Read Online The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen - Free Book Online

jumped to the floor and Priest appeared next to me. We sat there side by side as if in a little boat, blindedfor a moment by the many coloured lights that fell from Theodora’s window. Priest had been preaching in his chef’s outfit and the smell of pretzels spread through the church like a salty wave. Just that morning he had received twenty bags of flour from the boatmen and ten new baking trays that shone like silver. It had taken three trips with the wheelbarrow to deliver it all to his kitchen.
    ‘Who pays you to be a priest?’ I asked.
    ‘My parents had lots of money,’ he said. ‘They died and left it all to me.’ He pulled out a piece of origami paper from his apron and started folding it. ‘They weren’t nice people; they didn’t believe in God.’
    I thought of Papa who didn’t believe in God either, but was kind and had invited Mama for tea when she was just a stranger with tangled hair.
    ‘Maybe they believed in something else,’ I suggested, thinking they might have searched for truth without expectation just like Papa.
    ‘Pigs,’ he said, ‘they believed in pigs. They had a barn with hundreds and hundreds of them.’
    ‘Pigs are lovely,’ I said politely. ‘They have soft ears.’
    Priest didn’t look like he cared for soft ears. ‘They slept in the barn. Under a big tartan blanket.’
    ‘The pigs?’
    ‘No, my parents.’ Priest looked unhappy.
    ‘But where did you sleep?’
    ‘In the house, Minou. But talking about this brings up bad memories. It was so quiet at night, not a sound, and it was always dark. Pigs don’t like light, you see. Not even when it comes from across the yard.’ He looked at me. ‘Promise me, Minou, that you will never get a pig.’
    ‘I don’t think I will,’ I said. ‘I really want a horse.’
    ‘Horses are nice,’ said Priest.
    I still hadn’t convinced Papa that I needed a horse. Every time I asked he said, ‘You have two feet and can run very fast. Probably faster, Minou, than a horse.’
    I picked up the dead boy’s shoe from the floor of the blue room. I didn’t tell him my secret. Instead I wondered what had happened to him. The shoe was cold and greasy with salt. I looked down at my own boots. They were getting too small, squeezing against my toes when I ran. Mama had ordered them from the boatmen, but first she made me stand on a piece of paper in the kitchen so she could tracethe shape of my feet. Before handing the sheet to the boatmen she decorated her drawing of my feet with palm trees, roses and a pelican busy swallowing a large and frightened fish.
    We called for Papa to come and see her drawing. After studying it intently he told Mama that he liked it very much, especially the fish.
    Mama laughed. ‘But why the fish? It’s getting eaten.’
    ‘I know,’ said Papa. ‘But it has such lovely symmetry and its scales are all equal in size.’
    And Mama put her arms around him and kissed him on the mouth for a long time. Papa blushed, but looked happy and patted me on the head a little too hard as he walked back to his study.
    After he left, Mama grew serious. She studied the drawing. ‘Your feet will take you many places, Minou,’ she said, adding another line to the pelican. ‘No one is destined to stay on one island alone. We all need to see at least three of the seven seas in our life time, little one.’
    I couldn’t imagine my feet taking me anywhere else but around the island, but I didn’t tell her that.
    By now it was getting light. The pine trees outsidegot their colour back, and the dead boy’s ear looked more blue than grey. I noted in my book:
    The dead boy’s ear is almost the same blue colour as Boxman’s cape.
    There is a gold button on his jacket, Mama, and his hair is dark, almost as dark as mine.
    I looked through my notes and drawings. I already had quite a few, but I was convinced that Mama would want to hear more. Papa had searched the dead boy’s pockets, and hadn’t found anything that could tell us