She smiled but with her lips pressed together. Bengler knew what that meant: she had bad teeth. Or perhaps she had syphilis, which could be seen on the tongue.
‘I’m already engaged,’ she said. ‘But some other evening. Gentlemen are so unpredictable. The one sitting in there wants to marry me. But what he’ll want to do tomorrow, nobody knows.’
‘Her name is Matilda,’ said Bengler. ‘Matilda Andersson. She used to keep me company. Then I left on a long voyage. Now I’ve come back.’
The woman at the mirror continued straightening her hat. Bengler looked at her breasts under the tight-fitting blouse. He could feel his excitement growing.
‘Matilda is a common name. Just as common as mine, Carolina. Describe her for me.’
Bengler didn’t know what to say. He could describe her naked body, the shape of her breasts and thighs, but how had she dressed? He tried to remember. But he saw her only without clothes.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘She had blue eyes, brown hair. Maybe it was naturally curly, maybe she had it curled. She smelled sour.’
The woman was finished with her hat. She moved close to him.
‘What do I smell like?’
‘Like liquorice root.’
‘Forget her. Tomorrow I can keep you company.’
She gave his face a quick caress. He couldn’t help grabbing her breast. She laughed, twisted away and then vanished back through the draperies. Bengler walked through the lobby and out in to the street. It was warmer now after the downpour.
Somewhere he heard a horse whinnying. He looked up at the corner room where Daniel had probably fallen asleep by now. The desire for a woman was very strong. He thought about Benikkolua. Why couldn’t he have taken her along as well as Daniel? The thought of the woman in front of the mirror suddenly made him sick. In the cool autumn evening he began to hate this town. If it hadn’t been for the money he would never have come back. Matilda wasn’t even a memory, only a mirage, just like there in the desert. What had been was no more. Now it was only him and Daniel and the cognac, which made him feel like he was standing on the heaving deck of a ship again.
He went back inside, paid for his drinks, and heard the women laughing in the dark when he left through the draperies. I’m a person who’s doing a lot of different things for the last time, he thought. I will never come back to this room.
When he came upstairs to the corner room the chambermaid was asleep in a chair. Daniel was also sleeping. The girl jumped when Bengler touched her shoulder. Once more he felt desire flare up. How old could she be? Sixteen or seventeen, hardly more. She was very pale.
‘I’ll pay you,’ he said. ‘Did he go over to the window?’
‘He sat on the edge of the bed playing with his fingers.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Then he played with his feet.’
‘And then?’
‘Then he went to bed. He never looked at me.’
‘He seldom looks at people,’ said Bengler. ‘On the other hand, he does sometimes look straight through people who cross his path.’
Bengler had taken out a riksdaler coin. That was too much. Without really wanting to, he took a note out of his pocket.
‘There will be more money to be made,’ he said. ‘If you’re nice to me.’
She understood and jumped up. She ought to slap me, Bengler thought. Instead she blushed.
‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to pay me for this. I didn’t do anything. Just sat here.’
Bengler grabbed her arm. She tensed up.
‘I have to be careful,’ he said.
She started to cry. Shame crashed furiously over Bengler. What in hell am I doing? he thought. I’m trying to buy this girl who doesn’t even know what love is, knows nothing besides cleaning, curtsying and being pleasant.
‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ he muttered. ‘Take the coin.’
But the girl fled and he was left standing with the coin in his hand. His shame was raging. He went over to the window and looked down at the street. The students were leaving with their women. He watched the woman with the hat and thought: I have to get out of here. His old life was gone. He had left it behind in the desert. Now he had his insects and Daniel.
