“I haven’t seen a single vehicle come to the camp. Neither yesterday nor today,” Marguerite said.

“You’ve been sitting by the side of the road all day keeping an eye on things?” I said, trying to laugh. “Wasn’t it really hot? Did you sit by the edge of the ditch or something?”

She took a bite of her food and didn’t reply, didn’t even grace me with a glance.

“You’re quite the optimist,” I said.

I regretted the words immediately and hastened to add, “We are fine here. You can tell, can’t you, that this is a decent place?”

As if any of us knew whether this was a decent place. It wasn’t as if she had all the answers, as if she was the one who knew how things were at every refugee camp in southern Europe.

For a while we were silent. Finally Lou piped up. “We found a boat.”

“A boat?” Marguerite asked.

“Not really,” I said. “There was no boat—it was just a game.”

“But there was a boat,” Lou said. “There is a boat. It’s big and blue or black. Is it blue or black, Daddy?”

“Dark blue,” I said. “But it’s just a game.”

“Tell me about it, then,” Marguerite said, looking at Lou. “Even if it’s only a game.”

And Lou told her—about the boat, about the pirates, the dolphins, and the cunning captain.

Marguerite scooted over on the bench, closer to Lou, listened, asked more questions, and Lou explained. They chattered away as if they were old friends.

And Marguerite laughed, she actually laughed, when Lou told her about the stupid sailor.

There they sat, the two of them, on the bench across from me, laughing at me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

But afterward, when we were going our separate ways, Marguerite reached her hand out to Lou, toward her head, as if she were going to tousle her hair. She held it there stiffly, suspended aloft for a second, before pulling it back and instead just giving the child a slight pat on the shoulder.

That was something, I thought. That and that she had laughed.

Chapter Eleven

Signe

I wake up suddenly, the cold yanks me awake. My teeth are chattering and the sun has disappeared. The sky is clouding over and the wind has changed, become stronger, the boat is heeling more. I sit up; this must have blown up quickly. Or perhaps I’ve slept longer than I should have—me, the one who never needs an alarm clock at sea. I have always relied on my built-in timepiece.

All around me there is only the ocean—the only thing in sight is an oil platform, all lit up against a darkening sky. Every day they bring up two million barrels of oil, two million barrels. One barrel is 159 liters; I don’t have the energy to work out the total number of liters that comes to, every single day. There they are, all those who are constructing Norway the nation, while simultaneously they are destroying the world. What if they said no, all of them, refused to work, went on strike? One single week would have helped, just one day would have helped—two million barrels fewer pulled up out of the ground and released into the environment.