Sofia had tried to experience love from a man. During wartime! How ridiculous. Everyone was hell-bent on surviving. Love was only a currency now. And it was a currency you got nothing for in exchange. It left a woman broke. She did not like to acknowledge that her mother had been right about this.
How wonderful it was to be romantically rejected. It was quite possibly the most wonderful thing that could happen to a girl. What if he had loved her back? She would have lost her entire self. She would have done whatever he told her to do. She would have changed everything about herself to make him stay. What did it mean to live happily ever after? Couldn’t a person assume it meant death? Since death was one of the few circumstances where you could feel truly freed from the vicissitudes of human emotions. And death seemed closer to happiness than it did to sadness.
She could no longer stay cooped up. She was living in limbo. She was going to leave the woods and their fables behind. She was no longer a child, after all.
“I will head to the Black Market, Mama. And I will find your book! And we will still have a country!” she yelled out, squeezing the Goose.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Her nostrils were filled with an aroma of chocolate. It filled up her head, the way smoke filled up a bowl or a hookah. It filled her with total delight. She held her palms to her face and inhaled. She was sure they smelled like chocolate. Her body was transforming into chocolate. She thought that if she were starving, she could break off her pinkies and eat them one by one.
Now the idea of the Black Market had a flavour and a smell. She had tasted the Black Market. She had taken a bite out of it.
She longed for the pleasures that came with engaging with the world. There were risks that were very much worth taking. She might be killed by soldiers. But she was going to accept the gamble, nonetheless. She wanted chocolates. She wanted a novel. She wanted a silk scarf. She wanted a cup of coffee with cream. She had been waiting to get to the Black Market since the war began. It was everything good in the Capital separated from the chaff.
She looked at the empty spot on her finger. She would go to the Black Market despite the ring’s absence. She shuddered to think what they might ask from a young girl with no possessions. She reached into the inner pocket of her coat and stroked the piece of paper she had been carrying since her flight from the train. Might it be of value?
Tobias had stolen the clarinet, even. He was a scavenger. That was how he had managed to still be alive. He was like a dog that not only survived on leftovers but was thrilled by them. He coveted them. The Goose explained this to Sofia as they closed the door on the house behind the church and set out.
He went around looking for people who had things he needed. And he would take from them. Was this what it was now like to be a survivor in this country? Was there any way for them to actually create some sort of community where they cared for each other? Or would they always be wicked and conniving now? Would they always be at each other’s throats? Would they treat each other the way the Enemy had? Would they be responsible for ferreting each other out of hiding and destroying each other?
Tobias imagined he was the one who had suffered the most during the war, said the Goose indignantly. He didn’t think Sofia had suffered at all. He had come across a fourteen-year-old girl, starving and freezing in the woods, whose only company was a goose. And he thought she had no feelings. He had to judge her to be entitled. He thought she owed him something because he had suffered more than her. Women’s suffering was trivial. Their tears were idiotic. They were ridiculous. They were nags with their demands.
“Good riddance to him! It is good to be back in the pursuit of our own fortunes,” the Goose exclaimed. “You never know. You shall perhaps change the world as we know it.”
“Oh, I am just a young girl,” Sofia whined. “Have young girls ever done anything in any of the history books?”
“I don’t get my history from books, so I am perhaps better informed. Birthday parties were invented by a little girl in Brussels in 1614. There was a little girl in China who invented ribbons. No one knew what to do with them for at least a hundred years. The first cartwheel was enacted by a Romanian girl. No one could believe she survived. She proved to people that cartwheels did not equal a certain death. There was a girl who decided the moon showed up every night. And it caused all the waves and shipwrecks.”
“Worth it to have a moon, though.”
“They invented buttons. That’s for certain. And before buttons, everyone went to the battlefield and their clothes fell right off.”
“That would explain Vikings.”
“That’s correct. A wee British girl saw the Vikings arriving on their ships. And she quickly invented buttons. And before you knew it, they were all affluent bankers in suits.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh, it was a girl in Kenya who invented the colour pink. That is why there are so many debates about whether pink is actually a colour.”
“Well, of course pink is a colour. What else could it be?”
“A state of mind. A state of confusion and uncertainty and upheaval.”