He undressed and sat down in the chair where the chambermaid had been sitting. Without inviting it, the feeling of arousal returned. Matilda was gone, just like Benikkolua. Only the woman with her lips pressed together was left. Daniel was asleep. He sat down at the desk. The kerosene lamp burned with a low flame. He turned it up and then took out ‘Daniel’s Book’. But the words wouldn’t come. Instead he drew something, and at first he didn’t know what it was. Then he realised that he was trying to depict the wagon and the oxen when the wheel broke and he had been forced to take charge. He drew poorly; the wheel was oval, the wagon sunken in, the oxen looked like sway-backed cows and the ox-drivers only thin lines. He closed the book, turned off the lamp and crept into bed next to Daniel. In the morning we have to be off, he thought. The money I have will get us to Hovmantorp and then on to Stockholm. Beyond that I can’t imagine what will happen.
He turned his head and looked at Daniel lying curled up with his back to him. His breathing was very calm. Bengler carefully pressed two fingers to his carotid artery and counted silently to himself.
Fifty-one. Daniel’s pulse was very regular. And he still wasn’t in the deepest sleep: then his pulse would be between forty-five and fifty.
Bengler closed his eyes. The woman who was inside him pressed her lips together. Slowly he returned to the desert. The sun burned in his dreams.
Daniel lay wide awake at his side. When he was sure that Bengler was asleep he got up and carefully opened the notebook lying next to the kerosene lamp. The drawing depicted nothing. It was like an unfinished petroglyph on a rock wall.
PART II
THE ANTELOPE
CHAPTER 10
The one who had taught him about the dreams was Be. They coiled like tracks through people; the paths were not footprints they trod in the desert, but something that was inside them, in the spaces where only the gods had access. Be was his mother; her smile still burned inside him, even though the last thing he remembered was the blood that ran from her eyes and the scream that was abruptly cut off.
The boy named Molo lay awake by the side of the man whose eyes were always shifting. He was no longer afraid of him, afraid that he might have a spear hidden somewhere behind his back, like the ones who killed Be and Kiko. Besides, this evening he had been funny, almost tempting him to laugh. They had been sitting in the big room eating and he had drunk something that made his feet move the way they did when they were on the ship. He didn’t know what was in the bottles, but he stored it in his memory. In this peculiar country where the sun never seemed to go down, the rolling waves of the sea were kept in bottles. He had memorised the labels in his head for the day when he would be able to go back across the water and return to the desert.
He lay quite still in the bed. The man next to him hadn’t begun to snore yet. He still lay on his side. It wasn’t until he turned over on his back that he started snoring. Molo listened in the darkness. Someone laughed down on the street. Shoes clacked on the paving stones. He thought about all the sounds he was forced to house in his head. In the desert people’s footsteps were never heard. The wind might whine, but footsteps were always silent. They could hear voices at great distances and the antelope bucks bellowing with what Be called rut, which meant that they were looking for females to mate with. Molo thought about the shoes he was forced to learn to use on board the ship. Big and heavy, made of wood. His feet had cried in the shoes, curled inward like animals that would soon die, and he wondered why he wasn’t allowed to go barefoot as he had always done. His feet didn’t want to have shoes, and the shoes didn’t want to have his feet. That’s why he had flung one of them into the sea, to placate his feet and himself and to show that he didn’t need to have anything on his feet to be able to walk
. He didn’t want to shuffle along, didn’t want to lose the joy of walking. But he had made a mistake. That was the first time the man who was still not snoring had got angry. A line had appeared on his forehead right above his eyebrows. His eyes grew narrow and Molo thought the man was going to hit him, maybe throw him overboard. But nothing happened except that the next day he got new shoes that were even heavier. Then he thought of something that Kiko had told him, about the slave caravans he had once seen when he was young at the far northern end of the desert. Hiding behind a rock, he had seen a white man whipping people who were chained together, all black, driving them towards the coast. When he came back he told Be about it. Much later, when Molo was born, he was told the story too. The memory had returned when he was forced to wear the shoes that made him heavy and lose the desire to move.
