Joanna picked it up.
“Postcards,” she said.
Sophie gasped.
“Don’t touch them! Do you hear—don’t you dare touch them!”
Joanna jumped. She threw the box down as if she had burnt herself. The postcards were strewn all over the floor. The next second she began to laugh.
“They’re only postcards!”
Joanna sat down on the floor and started to pick them up. After a while Sophie sat down beside her.
“Lebanon ... Lebanon ... Lebanon ... They are all postmarked in Lebanon,” Joanna discovered.
“I know,” said Sophie.
Joanna sat bolt upright and looked Sophie in the eye.
“So you have been here before!”
“Yes, I guess I have.”
It suddenly struck her that it would have been a whole lot easier if she had just admitted she had been here before. It couldn’t do any harm if she let her friend in on the mysterious things she had experienced during the last few days.
“I didn’t want to tell you before we were here.”
Joanna began to read the cards.
“They are all addressed to someone called Hilde Moller Knag.”
Sophie had not touched the cards yet.
“What address?”
Joanna read: “Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Alberto Knox, Lillesand, Norway.”
Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. She was afraid they would say c/o Sophie Amundsen.
She began to inspect them more closely.
“April 28 ... May 4 ... May 6 ... May 9 ... They were stamped a few days ago.”
“But there’s something else. All the postmarks are Norwegian! Look at that... UN Battalion ... the stamps are Norwegian too!”
“I think that’s the way they do it. They have to be sort of neutral, so they have their own Norwegian post office down there.”
“But how do they get the mail home?”
“The air force, probably.”
Sophie put the candlestick on the floor, and the two friends began to read the cards. Joanna arranged them in chronological order and read the first card:
Dear Hilde, I can’t wait to come home to Lillesand. I expect to land at Kjevik airport early evening on Midsummer Eve. I would much rather have arrived in time for your 15th birthday but I’m under military command of course. To make up for it, I promise to devote all my loving care to the huge present you are getting for your birthday.
With love from someone who is always thinking about his daughter’s future.
P.S. I’m sending a copy of this card to our mutual friend. I know you understand, Hilde. At the moment I’m being very secretive, but you will understand.
Sophie picked up the next card:
Dear Hilde, Down here we take one day at a time. If there is one thing I’m going to remember from these months in Lebanon, it’s all this waiting. But I’m doing what I can so you have as great a 15th birthday as possible. I can’t say any more at the moment. I’m imposing a severe censorship on myself. Love, Dad.
The two friends sat breathless with excitement. Neither of them spoke, they just read what was written on the cards:
My dear child, What I would like best would be to send you my secret thoughts with a white dove. But they are all out of white doves in Lebanon. If there is anything this war-torn country needs, it is white doves. I pray the UN will truly manage to make peace in the world some day.
P.S. Maybe your birthday present can be shared with other people. Let’s talk about that when I get home. But you still have no idea what I’m talking about, right? Love from someone who has plenty of time to think for the both of us.
When they had read six cards, there was only one left. It read:
Dear Hilde, I am now so bursting with all these secrets for your birthday that I have to stop myself several times a day from calling home and blowing the whole thing. It is something that simply grows and grows. And as you know, when a thing gets bigger and bigger it’s more difficult to keep it to yourself. Love from Dad.
P.S. Some day you will meet a girl called Sophie. To give you both a chance to get to know more about each other before you meet, I have begun sending her copies of all the cards I send to you. I expect she will soon begin to catch on, Hilde. As yet she knows no more than you. She has a girlfriend called Joanna. Maybe site can be of help?
After reading the last card, Joanna and Sophie sat quite still staring wildly at each other. Joanna was holding Sophie’s wrist in a tight grip.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“So am I.”
“When was the last card stamped?”
Sophie looked again at the card.
“May 16,” she said. “That’s today.”
“It can’t be!” cried Joanna, almost angrily.
They examined the postmark carefully, but there was no mistaking it... 05-16-90.
“It’s impossible,” insisted Joanna. “And I can’t imagine who could have written it. It must be someone who knows us. But how could they know we would come here on this particular day?”
Joanna was by far the more scared of the two. The business with Hilde and her father was nothing new to Sophie.
“I think it has something to do with the brass mirror.”
Joanna jumped again.
“You don’t actually think the cards come fluttering out of the mirror the minute they are stamped in Lebanon?”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“No.”
Sophie got to her feet and held the candle up in front of the two portraits on the wall. Joanna came over and peered at the pictures.
“Berkeley and Bjerkely. What does that mean?”
“I have no idea.”
The candle was almost burnt down.
“Let’s go,” said Joanna. “Come on!”
“We must just take the mirror with us.”
Sophie reached up and unhooked the large brass mirror from the wall above the chest of drawers. Joanna tried to stop her but Sophie would not be deterred.
When they got outside it was as dark as a May night can get. There was enough light in the sky for the clear outlines of bushes and trees to be visible. The small lake lay like a reflection of the sky above it. The two girls rowed pensively across to the other side.
Neither of them spoke much on the way back to the tent, but each knew that the other was thinking intensely about what they had seen. Now and then a frightened bird would start up, and a couple of times they heard the hooting of an owl.
As soon as they reached the tent, they crawled into their bedrolls. Joanna refused to have the mirror inside the tent. Before they fell asleep, they agreed that it was scary enough, knowing it was just outside the tent flap. Sophie had also taken the postcards and put them in one of the pockets of her backpack.
They woke early next morning. Sophie was up first. She put her boots on and went outside the tent. There lay the large mirror in the grass, covered with dew.
