about Sanna. He’s from Malmö and has come all the way here to search for the damn person who did Sanna such harm.’