Until I Find You by John Irving Read Free Book Online Page A

left a bare band of skin, wide enough for a name, but both Alice and Tattoo Ole urged Ladies’ Man Madsen against a name. The ripped-apart heart, all by itself, was evidence enough of his pain.
    Lars, however, wanted Alice’s name. She refused. “Your heart’s not broken because of me, ” she declared, but maybe it was.
    “What I meant,” said Ladies’ Man Madsen, summoning an unexpected dignity, “was that I wanted your tattoo name.”
    “Ah—a signature tattoo!” cried Tattoo Ole.
    “Well, okay—that’s different,” Alice told Lars.
    On the very white skin between the pieces of his torn heart, she needled her name in cursive.
    Daughter Alice
    For his thoughtful care of Jack, Alice was grateful to the Ladies’ Man. “There’s no charge,” she told him, as she bandaged his broken heart.
    Jack didn’t know what gift his mom might have made to Ole. Perhaps there was no gift for Ole—not even Alice’s coveted Rose of Jericho, which Tattoo Ole much admired.
    Their last night in Copenhagen, Ole closed the shop early and took them to dinner at a fancy restaurant on Nyhavn. There was an open fireplace and Jack had the rabbit.
    “Jack, how can you eat Peter Cottontail?” his mom asked.
    “Let him enjoy it,” Lars told her.
    “You know what, Jack?” Tattoo Ole said. “That can’t be Peter Cottontail, because Danish rabbits don’t wear clothes.”
    “They just get tattooed!” cried Ladies’ Man Madsen.
    When no one was looking, Jack scrutinized the rabbit for tattoos but didn’t find any. The boy went on eating, but he must not have had enough Christmas beer.
    That night, very late, he had a nightmare. He woke up naked and shivering. He had just fallen through the ice and drowned in the Kastelsgraven. More terrible, Jack was joined in death, at the bottom of the moat, by centuries of soldiers who had drowned there before him. The cold water had perfectly preserved them. Illogically, the littlest soldier was among the dead.
    As always, the light in the bathroom had been left on—as a night-light for Jack. He slid open the two doors of frosted glass and entered his mother’s bedroom. Whenever he had a bad dream, he was permitted to crawl into bed with her.
    But someone had beaten him to it! At the foot of his mom’s bed, which was as narrow as his own, he saw her upturned toes protruding from the bedcovers. Between her feet, Jack saw the soles of two more feet—these toes were pointed down.
    At first, for no comprehensible reason, the boy believed it was Ladies’ Man Madsen. But closer inspection of the stranger’s bare feet revealed to Jack two un- tattooed ankles. Also, the feet between his mother’s feet were too small to belong to Lars. They were even smaller than his mom’s—they were almost as small as Jack’s!
    In the light from the bathroom, something else caught the boy’s eye. On the chair, where his mother often put her clothes, was a soldier’s uniform, which Jack thought was about his size. However, when he put the uniform on, it was bigger than he’d estimated. He had to roll up the cuffs of the pants and cinch the belt in its last notch, and the shoulders of the shirt and jacket were much too broad. The epaulets touched his upper arms—the sleeves entirely covered his hands.
    If he’d had to guess, Jack would have said that the littlest soldier’s uniform was at least a size larger than his civilian clothes—the ones Jack had borrowed to wear following his misadventure in the moat. (The soldier’s off-duty clothes, his mom had called them.)
    Undaunted by this clothing mystery, which seemed of no consequence at the time, Jack was determined to stand at attention at his mother’s bedside. When she and the littlest soldier woke up, Jack would salute them—as soldiers do. (Given the costume and the boy’s intentions, his mom would later refer to this episode as Jack’s first acting job.) But while he was standing there, at attention, he realized they were not asleep. The