英语小说网

In one fairy tale from the Land-of-Almost-Awake, a girl from Miamas broke the curse and released the sea-angel. But Granny never explained how it happened.

Elsa sits by the desk of the woman with the black skirt in a chair that Elsa assumes must be for visitors. Judging by the cloud of dust that enveloped Elsa when she sat down, as if she'd accidentally stumbled into a smoke machine at a magic show, she decides the woman can't have very many visitors. Ill at ease, the woman sits on the other side of the desk, reading and rereading the letter from Granny, though Elsa is quite sure by now that she's only pretending to read it so she doesn't have to start talking to Elsa. The woman looked as if she regretted it as soon as she invited Elsa in. A bit like when people in TV series invite vampires in and then, as soon as they've crossed the threshold, think "Oh shit!" to themselves just before they get bitten. At least this is what Elsa imagines one would be thinking in that type of situation. And that's also how the woman looks. The walls of the office are covered in bookshelves. Elsa has never seen so many books outside a library. She wonders if the woman in the black skirt has ever heard of an iPad.

Elsa remembers how Granny said that "the best stories are never completely realistic and never entirely made-up." That was what Granny meant when she called certain things "reality-challenged." To Granny, there was nothing that was entirely one thing or another. Stories were completely for real and at the same time not.

And then, once again, her thoughts drift off to Granny and the Land-of-Almost-Awake. For if this woman is the sea-angel, basically she's the third creature from that world, along with Wolfheart and the wurse, that lives in Elsa's building. Elsa doesn't know if this means that Granny took all her stories from the real world and placed them in Miamas, or if the stories from Miamas became so real that the creatures came across to the real world. But the Land-of-Almost-Awake and her house are obviously merging.

Elsa just wishes Granny had said more about the curse of the sea-angel, and how to break it. Because she supposes this is why she sent Elsa here, and if Elsa doesn't figure out what to do she'll probably never find the next letter. And then she'll never find the apology for Mum.

"I've never seen so many books, it's almost insane. Haven't you heard of an iPad?"

The woman's gaze suddenly moves up again. Lingers for a longer time on Elsa.

Elsa sighs.

"You can have all sorts of books on an iPad."

"I like physical books."

"Did you ever hear about the woman who read herself to death?" asks Elsa.

"I like books."

She looks up at the woman on the other side of the desk and clears her throat demonstratively. The woman's eyelids flicker, but she keeps staring down at the letter.

"You think I don't like books? You can keep your books on the iPad. You don't need a million books in your office."

"I don't know what… it means," says the woman almost fearfully.

The woman's pupils dither back and forth over the desk. She gets out a mint tab from a little box and puts it on her tongue, with awkward movements as if her hand and tongue belonged to two different people.

The woman's fingers tremble slightly. She peers at Elsa, a little as one peers at a person one meets outside a bathroom, where one has spent just a tad too long.

The woman's gaze glides up from the paper, brushes against her, and then flees back into the letter.

The woman's eyes close and open like large fans.

The woman nods, with the slowest nod Elsa has seen in all her life. Elsa throws her arms out.

"I like holding the book when I'm reading."

"It's from Miamas," says Elsa.

"But, you know, do what you like! Have a million books! I was only, like, asking. It's still a book if you're reading it on an iPad. Soup is soup whatever bowl it's in."

"I've never heard that proverb."

"I mean I like being able to turn the pages," the woman tries to explain.

"You can hold an iPad."

"That's not what I mean by 'a book.' I mean a 'book' in the sense of the dust jacket, the cover, the pages…"

"A book is the text. And you can read the text on an iPad!"

The woman's mouth moves spasmodically at the corners, spreading cracks in the surrounding skin.

"You can turn the pages on an iPad."

She really doesn't look like an angel, thinks Elsa. But on the other hand she doesn't look like a drunk either. So maybe it evens itself out. Maybe this is how halfway creatures look.

The woman looks down at her lap. Doesn't answer.

"Why does he carry on like that with his hands?"

"I didn't know you called him Wolfheart."

"Why did Granny bring Wolfheart here?" asks Elsa.

"He washes his hands all the time. Like he's trying to wash off a smell of poo, sort of thing."

"Sorry -- who?"

"Sometimes the brain does strange things to one after a tragedy. I think maybe he's trying to wash away…"

"That's his name. Why is he afraid of you if you don't even know who he is?"

"Your grandmother brought him here to talk about the war. She thought I'd be able to help him, but he got scared of me. He got scared of all my questions and scared of… of his memories, I think," she says at last. "He has seen many, many wars. He has lived almost his whole life at war, in one way or another. It does… does unbearable things to a human."

"Sorry?"

"You said Granny brought him here. And that's why he's afraid of you."

The woman puts her hands in her lap and studies them as if she just caught sight of them for the first time and wonders what in the name of God they're doing there.

"There's only one sort of soldier," Elsa snorts.

"You're a terropist, aren't you?"

"I don't think he was that sort of soldier. He was a peace soldier."

Elsa shrugs. "He shouldn't have become a soldier, then. It's because of soldiers that we have wars."

"Is he sick in the head?"

