“No,” she lies. Because she’s polite enough to know that if someone gives you a book, you owe that person the pretense that you haven’t read it.
The woman in jeans looks relieved. Then she takes such a deep breath that Elsa fears her wishbone is about to snap.
“You know . . . you asked if we met at the hospital. Your granny and I. After the tsunami I . . . they . . . they had laid out all the dead bodies in a little square. So families and friends could look for their . . . after . . . I . . . I mean, she found me there. In the square. I had been sitting there for . . . I don’t know. Several weeks. I think. She flew me home and she said I could live here until I knew where I was . . . was going.”
Her lips open and close, in turn, as if they’re electric.
“I just stayed here. I just . . . stayed.”
Elsa looks down at her own shoes this time.
“Are you coming today?” she asks.
In the corner of her eye she can see the woman shaking her head. As if she wants to run away again.
“I don’t think I . . . I think your grandmother was very disappointed in me.”
“Maybe she was disappointed in you because you’re so disappointed in yourself.”
There’s a choking sound in the woman’s throat. It takes a while before Elsa understands it’s probably laughter. As if that part of her throat has been in disuse and has just found the key to itself and flicked some old electrical switch.
“You’re really a very different little child,” says the woman.
“I’m not a little child. I’m almost eight!”
“Yes, sorry. You were a newborn. When I moved in here. Newborn.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being different. Granny said that only different people change the world.”
“Yes. Sorry. I . . . I have to go. I just wanted to say . . . sorry.”
“It’s okay. Thanks for the book.”
The woman’s eyes hesitate, but she looks straight at Elsa again.
“Has your friend come back? Wolf—what was it you called him?”
Elsa shakes her head. There’s something in the woman’s eyes that actually looks like genuine concern.
“He does that sometimes. Disappears. You shouldn’t worry. He . . . gets scared of people. Disappears for a while. But he always comes back. He just needs time.”
“I think he needs help.”
“It’s hard to help those who don’t want to help themselves.”
“Someone who wants to help himself is possibly not the one who most needs help from others,” Elsa objects.
The woman nods without answering.
“I have to go,” she repeats.
Elsa wants to stop her but she’s already halfway down the stairs. She has almost disappeared on the floor below when Elsa leans over the railing, gathers her strength and calls out: “Did you find them? Did you find your boys in the square?”
The woman stops. Holds the banister very hard.
“Yes.”
Elsa bites her lip.
“Do you believe in life after death?”
The woman looks up at her.
“That’s a difficult question.”
“I mean, you know, do you believe in God?” asks Elsa.
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe in God,” answers the woman.
“Because you wonder why God didn’t stop the tsunami?”
“Because I wonder why there are tsunamis at all.”
Elsa nods.
“I saw someone in a film once say, ‘Faith can move mountains,’?” Elsa goes on, without knowing why, maybe mainly because she doesn’t want to lose sight of the woman before she has time to ask the question she really wants to ask.
“So I hear,” says the woman.
Elsa shakes her head.
“But you know that’s actually true! Because it comes from Miamas, from a giant called Faith. She was so strong it was insane. And she could literally move mountains!”
The woman looks as if she’s trying to find a reason to disappear down the stairs. Elsa takes a quick breath.
“Everyone says I may miss Granny now but it’ll pass. I’m not so sure.”
The woman looks up at her again. With her empathic eyes.
“Why not?”
“It hasn’t passed for you.”
The woman half-closes her eyes.
“Maybe it’s different.”
“How?”