The Vanishing Act Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘He doesn’t know where he is going,’ I said.
    Looking at him I thought that maybe he could see the universe in the snow, and that perhaps it was all too much for him.
    ‘No Name knows exactly what he is doing,’ said Boxman. ‘His steps are measured, so that he can experience the delicious feeling—’
    ‘Of not making sense,’ finished Mama. And they both laughed.
    That didn’t sound right. I liked logic and at that moment No Name looked more crazy with longing than as if he was feeling something delicious.He looked as though he had forgotten which way was home.
    Later I thought that with a proper name No Name might have a better sense of direction and wouldn’t wear himself out so much when it was snowing, and it was clear to me that neither Boxman nor Mama knew about logic the way Papa and I did.
    I had tried to knit with gloves on, but it was difficult. The glass panes that made up the walls of the lighthouse were not thick enough to withstand the elements. And even though the heater was on throughout the night, the knitting needles were always cold. Every so often I put my hands under the blankets, and kept them pressed against my warm belly until I was ready to knit again.
    Sometimes I wished that No Name would keep me company at night. He was always warm, no matter what. But he didn’t like the lighthouse. The one time I carried him up the wooden stairs and put him next to the big bulb, he howled so loud that Priest could hear him from the back of the church. Priest had just turned on his noisy industrial oven, about to bake his weekly supply of pretzels, and said that it must have been a howl without precedent.
    ‘No Name is not a dog that appreciates a good view,’ said Boxman. ‘Some dogs do, but we don’t choose our personality, Minou.’
    If No Name had liked the tower I could have talked to him about Mama and about philosophy, and all the things I thought about while knitting. I could have told him about the great coincidences and Grandfather’s salmon. And how Papa, even though he didn’t want to tell me about the root cellar, shared everything philosophical with me.
    Papa had realised early on, he said, that I had a talent for philosophy. One of the first signs was that I liked going for walks in the morning all by myself.
    ‘All philosophers walk,’ Papa explained, ‘Kierkegaard, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, all of them. They walk along empty beaches with cold hands and windblown faces, searching their minds for the truth.’
    I liked the beach early in the morning. The horizon would appear suddenly, as if someone had decided, said Mama, to paint two bold strokes on the night sky. And the beach changed overnight. There was much to be found along the water’s edge. Sometimes I forgot to think philosophical thoughts and stopped to collect raven bones and shiny shells among the rocks. If I were lucky I would find a whole ravenskeleton. They were beautiful, with black beaks and bones the colour of sand. Their skulls were the size of Boxman’s juggling balls, round and smooth with deep indentations where their eyes had been. Their necks looked like knots on a thick string of wool and their wings were still adorned with feathers. I had three of them in the tower in my collection of bones.
    Papa never waved if we met on the beach on our solitary morning walks. He just stared into the sand and dark rocks and I tried to do the same. But if I happened to meet Mama I would stop and talk to her. She liked finding things, too, and had collected a rusty bike with bent wheels that Boxman unsuccessfully tried to fix for me, and half a violin with two strings that Mama thought looked like an unusual boat, in which you could go to unusual places.
    Kant, Papa told me, took the same walk every day. He left his house at half past three every afternoon, timing his departure with such precision that neighbours, shopkeepers, the shoeshine man on the corner, and whoever else saw him adjusted their watches as he