Epilogue — What Alma Said

Alma knew three rules, and she knew them in order.

The first was never go with anybody. The second was if somebody takes your hand and you don’t know them, scream, and say this is not my mamma. The third was turn your back on the man with the camera, which was less a rule than a game, and which she was extremely good at. Mamma had taught them to her over a long time, on the stairs, in the bath, in the little room where the moon lamp was, in a voice that was not cross but was not the story voice either. Alma did not mind them. They were like boots. You put them on when it rained.

She had also her own thoughts, which she did not tell anyone, because nobody asked.

One of them was that a rule is for anybody. And the friend was not anybody.

He had known the right words. He had said that it was a very good rule, the best rule there was, and he had said it with a face she had never seen on a grown-up, a face that went very still, as if somebody had given him something to carry and he was being careful not to spill it. He had known about Kanin. He had a lighthouse on his arm. And he had said he knew a lady who had the same rule, and she had thought about this for the whole of Monday night, in bed, with the rain on the window, and had come, in the end, to a conclusion.

The lady was Mamma.

It was simple. It was so simple that she was a little surprised that nobody else had seen it. There was only one lady in the world who had that rule.

* * *

On Thursday it rained and rained, and they painted.

They painted the sea, which was blue, and then gray, and then, because Mats spilled the water, brown. Randi gave her a clean smock. She painted a ferry with a flag. She was drawing a small man in a yellow hat on the deck, to be Pappa, when the door opened and the big wind came in, and Ellinor, who was the one with the whistle, stood in the middle of the room with a piece of paper in her hand and said something in a quiet voice to Randi, who looked up quickly, and put down her cup.

“Alma,” said Randi. “Come here, vennen. There is somebody to see you.”

He was standing in the hall.

He had taken off his cap. He was very tall, and very wet, and his hair was flat to his head with the rain, and he held a little red umbrella in one hand that was a good deal too small for anyone in the world but her. He looked at her down the length of the hall. He did not move. He did not say anything. It was the stillness that she remembered, the carrying-something kind, and then he crouched, slowly, on the mat, until his face was level with hers, and she saw that he was shaking a very little, and that he was trying to hide it, and that he did not hide it well.

“Hei, Alma,” he said, in his slow book-Norwegian.

“It’s the friend,” said Alma, to Randi.

“Yes. We know.”

“He’s the one from the lighthouse. He’s the one who knows Kanin.”

“Is he?” Randi’s voice was thick. “He says he is your father, vennen. He says your mamma has said it is all right.”

Alma looked at him. It was a long look, straight and grave, with her head on one side. She did not say you are not my pappa. She did not say my pappa is dead. She waited, because she was a patient girl, and because there was something in his face that she thought she might see if she waited long enough.

“Would you like to come and wait for your mamma somewhere you can see the water?” said the friend.

It was a good question. She thought it was the best one she had ever been asked.

“With the ferry?”

“With the ferry. She’ll come to find us. She’ll know where.”

“Do I need my boots?”

“You need your boots.” He almost smiled. “It’s a very wet day.”

So she put on her boots, the red ones, with the left one on first, because it was luckier, and she put on her coat and her hat, and Randi did up the buttons and her hands were shaking too. Everyone was shaking. It was strange; it was a very odd sort of day. But Alma was not afraid. She told herself that firmly, standing on the mat. She was not afraid at all, because she had thought, and the thing she had thought was a good thing, and Mamma would be so pleased.

She put her hand into the friend’s.

It was very big. It was warm, in spite of the rain, and dry, and hard on the palm like a rope; and it closed round hers slowly, as one closes a hand on a bird, not holding, only keeping. It smelled of coffee and wet wool and the sea.

* * *

They went down the hill.

He walked slowly. She noticed that. Grown-ups usually pulled, and said come on, come on, but he went at the pace of her boots, and held the red umbrella over her head so that none of the rain could get at her; and it ran off the rim in a ring and down the back of his coat. He did not seem to mind. He did not seem to notice. He kept looking, now and then, at the top of her hat, and then away, with his mouth held tight.

