“You can turn the pages on an iPad.”
The woman nods, with the slowest nod Elsa has seen in all her life. Elsa throws her arms out.
“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.”
The woman’s mouth moves spasmodically at the corners, spreading cracks in the surrounding skin.
“I’ve never heard that proverb.”
“It’s from Miamas,” says Elsa.
The woman looks down at her lap. Doesn’t answer.
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.
“Why did Granny bring Wolfheart here?” asks Elsa.
“Sorry—who?”
“You said Granny brought him here. And that’s why he’s afraid of you.”
“I didn’t know you called him Wolfheart.”
“That’s his name. Why is he afraid of you if you don’t even know who he is?”
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.
“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.”
“Why does he carry on like that with his hands?”
“Sorry?”
“He washes his hands all the time. Like he’s trying to wash off a smell of poo, sort of thing.”
“Sometimes the brain does strange things to one after a tragedy. I think maybe he’s trying to wash away . . .”
She becomes silent. Looks down.
“What?” Elsa demands to know.
“ . . . the blood,” the woman concludes, emptily.
“Has he killed someone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he sick in the head?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a terropist, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“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?”
“All people who have seen war are broken.”
Elsa shrugs. “He shouldn’t have become a soldier, then. It’s because of soldiers that we have wars.”
“I don’t think he was that sort of soldier. He was a peace soldier.”
“There’s only one sort of soldier,” Elsa snorts.
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.
“Maybe so,” says the woman in a low voice that skims over Elsa’s thoughts.
“You don’t have very many patients here, do you?” says Elsa with a pointed nod across the room.
The woman doesn’t answer. Her hands fidget with Granny’s letter. Elsa sighs impatiently.
“What else does Granny write? Does she say sorry for not being able to save your family?”
The woman’s eyes waver.
“Yes. Among . . . among other things.”
Elsa nods.
“And for sending me here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“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.”
“What does ‘Reg. Psychoterropist’ mean?”
“Registered psychotherapist.”