She becomes silent. Looks down.

"What?" Elsa demands to know.

"All people who have seen war are broken."

"Can't they be fixed, people who are sick in the head? Maybe it's sort of rude to call them sick. Is it? Is he all broken up in the head?"

"Excuse me?"

"Yes."

"Has he killed someone?"

"I don't know."

"… the blood," the woman concludes, emptily.

And she knows she's a hypocrite for saying it. Because she hates soldiers and she hates war, but she knows that if Wolfheart had not fought the shadows in the War-Without-End, the entire Land-of-Almost-Awake would have been swallowed up by gray death. And she thinks a lot about that. Times you're allowed to fight, and times when you're not. Elsa thinks about how Granny used to say, "You have standards and I have double standards, and so I win." But having double standards doesn't make Elsa feel like a winner.

"Yes."

The woman doesn't quite know how to respond to that one. Elsa throws out her arm defensively, and snorts, "Well, maybe it sounds stupid now, but it seemed more logical at the time! Everything seems obvious in hindsight!"

"Oh, I thought it had something to do with bombs."

The woman's eyes waver.

"Because she knew you'd ask a lot of questions. As a psychologist, I suppose I'm used to being the one who asks the questions."

"Registered psychotherapist."

"Why?"

Elsa nods.

"Maybe so," says the woman in a low voice that skims over Elsa's thoughts.

"Yes. Among… among other things."

"You don't have very many patients here, do you?" says Elsa with a pointed nod across the room.

"And for sending me here?"

"What does 'Reg. Psychoterropist' mean?"

The woman does something with the corner of her mouth that Elsa thinks might be a smile of some kind. But it's more like a stiff twitching, as if the muscles around her mouth are new to this game. Elsa looks around the office again. There are no photos here, as there were in the woman's flat. Only books.

"What else does Granny write? Does she say sorry for not being able to save your family?"

The woman doesn't answer. Her hands fidget with Granny's letter. Elsa sighs impatiently.

"Do you have any Harry Potters?"

"That would be more of a philosophical question. So it's difficult to answer."

"You got any good ones, then?" she asks, scanning the shelves.

"Not even one?" Elsa asks, incredulous.

"No."

"You have all these books and not a single Harry Potter? And they let you fix people whose heads are broken?"

"I've stopped," says the woman.

The woman nods, setting a new record for slowness.

The woman doesn't answer. Elsa leans back and tips the chair in that exact way her mum really hates. The woman takes another mint from the tin on the desk. She makes a movement towards Elsa to offer her one, but Elsa shakes her head.

"Granny also used to have a lot of sweets when she couldn't smoke, and she usually wasn't allowed to indoors."

"Where did you meet Granny? Was it after the wave? Or is that also difficult to answer?"

The woman looks surprised. Elsa shrugs.

"Stopped or taking a break? It's not the same thing," Elsa informs her.

"I don't know what you think is good," the woman answers carefully.

"No."

"Do you smoke?" asks Elsa.

Elsa shrugs again.

The woman's hands take cover in her lap.

"I like long stories."

"It's a long story."

"I was on holiday. Or… we… me and my family. We were on holiday. And it happened… an accident happened."

"The tsunami," says Elsa gently.

The woman's gaze flies around the room and then she says, in passing, as if it only just occurred to her: "Your grandmother found… found me…"

The woman sucks so hard on the mint in her mouth that her cheeks look like Granny's that time she was going to "borrow" petrol from Elsa's dad's Audi by sucking it out of a plastic tube.

"Drowned?" Elsa fills in, and then feels ashamed of herself when she realizes that it's probably very unpleasant to speak that word to someone whose family did.

But the woman just nods, without looking angry. And then Elsa switches to the secret language and asks briskly: "Do you also know our secret language?"

"After my husband and my… my boys…" the woman begins to say. The last words stumble and fall into the chasm between the others as they pass. As if the woman had suddenly forgotten that she was in the middle of a sentence.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

Elsa shrugs sourly.

It was a test. And Elsa is surprised that the sea-angel doesn't know the secret language, because everyone in the Land-of-Almost-Awake knows the secret language. But maybe that's a part of the curse, she thinks.

"Shouldn't you be at school?"

Elsa shrugs.

"Ah, nothing," Elsa mumbles in the usual language and looks down at her shoes.

"I got it. Thanks."

"Excuse me?"

The woman looks into her eyes. Smiles faintly.

"If I'd been joking I would have said, a blind guy walks into a bar. And a table. And a couple of chairs."

"If you get it, laugh."

"Have you been to Miamas?" asks Elsa.

The woman doesn't answer. Elsa throws out her arms.

"It's Christmas holidays."

The woman nods. Probably more or less at a normal speed now.

The woman looks at her watch.

"You get it? That a bliiind guy walks into a bar and a tab --"

"Did you think of that one yourself?" she asks after that.

The woman takes such a deep breath that if you threw a coin into it you'd never hear it hit the bottom.

"Why?"

"But why? I've walked halfway across the city to give you Granny's letter and you've hardly had time to tell me anything and now you want me to leave? Do you get how cold it is out there?"

