“The same?” Ingrid asks. “Nine times?”

Jadviga counts the lines again and says yes, nine times, takes her cup, examines it and moves it slowly to her lips.

Ingrid asks:

“Nothing else, no name, address . . . ?”

“No.”

The window has just been cleaned and is crystal clear, she can see for miles, a white sheet falls across her field of vision, the meadows are green and sway in the summer breeze, beyond them the same sea stretches into the distance as he writes the identical lines nine times without telling her what she really wants to know, and what is more with a wry smile on his face.

Another sheet falls across her vision, and her fingers tremble as she folds the paper and waves it at the window, as if someone is out there. Jadviga drinks her coffee and calmly watches her.

Ingrid places her hand on Jadviga’s knee and says thank you, goes out into the summer warmth and feels a need to walk around the house, past a grindstone, a stack of wood and a peat shed, a spade left in the ground, the shaft broken. In the farmyard she sees not only Arne and Fredrik and the two young boys, laughing at something, but also old Abelsen, pipe in mouth, listening to the captain, Lukas Wara, who is in the middle of a long discourse about wanting to go home.

Ingrid hurries over and says that the authorities – the new ones, too – have banned them from returning, she has seen the notice in the store. Wara snorts and says he doesn’t give a shit, he’s off home, even if it means going on foot, it can’t be more than a couple of thousand kilometres.

The others laugh. But the captain has at last received a letter he can rely on, telling him that as much as a third of his town has survived, including his small barn, he can sleep there until he has rebuilt the farmhouse, it is summer, it is light all day and night.

Jakob chuckles, and takes the pipe out of his mouth.

“Come on, it’d be better for you to stay here. You’re too old.”

“It’s like being in the workhouse here!”

“What? Is there something wrong with the grub?”

“What are you two blathering on about?” shouts the maid, who has come out onto the front steps.

“He’s not happy with the food,” Jakob shouts.

She shouts something back, which they don’t hear, then goes inside, slamming the door behind her. Jakob’s smile vanishes and he says, you don’t have anyone to go back to.

Wara looks as though he is about to implode, but repeats that it is humiliating to be wasting his time here on another man’s land when he has his own.

“Oh, go to hell then,” Jakob says, and turns to the boys. “Haven’t you got any potatoes to plant?”