Free The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen

ocean, with Mother’s hair, tentacles of red, reaching for me.
    ‘Boxman,’ I knocked on the lid. ‘Let me out.’
    When Boxman’s face and the dusty ceiling appeared above me, I searched my mind for something to tell him that didn’t involve La Luna.
    ‘Do you think,’ I asked, still lying down, with the notebook in my arms, ‘that No Name knows how far it is to the church, just by looking at the bell tower?’
    I had thought about this for quite some time and had saved it for one of our conversations. Even though Boxman wasn’t a philosopher, he did know a lot about space.
    Boxman lit a cigarette as I climbed out of the box. He had nice hands. They were always dotted with paint and he wore a gold ring on the right hand, set with a dark red stone.
    I thought that he really shouldn’t be smoking in the barn with all that hay lying around, andthen wondered if he was disappointed in my circus performance.
    ‘I don’t know what he sees,’ said Boxman, ‘but I know what he hears. When the church bell rings, even if it’s in the middle of the night, he waits for you at the door.’
    It was true. No Name was always ready when I came to pick him up. He liked everything about church. Not just the sermons and Priest’s origami, but also the church paintings that covered the walls and arched ceilings. He would stare at them enchanted throughout the service.
    One morning when it was raining and Priest was doing his gymnastics inside, he told Mama and me that they were called frescoes.
    ‘Frescoes tell stories,’ he said, swinging his arms around in big circles. ‘Stories about God.’
    The largest, Mama’s favourite, was of John the Baptist, painted in faded blues and reds. John was knee-deep in a river baptising a man amongst reeds and fish.
    Priest stopped swinging his arms, pointed to John the Baptist, and said with conviction, ‘God is in that painting, Minou. He is right there asking me to give him everything I have.’
    ‘What do you mean, Priest?’ I said. ‘What does he ask for?’
    ‘My life, Minou.’ Priest smiled. ‘My pretzels, my light bulbs, my origami, everything.’
    ‘But where is he?’ I asked, staring at the fresco.
    ‘He is nowhere,’ Mama said quite loudly, next to me. ‘That painting, little one, is made up of magenta red and cobalt blue, and a great deal of artistic ability.’
    Priest continued to talk as if he hadn’t heard Mama. ‘Look closely, Minou,’ he said and began to walk on the spot, lifting his knees high. ‘God is there,’ he puffed. ‘He is in the river, in the fish and in the man being baptised.’
    I looked at the fresco, while listening to Priest, who exclaimed a loud ‘wahh wahh uhh’ on every knee-lift. The baptised man, head above water, looked surprised, as if he had seen the overweight octopus and the sunken city all at once. But, no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see God and I wondered if No Name, sitting next to me, head sideways, squinting at the fresco, might be seeing what I couldn’t.
    Just above the entrance to the church was a fresco of a large black dog, teeth glinting in a dangerous smile. He was dancing in a row of angels.
    ‘That’s the devil in disguise,’ said Priest.
    I thought it was silly of the devil to dress up as a black dog. But the angels seemed too busy dancing in their long flowing dresses to notice that they were holding hands with a dog. No Name, as if he knew perfectly well that the black dog wasn’t who he pretended to be, would look suspiciously at the fresco every time we left the church.
    A stained-glass window at the end of the church showed Theodora and her beloved goat next to the Apostle Paul. Theodora’s hands were large. She held a brick in one and a paddle in the other, and looked big and strong next to Paul.
    Priest often looked at Theodora with admiration. ‘You wouldn’t want to mess with her,’ he said.
    ‘Was she a real queen?’ I asked.
    ‘In a way she was,’ he said. ‘She wanted to be a