The Summer Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

your turn.”
    “Can angels fly down to Hell?”
    “Of course. They might have all sorts of friends and neighbours down there.”
    “Now I’ve got you!” Sophia cried. “Yesterday you said there wasn’t any Hell!”
    Grandmother was annoyed and sat up angrily.
    “And I say exactly the same thing today,” she said. “But this is just a game.”
    “It’s not a game! It’s serious when you’re talking about God!”
    “He would never do anything so dumb as make a Hell.”
    “Of course He did.”
    “No He didn’t!”
    “Yes He did! A big enormous Hell!”
    Because she was cross, Grandmother stood up much too quickly, and the whole pasture started spinning around and she almost lost her balance. She waited for the giddiness to stop.
    “Sophia,” she said, “this is really not something to argue about. You can see for yourself that life is hard enough without being punished for it afterwards. We get comfort when we die, that’s the whole idea.”
    “It’s not hard at all!” Sophia shouted. “And what are you going to do about the Devil, then? He lives in Hell!”
    For a moment Grandmother considered saying that there was no Devil either, but she didn’t want to be mean. The farm machinery was making a terrible racket. She walked back towards the road and stepped right in a cowpat. Her grandchild was not behind her.
    “Sophia,” called Grandmother warningly. “I said you could have an orange when we got to the shop …”
    “An orange!” said Sophia contemptuously. “Do you think people care about oranges when they’re talking about God and the Devil?”
    Grandmother poked the cow dung off her shoe with her walking stick as well as she could.
    “My dear child,” she said, “with the best will in the world I cannot start believing in the Devil at my age. You can believe what you like, but you must learn to be tolerant.”
    “What does that mean?” asked the child sullenly.
    “That means respecting other people’s convictions.”
    “What are convictions?” Sophia screamed and stamped her foot.
    “Letting others believe what they want to believe!” her grandmother shouted back. “I’ll let you believe God damns people and you let me not.”
    “You swore,” Sophia whispered.
    “I certainly did not.”
    “You did too. You said ‘Goddamns’.”
    They were no longer looking at each other. Three cows came down the road, swishing their tails and swaying their heads. They passed slowly by in a swarm of flies and walked on towards the village, with the skin on their rear ends puckering and twitching as they went. Then they were gone, leaving nothing but silence.
    Finally Sophia’s grandmother said, “I know a song you don’t know.” She waited for a minute, and then she sang – way off key because her vocal cords were crooked:
Cowpats are free,
     Tra-la-la
But don’t throw them at me.
     Tra-la-la
For you too could get hit
     Tra-la-la
With cow shit!
     
    “ What did you say ?” Sophia whispered, because she couldn’t believe her ears. And Grandmother sang the same really awful song again.
    Sophia climbed over the ditch and started towards the village.
    “Papa would never say ‘shit,’” she said over her shoulder. “Where did you learn that song?”
    “I’m not telling,” Grandmother said.
    They came to the barn and climbed the stile and walked through the Nybonda’s barnyard, and before they got to the shop under the trees, Sophia had learned the song and could sing it just as badly as her grandmother.

Playing Venice
     
     
    O NE S ATURDAY THERE WAS MAIL FOR S OPHIA – a picture postcard from Venice. Her whole name was on the address side, with “Miss” in front, and on the shiny side was the prettiest picture anyone in the family had ever seen. There was a long row of pink and gilded palaces rising from a dark waterway that mirrored the lanterns on several slim gondolas. The full moon was shining in a dark blue sky, and a beautiful, lonely woman