Merrit knows much, much more.
But then there came a time when she didn’t say so much herself, but sat rather and listened when you talked about some of all the things that you yourself knew.
And then there are a lot of things you both know.
Merrit knows the Ferryman, who sits blowing a horn outside his house in the evening when the weather is good. And she knows everything about the Wise Virgins. And she also knows Fina the Hut, but she doesn’t know anything at all about the big black bird that comes and visits her during the night. And neither does Merrit know anything about the Old Poet’s barrel of bones.
“Ugh, is that right? Have you yourself seen that there are dead bones in it?”
“Yes, and there’s a dead girl’s skull, and Hannibal wanted me to kiss it.”
“Ugh, Amaldus. Surely you didn’t?”
Then you tell her how the Old Poet came and took the head and put it in his barrel, and about Hannibal’s robbers’ den in the warehouse cellar out near the Bight, where there’s the maroon that could blow up the entire building if you put a match to the touch paper. And Merrit shudders and has big staring eyes and sits gripping your arm.
Then you are secretly glad and proud that you have made her shudder.
And one evening you also tell her about the Earth Girl Lonela, the girl who sometimes comes to you in dreams and floats off with you.
Merrit listens with open mouth and big staring eyes.
“And what then, Amaldus? Where do you fly off to?”
“No, we just float.”
“And does she kiss you then? Or do you kiss her?”
“No, why?”
“Well, after all, when you’re out floating together.”
“Well, she’s dead, you know.”
“Oh, of course, Amaldus. But suppose she was alive?”
“Well, what then?”
“Well, wouldn’t you want to kiss her then?”
“I don’t know…”
“No, ’cos you’ve no idea how to, have you? Come here and I’ll show you.”
And then you feel her cold arm round your neck and her warm breath on your face and her lips, which are neither warm nor cold, but feel alive and a bit sticky and just a little bit nasty, like when you touch an earthworm.
“Well, hug me a bit, Amaldus. You’ve got to hug as well. Yes, like that.”
Merrit makes her voice deep and hollow:
“Now we’re floating… Whoo–oo. Now you’re out floating together with your Earth Girl.”
Then her hand comes and ruffles your hair.
“Was it all that bad? Have you never kissed a girl before? No, I don’t think you have, for do you know what you are? You’re a funny little puppikins.”
Then you think a little about this curious expression, which probably doesn’t mean anything good, but perhaps nothing bad either, for her voice is warm, and she is nudging you in a nice way.
And yet, that bit about puppy worries you a bit, for the fact is that she is two or three years older than you.
***
But puppy or no puppy, the first kiss has come into your life now, and something has started that will never cease, something that brings great disorder and change in its wake so that nothing is as before.
And still today, a generation later, you can clearly remember both time and place for this event, an event that was both so tiny and so great.
That was just near the stream under the Life Bridge, and it was a Saturday evening. For when you got home to Andreasminde, Little Brother was in his bath being washed and scrubbed by Jutta, and in the living room Grandmother was rehearsing a song with Pastor Evaldsen’s male voice choir (“Rejoice ye now, all Christian men”).
And when you had gone to bed that evening you could see the evening star low on the horizon in the west, motionless and un-twinkling like a little moon… while you lay there and wished that the Earth Girl Lonela would come and fetch you out on a long, long floating trip, but she should be in the shape of Merrit.