Molo got up from the bed and walked carefully over to the door. He had drunk a lot of water at dinner. Now he had to pee. In the desert you could pee anywhere, just not in the fire or anywhere Kiko was flaying an animal or Be was preparing food. But here it was different. On the ship he had stood by the railing. The man next to him had always held on to him. Molo had wondered if he was stupid enough to think that he would jump overboard. When they came ashore, peeing became a big problem, not to mention when he had to relieve himself of heavier things. There were special rooms with small wooden boxes where he was supposed to sit. He hadn’t seen any box like that here in this house. He had learned that you had to pee when no one was watching and that you should pee in such a way that all traces disappeared instantly. He stood naked in the middle of the room and looked around. There was a potted palm on the table. He stuck his finger in the pot and sniffed. The dirt was wet and smelled of rain.
If he peed there it would surely run over the edge and the man would be angry when he woke up. The white pitcher that had water in it earlier was empty. He could pee there. But the pee would still be there the next day. If he tried to pee out of the window the man who was sleeping would wake up and think he had turned into a bird. He went carefully over to the door and opened it. There was a kerosene lamp on the wall in the corridor. He closed the door behind him without a sound. That was something else he had learned. Doors were supposed to be opened so they were heard but closed without a sound. The corridor was empty and all the doors were shut. He walked carefully along the soft carpet. It was like walking in sand, he thought. Behind a door he heard a woman crying. It sounded like Be when she had given birth to a dead baby, the last one she bore before the man with the spear came and killed her. He stopped and peed on the carpet. The fabric would soak up the urine, the same way sand did. Then one of the doors suddenly opened. A man without a shirt and a big paunch that hid his sex came out. He had a bottle in his hand. He gave a start when he caught sight of Molo. Then he started to yell. Molo tried to stop peeing but he wasn’t finished. Other doors opened; a man came running up the steps. Everyone stared at him. He still couldn’t break off the stream. He wondered what was so strange. Didn’t children pee in this country? Then he heard a door open behind him. It was the sleeping man who had woken up. He finished peeing.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked the man excitedly. ‘Are you pissing on the hotel’s carpet?’
Molo didn’t understand what he said, just that he had made another mistake. The fabric under his feet wasn’t like the sand. The man grabbed hold of his arm so hard that it hurt, and dragged him back into the room. He sat him down on the bed. Molo understood that he wasn’t allowed to move. The man went back out of the door. Molo could see that the man gave money to someone who came running up the stairs. Molo thought that the best thing he could do now was to get in between the sheets and pretend to be asleep.
The man came in and closed the door silently. But Molo knew that he was angry and shut his eyes tight. He felt the man’s breath close to his face. It smelled sweet. Molo knew without opening his eyes that the man was thinking about hitting him. His breath grew more sour, more dangerous. Molo tensed. But nothing happened.
‘Damned kid,’ muttered the man.
Molo didn’t understand the words. Sometimes he thought that the language the man spoke was like the sound of an axe splitting old dried wood. Sometimes it sounded like Kiko hitting a rock with a tree branch to see if there were any hollows in it where snakes could hide.
The man crept into bed and sighed. Molo waited until his breathing grew calm. Soon the man would start to snore. Molo opened his eyes again. He was tired. He didn’t know what awaited him in the morning. But Be had taught him about the dreams. They were not only hiding places, they could also predict what was going to happen. Molo searched among the images streaming through his head. He stopped when Kiko appeared before him.
It had been the last time he was allowed to accompany Kiko to the rocks that stuck up out of the sand and looked like a resting lion. He knew that the hills were sacred. A long time ago the gods had lived among these rocks. They had lit their fires and sat there, and one evening after they had eaten their fill and were in a good mood, they had decided to create a new kind of animal, which would later be called a human being. Kiko had told the story very precisely and kept asking if Molo had understood. He had repeated the same thing several times, talked about the gods in different ways, as if he were a bird who saw everything from above, or a snake who silently coiled around their legs. Molo had understood. It was among these rocks that everything had begun. Gradually the gods had tired of the humans, let them take care of themselves, and left for other hills. But so that the gods would not become impatient and take their food from them, or the rain, the humans had carved their images into the rocks.