“You’re wet,” said Alma.

“I’m all right.”

“You should have an umbrella.”

“I have one. It’s on you.”

She thought about this. It seemed to her a very silly arrangement, but a kind one, and she let it go. They passed the church with the closed door, and the bakery with the lights on, and the man with the flower-bucket, and she said, in the casual voice she used for important questions, the one she’d learned from Henrik:

“Are you my pappa?”

His hand tightened, once, and let go.

He did not answer at once. She watched him. There was a way he had of waiting, before he spoke; a little pause, like a breath held before a jump, like when she wasn’t sure whether the spoon was hot. She had seen Mamma do it, sometimes, when she said we’ll see. It was a thing grown-ups did when the next word mattered.

“Yes,” he said.

It came out quite plain. There was no pause in it at all.

“Mamma said you died.”

“I know.”

“She said you liked boats.”

“I do like boats.” His voice was strange. “I like them very much. She told you a — she told you something to keep you safe, Alma. She thought it was the best thing. She was trying to be very careful of you.”

“From you?”

The hand did not move. She felt it, through the glove, go quite still.

“From me,” said her pappa.

She walked on, for some time, in silence, with her boots going in the puddles and her lifted shoulder going up and down, as it did when she thought. She thought: he is telling the truth. She was almost sure. There was something very tired in it, and very large, and very clean, like a stone that has been in the sea.

“Are you dangerous?” she said.

“Only to boats.”

She laughed. It surprised her. It came out of her in a sudden gurgle, and he looked down quickly, at the sound, as if he had been touched, and for a moment his whole face did something that she would have liked to have a name for. Then it closed.

“You’re not anybody,” Alma told him, with satisfaction. “That’s why I can come.”

“No,” said her pappa. “I’m not anybody.”

* * *

They stopped at the bottom, under the lamp.

It was lit, though it was the middle of the day, a round white glow in the gray, and under it there was a dry place on the stones where the umbrella made a roof. She liked it. It was like being in a small house. She leaned against his leg, and he let her, and the rain came down all round them in long ropes, and beyond the rain she could just see the water, and the shape of the quay, and the little ferry tied up, quite empty, with its flag hanging down.

“She’s late,” said Alma.

“She’ll come.”

“She said two snails.”

“Then she’ll come.”

She turned round, to look up the hill.

It went up and up, between the leaning houses, long and shining and gray. At the very top of it, by the green fence, so far away that she was only a dark mark with a pale face, a woman was standing. She was standing very straight. She had her arms by her sides, and her hair in her eyes, and something white in one hand, and she was not moving at all.

Alma knew her at once. She would have known her anywhere.

The hand in hers had tightened. She looked up. Her pappa was not looking at her. He was looking up the hill, along the whole length of the street, at the dark mark at the top; and his face had gone quite calm. All the shaking had stopped. He was smiling, a little, the way one does when something one has waited a very long time for comes into view round a corner, quite slowly, and is just as one remembered.

It was a nice smile. It went all the way to his eyes, and stayed there.

“Mamma!” said Alma.

She dropped his hand. She did not mean to. She took two steps out into the rain, from under the lamp and the umbrella, into the wet, and put up her arm in the way she knew, the right way, the way you do at a ferry: the whole arm, from the shoulder, in a great slow sweep from side to side, so that whoever it was could not mistake it.

“Mamma! Mamma! We’re here! This way!”

She shouted it as loud as she had ever shouted anything. It was very clear, and very high, and it went up the hill through the rain like a bird. It was how you called a ferry in to land. It told the boat where the harbor was.

“This way!”

For a moment nothing happened. The dark mark stood at the top of the hill by the green fence, and the rain came down, and the lamp burned. Then something white fluttered out of its hand and lay in the road. And her mother, who had taught her three rules, in order, in a quiet voice, and who had never once in her life let her wave alone, began to walk down the hill toward the sound of her name.

Alma kept waving. It was the right direction. She waved until her arm ached, and her mother came.