Daniel by Henning Mankell Page A

liberation. But Daniel’s only response was immediately to crawl up into the hammock and go to sleep. As always he had some grains of sand gripped in his fist. Bengler was puzzled. If he saw himself in Daniel, how would he decipher the fact that the boy was sleeping?
    A great pain has left him, he thought. It’s natural to rest when an affliction is over, be it a toothache, colic or headache. That’s what he’s doing, sleeping it off now that the pain has left him.
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    Two days before they docked at Le Havre, the man with cancer who was going to Devonshire died. Since the captain was worried about his spices and they were becalmed that day, a burial at sea was arranged. Bengler was very depressed when he thought that the man would never return home. During the funeral itself he locked Daniel in the cabin.
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    Besides their regular promenades, Bengler had given Daniel instruction every day. There were two subjects. First, he had to learn Swedish if possible. Second, he had to learn to wear shoes. Initially Daniel was amused by the shoes, but after a while he grew tired of them. On one occasion he flung one of the simple wooden shoes over the railing. Bengler was angry but managed to control himself. He had been given another pair of small worn-out shoes by a carpenter, and he started again. Daniel showed no interest whatsoever, but he did not throw the shoes overboard.
    With the language, on the other hand, no progress was made at all. Bengler realised that Daniel simply refused to take in the words. And he could find no way to counter his refusal.
    When they docked at Le Havre on a foggy morning in early August, Bengler felt a growing unrest inside. Why in hell had he let his impulses get the better of him and dragged this boy along?
    At first he had been afraid that the boy would jump overboard. Now he was afraid that he would throw the boy overboard himself.

    The last thing he saw when he went ashore was the sailor squinting at him. His look was as cold as the fog.
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    In the middle of August Bengler and Daniel boarded a coal lighter heading for Simrishamn. Bengler was granted passage if he helped with various tasks on board. The ship was dilapidated and smelled foul. For the entire trip Bengler worried that they would never arrive.
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    On 2 September the vessel docked at Simrishamn. By then Bengler had been away from Sweden for almost a year and a half.
    When he stepped ashore he realised that the fear he felt was shared by Daniel.
    They had grown closer to each other.

CHAPTER 8
    The day they landed a strange thing happened. For Bengler it was a sign. For the first time he seriously thought he had deciphered something from all the unclear and often contradictory signals that Daniel sent out.
    From the dock they had walked straight across the muddy harbour square and into a little inn located in one of the alleyways leading down to the water. The innkeeper, who was drunk, had looked in consternation at Daniel, who was standing at Bengler’s side. Could it be a little black-coloured monster that had hopped out of his delirious brain? But the man standing next to the boy spoke in a refined manner. Even though he had arrived from Cape Town, he didn’t seem to be infected with any tropical disease that might prove worrisome. The man gave them a room facing the courtyard. The room was very dark and cramped. It smelled of mould, and Bengler searched his memory; somewhere he had smelled exactly this same smell. Then he recalled that it was the coat worn by an itinerant Jewish liniment pedlar he had met during his last visit to Hovmantorp. He opened the window to air out the room. It was early autumn, just after a heavy rain, and there was a wet smell from the courtyard. Daniel sat motionless on a chair in his sailor suit. He had kicked off the wooden shoes.
    Bengler poured himself a glass of port to muster his courage for the future and to celebrate the fact that the coal lighter had not sunk