Ingrid considered this an explanation of a kind, but there had to be more, not because it wasn’t enough, but because there must always be more, otherwise there is nothing, and she wasn’t able to put this into words, no matter how clear it was to her, these shadows that rose and sank inside her. She thanked him for telling her, the old man could sit here and be like her grandfather, with the same enormous hands, hands that could never leave her.

~

Ingrid opened her eyes in the white room, and from the window saw the twenty-three lights and the star on the tree being sucked up into a black day – only to be extinguished completely, so slowly that she became unsure whether they really had gone, she could still see them, it was now January.

The rain lashed against the windowpanes, the snow vanished, an incessant howl resounded in the ventilation shafts. She crept out of bed and was on her tiptoes trying to close the hatch when the door opened, and in walked Ingvaldsen with a plaster on his shaven pate. He took a seat in the chair by the window and looked out at the lights that were no longer there. Ingrid went over and tore off the plaster, saying he didn’t need it, he didn’t have any wounds, it was his mind that was muddled, his nerves. He smiled archly and said he knew that, but they still didn’t say no when he asked for the plaster, bless them.

Ingrid stuck the plaster back on his head and asked whether she had put it on right.

“Yah, yah,” he said after checking with his fingertips, whereupon he pressed his face against the glass again, his hands down by his sides, and gaped out at the rain.

“There’s nothing to see,” Ingrid said.

“Yes, there is,” he said. “I can see something.”

“What?”

“Have a look yourself.”

Ingrid turned her back on him, sat on the edge of the bed and arched backwards so the upper part of her body bent towards the floor on the other side, reached out with her right arm and pulled the string as she swung up again, remaining in the same inclined position until the door opened and one of the carers came in, her name was Eva Sofie. In a voice that took even her by surprise, Ingrid asked if they could have some coffee.

“This isn’t a restaurant,” Eva Sofie said sourly, and was about to go again. But then she spotted the tray with the remains of the breakfast on the bedside table, went over to fetch it and on her way out told Ingrid to go to the duty room herself and ask for some coffee.