“Let go of me now, Signe.”

“I want to write,” I said.

“You must listen to me now,” he said.

“BUT I WANT TO WRITE TOGETHER WITH YOU,” I shouted, right into his ear.

“Ow! Signe!”

He took hold of me and set me firmly down on the floor.

“You can’t scream into people’s ears like that.”

“WHY NOT?”

“You will ruin their hearing. The ear is a finely tuned organ that we have to take care of. Just a single loud noise can injure the ear. Your hearing will never be better than it is now. You must take care of your hearing. Both your own and that of others.”

“Oh.”

Daddy turned back to the typewriter and quickly found a sheet of paper and a pencil.

“Look here. Write something for me,” he said. “Then we can spend some time together later.”

“About what?”

“Write about what you see.”

But I didn’t move.

“There are titmice on the bird table,” he said. “Write about them. What kinds do you see, what do they eat, how are they doing now during the spring?”

“Why?”

“Afterward I can help you with the Latin names.”

I got to work and wrote several lists that day, listing the names of small animals on the shore, seabirds in the sky, weeds in the garden, insects by the brook—but the writing of my lists went slowly. I envied Daddy his typewriter because if I had it, I thought, I could have written just as much as he did, just as fast, just as powerfully. I would collect the entirety of nature on the pages, just the way he did, and maybe one day somebody would even publish what I had written, the way his texts came back in thick journals, so everyone could read them.

He never got around to helping me with the Latin names, because soon it was dinnertime and Mommy came home with big news.

She told us over dessert, delivered the news into our lives, as if it were something we should eat covered with cream.

“Today it was finally approved,” she said. “They’re going to install a pipeline to channel the River Breio.”

I didn’t understand the meaning of what was said, not then, but I saw that she was smiling, that she thought this was good news. However, she didn’t say anything more and I realized that she was unsure about the kind of response she would get from Daddy.

“What?” was all he said, as if he hadn’t heard her words.

And he put his spoon down on his plate, even though it was still full of whipped cream and applesauce.

“It was approved,” Mommy said.

“But it wasn’t supposed to come up for a vote until the next city council meeting.”

“We had it approved today.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Bjørn, this is what everyone wants.”

He got to his feet, rattling the plates on the table. He shouted something—ugly words, words I wasn’t allowed to use.