"My boys used to… they used to tell jokes like that. Asking something strange and then you had to answer and then they said something and laughed." As she says the world "laughed" she stands up, her legs as fragile as the wings of paper planes.

"I want you to leave," the woman repeats in a hard voice.

"About the blind guy."

And then everything changes quickly. Her whole manner. Her way of talking. Even her way of breathing.

"Which one?" Elsa counters.

"You… shouldn't have come here."

"No. Granny told me."

"I came here because you were Granny's friend."

"I think you should leave now," she says, standing by the window with her back towards Elsa. Her voice is weak, but almost hostile.

"Sure, you're really managing bloody well. Really. But I'm not here out of charity," Elsa manages to reply.

"I don't need charity! I can manage on my own," says the woman grimly.

"Well, get out then, you little brat! Get the hell out!" hisses the woman, still without turning around.

Elsa starts breathing hard, frightened by the sudden aggression, and insulted by the woman not even looking at her. She hops off the chair with clenched fists.

And then it goes as with all anger attacks. They don't just consist of one anger, but of many. A long series of angers, flung into a volcano in one's breast until it erupts. Elsa is angry at the woman in the black skirt because she doesn't say anything to make anything more understandable in this idiotic fairy tale. And she's angry at Wolfheart for abandoning her because he's afraid of this idiotic psychoterropist. And most of all she's angry at Granny. And this idiotic fairy tale. And all those angers together are too much for her. She knows long before the word leaves her lips how wrong it is to yell it out: "DRUNK! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A DRUNK!!!"

"Right, then! So my mum was wrong when she said you were just tired! And Granny was right! You're just a bloody --"

She regrets it terribly in the same instant. But it's too late. The woman in the black skirt turns around. Her face is contorted into a thousand broken pieces of a mirror.

"Out!"

And Elsa runs.

"I didn't m --," Elsa begins to say, reeling backwards across the office floor, holding out her hands, wanting to apologize."Sorr --"

"Elsa." Alf's voice can be heard from the front door. Absolutely cut-and-dried. Not like a question. "Come on, for Christ's sake," he grunts. "Let's go home. You can't lie there bloody sobbing your heart out."

"OOOUUUT!" screams the woman, hysterically clawing at the air as if looking for something to throw at her.

She hurtles along the corridor and down the stairs and through a door to the vestibule, sobbing so violently that she loses her footing, tumbles blindly, and falls headlong. She feels her backpack whack against the back of her head and waits for the pain when her cheekbone meets the floor. But instead she feels soft, black fur. And then everything bursts for her. She hugs the enormous animal so hard that she can feel it gasping for air.

Elsa wants to yell out the whole story to Alf. Everything about the sea-angel and how Granny sends her out on idiotic adventures and she doesn't even know what she's expected to do, and how Wolfheart abandoned her when she needed him most and everything about Mum and the "sorry" Elsa had hoped to find here, and everything about Halfie who will come and change everything. How Elsa is drowning in loneliness. She wants to shout it all out to Alf. But she knows he wouldn't understand anyway. Because no one does when you're almost eight.

"You gave me the damned address," he mutters. "Someone had to bloody pick you up. I've been driving a taxicab for thirty years, so I know you just don't leave little girls anywhere, any-old-how." He's quiet for a few breaths before adding, into the floor: "And your grandmother would have bloody beaten the life out of me if I hadn't picked you up."

Elsa nods and wipes her face on the wurse's pelt.

"What are you doing here?" she sobs.

"Is that thing coming as well?" Alf asks grouchily. The wurse looks back at him even more grumpily. Elsa nods and tries not to start crying again.

"Like what?"

Elsa lowers her face into the wurse's pelt. Alf swears a bit in the front, and then after a while he passes her a paper bag. It has the same writing on it as the bakery where Granny always went.

"What the hell's that got to do with it?"

"It'll have to go in the trunk, then," says Alf firmly.

"I don't know. Coffee?"

"Is there anything you want?"

Elsa raises her head and glares at him.

But obviously that is not how things end up. Elsa keeps her face buried in its fur all the way home. It's one of the very, very best things about wurses: they're waterproof.

"Do you know any seven-year-olds who drink coffee?"

There's opera coming from the car stereo. At least Elsa thinks it must be opera. She hasn't really heard very much opera, but she's heard it mentioned and she supposes this is what it sounds like. When they're about halfway home, Alf peers with concern at her in the rearview mirror.

"Well, bloody forget it, then," he grunts.

"I can tell."

"I'm seven!"

"I don't know very many seven-year-olds."

"There's a cinnamon bun in there," he says, adding, "But don't bloody cry all over it or it won't taste good."

Elsa cries on it. It's good anyway.

When they get to the house she runs from the garage up to the flat without even thanking Alf or saying good-bye to the wurse, and without thinking about how Alf has seen the wurse now and might even call the police. Without saying a word to him, she walks right past the dinner that George has put on the kitchen table. When Mum comes home she pretends to be asleep.

And when the drunk starts yelling on the stairs that night, and the singing starts again, Elsa, for the first time, does what all the others in the house do.

She pretends she doesn't hear.