Free Daniel by Henning Mankell Page B

scissors and the needle that he used to sew together the various pieces. Late that night, as he crept up into his hammock next to Daniel, he hid the scissors in a cavity between two timbers up in the ceiling.
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    Before he went to sleep he lay still and listened to Daniel’s breathing. It was irregular and restless. He felt Daniel’s forehead but could detect no sign of fever. He’s dreaming, he thought. Some day he’ll be able to tell me what he was thinking when we left Cape Town.
    The odours from the holds were very strong. In the distance he could hear some of the sailors laughing. Then it was quiet again apart from occasional footsteps on deck and the ship creaking against the swells.
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    The journey to Le Havre took a little over a month. They went through two storms and were becalmed for six days in between them. The African continent could be glimpsed now and then like an evasive mirage in the east. The heat was relentless. The captain was worried about his cargo of spices and several times went below deck to check that nothing was getting damp.

    On the very first day Bengler had decided that Daniel needed a routine. After eating the breakfast that Raul brought in to them, they began taking walks on deck. The man from Devonshire seldom appeared. According to Raul he was in severe pain and ate almost nothing but strong medicines, which left him constantly in a trance-like state. The merchant’s daughter from Rouen played badminton with her chambermaid when the weather permitted. Bengler noticed that the ship then seemed to breathe in a different way. The crew devoutly hoped that the girls’ skirts would blow up and expose a leg or perhaps a bit of their undergarments. During their walks, Bengler talked to Daniel constantly. He pointed and explained and alternated speaking German and Swedish. Slowly he thought he could feel the tension in Daniel begin to relax. He was still somewhere else, with parents who were still alive, far away from Andersson’s pen and the ship that rose and fell, but he’s getting closer, Bengler thought. The further away from Africa, the closer to me.
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    Bengler realised that he had to show Daniel that the harness was a temporary solution for what he hoped would be an equally temporary problem. The rope situation could only be solved by a growing trust. On the second day aboard, Bengler left the scissors he had borrowed from the sailmaker on the table and let Daniel stay alone in the cabin. He waited outside the closed door, ready for Daniel to cut the rope and then rush out of the door to try to cast himself into the sea.
    After half an hour nothing had happened.
    When Bengler went into the cabin the scissors lay on the table. Daniel was sitting on the floor drawing with his finger in the sand that still covered the floorboards. Bengler decided to take the harness off the boy. The feeling that he had committed an injustice filled him once again with discomfort. But he also experienced something that could only be vanity. He didn’t want to admit that Wilhelm Andersson was right. That he should not have taken the boy with him. He didn’t want to have his good intentions questioned, even if only by a man he would never meet again. A man who lived in the midst of far-reaching hypocrisy at a remote trading post in the Kalahari Desert.

    Bengler went out on deck. The Chansonette was sailing in a light wind. The sails were full. He remembered how it had been when he came to Africa on Robertson’s black schooner, when he had felt masts and sails inside himself. He stood by the railing and looked down at the water. The sails flapped like birds’ wings above his head, a play of sunshine and shadow.
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    For the first time he seriously asked himself the question: what would he actually do when he got back to Sweden? The beetle with the peculiar legs lay in its jar. And he had Daniel too. In two big leather trunks he had 340 different insects he