Until I Find You

"Who has the time?" Halvorsen replied.

A pot was bubbling on the stove, something with a fish head in it. The kitchen smelled of fish and tobacco in more or less equal parts.

Alice couldn't hide her disgust; even Halvorsen's flash was dirty, his stencils smudged with cooking grease and smoke. Some pigments had hardened in the open paper cups on the kitchen table; you couldn't tell what their true colors had been.

"I'm Aberdeen Bill's daughter, Alice." She suddenly seemed uninterested in her own story. "I once worked with Tattoo Ole." Her voice trailed away.

"I've heard of your dad, and everyone knows Ole," Halvorsen said; he seemed unembarrassed by her evident disapproval.

Jack was wondering why they'd come.

"The Music Man," Alice said, for the second time. "I don't suppose he told you where he was going."

"He was angry about the infection," Trond Halvorsen admitted. "When he came back, he wasn't in a mood to talk about his travels."

"He's gone to Helsinki," Alice said. Halvorsen just listened. If she already knew where William had gone, why was she bothering Halvorsen? "Do you know any tattoo artists in Helsinki?" Alice asked.

"There's nobody good there," he answered.

"There's nobody good here," Alice said.

Trond Halvorsen winked at Jack, as if acknowledging that the boy's mother must be hard to live with. He stirred the pot on the stove, briefly holding up the fish head for Jack to see. "In Helsinki," Halvorsen said, as if he were talking to the fish, "you can get a tattoo from an old sailor like me."

"A scratcher, you mean?" Alice asked.

"Someone working at home, like me," Halvorsen told her; he was sounding a little defensive now, even irritated.

"And would you know such a person as that in Finland, good or not?" Alice asked.

"There's a restaurant in Helsinki where the sailors go," Trond Halvorsen said. "You get yourself to the harbor, you look for a restaurant called Salve. Someone will know it--it's very popular."

"Then what?" Alice said.

"Ask one of the waitresses where you can get a tattoo," Halvorsen told her. "One of the older ones will know."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Halvorsen," Alice said. She held out her hand to him, but he didn't shake it. Even scratchers have their pride.

"You got a boyfriend?" Halvorsen asked her; he smiled, showing his missing teeth again.

Jack's mother rumpled the boy's hair and pulled him against her hip. "What do you think Jack here is?" she said to Halvorsen.

Trond Halvorsen never did shake Alice's hand. "I think Jack here looks just like him," the scratcher said.

Back at the Bristol, they packed in silence. The clerk at the front desk was happy they were checking out. The lobby was overcrowded with foreign sportswriters and skating fans. The world championships in speed skating were due to take place at Bislett Stadium in the center of Oslo in mid-February, but the journalists and fans had arrived early. Jack was sorry they were leaving; he'd been hoping to see the skaters.

That February, the temperature in Oslo was eight degrees below average. The cold weather meant fast ice, the front-desk clerk said. Jack asked his mom if speed skaters skated in the dark, or were there lights at Bislett Stadium? She didn't know.

He didn't ask his mother what Helsinki would be like, because he was afraid she might say, "Darker." In the pale midday light, their hotel room again had an amber hue, but without the golden glow of Ingrid Moe's skin, Oslo seemed plunged in an eternal darkness.

In his dreams, Jack still saw that girl's inflamed ribs and the throbbing heart on the side of her breast. When he'd held the gauze against her skin, he could feel the heat of her tattoo; her hot heart had burned his hand through the bandage.

When Jack and Alice made their way down the carpeted hall where he'd watched Ingrid Moe walk away--like a woman--the boy was thinking that their search for his father was also a dream, only it was neverending.

One day or night, they would walk into a restaurant--a popular place called Salve, where the sailors in Helsinki went--and they would meet a waitress who'd already met William Burns. She would tell them what she'd told him--namely, where to go to be tattooed--but by the time they went there, William would have acquired another piece of music on his skin. According to Jack's mother, his father also would have seduced some woman or girl he'd first met in a church--and no amount of sacred music could persuade a single member of that church's congregation to help Jack and Alice find him.

Once again William would have vanished, the way the greatest music from the best organ in the most magnificent cathedral can drown out any choir and displace all other human sounds--even laughter, even grief, even sorrow of the kind Jack heard his mother give in to when she believed he was fast asleep.

"Good-bye, Oslo," Jack whispered in the hall, where he believed that Ingrid Moe had walked away with a whole heart--not one ripped in two.