Kiko had been working on an antelope the last time they went to the hill together. Anamet, the old man who had died the year before, had started carving the antelope, but when he withdrew, slowly isolating himself from life, and finally stopped breathing, Kiko was chosen to continue. He was not as talented as Anamet, nor would he ever be. Anamet had had a special ability to depict animals so that at any moment they might tear themselves loose from the rocks and vanish among the sand dunes. Kiko had coloured the animal’s body this last time. The antelope was in the middle of a leap. Anamet had made the eye very large, and Kiko worried for a long time about whether to make it red from the colour of a crushed beetle or to make it yellow with the sap from a bush that grew near the hill. Kiko could be taciturn sometimes when he was working on the antelope. He was the least talkative in the entire group of seven families who lived and travelled together. In contrast to Be, who was always talking and laughing, Kiko could be silent so long that they wondered if he had been taken ill. Molo also knew that it was only wise to ask Kiko questions occasionally. Sometimes he would answer, but if Molo chose the wrong time, Kiko might grow tired, maybe even angry. But this last time they went to the hill together Kiko had been in a good mood. Molo knew that it would be a good day, when he could ask all the questions he wanted.
They set off early at daybreak. When they reached the hill and the crevice in the rocks where the antelope was carved, the sun had just begun to pour in. It looked like the antelope was on fire.
‘Anamet was very skilled,’ said Kiko. ‘He not only knew how the hands should shape the antelope, he also thought about which spot on the rock he should choose.’
‘What does it mean to be skilled?’ asked Molo.
Kiko didn’t answer. Molo knew that this was an answer too. If Kiko said nothing it meant that the question had no answer.
Kiko decided that the antelope’s eye should be red. In a little leather pouch he had brought along some of the beetles that made the colour. He poured them onto the ground and the beetles tried to crawl off. He crushed them with a rock and began to squeeze out the colour in the shell. With a twig he then carefully filled in the incisions that Anamet had carved with his little chisel. Molo watched his father. The rays of the sun were slowly rising. The light was coming from below. The antelope’s eye glistened.
‘Where are
the gods?’
Kiko laughed.
‘Inside the rock,’ he replied. ‘Their voices are the heart that beats in the antelope’s body.’
‘I try to draw in the sand. Antelopes, zebras. But they aren’t any good.’
‘You’re too impatient. You’re only a child. The moment will come some day when you only see in one direction at a time. Then you’ll be able to make an antelope too.’
Kiko worked all day. Not until it began to get dark did he put down the red-coloured twig.
‘It’ll be done soon,’ he said. ‘One day when you’re older the colours will have disappeared. Then you can come here and fill them in again. It will be your turn to make the antelope come alive.’
They returned to the camp. From a distance they saw the fires and smelled the meat cooking. The day before, the hunters had managed to kill a zebra and now they had meat for several days. That’s why Kiko had time to devote to the antelope.
‘Tomorrow we’ll continue,’ said Kiko. ‘And the next day too. Then the food will be gone and we’ll have to hunt again.’
But did they ever go back to the hill? Molo lay with his eyes open next to the man who still hadn’t started snoring. He could no longer remember.
He had been asleep when the men with the spears and rifles came. They had horses and white helmets, though not all the men had white skin, some were black. They surrounded the camp during the night and when the women woke up in the morning the shooting and slaughtering had begun. Molo had been drenched with blood and looked as though he was already dead. Through half-closed eyelids, with his heart pumping in his body as if he were in wild flight, he saw Be impaled by a spear and Kiko shot through the head.
The men who attacked them had laughed the whole time; they had acted like they were out hunting animals. And when everything was silent and everyone was dead except Molo, they drank from their bottles, cut off a few ears, and then rode away until they were swallowed up by the sand and the sun.