These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!”
“That’s very pretty.”
“But we will talk no more. I simply say next chapter!’
“Oh, stop all that irony!”
“New chapter, I said! I shall be obeyed!”
Freud
... the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her...
Hilde Moller Knag jumped out of bed with the bulky ring binder in her arms.
She plonked it down on her writing desk, grabbed her clothes, and dashed into the
bathroom. She stood under the shower for two minutes, dressed herself quickly, and
ran downstairs.
“Breakfast is ready, Hilde!”
“I just have to go and row first.”
“But Hilde... !”
She ran out of the house, down the garden, and out onto the little dock. She
untied the boat and jumped down into it. She rowed around the bay with short angry
strokes until she had calmed down.
“We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a
burning sun in the universe. But each and every of us is also a ship sailing through life
with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor—we
have not lived in vain...”
She knew the passage by heart. It had been written for her. Not for Sophie, for
her. Every word in the ring binder was written by Dad to Hilde.
She rested the oars in the oarlocks and drew them in. The boat rocked gently on
the water, the ripples slapping softly against the prow.
And like the little rowboat floating on the surface in the bay at Lillesand, she
herself was just a nutshell on the surface of life.
Where were Sophie and Alberto in this picture? Yes, where were Alberto and
Sophie?
She could not fathom that they were no more than “electromagnetic impulses”
in her father’s brain. She could not fathom, and certainly not accept, that they were
only paper and printer’s ink from a ribbon in her father’s portable typewriter. One