Grace (12 page)
She looks around.
There was no point coming in here.
What was it she wanted, to talk to him one more time? To hear him say it was good finally to rest?
She stands up and walks to the door.
Had he still been alive he would have said, “Her tread is not heavy, but she is tired. So very, very tired. She is tired when she lies down to sleep, and when she wakes up she is tired.”
Mai shuts the door behind her, not turning to look back.
It grows dark. A deep darkness falls on Johan Sletten’s face.
He would have said, “And your hair, Mai, is more beautiful this morning than on any other.”
LINN ULLMANN
Grace
Born in 1966, Linn Ullmann is a graduate of New York University, where she studied English literature and began work on her Ph.D. In 1990 she returned to her native Norway to pursue a career in journalism, becoming a prominent literary critic. She is the author of the novels Before You Sleep and Stella Descending, and she also writes a column for Norway’s leading morning newspaper. In Norway Grace won the prestigious Reader’s Prize. Ullmann lives in Oslo with her husband and their four children.
ALSO BY LINN ULLMANN
Before You Sleep
Stella Descending
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2006
Translation copyright © 2005 by Forlaget Oktober AS
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Ullmann, Linn, [date]
[Nåde. English]
Grace / Linn Ullmann ; translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland.
p. cm.
I. Haveland, Barbara. II. Title.
PT8951.31.L56T513 2005
839.8’2374—dc22
2004048601
eISBN: 978-0-307-41534-9
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