He realised that the desert had already partially vanquished him. Now he no longer followed the maps: they went where the oxen led them. Soon the water and food would be gone. He took inventory and then wrote down a calculation in a letter to Matilda. The truth is now quite simple. If we don’t reach the trading post within ten days the journey will be over. My visit to the Kalahari Desert will then be finished. The question is whether I will have the courage to shoot myself or whether I will end up lying in the sand, being burned to death by the sun.
Apart from the beetle he had found only two other insects. A millipede that was close to twenty centimetres long, and a moth that lay dead next to the campfire one morning. He had identified both insects in his reference books. He forsaw that his museum would consist of these three jars. Someone who might come across the wagon buried in the sand would wonder who the madman was who had wandered around in this hell collecting insects in glass jars from which the alcohol had long since evaporated.
He counted down the days. When they were three days from the end, when all the food and all the water would be gone, Amos came down with a high fever. For a day and a night they were forced to remain encamped. Amos was delirious, whimpering like a baby, and Bengler was sure that they would soon have the expedition’s first burial. But by morning his fever had vanished as quickly as it came.
They pressed on. Just before the midday rest the second ox-driver began waving excitedly and pointing towards a spot that lay west of their route. It took a long time before Bengler managed to understand what the ox-driver had seen. At first it seemed that the sand was only quivering. But then he saw that there was a clump of trees and some houses. He heard a horse whinny in the distance. The oxen replied with dull bellowing.
At that instant he burst into tears. He turned away so that Amos and the other man would not see his weakness.
After a while he pulled himself together, dried off the traces of tears and urged on the oxen. They were now heading in a different direction. For the first time he had a goal.
Long afterwards he would try to recall what he had thought or felt at the moment they discovered the houses and heard the horse whinny. But there was only a vacuum of relief.
A little before three in the afternoon they arrived.
A man stood on the steps of the biggest house, waiting for them. He was missing two fingers on his right hand.
In resounding Swedish he said that his name was Wilhelm Andersson.
For him there was no doubt that Hans Bengler was Swedish.
No one but a Swedish shoemaker could have made leather boots as fine as those he was wearing.
Chapter 5
Wilhelm Andersson welcomed Bengler warmly. His handshake was so powerful that it felt like he was trying to crush his hand. Then Andersson took off his shirt, turned his back, and asked Bengler to cut open a boil between his shoulder blades that was inaccessible to his own hands. Bengler stared at the distended boil and recalled the time he had fainted in the Anatomy Theatre. He stroked the scar above his eye.
‘It’s probably best I don’t. I can’t tolerate the sight of blood.’
‘There won’t be any blood coming out, just greenish-yellow pus and maybe some worms or maggots.’
Andersson spat on a knife with an ivory handle and handed it to Bengler. His back was covered in odd cracks and swellings. It was as if the desert landscape had carved its presence into his skin.
‘I’ve never lanced a boil before.’
‘Stick the point in the middle and press. When it opens, cut downwards. And turn face your away so it doesn’t squirt in your eyes.’
Bengler put the knife point against the purple boil, shut his eyes and pressed. Then he squinted quickly and cut downwards. A viscous mess ran down Andersson’s back.
‘Take this towel here and wipe it off. Then we’ll eat.’
Still without looking, Bengler wiped off the mess and dropped the towel on the floor. Blood was trickling out of the incision now. Andersson gave him a piece of white cloth.
‘Put this over the cut. It’ll stick and stay on. The sweat makes it sticky.’
Bengler kept swallowing and swallowing so he wouldn’t vomit. Andersson wriggled into his shirt and buttoned it wrongly so that one edge hung down. He noticed but didn’t do anything about it.
Only now did Bengler realise that Andersson gave off a horrible stench. He tried to pull back a step and breathe through his mouth. But at the same time he remembered that he hadn’t been anywhere near a bath in almost two months. Water for washing was the first thing he had rationed, only a week after they left Cape Town.
Andersson led him into a room that was filled with animal trophies. The odour of decay and formalin was very strong. In the middle of the room was a hammock, identical to the one Bengler had slept in during the passage on Robertson’s schooner. It took a moment before he noticed that a short black man was standing motionless in the corner of the room. At first he thought it was a stuffed animal, but then he realised it was a live human being.
‘My only form of homesickness,’ said Andersson. ‘Or possibly it’s a sign of disgust. I’ve never been able to work out why I brought along a folk costume from Vänersborg and dressed my servant in it.’
This was a situation that Bengler had no background to help him understand. After two months in the desert he had reached a trading post where there was a Swede named Wilhelm Andersson who came from Vänersborg and dressed his valet in a Swedish folk costume.
‘I’ve tried to teach him to dance the polka,’ he said. ‘But he refuses. They prefer to leap. I’ve tried to explain that God doesn’t approve of leaping people. God is a higher being, higher than me, but we have the same view, that if there is dancing to be done it should take place in regular forms, in 3/4 time or 4/4 time. But they continue to leap and wiggle the most unexpected parts of the body.’
He offered Bengler a whisky and water. Bengler thought of his ox-drivers. Andersson instantly read his thoughts.
‘They will be taken care of,’ he said. ‘They’ll get water, food, conversation, be allowed to laugh, and at night there will be women who are warm and open. But you ought to shoot the oxen. You’ve driven the life out of them. Which brings me to the question: what are you doing here?’
Bengler felt the dizziness come as soon as he sipped the whisky. How can I explain something I can’t even explain to myself? he thought. Then, surprisingly even for him, he excused himself by fainting.
When he woke up he was lying in the hammock. The black man in the folk costume was fanning him with something that looked like a piece of oxhide above his head. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Andersson singing a hymn, off-key and vehement, as if he hated the tune. Bengler closed his eyes and thought that in a sense he had now arrived. He had no idea where he was, nor did he have any idea who the strange man was whose boil he had lanced, but he had indeed arrived. He had crept ashore on a strip of beach in this endless sea of sand. I ought to say a prayer, he thought. One that’s not as insincere as the hymn I’m hearing now. But who should I pray to? Matilda? She doesn’t believe in God. She’s afraid of God the same way she’s scared of the Devil. She’s just as terrified by heaven as by hell.
He didn’t say a prayer. He tried to catch the eye of the black man fanning him, but his gaze was far away, above Bengler’s head.