My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(53)

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

“Have you been to Miamas?” asks Elsa.

“Is this some kind of joke?”

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

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

“You get it? That a bliiind guy walks into a bar and a tab—”

The woman looks into her eyes. Smiles faintly.

“I got it. Thanks.”

Elsa shrugs sourly.

“If you get it, laugh.”

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

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

“Which one?” Elsa counters.

“About the blind guy.”

“No. Granny told me.”

“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.

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

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

“Why?”

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

“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?”

“You . . . shouldn’t have come here.”

“I came here because you were Granny’s friend.”

“I don’t need charity! I can manage on my own,” says the woman grimly.

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

“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.

“Right, then! So my mum was wrong when she said you were just tired! And Granny was right! You’re just a bloody—”

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!!!”

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!”

“I didn’t m—,” Elsa begins to say, reeling backwards across the office floor, holding out her hands, wanting to apologize.“Sorr—”

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

And Elsa runs.

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.” 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.”

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.

“What are you doing here?” she sobs.

“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.

“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.